Exiles at the Well of Souls

in the stores along the port, shopping. I found out what happened, but couldn’t do anything. I knew that if I showed myself, the CPs would take me, too, maybe give me a psych wipe, and turn me over to the Com. So, I stayed on Kaliva.”

“Ever feel guilty you didn’t try to spring her?” Renard asked, knowing the sensitivity of the question but realizing that Mavra Chang wanted somebody to talk to.

“No, I don’t think so,” she answered truthfully. “Oh, I had all sorts of plots in my head—a thirteen-year-old girl, a little over a meter tall and weighing about twenty-five kilos—to rush them, battle them, heroically rescue my mom, and dash away in the ship to unknown space. But I never even could get the chance. They had her away and the ship impounded in a matter of an hour or two. No, I was alone.”

“You don’t like the Com very much, by your tone,” he noted. “Any special reason?”

“They murdered my family,” she almost spat. “I was only a little more than five years old, but I can remember them. Harvich’s world went Com with sponge syndicate muscle and rigged votes, and my folks—my real folks—had been fighting them every step of the way. I got the whole story later, from Maki—my stepmother— when I got older. They refused to leave at the start, then found they couldn’t leave when the Com process started. Somehow—I don’t know how—they hired a spacer to get me out, one piloting a supply freighter for the Com process. Funny—after all these years I can still remember him. A strange little man in colorful clothes with a big, brassy voice that always had several tones in it. Some of those tones I later recognized as pure cynicism, but there was an underlying gentleness and kindness about him that he seemed desperate to hide but couldn’t. It’s funny— I’m not even sure of his name, and I was with him for only a few days when I was five, yet he’s as real to me as my stepmother, who actually got me out. Looking back, I think it’s incredible that a five-year-old spoiled brat like me would go with him. There was just something in him one liked, trusted. I often wonder if he was human—I’ve never met anybody else like that, ever.”

Renard was no psychologist, but he recognized the depth of the impression this man had made on Mavra Chang. She had been hunting for him, or someone like him, all her life.

“Ever try and find him?” he asked her.

She shrugged. “I was much too busy staying alive the next few years. By the time I had the means, he was probably dead or something. I have to admit that a number of people seemed to recognize him from my description, but there was nothing tangible. Some people said I was describing a fairy-tale legend, a mythical space captain who had never existed but was just part of those epic stories all professions get. Once I met a captain, a real old veteran, who said that this man really existed, somewhere, and he was old. He was supposed to be immortal, living forever, going back to ancient times of prehistory.”

“What’s the name of this legend?” Renard prompted.

“Nathan Brazil. Isn’t that a strange name? Somebody said Brazil was the name of a prehistoric place, one of the early space powers.”

“The Wandering Jew,” Renard said, almost to himself.

“Huh?”

“An ancient legend among some of the old religions,” he told her. “There’s still a Christian planet or two around, I think. They are an offshoot of an even more obscure and older religion known as Judaism. They’re still around, too—scattered all over the place. Probably the most traditionally co—” he stopped for a second, looked puzzled and disturbed. “Co—” he tried.

“Cohesive?” she guessed.

He nodded. “That’s it. Why couldn’t I think of that word?” He let it drop, but Mavra had an eerie sensation. A little thing, but important.

“Well, anyway, there was supposed to be this man who was Jewish and claimed to be God’s son. For this the powers-that-be killed him, because they were scared he might lead a revolution or something. Supposedly he was to come back from the dead. One Jew was supposed to have cursed him at his execution and been told that he would stay until this god-man returned. This Nathan Brazil sounds like the legend brought up to modern times.”

She nodded. “I never really believed all that stuff about immortals flying spaceships, but a lot of spacers who don’t believe in anything believe in his existence.”

Renard smiled. “That may explain what happened to you. If it’s a widespread legend, then somebody who knew it could imitate him, maybe convince the other spacers he was this legendary figure. They’d do favors for him they wouldn’t do for an ordinary captain. Make supersi—supershi—oh, hell!” he ended in frustration, unable to get the word out.

She got the meaning. “I don’t know. You’re probably right. But there was something really strange about that man, something I can’t explain.”

“You were five years old,” he pointed out. “That’s an age to get funny impressions.”

Mavra wanted to break off the conversation, partly because it was hitting too close to home but also because of Renard’s increasing trouble with large words he was obviously used to using. He was starting to think out his sentences in advance, using different words than he normally would. His difficulty wasn’t really that apparent, but his speech was slower, more careful, more hesitant than it had been.

Tomorrow, she thought glumly, those words just might not be accessible to him at all. But, he still wanted to talk, and, she told herself, if that was the case it was best she do most of the talking.

Renard took up the theme and thankfully took the subject away from the mysterious Nathan Brazil.

“You said you were on your own at age thirteen,” he noted. “Wasn’t that kind of rough?”

She nodded. “There I was, on a strange world, looking like an eight-year-old, with nothing but a few coins that maybe would buy a meal, and I didn’t even know the street language. At least it wasn’t a Comworld. Kaliva, its name was. Kind of exotic and primitive. Open bazaars, shouting peddlers and salesmen—a noisy, grimy, people-filled kind of place. I knew that in such a place you needed money and protection. I had neither, so I looked around. There were a lot of beggars, some just poor, some con men, some cripples who couldn’t afford the med service. There were enough of them that they weren’t hassled by the local police, and people did give. I walked around, watched who was making money and who wasn’t, and where, and saw what I had to do. I used the last little bit of money I had to bribe a little girl to give me her clothes—really dirty, grungy, ripped, and tattered. Nothing really but a foul sheet that could be tied like a sari. Some water and a little mud, and I really looked like a horrible little street urchin. Then I went to work.”

Renard thought that maybe she was a horrible little street urchin at that point, but decided not to mention that aloud.

“I really hustled those first couple of weeks. I got fleas and occasionally worse, and I slept in doorways, alleys, and such. I worked the good corners. Beggars have territories, you know, and run off others who want to compete for the business, but I learned how to make friends with some of the best, did favors, gave them a percentage. I guess it was also because I looked so very young and so very down and out—the model for those charity pictures they always take, the poor, starving, angelic faces—that everybody kind of adopted me. I did pretty good. Even on the worst days I made enough to eat, or somebody who owned a food stall would slip me something.”

“No trouble with rape or gangs?” he asked, amazed.

“No, not really. A few really nasty incidents, but somebody always seemed to come along or I managed to get away. Beggars kind of stick together, too—once you’re accepted. One of them put me on to an old shack out near the city dump, and I lived there. It was pretty gamey, but after a while you get so you don’t notice the smells, the flies, or anything. Some charity medical clinics were around, so we got sick a lot but never for long. Everybody kept trying to get me out of there, but I conned them. I didn’t want anything I didn’t earn myself. I didn’t want to owe anybody anything.”

“How long did this go on?” Renard prompted.

“Over three years,” she answered. “It wasn’t a bad life. You got used to it. And, I grew up, developed a little—as much as I ever did, anyway—and dreamed. I used to go down to the spaceport every day when I’d made my quota or just couldn’t do it any more—begging is hard work sometimes—and look at the ships and peer in the dives at the spacers. I knew where I wanted to be again, someday—and finally I realized that begging would always get me by but never get me anywhere. Some of the spacers were real big spenders, since they had no home but the ships and little to spend anything on.”

Renard was shocked. “You don’t mean you—”