Midnight at the Well of Souls

“Nathan!” he heard her call breathlessly at the break and jerk.

“I’m all right!” he called back. “Keep going!”

Suddenly there were sounds around them, grunts, groans, and yells.

“Nathan!” she screamed. “They’re ahead of us!”

“Run right at them at top speed!” he yelled. “Slash with your sword!” He grabbed at the matches, struck several against the hard leather straps. They flared, but immediately went out because of the wind caused by her rapid movement.

Suddenly she was heading into them, and they were roaring and clawing at her. She knocked the first several down and found, to her surprise, that the sword seemed to slice into them like butter. Once, twice more, she slashed at them, and they screamed in deep agony and clutched at wounds.

And then she was through them!

“Any ahead?” Brazil yelled.

“Not yet,” came Bat’s voice. “Keep going!”

“There’s plenty behind us!” Nathan called. “Slow down to a gallop so I can get at least one match lit!”

Wuju slowed and he tried again. They stayed lit in his hands, but went out before they hit the ground.

“Brazil!” Bat’s voice called urgently. “A whole bunch of them! Coming up fast to your right!”

Suddenly a group of six or seven came at them out of the grasses. Nathan felt a searing pain in his right leg. One Murnie jumped and hit Wuju’s backside, tearing a deep gash in her just in front of the pack. She screamed, stopped, and reared, slashing out at them with her sword.

Brazil hung on somehow, and tore off one of the pouches of matches with strength that surprised him. He struck one and threw it into the pouch. The matches caught with a whoomph and he threw the pack out onto the grass.

Nothing for a minute, and she bolted for the Murnies at an apparent opening. They had formed a hunting circle and their spears were ready.

They expected the charge, but their traditional ways didn’t allow for their quarry to have a sword, and the formation broke.

Suddenly the whole world caught fire.

The suddenness and volatility was what stunned them all.

My god! Brazil thought suddenly. It’s as if the stuff were made of cellulose!

He could see Cousin Bat, saw the creature come down on a Murnie and kick with those powerful, handlike feet rolled up as fists. The giant green savage went down and didn’t move.

The whole world suddenly became bright. Ahead she saw the stream valley, like a crack in the land.

The Murnies started running and screaming. The antelope panicked and ran in all directions, trampling many Murnies underfoot to get away.

She jumped into the ravine, and the momentum and steep sides caused her to lose her balance. She went sprawling down the hill. Brazil felt himself suddenly free as he was flung away onto the bank. He was stunned for a minute, then he picked himself up and looked around. There was a glow still from the fire above, but down in the valley there was a still, near-absolute darkness.

Feeling numb and dizzy, he ran down the valley in the direction Cousin Bat had said the river flowed. He looked around for Wuju but couldn’t see her anywhere.

“Wuju!” he screamed hoarsely. “Wuju!” But his voice was no match for the riot of noise above him, the cries of burning animals and panicked Murnies, many of whom were plunging over the bank into the valley.

He ran down the muddy shore and into the river and followed it. The rocky bottom cut his feet. But he was oblivious to pain, running like a scarecrow, mindlessly, aimlessly down the river.

Soon the glow and the sounds were far behind him, but still he pressed on. Suddenly he tripped and fell facedown in the water. He continued, crawling forward, then somehow picked himself up and started again.

The fetid odor of swamp mud was all around him and all over him, yet he continued. Until, quite abruptly, everything caught up to him and he collapsed, unconscious before he hit the water, stones, and mud.

THE NATION—A FIRST-CLASS HOTEL

They had not, as it happened, been arrested. They had been quarantined. The way the robot manager explained it, an analysis of the particles found in their waste gases had revealed two of them to have certain microscopic life forms that could cause corrosion problems in The Nation. They were, therefore, being held until their laboratories could check out the organisms, develop some sort of serum, and introduce it to them so they could safely get across the country without causing difficulties.

For Hain this was her first real vacation since entering this crazy world, and she lazed, relaxed, and seemed in no hurry to go on.

The Diviner and The Rel accepted the situation indignantly but with resignation; it kept pretty much to itself.

Since their hosts had evacuated the wing in which the four were staying, they were allowed to visit one another. Vardia was the only mobile person who cared to do so; she started going to Skander’s room regularly.

The Umiau welcomed the company, but refused to talk about her theories on the Well World or to discuss the object of their journey for fear that other ears were listening.

“Why do we have to go through with this?” Vardia asked the scholar one day.

The Umiau raised her eyebrows in surprise. “We’re still prisoners, you know,” she pointed out.

“But we could tell the management,” the Czillian suggested. “After all, kidnapping is a crime.”

“It is, indeed,” the mermaid agreed, “but that is also unheard of cross-hex. The fact is, these people don’t care if we’re prisoners, victims, or monsters. It just isn’t their concern. I’ve tried.”

“Then we must escape once we’re back on the road,” she persisted. “I’ve already seen a map—it’s in a desk in my room. The next hex borders the ocean.”

“That won’t work,” Skander replied firmly. “First of all, we have no idea as to the powers of this Northerner, and I don’t want to test them. Secondly, Hain can fly and walk faster than you, and either one of us is just a few good mouthfuls for her. No, put that out of your mind. Besides, we’ll not be ill-served in this. In the end, I have the ultimate control over us all, because they can’t do a thing without the knowledge I possess. They are taking me where I want to go and could not get myself. No, I think we’ll go along with them—until midnight at the Well of Souls,” she added with a devious chuckle.

“That’s about how long we’ll be kept here,” Vardia said grumpily.

The Umiau reclined lazily in the shallow end of the pool. “Nothing we can do about this. Meantime, why not tell me something about yourself? You know all about me, really.”

“I really don’t have much of a history before coming here,” she responded modestly. “I was a courier— wiped clean after every mission.”

The mermaid clucked sympathetically. “But surely,” she urged, “you know about your world—the world of your birth, that is. For instance, were you born or hatched? Were you male or female? What?”

“I was produced by cloning in Birth Factory Twelve on Nueva Albion,” she said. “All reproduction is by cloning, using the cellular tissues of the top people in history of each occupational group. Thus, all Diplos on or of Nueva Albion were cloned from the Sainted Vardia, who was the go-between in the revolution several centuries ago. She kept contact between the Liberation Front on Coriolanus and the Holy Revolutionaries in reactionary Nueva Albion. Thus, I carried her genes, her resemblance, and her job. My number, Twelve Sixty-one, said I was the sixty-first Vardia clone from Birth Factory Twelve.”

Skander felt a sourness growing in her stomach. So that’s what mankind has come to, she thought. Almost two-thirds of mankind reduced to clones, numbers—less human than the mechs of this absurd Nation.

“Then you were a woman,” the Umiau said conversationally, not betraying her darker inner thoughts.

“Not really,” she replied. “Cloning negates the need for sexes, and sexes represent sexism which promotes