02. Shadows of the Well of Souls (47 page)

"Duty!
Bah
!"
Anne Marie almost spit. 'This poor dear won't go home willingly. She'll try to find her husband, even if that's impossible, because it's
her
duty and because she's in love. You heard what they said about that dreadful culture. She'd be married off to some old bum she didn't know and die of a broken heart!"

"Anne Marie, this is not a romance novel."

"Tony Guzman! What in the
world
has gotten into you? It's not like we are innocent bystanders in all this! Nor entirely without some responsibility, too, simply because we weren't all that honest with them, either."

"We didn't
ask
to go along on this adventure!" Tony argued. "We were
drafted
!"

"Nonsense! That nice young man from the Zone embassy came along and
asked
us to do it. To go and link up with this Mavra Chang and find out as much as we could. And we found out a great deal, I think! We were also to get off a report to the ambassador if they lost track of the party. Thank
goodness
we didn't have to do
that.
I would have felt just
dreadful
about it!"

"But it's
over,
Anne Marie!
We're
the party now. The only satisfaction we might have is rubbing it in that smug drug runner's face after he discovers we were not fugitives but shadows."

"Spies, you mean. Spies for our government."

Tony sighed. "Anne Marie, spies are professionals. Espionage is a highly regarded art. We were rank amateurs dropped into a situation where we might have been hurt or killed by a government that wouldn't have really cared, and now we got out with our lives and whole skins. I don't
want
to be blinded or crippled. Not again. Now we have a second chance. I want to go home before something
does
happen. We were very nearly killed back there, you know. Anne Marie, we're sixteen years old again, only this time we're sexy blond bombshells that had the men of Dillia already making fools of themselves around us. I've
been
on that side. I want to find out if it's any more fun on
this
side."

"Well, then, you go home," she told the other centauress. "I suppose I should have seen it coming long before this, but I didn't want to. You've
had
a good life. You were handsome, from a well-to-do and well-connected family, skilled, educated, a pilot and world traveler. I never did
any
of those things. I couldn't. I was homely and plain and stuck mostly in a broken body. I made the best of it, but it wasn't fun, let me tell you! Your coming along, your love, was the one truly wonderful thing that happened to me. I shall always cherish it, and I shall always love that inner part of you, but surely you must have known from the moment we woke up like
this
that it could never be again. In a sense, this is our afterlife, mortal though we remain, goodness knows. I faced it more and more as we went on this trip. I shall always love that memory of you, and I shall continue to love you, but as a sister. This is after the 'death do us part' as surely as if we'd done away with ourselves, and you know it if you'd just face it."

Tony laughed.

"What's so amusing? I'm deadly serious."

"Anne Marie, I've rehearsed almost that identical speech a thousand times in my mind, and up to now I never had the nerve to give it. I was afraid of
hurting
you. And I thought we shared one another's thoughts to a degree!"

Anne Marie laughed in return, then finally said, "I guess not. I suppose it's what we thought we would think if the situations were reversed or some such. Or, since we actually
were
thinking the same, maybe it's true. Maybe we just didn't believe we were." She sighed. "Well, then, I guess this is what we'd call a divorce by mutual consent. Who would have
dreamed
we two would ever say those words?"

"We'll always be closer than any other two women of our race," Tony noted, taking her hand and squeezing it. "But no matter that we see each other in a living mirror, we are two different people who will lead at least slightly different lives."

"Agreed. And if you want to go back and have all those silly fools swoon over you, be my guest. I suppose, if all else comes out in the end, I'll wind up doing it, too, but I'm not so eager to start as you."

"Anne Marie! What can you
do
?
It is like the man said—it is
over
for us!"

"For you. Go on, I understand completely. But I know how skin-deep those lusting fools are, and they certainly weren't there when I needed them, going off chasing some—some dumb blond like you. I'm having
fun,
dear! For the first time in my life I'm
living
it instead of watching life go by! I very much
hope
that I'll come through in one piece, but, in the end it really doesn't matter to me. Perhaps it was because I was so devoted, to charities, to the unfortunate, to you. Perhaps it's just divine grace. But God gave me, at the end of my half life, a chance to live a
full
one, at least for a little bit. I shall probably give up in disgust and go home after a few days, but if there is
anything
perhaps I can do, if there's just one little thing I can add, I'll stick it out." She looked around at Alowi. "Oh my! The poor dear's cried herself to sleep!"

"Exhausted, probably. She's been throwing a tantrum for three days now."

"We should stop chattering and build that fire, then."

The next day proved tough going through the thick and ancient trees of Lilblod, but with no sign of who or what was the dominant race there or why they were feared.

Still, before midday they reached a road that, while direct, seemed very well traveled by the depth of the wheel grooves and the marks of all sorts of feet in the clay.

"Runs pretty much straight, northwest to southeast," Tony noted. "I guess this is the main highway to civilization. He said that place—Clopta or some such—was closest, which would mean we might well make it at a trot before dark."

Anne Marie raised an eyebrow. "But Agon is where they took the pair of them. If nothing ate us last night except the bugs—goodness! I itch all over!—then I doubt if anything will eat me if I spend one more night by this road. Give me the poor little darling and we'll head south."

Tony stared at her. "So this is it? Already?"

"I suppose so. It had to come sometime. It might jolly well be now." She gestured with her arms to Alowi to get off Tony and climb up somewhere on her back.

After a few moments' confusion Alowi figured it out enough to act, slid off, and managed, with a little help from Anne Marie, to get up on the other twin.

"Good-bye, Tony," said Anne Marie. "I'll see you in a few weeks, I suppose, unless we have a lot more luck than we have had in this matter so far." And without another word she started off southwest, toward Agon, at a brisk trot.

Tony stood there and watched her go until she was almost out of sight, then muttered, "Oh, hell," and trotted off southwest after them.

Just Off the Crab Nebula

THE KRAANG WAS NOT AT ALL PLEASED. WHAT HAD LOOKED from the start to be a fairly straightforward affair had now turned into a series of Gordian knots that threatened all its plans.

Nathan Brazil, happily and stupidly diverted making flower garlands for his girlfriend on a desert island well removed from the action, was nicely out of the game, although the Kraang understood the Well sufficiently to know that this would not, could not be allowed to become a permanent condition. Still, thanks to a race playing with powers it was not capable of handling or comprehending, the first job had been accomplished.

The Watcher had been diverted from the Well.

That should have provided more than enough time for the other to reach it first, but instead that mad, sick interloper had captured her and placed her in a situation where she, too, was no longer in control of events but which, instead of representing the Kraang's interests, now threatened to do horrible, irrecoverable harm.

Not that the Kraang didn't have a grudging admiration for Campos. If the vengeful cutthroat succeeded in destroying Mavra Chang's last vestiges of ego and will, she would open the entrance for him but be unable or unwilling to interface with the master control center. That would leave Campos free to roam those vast corridors unhindered, and after realizing that he could not comprehend, much less activate anything inside, he might well do terrible harm in his inevitable rage. Once he was inside its bowels, the Well would be helpless to control events concerning its own welfare.

And because she could still draw on the Well database to the limits of that primitive ape brain, she might even be able to tell him how to do some simple things that even so limited a creature could manage.

Probability was too complex to allow that. As a tiny stone in a pond made great ripples, even a very minute alteration of the basic matrix might, just might, create a series of alternatives that would take the whole universe into uncharted and unpredictable realms. Without one capable of handling and manipulating such power, like the Kraang itself, the results could be disastrous.

Even the Watcher, whom the Well would undoubtedly summon with great urgency if such a thing occurred, might not be able to fully straighten things out.

And yet without Mavra Chang to open the way, the Kraang could not reach those controls itself.

Why hadn't they simply hibernated, as the Kraang had, until they were needed? What could possibly be gained by a Watcher, or even two, living out meaningless lives on some distant dirt ball until rather crudely summoned in time of need?

Perhaps, it reflected, the judgment of eons had been wrong, after all. It had always thought of the Others as wrongheaded and foolish, but until now their competency had not been called into question.

Something would have to be done, and quickly. It was not used to thinking in such terms, but this was clearly not the time to ponder but to act.

But how?

Accessing Chang or even Brazil was out. It had managed a brief access while she was in transition, but once on the Well World, access to either her or Brazil was blocked. As for the rest, so far they were accessible only as viewers, strictly one-way communication. They were neither mentally strong enough to be used nor tied into the Well matrix.

There had to be
some
way, somehow, to break this apart, to create a flood from the logjam. Options had to be weighed, possibilities explored if they existed, and risks taken, even if it used up precious energy it could ill afford to squander if things didn't go just exactly right.

It was a question of divine intervention in a situation where there was no god.

More than ever, though, it was convinced that it was right, that it had been right all along.

This universe required a god and was instead stuck with two incompetent repair technicians.

There
had
to be a way. There had to be
something
that could be done.

But after four billion years of meaningless existence driving to and fro among the stars, finding even vast blocks of time meaningless, it wasn't used to thinking that time, any time, was quickly running out.