Twilight at the Well of Souls

Marquoz nodded. He appreciated what these creatures would be like in an all-out war with no quarter given or asked and surrender unthinkable. It was a wonder that any of them were left, he thought. But, no, as long as a single male and female were left, the Well would gradually replenish the stock, or so he understood the system. That thought was unsettling, though. Such devastation as the Supreme Lord intimated implied that those wars were literally wars of self-genocide; it was probably only the ones away from hex and home that returned to rebuild. The dead end, he thought glumly. The left overs from the Markovian dream in the eternal replay of the rise and fall of civilization. It was pretty damned depressing.

“I can understand Your Lordship’s interest in me,” he said carefully. “Here I show up in the middle of nowhere, an Entry or an exile, either one the same, but without any of the psychological problems or wonder of what you’re used to. You figure I’m the one to get you—right?”

The Supreme Lord shrugged slightly. “Are you?”

Marquoz sighed. “No… no, Your Lordship, absolutely not. The last thing I want is your job. That may be hard to believe under these conditions, but you’re a very clever man or you wouldn’t be where you are. I’m sure your lie detectors are telling you now that I’m being sincere.”

The other gave him a look of grudging admiration. “Clever one, aren’t you? But a psychopath would register the same.”

“Your Lordship, use those truth detectors now and believe what I say. Inside of a few weeks, if it hasn’t started already, you’re going to be flooded with Entries, and none of them are going to be typical. And I don’t mean ten, twenty, a hundred. I mean enough so that they’ll quickly double your population. Double it!”

The hollow burning red eyes of the projection shifted to a point outside the image, as if checking on something—a chart recorder, most likely, Marquoz guessed.

“Hakazit couldn’t support them,” the Supreme Lord said in a thin, worried tone. “We would have to kill them.”

“They won’t be that easy to kill,” Marquoz cautioned. “And, besides, they won’t be here to eat you out of house and home. They’ll be here to do a job and fulfill a set function.” Quickly he explained about Brazil, about the Well of Souls, about how it was damaged and had to be repaired.

“What are you offering?” the Supreme Lord asked warily.

“A battle. A full be-damned war! A war that could be fought by proxies trained by your people or by a combination of the two. An outlet for all this aggression, an outlet for all this pent-up civilization. And, of course, on the right side should Brazil gain the Well. And he will get there. Bet on it. Whether I die, whether Hakazit joins my side or opposes us, no matter what, he’ll win. And once he’s inside he might be able to help this situation you’ve got here. Think about it on a different level, too. This outlet, this release, will be enormously popular. You have a people who love war and have none. Now they’ll have one, and a set of purposes and objectives for it. It could be the safety valve you lack, put off collapse for many thousands of years—perhaps long enough to work out, this time, a more permanent system. And you’ll be a hero, too, for giving it to them. How long have you been Supreme Lord?”

The leader was thinking it over. “Huh? Oh, a little over three years.”

“Wouldn’t you like to hold on and maybe break that fellow’s old record? Hell, even if the yen doesn’t fade with the war, think about this: your biggest threats are going to be in the forefront of planning and leadership in this thing—not only too occupied to have a serious go at you, but up front, where you can see who’s really got a chance.”

“The people… they’ll have to be pre-prepared for this, you realize,” the Hakazit leader muttered. “It’ll have to be carefully planned, carefully orchestrated.”

Marquoz nodded. “That’s why I was sent here, specifically here, to Hakazit,” he told the other, realizing the truth himself, now, for the first time. “Uh, tell me, you have a secret police, of course.”

“A very good one,” the Supreme Lord confirmed proudly.

“Uh huh. And how does one get to head that service?”

The leader looked a bit sheepish. “Well… you know…”

“Oh,” Marquoz managed. “Your Secret Police chief, he doesn’t have this place bugged, too, does he?”

The Supreme Lord looked shocked. “Of course not! Only I control this. The proof is that I’m still here.”

That seemed reasonable to Marquoz. “Hmmm… this chieftan, is he a nice fellow as people go? Loving wife and kiddies?”

“General Yutz? Ha!” the dictator chuckled. “He’s a rotten son of a bitch, the rottenest I’ve ever seen. Strangled his last wife and his oldest son because he thought they were plotting against him.”

“I’m so very glad to hear that,” Marquoz responded sincerely. “Otherwise I’d have guilt feelings when I knocked him off.”

The leader looked surprised. “Knocked him off? Easier said than done, my friend.”

The newcomer chuckled dryly. “Oh, come on, Your Lordship. If you couldn’t kill him any time you felt like it, he’d have your job by now. His death should be simple to arrange.”

The Supreme Lord of Hakazit looked at Marquoz as if for the first time, shaking his head slowly in undisguised admiration and fascination. “You know, Marquoz,” he said after a while, “I think this might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

“Could be, Your Lordship,” Marquoz responded, managing a slight smile on his stiff, fierce face. “Could be indeed. I’d much rather work with you than overthrow you. It makes my job so much nicer.”

So much nicer, he thought to himself, and so much easier. Much easier than the alternate plan, which would have been to overthrow the whole damned system.

“Let’s do it,” the Supreme Lord said at last.

Awbri

The land of Awbri was a strange jungle rainforest, thick with huge trees growing out of a dense swamp, rising thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of meters into the air. The atmosphere was heavy and humid; little droplets seemed forever suspended in the air and there was nothing, really, but water, water, water… Water from waterfalls spilling down the trees and over broad leaves in a series of cascades, going down, ever down, into the forest floor below. And yet there was little sunlight; the great trees blocked it somewhere, up there, in the omnipresent gray clouds themselves, perhaps even above those clouds. The people of Awbri, if they knew, did not seem to care.

And below, far, far below, was the Floor, the base of the forest and the destination of those cascades. Down there, it was said, was a horrible swamp with quicksand and quagmire the rule and in which lived terrible, voracious mud and swamp creatures, creatures both animal and parasitic plant—and even carnivorous plant—that fought one another in a continual battle and devoured all that came near. None could climb, however, and even the parasites seemed stopped as they grew upward, halted by secretions from the great trees. The insects were mostly symbiotic, or, if parasitic, were so on animals and not the trees. Of insects there seemed an infinite number, some of which could penetrate and draw life-giving blood even from the bodies of the Awbrians, but that, too, was fair: in addition to the fruits of the trees and the vegetables from the vines that clung to great limbs, the Awbrians ate enormous quantities of those insects.

The Awbrians themselves lived only in the trees, from about the hundred-meter level to the clouds at about the fifteen-hundred-meter level. They had comic-looking short duck bills that were somewhat flexible, mounted on thin, flat heads whose long supporting necks joined lithe, almost infinitely supple ro-dentlike bodies. Their four limbs all terminated in identical monkeylike hands, each with opposable thumb; there was no difference between hand and foot, which, with the Awbrian’s infinitely flexible backbone and limbs, were used as either as the situation warranted. Except for their bare gray palms and long, flat, almost rigid, kitelike tails, their bodies were covered in thick fur whose oils repelled water. All limbs were connected by fur-covered membranes, and their bones were hollow, allowing them considerable bird-like buoyancy in the air, something they needed because, with