Midnight at the Well of Souls

MURITHEL—ONE HOUR FROM DAWN

WuJu had some trouble with the uneven, rocky ground, but they had managed to advance more than forty kilometers into the hex without meeting any of its dominant life form.

There was a flutter of wings and Cousin Bat landed just ahead of them. “There’s a fairly good cave with rock cover a little farther up,” the dark one whispered. “It’s a good place to make camp. There’s a small tribe of Murnies over on the other side of those trees, there, but they look like a hunting party, likely to stay on the plains and river basin.”

Brazil and Wuju looked where the bat pointed, but could see nothing but pitch darkness.

Cousin Bat led the way up to the cave. It was already getting light when they approached it, and they lost no time at all in getting in. It was a good location, high up on the cliff atop some ancient rock slide. They could see for kilometers but, thanks to the shape of the rocks and boulders around the cave, could not be seen from the plain below. It was damp and had a small family of tiny, toadlike reptiles living there, but these were quickly chased. It wasn’t all that deep a cave, but it would hide the three of them.

“I’ll take the first watch,” Brazil said. “Wuju’s dead tired now, and you, Bat, have been flying around half the night. All I’ve been doing is riding.”

They agreed, and he assured them he would call Wuju when he was too tired to carry on.

Brazil took a comfortable perch near the cave mouth and watched the sun rise.

Still light-headed over this air, he thought. It was obviously quite different in composition from what he was used to, although he had been through worse getting to Dillia from his own ill-fated Hex 41. Much richer in oxygen, lower in nitrogen, he decided. Well, the other two had gotten used to it and he would, too, in time.

The air was cool and crisp but not uncomfortable. Probably eighteen degrees Celsius, he thought, with high humidity. The threatened rainstorm still looked threatening, but hadn’t materialized yet.

The sun was well over the distant mountains when he saw his first Murnies. There they were—a small bunch, less than a dozen, running with spears after a deerlike creature. They were over two meters high, he guessed, although it was hard to figure at a distance. They were almost rectangular, a uniform light green in color, very thin—incredibly so, for he almost lost ones that turned sideways. They were kind of lumpy, looking at the distance something like light-green painted bushes. Two arms, two legs—but they melted into a solid when one stood straight and still.

He was amazed that he could see some features from this far away. Their big yellow eyes must be larger than dinner plates, he thought, and those mouths—huge, they seemed to go completely across the body, exposing a reddish color when they were opened wide. And they had teeth—even from here he could see they were pointed daggers of white of a size to fit those mouths.

They were sloppy hunters, but eventually they cornered the brownish deer-thing, surrounded it, and speared it to death.

Don’t they ever throw the spears? he wondered. Maybe those thin, wide arms couldn’t get enough strength or balance.

As soon as the creature fell, they pounced upon it, ripping pieces of it and shoving it into their mouths, fighting each other to get extra bites. Those hands must have pretty good claws to tear like that, he thought.

In just a few minutes, they had finished off the entire deer-thing, which must have weighed at least 150 kilos, he guessed. They even ate the bones. When they finally picked up their spears and went off down the plains, there was no sign of the prey they had eaten except a torn-up patch of dirt and grass.

Seven days, he thought. At the rate we’re going, seven days in their country. And that’s if everything goes right. And there’s bound to be lots more of them, a lot thicker group.

No problem alone, of course. Even easier with Cousin Bat, whoever he worked for.

Why the hell did I allow her to come along?

Why had he?

That act of courage in taking off her pressure helmet in Zone? Was that what he liked in her, deep down?

Pity, maybe. Certainly that had motivated him at the start.

Thinking back, he kept remembering how she had clung to him in Zone, looked to him for support, defying Hain even that close to the end.

What was love, anyway? he mused. She said it was caring, caring more about someone else than about yourself.

He leaned forward and thought a minute. Did he really, deep down, care if the Murnies got the bat? He realized he wouldn’t shed a tear for the creature. Just one more in a long list of dead associations. Was he going to Czill because Vardia was kidnapped? No, he decided, luck of the draw, really. He was going to Czill because it was the only lead he had to Skander, and that project was—well, wasn’t that caring?

What’s it to me if Skander takes over and remolds the universe in his own crazy image? He had met a lot of nice people, happy people, old friends and new acquaintances, in his long life and here on the Well World. He cared about them, somehow, even though he knew deep down that, in a pinch, they probably wouldn’t do the same for him. Maybe it’s for that unknown one who would, he thought. Nathan Brazil, ever the optimist.

Had anybody ever cared?

He thought back, idly watching a much larger group of Murnies chasing a fair-sized herd of the deer-things. How many times had he been married, legally or socially? Twenty times? Thirty? Fifty? More?

More, he thought wonderingly. About every century. Some had been nice lookers, some real dogs. Two of them had even been men. Had any of them really cared about him?

Not one, he thought bitterly. Not one, deep down in their selfish little hearts. Lovers, hell. The only friends who hadn’t betrayed him in some manner or the other were those who hadn’t had the chance.

Would he really care if the Murnies ate him ?

Just tired, the centaur had said. Tired of running, tired of jumping at every little noise.

I’m tired, too, he thought. Tired of running nowhere, tired of that tiny belief, often foresworn, that somewhere, somewhere, was someone who would care.

If all that were true, why did he care about the Murnies? Why did he feel fear?

The wild ports, the happy drugs, the whores and dives, the endless hours alone on the bridge.

Why have I lived so long? he asked himself. Not aging wasn’t enough. Most people didn’t die of old age, anyway. Something else got them first.

Not him.

He had always survived. Banged up, bleeding, nearly dead thousands of times, and yet something in him would not let him die.

He remembered the Flying Dutchman suddenly, sailing the world’s oceans with a ghost crew, alone but for one short leave every fifty years, doomed until a beautiful woman would love him so much that she would give up her life for him.

Who commands the Dutchman? he asked the winds.

Who curses him to his fate?

It’s psychology, he thought. The Dutchman, Diogenes—I’m all these people. It’s why I’m different.

All those millions over the centuries who killed themselves when nobody cared. Not me, I’m cursed. I can’t accept the universality of shallow self-interest.

That fellow from—what was the name of that country? England. Yes, England. Orwell. Wrote a book that said that a totalitarian society sustains itself by the basic selfishness of everybody. When the chips were down, his hero and heroine betrayed each other.

Everybody thought he was talking of the fears of a future totalitarian state, Brazil thought bitterly. He wasn’t. He was talking about the people around him, in his own enlightened society.

You were too good for this dirty little world, he had said, but he had stayed. Why? In failure?

Whose failure? he wondered, suddenly puzzled. He almost had the answer, but it slipped away.

There was movement in back of him and he jumped and jerked around.

Wuju came up to him slowly. He looked at her curiously, as if he had never seen her before. A chocolate brown girl with pointy ears welded to the working half of a brown Shetland pony. And yet it worked, he thought. Centaurs always looked somehow noble and beautiful.

“You should have called one of us,” she said softly. “The sun’s almost straight up. I thought you were asleep.”

“No,” he replied lazily. “Just thinking.” He turned back to gaze over the valley, now seemingly swarming with Murnies and deer-things.

“About what?” she asked casually, starting to massage his neck and shoulders.

“Things I don’t like to think about,” he replied cryptically. “Things I hid away in little corners of my mind so they wouldn’t bother me, although, like all ghosts, they haunt me even when I don’t know it.”

She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “I do love you, Nathan,” she whispered.

He got up and walked toward the back of the cave, patting her gently on her equine rump as he did so. There was a puzzled half-smile on his face, and he said, as he stretched out near Cousin Bat, in a voice so low it was really to himself, “Do you, Wuju? Do you, really?”