Jack Chalker - Shadow of the Well of Souls

“You’re the one who’s been following us for the last week or so, then.”

“Yeah, pretty much. You only gave me the slip once, out on the dock that one time. Pretty slick, but I figured it out. I also figured when I heard you talkin’ to that bastard blob of Jell-O that you wouldn’t’ve been so straight with him if you hadn’ta finally figured you’d been had and was already fixin’ to light out. I got to admit you picked a lousy day in particular to do it, but I just had this feelin’ you would.”

“Yeah, but how’d you track us from the hotel? We climbed down a sheer wall on a rope.”

“Hey! I was a news photographer, right? I mean, the only way to get the picture nobody else gets is to think like the guy you’re shadowin’. The rubes and the lazy ones, they’d stake out the lobby just like the colonel’s boys and wait for you to come through, figuring you would try to shake ’em. Me, I decided you was smarter than that, even if you did take a long time to catch on to the colonel’s game, and then it was just figurin’ how I would do it if I was you.”

“I was able to at least sense your presence most of the time,” he noted. “How come I didn’t sense you back there?”

“Because a good stakeout depends on not bein’ made, right? I mean, if you hadn’t given me the slip back on that dock last week, I would never have guessed you’d figured I was there at all, but since you did, I thought you or maybe Terry might be feelin’ me, and I hung back. I mean, you made tracks all through the snow, right? The only thing was, hangin’ back and not knowin’ how they launched these things, I couldn’t get close enough to jump on the boat. When you had your problems, I wasn’t in the right spot, so I couldn’t jump on like that other fella, but I figured I was close enough to swim out to you. Almost caught up when you got over near the barges, but then that guy came overboard almost into my face, and by the time I got my bearin’s back, you was headin’ through the hex boundary. I hadta swim like the very devil to get even close after that.”

Brazil frowned. “But, if you’re not part of the colonel’s crowd, then what are you doing here in the first place?”

“Lookin’ for you, and Terry. She and I go back a long way. I was the only cameraman she worked with if she could manage it.”

“Terry?”

“Her,” responded Gus, and a small finger pointed out at the girl on deck.

Brazil was suddenly excited. “You know her? Know who she is?”

“Sure. Theresa Perez. Hotshot producer for the news channel. It was her I was workin’ for when we come down to Brazil for the meteor coverage. Had an exclusive, too. Pretty good pictures, if I do say so myself. Hope they got ’em okay.”

Theresa Perez. Terry… At last, at least, she had a name and a past.

“But—she can’t see you, either? Even now?”

“I guess she could. She should if I was talkin’ to her or tried to make her, I guess. It ain’t somethin’ I can turn on and off, you know. I don’t even know how it’s done. All I know is that we’re like just about invisible to anybody except another Dahir. Works on every race I ever saw or met. Kinda handy, really, when you’re off on your own with nothin’ like I was. Just walk on any handy ship. They don’t even notice you. Need some food? Just take it. Gets to be kinda fun after a while. The Dahir, they got somethin’ of a religion about how not to abuse the power, but I didn’t stay for the lectures. Hell, I wasn’t a good Lutheran; why should I be a good and loyal follower of a religion I wasn’t even born to?”

Nathan Brazil laughed at that. “You’ll do fine around here, Gus. That’s just the attitude to survive.”

“Yeah, well, maybe. I dunno. It ain’t foolproof. I found that out a couple of times. You can’t fool a camera, or an electric eye, or any number of security devices. Recorders record your sounds even if the folks around don’t notice them when they’re made. I almost got picked up more than once back there in Hakazit, and I knew they’d just send me back home by the Zone Express, and with the kind of stuff I was charged with, that damned system woulda throwed the book at me. I guess I’m kinda on the lam myself now.”

“Well, I won’t turn you in, and I’m going to try as hard as I can to keep away from any more high-tech hexes for a while myself. The way you talk, though, everybody everywhere already knows who I am.”

“Well, not everybody believes it, or at least all the stories and legends, but it’s kinda the talk of government and official types, anyway. That’s how I heard about it. They had me in the capital, in what you might call a school on how to be a good Dahir and love it. They was also tryin’ to pump me for what I knew about the others, which wasn’t all that much. I doubt if most folks in the country, most places, have heard of you, but the big shots all have. They’re kinda in a whole set of arguments with each other, too. Some don’t believe you’re the guy in their legends; some believe you are, and it scares hell out of ’em. Some of the believers want to nab you; others want to just make sure you don’t do whatever they’re scared of you doin’ without first makin’ deals with them. Those who don’t believe you’re anybody special want to knock you off just to show the true believers they’re right, and so on. No matter how you look at it, though, Cap, you’re as made as me and twice as wanted.”

Nathan Brazil sighed. “So that’s the way it is. I’d kind of hoped nobody would spot me and I could be kindly Captain Solomon. So even the colonel knew all the time.”

“Oh, he knew, all right. Kept givin’ them regular reports on you. I stood there and listened to him give ’em. For now he was just gettin’ orders to stall, stall, stall, so I guess they still ain’t made up their minds. The guy was a perfect toady, I bet, back home, and he might have changed race, form, and loyalties, but he’s right at home doin’ just the same here. Uh—just out of curiosity, are you the guy they’re scared of?”

Brazil shrugged. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to admit what most of the leadership already half believes. Yeah, I’m the same guy. And yes, they have some reason to be scared of me, too. More reason now than before, if they get me too pissed off.”

“They say you’re some kind of like, well, god or something. That you’re really one of them guys who built this nutty place.”

“Well, that’s a bit exaggerated. Right now I’ve only got one important power they don’t, pretty much like your one big power. The Well—the master computer that keeps things running here—won’t let them or anything else kill me.”

“Huh! I’ll trade you!”

“Don’t tempt me! But still, it’s not as big a deal when you think of it. I can be hurt, hurt bad. If it’s really bad, I can take a very long time to heal. I can be kept prisoner, drugged, you name it. In other words, they might not be able to kill me but they can sure stop me, and if everybody and their sister knows about me, then I’ve got real trouble. I had this kind of situation once before, but then I had a number of friends and allies. Now—I don’t know. And Mavra Chang’s just like me, Gus. She’s heading where I’m heading, too. If she gets there before I do, all bets are off, including on me. She doesn’t really know how complicated this business is, but she can get me out of the loop, anyway. She could even…” He paused a moment, as if the very concept were hitting him for the first time. “She could even kill me.”

“Yeah? Would she do that?”

“She might. I don’t know, Gus. I haven’t seen her in… well, a very long time. We’re strangers, really, at this point. And you say she was leading a band of Amazons in the Brazilian jungle?”