Quest for the Well of Souls

The Parmiter reached into its marsupial pouch and brought out its gas gun, checking it for pressure and load.

“Everybody got their filters in?”

Joshi grabbed a meter-long match from a large compartment with his teeth and struck it with a quick motion of his head, making sure that his long ears were well out of the way. Carefully he touched the burning end to a small pot filled with a foul-smelling liquid, and it burst into flame, lighting up the interior of the compound. He then dipped the match into the sandy soil, extinguishing it, and pulled on a long rope, raising the burning pot until it was high enough to spread its light. Then, rope still in his teeth, he walked around the post supporting the pot a few times and looped the end around a little nail twice. It held.

Mavra never touched fire because her long hair was too vulnerable; but he, born in fire and scarred by it, had no such fears.

They began cleaning up the compound. Their supply ship, the Toorine Trader, was due in sometime the next day—the hour varied, but it always came on the right day, sometime between dawn and dusk.

Mouth-held brooms swept the wood floors and smoothed out the sand in the outer areas of the compound. Looking at Mavra and Joshi in isolation, one would have thought they were helpless, pitiful creatures; but at work they seemed normal, natural, and able to do almost anything.

True, they depended on others to make the matches, the pots, and many other necessities—but so did everyone depend on others to some degree. Once Mavra Chang had worn clothing and used sophisticated gadgetry, but she could never have made those clothes or built those gadgets. She was once a spaceship pilot, but she could never have built the spaceship nor fueled and provisioned it. She had sought those who could and paid for what she’d needed, just as she used the tobacco stores to pay for what was needed in Glathriel.

Suddenly her ears caught some odd sounds. “Listen!” she hissed to Joshi. “Do you hear anything?”

Joshi stopped and cocked a large ear. “Sounds like somebody coming up the beach,” he replied, puzzled and curious. “Somebody big, too. You don’t suppose the Trader got in early?”

She strained, shaking her head slowly. “I don’t think so. I know all of them well, their steps and sounds.”

“Not Ambreza, either,” he said. “I don’t think I heard anything like it. They’re sure trying to be quiet about it, too, aren’t they?”

She nodded. Old instincts, unused and unneeded these twenty-two years, began to return. There was something wrong here. Something unpleasant was up; she was sure of it.

“Want to fire a distress flare?” Joshi whispered, catching her mood.

She shook her head again. “Takes too long for the Ambreza to get here,” she responded in a tone so soft it was almost a wisp of breath.

“Whoever or whatever it is is just outside the door now,” he pointed out, moving so close to her that he merely had to mouth the words into her long ears.

“If they get in, escape through the stream gate,” she told him. “I don’t think anybody will anticipate that.”

He nodded. They edged as quietly as possible into the shadows.

“I wish we could risk putting that light out,” she hissed. “Wait—see if you can unwrap the rope and hold it,” she suggested. “Anybody coming in will have to pass right under the pot. Drop it and the place would be splashed with burning oil.”

He nodded and carefully undid the rope from the nail.

“Help me!” cried a wailing, plaintive voice just outside, a voice much too small for the creature or creatures they’d sensed. “Please! Somebody help me!”

Joshi couldn’t talk with his mouth full of rope, and he mumbled something.

Mavra caught the idea. “A trick to draw us out,” she whispered. “So its big friend or friends can grab us. Damn! I wish I knew who it was and why they were doing this.”

She looked around, spotted a roof support that had long needed attention. She had intended to have the Trader crew shore it up the next day, but now it might come in handy. She had a mule’s hind legs; mules had a mean kick, and so did she. She considered just where to hit the bottom post so the falling roof wouldn’t also catch her.

“Help me! Please help me!” the voice, so pitiful and sincere, repeated.

Quickly she whispered her plan to Joshi. Head turned, mouth full of rope, he didn’t risk even a nod, but he got the idea. He tapped his right foreleg three times. Younger than Mavra, Joshi had better hearing than she did. Mavra understood. Three of them. Two big, one little by the sounds. They had underestimated the Chang race.

There was a crawling sound. The little one was crawling up to the door flap, and, now, they watched it slowly open inward, top hinge squeaking slightly. A strange little creature crawled in, legs dragging behind as if broken. Mavra knew from her Well World studies that this was a Parmiter—a Parmiter a hell of a long way from home, two or three thousand kilometers, at least.

The legs really did look useless, and the thing was a truly pitiful sight. For a moment the Changs almost doubted their suspicions, and no noises whatsoever marked the larger creatures they’d heard.

The Parmiter looked up at them, genuine surprise in its face. The creatures were very strange-looking indeed, even if it had studied purloined drawings and photographs. They looked so helpless.

It glanced up after noticing that Joshi held a rope in his teeth. Its beady little eyes followed the rope, through pulleys and across the way, until, almost above it, they arrived at the pot of burning oil.

“Holy shit!” The Parmiter screamed. It jumped up, quickly drawing an odd pistol from a natural pouch.

At that, the parmiter’s two companions decided not to waste any more time on subtlety. They hit the log walls of the compound on the run. There was a tremendous shudder, and the logs gave a little, but not much. Mavra screamed “Hold it!” to Joshi and ran straight at the Parmiter, who suddenly felt itself trapped.

It raised the gas gun but she leaped, coming down on top of him, all sixty-six kilos of her landing directly atop the fifteen-kilo Parmiter, stunning it.

“Ulg!” cried the Parmiter, as all the air in its body was suddenly squeezed out. The pistol fell from its grasp.

Doc and Grune hit the wall a second time, then a third. And that did it. Not only did the wall splinter and give way, but it collapsed the unstable half-roof as well.

As they lumbered into the compound yard, Joshi released the rope.

Mavra rolled as no one would have believed possible and got back on her feet. “The stream!” she screamed to Joshi, and he turned.

The boiling pot landed directly on the back of one of the great lizards, which bellowed terrifyingly in its sudden agony and rolled over, tumbling the other lizard, too.

Fed by the dry straw that was all over, the flames ignited the collapsed roof of the compound.

With tremendous speed, Joshi and Mavra jumped into the icy stream and, trying not to slip, walked along its pebble-strewn bottom to the forest outside.

Inside the compound, the Parmiter gasped. It was sure a couple of bones were really broken now. Blood trickled from a corner of its mouth. It looked around, stunned.

“Let’s get out of here!” it screamed to its companions, one of whom was still groaning in agony from its burns. “If the natives get here with their spears and bows, we’ve had it!”

They had not survived so long following so crooked a path to let injury or failure trap them. The Parmiter, with difficulty, jumped on the unburned lizard and the two dashed out of there, fast—followed, almost immediately by the injured lizard.

Breathing hard, Mavra and Joshi stopped and turned toward the compound. They could see the fire’s glow, but it seemed to be localized. They watched as the two great shapes dashed out onto the beach, and they saw that while one seemed almost to blend into the beach, hard to see, the other had big dark spots on it that made it easy to trace.