02. Shadows of the Well of Souls (26 page)

The group intersected a wide, well-worn trail that came in from the south, one that was adequate not just for the creatures they'd seen on the plains but for the two Dillians to walk side by side if they wanted to.

"Someone cut this wider," Tony noted, pointing a long finger at a lopped-off tree branch and to other obviously cut limbs and bushes elsewhere.

"Yeah, but why this wide?" Lori wondered. "I've got too many weird scents here to decide what might be odd, but I've sure not seen anything
this
big so far."

"Well, whatever it is, it's
very
large indeed," Anne Marie noted, gesturing toward the ground. "Those are not the droppings of a chipmunk, dog, horse, or anything else so tiny."

"Holy shit!" Mavra exclaimed, not realizing she'd made something of a joke. "I haven't seen turds that size since . . ."

Since where?

Lori stared at the droppings. "Since perhaps some sort of zoo or preserve? Or maybe a circus? Those look like elephant turds to me."

Mavra nodded. "That's it! But not a zoo or preserve or a circus, no. I saw them with soldiers on top of them in both military parades and in fierce battles."

"They're not that fresh—thank goodness," Anne Marie commented.

"And the cuttings aren't recent. Maybe a week or so old, maybe more," Tony added.

Lori looked over and down at Mavra. "Could the locals here be elephantlike? I mean, like Dillians are horselike and so on?"

"There are a couple that I know of who might qualify in that area," Mavra replied, "but none who'd mess up their own trail like that. You have to remember that we're talking intelligent races here. Out in the wild, thinking beings crap off their roads, not all over them. On the other hand, intelligent races ride elephants and use them as work animals as well. And if you ride in on something like that, there's
nothing
in this grove that's gonna argue with you, is there?"

"
We're
not atop elephants," Tony reminded them. "And there is the watering hole. The watering hole and something very much more."

It was indeed. The "hole" was a large pool or basin perhaps fifty meters across. It seemed natural, and the continuous rippling on the surface suggested that it was fed by an underground stream. Someone, however, had taken the natural pool and carved and shaped it until it was an egg-shaped oval with a two-meter-thick lip of mortared stones around it on all but its back side. That ended in a curved wall, with stairs of stone that went up on both sides to a flat stone platform above the pool. In back of it was a cone-shaped structure that seemed twisted, creating a spiral to its point.

The building, stairs, wall, and pool itself were partly overgrown with vines and creepers. A number of creatures from both the jungle grove and the vast plains were moving about the whole area. Still, it didn't seem like a ruin but rather like a place that was only seldom used but was still carefully kept intact.

"Temple?" Tony guessed.

"Maybe. Who knows?" Mavra replied. "Considering that there's something that looks a lot like a boa constrictor covered with peacock feathers and with a mouth showing more teeth than a shark snoozing on that platform, though, I don't think I'm curious enough to find out."

"I thought you were immortal," Lori noted a bit sarcastically.

"I wouldn't die, but I'd hate to waste months growing a new pair of legs."

The current rulers of the pool were two dozen small creatures whose appearance was unsettling. The largest male was only a meter high, and they all looked to be a sort of tailless ape, with thinly spread, soft, downlike hair covering their bodies except the chests, rear ends, and parts of the faces. They walked stooped over but were definitely bipeds, and for all their smallness and crudeness they looked very, very much like humans, even to the long hair on the heads. But there was just enough of the ape in their features to make them seem slightly more of an anthropological speculator's exhibit than small humans.

When the apes spotted the travelers, they didn't immediately run. Instead, the females let out loud, humanlike screams that panicked all the flying things and many of the smaller land creatures as well; the males stared at them, bared their teeth, and growled menacingly.

"Good heavens! They're Lucy's cousins!" Anne Marie exclaimed.

"Lucy?" Mavra asked.

"Doctor Leakey's fossils from Kenya. The spitting image! Claimed they were some sort of ancestor of Earth humans or some such rot."

Lori, in spite of his feelings of alienation from the race of his birth, nonetheless had that primal feeling inside and didn't much like it. "My lord! You don't suppose . . . ?"

"Prototypes or more idea stealing by the makers," Mavra reassured him, although she didn't like how familiar they looked, either. "Odd, though. The mammals we've seen are all six-limbed. They're bipeds. They don't seem to fit in here at all."

"Well, I don't care about mysteries, but some of those creatures best left sleeping are awake now. Whatever these tilings are, they don't want to move away for us."

"Oh,
pooh
!"
Anne Marie said, and with barely a glance, both she and Tony reared up on hind legs, then kicked off and charged right toward the little apelike creatures.

They could see the panic in the creatures' eyes. A couple of the males gave hysterical gasps, then they all ran back into the jungle and vanished as if they'd never been there.

The centaurs pulled up, turned, and looked back at the other three.

"Poor little things!" Anne Marie commented. "I do hope we didn't scare them all
that
badly." There was a trace of a smile on her lips, though, and she added, "That was rather fun, though, I do admit."

They moved in, Lori and Mavra well aware that the feathered snake with the hundreds of teeth was now awake and looking at them from the top of the balcony platform, although it showed no intention of moving from its spot.

Even Julian was awake, looking weak and pale. Tony had forgotten that she was strapped down on her back when they'd reared and charged. Now the centauress's look changed from playful triumph to embarrassment, and Anne Marie quickly rushed over and untied the Erdomese.

"Oh, my dear! We're
so
sorry! Are you all right?" Anne Marie asked in English.

Julian stared back blankly, and Lori ran over to her. "Are you all right?
Julian!
Can you hear me?"

"Yes, my husband," she answered rather weakly and a bit uncertainly. "I—I think so. But I am so thirsty and weak . . ."

She seemed as good as she'd been, anyway. "Come, we'll get you down. When you didn't answer Anne Marie, I got very worried."

"I am gladdened that you were concerned, but I did not answer because I did not understand the speech."

Tony frowned and looked up at Anne Marie. "You
did
ask in English, didn't you? With the translator it's hard to tell."

"Oh, of course. I'd never expect any of you to speak
Dillian."

Lori steadied Julian and asked. "Do you understand her now?"

Julian looked blank. "I know nothing but Erdoma. Why should I understand the speech of an alien?"

Mavra looked up at Lori. "You better get her a fill-up. I think you bled her dry last night."

The water in the pool seemed remarkably clear and appeared safe. Mavra risked a left little finger and decided that it felt just like lukewarm water. Still, she got out a small test tube device from the pack, added some powder, then stooped and carefully let the tube fill with water. After she brought it up and looked at it, all the powder stayed on the bottom and the water remained clear.

"Unless I miss my guess, it's plain fresh water," she told them. "Actually, it's cleaner than it should be, all things considered. I don't think anybody should get in it, but we'll fill the canteens and Julian can drink all she wants."

"Fair enough," replied Lori, still concerned about Julian's dazed mental state. They began filling canteens and handing them to the Erdomese woman, who drank them down as if she'd been in the desert for months without a drop. The amount of water she finally consumed, particularly considering her size, was nothing short of astonishing. Each canteen held a little over a liter, and she easily and quickly downed a dozen or more canteens full of water before pausing, and she wasn't through. Even with the Dillians guarding, Mavra kept checking the surroundings for anything dangerous and soon lost count of just how much water Julian finally took in.

When she was finally, truly done, she looked quite different. The color was slowly coming back into her, and as the sacs in front of and just below her rib cage filled, they actually stretched the skin, pushing out the breasts and making them appear inflated and giving her the appearance of being slightly overweight. She was, too, Mavra thought. At the very least, she'd taken in fifteen to twenty liters of water, enough to add quite a bit of weight. Idly, the lone Earth human wondered if the Erdomese would slosh when she walked.

"I am much better, husband. Now you, too, should drink, for what you drew from me was not used in ordinary ways and the fever must have drained you."

Lori had passed a lot of particularly smelly and discolored urine already, but he knew what she meant. While by no means in the kind of shape Julian had been, he
did
feel a real thirst. On the other hand, he couldn't down more than five canteens full, and that was about as much as he'd ever taken in or needed.

While the others took turns, Julian asked him to sit so that she could clean off some of the muck still on him from falling in the muddy ditch when jumping from the train days earlier. Using her hands opened as fully as they could get, she began methodically rubbing and then brushing away the dried mud as if it were something she did all the time.

Since she seemed so much better, Lori asked her, "Julian, can you understand any of what the Dillians say? Have you remembered English?"

"I cannot understand their speech, my husband, if that is what you mean. I know only Erdoma. I do not know what the last word you spoke means, so I cannot answer that."

He lay down so she could work on his side and front, and this allowed him to see her face. "Have you lost all memory of the past?"
This is crazy,
he thought.
If anything, it's me who should be having memory problems after a fever like that.

She shook her head. "I remember only that I was possessed of an evil spirit and that now that spirit has fled with your sickness. It would please me if you would give me another name, one of your choosing."

"But I
like
your name. I'm used to it."

"It is the name of the spirit, not me. It makes me feel bad, and I cannot even pronounce it as you do.
Please,
I beg you to use the name chosen at our wedding or any other that pleases you."

He didn't like this change one bit. Not any of it. Even if, damn it, it was the fantasy he'd had since they'd left Aqomb. Now that he had it, he didn't like it at all. She was too much like she'd been when they'd both been under the influence of that hypnotic drug. Too much like, well, all the other young Erdomese women. Still, it wasn't something he could do much about right now.

It was true that the "ju" sound was not in the Erdomese language, or anything else that might in English be pronounced with the "J" sound. Her Erdomese name, Alowi, had been given by the priest at the wedding at least partly for that reason, but they'd never used it except during the post-therapy sessions while under the drug. Ironically, although it wasn't a traditional Erdomese name, "Lori" had been just fine with the priests.

"Very well. For now I will use Alowi," he told her, and she seemed very pleased.

Cleaned and combed, he did feel better and certainly looked better. By this time they were packing up, and he told Julian—
Alowi
—to help but got Mavra aside for a moment.

"You know anything about this change in her?" he asked.

"A little," Mavra replied. "It's not something
I
can understand, and I never thought somebody with her background would succumb, but you can't tell about people sometimes. Basically, Julian Beard's been fighting with the Erdomese body, feelings, customs, and conditioning, and the old personality has been more or less dominant, even when the Erdomese self occasionally peeked through. Last night, in a place alien to both sides, the only person she cared about and really needed in this world was dying, and Julian Beard couldn't save him with all the accumulated knowledge and skill of a lifetime. Beard had to face not only helplessness but repressed feelings and emotions toward you that the Alowi part, the native part supplied by the Well and conditioned by her new body and situation, wanted so much to express. Beard needed you for any chance of survival or reasonable happiness in this life, but only Alowi had both the knowledge and the additional motivation that could save you. Unlike Tony or you, who surrendered on your own terms, Beard could not. It just wasn't in him not to fight. When the crisis came and he wasn't able to deal with it, something gave, and that was Julian Beard."

"But that's crazy! They're one and the same! Just as I am. It's true that I'm different; I've changed radically since being here, sometimes in directions I don't like, and I'm still trying for a balance, but it's nothing I can't handle."

"As a woman, did you ever find another woman sexually attractive? Did you ever fantasize about what it would be like to be a man?"

"Well, yeah, sure, but . . ."

"I will bet you that Julian never found another man sexually attractive, at least not consciously, and his fantasies were
about
women, not about being a woman. He could take tremendous stress, great pressure, and still accomplish anything he set out to do. But those same traits created an enormous ego, I think, that had a single and absolutist view of itself. What the Well did to him was, to him, so extreme that finding himself a female, she had to be locked up and drugged just to keep her from suicide. You said as much. When you came along, he tried to compromise with his female self, but all that did was shift her from one extreme to the other. On this trip the male side felt in charge again, but last night the crisis was just too much. To help you, she had to put everything out of her mind that was from her male half, both attitudes and experience, and let Alowi completely take over. When that happened, all that repressed emotion just gushed out, suddenly no longer under restraint. Alowi then saved you by doing something Julian could never do—by
not thinking.
By just letting that Erdomese instinct take control and never doubting if it was right or wrong. She didn't work so fanatically because she needed you, not in the sense Julian had. She did it because she loves you, and being in love with a man wasn't something that Julian Beard could handle. When you push something that can't bend with a lot of force, it breaks."