Exiles at the Well of Souls

Teliagin

Even walking, twenty kilometers isn’t really that far—if you know where you’re going. But sunrise on the second day had brought heavy clouds totally obscuring the sun. All through the night there had been the far-off toll of drums, messages relayed from one point to another throughout the hex in an unknown and unguessable code.

Mavra Chang suspected that the messages involved speculations about the strange beings, rather small, who had crashed in some sort of flying machine and were now on the loose somewhere in the land.

At least it didn’t rain; they were thankful for that. It continued dark and ominous all day, though; the cover was much too thick to see the sun and guess direction. In ordinary circumstances, Chang would have waited for clearer skies despite the dangers, but she knew that the deadly disease was eating away at her two companions, and if she didn’t make those mountains and that coast quickly, there would be no hope.

Every once in a while doubt would creep into the back of her mind, doubt born of the logical probability that the new lands would be no more friendly than this one. The denizens—for all she knew, more cyclopses—would be no friendlier, no more advanced, no more able to help.

And, worse, although she was certain that they weren’t backtracking, she really didn’t know in which direction they were going. She had started off in the same direction, of course, but the woods were thick; there were some broad dirt roads and wide meadows to avoid, and who knew whether they had picked up in the same way after they had been forced to divert?

About the only good news had been the apples. At least, they looked a lot like apples, although they grew on bushes and had a funny, purple skin. Almost in desperation, she had gambled on some food source—and the lower-level wildlife looked warm-blooded and somewhat familiar. If alien bacteria hadn’t already gotten to them, then it was probably not going to—or so she prayed.

The big rodents ate the fruit with abandon, and she decided to risk doing likewise. Nikki, despite having her appetite drug-depressed, was still the hungriest, and she probably couldn’t have been restrained much longer, anyway. Mavra let the girl eat one, knowing they should wait several hours for the test to be conclusive, but when she reported the fruit to be sweet and good and easily chewed, the temptation to Mavra, whose own appetite could not be depressed, became too much to ignore.

They satisfied, they were good, and they were plentiful, apparently an important part of the upper animal food chain of this place. And they were doubly important. They proved that, no matter what else happened, Mavra Chang could survive here.

The second day had been a lot more satisfactory than the first. Even so, she was uncertain. The other two, now, had seen the great cyclopses, with their fierce expressions and nasty fangs, pulling wooden hand-hewn carts along the roads and tending flocks of animals that looked much like common sheep in the meadows.

Neither of the two spongies had shown much change as yet, but that was deceptive, she knew. In normal conversation there was little difference between an IQ of 100 and an IQ of 150. There was no question that Nikki would deteriorate faster; she was a little above average, but no genius.

As darkness fell at the end of the second day, the mountains were still nowhere in sight and the landscape didn’t seem to have varied much at all. There was a chill in the air from the damp, humid skies and a light drizzle. Neither Renard nor Nikki was at all comfortable; they had no protection, in or out of those filmy things from New Pompeii, and although Mavra’s clothing provided decent protection, she was by far the smallest of the three and had nothing to spare that could fit either of the others.

The darkness of the second evening was as much in their spirits as in the night surrounding them.

She tried bunching them all together for body warmth, but she was so small and their skin so cold and clammy that all this seemed to do was transfer their misery to her. Nikki, being heavy and unaccustomed to exercise, was, as usual, the first to fall asleep, leaving her with Renard, as before. They sat there awhile, thinking of little to say. He had his arm around her, holding her close to him, but it was not a romantic gesture, not an advance. It was a binding together in the face of adversity.

Finally, he said, “Mavra, do you really think there’s any point to all this? You and I both know we don’t even know where we are or what’s over the next hill or even whether the next hill isn’t some previous hill.”

The question irritated her, because it vocalized her own inner doubts. “There’s always a point to it until you’re dead,” she replied, and she believed it.

“You really think so?” he responded. “Not just brave talk?”

She shifted slightly, looking away from him, out into the blackness.

“I was raised by a rough freighter captain. Not the most ideal parent, I guess, but, in her own way, she did love me, I think, and I loved her. I grew up in space, the big freighter my playground, the big ports new and dazzling amusements every few weeks.”

“Must’ve been lonely,” he commented.

She shook her head. “No, not at all. After all, it was all I ever knew. It was normal to me. And it taught me how to be on my own for long periods of time—conditioned me against the loneliness, made me rely on myself. That was important, because my mother was doing a lot of illegal stuff. Most freighter captains do, but this must’ve been really big. The Com Police busted her and the ship was seized. I was about thirteen then, and I was in the stores along the port, shopping. I found out what happened, but couldn’t do anything. I knew that if I showed myself, the CPs would take me, too, maybe give me a psych wipe, and turn me over to the Com. So, I stayed on Kaliva.”

“Ever feel guilty you didn’t try to spring her?” Renard asked, knowing the sensitivity of the question but realizing that Mavra Chang wanted somebody to talk to.

“No, I don’t think so,” she answered truthfully. “Oh, I had all sorts of plots in my head—a thirteen-year-old girl, a little over a meter tall and weighing about twenty-five kilos—to rush them, battle them, heroically rescue my mom, and dash away in the ship to unknown space. But I never even could get the chance. They had her away and the ship impounded in a matter of an hour or two. No, I was alone.”

“You don’t like the Com very much, by your tone,” he noted. “Any special reason?”

“They murdered my family,” she almost spat. “I was only a little more than five years old, but I can remember them. Harvich’s world went Com with sponge syndicate muscle and rigged votes, and my folks—my real folks—had been fighting them every step of the way. I got the whole story later, from Maki—my stepmother—when I got older. They refused to leave at the start, then found they couldn’t leave when the Com process started. Somehow—I don’t know how—they hired a spacer to get me out, one piloting a supply freighter for the Com process. Funny—after all these years I can still remember him. A strange little man in colorful clothes with a big, brassy voice that always had several tones in it. Some of those tones I later recognized as pure cynicism, but there was an underlying gentleness and kindness about him that he seemed desperate to hide but couldn’t. It’s funny—I’m not even sure of his name, and I was with him for only a few days when I was five, yet he’s as real to me as my stepmother, who actually got me out. Looking back, I think it’s incredible that a five-year-old spoiled brat like me would go with him. There was just something in him one liked, trusted. I often wonder if he was human—I’ve never met anybody else like that, ever.”

Renard was no psychologist, but he recognized the depth of the impression this man had made on Mavra Chang. She had been hunting for him, or someone like him, all her life.

“Ever try and find him?” he asked her.

She shrugged. “I was much too busy staying alive the next few years. By the time I had the means, he was probably dead or something. I have to admit that a number of people seemed to recognize him from my description, but there was nothing tangible. Some people said I was describing a fairy-tale legend, a mythical space captain who had never existed but was just part of those epic stories all professions get. Once I met a captain, a real old veteran, who said that this man really existed, somewhere, and he was old. He was supposed to be immortal, living forever, going back to ancient times of prehistory.”

“What’s the name of this legend?” Renard prompted.

“Nathan Brazil. Isn’t that a strange name? Somebody said Brazil was the name of a prehistoric place, one of the early space powers.”

“The Wandering Jew,” Renard said, almost to himself.

“Huh?”

“An ancient legend among some of the old religions,” he told her. “There’s still a Christian planet or two around, I think. They are an offshoot of an even more obscure and older religion known as Judaism. They’re still around, too—scattered all over the place. Probably the most traditionally co—” he stopped for a second, looked puzzled and disturbed. “Co—” he tried.

“Cohesive?” she guessed.

He nodded. “That’s it. Why couldn’t I think of that word?” He let it drop, but Mavra had an eerie sensation. A little thing, but important.

“Well, anyway, there was supposed to be this man who was Jewish and claimed to be God’s son. For this the powers-that-be killed him, because they were scared he might lead a revolution or something. Supposedly he was to come back from the dead. One Jew was supposed to have cursed him at his execution and been told that he would stay until this god-man returned. This Nathan Brazil sounds like the legend brought up to modern times.”

She nodded. “I never really believed all that stuff about immortals flying spaceships, but a lot of spacers who don’t believe in anything believe in his existence.”

Renard smiled. “That may explain what happened to you. If it’s a widespread legend, then somebody who knew it could imitate him, maybe convince the other spacers he was this legendary figure. They’d do favors for him they wouldn’t do for an ordinary captain. Make supersi—supershi—oh, hell!” he ended in frustration, unable to get the word out.

She got the meaning. “I don’t know. You’re probably right. But there was something really strange about that man, something I can’t explain.”

“You were five years old,” he pointed out. “That’s an age to get funny impressions.”

Mavra wanted to break off the conversation, partly because it was hitting too close to home but also because of Renard’s increasing trouble with large words he was obviously used to using. He was starting to think out his sentences in advance, using different words than he normally would. His difficulty wasn’t really that apparent, but his speech was slower, more careful, more hesitant than it had been.

Tomorrow, she thought glumly, those words just might not be accessible to him at all. But, he still wanted to talk, and, she told herself, if that was the case it was best she do most of the talking.

Renard took up the theme and thankfully took the subject away from the mysterious Nathan Brazil.

“You said you were on your own at age thirteen,” he noted. “Wasn’t that kind of rough?”

She nodded. “There I was, on a strange world, looking like an eight-year-old, with nothing but a few coins that maybe would buy a meal, and I didn’t even know the street language. At least it wasn’t a Comworld. Kaliva, its name was. Kind of exotic and primitive. Open bazaars, shouting peddlers and salesmen—a noisy, grimy, people-filled kind of place. I knew that in such a place you needed money and protection. I had neither, so I looked around. There were a lot of beggars, some just poor, some con men, some cripples who couldn’t afford the med service. There were enough of them that they weren’t hassled by the local police, and people did give. I walked around, watched who was making money and who wasn’t, and where, and saw what I had to do. I used the last little bit of money I had to bribe a little girl to give me her clothes—really dirty, grungy, ripped, and tattered. Nothing really but a foul sheet that could be tied like a sari. Some water and a little mud, and I really looked like a horrible little street urchin. Then I went to work.”

Renard thought that maybe she was a horrible little street urchin at that point, but decided not to mention that aloud.

“I really hustled those first couple of weeks. I got fleas and occasionally worse, and I slept in doorways, alleys, and such. I worked the good corners. Beggars have territories, you know, and run off others who want to compete for the business, but I learned how to make friends with some of the best, did favors, gave them a percentage. I guess it was also because I looked so very young and so very down and out—the model for those charity pictures they always take, the poor, starving, angelic faces—that everybody kind of adopted me. I did pretty good. Even on the worst days I made enough to eat, or somebody who owned a food stall would slip me something.”

“No trouble with rape or gangs?” he asked, amazed.

“No, not really. A few really nasty incidents, but somebody always seemed to come along or I managed to get away. Beggars kind of stick together, too—once you’re accepted. One of them put me on to an old shack out near the city dump, and I lived there. It was pretty gamey, but after a while you get so you don’t notice the smells, the flies, or anything. Some charity medical clinics were around, so we got sick a lot but never for long. Everybody kept trying to get me out of there, but I conned them. I didn’t want anything I didn’t earn myself. I didn’t want to owe anybody anything.”

“How long did this go on?” Renard prompted.

“Over three years,” she answered. “It wasn’t a bad life. You got used to it. And, I grew up, developed a little—as much as I ever did, anyway—and dreamed. I used to go down to the spaceport every day when I’d made my quota or just couldn’t do it any more—begging is hard work sometimes—and look at the ships and peer in the dives at the spacers. I knew where I wanted to be again, someday—and finally I realized that begging would always get me by but never get me anywhere. Some of the spacers were real big spenders, since they had no home but the ships and little to spend anything on.”

Renard was shocked. “You don’t mean you—”

She shrugged. “I was too small to be a waitress, and I couldn’t reach over the bar. I never learned much about dancing, I didn’t have much in the way of social graces, and no real education. I talked like a wharf rat, and while Maki had taught me reading and writing and numbers, I hadn’t done much of it. I had only one thing to sell, and I sold it, learned how to sell it just right. Male, female, once, twice, ten times a night if I could. It got pretty boring after a while, and none of it meant anything, but, lord! How the money rolled in!”

He looked at her strangely in the near darkness, feeling slightly uncomfortable. It wasn’t what she was saying, but how she was saying it that affected him so. He wasn’t sure what to say. He was certain that she hadn’t told this to anyone, particularly a stranger—maybe not at all—in years. The fact that she was telling it now, and to him, meant something even his increasingly cloudy brain could fathom. Deep down, she was as scared as he was.

“You certainly speak well enough now,” he pointed out. “And you said you were a pilot. Did you make enough money to do all that?”

She laughed dryly. “No, not from that. I met a man—a very kind and gentle man, who was a freighter captain. He started coming around real regular. I liked him—he had some of those qualities I mentioned in my long-ago rescuer. He was loud, brash, cynical, detested the Com, and had the most guts of any man I’d ever known. I guess I knew I was in love with him, looked forward to seeing him, to meeting him, going out with him. It wasn’t like with the others. It wasn’t sex. I doubt if I could do that with any feeling with anybody. It was something else, something better than that. When I found out he was diverting often just to see me, our relationship grew even deeper. We complemented each other. And he owned his own ship, the Assateague, a really good, fast, modern job.”

“That’s kind of unusual, isn’t it?” Renard commented. “I mean, those things are for corporations, not people. I never heard of a captain owning his own ship.”

“Yes, it is unusual,” she admitted. “It took a while to find out why. He finally asked me to come with him, move onto the ship. Said he couldn’t afford all these side trips. Well, that was what I’d always wanted, so of course I did. And then he had to tell me how he had so much money. He was a thief.”

Renard had to laugh. It was a ridiculous climax to her story. “What did he steal, and who from?” he asked.

“Anything from anybody,” she replied. “The freighter was a cover and afforded mobility. Jewels, art, gold, silver, you name it. If it had a high value, he stole it. Rich people, corporation heads, party leaders on Comworlds were a particular target. Sometimes there were break-ins, sometimes he did it with electronics and a fine knowledge of bureaucratic paperwork. After we got together, we became a team. He got all sorts of teaching machines, sleep learners, hypno aids, and the like for me, and he coached me and rehearsed me until I sounded educated and acted properly.” She giggled. “One time we broke into the master storage area in the Union of All Moons treasury building, exchanged some chips, and had the next three days’ planetary income automatically diverted to dummy interstellar units accounts in Confederacy banks, and even after we closed down, withdrew the stuff, and transferred it far away, they never caught on. I wonder if they ever did?”

“Your man—what happened to him?” Renard asked gently.

She turned somber again. “We were never caught by the police. Never. We were too good. One day, though, we lifted two beautiful little solid gold figurines by the ancient classical artist Sun Tat, and they had to be fenced to a big collector. The meet was arranged in a bar, and we had no reason to suspect anything was wrong. It was. The collector was a front for a big syndicate boss we’d hit a year or so earlier, and the whole thing was a set-up. They cut him into little pieces and left the figurines with the remains.”

“And you inherited the ship,” Renard guessed.

She nodded. “We’d gotten a traditionalist ceremony a year or so before, just in case, I didn’t really want to, but he’d insisted, and it turned out he was right. I was his sole heir.”

“And you’ve been alone ever since?” he added, fascinated by this strange little woman.

There was acid and cold steel in her voice. “I spent half a year tracking down his killers. Every one died—slowly. Every one knew why they were dying. At first the big boss didn’t even remember him!” Tears welled up in her eyes. “But he remembered at the end,” she added, with evident satisfaction.

“Since that time, I have continued the family trade, you might say,” she went on. “Both of them.

“I’ve paid for the best the underworld can offer, and kept myself in top shape. Surgeons have turned me into a small deadly weapon, with things you wouldn’t believe built in and deep-programmed. Even if I were ever caught, the story I just told you couldn’t even be gotten by deep-psych probe. They’ve tried.”

“You were hired to get Nikki out, weren’t you?” Renard said.

She nodded. “If you can’t catch a crook, set her to catch other crooks. That was the idea. It almost worked.”

He grunted at the last. It brought everything back to the present situation, although now he could understand why she believed they would get out of this. With a life like hers, miracles were a common, everyday occurrence.

“There’s nothing really to tell about me,” he said wistfully. “Nothing violent or romantic.”

“You said you were a teacher,” she noted.

He nodded. “I was from Muscovy. A Comworld, yes, but not a really serious one. None of that genetic-manipulation stuff. Traditional family structure, prayers five times a day— There is no God but Marx and Lenin is His Prophet—and testing to see where you fit into the communal structure.” He was audibly straining for the words. They came hard to him. He didn’t appear to notice.

“I was smart, so I was put in school. But I never was interested in anything useful, so I studied old literchur”—that’s the way he pronounced it, as best he could—“and became a teacher. I was always kind of effinate”—he meant effeminate—“in looks and acts, but not inside. I got a lot of fun poked at me. It hurt. Even the students were mean. Mostly behind my back, but I knew what they were saying. I didn’t like the men who liked other men, and the women all believed I didn’t like them. I kind of withdrew into my own shell, in my apartment with my books and vid files, and came out only for classes.”

“How about a psych?” she wondered.

“I went to a bunch,” he replied. “They all started talking about all sorts of wild things, did I love my father and all that. They put me in some kind of drug training that was supposed to change my mannerisms, but it didn’t work. The more they tried and failed, the more unhappy I got. Finally, I sat there one night and considered how little I had done. I hadn’t really directly touched one other life—even for the worst. I thought about killing myself, but the psych probes out-guessed me there, and the People’s Police came and got me before I could do it.”

“Would you have?” she asked seriously.

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. I sure haven’t since, have I? No guts, I guess. Or maybe they deep-programmed me not to.” He paused a moment in thought—or trying to organize his thoughts.

“They took me to the political asylum. I’d never been there before. They seemed kind of upset that I was thinking of killing myself. Took it personally, like because I failed, the system had failed. They thought about wiping me clean, maybe converting me to being a woman and doing a new personality that would match.”

“Why not just kill you and be done with it?” Mavra asked. “It would be cheaper and less trouble.”

He looked shocked, then remembered her own background. “They just don’t do that on Comworlds! Not Muscovy, anyway. No, I was kept there for a long time—I don’t know how long. Then somebody came by and told me that some bigwig wanted to talk to me. I had no choice, so I went. He was from a different Comworld, a real far-gone one—true hermaphroism, genetically identical people programmed to love their work, and so on. He said he needed, of all things, a librarian! People who could read books, and be familiar with them, were rare— thatwas true! Even Muscovy had a ninety-two percent ill—nonreader rate.” The big words got him, and he either badly mispronounced them or couldn’t handle them.

“Trelig,” she guessed.

He nodded. “Right. I was taken away on his ship to New Pompeii, given a huge overdose of sponge, and I was stuck. The OD did crazy things to me in the weeks and months that followed. My girlish manners were made a hundred times worse, and my features became more and more like those of a woman, even to the breasts. But—it was funny. My male organs actually grew, and, inside my head, I was still a man. I finally had my first real sex experience on New Pompeii. I really was his librarian, too—and I was also one of the guards for special prisoners, like Nikki, there. Everybody on New Pompeii had psych problems of some kind plus a skill Trelig needed. He recruited from the best political asylums in the Com.”

“And now here you are,” she said to him, very gently.

He sighed. “Yes, here I am. When I shot Ziggy and helped you get out, I felt it was the first really important thing I had ever done. I almost felt that I was born and existed only for that one moment, that one act—to be there to help you when you needed it. And now—look what a mess we have!”

She kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Go get to sleep and don’t worry so much. I haven’t lost yet—and if I haven’t, you haven’t either.”

She wished she believed that.