Watcher At The Well - Echoes Of The Well Of Souls Part 20

She ran right through the first row and found the area larger than she had expected and the ground inside harder with much exposed white-veined gray rock that produced a "clopping" sound when her feet hit it.

She slowed but found that she needed to go up to a tree and put a hand out to fully stop herself without falling over.

It was almost a letdown to stop running, but her chest continued to heave and she continued to gulp in air at the same rhythm until her breathing slowed to a more normal rate.

She looked around, and her ears automatically rotated about a hundred degrees on either side, checking for sounds. There wasn't much except the rustling of some leaves in the highest part of the trees, apparently in reaction to a slight breeze that didn't reach the ground.

Her nose, though, brought an overpowering aroma that she recognized immediately, even though she'd never smelled it before-water!

Finding it was as simple as following her nose.

She didn't hesitate a moment worrying that it might not be good water. It wasn't any new inner sense that told her anything about it but rather an all-consuming thirst that made it clear that the question was moot. She simply had to have water.

The water was in fact from a spring that bubbled out of the rocks and created an attractive, shaded pool about a dozen meters across. She headed for it, got on all fours, then dropped down and just stuck her face in it and began to suck and lap it in. Her natural nose plugs closed the in-stant her face hit the water, and she hardly noticed.

It was an eerie sensation, though, because she just drank and drank. She had never drunk this much of anything in her whole life, and long after a human her size would have been satisfied she continued to take it in. She couldfeel it, cooling down her whole body in stages, coiling around in-side her like a living thing, and finally concentrating in her back. There was no telling how much she drank before, un-able to take another gulp, she came up out of the water and settled back, lying there on her side. For several minutes she felt bloated but cool, and then, slowly, her body temper-ature seemed to come back to normal and that bloated feel-ing subsided.

She wondered where all the water had gone. She didn'tfeel like she'd grown some sort of camel's hump, nor did rolling on her back for a moment reveal one, but clearly this body had areas to store a lot of excess liquid. After a while she forced herself to get up, even though she actually felt sleepy. For one thing, the pool was not totally calm but it did reflect decently and she wanted to get a more com-plete image of herself. And then it would be prudent to look around. Although Lori the American college teacher wouldn't have resisted, Bimi of the People knew that it wouldn't do to just zonk out without checking the lay of the land.

The image of herself in the gently rippling water was both strange and familiar. She'd always had something of a long neck, and she still did; the face, although the same beige or light tan color, contained enough of the old Lori Sutton to be recognizable, although it had a harder, larger, rougher cast. It was, she realized, what her face would have looked like had she been born a man. She'd always had that boyish look to her face, and now it seemed to have firmed up and looked not nearly as bad to her as it had all those times in the mirror.

The lipswere thicker by quite a bit and were a dark brown, the nose was a bit larger, the eyes were dark black blobs against a medium brown field, the ears were very equine and larger than she'd thought, and the eyebrows were thick and snow white and rose on either side of the eyes at a slight angle, giving her a slightly exotic look. The big shock of white hair was actually kind of cute. The horn, the same color brown as the skin fur, looked, well, different from what she had imagined.That's one h.e.l.l of a phallic symbol, she thought.Jeez! As weird as this body is, it sure would have turned me on!

She tore herself reluctantly away from the self-examination and got up and looked around the rest of the oasis. It was, thankfully, deserted. Not that she wanted to hide out forever, but she wasn't sure she was ready for oth-ers of this kind yet, particularly not as a man.

This was clearly a popular stop. In the sandy soil were traces of great numbers of people-beings like herself, anyway-having moved through here, and probably not long ago, since clearly the winds came through this place and erased many signs as if they'd never been. There was also signs of some sort of civilized behavior as well-holes which clearly were some kind of tent pole supports, a cen-tral fire pit with more support holes that might indicate any-thing from a rotisserie to grates being placed there, and a veritable waste pile of damaged and broken crockery, much of it of fired clay and some of it inlaid with elaborate de-signs.

The designs were very interesting, since among the more abstract parts were some scenes of what might have been life in this place. The style was almost reminiscent of an-cient Egyptian, all in profile and two very flat dimensions yet finely featured. She couldn't be sure if these were do-mestic or religious scenes, but a lot could be learned from them.

For one thing, they went in for decoration more than clothes, andthat was instructive-not that clothes made a lot of sense out here with this kind of body. Either these be-ings came in a rainbow of colors or dyed fur in different colors and patterns was popular. So was decorating the horns, some of which were depicted as impossibly long. There was also a fair amount of jewelry on the males and what appeared to be serapelike capes with intricate designs worn over the head but extending down only chest-high and, on some but not all, a kind of highly decorated but very brief codpiece. Males didn't seem to grow facial hair, but the big clump of hair on top tapered down the back un-til it vanished completely about three-quarters of the way down in a manelike appearance.

The females were quite different. First, they were all de-picted as at least a head shorter than any of the males, al-though that might be just the male artist's perspective. They had very soft feminine faces and no horn at all, but they had a huge amount of hair that trailed down their backs.

They also had tails, much like horses' tails, that were al-most mirror images of their hair and seemed to be deliber-ately styled to be that way and kept up with some kind of stays. They were not brown-furred but rather a soft, pale yellow, and their body hair and tails were a variety of browns, reds, even blonds, as well as black. How much was artificial and how much was "natural" color couldn't be de-termined.

They also had two pairs of b.r.e.a.s.t.s, one atop the other. It was a very strange sight, but with the erotic equine curves of the body it didn't look wrong, either. That got Lori to examining her own chest, where, after some effort even with the short hair, she did indeed locate four small nipples.

Did they havethat many kids that they needed all that excess capacity? Or did they have a lot of kids and only a few made it past weaning? No, probably not. They didn't seem big enough to carry more than one or two routinely, any more than human women did. The b.r.e.a.s.t.s, which seemed almost "humanlike,"

had some of the short pale yellow fur about two-thirds of the way to the nipples but were otherwise all a very light brown.

Some of the decorations simply depicted scenes from some kind of tribal life: guards flanking a particularly dec-orated male who wore a lot of gold and a bright sc.r.a.pe adorned with a sash, females preparing food in fire pits. The males carried spears, and some seemed to be wearing swords-there was one scene of two males dueling, possi-bly in sport, the swords thin and rapierlike, with hilts some-what reminiscent of their horns. There were also scenes that were blatantly erotic, often two or more females with one male, and the s.e.xual attributes depicted made her own rather large endowment seem downright trivial.

Still, aside from the alienness of the people depicted, the scenes for the most part looked right out of some ancient Near Eastern Earth culture. A tribal, nomadic people, but with a sense of art and, from the odd-looking bands around some of the broken pottery, with a form of writing as well.

She was about to abandon her look through the remnants when a large fragment caught her eye and she reached down, picked it up, and frowned. It gave her a sudden chill to look at the scene, the first one she really didn't like at all.

Their tents, crockery, ornamental stuff, all their goods moved on what seemed to be sledlike devices made to slide through the sand. Several had been depicted open or parked in other scenes, but this scene was of some in motion. She wondered why she hadn't seen any depictions of domesti-cated animals, and this was why.

The females were lined up on a series of wooden bars pa.s.sed through a forward support, and teams of six to ten of them, depending on the size of the desert sled, were clearly pulling them while the males ran with their spears to either side.

The females were the draft animals.

In fact, suddenly flashing back through the other scenes, she realized that whenever work was depicted, it was the females who were doing it. The males might fence or look magnificent or whatever, but never were they shown actu-allydoing anything, except in the erotic ones, of course, when they were doing what men always liked to do.

She felt outraged by the sight as all her old principles came to the fore, and yet she found herself thinking,Thank G.o.d I'm not a woman here!

She was ashamed of the thought, yet d.a.m.n it, the idea of being one of the bosses rather than one of the servants was something of a turn-on. She hated herself for feelingthat, too, and tried to get some self-control back. She didn't know what it was to be as oppressed as these women ob-viously were, but she knew what it was like to be a woman in a man's world, and she hoped she wouldn't descend to that level even if she had to adjust to this society.

She tossed the shard back in the pile, and it landed with a crash and cracked again.

This was too much to handle, coming all at once, she thought. It made the kidnapping and subsequent life among the People seem almost ordinary by comparison. Still, Alam-Mavra-had been right.

Without that first experi-ence, she wasn't sure if she could have handled this one at all.

She looked around, but there was clearly nothing to eat here. Theredid seem to be some kind of round, green fruit way up atop the trees, but even if it were edible and ripe enough to eat, this body was good for a lot of things, but tree climbing wasn't one of them. Filled with water, though, she was in no immediate danger of anything more than a growling stomach. She would pick a spot in the shade with some promise of concealment just in case and get the badly needed rest.Then she could think of what to do next.

It was a weird dream, mixing living scenes from the dis-carded pottery and the race that lived here with scenes of the Amazon and of the university, and at one point she was saying to her department head, "Now that I'm a man, Dr. Avery, you can't deny me the Holburn Chair and the profes-sorship that goes with it."

The smell of odd spices and perfumes and the tinkling of bells brought her back to consciousness, but it wasn't until the sudden thought that she was no longer alone that she stiffened, rolled over, and tensely peered out from the rocks and bushes toward the pool.

It wasn't a big caravan like those depicted on the shards but, rather, a small party, no more than eight or nine people from the look of it, and one of those sleighlike wagons. Most, maybe all, were females, except for one big fellow reclining on a cushion. He looked, well, old-not really old but well into middle age from the cast and lines in his face and the wear and tear on his skin. He wore a somewhat faded and threadbare sc.r.a.pe of faded red that had an even more faded yellow design too shopworn to matter and one of those codpieces that might at one time have been silvery but now just looked a dirty gray. His horn, either shorter than hers or worn down over time, was wrapped in a kind of turbanlike affair that made it appear that he was wearing a cream-colored pointed hat. Everything about him, from his overall look and manner to the faded remnants of once colorfully decorated skin, looked a bit old and a bit seedy.

So did the sleigh. Clearly it had seen a lot of use in its time and hadn't been cared for very well of late, but, like its owner, it was serviceable.

Watching the females, seeing them in person for the first time, was an odd experience. All were considerably smaller than either the old man or Lori, and the double pair of b.r.e.a.s.t.s on them all seemed quite a bit larger than in the pic-tures. The hair and the tails were nicely done up so that they were pretty well mirror images of one another, and the effect was quite nice indeed to look at. They all seemed to have a naturally feminine, s.e.xy manner to them, and they would talk or whisper to one another, ears turning and twitching, and occasionally giggle like schoolgirls. Most wore some sort of jewelry-bracelets, necklaces-but little else, although the one at the fire pit had on a thick sc.r.a.pe much longer than the male's, apparently not a garment but rather protection against heat. There was also something odd about their hands, but she couldn't make out what it might be.

She wondered just what the h.e.l.l she should do now. Here was contact, and on a scale she might handle, but d.a.m.n it, it wa.s.scary to be in this situation. Finally realizing that there was nothing else to do, Lori hauled herself onto the top of the rock, a.s.suming a sitting position, and coughed politely.

The effect on the females was startling. They froze like deer in the meadow might have frozen at the first sense of danger. The male moved pretty quickly, though, whirling, grabbing a sword, and actually getting to his feet in a single series of motions.

"Who be you?" the old man called out menacingly in a low voice.

"Please, good sir, put down your sword," Lori responded, startled at how very, very deep her voice sounded to her ears but also relieved that language, at least, wasn't going to be a problem. "I sit here with nothing, not even clothes, let alone a weapon."

"Where'd ye come from?" the old man asked suspi-ciously, sword still in hand.

"I was already here," Lori explained. "I-I woke up in the sands near here as I am now."

"Yesss . . . ?And who dumped ye there, and why?"

"I-I don't know if this is going to sound crazy to you or not, but I was a different sort of-creature-from another world. I came through what I was told is a hex gate to a place called Zone, and then they forced me through an-other gate, and I woke up as you see me."

The old man sniffed, frowned, then put his sword away. "Notanother one!" he said in disbelief. "Not in my life-time, or my father's, orhis father's lifetime has anyone come though there and been dumped here.

Now suddenly yer fallin' from the skies!"

Lori's heart skipped a beat. "Anotherone, you say? You mean I'm not the first?"

"Not if yer what you says you are, anyways. Other was a girl, over in the Hajeb, a couple months ago maybe. Least, that's what I heard."

She shook her head. "That means nothing to me. I'm afraid I don't even know where I am, or what I am, for that matter." She was disappointed at the time frame. It meant that whoever the girl was, she was from one of the other parties-most likely the woman in the wheelchair, since that was the only female she recalled among the pictures shown to them back in Zone.

The old man chuckled. "Well, sonny, this land be Er-dom, in the bottom of the World, and we all be Erdomites first. I be Posiphar of the Makob, a traveling merchant by trade. I buy and sell things, services, whatever be needed between the families and tribes of the Hjolai. I be on me route from oasis to oasis right now, headin' next fer the camp of Lord Aswab."

"The names mean nothing to me yet. I'm sorry," she told him. Guessing that the man's odd manner of speech was ei-ther a regional dialect or just the mark of a less than edu-cated man, she made no attempt to duplicate it. "Uh, I'd like to come down, but I'm not really dressed fit for mixed company, I'm afraid."

Posiphar chuckled again. "Don't worry none 'bout the girls. Ye ain't got nothin' they ain't seen many times afore, I promise ye. Come, come, let me get a look at ye!"

She got down slowly and carefully. Although the body seemed easier to use, more familiar now, she wasn't about to take any chances with it. She then walked over to him, trying to be as natural as possible.

"Heh! Ye walk like some girl," the old man commented. "Well, ain't no nevermind of mine. Yer a big fella, though, I got to say."

Until now she really hadn't had anything for comparison, but it was clear that things were pretty much of a human-sized scale, and now, standing in front of the merchant, she found that as he was a head taller than the tallest woman in his party, she was almost that much bigger and taller than he was. Although she'd been by no means short, it was a novel experience to be the biggest and tallest of a group, and she found she liked the sensation.

"Well, son," the merchant said at last, "maybe ye and me can make a deal here. Ye needs a bit of educatin' on Erdom, I think."

"Not to mention food, clothes, and money," she added.

"Yeah, well, that goes without sayin', I suppose. As ye might have figured, I ain't exactly drippin' with gold and silver and precious gems, but I makes do, I does. Been some banditry about of late-ain't like the old times, I tell ye. I ain't no slouch in a fight, but I be gettin' on and slowed down in spite of meself, and with n.o.body coverin' me back, I ain't been feelin' too safe of late. Don't suppose ye be any good with a sword?"

She looked at the sword he'd put down by his side. It wasn't like a broadsword; in fact, it was more like a saber than anything else. She wasn'tgreat with a sword, but she'dalmost made the fencing team her undergraduate sen-ior year. "I can use one of those if I had to," she told him. "I might be off balance with it, though. I'm still getting used to this body. But I'm even better with a spear," she added.

"Hmph! What were ye before? Some kinda hard-sh.e.l.led twelve-armed insect or somethin'?"

She laughed. "No, nothing like that. In some ways not anextremely different sort than this, but far enough. More- apelike. You know what an ape is?"

"Sure I do! Seen some over in the port cities now and again. See most anything in this world at them docks. Where'd you think I seen them insect things?"

She was startled. "You mean there actuallyare creatures like that here? Man-sized insects that-think?"

"Sure. You got a wholelot t' learn, sonny. Um, whatis yer name, anyways? One of them impossible-to-say words?"

"Uh, well, it's Lori. Itwas, anyway."

"That's a good enough nonsense word to serve," Posiphar responded. "Here ye be linked with yer family and tribal place name. Since ye ain't got no family or no tribe here, a place name'll do. It'll drive everybody else nuts tryin' to figure out how ye got it, too. How's Lori of Alkhaz sound as a name?"

"Uh, all right, I guess, but who, what, or where is Alkhaz?"

"Why,this is Alkhaz, of course! Just a transit oasis, not n.o.body's in particular. That's 'cause the water's decent here only part of the year. The rest of the time it's either too muddy or too alkaline for most folks'

tastes. There's always another that opens up, so it's no big thing."

"I'll accept it, then," she told him. "And Erdom? Is all of it like this? Desert?"

"Well, a whole lot of it is, anyways. All except right on the coast. A few nice little cities there get some rain and have some hills with trees that keep the rain there to use. Got a decent-sized seacoast, but we're right smack up against that Zone wall, so the only place where everything piles up is in the southeast, where Erdom and the wall come together. Sand and stuff gets built up by the sea breezes there, and they get a decent amount of weather. Rest of the place, well, the rains just sink into the sands and get swallowed up, and these here underground rivers are the only water."

"And so it's just the coast and the rest is like this?"

"Well, there's some towns around inside, where you got really good springs, of course. Otherwise you couldn't do the Pilgrimage of the Seven Springs. Got some deep mines over in Jwoba. Them's gold mines. And Awokabi has the diamonds and so on. Don't like 'em much, though. Dirty, smelly, sad little towns where most folks work for nothin' but food and water and the lords live fat. I like the Hjolai better. Folks be friendly if ye don't overstay yer welcome, and they knows ye won't cheat 'em much, and there still be some honor."

She looked out at the desert. "How many people live out here, though? What do they live on?"

"Oh, the whole be divided into Holdings, we calls 'em, each with a pretty fair-sized oasis able to support some number of herd animals and even some farmin' of a limited type. Each is a hereditary family Holding headed by a lord, and the folks there pretty much work fer him. He in return gives 'em protection and security. It ain't a bad system. h.e.l.l, half the year the lord's movin' 'round his Holding from oasis to oasis, listenin' t' gripes, fixin' problems. They still think things go both ways out here. The people work for the lord, and the lord tries to help the people with their problems and make life better for 'em. Most do all right. You gets a bad one now and again, o' course-stands to reason-but he don't last long. Most of 'em, even the best, get knocked off sooner or later by one of their relatives anyways, and if you got the people cheerin' for it, well, that lord lasts all the shorter, see?"

Lori nodded, but she wasn't all that thrilled by the sys-tem. It sounded like something out of Arabia and a past age of Earth-monarchical tribal families, inheritance by a.s.sas-sination, feudalism. She wasn't all that sure how much she was going to like this.

"But you're not working for a lord," she noted. "Or are you?"

"Haw!Not likely! There be some of us around, kind of like a brotherhood. See, them lords need us, 'cause they don't get along with one another nohow, and we be the only ones can walk and talk between with n.o.body figurin' we like one side better'n the other. So if one wants t' send a message to the other, they use traders like me. If their breedin' stock's thin and needs freshening, they won't sell to n.o.body they won't even talk to, so they sell to me for a promise that I'll bring 'em back what they need. I takes the stock, trades it to another, then bring the trade back, and that settles that. Of course there's a fee, but we haggles fer it. I been around so long 'cause I always gives 'em a good deal. 'Course, you don't live as well or as rich as if you try'n jerks 'em around a bit, but ye keeps yer b.a.l.l.s that way. Them lords got a real mean streak if they catch you!"

"I'll bet," Lori said glumly, having no trouble imagining Erdomite desert justice. "Uh, you mentioned some deal be-tween us?"

"Sure. Kwaza! Bring me the serpent chest!" he called, and one of the women stopped what she was doing, went over to the sleigh, and started rummaging around. She fi-nally found the chest and brought it over to them.

When she did, Lori could see what had been mystifying her about the females' hands. They were more hooflike, the three fingers fused together and bending as one, with just enough indentation for flexibility, while the opposing thumb was even wider and broader than the males' thumbs. The effect reminded her more of claws, but they were too soft and supple for that description to be accurate. It must be more like doing everything wearing mittens, she thought.

When the woman had gone back to her work,Lori asked in a low tone, "Are all females' hands like that? No inde-pendent fingers?"

"Huh? Oh, sure. That's 'cause, when they're well along carryin' a baby, they got to pretty much walk on all fours and use their arms like the forelegs of an animal unless they be leanin' on somethin'. Otherwise they couldn't get around at all for them last two months or so. If the fingers could spread like a man's, you'd never be able t' do it. It'd tear yer fingers right off after a while. Don't believe me, try it sometimes."

"Hmph! Seems too bad, though. It sure limits what they can do."

"Not as much as ye think," Posiphar replied. "There's an old sayin', of course, that if women had fingers they'd be dangerous, but actually they got a little over us. You'n me, we get a bad break in the leg, don't heal, and we're crip-pled and in pain fer life, hobblin' around and no good to n.o.body. They lose a leg, they can still get around, do most of what they could before. No, the Creator put a lot of thought into us.

I seen some races down at the port, they got these big b.o.o.bs or udders, and fer what? To feed the young for a few months after havin' kids. And how many kids do most women have, anyways? So they carry them things for life and use 'em hardly a'tall. Erdomite women, now, when they ain't sucklin', they stores water in them. Ye, me, full of water here, couldn't last more'n eight days without a drink.

Women-up to three weeks, and it's avail-able not only to them from the inside but to anybody else what needs it from the outside. Now,that's useful!"

She didn't bother to bring up the fact that there were other, purely pleasurable uses for b.r.e.a.s.t.s, but she conceded him his point. Each gender had its strengths and weak-nesses for this harsh society and environment, but it was pretty clear that the men were, in every sense of the word, on top here.

The chest, with an exotic winged serpentlike creature carved into it, proved to have various articles of male adornment. Only one of the dozens of codpieces was big enough to fit, and it was a plain, worn black color, but somehow, although it was decidedly uncomfortable and not at all useful for concealment or protection, it made her feel dressed for polite company. She pa.s.sed on anything else, though, figuring, as it turned out correctly, that anything she might choose to use would be charged to her account. While she had no objection to providing the old trader with some extra protection, she also had no intention of getting so into debt to him that he'd virtually own her.

The food was very spicy and very good, and Lori real-ized with a start that it had been avery long time since she'd eaten, let alone had a decently cooked meal. The meat seemed similar to lamb but was too salty to tell more, and it was cooked in a large woklike pan together with some kind of very long ricelike grain and a number of green and red vegetables at least one of which was some kind of hot pepper. Out here the drink was water, period.

With more conversation both that night and the next day setting out across the desert, she learned much more about this strange place and its dominant race.

Women were definitely at the very low end of the scale here, as she'd surmised, bound there by religion, tradition, and some definitely chauvinistic att.i.tudes among the males.

Because they were smaller and therefore had smaller brains, Posiphar told her, women were not as intelligent as men and had shorter attention spans, so any education and posi-tion was reserved for the males. It was considered a logical as well as practical division, not the least of reasons for this being that females outnumbered males roughly three to one, not only in live births but because they tended to live longer. Because of this, too, polygamy was the norm, al-though many men had only one wife and some of the richer males had whole harems. The rule was that one could have as many wives as one could support. There was also a law that said if one could no longer support them, one had to find new husbands for them that could.

She was relieved to learn that one of her fears, at least, was unfounded. They did not buy and sell women, or any-body else, either, although the women, without any practi-cal rights at all, were pretty much at the mercy of the exclusively male-dominated system. "Love matches" were simply beyond their comprehension; one married for polit-ical reasons, for social reasons, for a dowry, or sometimes because one liked their features and thought that the com-bination would produce superior children.

Infant mortality was horrendous in the cities and working towns but surprisingly low in the desert and oasis commu-nities. Communicable diseases were rare; the way heat was handled and exchanged in the bodies produced regular tem-peratures for short periods almost every day that killed ninety-five percent of any viruses or bacteria that might lurk inside. In the cities and working towns it was often the living conditions and other environmental factors that killed the young.

There was almost no chance at social mobility for either men or women, though. Maybe one step up or down, but no more than that. Certain physical features and colorations were unique to certain cla.s.ses and made it difficult to pa.s.s as another in any event. Although it would be a while be-fore she could recognize those differences, Posiphar told her that her body marked her as pretty well in the middle of the scale, suitable for a soldier or merchant or craftsman, but she had no characteristics of the n.o.bility at all.