Chalker, Jack L. - Well of Souls 02 (33 page)

"How do you have sex in this place?" he asked.

Soncoro roared with laughter.

Dasheen

Ben Yulin awoke with a start and opened his eyes.

His first thought was that the pain was gone, and he had feeling over his whole body again. That was a big relief in and of itself. But— where and what was he?

He sat up and looked around. Things were definitely different. He was slightly nearsighted and totally color-blind. But he could see well enough to tell he was in farm country; there was baled hay over there, nicely if crudely done, and fences and small roads stretched off for miles in squarish patterns. It was flat country, too; although his vision blurred beyond five hundred meters or so, he could tell where the land and horizon met.

He looked down at himself. Broad, muscular, hairy long legs that looked somewhat human, although the feet were strange— very wide and oval-shaped and made of a hard, tough substance. There were breaks in the front of each foot, but he had no toelike control of them. They were obviously just there to provide some flex when walking. He reached out and saw that his arms were wrestler's arms— tremendous, bulging muscles overlaid with a thin covering of stiff brown hair. The fingers were short and thick and seemed to be made of that tougher material in the foot, but they were jointed in the right places and had an opposable thumb. He reached down to feel his feet and tapped them. They had a dull, thick, hard feel and sound to them. He had almost no feeling in his hands or feet, although the rest of his body felt normal.

His skin was brown and mostly covered in that short, wiry hair, although he perceived it as dark gray. One look at his crotch told him that he was not only a male but one of gigantic proportions. That pleased him, even if the thing was jet black. It was the biggest he'd ever seen.

His chest was covered with a milky-white coating of the same kind of hair; it was an even shape that followed his torso. The body, too, was thick-set and powerful-looking; he flexed a little and the muscles bulged.

This wasn't going to be so bad, he told himself.

One reason for the nearsightedness, he realized, was that his eyes were set differently. He put a hand up to his face— and found more. He felt it carefully.

It was a huge head but perfect for his body. A thick, short neck, and a snout! Not a huge one, but it jutted out from his face. He tried to focus in on it and saw it, a white-furred oval with a flat top, jutting out maybe ten centimeters from his head. It contained a soft, moist, broad nose— incredibly broad, almost the width of the snout— which he thought was probably pink, and two huge nostrils with some kind of flaps. There were also whiskers flanking the nose— sharp, fairly long, like extremely long white pine needles.

His mouth, under the nose, went the whole length of the snout. He felt around it with a broad, flat, thick tongue. Lots of teeth, none of them sharp. He opened it, then closed it, then tried a chewing motion. He found he could only chew from side to side, which told him that he was a herbivore. He knew now why they raised hay and wheat and the like and who it was for.

The eyes were large, set back from the snout, and wide apart. Ears were sharply pointed, and could be turned at will, he found. On top of his head was an enormous pair of horns. They were part of his skull, no doubt about it, and they extended into wicked points from areas of the base bone a good five centimeters out from either side of his head.

He rose shakily to his feet and found that his head didn't feel abnormally heavy or out of balance, although he couldn't turn it in any direction quite as far as he remembered being able to do.

There was a last touch. He found he had a tail on some sort of ball joint, a tail he could wag and even whip to an extent. It was thick and emerged from his spine, was probably an extension of it. It was brown like the rest of him except his chest and snout, and it ended in a thick tuft of soft dark hair. It was long, although it didn't quite reach the ground. He reached around, took hold of it, and looked at it curiously.

I wish I had a mirror, he thought.

He started walking, first over to the road and then down it. He wanted to find some civilization, somewhere.

It was a chilly day, although only the parts of him with no hair, his nose, inner ears, and genitals, told him so. There was some kind of natural insulation here.

He spied a large number of what looked like people working in a field, but they were too far away for his reduced vision to really see. He considered going over and introducing himself, but he decided that that sort of thing could cause trouble, too. This might be private property, and they might not like trespassers. He decided to press on until he came to a town or until he met someone on the road.

Despite the visual limitations, his other senses were tremendously heightened. Every little sound, from the rustle of an almost imperceptible wind to small insects off in a nearby field, were sharp and clear and could be localized with unerring accuracy. Smells, too, both pleasant and unpleasant, were much fuller and richer.

He was hungry and wondered what he was supposed to eat. The fields contained the fodder, of course, but they were also obviously private, and the high, thick barbed wire discouraged casual snacking.

He came to a small intersection; a minor road went off at a right angle to the main one. He could see it led up to a large complex of buildings, maybe several stories high with rounded roofs of straw or some other material over good hardwood frames. He wondered where they got the wood; certainly not from around here.

He decided to chance it. As a newcomer, he might be excused some indiscretions, if he were careful enough not to get shot first. Let's see— what had Ortega called new people? Entries? Yes, that was it.

Most of the workers or family seemed to be out in the fields. There were obviously few seasons here; some of the fields had been harvested, some were about to be, and one on his left had just been plowed.

He was almost to the house or barn, or whatever it was, when he saw his first fellow creature close up.

She— there was no doubt it was a she— was using a plane to smooth down a plow handle. She was taller than he, with smaller head and longer, more flexible neck. Her horns were shorter and more rounded, even at the tips. Facially, she did resemble a cow, although the head was not right, more like a cartoonist's humanized cow than a real one. Her arms were also strikingly different from his— tremendously long, with a double elbow that seemed to be able to bend in any direction. Not double in the same places, now; there was the elbow where the elbow should be, and then the arm continued, tremendously muscular, to a second elbow near the waist. Almost reflexively he looked again at his own elbow, and saw that he'd been right; although thick and muscle-bulging, his arm was definitely the one-elbow type he'd been born with.

The final incongruity was that she wore a tremendous, leatherlike apron tied just above her waist. It bulged a bit in front, and at first he thought she mightbe pregnant, but as she worked, side turned to him, he could see that it concealed what had to be a large, tough-looking pink udder attached just above the waist.

She still hadn't seen him. He considered clearing his throat but wasn't sure how to do that, so he just decided to try conversation and see if he would be understood. At least he would be noticed.

"Hello?" he said hopefully.

She jumped, turned, looked at him. There was no mistaking her mannerisms: shock and fear. She screamed, dropped her tool, and ran off into the big building through a large wooden door.

He could hear her still screaming and yelling inside and also the sounds of other voices. He decided that the better part of valor was to stand there and see what happened next.

What happened took exactly thirty seconds. The wooden door flew open with tremendous force, so violent and loud was the action that it shook the whole building. Standing there, a really nasty-looking iron crowbar in his hands, was the master of the house.

He was slightly shorter than Yulin, but not much. The horns were huge, slightly curved and pointed; the head was massive and seemed to sit atop the torso without a neck. He wore a cloth kilt of some soft material from his waist to just below his knees. His huge, wide eyes sparked fire.

"What the hell do you want here, he-cow?" he snarled derisively. "If it's a cracked skull, just stay there another ten seconds!" He hefted the crowbar menacingly.

Yulin felt panic rising in him, but managed to control himself. "Wait a minute! I mean no harm!" he managed.

The crowbar didn't move. "Then what are you doing just walking into here stark naked and panicking good women?" the other returned, that menacing tone growing. But, Yulin realized, he'd answered instead of attacking, and that meant reason could prevail.

"I'm an Entry!" he almost yelled. "I just woke up in a field back there and I haven't the slightest idea whereor what I am or what to do next!" That was certainly the truth.

The big minotaur considered this. "Entry?" he snorted. "We have had only two Entries before that I know of, and they were both cows. Doesn't make sense to have a bull Entry." Still, there was something that made him hesitate. The crowbar lowered over so slightly.

"I'm Ben Yulin," he tried, attempting to sound friendly and not scared to death. "I need help."

There was something in the newcomer's manner that didn't seem right to the farmer. Yet he sensed, somehow, the genuineness of Yulin's plea.

"All right," growled the man with the crowbar. "I'll accept your story for now. But try anything funny and I'll kill you." He didn't let go of the crowbar. "Come on in and we'll at least get some clothes on you so you don't have half the herd coming after you."

Yulin started toward the door, and the farmer hefted the bar again. "Not in there, you idiot! Holy shit! Maybe you really don't know what's what around here! Just walk around the house, here, and I'll follow."

Yulin did as instructed, and entered a different door in what seemed to be a complex semidetached from the larger buildings. It was an apartment of sorts. There was a living room with small fireplace, a bull-sized rocking chair of a finely polished hardwood, windows looking out on the farm, and, to his surprise, artwork and reading material. A number of very large-sized books in a print he couldn't read sat on two shelves, and there were pewter sculptures, not only of other minotaurs, both male and female, but of other, stranger subjects that implied surrealism. Some etchings on the wall, actually black-and-white line drawings, showed farm scenes, sunsets and other realistic subjects.

The female sculptures showed him what he'd suspected— the cow did have big udders, like bulges hanging down— and a couple of the sketches, or prints, or whatever they were were rather graphic pornography. On top of a table near the rocking chair was a weird-looking mechanical device he couldn't figure out. It was a box with a horizontal round plate that obviously rotated by means of a spring-driven hand crank on one side. A complex brass device on a single pivot was mounted to one side, and out of the back rose a tremendous horn-shaped device. There seemed also to be a place for another horn to fit on the front. Yulin couldn't imagine what it did.

The man went into another room and seemed to be trying to open some sort of cedar chest with one hand while at the same time keeping his eye on the newcomer through the doorway. Yulin decided to stay stock still in the center of the room and do nothing at all.

The other room was obviously a bedroom, though. There was a wood frame there filled with a strawlike material, and there were also some carelessly tossed blankets and an enormous stuffed object that might have been a pillow. Thinking about his horns, Yulin wondered what happened if you rolled over in your sleep.

The farmer threw him a large cloth, and he caught it. It appeared to be made of burlap, much rougher and coarser than what the other wore. There had been rope drawstrings placed in it, and Yulin got the idea pretty quickly of how to put it on.

There was a thin, plain rug on the floor. "You'll have to sit there," the farmer told him, pointing to a spot on the rug. "I don't get much visitor traffic here." He sat down comfortably in the rocker and started to rock gently.

"Now can you tell me what happens next?" Yulin prompted.

"First you tell me about yourself. Who you are, what you were, how you got here," the other responded. "Then, if I like what I hear, I'll help you solve your problems."

Yulin complied, almost. He spared nothing, except his role in anything shady. He pictured himself as Gil Zinder's assistant, nothing more, forced by the evil Antor Trelig to do what he did. He was convincing. When he got to the part about crashing in the North, the farmer's eyes almost shone. "Been to the North, eh? That's kind of a romantic thing for just about all the folks here in the South. Kind of exotic and mysterious."

Yulin thought that the South was sufficiently exotic and mysterious for him, but he said nothing. His story, however, was accepted. It was far too detailed to have been created out of whole cloth as a diversion. The farmer relaxed.

"My name's Cilbar," he said, more friendly now. "This is my farm. You're in Dasheen, which is both the country and the name of your new people. You're a herbivore, so you'll never starve to death— although, as a civilized man, you'll find that while eating stuff in the raw will satisfy your hunger, prepared foods are better. The hex is nontechnological, so machines don't work here unless they're muscle-powered. We got the muscle, as you probably noticed."