Watcher At The Well - Echoes Of The Well Of Souls Part 22

He really wasn't quite certain just what to do with the girl. Clearly she wanted to come along, but she wasn't an a.s.set on a long trip as she was. It was as if she'd been re-born as a water creature who couldn't really communicate or travel any distance over land.

Still, he wasn't sure how to ditch her, either. She cer-tainly had a mind of her own.

She also had something of an appet.i.te. Any time they stopped during their journey, she'd find something edible around and down it. Like nearly all the Glathrielians he'd seen, she was chubby but not fat and apparently in excel-lent condition. He wondered if she wouldn't start putting on weight if she kept eating like that, but it was a moot point. Things she could eat that were so readily available would be few and far between in many of the hexes he'd have to travel, including Flotish itself, considering that the hex was part of the Gulf of Zinjin and was in fact salt water to near ocean depths.

He was nonetheless still fascinated by her and loath to cast her out. She should not have become a Glathrielian. And since she had, she shouldn't have retained what was obviously her natural coloration and features. The Well had changed her in many ways, including taking who knew how many years off her age, but the one thing it clearly had not done was change her genetic code.

He wished he could just know her name. He wasn't sure Glathrielians even used names anymore, butshe had one, and no amount of blocking or rewiring of some brain func-tions would keep her from knowing it. The problem was in finding some way for her to tell it to him.

It was not a problem he could solve on the back of a horse, though, not with her onanother horse.

That, too, was a wonder. He'd gotten the impression that the Glathrielians wouldn't evenuse a live animal, yet she'd picked her horse, gotten on, and now rode quite comfort-ably. Another mystery. When they were making speed, she'd go forward and hang on somehow up against the horse's neck, but she never kicked it to start, never seemed to guide it at all. The horse, though, did just what it was supposed to do every time. Sometimes he thought that the two moved so naturally and effortlessly together that it was as if somehow she and the horse were one.

Terry herself had no more answers beyond her old name, which indeed she did remember, although it was sometimes confusing because of the otherwise nonverbal processes now operating in her mind.

Sometimes it seemed like it was Terry; other times, Teysi. She knew that there had been a lot more to the name than either of those once, but those were the defining words she retained.

As for the horse, she was discovering talents she didn't know she had as she went along. She had gone out back, had realized he was going to ride, and had simply touched a number of horses until one of the animals "clicked" with her in a way she could not explain. When one had and she had mounted it, all she'd had to do was relax and put ev-erything out of her mind except that horse. As Brazil had imagined without believing, she'd become one with it, so that the two bodies, while in physical contact with one an-other, actually did become as one, operating as easily as one operated one's arms, legs, and head.

Whenever she dis-mounted and contact was broken, it was as if she'd lost something of herself. The size and power of the animal were exhilarating. Still, she hadn't the vaguest idea how she did it.

At a stop to get something to eat and drink and give the horses time to do the same, he decided to try another experiment. If that first Glathrielian girl had reacted to him as if he had the plague, how wouldthis one react?

He walked over to her, and she watched him come and stand right in front of her. He smiled, and she returned the smile. They were both almost exactly the same height, his computer-designed leather boots raising him just a bit, but only to match the added height of her thick black hair. Then, casually, he reached out and took her hands in his.

The initial contact was a shock, and the tumble of infor-mation that came through was incredibly confusing to her. There was a kindness in him that she found true, almost no-ble, and still the element of a little boy inside somewhere, either deep down or up front in the bravado that masked his deeper self.

There was also a sadness there, an incredible, deep, pain-ful emptiness that was almost too much to bear. She grieved for anyone who could have that much sorrow within him, yet she admired him, too, for the strength to be able to carry it. It masked, even overwhelmed, the tremen-dous contradictions she could sense but not grab hold of inside of him.

And yet, deep down, there was something else, some-thing hidden very deep, yet something he was aware of. It was so concealed, so cleverly masked with layer upon layer of pure humanity that it could not be directly seen, only glimpsed ever so briefly, like something seen only in the extreme corner of the eye. That was the heart of the confu-sion about him. There seemed to be two of him, two totally different creatures so alien to one another that the other would not come in, would not focus. Yet the man she could see, the man of sorrows, was not a mask, not a facade, but one and the same with what was hidden. It made no sense at all.

They had warned her, warned her that something lurked there that she did not want to see and should not and that only the man should be considered. She backed away from it, sensing somehow that what lay hidden was no more dan-gerous than the man and no less, being one and the same, but that it was somehow beyond her comprehension or abil-ity to cope.

He liked her. That made her feel very good indeed, be-cause she liked him and she wasn't certain how she was coming across. He wasn't a particularly handsome man, but he had a tough appearance, and his well-worn face echoed his inner strength and long experience. Even in her past life, she knew that if they'd met, she would have been at-tracted to him. The fact that she now could see so much of him yet not reach the central mystery of him fascinated her and made him all the more interesting. Sensing that he would never take advantage of her, she felt that at some point she might well be tempted to take advantage of him.

There was little or no sensation or information going in Brazil's direction, but he did somehow sense both her trust and her attraction to him, whether by some sixth sense or perhaps just from long experience. He did not consider it unusual, since, after all, ifhe were stuck inher current sit-uation and found just one other human being who knew who and what she was or had been and where she'd come from, he'd probably react the same way. He had no sense that she had learned so much about him, but he had noticed an odd, almost electrical tingling when he'd touched her that was as mysterious as the rest of her.

If he didn't know bet-ter, he told himself, he'd swear that she was somehow gen-erating a weak force field of some kind from within herself.

There was still a lot of the old Terry in her, and she found herself getting turned on by the experience.

That, right now, would never do, so she gave him a quick kiss and a big smile and broke the contact.

Well, at least she didn't run away screaming,he thought,although, truth be told, that wasthe general idea. Whatever the first girl had seen, this one either hadn't seen it or wasn't upset about it.

The fact was, he had mixed emotions about the result. On the one hand, to have gotten rid of her would have been in both their best interests; on the other, he had to admit that he liked her s.p.u.n.k and liked having somebody around who, however silent, didn't look or smell like a giant beaver.

Still, how could he take her along? Once she was on that ship and out to sea, there wouldn't be any way out for her.

It was almost nightfall by the time they intersected the main road, but by that time the city lights were in view ahead. Coming over the last rise, Armowak was spread be-fore them, and beyond lay the great blackness of the sea.

For Terry, the scene was both pretty and scary. Old re-flexes, old inner tensions from her past life resurfaced at the sight of a modern city, and for the first time it really hit home that she was about to be plunged back into modern civilization as a naked savage. Still, there was a certain confidence in that thought, and the kinds of things she'd been raised to fear in such places now had no hold on her. If she had nothing, it could not be stolen, and she doubted that giant beavers and most of whatever else lived in this world had much interest in her body.

Although traffic wasn't heavy, there were a number of the small personal cars going to and from the city at pretty good speeds, and their Ambrezan drivers seemed oblivious to anything on either side of them. A number of larger ve-hicles, including tandems and triples, pa.s.sed as well, show-ing the importance of the port. She and Brazil kept to the side, well away from the road, and barely drew a glance from any pa.s.sersby.

Armowak was Ambreza's western gateway to the rest of the world. Into it came the imports from other hexes that allowed a measure of variety in Ambrezan markets, prod-ucts of perhaps hundreds of races.

From it went the princi-pal export, tobacco, both processed and "raw," as well as manufactured items for various trading partners from the computer-controlled and robot-driven factories of the inte-rior. It was a busy, bustling place, a major seaport where great ships called constantly and where many of the races of the Well World mixed in a rare amalgam of shapes, forms, and languages. Here, too, one could buy almost any-thing with enough money, and here, too, one could lose ev-erything if not careful.

The suburban areas were fairly quiet but well lit; the streets were mostly narrow, except the main highway, and made for pedestrian traffic only, since there was an exten-sive system of underground moving walkways and transit vehicles to move people quickly around the city. The layout and design of the city were exotic to Terry's eyes and definitely had an alien cast, yet were basically familiar and logical.

The old city area was along the docks. The port itself ran for a couple of miles, or so it seemed, with large piers, ma.s.sive warehouses, brick and cobblestone streets, and broad silver-gray strips that proved to be much the same as the railroad tracks used by futuristic vehicles moving freight and supplies to and from the port area.

The services area of the port ran from the opposite side of the main north-south docks for about three blocks before a row of older, seedier-looking office buildings drew a line of demarcation between the actual port and the rest of the city.

There were a few larger ships in, although most of what was there seemed to be coastal steamers, tuglike boats, and even a few of what looked like fishing trawlers. What was fascinating was the odd juxtaposition of technologies be-tween the ships and the sh.o.r.e services: the latter were very modern with magnetic trains and robotic longsh.o.r.emen, and the ships often had smokestacks and, on the larger ones, two or even three tall sailing masts as well. It was as if ships of the American Civil War era were tying up and be-ing serviced at some twenty-first-century port.

Nathan Brazil was familiar with the design and the rea-sons behind it. He was impressed to see that some of the ships weren't wood anymore but were metal-plated or, in a few cases, seemed to be made out of wholly artificial new plasticlike substances. Their odd nature, though, remained out of necessity; literally just a few meters outside the har-bor entrance, visible by day but hidden in the night and city lights, was another hex boundary. Beyond it, where these ships had to sail, a different technology level was imposed. Flotish was a semitech hex; mere steam or sail power could be used but nothing electrical worked. Batteries would not hold charges, generators and alternators might truly give off energy, but it could not be controlled and dissipated just about as fast as it was made. Even powerful broadcast sig-nals from a high-tech hex like Ambreza would fade quickly once they pa.s.sed that boundary, no matter how strong the source. Running an internal combustion engine large enough to be useful would result in the most beautiful and rapid burning up of an engine anybody had ever seen.

Beyond were a few hexes that restricted all technology except direct mechanical devices. There great steam boilers would virtually explode, making it impossible to power any device, ships included. To travel those distances one had to use the most ancient of methods, the wind in the sail.

That also meant that each ship had to carry a highly trained crew expert in both steam and sail and willing to live for long periods aboard ship. Such crews were highly paid and highly prized, and they acted like it. Ship's law was the only law they respected, and the companies tended to pay for or gloss over any excesses in port. They also tended to be from a great many races, and here, at this port, Terry began to get a sampling of just what other sorts of creatures this world contained.

Two large scorpionlike creatures moved down a side street to her left, startling her. They looked huge, mean, and menacing. Elsewhere were several man-sized bipeds wearing clothes that looked like they were out of some Renaissance movie epic, but they more resembled Sylvester the Cat, with their expressive, almost comical feline faces and fur and large fluffy tails. And there was a creature that looked half woman and half vulture, with a pretty face and mean killer's eyes that seemed to glow in the dark.

Like the Ambreza, most embodied some aspects of creatures she knew or at least knew about, but the a.s.sociation with familiar Earth creatures was merely a way of cataloging them so that her mind could deal with what she was seeing. The reference points were far from exact, but they were the only way she could cope with the many alien beings she encountered.

Some, however, were beyond easy mental cataloging. Creatures with mottled, leathery dark green skin that went along at a fast clip on what seemed to be hundreds of spin-dly legs and whose entire bodies seemed to open into rows of sharp, pointy teeth; wrinkled, slow-moving dark gray ma.s.ses that could only be thought of as hippos without ap-parent bones; squidlike monstrosities whose tails seemed topped with giant sunflowers. There were so many, and they were so bizarre both individually and collectively that she could only look at one and then another and hope no-body noticed her staring.

But this was no freak show or chamber of horrors; these werepeople, people of ancient races, races as established as her own, from their own hex-shaped countries. She had to always remember that.

Brazil pulled up in front of a lighted office and dis-mounted, tying his horse loosely to what he knew was a fireplug. Terry wasn't sure what to do. Her impulse was to remain outside, but she had no idea what this place was or how long Brazil might be. After a moment she got down and followed him into the office.

Almost immediately she felt a sense of claustrophobia, of being hemmed in, of the walls and ceiling maybe closing in on her. She repressed it as best she could and managed to stay with him, but she didn't like the feeling.

The creature behind a counter was a large, irregular lump maybe only a bit taller than their own height that seemed to be an animated ma.s.s of tiny red and green feathers from behind which, much farther down than would be expected, two huge, round yellow eyes looked back at them.

"Yes?" the creature asked Brazil pleasantly, barely giving Terry a glance.

"Are there any ships in now outbound to Agon or Clopta or anywhere else semitech or above in the northwest?" Bra-zil asked it.

"Nothing direct," the creature replied. "TheSetting Sun down at Pier 69 may be your best bet. It stops at Kalibu, Hakazit, Tuirith, and Krysmilar. You might be able to change, particularly at Hakazit, since there's a lot of cross-channel stuff out of there."

"Nothing else coming in that might be more direct?"

"Sorry. Not until sometime next month, and that won't give you any time advantage. The only other possibility for Agon is something like theNorthern Winds leaving in two days for Parmiter, but your chances of a westbound connec-tion from there are slim to none, and you'd have to walk overland."

"Yeah, well, that would be a solution if Agon were my final destination, but it's not. I'll have enough overland without starting that early. When doesSetting Sun sail?"

"Let me see . . ." The huge eyes dropped down to look at something below the counter. "They're still finishing off-loading, and they have a lot to get on. They're scheduled for high tide . . . the day after tomorrow. About nine in the morning local time."

"That sounds reasonable. I need to book pa.s.sage on that sailing to Hakazit if it's available, with a cabin if possible."

"Yes, sir. For two?"

He turned and looked at Terry, who was showing her dis-comfort and staring around the office with a queasy look. Still, she was here.

"Yes," he sighed. "Might as well. What's the weather supposed to be en route?"

"Possible storms in west Ronbonz, otherwise choppy but not uncomfortable. The winds, however, are unpredictable in this crossing, particularly in storms."

"I'll still take it. You have anything on the basics of Hakazit or a general hex guide? I want to see if it's feasible to book the horses on as well."

"Animals are not guaranteed in shipment," the strange clerk warned him. "There is a bookshop on Vremzy Street, two blocks in and one left. It's closed by now, but it will be open all day tomorrow. You can get what you need there. Outfitters and suppliers are along that street as well. We can probably add two animals with no problem if you come back here by nine or ten tomorrow night with your prepaid ticket. In the meantime they can be quartered at the livestock area, Warehouse 29 just along this street.

Now, I'll need to know your native hex so that sufficient edible provisions can be laid on for you and the cabin prepared properly."

Nathan Brazil grinned. "Glathrielian."

Those huge eyes seemed to double in size. "You are jok-ing, of course."

"No, I'm not. We came through the Well from offworld, and that's what we are. It won't be hard even if your guide doesn't list us. I'll give you a half dozen or more races we're compatible with."

"Very well. Soyou're what Glathrielians look like."

"You work here and you've never seen any?"

"I'm actually the purser on theHonza Queen. When we're in port, we take the late shifts in the company of-fices. There isn't much here to interest me, anyway."

The fare was not cheap, but it was reasonable, and Brazil felt certain he could more than afford this leg.

There would be other times when things would be a lot harder.

Besides, it might be interesting to see how hard the ship's crew and other pa.s.sengers might gamble.

Finally, Brazil asked, "Is there any outdoor area nearby where we might be able to camp? I suspect that any hotels in this area won't be set up for us, and I have my own food." There usually were such places around ports, partic-ularly because most of them naturally provided only for the races that were the most common visitors. The Gulf of Zinjin was an arm of the Well World's greatest ocean, and there were far too many possible visitors to economically provide for them all, and particularly not Glathrielians.

"Far northern end, past the last pier," the clerk informed him. "Rather nice, although a bit chilly some nights for hairless types. A number of small merchants have local stalls up there from dawn to dusk, too, if you can tolerate the local food."

"Some of it. Well, it sounds fine to me. Any permits re-quired?"

"Not at the port one. All others, you'd need to report to the police first."

The clerk made a series of entries with two huge, clawed hands that extended from under the feathers, and the com-puter spit out very neat-looking ticket books. Brazil thanked him, put the tickets away, and went back outside, with Terry following. Just walking back out in the air seemed to lift an enormous burden from her, but she still felt a little shaken and a little sick from the experience. Being enclosed was going to be very, very rough on her indeed, she knew. Brazil decided to take the horses with them rather than pay to have them quartered at the warehouse. The odds of their being in the way at the park were more than out-weighed by the possibilities of selling them to the locals there if transporting them proved to be a problem, and it might. Hakazit and Agon were also high-tech hexes, and any layover in the former would just leave him with even more ravenous mouths to feed, not to mention the problem of horse droppings, which many places, and particularly high-tech places, tended to frown on.

The park wasn't much, just a large area that apparently had been part of a much earlier port and settlement, long abandoned. They'd planted some trees, as much to keep er-osion down as for shelter, and it fronted right on the Gulf, with a small jetty leading out to guide lights warning off any incoming ships.

If anyone else was using the park right now, he couldn't see them, although with some clouds and only a few elec-tric streetlights he might well have missed them. Still, there was a nice ocean smell coming in on the breeze and the quiet sound of waves lapping at the old pylons.

He picked a spot just inside the trees and set up the small tent and the camping outfit as he had in Glathriel. Thanks to the brevity of his trip, he still had a five-day supply of food and gas canisters, and there was a very nice if some-what elaborate fountain in the middle of the park that, thankfully, had fresh water.

Terry used her new night sense to survey the area and found virtually nothing edible in and around the park. She knew she could wander farther afield, but this was a large and strange city and was unlikely to have any real groves close by. Here one didn't pick one's food, one bought it.

Thus, when Brazil opened up his food supplies and ges-tured an offer to share, she had no choice but to accept, al-though she made it clear with hand signals that it was not to be cooked. Something of an amateur gourmet who fan-cied herself a very good cook, she now found the thought of cooked food thoroughly repulsive.

Brazil did not compromise his own preferences for hers but did find a perverse fascination in watching her eat. Knowing that she must have been a civilized, modern woman, he was fascinated to see her take an open container of preserved fruit, for example, and just scoop it out with her fingers. He was even more surprised when she took and ate the beef he had, both ground and in small filets, also raw. He remembered then the Ambrezan foreman telling him that Glathrielians would eat meat, but only if it was al-ready dead.

Terry, too, was surprised both at her appet.i.te and at the fact that the meat tasted exceptionally good right out of the container. Until now she'd always liked her meat cooked through, and with sauces and all the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs if available. While he packed up and saw to the horses, she went to the fountain and then to relieve herself, and when she got back, he was getting ready to turn in. It had been a long, tiring day, and both keenly felt it.

Avery chilly sea breeze was developing, and he was concerned for her. He offered her a spot in his tent, limited as it was, or his sleeping bag, but she declined both with a smile. Then she gave him a little hug and a kiss and went off.

Again he'd noticed that odd, almost static electricity feel-ing when they'd touched, but now he noticed another thing as well.

She'd been warm to the touch, with no sign at all of the chill he felt on his face and hands. As warm as summer-time.

Terry didn't notice this because she really didn't feel it. The field around her that she could see, generated somehow by her own body, acted as insulator and even life support system in some odd way.

She felt warm and comfortable, and she picked a tree almost over Brazil's tent and scam-pered up it, then found a comfortable notch and settled in for the night.

Terry awoke the next morning feeling nauseous, and for a moment she was afraid it was the food.

Something inside her, though, told her that it wasn't, that it would pa.s.s, and she trusted her instincts as usual and they proved correct. She still felt a little queasy when Brazil finally got up and found her there waiting for him, but she didn't let on that anything was wrong, and after getting something to eat, the feeling gradually vanished.

Brazil bought breakfast from the promised local merchants, who set up small booths along the waterfront area of the park selling homegrown produce and other things. He discovered that Terry would eat bread, the first cooked item he had seen her accept, but not eggs. In point of fact, she ate two whole home-baked loaves of bread and two large melons, and Brazil began to wonder if he could liter-ally afford to take her with that kind of appet.i.te.

He walked back into the port district; he'd already made a decision that the horses would be far too much of a bur-den until they were needed to be worth the cost and had opened some discussions with a stall merchant who kept a couple of horses at his place outside the city. Terry fol-lowed him through the now-bustling area, and her head be-gan to reel with the number of races and weird sounds and smells that made the whole place come alive. She had al-ready figured, though, that he was leaving by ship, and she no longer felt compelled to enter the buildings he entered.

So many sounds, so many races . . . how did theyunder-stand each other? She found the whole thing bewildering. The Glathrielians whose lives she'd shared had not pre-pared her for this.

Occasionally one or another of the creatures would say something to her, but she was always able to convey by some gesture or expression that she did not understand them. Still, she did feel the irony of being naked and ex-posed in a strange city and yearned for a dark alleyway. Once a particularly smelly and repulsive-looking reptilian creature had actuallytouched her, and she'd reacted in-stantly with a nearly panicky mental push that said "Go away!" And the creature had frozen, looked puzzled for a moment, then seemed to lose all interest in her and actually had gone away!

Could she reallydo that, or was it a coincidence? One of these times she'd find out.

Brazil emerged from the bookshop with something of what he needed. He had been surprised to find, in the first few weeks after landing in Ambreza, that he was able to figure out the written language almost as if it were some-thing he'd forgotten rather than something he'd never known. It was alittle c.u.mbersome and not all of it read just right, but what he needed to read he had little problem fig-uring out.

The map was the most important thing. When he had the time, he intended to annotate it in Latin, the "stock" Earth language he'd found the most useful over the long haul, so he wouldn't have to keep looking up and remembering this term or that and figuring out things word by word and sen-tence by sentence. There was a sort of common written lan-guage here, one used for interhex trade and commerce-the ticket was in it-but he foundit less familiar and less use-ful than Ambrezan.

Of course, he knew what had happened. He was remem-bering ancient Ambrezan, which had evolved greatly over the millennia since his last time here, and the common lan-guage he'd known had been entirely replaced, perhaps many times.

He then stopped at the ministry of commerce offices to call in to the capital, reportsomething on his slight obser-vations on Glathrielians-mostly to omit any of the oddities and report a very primitive life-style of no threat or conse-quence to the Ambrezans-and get what information he could on Mavra's group.

There wa.s.some information, but it was incomplete and not guaranteed. Of the two men and two women who came in, one was reported in Erdom, as he'd surmised, another was in Zebede, which did surprise him, a third was in Dahir, and a fourth, clearly Mavra, had shown up in Glathriel, as he already knew.

"But who's this other Glathrielian female I have with me?" he asked them. "If she didn't come in with me, and she didn't, since I know where mine are, and she didn't come in withthem, she must have come in either alone or with another group."

"The only group we have other than yours and the larger party is two males about three weeks after you arrived. One of those is a Leeming, and the other-that's odd-also an Erdomite."