Jack Chalker - Shadow of the Well of Souls

He finally talked it out with Mavra. “I know it’s a hell of a thing she did for us. I owe her, that’s for sure. When we get into the Well, I’ll see what, if anything, can be done about her. There’s got to be some way to influence it, even though the only direct controls available that I know of from last time are on people here. Funny, though. You jogged a memory. When I got information on Brazil and his party from Zone, there was mention of someone coming in alone who appeared from the pictures to be of our race—or so they said; I never saw them. Somebody who came in after us, snuck by them all, and went through the hex gate before they even knew anyone was there. They said the other one resembled us.”

Lori was excited at the idea. “You think maybe she—?”

“Don’t get your hopes up. She was diverting the guards, and I know just how they planned to do that. The Well Gate would have closed and self-destructed after I—we—came through because Nathan and the other two had arrived long before. I don’t think there’d be time. No, what I’ve wondered is whether one of the other women, one of the perimeter guards, might have watched us go through and decided to follow her goddess. It would be just like Utra or maybe Rhama to do just that. Poor darlings! What if one of them wound up in a high-tech hex? It’d be bad enough for them to turn into anything else, but a nontech hex they might handle with a lot of work. Still, there was no word of anybody else being reported, so it’s hard to say anything for sure. I do think that if Teysi had come through, she’d have gotten word to us somehow.” She sighed. “No, I’m sure she’s still back on Earth, and I’m pretty sure she’s still in the jungle. Unlike you, she found something in the jungle that she loved. I think she didn’t want to come because she’d already found her version of the Well World. I think she really wanted to stay just as she was.”

“You didn’t know her. She’d go nuts living in there like that forever.”

Mavra smiled. “Maybe you didn’t know her. I looked at you over a period of a week or two, and I saw somebody willing to play jungle Amazon and go along because that was better than death, but you were always playing at it. Once you got over your fear and your natural feeling that rescue was at hand, you got into it, but it was always a game with you. You didn’t ever belong there. I looked at her, though, and I saw somebody hiding one hell of a lot of inner pain. I don’t know what it came from, but it was there. And once she got over the same two hurdles you did, she didn’t accept things like you did, she embraced them. I’ve seen the same thing in countless girls who came to us over the years. Like some kind of horrible burden had been lifted, removed from inside them. You fell into a trap; she escaped one. I wouldn’t be surprised if she went totally, completely native.”

“We saw totally different people,” Lori said, shaking his head. “I wonder which one of us saw the right one.”

Mavra sighed. “Well, you’ve seen it happen with Alowi, and I would have bet you that Julian Beard would never have flipped out like that. We’ll probably never know for sure about her. At least I’ll try to find out once I’m inside. If I can, and she’s still alive, where and what she is back there will kind of settle it and what I do for her—if I can do much. That jungle was already disappearing at a horrendous rate. I wish I knew how long any of those tribes can continue to exist as they want to exist. It’s a real shame, but it’s the way that whole planet went. Right from ancient times they called it ‘progress.’ I guess it is—if you’re doing the chopping and not being chopped.”

That brought Lori back to his original train of thought. “What about this drug trade right here? It makes me feel sleazy. Worse than that, it depresses me. Here, all this time, all this civilization, and they wind up like we were going in my old corner of civilization. The whole damned world seemed to be falling into the hands of the Camposes and their ilk.”

“Well, having used drugs of a sort in the jungle, and earlier in other places, and having done a little smuggling in my time, I can’t be too judgmental about these people. In a sense, they’re the kind of people I was born and raised with. And I can’t really say I’m surprised that this exists here; rather, I’m surprised that it didn’t seem to exist when I was here last. At least not in anything that wasn’t species-specific and too localized to notice. The biggest problem you have if you’re born and raised on the Well World is that you have to face the fact that it’s meaningless. I mean, what can you hope to do? These are the descendants of the leftovers, the last races tested out here. They’re managed from on high—or, rather, from on low—and on the whole, things don’t change very much. That’s why they don’t keep a lot of the kind of history here that we do, on the whole. Even the Erdomese, on their own planet, might discover electricity, might discover radio and video and research biology, and might even figure out a way to get to the stars. They just have less to work with, and it might take them longer. They might not, but it’s possible. Not here.”

“Well, yeah, but it’s not that bad, I don’t think.”

“No? You were a scientist. I’ll bet you know enough to create a small renaissance in scientific knowledge in most hexes here, including Erdom. But it’s all useless knowledge, isn’t it? Useless because nothing except muscle and some water and wind power works there, and even then, if you generate a current, it’ll die before it reaches anything that might use it. That was Julian’s problem. Just about every bit of the knowledge she has and the talents she possesses are useless in Erdom. Permanently. She can’t even swagger around and be Senor or Senora Macha. Everything in Julian Beard’s life was denied him as an Erdomese by itself and by being an Erdomese woman in particular. Build things? Paint? With rock-hard mittens for hands? In a land and culture where anything she might do intellectually is considered deviant behavior and women are virtual property—forget it. On top of that he had a ton of guilt over being less than a wonderful human being by his own lights. And his mind-set was so much Mister Macho that he was finally faced with the ultimate problem and it tore him to bits.”

“You mean he just couldn’t handle being a woman?”

“No, he couldn’t handle falling in love with a man, you idiot! Even if it was with a man who used to be a woman and still has, I think, a woman’s soul.”

“Julian? In love with me? I mean, really in love?”

“Sure. Plain as day. But Julian couldn’t be in love with a guy, just couldn’t handle it, and Julian wasn’t useful in any meaningful way from this point on. So Julian goes, Alowi enters. Call it a split personality if you want, but one of them won. The one who could be in love with you and be of use to you and not go bonkers because of what she could no longer be or do.”

Lori sighed. “Well, ain’t that a kick in the head. Mavra, I swear to you, even though I never thought it for real until just now, I really did fall in love myself! But with Julian, not Alowi. Not that I’m not still, but, well, it’s not the same.”

Mavra shrugged. “Well, you have a problem maybe unique in romance, don’t you? I seem to attract the unique in that department. The thing is, though, you’ve got the Julian problem kind of the way he had it.”

“What? Now you’ve lost me again.”

“The Well World changes bodies around. That’s not unique, you know. It’s technology. The same principle as the matter transmitter. I once knew somebody who’s a distant ghost to me now who discovered the same principle on his own. An Earth-human type. It’s not magic. It’s physics and mathematics, and enough of an energy source to do it and enough of a computer to manage all that information. It also does some physiological adjustment so you don’t fall over trying to walk on those legs of yours or upchuck when you wake up as a creature that eats live prey or the like. But the process doesn’t really change the mind, the personality, the soul, as it were. You can’t keep the memories and such and wipe out the rest. You lived too long as Lori Sutton. Somewhere here Juan Campos is still a slimy son of a bitch. Julian completed her own transformation. She became a woman to the soul. Tony—well, that’s a different personality. I think he was a tough guy but very gentle underneath. With all he’d gone through and his double suicide plans for himself and Anne Marie, I think he considered himself dead, anyway. He got an easier break in a better culture to be a woman, even though that one, too, has its sexual divisions and problems. Still, in spite of cultural hang-ups, I think he was one of those rare guys who really liked and respected women. At least he doesn’t see it as a negative. I think he feels he lived a full and decent life as a man and now he’s got a chance to live a second life as a woman. That’s the attitude to take. Like the Hindu belief that we’re reincarnated alternately male and female. To her it’s a whole new life. I’m afraid Anne Marie’s more a problem than a continuing love story for him.”