02. Shadows of the Well of Souls (23 page)

Brazil thought about it. "I guess my viewpoint's different. To me, this is a place where maybe folks can find out what's really important."

"Well, that's 'cause you're the
audience,
not an actor in the play. Even so, I notice you went back and lived through all the shit in Earth history. You didn't stick around here watchin' folks contemplate their navels."

The captain sighed. "I don't know, Gus. Maybe you're right. Your whole life was trying to be where the action was, and I guess mine is, too. Don't exempt yourself, though, from that audience. We're both a couple of ambulance chasers, rushing off to see where the siren's going. Maybe that's the trouble with us. You didn't rush to rescue the child from the burning building or catch the robber or put your life on the line for a cause. You went there to
film
it. I didn't really have any cause, either. I might have tackled the robber or tried to save the kid, but it was just because it was something to do. Now it's
us
who are the story. This time we're the reason for everything that's going on. I doubt if either of us is comfortable in that role."

"Maybe. Maybe I just would rather have been one of them high-tech types here to tape all this for the eleven o'clock news. Maybe that's my problem. Or maybe it's just that this is the only game in town right now, and when it's over, it's gonna be boring as hell."

"Maybe, maybe not. Things
do
happen here, although on a smaller scale. There were some wars here once and might be again sometime, and revolutions
do
happen, cultures
do
get turned. Look at the ancestral home of Earth. Conquered by a nontech hex that forced it to switch places."

Gus looked out over the wheel at Terry, who still relaxed on the deck, seemingly oblivious to everything. "Yeah, and look at what we did with it. What the hell
did
they do to her, anyway? You can't
know
what a difference there is. You can't imagine it."

"I don't know, Gus," Nathan Brazil admitted, shaking his head slowly from side to side. "I don't know what happened at all. They weren't like that the last time I was here, and that was long after the switch. She—they—are the best example that things do change on the Well World. There are other things, too. I don't remember the Dahir being as sleek and streamlined as you are, and I sure don't remember ever hearing about this vanishing trick you do. I've seen some other races, too, races I knew, and they're different as well. A
lot
has changed here, for all the look of it. An awful lot. I haven't figured it out yet, and I doubt if I can get a real handle on any of it until I'm inside the Well, in that incredible form, able to digest all this and figure it out." He sighed. "And that is the only real priority."

And if I fail, I could die here . . .
Brazil was still having trouble with that, still fighting against the idea, but it wouldn't get out of his mind. It scared him, and he hadn't expected that, but there was also a bit more zest to this race because it was there.

For the first time his very existence was at stake. The sense of risk was both uncomfortable and oddly exhilarating. It was something totally new to him, and anything totally new was attractive, even in so perverse a fashion as this.

But then again, the girl was something new and unexpected as well, and for all Nathan Brazil felt for her, he still wasn't at all certain if she represented a true asset or yet another threat.

Why had she joined him in the first place, and stuck with him, considering the vast gulf between them? Why was she so intent on using her powers to help him clear obstacles from his path? Did she want to be put back, become Terry once again? He could do it, inside the Well, but how could she
know
that or anything else about his true nature? Was she perhaps fleeing from whatever had made her the way she was, or had that hidden intellect directed her to join him?

Gus went over to her as she ate some of the hard bread and tried to make her see him. He just couldn't believe that somehow, somewhere, deep inside her, he couldn't make her understand who he was.

She
did
see him when he put his huge reptilian face in front of her and stared into her eyes and began to talk. For a moment she was visibly startled to see this huge creature apparently materialize so close, but then she just frowned a bit and went back to the bread.

He had no way of knowing that at that moment she had looked beyond his surface appearance, looked deep inside him, and sensed only friendliness and a total absence of threat either to her or to Brazil. That had placed him in the category of factors not to worry about, and there seemed little point to anything more until and unless some concerted action was required.

He didn't accept that. "Terry! It's Gus!
Gus!
Do you understand me? It's Gus, at your side like always! You've just
gotta
be in there
somewhere,
damn it! We went through too much together!"

But Gus's words registered only as random sounds, and she could read or infer nothing at all from his features or form. She was aware that it was almost frantically trying to communicate with her, but she saw no possible point to the communication even if there had been a way. It seemed to feel some actual affection for her, which seemed odd, but that, too, wasn't relevant to her, nor was it a problem worth pursuing at this time.

She would, of course, have recognized Gus if he had looked as she had known him; those memories were still there, still accessible when needed. But she had not had the briefing for new entries in Zone. She had gone through the Zone Gate and emerged still human. All her experience told her that the Zone Gate was nothing more than another variation of the gate that had brought her to the Well World; she had no information at all on its transformation and adaptation abilities and functions. There was therefore no way for her to know that her companions of the past now looked remarkably different.

She did consider the problem of why she hadn't been able to see the creature until now. She
had
sensed it, even back on land, and knew it was the same one, but because it radiated only friendship and no sense of danger, it had been ignored.

She heard its heavy steps on the wooden deck going away from her, back toward the Mate, and looked up and was again startled to see nothing. That should not be. She could feel it, sense it, but only in general terms, enough to know it was there.

But where? It was so
big,
so colorful . . . She tried shifting through all the bands, but nothing showed up.
Now,
suddenly, Gus interested her a great deal. It was an unacceptable situation not to be able to see other creatures.

She sat statuelike, virtually all her mental resources suddenly fixed on this one problem, scanning every single energy band, mental and physical, one by one, examining and going through all sorts of tests on each, trying to find one that somehow wasn't right.

Busy with running the ship and with making plans, the two men hardly noticed that she sat there hour after hour, not moving, hardly breathing, all resources concentrated on this one problem.

And eventually she found it. One tiny, thin wave of medium power. She tried to block it off but found that impossible to do without also blocking off needed brain processing power. It was so perfectly located on the mental spectrum that it couldn't be jammed, couldn't be neutralized, without causing more harm than good. The best she could do finally was to narrow it down, localize it, pinpoint its source, then file it away.

She still couldn't see Gus unless he wanted to be seen, but from that point on she knew exactly where he was, which was more than sufficient. It was, however, an interesting capability for all that. The band was a common one, and the broadcast was strictly one-note, designed to do just one specific thing and to do that very well indeed. Given sufficient energy, it might be possible to duplicate the effect from the human brain. Almost casually, without even thinking about, let alone grasping, how she did it, she just
did
it.

Gus immediately popped into full visibility up there next to the Mate. One single narrow frequency; two broadcasts canceled out the effect on sender and receiver. Obvious and simple. Otherwise the creatures could never see one another, either. Once satisfied that she could turn it on or off at will, she filed the information away and finally turned her attention again to the now very old bread.

While all this was going on, late enough in the day to be nearing dusk and only a few minutes later than Brazil had predicted, they reached the hex barrier with Dlubine.

"Looks pretty peaceful," Gus noted. "Big fluffy clouds but not much else. Even the whitecaps don't seem real big."

Brazil nodded. "I'd hoped we'd reach it while we still had some light. I think we're pretty much dead on where I thought we were from the charts, too. I just hope it isn't freezing cold or something over there, although I doubt it. There'd be something of a permanent storm front at the barrier if it was, and while the sky looks a bit different, it's not enough to worry me. Still . . . I gather you're warmblooded, Gus, or you wouldn't have done so well back in that snowstorm. What's your range of comfort?"

"Can't say for sure," the Dahir responded. "I guess I'm pretty well insulated, since I haven't really felt uncomfortable in any extreme weather. Oh, I knew it was cold back in Hakazit, but it felt like I was wearin' a full set of winter clothes, if you know what I mean. Dahir's kinda high up, sort of a rain forest swamp like you find in northwest Washington, where it rains half the time and can get kinda chilly but not freezin'. I
hope
I don't need no clothes for any of this! I mean, jeez! Where would I get somethin' to fit
me
?"

"Well, we'll soon know. Here we go."

Pulcinell had been warm and comfortable for Brazil, with both water and air temperatures somewhere in the high twenties Celsius, very much like Rio had been in its spring. He felt the tingle as they passed through the barrier and was suddenly aware that the problem in Dlubine would not be freezing.

It was
hot.
It was a steambath of major proportions, and the sun was almost on the horizon! It had to be close to forty degrees Celsius. Even Gus wasn't unaffected.

"Wow! Feels like somebody just threw a hot blanket over me!"

"Me, too," Brazil responded. "This one's a hotbox, that's for sure. With heat like this near dusk, I'm not sure what midday might bring and I don't like to think about it. No wonder they had major storm warnings on the chart all over this hex! With this kind of heat and humidity you can get a hurricane between dusk and midnight! Evaporation here has got to be nuts!"

"Yeah, and when it's clear, it'll be Sunstroke City, definitely for you, maybe for me. I dunno. Maybe we oughta figure on riggin' up some kind of roof or sunshade or somethin' for tomorrow, though."

Brazil nodded. "At least it's calm right now, and we're in very deep water here with no shoals or reefs. I can pretty well lock the wheel down and the both of us can look for something to use. Otherwise we'll have to just drift through the day or find some shallows and anchor. Might not be a bad idea to do that, anyway. I can use some decent rest, and I get the bad feeling that there isn't a night in this land that isn't filled with thunder and lightning."

Gus looked out at the darkening horizon. "I'm not too thrilled to look forward to that experience, considerin' the storm we started with, but I'm just as worried at what I see out there." A tiny finger gestured to the northeast, and Brazil's gaze followed it.

"Well," the captain said with a sigh, "we couldn't exactly expect to travel even an ocean without company." He fumbled and came up with the binoculars from his pack and examined the horizon more closely. "Looks like all commercial traffic, anyway, just from the look of the sails. All heading pretty much the same way, too."

He made an estimate of the common heading of the three sets of sails still far off on the northeastern horizon and looked at the charts. "There," he said finally, pointing to a dot on the map with his finger. "Five will get you ten that they're all making for that island." He looked up at the sail. "Not much of a wind, but they should make it in, oh, two hours, I'd say. Maybe less if the wind picks up like I expect once things start to cool—and I say that in a relative sense. They cut it close, but they should be in the harbor there before any big blow comes up."

"What about us?" Gus asked him. "Shouldn't we put in someplace, too?"

"Well, the island, which is called Mahguul on the chart, is the only thing within
our
reach, too. Pretty small—only a few kilometers across by the look of it here, but with some elevation. I'd rather not risk getting bottled up in there if the word's out on us. It would only take somebody from Mowry to come over and post the gory details. A consortium could post a decent reward, but if they just posted that we'd stolen a fellow sailor's ship, it wouldn't take much of a reward." He thought for a moment. "Still, I don't want to battle storms all night even if I'm gonna fry tomorrow. I'm gonna head for it even in the dark. If we can just find some shelter off it, we might be able to get what we need."

"Sounds about as dangerous as takin' on the storms," Gus noted worriedly. "Still, you know the business."

"Yeah."
I
hope.

The night brought a stunning surprise. The ocean was alive with light; greens and blues and reds and yellows and all sorts of in-between shades were all over the place, forming patterns just beneath the surface and giving the whole sea an almost fairy-tale glow.

"Damn! Will you look at
that
!" Gus exclaimed at the unending parade of lights. "What do you suppose causes it? Could it be the lights of the people who live under the water here?"

"Unlikely," Brazil responded, fascinated himself by the beauty of it. "If it was coming from intelligent creatures, we'd see more movement in the patterns, and this is a semitech hex, so there wouldn't be any real power source. The water here is fairly deep, too, so it's not something pasted on or painted on bottom structures. That range of colors means they're not too deep. My guess would be some kind of marine life that forms large colonies that float or swim a few meters below the surface, but around here you can never take anything at face value."