03. Gods at the Well of Souls (3 page)

"But you're talking about living like an animal! Anne Marie exclaimed. "You are  better than that! Not to mention the fact that by your own admission you are  defenseless against the horrid beings that are a part of this world. It is a  death sentence either way." 

"I will never go back to Erdom," she repeated, "but I will die an Erdomese.  Those are facts. I choose my own course. It is more than any Erdomese woman has  been able to do before." 

Anne Marie sighed. "Then we shall simply have to contact our embassy in Zone and  tell them the situation and location. Then we will find some part of this land  that has some decent pasture and a few trees and wait them out." "Or wait until they throw us out," Tony noted. 

"Then we will leave, but only far enough to find some hospitality elsewhere,"  Anne Marie proclaimed. "I positively refuse to abandon this poor child to the  wolves!" 

Tony sighed. "Don't overdramatize, Anne Marie. There are no wolves in a place  like this except perhaps the foul creatures who run the place. But we must also  be practical. If we remain, we need to find some sort of work, and this is a  high-tech hex surrounded by others that are not." 

"But the closest ones are water!" 

"True, but what of that? If a ship cannot come in to high-tech, then there is at  least some point where it must be handled by the old means. Compared to one of  our men we are not very strong, but the closest of our men is probably half a  world away. In these parts we are probably quite strong, and even if we cannot  lift what is required, we can certainly pull great weights." 

"And Alowi?" 

Tony shrugged. "She can cook. And supervise if need be. If we must remain in  this godforsaken country, let's try and make the best of it." 

This time it was Anne Marie who was doubtful. "But for how long?" Tony shrugged. "Until one or more of us goes crazy or gets fed up or something  breaks. It is better than this. Who knows? The council might at least extend us  some seed money. It was they, after all, who got us into this." "Oh, Tony! You're such a dear! You're making me feel guilty about dragging you  along on this!" 

"I have never been dragged," Tony responded. "I followed of my own free will,  and I stay for the same reason. And when all hope is gone, then I will go home  the same way!" 

Anne Marie squeezed Tony's hand and then kissed her. "Of course you will, dear!"   

If there had been no hope, they would have headed home long before this, but the  problem was, as Anne Marie put it, they had been placed on hold but no one had  hung up on them. Anne Marie noted that in spite of many areas where the Well  World seemed futuristic to the point of being magical, the lack of any way to  fly or even send signals any great distance between the worldlets led to  everything more or less moving at, at best, a nineteenth-century pace. Nobody  was ever in a hurry here, it seemed, unless it was to do evil, and so long as  they were no threat, even evil seemed willing to leave them alone. The council, still divided over exactly what course to take and thus taking very  little, or so it seemed, asked them in fact to stay on "in the Agon region."  They advanced the Dillians some credit and even found the pair a job of sorts,  although not quite what they had in mind. Hexes in the region produced a variety  of products that were of great interest to Dillia, but it had never been  practical to manage much trade with nations so far away without some sort of  permanent trade office coordinating things locally. Dillia was half a world  distant-almost five thousand kilometers away over a vast stretch of water going  west from the Ocean of Shadows and across the entire Overdark. Deals could be  made in Zone in the traditional way, but without somebody on site, there was no  way to guarantee quality, compare prices and deals, and put everything together.  Dillians had never been the sort to relish staying long periods of time in  remote and alien lands, and so they'd pretty much had to accept the traditional  "take it or leave it" deals from their nearer neighbors. Merely the threat of  competition could only help, and here were two who wanted to remain, at least  for a significant period of time. 

Dillia itself was something of a hotbed of semitech innovation, conservation  plans and concepts, and agricultural management, particularly forestry, and had  much to trade in areas most nations largely ignored. In exchange, it needed  steam vessels, particularly for internal lakes and rivers, and other heavy  industrial items either impossible or impractical to make at home. Dillians also  had a taste for things that could not be grown locally, including many tropical  and subtropical products, coffee, tea, cocoa, and tobacco. The Dillian  government was more than happy to set Tony and Anne Marie up as a trade office  and see what they could do. 

Neither of them was under any illusions that this was a permanent job or that  the opportunity wasn't created because, for reasons of its own, the Zone Council  saw some value in keeping them in the region at that time, but as it served  everyone's purposes, there were no objections. 

Alowi was not so fortunate. She was nothing to Dillia, of course, and even less  to Erdom, who clearly was disinterested even in whether or not one more female  came back at all. Nor did the council as a whole see any use for her. So she  became basically the Dillians' housekeeper, keeping their new home clean,  cooking the meals, and doing other chores, all of which was made much easier by  being in a high-tech hex where things not only worked smoothly, they seemed in  some ways futuristic compared to Earth. 

Because she had no translator, Alowi spent the time studying and learning  Agonese, a language that sounded bizarre but that, she soon discovered, followed  a pattern not too different from some Earth tongues. It was soon clear that  Julian Beard was not dead inside her brain but merely dormant; it was in fact  Beard's knowledge of Japanese that gave her the clue to understanding Agonese.  Not that they resembled each other in obvious ways, but the structure wasn't all  that different. 

The trade mission had some initial frustration but then some startling  successes. Tony was adept at business, and Anne Marie seemed able to spot a con  or a sucker deal almost instantly and knew just when to give in on a  negotiation. The initial commissions weren't huge, but they no longer had to  worry about going broke. 

They used some of the first money to buy Alowi a translator. She made no  objections this time, spending much of her time doing a great deal of studying,  using the Agonese computer libraries. Their written language was actually pretty  basic; for a high-tech society, it appeared that they were surprisingly  illiterate and used voice and picture technology for all their information  sources. Her greatest frustration lay in her inability to really use her hands;  the oversized split hooves proved unable to push even a few small buttons on a  console, but she managed by gripping a wooden stick and using that instead. There was an ancient language of commerce on the Well World that had evolved to  cover just about every conceivable situation. It was a written language  only-translators filled the gap for spoken tongues-and it had arisen from a  pictorgraphic alphabet so ancient, nobody now knew its origins. It was extremely  complex-it had to be to cover so many tiny worldlets and so many varying  races-but it was used on virtually all interspecies documents and everything  from contracts to treaties. If one could learn it, there was nothing really  closed to that person. To Tony, its sheer complexity made Mandarin Chinese, with  its mere thirty thousand or so characters, seem like child's play, and he barely  tried before giving up. Anne Marie didn't try at all, noting that the English  had never had to learn other people's languages and she did not intend to start.  Alowi, however, managed to read many basic texts at the end of only three  months. 

It had been learning Agonese that had been the key. With both Agonese and Erdoma  to go by, she was able to isolate and assemble key concepts from the two totally  different languages and see how the trade language accommodated the concepts of  both. It still wasn't easy, but it seemed, well, obvious to her, and it had  already become merely a matter of memorizing vocabulary. 

Tony in particular was impressed. While still back on Earth she'd considered  herself something of a linguist, which was useful for an international airline  pilot. In addition to her native Portuguese and essential English for aviation,  she knew Spanish, French, and German well enough to converse and read a  newspaper. This, however-this was Sanskrit as written by a mad chicken that had  gone amok in an ink factory. 

"You can really read this?" 

Alowi shrugged modestly. "Enough. What I do not know, I can usually interpolate.  I think that if I were writing books or treaties, I would need several more  years, and about a third that applies to specific races and hexes that I cannot  imagine would require some context for me to understand, such as going there and  talking with them. But yes, I can make do in it. I will never write it, though.  With these hands I can stir, chop, pick up, do quite a number of things, but  only those things which can be done with broad motion and much toleration for  error. To make these fine marks with pen or brush, where slight deviations  change whole meanings-no. Even doing block English letters is crude, much like a  child just beginning to learn them." 

"Then why go through all this?" 

"Because the one thing that works as well as before, perhaps better, is my  brain. It is odd-I seem to be able to concentrate as I never could before, to  grasp and memorize things easily that before would have been much more  difficult. I have always been a good learner, but I do not know why it is  suddenly much easier. What is not so easy is chemistry." 

What?" 

"This body was built for sensation. It demands things, and the cravings can  become overpowering at times. I have compensated with creativity and with some  unconventional use of objects I have picked up in stores here, but it is not the  same as the real thing, and the only place I can get what I truly need would  also almost certainly give me a lobotomy. Erdomese just are not built to be  loners. I know that now. I have been kidding myself all along. So I cannot go  back, but if I do not go back, I will go mad." 

Tony sighed. "So what are you going to do? We're here mainly because of you and  because we hope to find out what the hell happened to the others, but time is  dragging on and on. The council is only certain that nobody has yet entered the  Well. There are certain places at the equatorial barrier, called Avenues, where  anyone who knows how- and only two people on this world do-can get in, and those  are all carefully monitored. It is almost as if one of those hex gates opened  and swallowed the two of them." 

Alowi nodded. "I know. I truthfully have expected to hear the worst, but I never  expected to go this long and hear nothing. That makes it all the harder." She  paused a moment. "Do you remember the clinic here that had some doctors of other  races as well as Agonese? Where I got the translator?" 

"Yes, it mostly serves the ships' crews and passengers and other travelers  passing through. There are stories that the doctors are here because they cannot  go home, that they are wanted for some sort of criminal activities. Certainly  they can't support all this high-tech equipment off what they're paid to fix  broken legs and such every once in a while. I did not like the feel of the place  when we took you there. Why?" 

"The locals tell tall stories about them. About how they do terrible experiments  and create horrors, but they are protected because they leave the Agonese alone.  It is also said they are of use sometimes to the government and perhaps to  criminal gangs. I do not like them one bit, but I have been thinking of going to  them. Only faint hope that perhaps my Lori could be found has stopped me." "Why? Are you sick?" 

"As I said, I have-problems. They are the only ones with a data base on all the  races, including mine, within who knows how far. Their practice here is  certainly honest and above board or they would have been forced to move  elsewhere. I have been thinking of going to them and asking if there was  something they could do to help me control this or damp it down. When you find  yourself not merely sweeping with a broom but making love to it, it is time  something was done. I have no money, and they are unlikely to be cheap. I am  ashamed that I must ask you if you will cover my bill if I go there." "Well, yes, of course-if you're sure. But I don't like it, and I know Anne Marie  won't, either. If even part of their reputation is true, you could wind up far  worse off than you started." 

"I'm aware of that, but this will not be some hapless captive coming into their  clutches. You will know that I am going there, and it will be all up front. It  is not likely that they could stand to create a monster in public, let alone  have a distinctive patient vanish, and I will know the options and be able to  choose which or whether to do anything at all." 

"Very well, then, dear, go to them. I fear as much for your mind and soul as for  your body, though. I have already seen you undergo so many personality changes,  I am not sure who exactly I am talking to sometimes, if you will pardon my  saying so." 

Alowi smiled. "I understand. In fact, I understand a lot more about myself than  I did. The truth is, I think those all were different people, or different parts  of me, all mixed up inside. It has taken me a long time, and many shocks, to put  any of it together. Julian Beard is essentially dead. I have all of his  knowledge, but I have no direct memories or feelings of being him. It is more  like-well, viewing a very long motion picture of somebody's life. It is very  odd. I know every detail, but not as if I had actually done it. Rather, it is as  if I had been standing there, ghostly, watching it all being done. I can think  about how to do things with soft, five-fingered hands, but I cannot really  imagine having such a hand. When I look in a mirror, what is reflected there is  me. And the odd thing is, I like what I see. Nothing else-computes, you might  say. I hate the Erdomese government, church, and system, and I cannot say that I  wish I had been born with the freedom a man has there, but I am who and what I  am, and I am comfortable with that. I just wish they would be. So, for better or  worse, I am Alowi and I am too damned smart to go home."