Chalker, Jack L. – Watchers at the Well 02

Brazil was content to let her take the lead, sensing her confidence. Food and water were the first priority, and somehow he was confident she could find them even though he wasn’t sure how. On Earth a good although not totally infallible rule of thumb was to watch what the ani­mals ate. Here the only animals were insects of a different evolution.

He watched her examine trees, vines, shrubs, and growths of all sorts and was not even aware that she was comparing them not to anything she knew directly but to elements in the vast Well database she could slightly access through her links to him. Finally, she picked up a thing that looked to him like a purple cabbage, peeled away the outer leaves to reveal a smooth oval inside skin, and bit into it. The deep red pulpy interior was kind of messy, but she kept eating rather than falling down in fits. He shrugged, picked up another—they must be falling from some of the higher trees, he decided—and did the same.

The stuff was disappointingly tasteless, with just a hint of a grapelike flavor, and the inside proved to have the consis­tency more of mashed potatoes than of oranges or grape­fruit, but it went down easy, was filling, and had a high water content to boot.

He hoped they’d find something better and tastier, but unless they both came down with galloping stomachaches later, it was proof that they wouldn’t starve here. They could at least survive.

Farther in they found a number of shallow streams that provided welcome fresh water. It tasted strongly of minerals with just a hint of sulfur, but it would do.

They did find a few more palatable things to eat as well, including something that resembled a pink tennis-ball size grape, both in looks and taste, and a thick green vine that tasted a lot like celery with a slight onionlike tang, before the light began to fail. By that time the aches and pains had gotten a bit too much for him, anyway, and she found an area near a huge tree carpeted with a light brown, spongy moss and lay down on it. It would soon be dark as pitch in the volcanic jungle, anyway; not the sort of conditions for exploring.

He lay down next to her on the soft natural matting and found it surprisingly comfortable. Still, as the last light faded and the world was enveloped in total darkness, he couldn’t help but feel every ache and pain and consider the absurdity of the situation. There was no way around the fact that they were now shipwrecked on a small island in the middle of nowhere, alone, cut off from continental land by 190 kilometers or more of open sea they had no way to cross, with no means to get off and little hope of rescue by anyone save perhaps their enemies and the final objective, the equatorial barrier and its gateway into the Well of Souls, more unobtainable than ever.

She felt his pain, both physical and mental, and all she wanted to do was help him as he had helped her in the surf. To Terry, the current situation was not bad at all but almost her own concept of how life should be. All that they needed was here, and there seemed little that could threaten them in any way. It seemed as if all the fates had conspired to bring them here, and she could not conceive of it being more ideal. It was his old ways, old life thinking that kept him unhappy, forever searching for what he did not know. He had helped her when she had needed help; now it was her duty to do it for him.

She began by easing his physical pain, both by damping down the pain centers and by applying healing energies to those parts that were badly bruised. She began by massag­ing him, and as he felt the effects, he did not protest but rather relaxed and enjoyed it. With his pain substantially eased or gone, the massage turned slowly into far more than that, and as passion took control, she offered a unique new experience, a sharing of bodily pleasures that subtly became a sharing of minds and souls as well, in which her own will became dominant. Now, in rhythm with the pas­sion, waves of conceptual objects of her will washed through them, through him, and as they had no words, their significance and purpose could not be divined by him, yet they were unresistingly accepted and understood by his mind as seductive, hypnotic commands in a way quite sim­ilar to what the Glathrielians had done to her, but in this case entirely of her own origin and out of her own desires.

Forget the past . . . Wall it off . . . The past does not exist . . . There is no past, there is no future, there is only now . . .

Enter my mind, my body . . . Within is all that you re­quire, all that you will ever need . . . Take from my body, my mind all that you need . . . Leave all else behind . . . See, know, that there is only good inside me, take it as your own, renounce all else . . .

He reached out for what was promised and found within her a shining kernel of something overwhelming, something beyond anything he had ever experienced before. Pure, un­diluted, unconditional love; total, absolute, unconditional trust. There, inside her, was what he had never been able to witness or feel, that which he’d been incapable of believing even existed anywhere, at any time, on any plane.

Let it in, let it in . . . Let it displace all the darkness . . .

A moment he knew at some deep level would never come again had arrived, and he could not turn it away. His resistance melted; he let it flood into him, not displacing that which could not be displaced but pushing it away, sealing it off from consciousness, not permitting it to interfere . . .

The waves washed through him, overwhelming, sealing off all those things that could intrude or interfere, and once that was done, he returned them until what remained active in his own mind matched the pattern in her mind. The yin and yang merged, the puzzle pieces, shorn of all that was not relevant, fit perfectly and without flaw . . .

They awoke before dawn, the jungle no longer dark to them but seething with the varying colors and patterns of life. They took care of bodily functions, washed in a nearby stream, then started through the jungle, not with any real purpose but because it was so pretty and so alive and was to be enjoyed. Along the way to nowhere in particular they found some of the fruits and vegetables that were good to eat and they ate, feeding themselves and each other and giggling like two young people in the dawn of first love.

After a while they started off again, going deeper, fol­lowing the trails of some of the larger insects just to see what made them and where they were going. They were hardly aware of the fact that they were also moving uphill, nor did they care, all places and destinations being the same to them. They were Adam and Eve in the Garden before the Fall, and they were more than that. They did not speak because such an act was totally unnecessary. Each felt what the other felt, each knew what the other knew, both thought the same thoughts at the same moment because they were as one. Each existed solely for the other and for the mo­ment.

When they broke clear of the jungle, they were amazed and thrilled at the great sight that was before them. Still rel­atively far down on the great mountainside, they could still look out from its slope and see the vast colorful seascape beyond, even more beautiful when blended as it was with all the colors of life below.

Then they watched the sun come up and dramatically change the view, not to one of ugliness but to one almost completely different from the night scene. They stayed there for some time, until the sun was well up in the sky, then made their way back down into the jungle for some more to eat and drink.

He found a vine filled with pretty multicolored flowers that had become broken, possibly in the wind or by insects, and picked it up and made a flower garland out of it for her hair. She wanted to see it and so saw it through his eyes, then decided to take the flowers and place them on him, and he looked at himself through her eyes. And when they were done, they put the flowers back where they’d been found and went off in search of more wonders.

And when the thunderstorms came after dark, they did not seek cover but rather stood in the rain and the mud and watched, as if the sound and light show were being put on just for them. Everything was a wonder of a game, and ev­erything was eternally new.

He remembered nothing of his past, his origins, or his unique nature, but he neither wondered about such things nor let them enter his mind. There was only here, and now, and her, and that was more than enough. She felt exactly the same, experiencing only the here and now and him. Neither remembered or bothered to consider that this had come about only the previous night. There was no concept of time, only the now and the other. So closely linked were they that he was not even certain that he was the he and she was the she; either could effortlessly become the other, and so such a question was without meaning and thus not even asked.

The food and water were ample for the two of them for an indefinite time. The ship had gone down without a trace, and there was no real sign that they had ever made this or any other island. All their defenses were perma­nently on; any searchers or landing parties would not even notice their existence, and since they built nothing, created nothing outside of themselves, there were no signs of their existence for anyone to find.

It had not been the intention of the Glathrielian elders, but Nathan Brazil, for all appearances, had been taken out of the game. Terry had allowed for all external factors, it seemed.

All but one, and she could not know about that, even though it was everywhere, not many kilometers beneath their feet.

Kzuco

three day out from gekir, while still inside ogadon waters, the small ship its passengers discovered was called the Star Runner met up with its transfer ship.

Whatever illegal cargoes were involved in this mysteri­ous underworld, they were both valuable and dangerous, and it was nearly impossible for those paid to find out about such shipments that were in fact taking place. Even deep beneath the ocean waters in Ogadon, where this par­ticular trade originated, there were civilization, law, and ef­fective agencies trying to stay on top of things. The one thing the authorities could not do was fully determine the when and the where across a hex that was, after all, almost four hundred kilometers wide, such activity took place, but it was always a battle of wits.

Even though it would be sheer luck to locate and stop a transfer in progress, once it had been passed off to a surface vessel, the fact became known. The Star Runner’s job wasn’t to pick up the cargo but rather to meet the pickup boat, which was a relatively local one well known as legit­imate to the authorities, and then take aboard the contra­band at sea. Ships like the Runner were built to all the latest specifications but were particularly intended for speed, speed, speed. As a vessel legally registered to handle charter and consignment jobs, it always had some specific legal mission of its own, although nobody was particularly fooled about its true purpose.

The smugglers’ defense was a variation on the shell game; several ships like the Runner would take off from various ports on seemingly legitimate missions at roughly the same time. Each would head for a different place, but only one or possibly two would actually pick up transfer loads of contraband. Consistently stopping and boarding the wrong ones could prove embarrassing for the interhex au­thorities, who were in many ways privateers not much dif­ferent from the crooks they chased except that they’d chosen a lesser return in exchange for doing things the le­gal way.

Several large waterproof containers had been taken aboard by the Runner from what appeared to be a small and seedy trawler, although it was hard to say just what the other ship really looked like in the nearly total darkness in which it was done. It was now the Runner’s job to get those containers to another ordinary and familiar coastal vessel that would take a detour at some secluded part of the coast and transfer them once more to small boats to go into shore and from there to a distribution point.

Mavra Chang was fascinated by the process. Once they were under way under full steam, she went over to Zitz, the friendly mate who’d always liked to chat, and commented, “I don’t see how you manage it.”

“Eh? What?”

“Linking up with a specific small boat in open ocean, in either direction. I don’t see how you can find her unless she sits there like a sitting duck waiting for you, and I’m sure she doesn’t.”

“You’re right,” the Zhonzhorpian admitted. “It’s actually quite simple. No state secret except for the specifics of ev­ery operation. Before we set out, we get a very fine cus­tomized grid of the entire hex. Thousands of tiny little squares. The rendezvous ship is a scheduled carrier; we know its route in advance, and we know in which of a range of squares along its route the pickup will be made. She doesn’t stop, not even, you’ll notice, for the transfer. We just find her and match her course and speed.”

“It was impressive—and quick,” Mavra admitted. “Then we proceed to our destination hex, which has an­other hex map, another customized grid, and another series of scheduled local carriers. We plot them at all times. Once I’m there, I determine where the best one is located, head for it, and reverse the process. Unlike the pickup, I will al­ways have a choice of two or three ships, and even they won’t know which one of them will receive the goods from us, so there can’t be any leaks ahead of time. Similarly, there were several ships similar to this one, any one of which might have picked up the cargo from the first vessel. They didn’t know it would be us, and it might not have been. If anything went wrong, if someone else got there ahead of us, or if they were being shadowed, they would al­ter their course slightly from the grid and we wouldn’t have seen her.”

“I see,” she commented. “Very slick.”

“There are so many spies and agencies out there that it’s impossible to keep them from infiltrating one ship or an­other on the two ends,” Zitz told her. “What is possible is, since not even the captain knows if he’s the one until he passes the pickup point, we control access to the goods. They pick up; they transfer to one of a number of similar vessels. What does the spy report when he, she, or it finally makes port? And most of the next ports are nontech hexes, too, by design. My crew stays with me, so I know them all. Our rendezvous ship even now does not know it will be the one, so there’s no rumors or leaks from its crew. When we do the transfer, same rules applying, they will take it on and proceed immediately to a point offshore in a nontech or semitech hex and transfer it again, being met by crews who pick the position themselves, then proceed into port on schedule. By the time anyone aboard can get the word out, the cargo and pickup people are long gone. As soon as I make the transfer, I destroy the grid maps. My counterparts will eventually intersect the pickup freighter back there, by the way, see that there is no coded sign that anything is to be picked up, and proceed on as if they had picked up something anyway.”

“So this is your point of maximum vulnerability,” she noted. “You have the cargo and maps aboard.”

“True, but for all of that we have ways of dropping the cargo even under pursuit. The captain only needs to re­member one grid position and the code number of the grid map no matter where along the route we might be forced to drop it. We would not then bring it in, but once he trans­ferred the grid location and grid code upon making port, someone else eventually would.”

“Sounds almost foolproof.”

“It’s very good,” he admitted. “I think it might not be improved upon. It is, however, still a risky business, partic­ularly in high-tech water hexes like Kzuco. We try and stay out of them as much as possible, but it’s not possible on this run. That makes the money much better, but the risks are far greater. That’s why we’re running the short side of Kzuco along the Awbri coast. Awbri’s nontech, not the best vantage point, and once we’re across the border into Dlubine, we’re back in semitech and safer. From that point we can remain in non- and semitech water hexes. I do worry about Dlubine, but not as much as here.”

“Dlubine has local conditions that create problems?”

“Several. For one thing, it’s crawling with patrols, sand­wiched between a high-tech land and a high-tech water hex and with a lot of islands with small harbors and hidden coves. Also, in Dlubine it’s easier to run by day than by night. You’ll see what I mean the first night we’re there. The water’s lit up like a high-tech city, making it easy to spot you. Easier by day, yes, but murder on us.”

“Huh?”

“You can almost make soup with the water, it’s that warm, and the air temperature in the middle of the day is close to lethal for many life-forms. It averages more than half the point to boiling. Even the islands seem like water kettles. Still, it is a lot of sea to find us in, and we do it all the time. Each hex has its problems, so I don’t want to min­imize any dangers, but we are used to them. You are not.”

She nodded. “We’ll stay out of your way. If it comes to a flight, though, you well know I have no stake in being ar­rested and returned to Gekir.”

“Yes. You understand, though, that none of you can be allowed to leave this vessel until after the transfer has taken place and we are well away.”

“We understand,” she assured him. She did not press him on the nature of the cargo; in truth, she already knew what at least some of it was just from overheard conversations among the crew. It was a drug, an extremely addictive drug, that worked on a large variety of warm-blooded creatures. Called by many names in many hexes, it was apparently some kind of deep underwater fungal growth. Alive, one could actually eat it without harm, although it supposedly had a terrible taste. Out of the water, though, it died in min­utes and dried out quickly, causing its natural internal fluids to undergo a chemical change, crystallize, and become a very sweet and addicting drug that could be eaten, injected, or who knew what else? Tolerances varied, but apparently for some races one ingestion could be enough to hook a user.

Lori had come up to get some night air, finding it diffi­cult to sleep below, and had been listening to the conversa­tion. When it was over and Mavra had moved away toward the rail to stare out at the black sea, he went over and stood beside her.

He’d found this business with the Runner both disgusting and unpleasantly familiar. “It’s the same here as back on Earth,” he growled. “It’s as if there’s no way and nowhere to escape drugs and the predators who sell them.”

“The universe is composed of predators and prey,” Mavra responded, not sounding cynical but rather as if she were reciting the obvious. “Everyone is one or the other, sometimes both in a lifetime.”

Lori’s realization that this was a ship in that sort of busi­ness and that all the crew were the same sort of creatures as the ones who ran and guarded Don Francisco Campos’s jungle operation, which now seemed not merely a million light-years but also a million real years away. He couldn’t help but wonder if Juan Campos hadn’t already found his niche in this sort of operation here. It was a natural for him.

He often wondered what had become of Campos. How he’d like to meet the little weasel now, not rat to woman but rat to man. They said that when a sexual change was done, nine out of ten times it was to a female, to which poor Alowi and Tony, too, attested. He’d often thought how he’d love to discover that Juan Campos had become an Erdomese female. It would be real justice, but while Mavra said that the Well was sometimes perceived to have a sense of humor even though it shouldn’t and theoretically couldn’t, both Julian and Tony were proof that there wasn’t a whole lot of justice as he would think of it built into the system. The bastard was probably nine feet tall with four arms and sharp teeth and more rotten than ever as befitted his personality.

He still wondered about Campos, and not just him. Where was poor Gus, for example? Had he even survived the transfer and transformation? He’d been such a gentle, quiet soul, it was hard to see him outside his element, his cameras and video equipment and other high-tech toys.

He also wondered about Terry quite often. What was she doing now? Still back there with the People in that rain for­est? He knew when she’d decided to be the diversion that she would get the worst of it. Such a bright, educated ca­reer woman, highly competent, courageous . . . There were few superlatives for Terry that he didn’t think she deserved. To be shut off for good in the jungle would be intolerable to her, he was convinced. But to emerge, tattooed all over, with bone jewelry threaded through her ears and nose . . . She’d be a freak. A news story herself for a while, then just a freak. There was no way she could ever lead a normal life like that, and the amount of removal and the cosmetic sur­gery on her beautiful brown skin would give her a choice between being a painted freak or looking like a burn victim. What kind of a life could she have like that?

In the end, she’d probably stay in the jungle, perhaps leaving the People and joining a true tribe but remaining anonymous otherwise, or she’d find a convent, become a nun, and remain cloistered for life. Damn it, it wasn’t fair! Terry would have loved this place no matter what she wound up as!

He finally talked it out with Mavra. “I know it’s a hell of a thing she did for us. I owe her, that’s for sure. When we get into the Well, I’ll see what, if anything, can be done about her. There’s got to be some way to influence it, even though the only direct controls available that I know of from last time are on people here. Funny, though. You jogged a memory. When I got information on Brazil and his party from Zone, there was mention of someone coming in alone who appeared from the pictures to be of our race—or so they said; I never saw them. Somebody who came in af­ter us, snuck by them all, and went through the hex gate before they even knew anyone was there. They said the other one resembled us.”

Lori was excited at the idea. “You think maybe she—?”

“Don’t get your hopes up. She was diverting the guards, and I know just how they planned to do that. The Well Gate would have closed and self-destructed after I—we— came through because Nathan and the other two had arrived long before. I don’t think there’d be time. No, what I’ve wondered is whether one of the other women, one of the perimeter guards, might have watched us go through and decided to follow her goddess. It would be just like Utra or maybe Rhama to do just that. Poor darlings! What if one of them wound up in a high-tech hex? It’d be bad enough for them to turn into anything else, but a nontech hex they might handle with a lot of work. Still, there was no word of anybody else being reported, so it’s hard to say anything for sure. I do think that if Teysi had come through, she’d have gotten word to us somehow.” She sighed. “No, I’m sure she’s still back on Earth, and I’m pretty sure she’s still in the jungle. Unlike you, she found something in the jun­gle that she loved. I think she didn’t want to come because she’d already found her version of the Well World. I think she really wanted to stay just as she was.”