Midnight At the Well of Souls Read online

  The queen looked around and screamed in terror. The king with Skander's face was but one square right, and the queen with Varnett's face was one square up.

  "Our move!" they both said, and laughed maniacally.

  * * *

  Brazil awoke.

  He got quickly to his feet. Odd, he thought curiously. I'm more wide awake, feeling better, head dearer than I can ever remember.

  Quickly he examined his body to see what he was. With a shock he looked up around him, to the shores of a nearby lake. There were animals there, and others of his kind.

  "Well I'll be damned!" he said aloud. "Of course! That had to be the answer to the first question! I should have figured it out in Serge's office!"

  Sometimes the obvious needed to be belabored.

  Considering how primitive the place was, Brazil worriedly set out to see if he could find the Zone Gate.

  CZILL—SPRING

  (Enter Vardia Diplo 1261, Asleep)

  She was never certain why she had finally stepped through the Gate. Perhaps doing so was an acceptance of inevitability, perhaps an obedience to authority that was a part of her conditioning.

  There were patterns of color, running in and out, pulsating in a rhythmic, cosmic heartbeat: yellows, greens, reds, blues—all forming kaleidoscopic patterns, a mechanical ringing sound accompanying the pulses in an odd symphonic monotone.

  Then, quite suddenly, she awoke.

  She was on a lush savanna, tall grasses of green and gold stretching out to low foothills in the distance. Some trees, reminiscent of gum trees, dotted the plain, with odd growths that looked like barren stubs of what once had been taller trees showing in some numbers in the distance.

  With a start, she realized that the stubby trees were moving. They moved in a syncopated rhythm that was most strange. The trunks were actually legs, she realized, and it seemed as if they were all moving in great strides, yet were somehow arrested. It was like watching a track meet in slow motion. That was deceptive, though; the slower motion was apparently only an illusion, and as she watched, some of them covered pretty good distances in no time.

  They all seem to have something to do or someplace to go, she thought to herself. Purpose means some sort of civilization, and I need to find out where I am and what place this is before I can get my own purpose clear.

  She started toward the distant forms.

  And suddenly stopped as she caught a glimpse of her own body.

  She looked down at herself in wonder.

  She was a sort of light green, her skin a smooth, vinelike texture. Her legs were thick and yet long and rubbery, without an apparent joint. The trunk of her body showed no signs of breasts or of a vaginal cavity; and though her feet were flat bases, her arms seemed to be of the same nature as her legs, only thinner, ending as tentacles rather than as hands. Another, shorter tentacle grew out of the main arm about ten centimeters from its tip. A thumb, perhaps?

  She found that the rubbery arms worked well either way, being pliant and without apparent joint or bone, and she felt her smooth backside. No rectum, either, she found.

  She ran her arm over her face. A wide slit was no doubt the mouth, yet it opened only a tiny fraction. The nose appeared to be a single, fixed, hard hole above the mouth. Growing out of the top of her head was something thin, tough, and about the size of a mortarboard, although of irregular shape.

  What have I become? she asked herself, feeling fear bordering on panic.

  Slowly she tried to regain control of herself. Taking deep breaths had always helped, but she found she couldn't even do that. She was breathing, all right, she could sense that—but that nostril took in only a very tiny part of the air.

  She realized it was primarily a sensitive olfactory organ; she was breathing by involuntary muscle actions through the pores in her smooth, green skin.

  After a while her panic seemed to subside, and she considered what to do. The distant shapes were still going about their business, she saw. She seemed to be on a road of some sort.

  No matter what, she had to contact those creatures and find out just what was happening. She again started for the figures and found, with some surprise, that she covered the distance—almost a kilometer through the tall grass—in a much shorter time than she would have expected.

  It was a road, she saw—a dirt track, really, but wide and made up of reddish-brown soil.

  The creatures using it paid her no attention whatsoever, but she studied them intently. They were like herself, she knew. Those things she couldn't discover from self-examination were now apparent: two large, round, yellow eyes with black pupils, apparently lidless. She suddenly realized that she hadn't been blinking her own eyes, and could not.

  The thing growing out of her head proved to be a single large leaf of irregular shape—no two were alike. The stalk was thick and very short. Its color was a much deeper green than the body and it had an almost waxy texture.

  Not knowing how to talk to them, and almost afraid to try, she decided to follow the road. It must go someplace, she told herself. It really didn't matter which direction—one was as good as the other.

  She walked onto the road and set off toward the low hills to her left. The road really wasn't as crowded as she had thought, but at least a dozen—people?—were on the road ahead of her. She gained on a pair, and as she did she became aware that they were talking. The sounds were musical, yet she discovered that she could almost make out what was being said. As she closed to within three or four meters of the pair, she slowed, aware now that she could understand the strange, whispering singsong.

  " . . . got into the Bla'ahaliagan spirit-strata stuff, and can't even be talked to these days. If the Blessed Elder doesn't get off that crap pretty soon I'm going to transfer over to cataloging."

  "Hmmmm. . . . Dull stuff but I can see your point," the other sympathized. "Crindel got stuck under Elder Mudiul on some esoteric primitive game an Entry dropped on us about three hundred years ago. Seems it has almost infinite patterns after the first few moves, and there was this project to teach it to a computer. Couldn't be done. Weird stuff. Almost went off to the Meditations and rotted, Crindel did."

  "How'd the Worthy get out of it?" the first one asked.

  "Mudiul got a virus and it got the Elder quarantined for nine years," chortled the other. "By the time the Worthy got out the Board had closed down the project and redistributed the staff. The Old One's got off on whether rocks have souls, and that ought to keep the Worthy out of harm's way until rot wipes the Worthy."

  They went on like that for some time, and the conversation did little to clear up anything in Vardia's mind. About the only useful fact that came out of the discussion was the obvious limits of third-person-singular pronouns in the language.

  She noticed that both wore gold chains around their necks as their only adornment of any kind, but, trying not to be conspicuous, she couldn't see what was fastened to them.

  They had been walking for some time now, and several other things came into her mind. First, the locals seemed to live in communities. She passed groups of them here and there, their numbers ranging from three or four to several dozen. Yet there were no signs of buildings. The groupings seemed to be like camp circles, but without the fire. Occasionally she could glimpse mysterious artifacts here and there in the midst of the groups, but nothing large enough to stand out. Some groups seemed to be singing, some dancing, some both, while others were engaged in animated conversations so complex and esoteric that they melded into a tuneful chatter like a blending of insects.

  Also, she was aware very suddenly, she felt neither tired nor hungry. That was a good thing, she reflected, since she had no idea what these people ate.

  She continued to think in her own, old language, but had no trouble understanding others with their singsong chirping so alien to her.

  The two she had been following took a side path down toward a large grouping that was gathered in a particularly attractive spot. It was a pasto
ral setting of multicolored flowers and bushes alongside a fast-flowing stream.

  She stopped at the junction of the main road and the access trail to the lake, partially blocking the side trail. Someone came up behind her and brushed past her, making her conscious of her blocking.

  "I'm sorry," she said automatically and stepped to one side.

  "That's all right," the other replied and continued on.

  It was almost a full minute before she realized that she had spoken and been understood!

  She hurried after the being who had spoken, now far ahead.

  "Wait! Please!" she called after the creature. "I need your help!"

  The other stopped and turned, a puzzled expression on it.

  "What seems to be the trouble?" the creature asked as she came up to him.

  "I—I am lost and confused," she blurted out to the other. "I have just—just become one of you, and I don't know where I am or what I'm supposed to do."

  Realization hit the other. "A new Entry! Well, well! We haven't had an Entry in Czill in my lifetime! Well, of course you're confused. Come! You shall sleep with us tonight and you will tell us of your origin and we'll tell you of Czill," it said eagerly, like a child with a new toy. "Come!"

  She followed the creature down to the grove. It moved very quickly, and eagerly gathered its companions as fast as possible, excitedly telling them that they had an Entry in Riverbend, as the camp was apparently called.

  Vardia took all the attention nervously, still bashful and unsure of herself.

  They gathered around asking questions by the hundreds, all at once, each one canceling out the others in the general din. Finally, one with a particularly strong voice appealed for quiet over the noise, and after some work, got it.

  "Take it easy!" it shouted, making calming gestures. "Can't you see the poor one's scared to death? Wouldn't you be if, say, you went to sleep this night and woke up a Pia?" Satisfied, it turned to Vardia and said gently, "How long have you been in Czill?"

  "I—I have just arrived," she told them. "You are the first persons I've talked to. I wasn't even—well, I wasn't sure how."

  "Well, you've fallen into the worst pack of jabbering conversationalists," the one with the loud voice said, amusement in its tone. "I am Brouder, and I will not try to introduce everyone else here. We'll likely draw a bigger and bigger crowd as word of you gets around."

  It was interesting, she thought, that such weird whistlings and clickings should be instantly translated in her mind to their Confederacy equivalents. The creature's name was not Brouder, of course—it was a short whistle, five clicks, a long whistle, and a descending series of clicks. Yet that was what the name said in her mind, and it seemed to work in reverse as well.

  "I am Vardia Diplo Twelve Sixty-one," she told them, "from Nueva Albion."

  "A Comworlder!" someone's voice exclaimed. "No wonder it wound up here!"

  "Pay the critics no mind, Vardia," Brouder told her. "They're just showing off their education." That last was said with a great deal of mysterious sarcasm.

  "What did you do before you came here?" someone asked.

  "My job?" Vardia responded. "Why, I was a diplomatic courier between Nueva Albion and Coriolanus."

  "See?" Brouder snorted. "An educated one!"

  "I'll still bet the Apprentice can't read!" called out that one in the back.

  "Forget the comments," Brouder urged her with a wave of its tentacle. "We're really a friendly group. I was—is something the matter?" it asked suddenly.

  "Feeling dizzy," she replied, the ground and crowd suddenly reeling a bit. She reached out to steady herself on Brouder. "Funny," she muttered. "So sudden."

  "It comes on like that," Brouder replied. "I should have thought of it. Come on, I'll help you down to the stream."

  It took her down to the rushing water, which had a strangely soothing effect on her. It walked her into the water.

  "Just stand here a few minutes," the Czillian told her. "Come back up when you feel better."

  Automatically, she found, something like tendrils were coming out of small cavities in her feet and were digging into the shallow riverbed. She drank in the cool water through them, and the dizziness and faintness seemed to evaporate.

  She looked at the riverbank and saw that they were all watching her, a line of fifteen or twenty light-green, sexless creatures with staring eyes and floppy leaves on their heads. Feeling suddenly excellent once more, she retracted her tendrils and walked stiffly back to the bank.

  "Feel all right now?" Brouder asked. "It was stupid of us—you naturally wouldn't have had much water in you. You're the first Entry in some time, and the first one ever for us. Please, if you feel in the least bit strange or ill, let us know. We take so much for granted."

  The concern in its voice was genuine, she knew, and she took comfort from it. All of them had looked concerned when she had been out in the river.

  She really felt she was among friends now.

  "Will you answer some of my questions, then?" she asked them.

  "Go ahead," Brouder told her.

  "Well—these will sound stupid to you all, of course, but this whole business is entirely new to me," she began. "First off, what am I? That is, what are we?"

  "I'm Gringer," another approached. "Perhaps I can answer that one. You are a Czillian. The land is called Czill, and while that explains nothing, it at least gives you a label."

  "What does the name mean?" she asked.

  Gringer gave the Czillian equivalent of a shrug. "Nothing, really. Most names don't mean anything these days. They probably all did once, but nobody knows anymore.

  "Anyway, we are unusual in these parts because we are plants rather than animals of some sort. There are other sentient plant-beings on the Well World, eleven in the South here and nine in the North, although I'm not sure those are really plants as we understand them. We're a distinct minority here, anyway. But there are great advantages to being in the vegetable kingdom."

  "Like what?" she asked, fascinated in spite of herself.

  "Well, we are not dependent on any sort of food. Our bodies make it by converting light from the sun, as most plants do. Just get a few hours of real or artificial sun a day and you will never starve. You do need some minerals from the soil, but these are common to much of the Well World, so there are few places you can't get along. Water is your only need, and you need it only once every few days. Your body will tell you when—as it did just now. If you get into a regular routine of drinking, you will never feel dizzy or faint nor will you risk your health from its lack. There is also no sex here, none of those primal drives that get the animals in such a neurotic jumble."

  "Such things have been minimized on my home planet," she responded. "It would appear from what you say that I will not find this place that far from my own social concepts. But, if you have no sexes, do you reproduce by some artificial means?"

  The crowd chuckled at this.

  "No," Gringer responded, "all races on the Well World are self-contained biological units that could survive, given certain ecological conditions, without any aids. We reproduce slowly, for we are among the oldest-lived folk on the planet. When something happens to require additional population, then we plant ourselves for an extended period and produce another of ourselves by fission. This is far more practical than the other way, for everything that we are is duplicated, cell for cell, so that the new growth is an exact copy that contains even the same memories and personalities. Thus, even though you will wear out in a few centuries, you will also live forever—for the growths are so identical that not even we are certain which one is which."

  Vardia looked around, studying the crowd. "Are there any such twins here?" she asked.

  "No," Gringer replied. "We tend to split up, stay far apart, until the years make us into different folk by the variety of experiences. We live in small camps, like this one, drawn from different occupations and interests, so that the camps provide a wide range of folk and
keep things from getting too dull."

  "What do you do for work?" Vardia asked. "I mean, most—ah, animal civilizations are devoted to food production, building and maintaining shelters, educating the young, and manufacturing. You don't seem to need any of those things."

  "This is true," Brouder acknowledged. "Freed from the animal demands of food, clothing, shelter, and sex, we are able to turn ourselves to those pursuits to which other races must, because of the primacy of those needs, devote only a small part of their endeavors."

  Vardia was more puzzled than ever. "What sort of activities do you mean?" she asked.

  "We think," Brouder replied.

  "What Brouder means," Gringer cut in, seeing her uncomprehending look, "is that we are researchers into almost every area. You may think of us as a giant university. We collect knowledge, sort it, play with problems both practical and theoretical, and add to the greater body of knowledge. Had you followed the main road in the other direction, you would have come upon the Center, which is where those of us who need lab facilities and technical tools work and where people following similar lines meet to discuss their findings and their problems."

  Vardia's mind tried to grasp it, and could not. "Why?" she asked.

  Brouder and Gringer both showed expressions of surprise. "Why what?" Gringer asked.

  "Why do you do such work? To what goal?"

  This disturbed them, and there were animated conversations through the gathered crowd. Vardia was equally disturbed by the reaction to her question, which she had considered very straightforward. She thought perhaps she had been misunderstood.

  "I mean," she said, "to what end is all of this research? You do not seem to use it yourself, so who is it for?"

  Gringer seemed about to have a fit of some kind. "But the quest for knowledge is the only thing that separates sentient beings from the most common grasses or lowest animals!" the Czillian said a bit shrilly.

  Brouder's tone was almost patronizing, as if addressing a small child. "Look," the researcher said to her, "what do you think is the end result for civilization? What is the goal of your people?"