Jack Chalker: Quest for the Well of Souls

The creature that stared back was a strange one indeed to all but her and Joshi. In fact, it had been years before she even asked for a mirror. Not until after she’d changed.

First, remove the limbs from the torso of a small woman; then turn it face down, elevating the hips about a meter off the ground, the shoulders about eighty centimeters. Now attach a perfectly proportioned pair of mule’s front legs on the shoulders. Add two hind legs, also a mule’s, but keep it all “human,” perfectly matched to the hairless orange torso—except for the hooves on all four feet. Replace the woman’s ears with meter-long jackass ears of human skin. The result is even more impressive when one realizes that the woman was originally under 150 centimeters, head and legs included, so that the ears are actually longer than the torso. Now, as a final touch, add a horse’s tail at the base of the spine. The last was a gift from Antor Trelig’s New Pompeii party so long ago. Thus had Mavra Chang been transformed by the cats of the Olborn.

She didn’t worry about her hair blocking her vision; at maximum head lift she could see less than three meters ahead, anyway. She had learned to rely less on her eyes than on other organs, the ears in particular.

Although they gave no better hearing than the originals, they were independently controllable from small muscles in the scalp. These she used as an insect would use its feelers.

She walked to the outer, roofed part of the compound, lowered her face to the ground, and grabbed a sheet of leather in her teeth. She pulled it back, to reveal a crude leather bag, which she then lifted with her teeth. The Ambreza kept her teeth in good shape.

Her neck mucles were the only aid she needed to lift the heavy sack. Placing a foreleg on either side of the bag, she worked at it with nose and mouth until it was wide enough open for her face. Inside was chopped cooked meat, cold but still fresh. She ate as a dog might. Afterward, she managed to close the bag, replace it in the hole, and cover it again.

The Ambreza left nice little tabbed plastic bags of tasteless trash every month. But she’d never accepted that. That routine made her dependent on others, and she had not stood it for long.

She walked over to the small fresh-water spring that ran through the compound on its way to the nearby Sea of Turagin. She lowered her face into the water and drank deeply. Its coldness refreshed her completely.

No dependencies, not for long, she thought with satisfaction. The dominant culture in this hex was primitive human. The natives were a dark people with Negroid facial features but compact build. Their hair was straight and black like her own. Originally, the locals panicked themselves with tales that the Goddess of Animals lived in her compound and that they would be turned into animals if they so much as caught sight of her.

And, of course, for quite a while she wanted no one, preferring to sulk in self-pity. But, eventually she would leave the compound, sometimes for the beach where she would prop herself up so she could see the magnificent starfield. Eventually she also explored inland, but always by night to minimize possible problems. Except for the mosquitoes and other pests she no longer felt, there were no predators that could bother her, and the natives feared the dark.

But, of course, she had eventually run into a couple anyway, and the first encounter was a disaster. They knew immediately what they saw—the very animal described in their tales—and it so terrified them that one actually did drop dead on the spot and the other became insane.

The most powerful voodoo is the one one’s mind believes in, she found.

And so, at first, she was cautious. Having a translator meant she could understand them and they her—although the device added an eerie tone to her voice.

Just the right effect. Ambreza-like, but not Ambreza. Something else: The Goddess!

And, of course, finally she announced to the local natives that if they served her she would show herself once without their suffering any ill effects. When she eventually walked into the firelight, ghostly and eerie, they did what she had hoped. They fell on their faces and worshipped her.

But, she warned them, to tell the Ambreza was to risk her wrath. Even to tell other tribes would bring down upon them a fate worse than death. Her tribe had kept the faith. They were the People of the Goddess, and they reveled in that knowledge.

Mavra demanded offerings, and offerings she got. Hoards of food dumped at the door of the compound. Tobacco, too. Rare on the Well World, the substance was much prized; the Ambreza took most of the crop, of course—but now she had some to trade with the monthly supply ship for things she wanted more than the now largely unneeded provisions.

For tobacco, the ship’s crews would bring what she asked. Since Glathriel was a nontech hex, machines were out; but books, geographies, and grammars were useful. She learned to read several related languages and waded through everything in their published histories.

She was, by her eleventh escape attempt, probably the greatest living expert on Well World life, geography, and geology. And she reread the books frequently, turning pages with nose and tongue until the volumes were almost unreadable. Even after she changed she continued to read voraciously; it was one of the few activities that kept her properly stimulated.

She also gave native hunters advice on game traps, which increased their yields, and suggestions for the manufacture of new nontech weapons. The Glathriel, of course, worshipped her all the more. The Ambreza became suspicious, but there was little they could do. The situation had gone too far.

Then, one night just after she changed, she noticed a strange glow in the direction of the village. Positioning herself nearby, she watched as one of the huts burned and people screamed. They got only one out alive, a young boy with massive burns on hands and feet.

She ordered him brought to the compound and launched one of her little rockets to signal the Ambreza. More Goddess magic.

And the Ambreza doctor had come, and looked at the boy.

“There’s no hope,” he told her. “I can get him to a hospital, yes, but not in time to do any good. He’s horribly burned. I might save his life, but never his limbs, and he’ll bear those tremendous scars his whole life as a cripple. Best I put him out of his misery.”

Something rose in her, looking at the burnt and pitiful boy of ten or eleven. “That’s not a pet to be put out of its misery!” she’d shouted to the beaverlike creature. “That’s a person! If you won’t save him for yourself, save him for me!”

She didn’t know why she’d said that, it just seemed right, somehow. The helpless, disfigured boy in some way reminded her of her own differences, and she took the Ambreza’s comments personally.

She accompanied the boy and the doctor to Ambreza and saw him later, still sedated in a high-tech hospital. He was a mass of scars, and both hands and feet had been amputated.

They argued with her. Ordinarily they wouldn’t have paid any attention, but the Ambreza felt a special guilt and a special responsibility for Mavra Chang.

“But what can he do?” they had asked. “The tribe would kill him. You can’t help him. Make sense!”

And, suddenly, the solution had risen, unbidden, in her brain and come out. Such intuition was uncharacteristic of her; it was the change.

“He’s a male!” she’d shouted back. “If the Olbornians still have those yellow stones, take him there! Touch his shattered arms until they change, then his twisted legs until they change! Make him a Chang like me, and give him to me!”

They were stunned. They didn’t know what to do.