03. Quest for the Well of Souls (6 page)

She nodded. "You know I will."

They left the compound and cantered down the trail. The sound of the pounding surf grew very loud.

"Must've been a storm out there," he remarked. "Listen to those breakers!"

But far-off storm or not, the sky was mostly clear, obscured here and there by isolated wispy clouds that lent an almost mystical atmosphere to the scene.

He lay down in the sand, and she settled more or less atop him, propping herself up enough so she could see the stars.

In many ways, she had changed less than she thought. She had genuine affection for Joshi, and he for her. But Joshi was, in the end, part of her project, one designed as a means to gain independence from others. Dependency she hated more than anything else. She had never been dependent for very long on anyone, and the state to which they'd reduced her was intolerable.

But her brain had compensated for most of that; if she lived long enough, one day it would redress the balance.

But it was only coping. Mentally and emotionally she had acclimated to her physical condition and limitations, but never had she abandoned the stars, the great swirling gulfs that shined so brightly all around her on nights like this that you could almost leap forward into them. So close, so visible—and yet, so far.

That was where she belonged, and she never gave up.

First you must descend into Hell. Then, only when hope is gone, will you be lifted up and placed at the pinnacle of attainable power . . . 
 

But hope was never gone, she thought to herself. Not while she lived. Not while the stars shined so.

Joshi turned his head upward a little, looking out at the northeastern horizon.

"Look!" he said. "You can see your moon!"

She lowered her gaze toward the horizon. It was there, a large silvery ball looking unreal and out of place, like a huge chunk of silver.

Surely they're all long dead now, she told herself. All but Obie—poor, isolated Obie. The computer had been much more than any self-aware model she'd ever known. Obie was the son of Gil Zinder, and regarded himself that way. His own tragedy was that self-aware personality; how lonely he must be, she thought.

Lonely. That was an odd term for her to use, she thought. All her life it had been her normal condition, except for those few years of marriage. And yet, she was better off than Obie now. She had Joshi, and the tribe.

After a while the salt spray from the incoming tide started to reach them, and clouds obscured the view, so they got up and headed back to the compound.

"The
Trader
's due in some time this week, isn't it?" he asked her.

She nodded. "I hope they brought the bio references I asked for, and those books on seine fishing techniques, too."

He sighed. "The fishing stuff I can see—for the tribe, anyway. Got to keep the faithful faithful and all that. But what's all this interest in bio? You know we're a race of two, sterile. If we weren't, we'd have had some by now."

She chuckled. The logistics of that had been a real tangle, since their sexual equipment was not in the best places, but it had been accomplished. She wondered whether her renewed appetite for sex after so many years of abstinence was due to middle age.

"Well, I'm sterile, anyway," she responded. "Even if I weren't, we'd have Glathriel children. But there may be ways, somewhere. I've seen crazier experiments in genetic manipulation. It might be too late for me, though; I'm getting too old for that sort of thing."

He snuggled up to her. "You're not too old for
me
. A little frazzled and fat and big-assed, but I like 'em that way."

She snorted mock-contemptuously. "You just say that because I'm the only woman you've got. Besides, I know about that sacrificial virgin bit you've been working on the tribe."

He laughed. "I had a good teacher," he pointed out. Then he grew serious. "But I'm not a Glathriel. Not any more. Not ever that I can remember. I'm a Chang and you're a Chang and nothing can alter that."

That pleased her. They went back into the sleeping compound together, and Mavra felt confident that, before she died, once again she would control her own destiny and manage her own fate.

But destiny had always controlled Mavra Chang.

Dasheen

Ben Yulin was nervous. Yaxa weren't very welcome in Dasheen, not since the days of the wars, when peaceful, agrarian Dasheen had been dragged into the Northern campaign by his presence and the Yaxa's insistence.

The Dasheen were minotaurs; they numbered about eight hundred thousand at the moment, only eighty thousand of whom were males. Their large, thick-bodied, muscular shapes were coated with fine fur; their heads, those of streamlined bulls: immense, almost neckless, with short snouts, broad pink noses, wide brown eyes, and tremendous curved horns.

From the males' view, the only worm in Dasheen's apple was the fact that Dasheen bulls lacked the ability to digest calcium directly, causing a deficiency that could only be counteracted by the milk of the females.

The Yaxa had arrived at the great farm unannounced, panicking the cows. Its great wings cast a tremendous shadow across the fields of oats and wheat, like some great, multicolored predator. It landed near the main house—a huge structure that included silos, storage facilities, quarters for Yulin's 117 wives and daughters, and his own quarters.

It was not that he'd been totally out of contact with the Yaxa. But such meetings were usually carried out surreptitiously, with him going to a neutral high-tech hex to test his theories, or arranging a rendezvous in Zone.

Yulin calmed down his family and went to meet the Yaxa.

The great butterfly, impassive as always, seemed to bow slightly. Yulin motioned for it to enter his own living quarters, and it did, clearing the doorway with some difficulty. Yulin took his seat in a broad rocking chair and waited for the creature to speak.

"I am Racer," the Yaxa said, using its nickname. Their names were untranslatable, so they generally adopted and stuck to translatable nicknames when dealing with others.

Ben Yulin nodded. "Well, welcome, Racer. But isn't it a little risky coming here like this? I mean, I know the border's not far from here, but I doubt if you could avoid being seen. There will be a lot of questions."

"What I have to say is much too important to keep. Zone itself is far too risky for it, and there wasn't time to get you out plausibly. The questions may not matter, anyway, when you hear what I have to say."

"I'm listening," he said, a growing feeling of unease mixed with the excitement rising within him. He suspected he knew why the Yaxa had come.

"We have placed Yaxa in a Northern hex. We can place anyone there now—with difficulty, but with complete certainty."

A thrill shot through him, but it was tempered by his engineer's mind. Like them, he'd worked on the problem for many years to no avail.

"How is it possible?" he asked.

"A Northern energy creature, the Yugash, grows crystalline creatures tailored to its needs and then operates them by entering the creatures' bodies and controlling them," Racer explained. "Finally a Yugash, who are high-tech, got together with us. They, like us, thought that the Well used mind-set rather than physical form to regulate transfer between Zone and hex gates. We allowed a Yugash called the Torshind to possess a Yaxa completely while the thought processes of the Yaxa were heavily sedated. The Yaxa body entered the Yaxa embassy Zone Gate—but walked out in Yugash!"

Yulin thought about it. "You mean these things can take over your body? And the Well switches them—and whatever body they're in—to Yugash?"

"It is so. A bit unnerving, but, thankfully, they cannot enter hexes in the South. The Well is called the Well of Souls for good reason—it recognizes you by your mind, not your form. We firmly believe that we can now move a party of our choosing to Yugash, only three hexes, straight line, from where you crashed in Uchjin."

The news was incredible. He could hardly believe it—there had to be a fly in the ointment somewhere, and he thought of one immediately.

"What's to prevent these creatures from not just letting us go once they take us over?" he asked cautiously. "I've seen enough Well World life to know that my own people's legends of centaurs and mermaids and ghosts were more than racial memory—some of those creatures must actually have gone to the home world of the humans in the early days. There are also legends of people being possessed by demons. I can't but wonder if the Yugash . . ." He left the uneasy thoughts incomplete, but the Yaxa got his point.

"We think you're probably right," Racer agreed. "Surveys of many Entries have indicated this possibility, and the stories are remarkably similar. It's entirely possible that Yugash roam in many areas of space, the descendants of those who occupied the bodies of prototype colonists leaving the Well eons ago. However, we have pretty well determined that, while a Yugash can control your body, it cannot read your mind. Thus, for lack of knowledge, it still could not fly the ship, nor could it gain the means of entering Obie."

Yulin nodded.
That
was a relief. But practical problems remained. "I'd still feel better if we could find some way to be in control of ourselves at the critical point, when we're inside Obie. The old legends mentioned ways of warding off evil spirits. If the legends of the spirits are based on fact, then the protective spells probably are, too."

"We are ahead of you," the Yaxa assured him. "We have compared the legends of many Entry races for common factors, and, more important, we wanted to know why none of the six hexes surrounding Yugash were open to their takeover. We think we have found it—a common factor. First, protective amulets of some sort were always worn—though a few were vegetable matter, the ones that were not were frequently made of copper or a copper alloy. We checked into this, and, indeed, in all the hexes surrounding Yugash we found enormous quantities of copper, copper oxide, or copper sulfide, either in the physical composition of the creatures or in the atmosphere itself.
And there is no copper at all in Yugash!
"

Ben Yulin's bovine face could not smile, but satisfaction was evident there, and relief.

"But there's still the political problems," he pointed out. "The Uchjin will block any attempt to move the ship, and, besides, we don't have the means of doing so."

"We're working on that," the Yaxa assured him. "I doubt if we can ever get to the Uchjin, but between the Yugash and a Uchjin neighbor, the Bozog, we may have the means to seize the ship by force. The Bozog have the methods to move it, and their high-tech hex could be the launch site. The price would be their inclusion in our little party, of course, and they are not a very trustworthy race. We recently learned they have also contacted Ortega and Trelig. They will work with the first group to reach the ship."

Ben Yulin exhaled slowly. "So it's to be a race, is it? But, tell me, why didn't the Bozog just swipe the ship themselves?"

"Because they have no way of flying it," the Yaxa snapped irritably. "To the first one who provides the methods, they will provide the means."

Yulin considered this. "The logistics? Air supplies, food, and the like?"

"Already being quietly constructed," Racer told him. "And with the Torshind's help, we are mapping the best route there. It will be longer and more dangerous than the direct route, but it will keep us basically in high-tech and semitech hexes so the breathing apparatus and life-support systems tailored for this mission will operate." The Yaxa hesitated for a moment, considering its next questions carefully.

"Our biggest doubt," it went on, "is you. Can you still pilot after all these years? Can you get by Trelig's robot sentinels after such a long passage of time? And can you open that computer?"

Yulin took in what the Yaxa meant and thought about it seriously.

"As to piloting, I'm rusty, sure, but the system's basically automated. It's a matter of knowing what to push in what sequence. I think I can handle that, as long as there's no fancy stuff or crash landing required. As to getting into the computer—oh, I'm sure of that. And as long as I have eyes, fingers, and a voice, I can control it. The sentinels present a hairier problem. Of course, Trelig never knew it, but I ran the problem through Obie for my own benefit—that is, I think, how he knew which signals to give to Mavra Chang—and got the code. It's based on books in Trelig's New Pompeii library. We'd have to work out a long computer problem—I know the titles involved, but there are fifty-seven key ones and the thing was changed daily on an oddball progression. A little hypnosis should bring them back clearly. But—twenty-two years' worth. That's where either Trelig or Chang would have the advantage. They'd be 100 percent sure, we'd be about 90 percent."

The Yaxa nodded with its body. "It is sufficient. I gather you do not wish to reach an agreement with Trelig?"

"Good God! No!" Yulin shouted, then got hold of himself. "Never—you don't realize the depths to which that man's capable of sinking. I do."

"It will take about two months to get the hardware built and tested," the Yaxa said. "During that time, others will not be idle. Ortega already
has
the hardware—he's had it for years. And he may know more than any of us. Radio signals of a strange type, directed toward New Pompeii when it is visible, have been intercepted coming from some point near the Overdark Ocean. We have been unable to decipher them or get any idea as to what they contain. But it is certain that similar signals have come back from the satellite.
Someone
is talking with that computer!"

Yulin was aghast. And yet, it made sense, somehow. Obie
did
have broadcast capability, put in so that it could be remote-controlled from space when Trelig's big projects started.

"But they still won't be able to get him out of 'defense' mode," he pointed out.

"If it's Ortega, he wants the thing destroyed, not used," Racer retorted. "It's too great a risk! And the Yugash are a bunch of freebooting anarchists. If the Torshind can do it for us, some other Yugash might get ideas and contact that Ulik Ortega. Suddenly, after all this time, every second presses, works against us."