Jack Chalker - Echoes of the Well of Souls

Well, the monk had sure laid it on the line. “All right, I agree.” Lori said. “I swear it to you here and now.” He hoped he could fulfill the duties he was agreeing to. As a male and an Erdomese, he was still a virgin.

“Very well. I assume you can write in some language?”

“Several. Just not Erdomese—yet.”

“All right, then, I will dictate the contract, and you will write it in the language of your choosing. One copy for you in your language, certified as a true copy by me, and the other in Erdomese for official use. Those, and the marriage contract, will suffice. When do you leave?”

“Well, Posiphar has indicated that he might well go to Aqomb himself for a while and take a rest. If he does, we’ll go with him. The hope is to leave just before dawn the day after tomorrow so that we can hit a small oasis at midday.”

“Very well. Then you will marry tomorrow. I will then be there before you leave the next morning to make my examinations and, if satisfactory, hand you the papers.”

The interview was over. “Thank you, Holy One. I will try to be worthy of your trust,” he said, rising, bowing slightly, and leaving the prayer sanctuary.

He headed for Julian, who was still locked up by decree until the marriage, to tell her the good and the not so good parts of the news.

“I speak in Erdomese,” he said right off, “because one of the conditions was that we speak nothing else to one another, and I do not wish to have anything go wrong.”

“It will be so,” she agreed.

“The reason why you have changed so much in here is that they have been giving you herbs to facilitate the process,” he told her. “They are strong, and the Holy One knows his business. I am commanded to keep you on them until they are gone. He said that to stop them now would cause you to go mad. He also said that they would not change you more than you are now, that it is just to ensure that you remain this way. He also said that an examination by others could tell. Does this bother you?”

“No,” she responded. “It—gives me relief. Now I understand why I have been this way. It helps me. And if it frees me from this place, I will take anything they wish. I know they can probably tell. That is one thing they are experts at here. Getting what they want.”

“Then we do it tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow!” Julian was excited. “But—I will need more than this! I can’t get married looking and smelling like this! ”

Lori grinned. “You look just fine to me, but I’ll speak to Aswam. Most likely his wives and daughters can help you.

He’ll probably try and rob me blind for the service, but until tomorrow he’s stuck with you.”

Julian laughed, the first laugh she’d had since she’d gotten here. “And I will be a good little girl until he has no hold on me. I promise.”

“Um, one more thing. They require that we consummate as soon as possible after marriage.”

“Well, I am ready for that. I would not have it any other way, as I told you before, even though it is another way they hope to hold us here.”

“Huh? Why is that?”

“They hope I will get pregnant, which will restrict us, and that I will have children, which will limit us more. With nations so small and so different, it is unlikely that the others would welcome families as settlers. It does not worry me. One day I might like to have children, but it is not how you do it here that counts. Even births are regulated from on high, so that the nations do not get too many people to support. That is what they told us when we came in here.”

Reminded of that, Lori felt a little more relieved. She didn’t think they had a population problem here at the moment, and she’d seen some babies in her travels, but not a lot of them. The fact that at least by observation it appeared that twins were the norm made the chances even lower.

“That’s supposing that we can do it right to begin with,” she joked.

Julian gave a soft laugh. “That should not be a problem. You know what a woman wants; I know what a man wants. When you consider that, we should be the most perfect couple in all history!”

After Lori left to make the arrangements, Julian had to chuckle at the sudden realization that she was still of two minds. As a human male she’d been divorced with no children; now, as an Erdomese female, she was to be married and could have her own children, and something in her really craved the kind of family life Julian Beard had rarely experienced. Lori might find what he was looking for elsewhere, but she would never again fly a plane, let alone a spacecraft, never again do meaningful research—not with this body and these hands—and, curiously, she didn’t really mind. She’d railed against that knowledge most of all in the beginning, but it no longer seemed to matter now. Oh, she was glad that she’d done those things and had those memories, but at the age of forty Julian Beard, from a broken home and with no wife or family, had accomplished as much or more on his own than his boyhood dreams had ever imagined. She hadn’t realized until now how empty some of the triumphs had been without anyone to share them with.

She wondered if in fact the Well had screwed up or whether, somehow, becoming Julian Beard’s complete opposite—sexually, technologically, and in every other way—wasn’t what was exactly right for her at the moment. Now she was supporting Lori’s show, and it felt comfortable to be in that role and stop fighting. Lori might never understand it, but that, too, was all right.

Husbands never understood their wives, did they?

Julian in fact looked stunning for the tiny wedding, with long golden earrings—a series of squares linked together with chain, hanging down from punctures in the lowest part of the equine ears—a matching necklace, a pinkish glow applied judiciously to her face and upper body, hooves and “fingers” shined to almost a reflective polish, and her hair and tail done up in the traditional style, rising from golden tubes out across her back and up from the rear and then slinkily down to almost the ankles. Aswam’s women had done her up just right, and she had just the body for it.

Lori was stunned by the look. In the dark shed he hadn’t even noticed that Julian’s hair was a sultry light reddish-brown, and the combination now put the other women around to shame.

Somehow, too, he’d expected Julian to be taller. It was true that Lori was very large for an Erdomese male, and he’d gotten used to being higher than everybody else by a few inches, but Julian looked positively tiny beside him, with only that huge mane of hair bringing her up to near his shoulders. She also looked so young, although certainly amply developed.

The wedding was brief and simple, held in a small demonstrator tent on Aswan’s property, with only the tentmaker and his women and Posiphar and his women in attendance. In some ways the oaths taken before the witnesses and priest were everything Lori had hated back on Earth; Julian had to promise to honor, respect, and “obey absolutely” her husband, while Lori was required to swear only that he accepted all responsibilities, morally and legally, for his wife’s welfare. More interestingly, the word “love” was nowhere to be found. That, at least, Lori thought, was not dishonest; he wasn’t in love with Julian, but he did find her incredibly attractive on all levels, and love might come later. Neither, however, really knew the other yet—which was in some ways also consistent with Erdomese tradition.

Then there were fruit drinks and exotic pastries and some of the exotic-sounding Erdomese music from two of his daughters who had some talent in that direction, and that was it. By the heat of midday they were in a guest tent not too far away, the floor of which was covered with the large, varicolored pillows that were the most common furnishings in the nation.