02. Shadows of the Well of Souls (21 page)

"Twice a year as well, and about ten days long. They are
most
unpleasant, but we can function feeling awful a lot better than we can function during the arousal stage, I can tell you."

"I know," Lori sighed. That was the experience that defined growing up female more than any other, and the lack of it now was one of the best things about being male. He looked back at Anne Marie, the twin of the creature he was riding, and commented, "Too bad you and Julian will both miss shopping for shoes, though."

Now, as he sat there in the darkness, he tried putting a little weight on the ankle and was pleased to notice that the pain was very mild now. In an emergency he would have no compunctions about getting up and running on it, even if he might still pay for that later. The hand, though, was another story. If anything, he was more right-handed than Lori Ann had ever been; his left hand was useful mostly for support of whatever the right hand was doing. The aspirin had helped; he never remembered it doing this good a job on a human headache and suspected that there was a different biochemistry at work here, for once in his favor.

Not enough, though. It still hurt, and the fingers felt numb, a lot more than could be explained by the splint and bandages. The automated clinic back on the east coast of Itus was a long way away now. He had no idea how far away the next high-tech hex they might reach was or whether they would know how to repair a broken Erdomese there. What if the hand had to come off? There weren't many prospects for one-handed men in Erdom. He began to feel panic at the thought, and that just made the awareness of the pain worse. He fought it, tried to push it back down, and finally got some self-control back, but he was feeling dizzy and nauseous. Scared, he reached over and shook Julian, who stirred, shook herself awake, then frowned and immediately was up and at his side.

"You have a fever," she told him in a concerned whisper.

"A very bad one. You are glowing like a camp fire. How long did you let me sleep?" She reached over and picked up the watch. "Five hours." The remains of the medical kit were on a blanket near them, and she went over and picked up the small vial of aspirin. "Here.
Curse these hands
!" She managed to get the top off but couldn't get the pills out. "Give me your hand and I will try and shake them into it."

Lori nodded, shaking now, and put out his left hand. She shook out a half dozen pills, then scooped up two with the lip of the vial and got him a canteen. He got the pills down, but it would take some time for them to have any effect.

"Lie here beside me, husband," she told him, "and try to sleep if you can. I will be here and keep watch upon both the camp and you."

He moaned and shook and thrashed around for the better part of an hour before finally passing into sleep. Julian wasn't all that certain if he was just sleeping or if the fever had finally put him out, but there was nothing more that could be done.

Julian's thoughts were mixed but all bad. For one thing, she felt almost helpless in the situation. She could comfort him and check on him and see that he got aspirin until that was gone, and she could cover him, but she could do little more. The biggest frustration was that she knew nothing of Erdomese infections or even whether this kind of fever reaction was normal or terminal. She
did
assume that if it didn't break within a day, it was very bad indeed, but
then
what? Should he be kept cool or, as she'd automatically done, warm under a blanket?

She assumed that growing up Erdomese tended to give one at least a rough idea of these things just as Earth people had a rough idea of human reactions and illnesses simply by growing up human. Maybe they shouldn't have bandaged the hand. Maybe that cut off air flow or something, although there was no open wound and the bandages were mostly to keep the splint on.

I'm not even a good First Wife here,
she thought miserably.
A first wife should know what to do.

Of course, if they were back in Erdom, help could have been called. Not here.
All that education, that sophisticated background, and what's it worth?
she asked herself.

Nothing. Nothing at all. The revelation struck to the core of her ego and identity. All that Julian Beard had been, all that he'd learned, every scrap of sophisticated knowledge and the numerous skills he'd mastered, were not merely useless now, they were useless period. Sure, in training he'd learned probably the ultimate in first aid, but how much of that applied to Erdomese biology and what good was most of it without the proper instruments and medications on hand? What could she do if she had a decent kit, anyway? Even if she could put a thermometer in his mouth, for how long should it be in and what would be the correct reading? Useless, all useless. Julian Beard was someone trained for other conditions, another time, another world, another life.

Julian of Erdom was furious at Julian Beard for being worse than useless.
Incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial.
She had clung to him desperately for so long, even decided at one point to die for him, and he was worthless. She rejected him in her fury. She understood now: this was totally new, a start from scratch, from
less
than scratch. All the feelings, impulses, inclinations that she'd pushed back for the sake of that precious ego had been not a personal victory but a brick wall. Her past was the wall, a useless thing that had kept her unhappily tied to a world and life and viewpoint no longer relevant. But the old Julian Beard wasn't there anymore. He was a ghost, an evil spirit that had led her only to this helpless situation.

It was probably too late, but she hated him now, rejected him, cast him out. She felt him go, like something solid and tangible that had been inside her head and heart and now was removed. It felt good, but—what was left?

Erdomese women served their husbands and families and extended families. She had a husband, but neither he nor she had anyone else, even in Erdom. He was all she had, and she felt that she had failed him. She looked down at him as he slept fitfully, and for the first time she looked at him entirely as an Erdomese female. She looked at his cute horn, the gentle strength of his face, and a flood of emotions and self-realizations swept through her, this time unchecked, unfiltered, without thought or inhibition.

She bent down to his face and whispered in his ear, "I love you, Lori. I love you and I need you."

He didn't come fully awake, but he seemed to hear, and there was a gentle smile on his face all of a sudden, as if he had banished nightmares for a more pleasant dream.

Julian was not really thinking, just letting her Erdomese body and brain act as they willed, performing actions that she neither knew nor cared made any sense or not. She bent over, raised his head gently, and offered him her lower right breast, one of the water carriers in a nonpregnant female's anatomy. He took it and began to drink. At first it was a little, as in foreplay, but after a bit he began really sucking and taking it in, even as she was licking his face with her long, thick tongue.

She had no idea how long she kept it up, but it was probably an hour or two before she noticed a dramatic change in him. The fierce glow was gone; there was only a slight residual shimmer, the natural aftereffect of the dangerous condition he'd had.

Lori's fever had broken.

Julian pulled back, exhausted, dehydrated, but also very, very happy to see and sense the change in him. He was going to be all right!

"We might light a small torch and take at look at that dressing," said a deep woman's voice behind her.

She started, turned, and saw Mavra Chang standing there.

"How—how long . . . ?" Julian managed, her voice raspy and dry.

"Pretty much since you started.
Somebody
had to guard the camp."

Julian felt suddenly ashamed, as if she'd done something
else
wrong. "I—I'm sorry. But—he was burning up with fever. I felt his life burning up inside him. I
had
to do
something."
She paused. "I just wish I knew what I did."

"Don't apologize. I heard him crying out and thrashing around and knew he had to have something nasty—I don't think I've actually slept soundly since I was aboard a ship in space, and you can't
believe
how long ago that was, nor can I. At first I couldn't figure out what you were doing, though," she admitted. In fact, although she didn't say it, what she had first made out in the bright starlight and then watched for a bit seemed pretty damned sick, a kind of prenecrophilia in which one made love to the dying. It took her experience with many alien species and her analytic mind to finally see a method in the apparent madness.

Julian still couldn't. "Uh—what
was
I doing?" she asked hesitantly. She felt really rotten herself at the moment.

Mavra smiled. "A long time ago—it seems like I use that term a lot these days—when I was just pushing puberty, I pondered the Universal Sexual Design Question like most everybody else I knew. If most every mother had one baby at a time and multiple births were rare, why did girls get two tits? The answer, of course, is
redundancy.
Then I saw that Erdomese women had quads, yet Erdomese births are not all that much different in number than Earth-human births. So why
four
breasts? Wasn't that taking redundancy to an extreme? Then I was told that the bottom two were water jugs when the system allowed it, and, probably like you, I accepted it as some sort of desert survival thing. I mean, you only need one guy to knock up a lot of females, but a lot of guys can't produce any more babies with one female than one guy. Made sense. You probably thought the same thing. Probably most Erdomese think that way."

"Yes? So?"

"I don't think so anymore. Oh, maybe that's
one
reason, but it's not the main one. I have nothing but the evidence of my own eyes here and the results, but I'll bet you what you did is done whenever a male is seriously ill. The face licking cools down the head in the only area of the body where your race can perspire to exchange heat. But that water—I don't think that's water at all. It's at body temperature, and the cooling effect is minimal, so what purpose does it serve? Then I remembered the female Uliks from a long time ago. Big, ugly suckers, cross between walruses and giant snakes, with six arms and three pair of breasts.
That
was bad enough, except that they laid eggs and the young were born with developed stomachs and teeth and were fed dead meat. Which of course brought up the question of why they had
any
tits, let alone six, when they didn't nurse their young.'"

"Yes? And?" Julian was exhausted, but she really wanted to know the point of this.

Mavra handed her a canteen. "Drink all of it. I
know
there's water over there, and we'll get some in a few hours. We have several more canteens, anyway."

Julian took it gratefully and found herself draining the whole canteen in almost a continuous series of gulps. When she was done, Mavra continued.

"See, the only thing you and a Ulik woman have in common is desert. I didn't think about it, but these ancient farts playing God here long ago weren't
all
creative geniuses. They stole a lot from one another. That's why there are so many humanlike life-forms, and why most races here seem to be themes and variations on other races, plants, animals, birds, bugs—you name it. It's obvious to me now that the ones working on desert races would peek at each other's work, steal from each other, even critique one another's work."

"The Ulik . . . ?" Julian prompted.

"The Ulik female takes in enough water to float a ship. Once inside her, the amount she doesn't use, and that's most of it, is stored in a series of sacs that have what look like breasts as outlets. But each 'breast' produces different stuff. There's a salt and mineral solution in a form that can be handled by the body to replenish what's lost. Another takes vitamins from food and creates a vitamin solution of sorts. But the bottom pair have a solution that contains universal antibodies of some kind of supercharged type. Viruses, germs, inflammation, you name it. They attack, destroy, then work to help heal what was damaged. The Ulik males are big; the females are
enormous,
and they don't travel much, but I tell you the males really treat them right and bring them whatever they want. I thought it wasn't a bad system, myself."

Julian gasped. "You mean—my lower set—they're like those super illness fighters?"

Mavra nodded. "I think so now. No way to be sure, of course. I sure wouldn't bet my life on it being fact, but I'd bet a good amount of money it was the answer. I think you shot him up with the equivalent of megavitamins, minerals, body salts, antibiotics, you name it. He can't make that amount on his own, like the male Uliks. In fact, I'll bet the whole harem thing grew out of that. You're basically mammals. When you're pregnant, the body devotes itself entirely to one thing and one thing only, and all this good stuff gets shot into the nursing baby just like Earth-human breast milk transfers antibodies and nutrients well beyond mere food. Tell me—you ever cut yourself? Or had a bad bruise?"

"Yes. When I was being imprisoned, I was chafed and bruised by the chains, and I cut myself once trying to get away."

"Uh huh. And how long did it take you to recover?"

"I—I hadn't thought about it. Once I was freed and out of there, I never noticed."

"Lori injures a lot more easily and heals more slowly. He had some minor cuts and abrasions on him that were scabbed over. You have none, yet you've been here longer than he has and have been treated more roughly. Ever know a sick Erdomese female? Or see one scarred and bruised?"

Julian thought a moment. "No, now that I think of it. Oh, some of the old ones showed the wear and tear of their age, but among the younger ones, no. The men, however, all had some kind of cut or bruise, and a lot of them had dueling scars." The evidence of Mavra's suppositions was sinking in. "Many of the older women were fat and frumpy and didn't take great care of themselves, but I don't remember even one with
stretch marks
!"