“You mean—fly?” Yua was more than hesitant.
“Sure. Oh, it won’t quite be flying here. Just get an idea of the breeze, go with it, jump off like you were aiming at a nearby branch, spread out your arms, legs, and tail, and look straight at the cowbrey bush there. You’ll get there. You won’t fall. Trust me and don’t panic. When I jump off, you follow right away.” She poised for the leap.
“Wait!” Yua cried. “Let me get my courage up for this. Tell me—this land is called Awbri?”
“That’s right,” the other agreed. “Well, come on. It’s getting dark and I don’t like to be away from my tree at night.” With that she launched herself.
Steeling herself, Yua, too, jumped off and spread her tail and the folds of skin. She was amazed at how the air seemed to push against her, keeping her aloft as if in a long leap, although she was falling, very slowly, and the whole thing felt like descending in an elevator.
It was actually only thirty seconds or so until she reached the tree, but it seemed an eternity, and she feared she wasn’t going to make it. She didn’t dare look down, though; she kept her eyes on the tree and on the friendly woman nearby.
And now she was there, in the branches. She grabbed and hung on for all she was worth. That she had done it did nothing to calm her down, so she clung tightly to the limb until the shakes had subsided somewhat.
Her friend had already scampered off deep into the interior of the tree but Yua was in no condition to follow.
Several minutes later the woman was back, looking slightly amused at Yua’s still trembling perch. “Oh, come on! You did the worst of it! Follow me. I’ve told the Elder’s Secretary that you are an Entry and here and they want to see you immediately. Hurry along now! I have to be getting home. It’s almost too late.” And with that she was off.
Yua followed her with her eyes until the woman was out of sight. I never even knew her name, she thought. Taking a few deep breaths she relaxed and headed into the interior of the cowbrey bush.
The entrance was easy to spot as she approached the great trunk, for there was a large door in the tree, decorated with unfamiliar carved symbols. Yua opened the door hesitantly and entered.
Oil lanterns lit the interior; it was bright, cheery, and absolutely hollow. For a plant that appeared so healthy outside it was a nothing in its base.
A large male was seated behind a carved wooden desk writing with what appeared to be a quill pen. He looked something like a great duck-billed squirrel wearing large horn-rimmed bifocals.
He stopped writing and looked up at her. “You are the Entry?” he asked crisply.
She nodded. “I am Yua, formerly of Olympus,” she told him.
He sat back, relaxed. “We don’t get many Entries,” he told her. “You’re the first I’ve ever met. Had a devil of a time going through the manuals of procedure to see what is to be done with you.” He gestured at a large bookcase filled with impressive-looking red-bound volumes.
“However, the first thing I’m supposed to do is welcome you to Awbri. Welcome. The second is to give you this little speech.”
She sighed and relaxed. The Awbrians were a tough people to like.
“First of all, we don’t know who or what you were before you came here,” he continued, “nor do we care. That is irrelevant. You are on the Well World to stay and the sooner you forget your former life and adjust to your new one the better off you’ll be. You are now an Awbrian. This, too, will not change. You come to us from an alien form, but, more important, you come from an alien culture. Adjusting to your new physical form will be relatively easy; the cultural adjustment, however, is very difficult. You must accept the culture that has existed here for tens of thousands of years before you were born. You will probably not like it at first, will find it uncomfortable or hard to accept. The important thing to remember is that it is the culture here, it is the product of millennia of social evolution, and it works for us. We will do what we can to help you in that adjustment. Any questions?”
“Hundreds,” she replied. “But—tell me of this culture. I have seen some of it and guessed some, but I would like to know it all.”
“You’ll learn it in the days to come,” the secretary assured her. “However, some basics. We are divided into family groups, each group having a tree. It is their tree and no other’s. You can use another family’s tree to pass through, but for no other purpose. Almost all the trees are hollow, as is this one, and those are used for living quarters. If a tree is carefully managed it can support a reasonable population, since the rainforest climate here allows phenomenal growth. For every five thousand population there is a village Council on which the wisest men called Elders, sit. Age is revered here. There is also, off in Gaudoi, around the Well Gate, a Maintenance Administration that makes sure the paths and airways are kept clear, administers what little trade there is between the various villages, and settles intervillage disputes.”
“I notice you say wisest men,” she said carefully. “Then it is the men who run things here?”
The secretary’s bill opened slightly in surprise. He was not ready for the question and thought a moment.
“There is a division of responsibility, culturally,” he replied. “Exterior maintenance of the tree, cultivation of leaves and fruits and the careful management of the harvest, are the responsibility of the males, who also assume the role of protector of the tree and family against anything. They also represent the family group to the outside. Females have the responsibility for internal maintenance, including cleaning, furnishing, and decorating, as well as food preparation and distribution and the bearing and rearing of the young.”
It didn’t sound like such a logical deal to Yua, but she let it go for now.
“What about professions?” she asked. “Surely not everyone is a tree farmer.”
“There are some,” the secretary told her. “I am of the professions. There are, after all, a large number of excess males for whom there is nothing in family life to offer support. Doctors, lawyers, traders, and maintenance personnel are needed. Those books had to be written by someone and printed and bound and distributed by others, for example.”
She frowned. “Excess males? No females?”
He cleared his throat lightly. “I know that there are some cultures where the females have a different role, but not here. I mean, after all, one male can, ah, service a number of females but not the other way around. It is only logical, you see.”
She didn’t see the logic of it at all. It was more than a slight shock to come from a culture where males were almost nonexistent and used for only one purpose, anyway, to such a culture as this.
“So what is my place in such a culture?” she asked warily.
“Tonight you’ll sleep here as the guest of the Elders,” he responded casually. “Tomorrow you’ll be interviewed by them, then placed with a family willing to accept you.”
She didn’t like that. “And suppose I don’t want to go with that family—or any other?”
He actually chuckled. “Oh, there is no choice. After all, what would you eat? And where? Where would you sleep at night? You see? Here you must have a family and a tree or you starve and die. Don’t worry, though. There are potions, things like that, to help you adjust, forget your former cultural patterns and fit in.”
The fact was that it did worry her. She didn’t want to be drugged and passed on to some oppressive, nasty male to whom she was only a bearer of babies. She couldn’t afford to be. She had been sent to the Well World not as a refugee but as a soldier. She had things to do, and this sort of life was not part of it, would never be a part of her existence.
But—she had no really clear idea of what it was she was supposed to do once here. Obie had said that things would work out so that she’d know when the time was ripe, but when would that be? What if he was wrong? What if Awbri wasn’t where and what she was supposed to be?
She didn’t know what to do, and, worse, she had only one night to figure something out.
She only knew that this wasn’t what she expected, not at all . . .
South Zone
“they’ve been coming through steadily,” ortega said to the Southern ambassadors and the representative from the North. “So far we’re processing about one hundred an hour and there’s no sign of stoppage. In fact, the number continues to grow. Already we’ve called upon some of you to supply extra manpower, even army units, to keep everything orderly—but that won’t last. We’re literally being flooded with people!”
“What about simply leaving them in the chamber?” an ambassador asked. “Won’t that block the arrival of newcomers?”
“For a time,” Ortega acknowledged. “But the place isn’t set up as a living area. We have no way to feed them or eliminate their wastes.”
“You say it’s an entire planetary population?” another voice chimed in. “Good heavens, man! That could mean billions! Do you realize what that will do to us? The world can’t support such a population! It’ll be chaos, social, political, and economic. It could destroy us! Something must be done!”
The massing of mutterings indicated that this ambassador had a lot of support.
“In all the history of the Well World,” one said, “there has never been such an event. An entire planetary population! It’s like the Markovians all over again, but the planet is already populated. Many of our ecosystems are in a very delicate balance, which this influx will tip. I say we have no choice. For our own well-being, we must kill these newcomers as they arrive.”
His conclusion shocked a lot of them. Silence reigned for a moment, although Ortega knew that many of the ambassadors would overcome their shock and start thinking just that way.
“This isn’t a random occurrence,” Ortega suddenly announced. “It is deliberate. You all know that there is a surviving Markovian technician, Nathan Brazil. He is behind this. I think for a particular reason.”
There was quiet on the other end. They were listening.
“You all know the standing rule if Brazil were to appear today. His mental state wasn’t all that great the last time. I know—I was there. Even then he was claiming to be God, the one creator of the Universe, Markovians, and all. We don’t know what another thousand years have done to his mind. Should he get into the Well of Souls again he might take a different course. Suppose his god complex has grown? Suppose he decides to play god for real next time? You know the fear is a real one. You know that once inside he could do anything he wants. Procedures have long been established to stop him and keep him captive should he arrive.
“Well, colleagues, I believe the time has come. Brazil is going to appear again, this time deliberately, and all this confusion is but a smokescreen. He may be mad, but he’s not stupid. He knows we’re laying for him. What better way to mask his coining and increase his chances of success than by camouflaging his actions in this way? By finding a planet in trouble, dying, and running its population through. He knows what chaos the overcrowding will cause. And while we’re coping with total disruption, he’ll try to sneak past us. Kill them? No, I don’t think that’s the solution. What would we do with the bodies? Better we cope with the mob, for the moment putting up the newcomers in our home hexes as local conditions allow. The genocide option is open to us at any time as long as we keep track of these Entries. Right now let’s just concentrate on orderly processing—but send in some really good troops to guard the Well Gate. He must go through it. Once he’s through I’ll wager the flood of new Entries will slack off. But he must not pass!”
All present murmured agreement to that.
“For now I’ll set up what procedures I can,” Ortega told them. “I hope all you air-breathers will cooperate by sending whatever personnel in whatever quantities are necessary. Troops will be posted with adequate weapons. If Brazil tries to sneak through, they will be instructed to shoot to kill.”
Dillia
mavra chang awoke. it was slightly chilly but not unpleasant; a peaceful forest with the sound of a running stream nearby. She was relieved; going through the Well hadn’t been any trouble at all.
She began to move forward and instantly stopped. She turned to examine her body, then she started cursing.
Damn Obie! she thought angrily. She was still a centaur! He had known it—that had been why he’d insisted she keep the Rhone form. He was getting her used to it.
She walked down to the water. There was a waterfall, small but pleasant-looking, churning the water below but it ran off into a broad pool and almost slowed to a start. Just downstream a bit it was almost a mirror-like lake and she quickly took advantage of it.
She was not the same centaur she’d been, she saw that reflected in the pool. She was larger, stronger, more powerful-looking. Her head and the equine part of her body were covered with a yellowish hair, blonde and majestic. Her body, amply-built but strong and sturdy, was light-skinned and her face retained no trace of its Oriental cast. It was a strong, attractive face with, of all things, blue eyes staring back at her from the reflection.
And yet there was something oddly familiar in the visage, as if it reminded her of someone she’d known long ago. She couldn’t think of who it might be; she’d never seen anyone so fair of skin nor with blue eyes—except—who?
A memory stirred, struggled, then came forth, a memory so long buried that she could never have recalled it on her own. Obie had been at work; his reach extended past his own demise.
A tall, handsome, muscular man with deep-blue eyes and a smaller, stunningly beautiful dark-haired woman with very fair skin.
Her parents.
Somehow she knew now, understood what the Well had done. Mavra Chang had been the creation of back-alley surgeons, a shape and form so different that none would ever recognize her as the refugee child from a doomed planet.
This was what she would have looked like if she’d been allowed to grow up normally, to be the true child of her parents.
Despite the centaur’s form, for the first time in her life she was seeing herself as she might have existed in human form. It startled her, even scared her a little. She shivered, only partly because of the slight chill.
She looked around her. High mountains off in the distance, not very far, really. She was essentially up in them even now. She knew where she was, where she must be. She’d come out of those mountains once before, the strange, quiet peaks of the hex named Gedemondas. This was Dillia, the land of peaceful, centaurs, uplake—at the head of a massive glacial body of water. There was a village down there, she knew. Filled with friendly centaurs who drank and smoked and told great stories. And up there, in those mountains, was the strange mountain race who had powers and senses beyond understanding.
She seemed to understand Obie’s intent, but she was still alone, in a chilly forest, without even a coat to keep out the chill.
All right, Mavra, she told herself. Here you are the would-be warrior queen with no followers and no army. Here you are, a long, long way from Glathriel and Ambreza, naked and alone and you’re supposed to start a revolution.
All right, superwoman, she told herself, you’re on your own now. No Brazil, no Obie, nobody. Just the way you wanted it to be. Now how are you going to do the job you have to do?
She sighed and turned, walking slowly from the stream toward the village she knew was there. First warm clothing, some food and drink, then conquer the world, she told herself.
Yeah. Conquer the world. You and what army? the darker part of her whispered. She had no reply.