Quest for the Well of Souls - Jack L. Chalker [46]
Although that wall was a bare fifteen meters from her, she had trouble seeing beyond it. Close-up things were sharp and clear, say, a few meters around, but then things started to blur. Beyond the wall she could see indistinct forms but no recognizable shapes. For some reason this seemed wrong to her, but she didn't dwell on it.
She was thirsty, incredibly so, and walked down to the water, sliding in easily and without fear, moving effortlessly in it. She opened her mouth and let the water enter until she had had enough, then headed back to the little hill. The smell from the trough was overwhelming, and she went to it quickly and started eating.
She heard a noise behind her and saw the male emerge sleepily and repeat her actions almost exactly. As soon as she saw what it was, she went back to eating. Soon he, too, was eating hungrily, greedily. An enormous amount of food lay in the trough, but they did not stop until they had eaten it all, even pushing each other for the last morsel.
Each then spent some time searching around the trough and eating what they had spilled in their feast. Finally, satisfied that there was no more, they returned to the water, drank some more and swam for a bit, then sauntered up the hill and reclined in the grass to bask in the warm sun and listen to the unfamiliar sounds that came from all directions—sounds of different animals and others.
Over the next few days the routine was unvaried. The male marked the island, the hut, the food places and the water with his scent which she accepted. It defined the limits of their territory.
The food was delivered by a strange-looking and stranger-smelling thing that entered by lowering a ramp from the other side of the wall; it would pour more stuff in the feeding-place, then leave, allowing the ramp to fold out of sight. At first they had challenged the thing, but the food was too strong and soon its function was obvious, so they left it alone. Beginning to look forward to its brief visits and its occasional odd noises directed at them, they would strain to catch its scent.
Always hungry, they left nothing. When there was no food, they would rest, or chase each other playfully, or swim in the moat. At no time did they have a verbal thought, at no time a memory, at no time even a curiosity as to where they were.
But the Wuckl's shock and conditioning had not really touched the brain; their intelligence was all there, and, as time passed memories slowly crept back to both of them, first as odd dreams, funny pictures of unfamiliar creatures making odd noises, then as whole sequences of events. At first it was too much for them to comprehend, but time, inactivity, and the total absence of anxiety healed them more and more.
Thoughts became coherent. Strange things in their disjointed memories started acquiring names, meaningless but definite. Then came the big hurdle: self-awareness. He. She. I.
For Mavra Chang there came visions of a cold and mountainous place, a place populated with huge two-legged creatures of white fur with doglike faces and kind eyes, beings she knew, beings who knew her, beings who perhaps knew everything, beings who could help her, although she did not as yet remember why she needed help.
She knew, somehow, she had to reach them. It was an imperative, like eating and sleeping. It was something that had to be done.
For Joshi, there was a different sense; he knew as the male it was his job to mate with and protect the female. He had no visions of strange beings with white fur and kind eyes, but he also sensed that he had to follow his mate wherever she went.
Escape became Mavra's mania. She searched all over the little island for a way out but could find no means of going over that wall.