01. Midnight At the Well of Souls (19 page)

Klamath took chin in hand in a thoughtful pose, trying to think of something he could do to break through the barrier. Suddenly he brightened. "Worth a try," he said at last, "but even if she doesn't understand it, it won't prove much. Well, here goes.

"Using the Three KY spectroanalysis program, stellar motion can be computed by phase-shifting observations using the infraspectrometer circuits in the navigational matix for visual course plots," Klamath intoned. Suddenly he stopped and turned to Yomax. "How was that?" he asked.

"I got maybe one word in four," the old man replied. "How about the lady here?"

Julee shook her bead in bewilderment. "A lot of big words but I didn't understand what they meant."

"Can
you remember a big word?" Klamath prompted.

She thought for a minute. "Ma—matrix, I think," she said hesitantly, and, she looked totally perplexed, "phase shifting?"

Klamath smiled. "Good old basic navigation manual!" he exclaimed. "You're from my part of the universe, all right. There's just no equivalent for that stuff in this language."

Yomax nodded, an expression of satisfaction on his face. "So she's one of the last four."

"Almost certainly," Klamath nodded. "I've been keeping track of them since I know one, at least slightly. He's almost a living legend among spacers, and we know where he is and where the one
called Vardia is. You must be that girl that was sick; that would explain the memory problems."

"Who am I, then?" she asked excitedly. "I want to know."

"Probably a girl named Wu Julee," Klamath told her.

"Wu Julee," she repeated. The name sounded strange and totally unfamiliar to her. She wasn't sure she liked it.

"I'll be heading back downlake in an hour or so, and when I get to Donmin I'll see the local councilman and pass the word along," Klamath said. "In the meantime, you might as well stay here. It's about the best place to relax and enjoy things, and that might be just what you need."

Their course of action agreed to, they all went to the local bar. She felt somewhat left out of the conversation after that, and the thick, dark ale made her slightly giddy. She excused herself and wandered out onto the main street.

Jol and Dal were there, and, seeing her, rushed up for the news.

"They say I'm an Entry," she told them. "Someone named Wu Julee. They said I was sick."

"Well, you're healthy now," Jol replied. "And whatever you had got cured on the way in. Maybe your memory will come back, too, after a while." He stopped and fidgeted nervously for a time, glancing once in a while to Dal. Finally the spotted female threw up her hands.

"All right, all right. May as well," she said enigmatically.

"Sure it's all right with you?" Jol responded.

"Why not?" his girlfriend replied, resigned.

Jol turned back to Wu Julee. "Look," he said eagerly, "we—Dal and me—we been thinkin' of putting together our own family, particularly with Dal pregnant and all. There's so few folks our age up here, and we aren't gettin' along with our own families too good now. Why don't you come in with us?"

Julee hesitated a moment, then replied, "I'd like that—if it's all right with Yomax."

"Oh, he won't mind," Dal replied. "He's been itchin' to see us take jobs anyhow, and if we form the group we'll have to to get our share of the harvest."

And it
was
that easy.

They picked a spot fairly deep in the woods upvalley and started by building a primitive but efficient trail to the site. It required little clearing, but it did wind in and out between the giant trees. Borrowing a large handsaw and with some help from a forester they chopped down two trees near a tiny creek and burned out the stumps. Villagers helped them clear the area and cut up the trees into useful sizes, as well as providing smaller, more useful logs and hauling reddish clay used for insulation.

Wu Julee—the others nicknamed her Wuju, which she liked better—threw herself into the work, putting any thoughts of Klamath and governmental problems out of her mind. She hadn't seen the captain after the first day, since the boat came only once a day and stayed barely over an hour. Weeks passed.

They put in the sawdust floor, and built a stone cairn to use as a stove and winter heater, fueled with wood left over from the project. The cabin had a large central area with crude tables and a work area, and five stalls—bedrooms, really, with leaning supports, since the Dillians slept standing up. The extra stalls were for Dal's increasingly obvious new arrival and a spare in case someone else would join them. Jol and Dal took her trapping in the woods, and showed her how to skin and weave the animal furs and the skin from various plants into clothing. Once settled in, she and Jol were assigned to survey and check some back-country trails, particularly noting log bridges that might not stand the weight of winter snows. It was easy and pleasant work, and she enjoyed the peace and natural wonder of the mountains. When winter came they would help dig out snowed-in cabins and ensure safe paths around the small lakeside community.

In late summer Dal dropped her foal, large and fully formed but barely covered in a soft, neutral, downy fur, with reddish, wrinkly skin that made the boy-child look like a wizened old man.

Although born looking physically eight or nine in size and proportion—and able to stand, walk, even run within a few hours of birth—the child would be toothless for over a year and could only feed by nursing. It needed almost constant supervision, even though hair developed in the first few weeks affording a measure of protection. Born only with the instincts of a wild animal, the boy would have to learn how to reason, to speak, to act responsibly. It was difficult for Julee to get used to at first, since after the first month the child looked like a boy of about ten.

But he would look that way for years, they told her, perhaps eight or ten, until puberty. Until then they would be his world; after that, he would have to pull his own load.

But this peaceful, almost idyllic existence was interrupted by the start of her nightmares. They often involved racing pain, torture, and an evil, leering monstrous face that demanded horrible things of her. Many nights she woke up screaming, and it took hours to calm her down.

She began seeing the town Healer—the Dillian wasn't a doctor, because they had never been able to talk one into moving up into the isolated wilderness, but she could treat minor injuries and illnesses and set broken bones and the like. Anything really serious required using the old treadmill-powered raft to get the patient downlake. That was not really as difficult as it sounded because there was a fairly strong current that led to the falls at the downlake town.

Talking to the Healer helped, but the sleeping powders didn't. As fall started turning the leaves a riot of colors, and the snow began to creep down from the mountaintops, with occasional cold winds breaking through the still comfortable warm air, she was drawn and looked not at all well. Drinking the warm, potent ale seemed to help for a while, but she was more and more in a state of intoxication which made her less useful and harder to live with.

The villagers and her two companions were concerned but felt helpless as she seemed to deteriorate daily. The nightmares became worse and more frequent, the drinking increasing to compensate. She had been there almost twelve weeks, and she was miserable.

One particularly chilly day she came from the little bar in a high state of inebriation that even the cold wouldn't moderate, wandering down to the dock as the steamboat came in. She stared at a figure dressed in rugged furs sitting on the top deck, outside the little pilothouse that had been erected when the season changed.

It was alien. It looked human, but had only two legs and no hindquarters. Its features were hidden under a big fur hat, but it seemed to be smoking a pipe—a habit only a few of the oldest around did because of the difficulty of getting the weeds to stuff into it. She wasn't sure if this was a creature of her drunk or of her nightmares, and she just stared at it.

The boat tied up and the creature, or vision, joined the captain in walking down to the first level and onto the dock. Klamath spotted her, and pointed. The funny two-legged creature, so small next to the Dillians, nodded and walked over to her.

She drew back apprehensively, stifling a sudden and overwhelming urge to run.

The creature approached her cautiously and called out, in Dillian, "Wu Julee? Is that you, Wu Julee?" The voice seemed familiar, somehow. He stopped about two meters from her, took the huge, curved pipe from his mouth, and pulled off the furry headpiece.

Wu Julee screamed and screamed, then suddenly seemed to collapse, hitting the ground hard in a dead faint.

Klamath and many of the villagers rushed up to her in concern.

"Damn!" said the creature. "Why do I always have that effect on women?"

For the shock of seeing his face had brought it all back to her suddenly and in full force. The only change the Well World had made in Nathan Brazil was his clothes.

THE BARONY OF AZKFRU, AKKAFIAN EMPIRE

The Baron Azkfru was furious.

"What do you mean he wasn't there?" he stormed.

The Diviner and The Rel remained impassive and apparently unperturbed as usual.

"We had no problems concealing ourselves through the first day," The Rel reported, "and acted about an hour after nightfall. When we approached the structure where Skander almost had to be, The Diviner sensed a change in the balancing equation. A new factor had been introduced. Skander had been there, but had left."

"What do you mean a new factor?" snarled the Baron.

"In the most basic terms," The Rel explained patiently, "someone knew we were coming and what we were after. So either by direct warning or the indirect action of others, Skander was not there when we were. It was much too dangerous to remain there any length of time awaiting a possible return, so we broke off and returned here."

Azkfru was stunned. "A leak? Here? But, that's impossible! It couldn't have been any of my people—they're too thoroughly under my control. And, if anyone from the Imperial Palace had a reconditioned plant here, I wouldn't still be alive now. If there's a leak, it must be on your side."

"It is possible our intentions were divined in the same way we divine the actions of others," The Rel admitted, "but it is impossible for any in my own leadership to have betrayed us, and you, yourself, saw to the security when we came cross Zone. A release of information on your side remains the most likely explanation."

"Well, we'll dismiss the blame for now," Azkfru said more calmly, "and proceed from here. What do we do now?"

"Skander is still the only link we have to concrete knowledge of the puzzle," The Rel pointed out. "And, its location is known, if presently unattainable. The Diviner states that Skander's research was incomplete, and it must return to the learning place sooner or later. We are now attuned to that, and will know when. It is suggested that we bide our time until this Skander is again within our grasp. We did not compromise the plan, we just about proved it. It is still workable."

"Very well," growled Azkfru. "Will you stay here?"

"We miss our homeland and constructive endeavor," The Rel replied, "but the mission is too vital. We will remain. Our needs are few, our requirements simple. A dark, bare cell will be sufficient, and an avenue to the surface every once in a while to stand beneath the stars. Nothing more. In the meantime, I would check your own security. It will profit us little if such a thing happens again!"

Soon after The Diviner and The Rel were seen to, the baron flew to the Imperial Palace and, securing a Zone pass, returned to his office in Zone. He was confident that he wouldn't be alive if it were any of his own people, so that left alien intervention—which meant Zone.

The offices, even the walls, were practically torn apart. It took almost two days and the destruction of more than half the embassy to find it. A tiny little transmitter inserted in his communications unit in his own office! His technicians examined it, but could be of little help.

"The range is such that it would carry to over four hundred other embassies," one explained to him. "Of the four hundred, almost three hundred are functional and used, and, of those, more than half are technologically capable of creating such a device, while the rest could probably purchase it untraceably, and almost all could place the device during a slow period when you were away."

He had most of his office staff ritually executed anyway, not that it made him feel any better—just less foolish.

Someone had heard him kill General Ytil.

Someone had spied when The Diviner and The Rel had come through, and listened to their initial conversations in his office.

No more, he knew. But that was bad enough.

Someone else now knew at least
what
Skander was.

He had no choice, though, he realized. He had to wait.

Almost fifteen weeks.

THE CENTER IN CZILL

Vardia was assigned a basic apprentice's job, doing computer research. She learned fast—almost anything they taught her—even though she couldn't make a great deal of sense out of her part of the project she was on. It was like seeing only one random page from a huge book. In itself, nothing made any sense. Only when put together with thousands of other pages did a picture finally emerge, and even then the top researchers had the unenviable job of fitting all the pages together in the proper order.

She enjoyed the life immensely. Even though she didn't understand her work, it was a constructive function with purpose, serving the social need. It was a comfortable niche. Here, indeed, is social perfection, she thought. Cooperation without conflict, with no basic needs beyond sleep and water, doing things that meant something.

After a couple of weeks on the job she began feeling somewhat dizzy at times. The spells would come on her, apparently without cause, and would disappear just as mysteriously. After a few such episodes she went to the central clinic. The doctors made a few very routine tests, then explained the problem to her.