Jack Chalker: Twilight at the Well of Souls

“You mean in the preliminary interview he spoke something else?” the Czillian pressed, amazed. “And that’s what gave him away? But, then, why wouldn’t it have betrayed him at the time?”

Ortega chuckled. “How do you and I converse? I’m speaking Ulik, a tongue your rather odd vegetable sound generator couldn’t approach. By the same token, your speech is the wrong set of frequencies for me to even hear. Yet we talk normally like this and are understood.”

“Ah!” the Czillian’s strange pumpkin head came up, its perpetual look of amazement only adding to its body language of understanding. “The translators! Of course! Basically they are telepathic projectors.”

The snake-man nodded. “Sure. And for purely diplomatic reasons, we all wear them in Zone. All of us. The master communications system here is only a larger, more sophisticated external version so we can understand the Entries without an operation. He knew it’d take whatever he spoke and translate it into our own languages as if he were speaking ours.”

“But isn’t that dangerous? Didn’t he risk running into a former 341 Entry?”

“Pretty slim, you’d admit,” he responded. “And, besides, most races have a number of languages— and things change even more with time and distance. No, he slipped because of the language he used and the fact that I was one of the very few people on the Well World who might recognize it. I have to tell you I needed computer help to defeat my own translator mechanisms.”

“And the language?”

Ortega smiled. “It is ancient Hebrew. We had a couple of rabbis come through, and the language is in the data-center computers. It’s Hebrew all right—a Type 41 language and one he knows well. Oh, the man is so damnably clever!”

The Czillian shook its head slightly in wonderment. “He is quite an actor,” it noted. “Who was the duty officer who processed him?”

Ortega spat. “ Me, damn his hide. Me! ”

“This means that Brazil arrived before his agents,” the Czillian pointed out needlessly. “He was through Ambreza before we even knew anything was amiss. He could be anywhere by now. Anywhere!”

Ortega shook his head slowly from side to side. “No, not anywhere. Ten to one he moved from Ambreza into Glathriel as quickly as possible. He knows the territory well. I think he is the Markovian who designed that particular race. They’re still pretty primitive, but that would give him an advantage. Get some dye to make himself a little darker, like the people of Glathriel, some native dress, and he’d fit right in. Lie low until his people could help him out. He’d be conspicuous on the move, remember. He’ll need help, native help—or native-looking help anyway. That’s our only ace in the hole. Our only one. He couldn’t prepare much in advance. Once in, he’d have to hide and wait.”

“He seems perfectly capable of hiding out indefinitely,” the Czillian noted with unmasked appreciation.

“Hiding out, yes,” the Ulik agreed. “But he can’t hide out. Not indefinitely. Sooner or later he’s going to have to come out of his hidy-hole and move. At the very least he’s got something like eight hexes to traverse—well over three thousand kilometers. And we can be sure he’ll take anything but the direct route. The only thing he has in his favor now is that we have no idea to which Avenue he’s going, or when, or how.”

“The only thing,” Gramma repeated sarcastically.

“Once he starts to move, he’s playing my game,” the snake-man continued, oblivious to the other’s tone. “Only trouble is, he knows that as well as I do —and he’s been a step ahead of us all the way.”

“What do we do in the meantime, though?”

“We put people on all the key agents, the ones who came through first. Mavra Chang in particular —she’s the best he’s got, possibly the most dangerous woman I’ve ever known. And she thinks like him. Beyond that, I think we must convene an emergency session of the council—North as well as South.”

The Czillian appeared surprised. “Is the North necessary?”

“It is. It’s their fight, too, remember. And consider this. I have reports of a large number of Entries winding up as Northerners.”

“But that’s impossible!”

“Uh uh. We have only 780 hexes here in the South, all in careful balance. The population’s maintained, stablilized by the Well so it never exceeds the available resources. It’s overloaded already. We’re doubling the population, you realize that? And there’s no end to them! So the Well’s kicked in its emergency system—it’s started filling in Northern Hexes as well to distribute the flood tide. And that means Brazil now has loads of Northern followers as well.”

“But he can’t get past North Zone,” the Czillian pointed out. “You know the Well Gates don’t work that way.”

“I only know that centuries ago a whole shitload of Southerners, Chang included, went North. We can’t afford to overlook anything. It’d be just like the son of a bitch to come back to Zone, go to North Zone, then into an Avenue from the other side. Who’d expect it?”

“I’ll set the Council session up,” the plant-creature responded meekly. “Anything else?”

“Yeah. As quickly as possible, I want reports on Chang and the other two who came in with her. I want to know what they are, where they are, and what they are doing now. Let’s move!”

The Czillian left hurriedly, and the door to the Ulik Embassy at South Zone hissed closed. Serge Ortega leaned back wearily on his massive, coiled serpentine tail and sighed, then turned silent, his six arms folded contemplatively. He rocked back and forth, slowly, as if meditating, although actually he was deep in thought. The silence was absolute.

And then, quite suddenly, it was broken by the sound of someone clearing its throat.

Ortega jumped and whirled, shocked by the sound, then stopped, staring wide-eyed at the intruder, who was lounging quite comfortably on a cotlike couch.

The alien was a Type 41—a human, just as Ortega had once been, but that had been so long ago he had almost forgotten what it was like. Lanky, dark-complected, with a lean, heavily boned triangular face, he was dressed in a plaid work shirt, heavy slacks, and well-worn boots. For a moment Ortega thought it must be Brazil, and a thrill shot through him. But, no, he told himself, Brazil could disguise himself in a number of ways, but he couldn’t add fifty or more centimeters, at least not so convincingly. “Who the hell are you, and how did you get in here?” Ortega asked the newcomer.

The man shifted around and put his arms behind his head, looking comfortable and slightly amused by all this. “Just call me Gypsy,” he replied lightly. “Everybody does. Mind if I smoke?”

His insolent manner irritated Ortega, but curiosity overwhelmed all other emotions. “No, go ahead.”

Gypsy reached in a shirt pocket and removed a long, thin, Com-style cigarette from a pack, then a small silver lighter, and lit up. Curls of blue-gray smoke rose into the air as he puffed to make sure it was lit.

“Thanks,” he responded, putting the lighter away and resuming his comfortable posture. “Filthy habit, I admit, but handy. What with the Ambreza monopoly on tobacco here, they’re better than gold.”

A coldness crept up and down Ortega’s spine. “You have to have heard that at a briefing, probably one by Brazil,” he guessed. “The humans here don’t look much like you. You have just arrived here. I’m surprised they didn’t shoot you.”

Gypsy chuckled. “They didn’t shoot me because I didn’t just arrive at all. I’ve been here for weeks, in fact. As to how I got here, I came through the Zone Gate.”