Vardia just stood there for a while, looking at the small community in the gloomy dusk. She discovered that, although her eyes remained open, she was having trouble seeing. Everything looked very dark, as if she were peering through a piece of film that was badly underexposed. Then she felt the myriads of tiny tendrils in her feet creep out in response to some automatic signal and extend deep into the loose soil. The chill and tiredness seemed to lift, and she felt a warmth rising within her. Every cell of her new body seemed to tingle, and she was consumed in an orgasmic feeling of extreme pleasure that canceled out thought.
All over the hex of Czill, all who were not working in the Center were similarly rooting. To an alien observer, the land would be punctuated with over a million tall, thick vines as motionless as the trees.
And yet the landscape was not motionless. Millions of nocturnal insects set up a chorus, and several small mammals scurried around looking for food and, in the process, moving, aerating, and fertilizing the soil. They provided the carbon-dioxide-from-oxygen conversion needed for atmospheric balance in this hex. The teeming legions of life coexisted with the daylight Czillians in perfect balance. They existed under the thousands of stars in the night sky the sleeping plant-people could not see.
Because her eyes were lidless she saw the awakening even as she underwent it. It was strange to come out of that infinitely pleasurable sleep and see the morning simply fade in. Several of the others were in her field of vision, and she saw that the sleeping position was very stiff. Tentacles ran down and almost blended with the trunk, the legs almost forming a solid front.
She noted absently that picking one’s spot for the night was more important than had been first indicated. The unrooting was apparently triggered by the sun’s rays falling on the single leaf atop the head, so the more objects scattered about blocked the sun’s first rays, the slower one was to be freed. She felt her own tendrils retract and suddenly she could move freely, as if a paralysis had worn off.
Brouder came up to her. “Well? Do you feel better?” it asked cheerfully.
“Yes, much,” she replied, and meant it. She did feel better, her fears and insecurities fading into a tiny corner of her mind. For the first time she noticed that Brouder wore a neck chain similar to the ones on the two she had followed. Now she looked at the tiny object suspended from it.
It was a digital watch.
Brouder looked at it and nodded. “We’re early,” it said, then looked somewhat sheepish. “I always say that, even though we always wake up at the same time.”
“Then why wear a watch?” she asked. “It is a watch, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes,” the Czillian affirmed. “I need it to tell me the time and day so I can make my meetings at the Center. It’s been hectic lately, and I am always afraid that I’m going to get trapped and not be able to come home nights.”
“What are you working on?” she asked.
“A very strange project, even for this place,” came the reply. “We are attempting to solve a probably unsolvable riddle that is endemic to this world—a great deal of the Center is devoted to it right now. And the worst part is that most of us feel it is unsolvable.”
“Then why bother with it?” she asked.
The Czillian looked at her, a grave expression coloring its body movements.
“Because, while we are the best equipped to work on the problem, others are also at work on it. If there is any chance it is solvable, the ultimate knowledge will be ours. In others’ hands, that knowledge might threaten the very survival of us all.”
Here was something Vardia could understand, and she pressed her new friend for more information. But the Czillian dismissed further inquiry for the time being. She had the strong impression that the work was of too high a grade for her to be trusted, even though she was now one of them.
“I am going to the Center now,” Brouder told her. “You should come with me. Not only will that give you a chance to see a little of our country—it’s your country now, you know—but only at the Center can you be tested and assigned.”
She agreed readily and they started off, back down the road she had followed the day before. As they walked, Brouder pointed out the land and vegetation and sketched out the country for her. “Czill is six hundred fourteen point eight-six kilometers across, as is every other hex on the Well World except the equatorial hexes.”
She marveled at the knowledge that the measurement it used bore no relationship to the metrics of her own world, yet was translated to the decimal points instantly inside her head.
“We have, of course, six neighbors, two of which are ocean species. Our seven great rivers are fed by hundreds of streams like the one at our camp. The rivers in turn empty into a great ocean—one of three in the South—covering almost thirty hexes. This one of ours is the Overdark Ocean. One of the sea folk is a marine mammal, half-humanoid and half-fish. They are air-breathers, but live most of their lives underwater. They are the Umiau, and you might run into a few at the Center. We are always cooperating on a number of projects, particularly oceanographic studies, since we can’t visit their world except in pressure suits. The other ocean species is a nasty group called the Pia—evil characters with great brains and humanoid eyes. But they have ten tentacles with slimy, adhesive suckers and a gaping mouth with about twenty rows of teeth. You can’t really talk to them, although they are quite intelligent. They tend to eat anybody not of their race.”
Vardia shuddered, imagining such horrors. “Then why don’t they eat the Umiau?” she asked.
Brouder chuckled. “They would if they could, but, as with all hexes near antagonistic species on the Well World, natural limitations are designed into the system. The Umiau’s land is near the mouth of three rivers and the low salt content isn’t to a Pia’s liking. Also, the Umiau do have certain natural defenses and can swim faster and quicker. They’re in some kind of uneasy truce now, anyway, since the Umiau, although they aren’t fanatical about it, can and will eat Pia, too.”
They remained silent for a while, until they came to a major fork in the road.
“We go to the left,” Brouder said. “Don’t ever go down that right fork—it leads to the camps of the diseased and isolated.”
“What sort of diseases?” she asked uneasily.
“About the same number as anywhere else,” Brouder replied. “But every time we discover an immunizing agent, something new mutates in the viruses. I wouldn’t worry about it, however. The average Czillian life span is over two hundred and fifty years, and if nothing serious happens to change that, you’ll twin several times anyway. The population’s a stable million and a half—crowded, but not so much that we cannot have empty spaces and camp room. Our births and deaths are almost exactly even—the planet’s master brain sees to that. Besides, since we don’t really age in the sense most other things do, and since we can regenerate most of our parts that go bad or get injured, there’s naturally a constant death factor to keep the population in bounds. The master brain only interferes in critical situations.”
“Regenerate?” Vardia asked, surprised. “Do you mean that if I lose an arm or leg it will grow back?”
“Just so,” Brouder affirmed. “Your entire pattern is held within every cell of your body. Since respiration is direct, through the pores, as long as your brain’s intact, you’ll come back. It’s painful—and we don’t experience much pain—but possible.”
“So the only area I have to protect is my head,” she remarked.
Brouder laughed a high, shrill laugh. “No, not your head, certainly not! Either foot,” it said, pointing to her strange feet that looked like inverted bowls with spongy lids for soles.