05. Twilight at the Well of Souls - The Legacy of Nathan Brazil (7 page)

Oriental. That word had lost its meaning many thousands of years before, when mankind spread out to the stars from Old Earth. A third of mankind perhaps more, had been of one race and they had gone in search of the land Old Earth no longer could give them and the space in which to breathe and live and grow beyond teeming, packed cities and communal farms. Almost everyone looked a little Oriental after a while, and that had been something of a leveler; those purely of the other races of man were very few and far between and tended to stand out in any crowd.

Brazil, of course, and the small, scattered, but hearty band of Jews on many worlds, and the other odd ones bound together for racial survival like the gypsies. Very few and very rare.

Her face now was an exotic face, a sexy face, not one reflecting .the racial mix usual on human planets. Amost none there had pure golden-blond hair, except by coloring it, nor deep, icy-blue eyes except with lenses. Without blemish, her skin, too, was very pale, although she knew it would darken with the sun, and her breasts were large, much larger than they had been before, and perfectly formed. They moved when she moved, and she was somewhat conscious of the fact.

She was not, of course, human; only the face and torso were that, memories of might-have-been. The human part blended into the equine form perfectly matched to the human body, also covered in shorter hair of golden blond with a tail that was almost white.

Obie had made her a centaur twice now, although she was aware, in the back of her mind, that this time it was for keeps. She had stood there, thinking after a while, trying to understand the computer's point. Finally her gaze was drawn from her reflection in the pool upward toward the nearby mountains, cold-looking and purple, wrapped in clouds and capped by snowy peaks that would be a long while melting. That was not Dillia, she knew, but Gedemondas, mysterious Gedemondas, which only she remembered—and even that memory had now been dimmed by centuries of experience and life. A strange, mystic, mountain race that had enormous powers yet kept, hermitlike, completely to itself in its mountain rookeries and in its volcanic steam-heated caverns far beneath the placid surface. Their thought processes were—well, nonhu-man, really, was the term, she supposed, when the rest of the Southern hemisphere, at least the parts she had seen, tended to think along more familiar paths, no matter how bizarre their form and life style. The Gedemondans had known her and been interested in her once. Perhaps again?

She turned and walked away from the stream and waterfall, down the path toward the small village she knew was there, conscious of the fact that she was traveling down the same route that her grandfather had so very long ago, and with the same ultimate destination in mind: the Well of Souls computer itself. Her grandparents had gone there with Brazil, although not really by their own plan.

The village sat at the source of a great glacial lake, far removed from the mainstream of Dillian life. It had remained relatively small, still something of a wilderness community, despite the passing centuries —mostly because the population of the hex was kept relatively stable. There was no overpopulation on the Well World, and therefore none of the pressures that would long ago have forced this area to develop. Nor were there resources here worth despoiling the land; this was a semitech hex, nothing more than steam power allowed, and the deposits of seemingly inexhaustible coal and crude oil were far to the south.

What resources there were here were of greater import to the local population. Fish spawned here throughout the myriad streams that fed the lake, creating a bountiful and carefully managed industry that fed, in more than one way, the food, fertilizer, and special-oils industries elsewhere—Downlake, as the rest of the hex was known to these people. That, and the bountiful game of the Uplake forests, were the resources that counted up here.

Still, she saw, things had changed quite a bit from the last time she had been here. The village
was
larger; there seemed to be more cabins in and between the forest groves, and things seemed a bit more modern. Torches had been replaced by gas lamps, apparently fed from a huge natural-gas canister, near the lake itself, that had connectors for marine refilling. There also seemed to be a large number of small boats moored in neat rows around the small harbor; almost a marina, she thought. The buildings, too, looked newer, not merely the log cabin style of earlier times but some prefabricated units as well. Change was slow to come to places on the Well World, yet change was inevitable everywhere. Still, it disappointed her in a way. Some of the personality seemed to have gone.

Her nakedness didn't bother her; with the coming of warm weather most of the centaurs went without clothing, and only her pale complexion really set her apart from the more weathered bodies moving about.

She sought out the office of the local constable, the only real government they had up here. No sense in going around ignorant and alone when these people had always been a friendly bunch.

She couldn't read the signs, of course, but only one small building, a prefab, had official-looking seals on both sides of the door, seals that could only be the Great Seal of the hex. That meant officialdom, and unless they had really changed, that meant who she was looking for.

Things
had
changed, but it didn't matter. The town, it seemed, had become incorporated, mostly to keep the tourists under control, and this was city hall. A mighty small city hall it was, too; if all four officials the mayor, treasurer, clerk, and constable had decided to be in at the same time, there would have been no room even for furnishings. But, the clerk assured her, that never happened. Things changed, but not all that much. The three others were all on the lake, fishing.

The clerk, a sharp-nosed, businesslike woman with mottled gray-and-white body hair, proved pleasant enough. "My name is Hovna," she told Mavra. "Somehow, when we heard there were a bunch of Entries from your part of space, we expected at least one of you to show up here."

Mavra's eyebrows rose in surprise. "Oh?"

The clerk shrugged. "Four times in our history people from your area have come in, and all four times at least one has wound up here. Must be some kind of affinity."

That interested her. "Are there any others here now?"

"Oh, no," the woman laughed. "Last one was hundreds of years ago, before any of our times. I think you're the first Entry in my records, in fact, from anywhere."

That will change shortly, Mavra thought sourly. She would have to alert the authorities here so that some sort of temporary accommodations that wouldn't screw up this pretty and peaceful place could be made for the newcomers. For now she just said, "Well, I'm pleased to be here. My grandfather was once one of you, back in the old days."

The clerk frowned. "Grandfather? I don't remember . . . Anyway, how could that be? Once here, you're
here."

"Not if you go out through the Well of Souls," Mavra replied.

The clerk, obviously confused, just shrugged and said, "Before my time."

Mavra didn't press the matter. "For now, I only need a few days to get my bearings and such. I'm afraid I'm not your typical Entry—I have some work I was sent here to do."

Her statement was even more puzzling. "Work?" The clerk gave a sideways look that indicated she thought the newcomer was more than a little mentally unbalanced. Still, there was an official register for such cases that declared her a citizen and the like and gave her certain legal rights, which weren't much —but it was a pretty loose government, anyway. Only her first name was taken; the Dillians used only one name and never saw much necessity for two. Fortunately, her name, Mavra, was composed of syllables common to the Dillian tongue and needed no alteration.

"There's a guest lodge at the head of the lake," the clerk told her, scribbling something on a piece of official stationery. "You take this over to them and they'll give you a room until you can get settled. It's still early in the season, so there'll be rooms. You can eat there as well, if you like." Again a second note. "And take this to the smith down the street. You'll need shoes in this country anyway. Beyond that it'll be up to you to find your place here. Lots of things to do if you like this part of the country, or go Downlake for more civilized and paved-over type work." She said the last disdainfully. There were city people and country people, and she made no attempt at concealing which she was.

Mavra looked at the two sheets. "I'm sure this will be fine," she assured the clerk. "Um . . . I can't read them, you know. Which one's which?"

The clerk looked apologetic, then drew a little inverted horseshoe on one. Mavra nodded, thanked her, and left.

She felt hungry, but decided to look around the town before going up to the lodge. Shoes . . . Funny, she hadn't thought of that, she told herself. The Rhone, the centaurs of her old sector, had developed rather sophisticated protections that didn't require them—but shoes might be a good idea here. She headed for the smith's.

This was rather like having a broken bone and having to go to a doctor, she decided. The fact that it wasn't supposed to hurt and would be over quickly didn't diminish the anxiety that came from the thought that the huge, burly, chestnut-colored centaur, who looked as if he could bend steel bars like noodles, was going to drive a bunch of nails into the bottom of her feet.

When she entered the smithy, the smith, a friendly man named Torgix, eyed her appreciatively as any man might, grinned like a schoolboy through a thick beard, and hurried over to her. He took the paper with the horseshoe mark, glanced at it, and told her where to stand.

"Just relax, beautiful," he roared in a voice that fit his physique, "and I'll have it done in a jiffy."

It was pretty nerve-racking to see him measure her hooves, then bend red-hot steel to the proper shape with an artisan's quick skill, and she couldn't bear to watch as he drove the special nails through the small holes in the shoes and then into her hooves. It was true that she felt no real pain, except, perhaps, a residual muscle ache from the force of the blows— truly the man had no idea of his own strength—but the psychic pain was intense. Glad when he was finished, she walked about hesitantly, feeling the extra weight and the odd balance the horseshoes gave her.

"You'll get used to them," he assured her. "In a couple of days you'll forget what it felt like not to wear 'em—and your feet will thank you in the days and months to come. The alloy is good; there'll be no rust or warping, although the nails, naturally, come loose over time. If you have any problems, any smith can do simple repairs. Anything else I can do for you?"

She shook her head. "Nothing, thanks. But I could use a drink, I think." She hesitated. "But that takes money or some kind of payment, doesn't it?"

"I wouldn't worry about it," he chuckled. "You're the most beautiful woman in these here parts, I'll tell you, and you got the moves, too, beggin' your pardon, if you know what I mean. You won't have no trouble gettin' a drink. You was a woman—before?"

She nodded.

"Then you know what I means," he said knowingly, and winked.

She smiled slightly. Yes, she knew exactly what he meant.

The culture she remembered from her last time through Dillia had been communal. If there had been any money, it hadn't been used here, in the village Uplake. Again things had changed, although not to the complicated degrees found elsewhere even on the Well World. You had a number—
she
had a number, on those notes—and that gave you an account, kept by the clerk in the village where you were registered. It wasn't a very definite kind of thing—the units were sloppy and not even named—and the only thing required was to do some sort of productive work known to the community to keep your account open. There was no trouble going to a store or seller's stall and just getting what you needed—as long as you worked and produced.

She wondered how far an Entry's account stretched before it ran dry. A little, anyway, she decided. There hadn't, really been a time limit—although, of course, the clerk hadn't explained the system nor read her out her number, either. Best to be wary with folk from alien cultures who might abuse a charge account, she decided. But she
was
beautiful, and she did, unconsciously, have the moves, as the blacksmith had said, and the system was easily explained to her.

She had gotten sloppy and lazy, she decided. Bars had always been her element; she grew up in and around them, worked them and worked in them. She had always been what others thought of as cute, which had worked to good advantage, but she was now the center of attention and she was rusty at handling it. Obie had been a close friend, a companion, the closest thinking being to her for a long, long time, and she missed him terribly. But he had also been a drug, she was now realizing, a magic genie that could give you anything you wanted or needed at the snap of a finger. The old tough, totally self-reliant Mavra Chang had been lost somewhere along the line. It had been an insidious kind of thing, not missed until needed, and now she realized the disadvantage she was at.

She had been a total world unto herself for the early part of her life, and fiercely proud of it. She had clawed her way to the top by her own wits and abilities—not without a helping hand here and there, but that was true of everyone in the universe, she knew. She had changed, though. Magic wands do that to you.

She found the men and women in the bar mostly loud, boisterous, and very boorish. That had always been the case, of course, but she had always been able to tolerate such behavior and to fake fitting in to get what she wanted. Doing so was increasingly difficult now; the routine social acting seemed somehow impossible, the pawing and passes hard to ignore and easy to cause irritation. She left as quickly as she could and walked up to the lodge, a huge wooden building of logs with a wide porch fronting on the marina and lake.

It was a pretty place inside; the entire first floor was open, except for the huge log ceiling bracing beams, and there was a fireplace at each end and one in the center with an exhaust vent rising up to the roof. The rooms split off in two-story wings from the back of the main social hall, small and basic but what was needed. Dillians slept standing up, although they liked to be braced for sheer relaxation, and there was an area with two padded rails for that; also a sink with running spring water, a pitcher, and some linen for just washing up. The common latrine was down the hall, just a bunch of stalls you backed into. Nothing fancy, but it would do.