03. Gods at the Well of Souls (10 page)

"Another corrupt government?" Tony sighed. 

"You misunderstand. The Liliblodians believe that all other races were put here  as their prey. By-consuming- others or, more accurately, the fluids of others,  they believe they gather in inferior souls and all the strengths of the prey.  The cartel pays them in two ways. It provides live prey for them of the type  they love-alien flesh, as it were-and the one other substance which is their own  drug weakness." 

"Disgusting," Anne Marie commented. "Eating live beings for pleasure . . ." "Yes, it is almost as bad as their own drug of choice. You cannot imagine  anything more bizarre than seeing a mass of Liliblodians literally rolling in a  chocolate stupor ..." 

Dlubine 

THE MASTER COMPUTER THAT WAS THE HEART OF THE ENTIRE planet called the Well  World was just a machine; its powers were far too vast to have ever trusted  making it self-aware in the sense that it could act outside its makers'  predetermined instructions. And while it was true that machines had infinite  patience, they could also have very little if something required was not getting  done. Now, as the Kraang continued its assaults and made tiny slivers of inroads  into the system, it calculated that the time to solve this problem was no longer  inconsequential. In that sense the Well could be said to have become impatient  with the progress of events, and when the Well wanted something, it tended to be  less than subtle about it. 

To summon the two Watchers to see to repairs, it had sent huge meteors crashing  into the planet where the Watchers were living. Extricating Mavra Chang so that  she had any reasonable chance of success appeared to be very difficult and would  require a great deal of subtlety and patience. Going after Nathan Brazil, on the  other hand, would not. The fact that Brazil had willingly taken himself out of  worldly care was to the Well entirely irrelevant. 

Nathan Brazil had been on the Well World for over eleven months, having come in  with Tony and Anne Marie. It had been almost seven months since Theresa "Terry"  Perez had come through on her own, following Mavra, Lori, Gus, and Juan Campos  by a mere hour or so and quickly coming under the influence of the bizarre  Glathrielian Way that the race that shared common ancestry with Terry's had  followed. Prepared by the Glathrielians, she had attached herself to Brazil  within only a week, and they had been inseparable since. For four months they  had been deliberately held up, stalled, far from the goal of the Well Avenue,  and then for two weeks they had broken free and escaped across the sea, been  reunited with Gus, and then lost him again as they crashed on an undersea reef  in a storm. 

But on their tiny tropical volcanic island in the middle of a fairy-tale sea,  Nathan Brazil and Terry had no concept of the passage of time or any cares or  thoughts beyond sheer childish fun. The tropical rain forest on the windward  side of the island provided enough wild fruits and vegetables to feed them, and  the frequent but brief storms always provided a supply of fresh water. Brazil  had opened himself to the Glathrielian Way but not to the elders' master plan of  co-opting him as he entered the Well. There he had remained, happy and carefree,  unaware of that nonhuman part of him, that deep alien nature that had thwarted  the elders' control. 

The tropical sun had browned him almost as dark as Terry's natural color, and  his hair and beard were long and unkempt, giving him almost a wild man's  appearance. His bare feet were hard and callused, toughened from months of  volcanic rock and soil; the day-to-day life of climbing for treetop delicacies  and over the craggy rocks had bulked out his muscles. 

Terry had not been as active of late, for she'd developed a large, hard belly  and some considerable fat and felt unbalanced and odd, but she accepted it as  the way things were. Part of the Glathrielian Way was acceptance of whatever was  and dealing with it as best one could. 

This proved difficult suddenly, though, when they were awakened one morning just  at dawn by a series of severe tremors. The ground shook, and trees swayed, and  rocks fell from the high mountain. This went on for a day or more, and suddenly  a huge piece of the mountain about halfway up the side seemed to collapse,  opening a gaping wound from which belched forth steam and black ash. Then  beginning what seemed a wondrous light show, a volcanic fountain played against  the sky. But the earthquakes continued in increasing frequency and intensity,  and from the masses of grainy rock laid down by the fountain there came puffs  and plumes of smoke and ash that set part of the forest on fire. They made their way around to the beach on the opposite side of the mountain  from the eruption, having to stop or risk falling down with each tremor.  Something inside them knew that they had to leave this place, and quickly. But  leave for where? And how? There was nothing on all sides but the water. There were other islands, of course, some of which could be seen across the  expanse of sea, but they were not as close as they appeared. None would be a  problem to reach with a boat or a raft, but they had nothing but themselves. An  inner sense of urgency told them that there was little time to consider any  alternatives. Reluctantly, they entered the water and made their way out past  the reefs, Brazil using his strength to support Terry and keep her afloat. They made it to perhaps a kilometer from the beach and found themselves suddenly  carried along on a warm current, able to pretty much just float and let the  water do the work, which was more than welcome. The current carried them at a  steady pace away from the erupting island and toward the calmer ones beyond. Then a sudden, tremendous explosion hit them like something solid, deafening  them both, and they could see the onrushing wall of water from where the island,  now a vast and dark mushroom-shaped cloud, had been, a huge tidal wave coming  straight for them. It was taller than the tallest trees and with a roar that  sounded like thousands of caged beasts roaring at once, and they stopped  swimming and watched it come, knowing it was death. 

When it struck, their world became all water and whirling forces and then  oblivion. 

The Well had issued its wake-up call to Nathan Brazil. 

The island exploding, the rushing wall of water, then . .. What? She awoke as if from some strange dream, much of which had been very nice yet  only dimly remembered, like some great childhood treat now far in the past and  unrecoverable. 

But watch that last step, she thought. It's a dilly. 

She sat up painfully, groaning and stretching. She felt as if she'd been beaten  to a pulp by some gigantic fist, but just as everything seemed bruised, nothing  seemed broken. 

The beach was warm and wet. It was made of yellow sand, the kind built up from  the discards of coral reefs over thousands upon thousands of years, but it was  soft and somewhat comfortable. 

She shook her head, trying to clear it, trying to think. She remembered a  tremendous bang and a big wave but nothing afterward. 

And nothing before. 

It was as if she'd just suddenly come into existence here on this beach. A big  bang and here she was. 

It was quite dark, but out in the water she could see a million lights  underneath the gentle waves, burning with a multitude of colors and shapes and  patterns that she knew couldn't be anything from nature, although she didn't  know how she knew. And on the water, too, in the distance, things seemed to  float, lights up upon the water rather than deep below it. 

Boats, she understood at once, although again she had no idea where this  information was coming from. 

I've lost my memory, she realized. Something, some accident or shipwreck or  something like that caused me to lose my memory. She had no idea who. or where,  or even what she was. 

She ran her hands over her body in the dark. It was a woman's body. It wasn't  that this was wrong so much as basic information about herself that she had had  no sense of before. Somehow, she hadn't seen herself as a woman, and there was a  sense of wrongness about it somewhere deep inside her. 

She knew so many things! There were all sorts of facts and behaviors and other  pieces of information swirling around in her head, yet about herself she had no  information at all. No past, no memories of actually being anywhere, doing  anything, interacting with anything or anybody at all. I am a woman became the  first, and so far only, definition of herself as an individual. It seemed to her that there had been Another somewhere, somebody very important.  A girl ... Another girl? That didn't seem right. But who and what? She cast about with her mind, never even considering speech, but there was no  response from the immediate area. She was alone on the beach, without memory,  without anything at all, in a place she couldn't remember for reasons that were  a total mystery. 

Perhaps ... Perhaps out there, among the floating lights? She cast a mental net  and caught far more than she expected. Thoughts ... Lots of thoughts from what  seemed to be lots of different creatures. Their words, then- very sounds would  mean nothing to her-she knew that-but thoughts were assembled from stored  information into holographic concepts before they were translated as sounds, and  those she could pick up if she concentrated. 

The power came naturally to her, although something inside said that it was a  new thing, something she hadn't done before, yet something she had done before.  That didn't make sense. Nothing really did. 

It seemed somehow indecent to peek into their thoughts, to see who was tired,  who was bored, and who was thinking of killing the captain. Indecent but kind of  fun, too. Some thoughts, though, were a lot harder to figure out than others;  some of those creatures out there weren't even close to her form, and their  thinking wasn't much closer, either. 

She cast about for others of her own land but found none. Wherever she was, she  was more than merely unique in her own psyche; she was one of a kind. No, that wasn't true. There were others. Something told her that. Men, women,  children ... But not here.  

In the general casting about, though, she found spots where in fact not only  words but complete sentences came through to her as if spoken in her native  tongue-whatever that was. But it took some mental fine-tuning until she could  fully understand those thoughts, kind of like tuning a radio. 

Tuning a radio? Where had that come from? God! She sure knew a lot for somebody  who couldn't remember anything except what was discovered by direct examination. Maybe they knew. Maybe they were looking for her. If so, she'd better find out  if it was in her best interest to want to be found. 

"... Still getting reports from the Dlubinians that there is a great deal of  damage and loss of life below ..." 

Those underwater lights. There were people of some kind who lived down there! If  that explosion that seemed to start her existence wasn't just some metaphysical  memory, then ... Oh, God! 

"... No previous indication of volcanic activity in the area in any recent  period, and it's monitored as closely as you can in a semitech hex ..." Some of that made sense, some of it didn't. A volcano- that would account for  .the explosion and the big rush of water that had followed. If she were anywhere  in that area, she would have been hit with tremendous shock. That had to be it.  But it didn't explain anything else. 

She listened for quite some time, gathering details of what had happened but  clearing up her own personal mystery not one bit. Had she been on a boat, or on  an island, or what? Not alone, surely. Not out here in this strange and alien  place. But if not alone, then with who? How? And why? 

The aches and pains made it impossible to just sit there. She began massaging  the stiffness and found herself somehow mentally surveying her physical  condition. Bruises, twists, all that, but nothing serious. As each region was  surveyed, she dampened down the pain there and went on. Only one area stymied  her, the area around her abdomen. It seemed odd, at once detached and yet not  detached, but certainly different. Well, it wasn't anything she could figure out  now. She was aware that she was using, almost matter-of-factly, powers that were  extremely unusual, powers that even she hadn't realized were there. But she  thought nothing about using them. 

She felt a strong urge to pee and then find something to eat and drink, if she  didn't have to wander too far in the darkness. She certainly hoped that there  was some sort of food and water on the island; otherwise a lot of choices would  be made for her right off. 

Her body felt clumsy, unfamiliar, and it took some getting used to before she  felt confident enough to really try much. She wished it were light; there was  nothing but darkness beyond the beach and no way of telling what might be  waiting for her there. 

Almost at once, unbidden by any conscious thought, the darkness was replaced by  endless colors, all soft pastels with occasional flashes of brightness, and  without a lot of difficulty she began to make out which were trees, which bushes  or flowers. She intuitively understood that other colors represented living  things great and small. It seemed magical, a counterpoint to the great lights  beneath the waves in back of her, but after a while she realized it didn't help.  This new form of vision didn't show rocks or fallen dead timber or other  hazards. Best to stay out of the jungle until she knew it better and was more  comfortable with the way her body moved. 

Instead of going inland, she walked along the beach, not quite sure what, if  anything, she was looking for, but the terrain was at least manageable by the  light of the spectacularly bright starry sky. Here and there were great rocks-  perhaps spewed by volcanoes, perhaps eaten away by the sea-and all sorts of wood  and shells and coral washed up and deposited on the sandy shore. Walking closer,  she thought she heard something, a gurgling sound, almost drowned out by the  sound of nearby breakers. In a couple of minutes she found it-a tiny spring  coming out of the rocks and jungle, cutting its way through the sand, and  flowing into the great sea beyond. She got down on her knees, cupped her hands,  and brought some to her lips. It was fresh! At least she would not die of  thirst! It was lukewarm, but she splashed some on her face to wash away the last  of the cobwebs that seemed to be lurking in her mind.