Jack Chalker - Shadow of the Well of Souls

“We should jump off last,” she said to Lori, “because we can see.”

He shook his head. “No, I think we go first for that very reason. We can find them a lot easier than they can find us, and I think it would be better to be on the ground just in case one of them has a problem with the jump.”

“All right, then. You go and I’ll follow. Night is almost completely upon us, and there are many lights not far ahead. I can already feel us slowing just a bit.”

Lori turned to Mavra, who had noticed the lights as well, and she nodded. “Any time you feel right after we’re slow enough. Just don’t take it too fast. We’ll get out.”

The Erdomese moved to the opening in the flatcar stakes. Lori sat, legs over the side of the car, uncomfortable sitting on his behind because of the tail and tailbone. It was not a normal position for Erdomese, and he decided to jump as soon as he felt it was safe.

“Remember the heavier gravity,” Julian warned him. “You will hit very hard, my husband.”

“You take care, too.”

The train was definitely slowing now, going perhaps thirty kilometers per hour, and it continued to slow. Lori’s tailbone was hurting badly enough that when it was down to about twenty, he took a deep breath and launched himself into the night. He hit as hard as Julian had warned, pitched forward, and found himself rolling down a small embankment into a fetid, muddy drainage ditch. Covered with stinking mud, he almost panicked, got control, and clawed himself out of it and up onto dryer land. He lay there, breathing hard, for a minute or so, then picked himself up. He not only stank, he was sore, and his left ankle and right wrist stung when he moved them. For a moment he was afraid that he’d broken something, but he quickly realized that they were probably only sprains and not that serious. By force of will he made his way in the darkness just below the tracks toward the lighted area about half a kilometer farther on.

Julian came to meet him, walking on all fours. “Are you all right?” she asked, concerned, then twitched her nose. “You sure don’t smell all right!”

“Rolled all the way down into the drainage canal. Didn’t pay enough attention to the slope. I’ve got some twists, but I can handle it. You?”

“A little bruised but not bad. It was slower, and I had a more level area. About the only problem I’ll have is getting grass stains out of my fur.”

He managed a chuckle at that. “The others?”

“Mavra was right behind me. She just jumped out, rolled once, and landed on her feet almost beside me! Like an acrobat or something. She told me to find you and she was going to check on the Blondie Twins.”

“Let’s join up,” he told her, gesturing forward.

“You are limping! Come! Put your hand on my shoulder, and I will help you,” she invited, standing erect.

“I—I can make it on my own,” Lori insisted, then grimaced and almost fell forward. She caught him and helped brace him, and this took just enough weight off that he was able to manage it.

“I thought you couldn’t even move, let alone stand in this place,” he noted.

“I grow strong when I am needed,” she responded, quoting a female Erdomese proverb.

Both Dillians had jumped without a hitch and now waited with Mavra for Lori and Julian to join them in a dark area behind the first automated switching tower. Mavra, seeing them in the very dim glow of the tower lights, motioned for the much larger centaurs to remain where they were and ran toward the two Erdomese. “What happened?” she asked. “Are you hurt bad?”

“I’m not sure,” Lori answered honestly. “I thought the ankle was just twisted a little, but now I’m not so sure. It doesn’t feel broken, but I think it’s a hell of a sprain.”

“Well, a very ancient man who knows the Well World far better than I do once said to never travel without a Dillian if you can manage it. We can repack all the stuff on one of them and put you on the other. Don’t argue! Whoever’s watching us has probably already discovered that we’re not there. The sooner we get away from here, the better!”

When they reached the Dillians, one of them was already repacking the saddlebags on the other. Then the one who carried all the equipment helped Lori onto the other’s back.

“Ride forward,” the centauress suggested. “That should take the pressure off your tail as well. And watch that horn on your head! I don’t want to get stabbed if I have to make a sudden stop!” Left unsaid was the rather noticeable stink of swamp and mud permeating his hair.

He felt awkward and helpless and, even worse, stupid. It was almost like a horse riding a horse. He was just never designed to ride on the back of a soft animal, but there was little choice at the moment.

Mavra turned to Julian and said, “Well, you’re leading the way because you can see and we can’t. Can you handle it? I know how hard this high G is on you.”

“I’ll be all right,” she assured the woman in black. “You said south, right? How far do you wish to go tonight?”

“Well, we’re going to be moving a lot slower and more cautiously than I planned, but we ought to go on until at least one of us has to stop. It shouldn’t be more than a dozen kilometers or so to the border if we head due south. That’s a haul on foot in the dark under these conditions, but we haven’t done much more than rest on our duffs all day. Can you make it?”

“Yes.” No equivocation, no hesitancy. Mavra liked that.

“I think you’re gonna do just fine, Julian. You sure you know which way’s south? We had a bend just before we came in.”

“I know. It is something in the Erdomese brain. Once we have a fix on the sun at any point, we always know direction, even when the sun is gone.” She looked around, thinking. “The first thing is to find a road or trail of some kind going in our direction and parallel it. I do not think we should risk Tony or Anne Marie tripping over jungle vines or fallen logs. Just keep close and I will get you through.”

“You sound like you’ve done this sort of thing before.”

“Air force survival training. This is no worse than the jungles of Panama or Honduras.”

“That’s right! Lori said you were once captain of a spaceship.”

“No, captain was my rank in the air force. A military service. I was a mission specialist on the space shuttle, not a pilot or commander, although I had a jet pilot’s license.”

“Too much of this is new to me,” Mavra admitted, her translated voice coming to Julian’s ears as an odd but understandable mixture of Erdomese and English, depending on the terms used. “I was in the jungle, cut off, for so long that it wasn’t until a few years ago that I even realized that Earth had progressed to power tools, let alone flying machines and spacecraft, and by that time I saw them only as evil magic. Until I spoke with Tony and Anne Marie here, I had no idea Brazil wasn’t still a Portuguese colony, let alone that your own country even existed. It was all very ironic. All I was doing was holding out in the wilderness until technology advanced to where I could get off that planet, and I managed to fall into a trap where I rejected all technology. Even now I’m sweating like a stuck pig. I still haven’t gotten used to clothing, and these boots feel bizarre.”

“What’s stopping you from taking them off? The nearest Earth-human type is probably a thousand miles from here, if even that close.”

“Practicality, mostly. Certainly not modesty. I was born without that word having much meaning. Back in the Amazon, that was my jungle. I loved it and still do, but I knew everything about it. Everything. This isn’t my jungle. I don’t know the effects of anything I step on here, and any protection is better than none when you’ve only got bare skin in an unknown land.” She dropped her voice low. “Hell, I remember when female Dillians wore bras, and they weren’t nearly as hung as those two.”