Echoes of the Well of Souls

Erdom

Lori had been with Posiphar long enough to understand the bargaining game, and it was a good thing, too, since the tentmaker wasn’t offering a very good deal on getting Julian off his hands in spite of his professed disgust with her.

“Since the treatment has begun as the Holy One directed, she is coming along very well,” Aswam argued. “In a few more months, with the herbs the monk gave us to add to her food and drink, she will have forgotten all this foolishness and become a good girl and bear many fine children.”

Lori did find this particular scale of bargaining distasteful, though; it seemed too much like haggling over a sale price, and in this case the commodity was a woman reduced to the status of a brood mare. Still, the addition of drugs—“herbs”—to Julian’s food explained a lot as well about her mood swings and collapse of will.

“And you are arguing that I should repay you for your losses to date, when you are telling me that she is as she is now only because of herbs? And other than your loss of use of the storage shed, how much has she cost you so far above what dowry you were paid for her? How much for those herbs and all the special attention?”

“My investment is considerable now. That is why I will not give her away!”

“Ah! But you said it would still be months, perhaps many months, before it ran its course and you had the girl you wanted. Perhaps it will be months. Perhaps it will be longer. And can you ever be certain that what you see is real, is not an act? Will you ever be able to trust her fully? Or will your wives and daughters always be preoccupied watching her, so that they can never concentrate on their duties? It seems to me that you are boasting of doubling your costs in a fifty-fifty chance that she might work out. Right now, thanks to the dowry, your losses are small, but now that dowry is gone and all the costs are on you. Is yet one more wife worth that much to you?”

They argued back and forth, and for a little while Lori was afraid that Aswam might well not budge too much beyond a “Take her and go,” blaming Lori for Julian’s newfound resolve.

Lori had fought so hard just to get the tentmaker to this point that he feared pressing the matter might lose everything. Still, there was just some feeling inside, some gut instinct, that the old man really didn’t want Julian anymore. Lori wondered if he had the right to bargain beyond this point, considering that it was Julian’s future, not his, that was at stake, but something inside made it impossible to stop. He did, however, decide to bring down the hammer.

Lori got up from the cushion and looked down at the still-reclining tentmaker. “I cannot accept the dishonor of a wife with no dowry,” he said flatly. “If she is not worthy of it and I am not worthy of the respect, then there is nothing more to say.” He turned, feeling uneasy and queasy as hell about what he was doing, and started for the exit from the great tent.

He actually thought the old bastard was going to let him go, but just as he reached the curtained doorway and made to push back the drape and leave, Aswam called, “Now, wait a minute! Perhaps something can be arranged, young hothead.”

Lori smiled and felt immense relief, then set his face in a very serious posture before turning and coming back to the old man. From this point the haggling would be over how much the tentmaker would pay, not the other way around.

The final price was not nearly as much as Lori had hoped for as a stake, but he just didn’t have the heart or stomach to press it anymore. He kept thinking that if Julian had known what he’d done, she’d have killed him. In fact, if the old Lori Ann Sutton had seen this, she would have organized protests.

Once agreed, a marriage contract of sorts was drawn up, and then Lori had to go and see the village Holy One.

The monks of the hierarchy of the church looked and sounded quite odd. All males, castrated while still children, they tended to be small and wizened, with weak sopranolike voices, without hair or horn. Only the eyes showed that there was a lot more going on in the head than their appearance indicated.

“I must confess that I am not wholly in favor of this union,” the monk told him. “The role of females in this society is quite tightly prescribed, and no matter why the gods have chosen to put that person in that body, it was their holy will that it be so, just as it was for you. You were a step beyond her in your spiritual development, hence you were reborn male, and she was a step behind. In a sense, both of you were given a great gift. Few may be spiritually reevaluated while still alive. You were promoted, Julian was demoted one step, as it were. The proof of the lightness of it is how well you have adapted under a mental and cultural burden the rest of us do not have to share. That is why Julian is having so many problems with it; it is always more difficult to go down than up. I know the argument for the randomness of the Well process, but we reject it. There is a reason for all that happens. Randomness is an illusion. I fear that the joining of the two of you might well undermine that process.”

Lori remembered Julian’s warning that this monk was both devious and dangerous. Maybe they all were. Playing god and meddler on some level was the only thing they had.

“Are you telling me then, Holy One, that you will not allow it?”

“I am of two minds on it. On the one hand, there must be a reason why, out of 780 racial possibilities for each of you, both of you were reborn Erdomese and have come together in this way. On the other hand, since Julian will tend to cling to her old self more in your constant company, by allowing it I might jeopardize her immortal soul.” He sighed and thought a moment. “There is a possible compromise position here.”

“Yes?”

“First, what are your plans afterward?”

“Um, well, I am weary of being a needless guard for an old trader. I need more of a challenge. I had thought to travel to Aqomb and find tutors to teach me the full written language of Erdom. Once I am reasonably proficient, I hope to gain a position in the civil service there.”

The monk nodded, pleased with the answer. “Very well. Here is what I will do, then. I will marry the two of you, but on the official papers I will place conditions. First, you must swear to me on your honor that you will continue with the herbal additives until they are gone. This is not just a religious requirement; to discontinue them now might well cause her to become very ill and cause permanent mental and emotional problems. Do not believe that I say this just to make you do it. I swear upon the Holy of Holies that what I tell you is true.”

She didn’t like it, but there was nothing she could do about it for now. “All right, I swear it. But I must know what they are.”

“They are simply aids. In layman’s terms, they help her mind and body become one and her behavior to be consistent with Erdomese culture.”

“And in nonlayman’s terms? I was once a scientist.”

The monk gave a thin smile. “In technical parlance, they are natural psychochemical blockers and facilitators of attaining desired hormonal balances. One, for example, is a hybrid of two herbs used for countless generations as aphrodisiacs. Over a period of time the body begins to treat the blockers and newly set hormonal levels as normal and produces them naturally as needed. Once that happens, the drugs have no further effect and can be discontinued. In midtreatment, however, the body’s balances are quite disturbed and discontinuance can produce what anyone might call insanity. The pharmacology is quite complex, actually. To go into more detail would involve going through the Pharmacopoeia, and you cannot at the moment read it.”

She was startled by this sudden rather sophisticated science and immediately saw what Julian meant when she said that this guy was no fool.

“I accept what you say. The problem I have is, what is it doing to her mind?”

“You won’t notice any changes from the way she is now so long as you continue them. The bottom line is that she won’t want to kill herself, and she will be accepting of her role.”

“Okay, that’s one condition. You said several.”

“Yes. When you reach Aqomb, you must check in and present the papers to the Holy Office there. They will monitor your compliance and her progress.”

“Very well.”

“Next, you will speak only Erdomese to one another, even in private. Language is the primary definer of a culture. You must believe that the Holy Office can determine if you uphold this or not in their examination of you both.”

She wasn’t sure how they could tell, but right now she would agree to anything just to get it done and over with.

“And finally, as soon as practical after the marriage but certainly before you retire for the night, you must consummate the marriage and present her for examination by me the next day. Then, and only then, will I give you the papers. Failure in any one of these may result in the marriage being annulled, and if it is, you will not see her again and may yourself face criminal penalties. Once you are married, you are morally and legally responsible for her and you will be held accountable. Remember, too,” he added, possibly guessing at her ultimate intentions, “that even if you leave our land, you have had your living rebirth. There will be no more change in race, sex, or anything else until you die and are again reborn. There is no running from it. There are no colonies here. You both will be Erdomese and nothing else.”

Well, the monk had sure laid it on the line. “All right, I agree.” Lori said. “I swear it to you here and now.” He hoped he could fulfill the duties he was agreeing to. As a male and an Erdomese, he was still a virgin.

“Very well. I assume you can write in some language?”

“Several. Just not Erdomese—yet.”

“All right, then, I will dictate the contract, and you will write it in the language of your choosing. One copy for you in your language, certified as a true copy by me, and the other in Erdomese for official use. Those, and the marriage contract, will suffice. When do you leave?”

“Well, Posiphar has indicated that he might well go to Aqomb himself for a while and take a rest. If he does, we’ll go with him. The hope is to leave just before dawn the day after tomorrow so that we can hit a small oasis at midday.”

“Very well. Then you will marry tomorrow. I will then be there before you leave the next morning to make my examinations and, if satisfactory, hand you the papers.”

The interview was over. “Thank you, Holy One. I will try to be worthy of your trust,” he said, rising, bowing slightly, and leaving the prayer sanctuary.

He headed for Julian, who was still locked up by decree until the marriage, to tell her the good and the not so good parts of the news.

“I speak in Erdomese,” he said right off, “because one of the conditions was that we speak nothing else to one another, and I do not wish to have anything go wrong.”

“It will be so,” she agreed.

“The reason why you have changed so much in here is that they have been giving you herbs to facilitate the process,” he told her. “They are strong, and the Holy One knows his business. I am commanded to keep you on them until they are gone. He said that to stop them now would cause you to go mad. He also said that they would not change you more than you are now, that it is just to ensure that you remain this way. He also said that an examination by others could tell. Does this bother you?”

“No,” she responded. “It—gives me relief. Now I understand why I have been this way. It helps me. And if it frees me from this place, I will take anything they wish. I know they can probably tell. That is one thing they are experts at here. Getting what they want.”

“Then we do it tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow!” Julian was excited. “But—I will need more than this! I can’t get married looking and smelling like this!”

Lori grinned. “You look just fine to me, but I’ll speak to Aswam. Most likely his wives and daughters can help you.

He’ll probably try and rob me blind for the service, but until tomorrow he’s stuck with you.”

Julian laughed, the first laugh she’d had since she’d gotten here. “And I will be a good little girl until he has no hold on me. I promise.”

“Um, one more thing. They require that we consummate as soon as possible after marriage.”

“Well, I am ready for that. I would not have it any other way, as I told you before, even though it is another way they hope to hold us here.”

“Huh? Why is that?”

“They hope I will get pregnant, which will restrict us, and that I will have children, which will limit us more. With nations so small and so different, it is unlikely that the others would welcome families as settlers. It does not worry me. One day I might like to have children, but it is not how you do it here that counts. Even births are regulated from on high, so that the nations do not get too many people to support. That is what they told us when we came in here.”

Reminded of that, Lori felt a little more relieved. She didn’t think they had a population problem here at the moment, and she’d seen some babies in her travels, but not a lot of them. The fact that at least by observation it appeared that twins were the norm made the chances even lower.

“That’s supposing that we can do it right to begin with,” she joked.

Julian gave a soft laugh. “That should not be a problem. You know what a woman wants; I know what a man wants. When you consider that, we should be the most perfect couple in all history!”

After Lori left to make the arrangements, Julian had to chuckle at the sudden realization that she was still of two minds. As a human male she’d been divorced with no children; now, as an Erdomese female, she was to be married and could have her own children, and something in her really craved the kind of family life Julian Beard had rarely experienced. Lori might find what he was looking for elsewhere, but she would never again fly a plane, let alone a spacecraft, never again do meaningful research—not with this body and these hands—and, curiously, she didn’t really mind. She’d railed against that knowledge most of all in the beginning, but it no longer seemed to matter now. Oh, she was glad that she’d done those things and had those memories, but at the age of forty Julian Beard, from a broken home and with no wife or family, had accomplished as much or more on his own than his boyhood dreams had ever imagined. She hadn’t realized until now how empty some of the triumphs had been without anyone to share them with.

She wondered if in fact the Well had screwed up or whether, somehow, becoming Julian Beard’s complete opposite—sexually, technologically, and in every other way—wasn’t what was exactly right for her at the moment. Now she was supporting Lori’s show, and it felt comfortable to be in that role and stop fighting. Lori might never understand it, but that, too, was all right.

Husbands never understood their wives, did they?

Julian in fact looked stunning for the tiny wedding, with long golden earrings—a series of squares linked together with chain, hanging down from punctures in the lowest part of the equine ears—a matching necklace, a pinkish glow applied judiciously to her face and upper body, hooves and “fingers” shined to almost a reflective polish, and her hair and tail done up in the traditional style, rising from golden tubes out across her back and up from the rear and then slinkily down to almost the ankles. Aswam’s women had done her up just right, and she had just the body for it.

Lori was stunned by the look. In the dark shed he hadn’t even noticed that Julian’s hair was a sultry light reddish-brown, and the combination now put the other women around to shame.

Somehow, too, he’d expected Julian to be taller. It was true that Lori was very large for an Erdomese male, and he’d gotten used to being higher than everybody else by a few inches, but Julian looked positively tiny beside him, with only that huge mane of hair bringing her up to near his shoulders. She also looked so young, although certainly amply developed.

The wedding was brief and simple, held in a small demonstrator tent on Aswan’s property, with only the tentmaker and his women and Posiphar and his women in attendance. In some ways the oaths taken before the witnesses and priest were everything Lori had hated back on Earth; Julian had to promise to honor, respect, and “obey absolutely” her husband, while Lori was required to swear only that he accepted all responsibilities, morally and legally, for his wife’s welfare. More interestingly, the word “love” was nowhere to be found. That, at least, Lori thought, was not dishonest; he wasn’t in love with Julian, but he did find her incredibly attractive on all levels, and love might come later. Neither, however, really knew the other yet—which was in some ways also consistent with Erdomese tradition.

Then there were fruit drinks and exotic pastries and some of the exotic-sounding Erdomese music from two of his daughters who had some talent in that direction, and that was it. By the heat of midday they were in a guest tent not too far away, the floor of which was covered with the large, varicolored pillows that were the most common furnishings in the nation.

Julian sighed. “Well, now I am Lori-Julian, or Madam Lori. Husband’s name goes first here, but even if you take a dozen more wives I’ll still be the only Madam Lori.”

“I know,” Lori replied, stretching out on the pillows and sighing. “Sorry, I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“You are lucky. I got none at all. I never thought I would ever get married again. And I surely never thought I would be somebody’s wife .”

Lori frowned and looked up at her. “You were married?”

“A disaster. I will tell you about it if you want. We were divorced years ago, and after she remarried, I never saw or heard from her again. You were never married?”

“No. I lived with a string of men off and on, the last one for five years. We had just broken up for good when I got the offer to cover the meteor strike.” He smiled sadly. “Want to know the ultimate irony? I forced the issue. I was closing in on forty, and my biological clock was in screaming mode. The idea of children frightened him to death for some reason. I pressed, he left. Just moved out without a word.” The smile turned to a nasty grin. “How I’d like to see him now!”

Julian chuckled. “Yes, it might be fun to see Holly now, too. I’ve got twice her cleavage in both ways. Useful, too. They actually are ‘jugs,’ you might say, holding water until near the time of birth, when Mother Nature throws a switch inside. You think you have problems. Erdomese gestation is almost a year long, and the little buggers have hooves.” She lay down beside him. “We can get some rest now and do what we must later,” she suggested, “but can you at least satisfy one bit of curiosity I’ve had since I woke up here?”

“Huh? What?”

“Will you take that thing off? I’ve got to know if it really is that big or if those things are falsies.”

Lori shifted around, removed the codpiece, and put it to one side, then rolled back. He’d never seen anybody’s eyes get that big.

“Oh, my! Ohmy, oh my…”

It proved a lot easier, and a lot better, than either of them had thought it would be.

The land changed considerably as they neared the coast, becoming harder and more like the deserts of the American southwest or the steppes of Kazakhstan than like the Saharalike interior. Water here could be found coming from fissures in the rocks or occasionally in streams around which sprang dramatic vegetation. Because of this, they would often run into wandering herds of amat, twon, or zalj, the Erdom equivalent of the bison, the cow, and the antelope, respectively, and, here and there, signs of mahdag, the elephantine and vicious yaklike creatures of the steppes. Overhead, the fierce pterodactyllike maguid would swoop down in aerial packs; while preferring carrion, maguid were perfectly willing to do their own killing if they were really hungry.

Posiphar had exchanged the sand skis for wooden wheels, and it occasionally took all of them to get it up some of the grades and all of them to keep it from going down some grades ahead of them. Mostly, the daughters pulled it, the others walking beside.

“This place could be beautiful if you knew the rules and what was dangerous and what was not,” Julian noted. “Unfortunately, I do not know those rules, and it seems pretty scary to me.”

“I’ve seen little here that scares me,” Lori assured her. “Nothing I couldn’t take with a spear or arrow, anyway. Mahdag is a different story, but I don’t want to try one of those.”

“There be them who hunt them,” Posiphar remarked. “And them who be offerings of mahdag to the maguid who have tried to hunt them, too. Luckily, they be few and far between, and the ground be shaken long afore they come.”

“Have you ever seen one?” Lori asked him.

“Yes, several times in this district, always from a distance and going the correct way, which is not the same way the mahdag be going. The cursed beasts be a head or more taller than even y’self and weigh a couple of tons or more.”

Lori shook his head in wonder. “What do they eat? It would seem that it would take a lot to satisfy just one of them.”

“Oh, there be a lot more vegetation around on some of these plateaus and mesas than ye’d think,” the old trader told him. “I be not sure anyone has ever had the opportunity to study livin’ ones and survive, but I be certain that they be vegetarians and kill entirely for pleasure.”

The church taught that the mahdag had once been people, evil ones beyond redemption, doomed to wander in the wastes until the end of the world.

The trip had been an uneventful one as usual, and Lori and Julian had pretty well stuck to the bargain. She was even mixing the herbs herself according to the instructions passed on to them. They also practiced some social rules that Lori at least had never even noticed before, although he’d been around Posiphar’s wives and daughters since arriving in Erdom. He should have noticed, though, and he felt bad about his lapse, since most were really designed to keep women in their “place.”

For instance, a wife or daughter could address a husband or father easily, and also any other woman, but conversing directly with any other man, unless specifically invited to do so by husband or father, was forbidden. Since Julian considered Posiphar’s family a set of ignorant little airheads, she talked mostly to Lori, but never interrupting a conversation Lori was having with Posiphar. This grated a bit on Julian’s nerves, but she held it in and practiced it anyway. She was well aware that she was still on some kind of probation and that it all could be yanked away, and that was her biggest terror.

Still, when they got to the start of the last mesa, they found themselves in an actual forest, which seemed strange and alien to them after so long in the desert, and when they emerged from it at the other end, the whole of the Sultanate of Aqomb was spread out below them in the late afternoon light, and even Julian had to gasp.

The town itself sat on a broad coastal plain, its towers and spirals and vast honeycomb of streets looking like something out of the Arabian Nights. The green of trees and grass, in parks within the city walls as well as outside and up the coast as far as the eye could see, made it seem literally a different world. But what was even more startling was the view beyond, not only just to the east of the city but also to the south of it, and it wasn’t the vast expanse of the West Arm of the Sea of Turigen, either, although that seemed amazing enough. It was the shimmering curtain that seemed to follow the coast all the way through which most of the water was glimpsed, a curtain that seemed to rise up to heaven itself.

“That’s right,” Posiphar cackled, “Ye never seen a hex boundary afore. That there be the border with Hadron. All the nations be bordered like that, all over the world. It can be kinda odd sometimes, not like now. I hear tell of some where it be havin’ ice fallin’ from the skies and as cold as the lower hells on one side, and on the other side it be sunny and warm as the Hjolai at midday.”

“And that to the right—it looks like the same sort of thing, only solid. You sure can’t see through it.”

The wall there did indeed look thick and translucent; it reflected the sun to some extent but was a mottled gray-black going from behind to ahead of them as far as could be seen.

“That be the Zone Boundary,” Posiphar told him. “Inside there is where ye came in, somewheres. Damn thing’s so huge, you can put dozens of nations in it at least. Even where they be havin’ great weapons, they can’t blast through it, chip it, even scratch it. The only way in or out of it is by the Great Zone Gate, which be hidden by that tall building down there built up against the wall. I hear tell it be a mighty strange thing. Ye walk through any of them, and it’s like a tunnel and there you are in the Zone. But no matter if ye walk in your own, or someplace far away, even on the other side of the world, when ye leave the Zone, ye walk out right there. If ye travel as I know ye intends, remember that. Any gate will take you to Zone, and any gate out of Zone will take ye right there. Be a whale of a shortcut home.”

Both he and Julian stared at that wall. Inside there was where they’d awakened after dropping through, somehow, to Zone from Brazil. Inside there they’d received their briefings and gone through the gate the first time and wound up here.

“Can anybody just use it?” he asked.

“Well, yes ‘n’ no. Accordin’ to treaties, anybody’s supposed t’ be allowed to walk through any gate, but not everybody likes everybody else and not everybody signs treaties, and some who does sign treaties don’t always remember what’s in ‘em, if you gets my meanin’. Still, mostly you can, but you only can if ye turn ‘round and come right back to home. Zone itself’s for official types only. Kinda handy for some emergency-type trade, though. If ye needs somethin’ quick, ye can always have a fellow someplace far off push it into Zone by his gate, then ye pick it up there and push it back and it’s here.”

“You mean things as well as people are transported? That’s not like the ones we went through.”

“Oh, it be handy, but limited. Mostly things like medicines and stuff and fancy stuff for the rich come through. Most all else goes in or out by ship and overland by all sorts of ways. It don’t allow no animals or bugs or stuff through, so it’s safe, but them critters can get into Zone, so they spray and inspect and all that in there, and they really don’t allow much use of the thing for that kind of trade, you see. Most bugs and stuff don’t like it outside their home, and most races can’t catch other races’ diseases, but there’s always a few what can. And most anything can live inside the Zone.”

“Have you ever been outside of Erdom?” he asked the trader.

“Me? A few times, yes. Not far, though, and not on any of them floating contraptions. Been up north where they grow tobacco. Be a big trade item here, only for the very rich. Gave it up, though, after a while. Them Ambrezans be mighty strange folks, and I don’t much like them contraptions floatin’ you in air and all that. Also it be wet and smelly, with water just hangin’ in the air. They be also makin’ smart remarks about our ways and looks and how I treats me wives and all that. The longer you’re away, too, the better home seems. This place was made fer us.”

Lori couldn’t imagine himself having that problem, but he might. Who could tell what sorts of places those other hexes were? “Is there anywhere where we can see a map of the world? Find out about some of the other hexes and races and the like?”

“Oh, there’s plenty books ‘n’ maps and stuff, but if ye can’t read Erdomese, it don’t matter, does it? Down by the port there ye can get stuff in a ton of crazy languages as well as the one they use for translators so we can talk to one another, even them what don’t have mouths. But ye can’t read that, neither, so what’s the use? Best go down to the port and pump some of them funny critters that runs the boats.”

Julian’s head came up and looked at Lori, who had the same sudden thought. “You mean those translators work— even in Erdom?”

“Yep, they do. Got several kinds. Some folks wear ‘em, some get ‘em stuck inside ‘em—don’t recommend that be done in Erdom! I hear tell they be hexes where they can look right inside you and see what’s there and do all sorts of miracle things. The rich and nobles go there when they needs stuff. ‘Course, you and me, we can’t afford it and don’t have the contacts.” He looked at the sun. “We better be gettin’ on down there if we want to be on the flat afore dark. It be all downhill from here and windy. The woods don’t stop here where ye think; they just go down, too.”

The sun did set before they were all the way down; the road was good, but they were descending maybe two kilometers or more in a fairly steep grade, and the compensation was a serpentine roadway that switched back and forth on itself for what seemed like forever.

Still, even though it was some distance yet to the city, the flat made it easy going and the city was certainly not something anybody could miss. It was big and bright and seemed lit up like a million Christmas trees.

Julian’s past military experience spotted a puzzle. “I wonder why they have city walls if they light the place up like that.”

Even Posiphar didn’t know the answer to that when Lori passed along the question to him. “Guess if anybody be attackin’, they’d put them lights out,” he guessed.

This was one city that did not close at night. Oh, the shops and bazaars were closed, but there seemed to be clubs and nightlife and eateries and music and gaiety all over the place, all illuminated by brilliant oil lamps, some, with stained glass, casting fairyland glows that ranged the spectrum.

Posiphar directed them to a small hotel. “Farewell, lad. It’s been a very interestin’ time we be with you, and the gods go with you. With my brood we be stayin’ with some old friends in their place near the docks. Ye mind yer money, now. Ye ain’t got much, and it goes quick.”

Lori felt like he was losing his oldest friend, which in a way was true, but they parted on a handshake rather than the embrace he almost gave the old fellow. Men did not do that, not in Erdom.

Julian looked at the hotel. “Well, my husband, it looks a little seedy, but cheap at least.”

Lori grinned. “You mind your manners and tongue here or we’ll both be in trouble.”

“Yes, sir, my Lord and Master,” Julian responded mockingly, but she shut up.

The place was a little seedy, but it wasn’t all that cheap.

While he liked the city, its sights, sounds, and smells, Lori had to wonder how long he could afford to stay around this place before he had to find a job of some kind. At this rate, not long, and there was much to learn and probably a lot of money to raise before they could ship out of here.

The next morning he got directions from the desk clerk to the Holy Office. Best to get that out of the way as soon as possible, they’d both agreed, although it was not something they looked forward to. Posiphar had confirmed that the church was a master of drugs and potions, and it was here, in the unique climate and conditions of the south coast, that they grew and bred their stuff. He’d figured as much. If a monk in a jerkwater town like the one they were married in knew that much, imagine what the ones here knew and could do!

The monk read over the marriage contract and the annotations and paperwork from the desert monk. Then they were separated, somewhat to Julian’s panic, and taken to different rooms that looked very much like Erdomese-designed versions of doctors’ examining rooms, and that was what they proved essentially to be. The monk who examined Lori seemed a bit younger and in a little better shape than the others he’d seen, but the doctor knew his stuff and gave a pretty reasonable physical. At the end the monk left for a couple of minutes, then returned with three small cups filled with different colored liquids.

“Recline on the examining couch and take the orange liquid and then relax,” Lori was instructed. “I will return in a few more minutes. Your wife is fine, and I’m sort of going between the two of you.”

Lori noted that the doctor didn’t leave until the liquid was clearly swallowed. It tasted like burned orange.

After a while things got very pleasantly hazy, although he was never completely out. He just lay there, kind of floating, and he didn’t feel any anxiety when the monk-doctor returned and checked his eyes and reflexes.

After that came a whole series of questions, and he answered every one, although the moment he answered, he found he couldn’t remember the question or the answer. Feeling good, he was agreeable when told to down the green liquid, and after a very short time, he was out cold, at least as far as he was concerned, and he never did know about the third cup.

He woke up later feeling absolutely great, supercharged with energy. He also felt different somehow as well, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was at the start. Let’s see… He knew who he was, and where he was, and why he was here… Something about a woman… His wife? No, that wasn’t it. Oh, yeah. He’d been a woman, from a different world, and he’d carried part of her inside him since he got here. Now she was gone. Not the memory, although that seemed both alien and irrelevant to him. All those feelings, all those emotions, all those conflicts seemed to have vanished now. He felt no conflict; he was all man, and he liked it that way. He liked being Erdomese, too. He couldn’t imagine being anything but what he was, even though the back of his mind assured him he had been. He was glad to be rid of that wimpish element.

Next door Julian awoke also feeling simply wonderful. She, too, had a feeling that something was gone, but, as with Lori, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. All she could remember was that she’d been sick some way, and they’d made her well, and now she was First Wife to the most handsome, virile, wonderful man and that was that.

The monks studied them from hidden recesses in the walls and nodded to one another. Lori would take the prescription down to the pharmacy and get more of the second and third drugs. The second they would both take, and they would effectively rehypnotize each other. The third, which only Lori would take, would cause overwhelming hormonal changes that would wash the last traces of Lori Ann Sutton from his conscious actions and inner thoughts.

They would make good citizens.

The monks’ plans might have worked well except for their own introduction of a factor that they never thought of as a threat.

A note on official government stationery had been left at the Holy Office for Lori, and it was given to him dutifully as the pair left.

Lori was quite puzzled at it and even more puzzled that anyone would think he might be able to read it, but he found that he could. It was written in, of all things, classical Greek.

This is a just-in-case note. I have word from Zone that you were made into an Erdomese male. While it is difficult for me to imagine you other than as you were, it is a very good thing you were made male if it had to be Erdom, as you know.

I had intended to come to you, but in your own port where this is being written and where I have been trying to locate you, there has been a serious attempt on my life. I cannot imagine any motive for this except from Nathan Brazil, and, since he knows I cannot be killed, I can only guess that he has learned of my intentions and is attempting to slow me down, possibly lay me up for weeks or months in a nontech hex hospital, or at the very least kidnap me and imprison me somewhere in the interior. This means that the race is on, and time is not on my side. I need your help. The fate of countless thousands of worlds is at stake, as well as, quite possibly, this one. My best bet is to head for the Zone Gate if I can get to it safely, which will return me to Ambreza just to the north. If I cannot get into Zone, I’ll have to take a ship, but few have ever been able to prevent me from going where I want to get into.

I have left messages everywhere I dare that I feel are reasonably secure. If you made it here and are reading this, I plead with you in the spirit of comradeship we once had not long ago to join me. I must get out of here today before more attempts are made—one might succeed. It is unlikely that they would know you by sight or current name, so you should be safe. I have left money on account with you at the Gryssod Shipping Line on Baszabhi Street at the port. Money right now is the least of my problems. Use the account to purchase tickets on the first ship north to the port of Sukar in Itus. Register at the Transient Main hotel. Someone will contact you there and get you in touch with me or provide the means to get to me.

I will not minimize the task. It is long, arduous, and dangerous. The prize, however, is that if we win and beat him to the Well, you can name any treasure, any reward, anything you like. There is literally no limit. I hope to see you very soon.

It was signed “Alama—Mavra Chang.” The date was only four days old.

He gestured for Julian to follow and went out, trying to figure out what to do next. She followed meekly, without questions. Certainly this put a different light on things. He liked the fact that she was pleading with him to help her. He remembered her as small and weak compared to a big man like him. She needed a warrior, and that was at the moment the only thing he was qualified to do.

And the reward certainly beat working for a living.

Instead of going back to the hotel, he went to the port and, after a few inquiries, found the shipping agency. The clerk, who looked something like a Julian-sized bowling ball on stilts with two huge oval eyes, was disconcerting, being the first non-Erdomese he’d seen since the dragon back in Zone. It also had the most irritating high-pitched voice he’d ever heard.

“Is there a ship leaving any time soon for Sukar, in Itus?” he asked.

“There usually is, sir,” the thing replied. “Drat these old-fashioned written schedules. It takes time to find anything. Itus, Itus… Yes, here it is. There is a ship leaving this evening, in fact.”

“And how long would it take to get there?”

“Well, it is quite along trip, sir, and the only ones likely to put in here are coastal steamers.”

“Never mind that! How long?”

“With stops, five days, more or less.”

Five days.“And how long is it from—” What was the name of that place? Think! “—from Ambrosia or something like that to Itus?”

“You mean Ambreza, sir?”

“It sounds right. North of here?”

“Immediately north, so just minus one day, sir.”

One day. So if Mavra got back to Ambreza and set out for Itus from there, it meant that she was five days ahead of him. Five, plus the five days for Lori to get there by boat, was ten—maybe less if Mavra had to travel from the hex gate in Ambreza to the port and get transit. Clearly, overland wasn’t an option from the way the letter was phrased.

The offered reward, however exaggerated, sure seemed better than working for years.

He looked at Julian. This wasn’t a job for a girl, but she was his wife, and he was responsible, and he’d need somebody along to attend to him. The hell with it.

“Book two on that ship. There should be an account in my name left here to cover the tickets. Lori of Alkhaz and First Wife.” Damn! That name sounded dumb to him now. He’d have to change it sometime, but not until he’d linked up with Chang.

There was in fact a pouch left for him, which included not only sufficient money for passage but some international coins for expenses and another copy of a similar letter in Greek that contained no new information.

He went back to the hotel, pausing only to stop at a chemist’s shop and get a prescription from the monks filled. It never entered his head why he was doing it or that he shouldn’t.

“Pack what we have,” he told Julian curtly. “We’re going on a trip.”

She looked puzzled but neither objected nor asked questions about it.

The monks’ plot would work for a while. But there was only a four-day supply in the vials, and when he felt the urge to get more, both he and Julian would be hundreds of kilometers away from the nearest chemist who could fill it and heading farther away from Erdom.