Jack L. Chalker - Watchers at the Well 02 - Shadows of the Well of Souls

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SHADOW

OF THE

WELL OF

SOULS

A Well World Novel

Jack L. Chalker

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 93-73660

ISBN 0-345-38846-1

e-book ver.1.0

For Fritz Leiber,

who enjoyed the original Well saga

but left us before this one was done, and

likewise for my old friend Reg Bretnor,

also gone too soon, my writing opposite of sorts,

who packed more laughs into fewer words than

any science-fiction author in history.

The worst thing about growing old

is the increasing number of missing,

and missed, friends.

Preface

"Oh, No! Not Another Trilogy!"

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON A JOURNEY BACK TO THE WELL World . . .

The Well of Souls series was the only five-volume tril-ogy I had ever written, and I felt it was basically

symmet-rical and right; I had no intention of going back to it after I finished Twilight at the Well of Souls

in 1979. For one thing, I didn't want to be "typed" and wind up cheapening the concept or the original

book(s) by ripping off Well World No. 386. I didn't get into the writing business to do that.

Still, when Del Rey came to me with the proverbial Of-fer I Couldn't Refuse, it had been ten years since

I'd as much as looked at the series, and I had a number of other very successful books, multivolume big

books, and one or two series as well. Footnote: Publishers call all multivol-ume works "series," but actually

only a couple of mine are. A series is an open-ended set of tales having in common a setting, a premise, or

a set of characters. Anthony's Xanth is a series; so are King's Gunslinger saga, Zelazny's Amber, and, for

that matter, Mark Twain's Sawyer and Finn books.

The multivolume novel is what happens to writers who like to write novels the size of War and Peace in

an age of computerized budgets and mass market-publishing. The writer simply outlines a single,

stand-alone novel as he would any other but then is informed that there are "price points" and that he has to

cut to fit the prescribed maxiIF mums or, frankly, production costs on the book will push it beyond its "price

point" where there is more sales resis-tance than acceptance. So you split it in two, or three, or whatever.

Tolkien's Rings books are in fact both a series and a multivolume, or "serial," novel. The Lord of the

Rings is a serial novel; its middle volume, in fact, ends on a classic cliff-hanger (worthy of Republic film

serials of the thirties) with Sam shut out of the evil dungeon and in the land of the enemy, beating his fists

futilely against the closed gates while the narration says, "Frodo was alive, but captured by the enemy." To

be continued. Of course, since the concept began with The Hobbit, a totally independent novel, and has

continued even after the author's death, the Rings is in fact a series which contains a serial novel.

Midnight at the Well of Souls was a single novel and re-mains today a single novel in one volume, a

totally stand-alone work. Acceptance of it was so great that both I and the publisher couldn't resist so vast

a canvas, so I outlined a second novel that, as it turned out ran about 250,000 words, or about twice the

length of Midnight. Presto! It was a serial novel, a single book in two parts, that was also a sequel to an

independent book.

I then found that even with this addition I couldn't finish the story I wanted to tell. Oh, I wrapped the

novel up, but there was a ton of material I couldn't put in it and more that I wanted to do, particularly visiting

the northern hemi-sphere. That brought forth another novel outline, which, again, ran very long and wound

up as two books. Hence, a five-volume trilogy, a series containing three novels in five books.

This is a fourth novel in the series (and when you go be-yond the trilogy that Tolkien seems to have

defined as the cliche-length of a serial novel, you find that ad agencies say you're writing a "saga"), and it's

longer than the preceding three. I really thought I could wrap it in two in the same way I was certain that I

could do the second book in about the same amount of space that I'd used for Midnight. It didn't happen.

So, I could still have done it in two if I were willing to cut out much of this volume, which is the

philosophic heart of this fiber-novel and begins to make some sense of what happened in Echoes of the

Well of Souls. Never mind all the heady discussions between characters and all the mushy stuff, some

would say—cut to where you start the massa-cres. Well, I don't work that way, either. A novel is as long

as it takes to properly tell the story; it shouldn't be any longer than that or be cut any shorter than it

absolutely needs.

Hopefully, if you aren't familiar with the original "Saga of the Well World," you'll pick it up—it is, or

should be, available at finer booksellers everywhere—and start from there. If you have read the original

series but missed Echoes of the Well of Souls, it's still out there and you should find it. In fact, all

competently run bookstores should certainly have copies of it available when this book comes out. If they

don't have it where you found this, go back and tell them what you think about that fact and how it reflects

on them.

There will be one more volume of this long novel. It's already outlined, and it's got my usual very big

finish. Some of it will be what you expect after reading this, but I think there will be a number of surprises.

There are in fact several surprises in store in this book, if you wait for them. But you can see we're shaping

up here for one cosmic cat-aclysm, and I do not plan to disappoint you. So if you al-ready have Echoes,

let's go. If you don't, go out and get it first and "see it from the beginning"! This is, after all, the middle of my

350,000-word novel!

Somewhere

Between Galactic Clusters

the kraang had good reason to be complacent. after so long, so very long, its plans were coming to a

head, and with each passing day its link to and power within the Well Net grew. It could already send

within the field and could receive and track and monitor as well. While none of the principals in the drama it

had concocted were directly addressable—unless they were in a full Well field such as traveling through

and between hex gates and Zones—and the Watchers were outside its direct monitoring abilities, the others

whom it had identified as they were processed by the system were far easier to track.

When the Kraang's ship itself was not in the slingshot gateways, it was now possible to see through the

eyes and hear through the ears of the others who had been processed, and that was more than sufficient to

monitor the Watchers' track, while both Watchers and their monitors were un-aware even of its very

existence. And although unable to send to them under normal circumstances, it could do more than merely

receive; it knew them. It knew their innermost thoughts, their loves, hates, fears, and nightmares. It knew

that little band better than they knew themselves. That not only allowed the Kraang to filter out subjective

impressions from the raw data, it also provided such deep individual knowledge of them that when more

was possible, when they finally opened the gate that would bring it to them, they would be as soft clay, as

easily remolded inside as they had been outside to serve the Kraang's purposes.

It had been nothing less than the remaking of the cosmos that had allowed the Kraang's liberation,

although close to a billion years had passed until chance had ultimately given it access to the net once again,

access the Ancient Ones be-lieved had been denied it for eternity. The rest of the sys-tem had provided just

a moment, mere nanoseconds, when the program that had bound it for billions of years could not control its

destiny. That tiny moment had been suffi-cient for the Kraang to alter the system, however slightly, without

detection by the net or the Watchman, so that when the program was reimposed, it was flawed. Afterward

it had been a mere matter of waiting, suspended of activity, until eventually chance would place the Kraang

and its prison within distance of possible direct contact with a Well Gate. The Well computer became

aware of the flaw only when that contact came, and then it was too late: the Kraang had access to the net.

And the Kraang could be dis-engaged from the net only by the Watchman, since the Well was powerless in

and of itself to do harm to one of its cre-ators. Only another Maker could do that.

So the Kraang had done what it had to do. The world upon which the Watchman lived was still primitive;

there was no space travel of consequence, no way to create a sit-uation by which the Watchman could be

drawn to a gate. The gate, then, had to come to the Watchman by the crude but effective method of

sending Well Gates down to the planet of the Watchman as meteors.

But there had been two Watchers instead of one at this juncture, the second created by the original

Watchman when the cosmos was reset. Multiple gates were required because the two were separated.

And so the gates had fallen, remaining open until the Watchers were collected, operating in their normal

manner until the Well could safely close them. During that period it was almost inevitable that others,

natives of the planet, would fall through, and it was amazing how few had actually done so.

Few, but enough.

The newspeople—Theresa Perez, the producer; Gus Olafsson, the cameraman; and Dr. Lori Ann Sutton,

the uni-versity astronomer tapped as the expert for the newspeople—had been captured by a primitive

Amazonian tribe deep in the jungles of Brazil. A tribe whose mysteri-ous leader was the female Watcher,

who had taken them through with her to the Well World, along with the Peru-vian gangster and drug lord

Juan Campos. And, before them, two of the always-inevitable investigators of the me-teor, Colonel Jorge

Lunderman, Brazilian Air Force re-gional commander, and Julian Beard, U.S. Air Force

scientist-astronaut. Those two had been taken while posing for photos atop the "meteor," perhaps as an

object lesson for all others to stay away.

The other, the original Watchman, had also been in Bra-zil, but on the civilized coast, taking a sort of

holiday in the nation that shared his name. Only two natives had been taken in with him, both at his

invitation: the blind former airline pilot Joao Antonio Guzman and his dying British wife, Anne Marie.

Eight natives who were processed by the Well, each be-coming something else, another creature,

another race, yet with their memories and essential selves, their souls as it might be colorfully put, intact, for

good or evil. The Kraang had no influence over what they had become, but it ever af-ter had been along for

the ride.

During the processing, a link could be and was estab-lished.

Even communication with the Watchers was possible during that period, but it was dangerous to go too

far. Sur-face thoughts and surface memories triggered by the expe-rience had been available even though

the Watchers themselves remained essentially out of the Kraang's control. One thought, however, one

memory, one weakness, partic-ularly on the part of the newer Watcher, was sufficient. Had been

sufficient.

Now the game was commencing. Now one of them certainly would open the way. Now one of them, at

least, would be the unwitting agent freeing the Kraang and sum-moning it home. Home to the Well. Home

to become God.

Hakazit

although in many ways the well world felt familiar, even comfortable to him, in other ways, Nathan Brazil

re-flected, he always had a sense of wrongness when on it.

It wasn't the bizarre variety of creatures and cultures, the things that made new entrants so uneasy;

rather, it was the common things. Some things might be expected to change when crossing a national

boundary, but not the climate, and absolutely not the gravity, yet one could cross from the tropics to snow in

a few footsteps or have gravitational fluctuation of up to twenty percent in the same distance if one were

near one of those borders. And of course it should be cold at the poles and grow warmer toward the

equator, even more so than on Earth, as the Well World had no ap-preciable axial tilt and thus no natural

seasons. The days, and nights, a bit longer than back on Earth, were nonethe-less always pretty close to

equal.

But Glathriel, near the south polar region, was tropical; Hakazit, a thousand kilometers or so west of

Glathriel yet only a bit north, was raw and cold, the winds off the Ocean of Shadows brisk and biting,

carrying small droplets of ice and snow and swirling them around, not in the sense of a storm but rather as

persistent irritants, felt but not really seen.

He pulled his fur-lined jacket tightly about him, hoping to ward off some of the wintry chill, his breath

causing huge puffs of steam as it came from his warm interior and struck the frigid air with every

exhalation. He looked over at the girl standing atop the rocky cliff looking out at the pounding surf. Although

as Earth-human, in some ways more Earth-human, than he was, she was wearing not a stitch of clothing,

and Brazil marveled again at her total in-sulation.

He would have liked to know how they had pulled it off. Some sort of internally generated energy field,

certainly, a true cosmic aura fueled from within by some autonomic source he couldn't imagine. Certainly

she didn't do it con-sciously; it was simply too perfect for that. But even if he granted the unlikely and

heretofore unsuspected power to Type 41 humans to do this sort of thing, he couldn't imag-ine why it would

evolve in a primitive and totally tropical hex where only "wet" and "dry" had much meaning. Nor did it

account for the selectivity. She was standing there in temperatures well below freezing on rock that itself

was cold enough to freeze any water it had, but the cold didn't affect her. She was warm to the touch even

on the surface of her skin, and the icy droplets that were turning his own hair into a miniature ice field were

hitting her as well, as warm and liquid as a summer drizzle. Yet her long black hair blew free in the wind, a

wind that made the chill factor almost Arctic on bare skin but that, in that incredibly small fraction of a

millimeter before it struck any part of her, was suddenly turned as warm as a tropical breeze.

Clearly the talent had not been evolved for situations like this; it merely served this function as well. What

was it, then? What was this mysterious inner-produced energy field's primary function?

Clearly it required a lot of energy. The photo he'd re-ceived here of her in the Zone Gate corridor, taken

off the monitor recording, had shown her very lean and somewhat muscular; now she was, well, fat. Not

obese—nobody who could move like she did could be considered that—but the thighs were very large, the

ass ample, the breasts enlarged to substantial proportions and resting on an ample tummy.

She ate a lot, yet it never seemed to slow her down, and he'd never seen her pant for breath once, even

while run-ning. That surplus wasn't there for the usual reasons; most of the Glathrielians he had seen were

at the least chubby. It was there as fuel for whatever additional engine they had within themselves.

She was more than merely another of the Well World's many mysteries, though. The Well World left no

one un-changed who entered through its Zone Gate save Mavra and himself, yet she was clearly not of

Glathriel, the only Earth-human hex here. Her west African heritage showed clearly in her skin and lips, yet

her naturally straight, lush, long black hair and general facial features betrayed an equally obvious Hispanic

ancestry. She had been made by no Well computer; she had been born and had grown up like this.

Whatever changes had been made, they had been inside, in the adaptation stage, in which the brain was

slightly reprogrammed to accept a new situation.

But the Well World wouldn't have programmed in an evolutionary change made after the last reset. It

would use the basic template.

Conclusion: She had not been changed inside by the Well at all, but by some other force, and that force

could only be the Glathrielians themselves.

And that disturbed him most of all, because the last time Glathriel's template had been examined and

revised, he had done it himself, and while he might well have expected some sort of tropical tribal primitive

society or some other variation of it, he'd given them nothing with which to de-velop the society, if it could

be called that, and the powers that they now possessed. A society that used no tools, built no structures,

altered its environment not a whit, had no ap-parent spoken language or even the concept or need for one,

consuming only what it found day by day, and not even using fire. Yet somehow they presented the

sensation of a tightly knit and intelligent tribal society.

He had no idea who this girl was, or what she had been, or where other than Earth she'd come from.

She'd almost snuck into Zone on her own and crept past the officious and preoccupied duty personnel there.

The recordings of her from South Zone, discovered too late, showed a picture of a primitive savage, painted

and dressed in little but bones, but she didn't look like any Amazonian Indian he'd ever heard of. The group

she had followed in, Mavra's group, had entered similarly primitive-looking, yet had proved to be from a

modern and articulate educated society. He'd like to know that story one of these days; it was prob-ably a

hell of a saga.

Was she from one of the primitive tribes of the Amazon, a native who had been caught in the hex gate,

perhaps after seeing the others go through? Some orphan, perhaps, or a captive raised by them, which

would explain her different look? She was tough and had guts; she'd taken on an Ecundo whose body was

armored and whose tail meant death without a second thought—and with her bare hands. Yet even as she

rejected all the fruits of technology as a Glathrielian would, she'd not been surprised or even curi-ous about

them. She seemed to know exactly what was dangerous to touch and what was safe, and she seemed to

understand the setup of a developed society even if she did not join in on any of its activities.

Despite this, and for no logical reason he could deter-mine, he found her attractive in ways he couldn't

really ex-plain. He hadn't remembered feeling this way about anybody, possibly ever, certainly not in

countless thousands of years. It was oddly sexual, stirring in him feelings he'd believed dead so long that

they'd ceased to be more than abstractions to him. He had of course felt closeness, friend-ship, even a sort

of love for individuals over time, as much as he'd tried to repress such feelings, knowing the brief time they

had compared to him, but not on this level. It was also clear that she sensed this and, in what ways she

could, reciprocated. She was anything but naive and unsophisti-cated in the art of making love, and while

nobody had longer experience than he in that sort of thing, she made him feel things, physical things, to a

degree he knew he'd never reached before. It was as if she were some powerful and addictive drug, one

that, once taken, he could never again be without. It was the first new experience he'd had since . . . since .

. . since before he'd re-created the uni-verse.

Of course, he suspected that it wasn't entirely natural. Glathriel's revenge, he thought with a trace of

genuine iro-ny. Take us out of our nice, comfortable high-tech little worldlet and stick us in a nontech

swamp designed for a race of giant beavers, will you? Well, it took us a million years, but we finally figured

out a way to get back at you! Then, through her, it is we who will control you!

He considered that a distinct possibility, although he wasn't certain how sophisticated the Glathrielians

were along those lines. It did not, however, overly concern him. For one thing, she was at least partly

Earth-human, no mat-ter how changed she might be, and he'd had a very long time to learn to read beyond

the surface of Earth people, to detect even slightly corrupt attitudes or motives as well as pure ones. He'd

never sensed any deception in her. If it was something Glathrielian women did to snare men, it worked both

ways, of that he was positive. If she was the only girl in his world—pretty well true at the moment, come to

think of it—then he was her only boy. He was absolutely con-vinced that she would not, could not act

against him. What-ever unsuspected potential lurked in the Type 41 brain, the link that bound the two of

them together was empathic in nature, and that was the most revealing sense of all. Even telepaths learned

how to cheat each other just to survive; an empath seldom could, since the very power dealt in emo-tions

which no one could ever fully control.

Within their own subjective limits, he felt what she felt, and she felt what he felt. That was what made

physical in-timacy so intense, but it also left him convinced that she could not knowingly play false with him.

"Knowingly," of course, was an important distinction, but even if there was something sinister at work and

he was de-luding himself, he knew in the end that it didn't matter.

Once inside the Well, he was invulnerable to anything the universe could throw at him, even betrayal.

And once inside, he would be able to find out what the hell was going on.

In the meantime something deep within his own psyche, his own deep chasm of loneliness, despair, and

alienation from others, assuaged over long years only with tiny mor-sels of hope and self-delusion, had been,

however temporar-ily, partially filled, and for the moment that was enough.

Still, it was too damned cold for him, even if not for her, and the kind of warmth she could give him was

not the sort he now required. He went over to her and put his hand on her shoulder. She turned and smiled

at him, and he made an exaggerated shiver and gestured back toward the town. She nodded and looked

sympathetic; clearly she was also no stranger to a cold environment, even if she couldn't feel it herself.

All seaport towns had a certain basic similarity to them. Although the towns themselves and their urban

layouts tended to vary in wild and bizarre ways, reflecting the very different races that lived in them, there

was always a section by the docks generally known as the International Quarter, even though it was a far

smaller piece of the town than that. Where ocean ships crewed by a polyglot of races made ports of call

like spaceships docking in new tiny worlds, a level of comfort, convenience, and service was necessary to

cater to alien needs. Some were far better than others at this, of course, but Hakazit was a high-tech hex

with a huge auto-mated port, and its facilities, were first-rate. The Hakazitians were a bit harder to take, if

only because they resembled, to Brazil's mind at least, human-sized mosquitoes with a pro-boscis that

looked like a giant version of one of those Happy New Year whistles that unrolled when blown. But the

Hakazitians' "nose," when extended, proved to be not one but six sticky tendrils capable not only of feeding

but also of doing almost any task hands could do and a few they could not. Their huge hivelike structures

dominated the landscape as far back as anyone could see.

The girl—she'd never taken to or responded to any name he'd tried, so she'd just become the girl—never

liked being inside a structure. Glathrielians, it seemed, were a bit claus-trophobic even in fairly large rooms.

It was a measure of how attached they'd become that she was willing to enter most buildings, even sleep

where he did, although she was always clearly uncomfortable and still preferred floors to beds, at least for

sleeping. She almost seemed to get a charge, though, out of walking unconcerned and unafraid stark naked

down bustling streets and in crowded hotel lob-bies, something unthinkable on Earth. But since the only

other one of her species was her companion and lover, it gave her a rush of liberation that was as unique to

her as his feelings for her were to him.

Vagt Damstrl, which meant "the Hotel Grand" in Hakazit, or so they said, was an imposing structure that

dominated the skyline in a way only the huge port cranes could match, and its management prided itself on

being able to provide both accommodations and necessaries for any race of the Well World that might be a

guest. As usual, considering the state of Glathriel and its people, it had nothing precisely the way he'd want

it, but many races liked carpeting on the floors and many others liked soft beds and many bathed in pools or

tublike creations, so that they were able to assemble a spacious room for him that not only was to his

standards but went beyond them. Nor was food a problem; a fair number of races who traveled for various

reasons ate things close to or even the same as Type 41's, and a short scan by a clever little device he'd

never seen before resulted in room service deliveries of meals, even some sort of meat and fish, that were

tasty and had no unusual side effects. Even silverware was provided to his specifications.

The girl ate no meat, nor would she use tableware. Still, she could and did pack away an enormous

amount of fruits, grains, nuts, and starchy vegetables, all raw, all completely consumed, including rinds,

skins, and seeds. She also ate whole sticks of whatever butter they provided and large squares of what

appeared to be lard. It was fascinating to see the lengths she would go to to avoid using tools or utensils,

though. Milk—he wasn't sure what kind and didn't want to know, but it had a distinct buttery taste and a

kind of goatlike aroma—was fine, but not in a glass. Put it in a large bowl, and she would not touch the

bowl but would put her face into it and drink or, if it was ample enough, cup it in her hands. But just about

everything she could eat she did eat.

The aversion to using tools or mechanical devices wasn't absolute, but it was as absolute as she could

make it. She would not take the elevator; she walked up and down the stairs or often ran. Neither would

she open a door or even indicate that she wanted it open; she would simply stand there until it was open for

her. Somehow, though, she al-ways knew the right floor to stop at and wait for him.

Even dicier was when she had to go to the toilet. Al-though the one in the room wasn't built for Earth

humans, it was close enough to be useful, but she would not sit on it or even touch it. She squatted, and that

was that. But she had no aversion to the large oval-shaped sunken tub that filled and drained automatically.

She had no problems adapting the tub to her bodily needs, which was okay, but it kept him from enjoying it.

She, however, immersed her-self in it with no compunctions. Overall, until he arranged with the

management for an alternative shower, she smelled better than he did.

That night, feeling finally warm and comfortable, Nathan Brazil sat in the room and looked over some

maps. The shortest route to the Well was over the Straight of Sagath to Agon, just three hexes away via

the water route, then north through Lilblod, through Mixtim or Clopta, and across Quilst to the Avenue. It

wasn't an area he knew from the past, being well off his normal track, but it was direct and didn't require

too much travel in nontech hexes. Indeed, if he went via Clopta, Betared, up to Lieveru, and approached the

Avenue from the west in Ellerbanta, although it would be a bit farther, he could limit the nontech part to

Lilblod alone. That didn't ensure friendly receptions, of course, but high- and semitech hexes had means of

transportation other than muscle power, and that meant speed. By getting on the ship the girl had shown

that she would ride in such things even if she didn't like it, adjusting as best she could, as she was doing just

being inside the hotel and the room.

The other alternative was to head northeast, but in addi-tion to being longer, that route had the almost

equal prob-lem of being partly in areas well known to him. He wasn't at all certain he wanted to put himself

under the authority of the Yaxa, whose high-tech devices might well contain some vestigial residue of

suspicion or identification of one Nathan Brazil even after so very long a time. He didn't trust them much in

any event.

Getting to Agon, however, was proving to be harder than he'd been led to believe. No matter what

shipping company or booking agent he tried, nothing was going there. Coming from there, yes, but even

when he found two ships on the schedule, he was informed that one had developed hull problems and would

be in drydock for months and that the other was skipping the port because of scheduling problems and lack

of business there. It almost seemed as if nothing was crossing the relatively short strait. Somehow some

new natural law had been passed, or so evidence suggested, that ships traveled only east and west. It was

almost making him paranoid.

If it wasn't so ridiculous, he thought, I'd swear I was the victim of some massive conspiracy to keep

me here.

Well, he had to decide on something, however unsatisfac-tory, fairly quickly. At the rates charged by the

Grand, they'd be on the street in two more weeks. In a way he en-vied the girl—that wouldn't bother her a

bit, and he knew it. While she was mortal and he was not, the inseparable gulf between them that even

empathic linkage couldn't get around, he felt the cold and hunger and was subject to many of the infirmities

that she was somehow shielded against. He had no intention of being frozen stiff in some cliffside hideaway

until somebody found him and thawed him out in years to come.

It was while coming out from yet another fruitless en-counter with a shipping agent that he met the

colonel.

"Of all the sights I have seen in this beautiful but ac-cursed world, that has to be the most amazing," said

a voice behind him, a voice that sounded both eerie and men-acing, the kind of voice that would give the

same impres-sion if it just said "Good morning." It was Sydney Greenstreet, but on steroids and in a mild

echo chamber.

Brazil and the girl both stopped dead at the sound and turned. Brazil felt her sudden reaction to the

speaker and understood it. She never reacted to the outward appearance of anybody; he wasn't even sure

she considered it relevant. But the inside, the important part of an individual, that she got immediately and

with unerring accuracy. Not that he needed the loan of her talent for this case. The voice kind of oozed

with a silky sliminess that would put anyone on guard. The fact that the figure who spoke matched the

im-pression only reinforced the sense of menace.

"I beg your pardon," Brazil responded politely. "Were you speaking to me?"

The creature they faced was less a form than a mass; it seemed almost made of liquid, an unsettling,

pulsating thing that had no clearly defined shape, its "skin," or outer membrane, a glistening obsidianlike

shiny brown that re-flected and distorted all the light that struck it. He couldn't imagine how it spoke aloud

at all.

"Pardon," it said, revealing a nearly invisible slitlike mouth in the midst of the mass. "I had not even the

slight-est suspicion that there might be Earthlike humans on this planet, although God knows there is

certainly every other nightmare creature."

Brazil frowned. "You know Earth?"

"Of course. I was born there and once looked much as you." The mass changed, writhed, and took on an

increas-ingly humanoid shape, until, standing before them, it be-came what looked for all the world like a

life-sized animated carving in obsidian or jade of an Earth-human man, middle-aged but ramrod straight.

There was even a suggestion of a bushy mustache and the semblance of, yes, some sort of uniform.

"Colonel Jorge Lunderman, late of the Air Force of the Republic of Brazil, rather abruptly re-tired but at

your service."

"So you're one of the two officers that they told me about! I wondered who you were and how you

wound up coming through. Oh—sorry. Captain Solomon is my name. David Solomon."

"Captain? In the service of what nation?"

"None, really. Merchant marine. Countless ships under the usual flags of convenience."

"You were in port, then, in Rio?"

"No, just on holiday there. I hadn't been in Brazil in—a very long time."

"I was commandant of the Northwestern Defense Sector— the area mostly of jungle and isolated

settlements between Manaus and the western and northern national borders. A very large meteor struck,

harmlessly, in the middle of the jungle, but a mostly American television news crew who went in to

investigate and report on it vanished completely. There was quite a search using every resource at our

com-mand, but it was as if they had vanished into nothingness."

Brazil nodded. "I understand. Somehow they must all have fallen through to here."

"Well, some Peruvian revolutionaries had camps just along the border, and they were in alliance with

some very powerful drug barons, one of whom had guaranteed the newspeople's safety. We had fears that

the crew had been disposed of for some reason, but we found only cooperation from the Peruvians. It

seems one of Don Campos's sons was among the group that vanished. We searched for weeks before

giving up. Nothing. But this meteor, it was so strange that they were flying in scientists from all over to test

and check and measure it. There seemed no harm there, though. They'd poked it and probed it and tried to

drill into it, and nothing much had changed. The Americans sent a li-aison, a NASA astronaut who was a

geologist, to help co-ordinate. The two of us stupidly agreed to pose atop the meteor for the news media. It

seemed harmless enough. The next thing we knew, we were here."

Brazil listened carefully to the account, musing over the implications he couldn't fully discuss with the

colonel or anybody else. Why had a huge chunk of meteor with a fully operative Well Gate fallen so far

inland? Hell, that was a thousand miles from Rio, where he was, and the Well computer hadn't had any

trouble almost hitting him on the head with one. Had Mavra been in Brazil as well? Maneu-vered there by

the subtle shifts of probability the Well was capable of when it concerned a Watcher? That still didn't make

sense. One didn't go to the upper Amazon for a ca-sual trip, but he couldn't see her either in the drug trade

or playing local revolutionary. Not unless she was leading the rebels, anyway. Or . . .

Just why had he decided to take his holiday in Brazil? Maybe it was he who'd been manipulated. The

savage looks of the other party, the accounts of how primitive they and the girl had seemed . . . Mavra

living with a tribe of Stone Age Indians deep in the jungle? That had to be the answer. How and why

would have to remain a mystery, at least for now, but it explained a lot. But the colonel and the astronaut

had come through weeks, maybe longer, before Mavra's group.

Maybe the colonel's initial search and, afterward, the col-onel's and the astronaut's apparent on-camera

disintegration would have made it hard as hell to reach the Gate. That had to be it. But then, who did come

through with Mavra when she finally managed it? Others of her tribe? And if that was the case, where was

that news crew?

"Captain? Are you all right?" the colonel asked.

"Oh, yes, sorry. I was just trying to fit events together. What brings you to Hakazit now, Colonel?"

"Why, I thought that would be obvious. You do. Both of you, in fact. I mean, it is still something of a

shock to me to find myself here in this form and situation, but I ac-cepted what had happened out of

necessity. But I had not seen or heard of a race here that was like the one into which I was born, and

suddenly there is news that at least two and perhaps more of what I still think of as 'humans' were around

and apparently unchanged. I had to find out who you were and what you were doing and, of course, how

the both of you manage to remain as you were. I as-sume she is as she looked before and is not some

native hu-man stock unknown to me. Your pardon, but the only surprise greater than seeing someone like

you here is seeing her, standing there, stark naked, on a cold and windswept coast, apparently feeling no

discomfort."

"You're right; both of us are from Earth. I suspect she came through the same gate you did. I came

through in the hills behind Rio with two others I haven't located as yet. She's a mystery girl—arrived naked,

painted up, bone jew-elry and the like, and snuck right past everybody and en-tered the Well World without

being noticed until too late. I have no idea why the computer they say controls things here decided to keep

us both as we were, but I can hazard a guess as to why she's more changed in other ways, in-cluding the

ones that are obvious, than I am. There is a hu-man hex here, but the people don't quite look like any race

or nationality we know and they're primitive, mysterious, and very un-Earthlike in their ways. They took a

different path somehow. Seems that long ago their ancestors plotted to take over an adjoining nontech hex,

Ambreza, and forgot that lack of machines doesn't equal lack of intelligence. The Ambrezians bred some

kind of gas-producing plant that grew like weeds in the human hex and basically knocked their brains all to

hell. Then they switched hexes, so now the humans are nontech and apparently have been ever since. It

changed them. There was some sort of muta-tion. Had they remained high-tech, they'd have been fairly

familiar, I think, but being nontech, they went to the ulti-mate nontech system. Because the computer still

has them in their original hex, however, that's where both the girl and I came in. I stayed and made myself

useful to the Ambrezians—they look like giant beavers—while she fled to the human hex and fell in with

them. It was they, I'm sure, that made her this way, not the computer."

"Does she not speak?"

"I don't think she speaks or understands a word anybody says. Sometimes I'm not even sure she thinks

the way most of us think. The Ambreza said that they did have a small number of sounds that were

consistent, but not enough to be considered a language. I'm not so sure it's more than the equivalent of the

sound codes used by many animal species. You know—warning the tribe of danger, warning enemies off,

sounds that relate to fear, and things like that. A scream, a warning cry, a sigh, a purringlike hum—that's

about the range of it. If they communicate more complex information, and I'm convinced that they do, it's

by means other than what we think of as language. I hope she was one of the Stone Age Amazonians. I'd

hate to think of the frustration I would have, let alone anyone from a more civilized and tech-nological

culture, under those limitations imposed on her."

"She is definitely not a native," the colonel noted. "How-ever, she looks like many people in my old native

land for all that. It is not unheard of for such tribes to find or adopt lost children of outsiders and raise them

as their own. I pray that it is so, for then she is probably better off and will live longer by coming here. It

would be terrible if, say, she was one of the missing television crew. I mean, I may look, even be very

different but inside, in my mind, I am still Jorge Lunderman. But like that, not even as you say think-ing as

we were raised to think, how much of either of us would be truly left after a period of living that way? I am

the same man that I was, living a different life in a very different place and as, frankly, something very

different than what I was. Still, there is continuity, is there not? The mind and soul are my own. I would

much prefer that to re-taining my body and losing my mind, my memories, my very way of thinking. I would

not be me anymore. I would be someone entirely different, but perhaps with just that lurking suspicion

somewhere telling me that I was once someone else. Terrible, sir! Terrible!"

Brazil glanced at the girl, who was still looking at the creature with some disdain on her face but with no

hint that she'd comprehended, or even tried to comprehend, any of the discussion.

"Well, she seems neither tortured nor unhappy," the cap-tain noted, "so I will continue to just accept her

as she is."

The colonel shifted a bit, the human statue distorting a bit eerily. "You must tell me what you are doing

and why she is with you instead of remaining back there!" he said enthusiastically. "And about all the rest of

what you know as well. It seems like ages since I was able to speak to any-one with a common frame of

reference to my past! But sir, I apologize! While the cold is of some little discomfort to me and apparently

none to her, you must be freezing! For-give my manners. Have you a hotel?"

"Yes, I'm at the Grand. You?"

"I am currently living out of my cabin aboard the ship I used to get here. It will be in port here for three

days, so there is little reason to consider my course of action beyond that until then. My cabin is, of course,

at your service, but I'm afraid it would be neither spacious nor comfortable to one not of my new kind. Shall

we go to your hotel, then?"

"Might as well," Brazil sighed. "It doesn't look as if I'm ever going to get out of here."

They begin walking, or, rather, Brazil began walking, as did the girl, a bit behind, while the colonel sort of

oozed along next to him.

"That is a good question to begin with as we walk," the colonel noted. "Why are you in this inhospitable

and out-of-the-way place?"

"Well, if you must know, I'm in a far worse position than either you or the girl there. I can't set up

anything per-manent in Glathriel—the human hex—unless I want to take on her ways and life style. The

Ambreza could be strung along just so much, but they're still paranoid about humans, particularly the kind

who can talk and know technology like me, and they've basically barred me from returning. I'm the man

without a country. I am not, however, without a good deal of experience and skills that even the Ambreza

found useful, which is how I have any cash at all. By the time you can command the kind of ships I did, you

became something of an expert in almost everything practical and useful. Way up north around the equator

there are two high-tech hexes separated by a narrow strait, neither of which has ever seen or heard of the

likes of Glathriel, and both are highly dependent on shipping and import-export trade at this stage. They've

both been looking for qualified ship's officers and as usual aren't particular about the race or na-tionality

involved. They also serve as flags of convenience for hundreds of coastal hexes, particularly the nontech

and semitech ones that have to get ships and crews from high-tech places. It's my best shot at a life here."

"Yes, I understand," the colonel said. "But you have been frustrated?"

"I can't get a ship north for love or money. It's driving me crazy—not to mention quickly broke before I've

started."

The colonel thought a moment. "Tell me, Captain, do you think you could handle the sort of ship they must

use here?"

The Well World did require rather bizarre ships, since there were water hexes as well as land ones and

those water hexes had the same technological limitations as their dry counterparts. Thus, a large ship had to

be able to move en-tirely by sail through nontech waters, switch to basic steam fed by manual labor or

ingenious cog-drive mechanisms for the semitech, but could use an efficient fusion plant for the high-tech

regions.

"I began in sail, if that's what you mean," Brazil told him. "And I've got—had—a master's license for

steam as well. My latest ships were big diesels, but the power source of a modern plant isn't relevant if the

power's fed to the engines in the amount the bridge demands. I'm a little out of shape to climb rigging

myself, but I could handle most anything else."

"Then why do you not sail there yourself?"

"For the same reason you, as an air force colonel, didn't have your own personal supersonic transport.

That would take an incredible amount of money, and I'm afraid I'm still a wee bit short."

The colonel chuckled, a very eerie sound. "Yes, I see. But there are much smaller craft making the runs.

Private and government yachts, ferries that are built in one place and must be sailed to where they are

needed, smaller fish-ing boats or their equivalents, that sort of thing. Like many other high-tech coastal

hexes, Hakazit has a very competi-tive shipbuilding industry, you know, and they often have only skeleton

crews to take those ships to their customers, as most experienced crew live on and have a share in their

own ships. Forget shipping agencies, sir! Try the ship-wrights! Why, I managed to finagle passage here

because they needed someone familiar with government-type con-tracts to check on an overdue naval

vessel my nation has on order. Permit me to ask around when I go down there to-morrow morning.

Perhaps I can find something for you. One-way, of course, and probably not precisely to where you wish to

go, but sufficient, I would expect."

"I have no papers for this world," Brazil reminded him, "so I never even thought of that route. But, if you

can find somebody who'll take me north, I'll be glad to sign on."

"Done, sir!"

"You sound very confident," Brazil noted dryly.

"Why, sir, I am first and foremost a Brazilian! In my country you learn very quickly how to deal with

mosqui-toes, however large they are!"

In point of fact, Theresa "Terry" Perez did remember who she had been and where she had come from,

but that only accentuated the change within her. What was different was that it no longer mattered to her,

nor even did it disturb any part of her in the slightest that it no longer mattered to her. Nothing that mattered

to virtually all the others in the hotel and in the city really mattered to her, except for a few ba-sics. That

was at the root of this new, nonlinear way of thinking that the Glathrielian group will imposed upon her, and

not unwillingly on her part although she hadn't known at the time what it would mean and the old Terry

might well have fled instead. In point of fact, the Glathrielians had not imposed a great deal; rather, they had

in effect rewired her brain so that it processed information in a way more alien to Earth stan-dards than

most of the cultures of the wildly varying races of the Well World. It created a new Terry, one who

auto-matically saw the world in a new and very different way.

The Glathrielian imperative was essentially quite simple: At all times, consider only all the things that are

relevant to you, and miss not a one of those. Anything irrelevant or un-necessary was a distraction;

distraction was the way to de-struction, so anything unimportant must be literally factored out of the mind

and not even allowed to register. It would take years of self-training to master it completely, but Terry,

helped by the experience and self-training of the Glath-rielian elders, had achieved an amazingly high level

of mastery in so short a time.

If she could filter out all distractions, all things not di-rectly relevant to her existence and what was of true

impor-tance to her, and automatically observe only what she needed, the amount of information that simply

came to her was enormous, far beyond the sort of knowledge others might possess. Thoughts, actions, and

processes that did not require decisions should be automated so that they, too, ceased to exist as a factor.

The energy field that her brain could generate and her body could use for so many things was one such

process she had already relegated to that sta-tus. Although she didn't know or care exactly what it was

doing, or how, it protected her from the elements that might cause distraction—extremes of heat and cold,

for example, or even adjusting gravitation or filtering out any impurities from an atmosphere so that if the

chemicals needed to breathe were present in any mixture, it would extract only those and allow them into

her lungs.

Of course, it was also useful both as a defense and as an offense, if needed, and those functions, too,

were automated.

Without even realizing she had done so, she had reor-dered much of her digestive system and metabolism

for maximum efficiency and maximum reserves of power.

What she ate, so long as it was not poisonous to her system and was not of flesh, was irrelevant to her,

and even much that might have made her ill or killed her was now sepa-rated out and isolated and passed

through without harm. The body maintained its own vitamin, mineral, fat, and sug-ar requirements as best it

could with whatever was at hand; it basically controlled what and how much she ate. She didn't even think

of it.

All the knowledge of her past and the person she'd been was not gone, but it had been reordered and

placed in an out-of-the-way, protected area of the brain. The sight of an object or an assemblage of objects

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SHADOWOFTHEWELLOFSOULSAWellWorldNovelJackL.ChalkerCopyright©1994byJackL.ChalkerLibraryofCongressCatalogCardNumber:93-73660ISBN0-345-38846-1e-bookver.1.0ForFritzLeiber,whoenjoyedtheoriginalWellsagabutleftusbeforethisonewasdone,andlikewiseformyoldfriendRegBretnor,alsogonetoosoon,mywritingoppositeofsor...

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