Jack Chalker: Echoes of the Well of Souls

He woke up later feeling absolutely great, supercharged with energy. He also felt different somehow as well, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was at the start. Let’s see… He knew who he was, and where he was, and why he was here… Something about a woman… His wife? No, that wasn’t it. Oh, yeah. He’d been a woman, from a different world, and he’d carried part of her inside him since he got here. Now she was gone. Not the memory, although that seemed both alien and irrelevant to him. All those feelings, all those emotions, all those conflicts seemed to have vanished now. He felt no conflict; he was all man, and he liked it that way. He liked being Erdomese, too. He couldn’t imagine being anything but what he was, even though the back of his mind assured him he had been. He was glad to be rid of that wimpish element.

Next door Julian awoke also feeling simply wonderful. She, too, had a feeling that something was gone, but, as with Lori, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. All she could remember was that she’d been sick some way, and they’d made her well, and now she was First Wife to the most handsome, virile, wonderful man and that was that.

The monks studied them from hidden recesses in the walls and nodded to one another. Lori would take the prescription down to the pharmacy and get more of the second and third drugs. The second they would both take, and they would effectively rehypnotize each other. The third, which only Lori would take, would cause overwhelming hormonal changes that would wash the last traces of Lori Ann Sutton from his conscious actions and inner thoughts.

They would make good citizens.

The monks’ plans might have worked well except for their own introduction of a factor that they never thought of as a threat.

A note on official government stationery had been left at the Holy Office for Lori, and it was given to him dutifully as the pair left.

Lori was quite puzzled at it and even more puzzled that anyone would think he might be able to read it, but he found that he could. It was written in, of all things, classical Greek.

This is a just-in-case note. I have word from Zone that you were made into an Erdomese male. While it is difficult for me to imagine you other than as you were, it is a very good thing you were made male if it had to be Erdom, as you know.

I had intended to come to you, but in your own port where this is being written and where I have been trying to locate you, there has been a serious attempt on my life. I cannot imagine any motive for this except from Nathan Brazil, and, since he knows I cannot be killed, I can only guess that he has learned of my intentions and is attempting to slow me down, possibly lay me up for weeks or months in a nontech hex hospital, or at the very least kidnap me and imprison me somewhere in the interior. This means that the race is on, and time is not on my side. I need your help. The fate of countless thousands of worlds is at stake, as well as, quite possibly, this one. My best bet is to head for the Zone Gate if I can get to it safely, which will return me to Ambreza just to the north. If I cannot get into Zone, I’ll have to take a ship, but few have ever been able to prevent me from going where I want to get into.

I have left messages everywhere I dare that I feel are reasonably secure. If you made it here and are reading this, I plead with you in the spirit of comradeship we once had not long ago to join me. I must get out of here today before more attempts are made—one might succeed. It is unlikely that they would know you by sight or current name, so you should be safe. I have left money on account with you at the Gryssod Shipping Line on Baszabhi Street at the port. Money right now is the least of my problems. Use the account to purchase tickets on the first ship north to the port of Sukar in Itus. Register at the Transient Main hotel. Someone will contact you there and get you in touch with me or provide the means to get to me.

I will not minimize the task. It is long, arduous, and dangerous. The prize, however, is that if we win and beat him to the Well, you can name any treasure, any reward, anything you like. There is literally no limit. I hope to see you very soon.

It was signed “Alama—Mavra Chang.” The date was only four days old.

He gestured for Julian to follow and went out, trying to figure out what to do next. She followed meekly, without questions. Certainly this put a different light on things. He liked the fact that she was pleading with him to help her. He remembered her as small and weak compared to a big man like him. She needed a warrior, and that was at the moment the only thing he was qualified to do.

And the reward certainly beat working for a living.

Instead of going back to the hotel, he went to the port and, after a few inquiries, found the shipping agency. The clerk, who looked something like a Julian-sized bowling ball on stilts with two huge oval eyes, was disconcerting, being the first non-Erdomese he’d seen since the dragon back in Zone. It also had the most irritating high-pitched voice he’d ever heard.

“Is there a ship leaving any time soon for Sukar, in Itus?” he asked.

“There usually is, sir,” the thing replied. “Drat these old-fashioned written schedules. It takes time to find anything. Itus, Itus… Yes, here it is. There is a ship leaving this evening, in fact.”

“And how long would it take to get there?”

“Well, it is quite along trip, sir, and the only ones likely to put in here are coastal steamers.”

“Never mind that! How long?”

“With stops, five days, more or less.”

Five days.“And how long is it from—” What was the name of that place? Think! “—from Ambrosia or something like that to Itus?”

“You mean Ambreza, sir?”

“It sounds right. North of here?”

“Immediately north, so just minus one day, sir.”

One day. So if Mavra got back to Ambreza and set out for Itus from there, it meant that she was five days ahead of him. Five, plus the five days for Lori to get there by boat, was ten—maybe less if Mavra had to travel from the hex gate in Ambreza to the port and get transit. Clearly, overland wasn’t an option from the way the letter was phrased.

The offered reward, however exaggerated, sure seemed better than working for years.

He looked at Julian. This wasn’t a job for a girl, but she was his wife, and he was responsible, and he’d need somebody along to attend to him. The hell with it.

“Book two on that ship. There should be an account in my name left here to cover the tickets. Lori of Alkhaz and First Wife.” Damn! That name sounded dumb to him now. He’d have to change it sometime, but not until he’d linked up with Chang.

There was in fact a pouch left for him, which included not only sufficient money for passage but some international coins for expenses and another copy of a similar letter in Greek that contained no new information.

He went back to the hotel, pausing only to stop at a chemist’s shop and get a prescription from the monks filled. It never entered his head why he was doing it or that he shouldn’t.

“Pack what we have,” he told Julian curtly. “We’re going on a trip.”

She looked puzzled but neither objected nor asked questions about it.

The monks’ plot would work for a while. But there was only a four-day supply in the vials, and when he felt the urge to get more, both he and Julian would be hundreds of kilometers away from the nearest chemist who could fill it and heading farther away from Erdom.

Standing behind her desk, Ursoma would have looked to any Terran like a pretty woman with very long blond hair, an exotic cast to her face, and a skin tone that one might not have placed exactly. Only the ears, which were pointed and set oddly on both sides of her face, would have seemed out of sorts.