Midnight at the Well of Souls

“Fear,” he replied seriously. “It destroys, rots, and touches everyone around.”

She was silent for a moment. “I’ve been afraid most of my life,” she said so softly he almost couldn’t make out the words.

“I know,” he replied gently. “But there’s nothing to fear now, you know. These are good people here, and this is a spot I could cheerfully spend the rest of my life in.”

She looked straight at him, and her youthful looks were betrayed by the eyes of someone incredibly old.

“They are wonderful,” she admitted, “but it’s their paradise. They were born here, and they know nothing of the horrors around them. It must be wonderful to be that way, but I’m not one of them. My scars seem huge and painful just because of their goodness and simplicity. Can you understand that?”

He nodded slowly. “I have scars, too, you know. And some of them are more than I can take at times. My memory’s coming back—slowly, but in extreme detail. And, like Serge said, they’re mostly things I don’t want to remember. Some good times, some wonderful things, certainly—but some horrors and a lot of pain, too. Like you, I blotted them out, more successfully it seems, but they’re coming back now—more and more each day.”

“Those rejuve treatments must have done a lot to your memory,” she suggested.

“No, nothing,” he said slowly. “I’ve never had a rejuve treatment, Wu Julee. Never. I knew that when I blamed them for such things.”

“Never—but that’s impossible! I remember Hain reading your license. It said you were over five hundred years old!”

“I am,” he replied slowly. “And a lot more. I’ve had a hundred names, a thousand lives, all the same. I’ve been around since Old Earth, and before.”

“But that was bombed out centuries ago! Why, that was back almost before history!”

His tone was casual, but there was no doubting his sincerity. “It’s been dropping like a series of veils, little by little. Just today, up in the mountains, I suddenly remembered a funny, little, Old Earth dictator who liked me because I wasn’t any taller than he was.

“Napoleon Bonaparte was his name…”

* * *

He slept on furs in Yomax’s office for several days, seeing Wu Julee gain some strength and confidence with every visit.

But those eyes—the scars in her eyes were still there.

One day the steamboat came in, and Klamath almost fell in the lake rushing out to meet him.

“Nate! Nate!” the ferry captain called. “Incredible news!” From his expression it was nothing good.

“Calm down, Klammy, and tell me about it.” He spied a block-printed newspaper in the waterman’s hand, but couldn’t read a word of the language.

“Somebody just busted into that university in Czill and kidnapped a couple of people!”

Brazil frowned, a funny feeling in his stomach. That was where Vardia was, where he was going next.

“Who’d they snatch?” he asked.

“One of yours, Vardia or something like that. And a Umiau—they’re sorta mermaids, Nate—named Cannot.”

The little man shifted uneasily, chewing on his lower lip.

“Anybody know who?”

“Got a good idea, though they deny it. Bunch o’ giant cockroaches with some unpronounceable name. Some of the Umiau spotted them in the dark when they shorted out the power at the Center.”

Slowly the story came out. Two large creatures resembling giant flying bugs blew the main power plant, causing the artificial sunlight to fail in one wing of the Center. Then they crashed through the windows of the lab, grabbed Vardia and Cannot, and took them away. The leaders of the culprit’s race were confronted at Zone, but pointed out that there were almost a hundred insectival races on the planet and denied they were the ones. Their tight monarchy, resembling a Comworld with fancy titles, was leakproof—so nobody was sure.

“But that’s not the most sensational part!” Klamath continued, his voice rising again. “These Umiau got superupset at all this, and one of them let slip the truth about Cannot.

“Seems they and the top dogs of the Center had a real secret to keep. Cannot was Elkinos Skander, Nate!”

Brazil just stood there, digesting the information. It made sense, of course. Skander would use the great computers of the Center to answer his big questions, getting everything he needed so that, when he was ready, he could mount an expedition under his direction to the interior of the Well World. Power and greed, Brazil thought sourly. Corrupting two of the more peaceful and productive races on the planet.

Well, they wanted it all, and now all they’ve got left is their fear, he reflected.

“I’ll have to go to Czill now,” he told the ferry captain. “It looks as if my job is starting.”

Klamath didn’t understand, but agreed to hold the boat until Nathan could say good-bye to Wu Julee.

She was standing unsupported and looking through a book of landscape paintings by local artists when he entered. His expression telegraphed his disquiet.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“They’ve broken into a place a couple of hexes over and kidnapped Vardia and Skander, the man who might be the killer of those seven people back on Dalgonia,” he told her gravely. “I have to go, I’m afraid.”

“Take me with you,” she said evenly.

The thought had never occurred to him. “But you’re still weak!” he protested. “And here is where you belong. These are your people, now. Out there is nothing but worse and worse. It’s no place for you!”

She walked over to him and looked down with those old, old eyes.

“I have to,” she told him. “I have to heal the scars.”

“But there’re only more scars out there,” he countered. “There’s fear out there, Wu Julee.”

“No, Nathan,” she replied sternly, using his first name for the first time. She tapped her forehead. “The fear is in here. Until I face it, I’ll die by inches here.”

He was silent for a while, and she thought he still wouldn’t take her.

“I’m easier to care for than you are,” she pointed out. “I’m tougher of skin, more tolerant of weather, and I need only some kind of grass and water.”

“All right,” he said slowly. “Come if you must. You can get back to Dillia through a gate from anywhere, anyway.”

“That’s what I’ve got to know, Nathan,” she explained. “I’m cured of sponge, but I’m still hooked on that ugliest drug, fear.”

“You sure you’re well enough?”

“I’m sure,” she replied firmly. “This will give me what I need.”

She put on a coat and they went outside. When they told Yomax and the others that she was going along, the same round of protests started all over again, but her mind was made up.

“I’ll tell Dal and Jol,” Yomax said, tears welling in his eyes. “But they won’t understand, neither.”

“I’ll be back, old man,” she replied, her voice breaking. She kissed him lightly on the cheek.

Klamath sounded the steam whistle.

They stepped on board the first floor of the steamship and entered the partially closed cargo door that enclosed the lower deck from the colder weather.

Five hours later they landed in the much larger village of Donmin downlake. Compared to the uplake community, it was a bustling metropolis of fifteen or twenty thousand, stretching out across broad, cleared plains. The streets were lit with oil lamps, although Brazil had no idea what sort of unrefined, natural oil they used. It smelled like fish, anyway.

He reclaimed a well-made but crude backpack from the shipping office and said good-bye to Klamath, who wished them luck.

The packs, Wu Julee found, were largely filled with tobacco, a good trade commodity. One pouch had some clothing and toiletries.