Exiles at the Well of Souls

checked out. These people are tricky as hell.”

The speaker cracked to life. “Ortega?” said a metallic, toneless voice. “This is Robert L. Finch of The Nation.”

Ortega couldn’t suppress a chuckle. “I didn’t know The Nation had names,” he remarked, remembering them as communal-minded robots.

“The Nation has its Entries, too,” Finch replied. “When it is matters concerning such, the appropriate persona is selected.”

Ortega let it go. “What’s your problem, Finch?”

“The woman, Mavra Chang. Why have you left her with the Lata? Not playing any little games again, are you, Ortega?”

Ortega took a deep breath. “I know she should be run through the Well, and she will be, sooner or later. Right now she is more useful in her original form—the only such Entry on the Well. I’ll explain all in due course.”

They didn’t like it, but they accepted it. Other questions followed, a torrent, mostly irrelevant. The tone of many was the usual, “it’s not my problem,” and Ortega got the impression that others were not being very straightforward. But he’d done his duty, and that was that. The meeting ended.

Vardia, the Czillian plant-creature, had sat in in Ortega’s office. There wasn’t anything its people needed to know that they didn’t already.

Except one.

“What about that Chang woman, Ortega?” Vardia asked. “What’s the real reason you’re keeping her under wraps.”

He smiled. “Not under wraps, my dear Vardia. All six hundred thirty-seven races with Zone embassies know she’s with the Lata. She’s bait—a recognizable object that could smoke out our quarries.”

“And if they don’t take the bait?” Vardia prodded. “The fact that she’s a fully qualified space pilot still in a form that would be best for operating a spaceship wouldn’t have anything to do with your thinking, would it?”

Ortega leaned back comfortably on his long coiled body. “Now isn’t that an interesting idea!” he responded sarcastically. “Thanks for the suggestion!”

If there was a sincere, honest, or straightforward bone in Serge Ortega’s massive body, nobody had found it yet.

Vardia decided to change the subject. “Do you think they’ll do it—report the Entries, that is?”

Ortega’s expression grew grim. “A few might. Lata, Krommians, Dillians, Czillians, and the like. Most won’t. They’ll either try to bury them—which would be a mistake on their part they’ll live to regret, I suspect—or they’ll go along with them. Team up any of them with an ambitious, greedy government, and you’ve got the nucleus of that war I spoke about. An alliance and a pilot to fly the ship. Even a scientist who might be able to help put the pieces back together.” He shifted slightly, turned to face the Czillian square on, and said: “And as for Mavra Chang—if we’ve got her, we have some control. If we put her through the Well, they’ve got her. No fuel for the fire yet, my dear. It’s going to get hot as hell all by itself without the likes of you and me pouring oil on it.”

Makiem

He awoke and opened his eyes. For a moment, he was confused, disoriented. Things didn’t quite look right, and it took him half a minute to remember what had happened and what was supposed to happen.

He had walked into that blackness in the wall, and there had been an odd sensation, like being wrapped in someone’s embrace—warm, probing, emotional; a thing he had never felt before. A drifting, dreaming sleep, except that he couldn’t remember the dreams—only the fact that most, perhaps all, had been about himself.

I’m supposed to be something else,he remembered. Changed into one of those weird creatures, like the snake-man or the plant-thing. It didn’t bother him, really, that he was to become something else; what he had become, however, would shape his plans for the future.

There was something strange about his vision, but it took him a little thinking to realize what it was. For one thing, depth perception had increased dramatically; everything stood out in sharp relief, and he had the strong feeling that he knew to the tenth of a millimeter how far one thing was from him and from anything else. Colors also seemed brighter, sharper; contrasts, both between slightly different shades of the same color and between light and dark, were markedly improved. But, no, that really wasn’t what mattered, either.

Suddenly he had it. I’m seeing two images! he thought. There was almost an eighty-degree panorama on both sides; peripherally, he could almost see in back of him. But straight ahead there was a blank spot. Not a line or a divider; it was simply that what was absolutely dead ahead was barely out of his range of vision. His mind had to be forced to recognize the lapse, or he wasn’t conscious of it.

There was movement to his right, and reflexively his right eye shifted a little to catch what it was. A large insect of some kind—very large, the size of a man’s fist—buzzed overhead like some small bird. It took him a little more time to realize that he’d moved the right eye independent of the left.

He put both eyes as far forward as possible. He seemed to have a snout of some kind; his mouth was large and protrusive. He was conscious that he was resting comfortably, almost naturally, on all fours, and he raised his hand up to his right eye to see it.

It was an odd hand, both strangely human and yet not. Four very long webbed fingers and an opposable thumb, each terminating in what appeared to be a small suckerlike tip where the fingerprint would be. Looking carefully, he saw that there was a print pattern inside the sucker. His hand and arm were a deep pea-green in color, with brown and black spots here and there. The skin looked tough and leathery, like the skin of a snake or other reptile.

That’s what I must be, he decided. A reptile of some sort. The landscape was certainly right for it: jungle- like, with lush undergrowth and tall trees that almost hid the sun. What looked for all the world like a gravel- topped road cut through the dense vegetation. It was a road, and very well maintained, too. In thick brush like this, one would have to have road crews working constantly every hundred kilometers or so to keep the natural foliage back from the cleared area.

He had just decided to go over to the road and follow it to whatever passed for civilization when another of those large insects came by, perhaps two meters or more in front of him. Almost without thinking, his mouth opened and a tremendously long tongue, like a controllable ribbon, shot out, struck the insect, and wrapped itself around the thing. Then it was retracted into his mouth, and he chewed and swallowed it. It didn’t have much taste, but the insect felt solid and went down well, and it helped the hungry ache inside him. He reflected curiously on his own reactions, or lack of them. It was a natural, normal thing to do, and it had been done automatically. The concept of eating a live insect didn’t even bother him that much.

The Well World changes you, all right, in many ways, he thought. And yet—he was still Antor Trelig, inside. He remembered all that had transpired and regretted none of it—except flying too low over the Well World. Even that might be turned to ultimate advantage, he told himself confidently. If such power could be harnessed in the service of those best able to use it, ones like himself, it mattered not what form he was in or what he ate for breakfast. If the Well World had taught him nothing else, it taught him that everything was transitory.

I wonder how I walk? he mused, chuckling at the absurdity of the question. Well, the eating had taken care of itself, probably that would, too.

He eyed the road and started forward. Much to his surprise, his legs gave a great kick and he was to it, unerringly, in two large hops—coming down after the first one in a smooth, fluid motion that already had him set for the next leap, and coming to rest in the loose gravel with no rolling, imbalance, or discomfort. It was fun, really—like flying, almost.

He tried just walking, and found that, if he used all fours, he could manage it with some effort, like a waddle. Jumping, or hopping, was the normal mode of locomotion for this race; walking was for the local stuff too short for a hop.

He looked both ways. One direction was as good as the other, he decided; both ends of the path