Midnight at the Well of Souls

THE CENTER IN CZILL

Vardia was assigned a basic apprentice’s job, doing computer research. She learned fast—almost anything they taught her—even though she couldn’t make a great deal of sense out of her part of the project she was on. It was like seeing only one random page from a huge book. In itself, nothing made any sense. Only when put together with thousands of other pages did a picture finally emerge, and even then the top researchers had the unenviable job of fitting all the pages together in the proper order.

She enjoyed the life immensely. Even though she didn’t understand her work, it was a constructive function with purpose, serving the social need. It was a comfortable niche. Here, indeed, is social perfection, she thought. Cooperation without conflict, with no basic needs beyond sleep and water, doing things that meant something.

After a couple of weeks on the job she began feeling somewhat dizzy at times. The spells would come on her, apparently without cause, and would disappear just as mysteriously. After a few such episodes she went to the central clinic. The doctors made a few very routine tests, then explained the problem to her.

“You’re twinning,” the physician said. “Nothing to be concerned about. In fact, it’s wonderful—the only surprise is that it has happened so fast after joining us.”

Vardia was stunned. She had met some twins off and on at the Center, but the idea that it would happen to her just never occurred to her.

“What will this do to my work?” she asked apprehensively.

“Nothing, really,” the doctor told her. “You’ll simply grow as each cell begins its duplication process. A new you will take shape growing out from your back. This process will make you a bit dizzy and weak, and, near its completion, will cause some severe disorientation.”

“How long does the process take?” she asked.

“Four weeks if you continue a normal schedule,” was the reply. “If you’re willing to plant day and night, about ten days.”

She decided to get it over with if she could. Although everyone else seemed excited for her, she, herself, was scared and upset. Her supervisor was only too glad to give her time off, as she had not worked on the project long enough to be irreplaceable. So she picked a quiet spot away from the Center and near the river and planted.

There was no problem during the nights, of course, but during the day, when she had to root by exercising the rooting tendrils voluntarily, she quickly became bored. Except for early morning and just before dusk, she was alone in the camp or else surrounded by unconscious Czillians sleeping off long round-the-clock work periods.

On the third day, she knew she had to have water and uprooted to go down to the stream. Doing so was more difficult than she would have thought possible. She felt as if she weighed a ton, and balance was a real problem. She could reach back and feel the growth out of her back, but it didn’t make much sense.

At the river’s edge she saw a Umiau.

She had seen them at the Center, of course, but only going from one place to another. This was the first one she had seen close up, and it just seemed to be lying there, stretched out on the sand, asleep.

The Umiau had the lower body of a fish, silvery-blue scales going down to a flat, divided tail fin. Above the waist it remained the light blue color, but the shiny scales were gone, leaving a smooth but deceptively tough skin. Just below the transition line was a very large vaginal cavity.

The Umiau had two large and very firm breasts, and the face of a woman who, were she in Brazil’s world, would have been considered beautiful despite hair that seemed to flow like silvery tinsel and bright blue lips. The ears, normally covered by the hair, were shaped like tiny shells and set almost flush against the sides of the head, and, Vardia saw, the nose had some sort of skin flaps that moved in and out as the creature breathed, probably to keep water out when swimming, she guessed. The long, muscular arms ended in hands with long, thin fingers and a thumb, all connected by a webbing.

Vardia stepped in to drink, and, as she did so, she saw other Umiau on and off along the banks, some swimming gracefully and effortlessly on or just beneath the surface. The river was shallow here, near the banks, but almost two meters deep in the center. On land they were awkward, crawling along on their hands or, at the Center, using electric wheelchairs.

But, as she saw from the swimmers in the river’s clear water, in their own element they were beautiful.

Most, like the sleeper nearby, wore bracelets of some colorful coral, necklaces, tiny shell earrings, or other adornments. She had never understood jewelry as a human, and she didn’t understand it now.

They all looked alike to her except for size. She wondered idly if they were all women.

Finishing her drink, she made her way, slowly, to the shore. She made large splashes and was terrified she would fall.

The noise awakened the sleeper.

“Well, hello!” she said in a pleasant, musical voice. The Umiau could make the sounds of the Czillian language, and most of them at the Center knew it. Czillians could not mock any other, so all conversations were in the Czillian tongue.

“I—I’m sorry if I awakened you,” Vardia apologized.

“That’s all right,” the Umiau replied, and yawned. “I shouldn’t be wasting my time sleeping, anyway. The sun dries me out and I have a fever for hours after.” She noticed Vardia’s problem. “Twinning, huh?”

“Y-yes,” Vardia replied, a little embarrassed. “My first time. It’s awful.”

“I sympathize,” the mermaid said. “I passed the egg this cycle, but I’ll receive it next.”

Vardia decided to root near the stream for a while, and did. “I don’t understand you,” she told the creatlure hesitantly. “Are you, then, a female?”

The Umiau laughed. “As much as you,” she replied. “We’re hermaphrodites. One year we make an egg, then pass it to another who didn’t, where it’s shot with sperm and develops. The next year, you get the egg passed to you. The third year you’re a neuter; then the cycle starts all over again.”

“You cannot abstain, then?” Vardia asked innocently.

The Umiau laughed again. “Sure, but few do, unless they get themselves sterilized. When the urge hits, honey, you do it!”

“It is pleasant, then?” Vardia persisted innocently.

“Unbelievably,” the Umiau replied knowingly.

“I wish this was,” Vardia pouted. “It is making me miserable.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” the Umiau told her. “You only do it two or three times in your very long lives.” The mermaid suddenly glanced at the sun. “Well, it’s getting late. It’s been pleasant talking with you, but I have to go. Don’t worry—you’ll make out. The twin’s coming along fine.”

And, without another word, it crawled into the water more rapidly than Vardia would have suspected possible and swam away.

The next few days were mostly boring repetitions of the earlier ones, although she did occasionally talk to other Umiau for brief periods.

On the ninth day when she needed water again, she discovered she had little control over herself. Every forward movement seemed to be countered by the twin now almost fully developed on her back. Even her thoughts ran confused, every thought seeming to double, echoing in her mind. It took immense concentration to get to the water, and, in getting out, she fell.

She lay there for some time, feeling embarrassed and helpless, when she suddenly realized a curious fact, a thought that echoed through her mind.

I’m I’m seeing seeing in in both both directions directions, her mind thought.

Getting up was beyond her, she knew, and she waited most of the afternoon for help. The confusing double sight didn’t help her, since both scenes seemed to be double exposures.

She tried to move her head, but found she couldn’t without burying it in the sandy bank. Finally, an hour or two before sunset, others came for rooting and pulled her out and helped her back to a rooting spot.

The tenth day was the worst. She couldn’t think straight at all, couldn’t move at all, couldn’t judge scenes, distances, or anything. Even sounds were duplicated.

The sensation was miserable and it seemed to go on forever.

On the eleventh day nothing was possible, and she was in a delirium. About midday, though, there was a sudden release, and she felt as if half of her had suddenly, ghostlike, walked out of her. Everything returned to normal very suddenly, but she felt so terribly weak that she passed out in broad daylight.

The twelfth day dawned normally, and she felt much better, almost, she thought, euphoric. She uprooted and took a hesitant step forward. “This is more like it!” she said aloud, feeling light and in total control again.

And, at exactly the same moment, another voice said exactly the same thing! They both turned around with the same motion.

Two identical Vardia’s stood looking, amazed, at each other.

“So you’re the twin,” they both said simultaneously.

“I’m not, you are!” they both insisted.

Or am I? each thought. Would the twin know?

Everything was duplicated. Everything. Even the memories and personality. That’s why they kept saying and doing the same things, they both realized. Will we ever know which is which? they both thought. Or did it matter? They both came out of the same body.

Together they set out for the Center.

They walked wordlessly, in perfect unison, even the random gestures absolutely duplicated. Communication was unnecessary, since each knew exactly what the other was thinking and thought the same thing. The procedure was well established. Once at the reception desk, they were taken to different rooms where doctors checked them. Pronounced fit and healthy to go back to work, each was assigned to a part of the project different from that she had previously been working on, although with similar duties.

“Will I ever see my twin again?” asked the Vardia who was in Wing 4.

“Probably,” the supervisor replied. “But we’re going to get you into divergent fields and activities as quickly as possible so each of you can develop a separate path. Once you’ve had a variety of experiences to make you sufficiently different, there’s no reason not to see each other if you like.”

In the meantime the other Vardia, having asked the question sooner and having received the same answer, was settling in to a very different sort of position, even though the basic computer problem was the same.

She began working with a Umiau, for all the world identical to the one she had talked with along the riverbank. Her name—Vardia’s mind insisted on the feminine for them even though they were neither—and both—was Endil Cannot.

After a few days of feeling each other out, they started talking as they worked. Cannot, she thought, reminded her of some of the instructors at the Center.

Every question seemed to get a lecture.

One day she asked Cannot just what they were looking for. The work so far consisted of feeding legends and old wives’ tales from many races into the computer to find common factors in them.

“You have seen the single common factor already, have you not?” Cannot replied tutorially. “What, then, is it?”

“The phrase—I keep hearing it off and on around here, too.”

“Exactly!” the mermaid exclaimed. “Until midnight at the Well of Souls. A more poetic way of saying forever, perhaps, or expressing an indefinite, like: We’ll keep at this project until midnight at the Well of Souls—which seems likely at this rate.”

“But why is it important?” she quizzed. “I mean, it’s just a saying, isn’t it?”

“No!” the Umiau replied strongly. “If it were a saying of one race, perhaps even of bordering races, that would be understandable. But it’s used even by Northern races! A few of the really primitive hexes seem to use it as a religious chant! Why? And so the saying goes back as far as antiquity itself. Written records go back almost ten thousand years here, oral tradition many times that. That phrase occurs over and over again! Why? What is it trying to tell us? That is what I must know! It might provide us with the key to this crazy planet, with its fifteen hundred and sixty races and differing biomes.”

“Maybe it’s literal,” Vardia suggested. “Maybe people sometime in the past gathered at midnight at some place they called the Well of Souls.”

The mermaid’s expression would have led anyone more knowledgeable in all-too-human emotions to the conclusion that the dumb student had finally grasped the obvious.

“We’ve been proceeding along that tack here,” Cannot told her. “This is, after all, called the Well World, but the only wells we know of are the input wells at each pole. That’s the problem, you know. They are both input, not opposites.”

“Must there be an output?” Vardia asked. “I mean, can’t this be a one-way street?”

Cannot shook her statuesque head from side to side. “No, it would make no sense at all, and would invalidate the only good theory I have so far as to why this world was built and why it was built the way it was.”

“What’s the theory?”

Cannot’s eyes became glazed, but Vardia could not tell if it was an expression or just the effect the Umiau had when closing the inner transparent lid while keeping the outer skin lid open.

“You’re a bright person, Vardia,” the mermaid said. “Perhaps, someday, I’ll tell you.”

And that was all there was to that.

A day or two later Vardia wandered into Cannot’s office and saw her sitting there viewing slides of a great desert, painted in reds, yellows, and oranges under a cloudless blue sky. In the background things got hazy and indistinct. It looked, Vardia thought, something like a semitransparent wall. She said as much aloud.

“It is, Vardia,” Cannot replied. “It is indeed. It’s the Equatorial Barrier—a place I am going to have to visit somehow, although none of the hexes around it are very plentiful on water, and the trip will be hard. Here, look at this,” she urged, backing the slides up several paces. She saw a view taken through the wall with the best filters available. Objects were still indistinct, but she could see just enough to identify one thing clearly.

“There’s a walkway in there!” she exclaimed. “Like the one around the Zone Well!”

“Exactly!” the mermaid confirmed. “And that’s what I want to know more about. Do you feel up to working through the night tonight?”

“Why, yes, I guess so,” she replied. “I’ve never done it before but I feel fine.”

“Good! Good!” Cannot approved, rubbing her hands together. “Maybe I can solve this mystery tonight!”

Stars swirled in tremendous profusion across the night sky, great, brilliantly colored clouds of nebulae spreading out in odd shapes while the starfield itself seemed to consist of a great mass of millions of stars in swirls the way a galaxy looked under high magnification. It was a magnificent sight, but one not appreciated by Vardia, who could not see it with her coneless eyes as she worked in the bright, artificial day of the lab, or by unseen onlookers out in the fields to the south.

At first they looked like particularly thick grains of the wild grasses in the area. Then, slowly, two large shapes rose up underneath the stalks, shapes with huge insect bodies and great eyes.

And—something else.

It sparkled like a hundred trapped fireflies, and seemed to rest atop a shadowy form.

“The Diviner says that the equation has changed unnaturally,” said The Rel.

“Then we don’t go in tonight?” one of the Akkafian warriors asked.

“We must,” replied The Rel. “We feel that only tonight will everything be this auspicious. We have the opportunity of an extra prize that increases the odds.”

“Then the balance—this new factor—is in our favor?” asked the Markling, relieved.

“It is,” The Rel replied. “There will be two to carry back, not one. Can you manage it?”

“Of course, if the newcomer isn’t any larger than the other,” the Markling told The Rel.

“Good. They should be together, so take them both. And—remember! Though the Czillians will all sleep as soon as the power-plant detonator is triggered, the Umiau will not. They’ll be shocked, and won’t see too well or get around too much, but there may be trouble. Don’t get so wrapped up in any struggle that you sting either of our quarry to death. I want only paralysis sufficient to get us back to the halfway island.”

“Don’t worry,” the warriors assured almost in unison. “We would not fail the baron like that.”

“All right, then,” The Rel said in a voice so soft it was almost lost in the gentle night breeze. “You have the detonator. When we rush at the point I have shown you, I shall give a signal. Then and only then are you to blow it. Not sooner, not later. Otherwise the emergency generators will be on before we are away.”

“It is understood,” the Markling assured the Northerner.

“The Diviner indicates that they are both there and otherwise alone in their working place,” The Rel said. “In a way, I am suspicious. This is too good fortune, and I do not believe in luck. Nonetheless, we do what we must.

“All right— now!”