Twilight at the Well of Souls

definitely gone wrong with Obie’s plans and now she was trapped, totally trapped. Even escape was now out of the question, since the Time was open-ended and continued until release was found, and there was only one way to get that.

That night, totally down, facing assignment the next day combing through the dung accumulation and gathering enough for certain kinds of fertilizer, she slept, finally, fitfully, and she dreamed. She was aware that she was dreaming, yet it seemed so real. She was an Olympian again and she was bathed in a strange, shimmering purple glow. There was a presence there with her, she sensed. All around, all-encompassing.

“Obie?” her dream self called out.

“I’m here, Yua,” came the familiar tenor of the great computer.

“But you’re dead!” she protested. “I’m dreaming all this!”

“Well, yes, I must be dead or at least badly damaged,” the computer admitted. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be having this little chat. Obviously my fears were realized—the union with Brazil badly damaged or destroyed me and, therefore, the job must be done the hard way. Too bad. If he just hadn’t been so obstinate I could have beamed him down to the Well World at an Avenue and we wouldn’t have had these problems.” He paused. “Well, who am I kidding? With the rip in space-time I was too screwed up to do the job anyway. It doesn’t matter. It only matters that, if we’re talking like this, you must be in Awbri and past your first Time.”

She started in surprise. “You know about that? But —what am I saying? This is a dream. Wish-fulfillment, nothing more. I’m not really talking to you.”

“You’re right on most counts but wrong on that last one,” the computer responded. “Yes, this is a dream. You’re asleep somewhere in the bottom of a tree in Awbri right now. And, yes, I’m not really here or near by. Even if I could get there, I doubt that I would have the power to overcome that nullified space and that tremendous short circuit of Markovian energy. But we are having this conversation—already had it, in fact. When you went through me for the last time, all of this was planted by me deep in your subconscious to pop up at the proper moment. Only after you’d gone into heat for the first time could it come out. You had to know what you were up against.”

“I don’t really believe this,” she told herself and the ghostly computer. “I’m just fantasizing what I desperately want to happen.”

“Well, fantasize this, then,” Obie came back. “Right now you’re seeing a map of your area of the Well World, and you see where you are in relation to Glathriel. Also in your mind at this point is a briefing on the lifeforms and such of the hexes in between.

And, here, I’ll give you a complete political-topographic map of Awbri as well. You’ll need it before long.”

And it was true. There it all was, in glowing detail, so much a part of her mind now that she doubted she could ever forget it. She began to feel a glimmer of hope that, perhaps, her dream might be real.

“But what good does all this do me, Obie?” she asked, still defeated. “If you had made me a male, I might have done something, but this!”

Obie chuckled. “Sorry. I thought you of all people would be a bit stronger than that. Think about it. The women have the numerical superiority, for one thing, and just as many brains as the men. Maybe more. And, of course, they have the biggest stake in a change. The men would fight you, probably kill you outright. They have a nice, neat, packaged little world that exists for their own pleasure and enjoyment. They are opposed to all change—more conservative types you cannot possibly imagine. Almost all creativity and progress in Awbri come really from the women, nurtured secretly and then sort of put into the minds of a young male here and there. A composition whistled while you work, an idea for a simple spring-loaded mechanism instilled in a young male while still at his mother’s knee that, later, he miraculously ‘invents’ and really thinks he did. You name it. Without the women the place would have stagnated into unthinking animalism, nothing more. But when push comes to shove and the Awbrians have to choose sides between joining the forces of Brazil or stopping him at all costs, the men of Awbri will be right there with the stop-at-all-costs faction. They have to be. He could upset their little applecart, their nice little world.”

She was beginning to understand. “But not the women.”

“Exactly! They have the most stake in change. Never was a place more ripe for, or deserving of, revolution. Tell me, do you think the women would revolt if they could?”

She thought a moment, remembering particularly the ancient female’s comments on lost opportunities.

“Not all of them, of course—but the leadership, certainly. The ones with an ounce or more of brains.”

“The ones who count,” Obie noted. “The rest will follow like sheep whoever wins and cheer that side. Now, what’s stopping them? What’s kept a revolution from happening?”

“The Time,” she responded quickly. “When you go into desperate heat every six weeks, there’s not much you can do.”

“Uh huh,” the computer agreed. “And so what do we have to introduce to produce a revolution the way we want it—on schedule, on time, just waiting for the load of new Entries?”

“You’d have to kill off all the males,” she responded, then stopped. “No. That wouldn’t work. That would only put us all in unending heat.”

“What you need,” Obie continued, “is something that will keep the Time from coming. You need the one thing a race that reproduces so slowly it still has females in heat would never consider, not even the most intellectual of them. You need a birth-control device—or, rather, a birth-control chemical, something that would fool your body into thinking it wasn’t the Time.”

The thought excited her. “Yes! Of course!” Then she hesitated, considering the idea. “But there are two problems there. One is the psychological addiction to the experience. Obie, it’s unbelievable! The direct pleasure center of the brain is stimulated. I don’t know if anyone who has had the experience could bring herself to deny it again.”

“Not even you?” the computer shot back.

She considered it. “Of course I could, but I could see becoming so addicted I couldn’t stop. Most of the women in Awbri have been through this so many times it would be impossible. And, of course, there’d be the other problem—that with a race reproducing this slowly, there would be some hesitancy in giving women this out, even by the female leaders. They wouldn’t want to wipe out their race.”

“True on both counts,” the computer admitted. “Now, I chose Awbri for a number of reasons. One is geography—you can get where you’re needed quickly. Another is mobility combined with agility. Don’t underestimate the potential of your race as fighters, and their ability to fly is combined with a toughness and flexibility not found in birdlike species. Unlike the bird, you are not fragile. A lot of protection is built in. And the final reason is that the choice of Awbri converts a certain enemy into an ally. In order to do this I had to analyze the Awbrian biochemistry and the biome of the hex and see if what I wanted was possible. If it were not, you wouldn’t be there.”

“There is a way out, then!” She was excited now, the dream becoming more real than her true situation — lying, asleep, on a straw pallet above a dung-heap on the Well World.

“Yes. Indeed. If there weren’t, this conversation would have been wasted and, frankly, you would be somewhere and something else.” Obie had a nervous pause right now. “Um, that’s assuming you are in Awbri and I didn’t foul up. Oh, my. If that’s the case, tell me what you are and I’ll switch to a different set of messages that might not be of as much help but should do something, anyway.”

“I’m in Awbri,” she assured him. “Otherwise, how could we have had the earlier conversations?”

“My dear, you fail to understand that this conversation, for me, never even happened at all. It’s a stimulus- response thing, with your own mind filling in the gaps from my multitudinous leads. Well, anyway, let me continue. First of all,” Obie said, “there is a potion created out of seven different plants that will cause what would medically be a hormonal breakdown, but won’t actually impair you and will free you of the Time. The potion is easy to make and should be terrible to drink but such sacrifices for a revolution are necessary.” With that, into her mind came a complete set of ingredients, where to get them and how to mix them properly. Some heat was required, she noted, and she didn’t like where two of them came from.

“Those are Floor fungi!” she objected. “Obie, do you know how dangerous that Floor is? ”

“No,” the computer responded. “Do you? But, so what? A little risk is required. Now, to continue, I should warn you of several side effects. One is that the stuff is physically addictive. But I wouldn’t worry too much about