03. Gods at the Well of Souls Read Online Free Page B

interspecies documents and everything  from contracts to treaties. If one could learn it, there was nothing really  closed to that person. To Tony, its sheer complexity made Mandarin Chinese, with  its mere thirty thousand or so characters, seem like child's play, and he barely  tried before giving up. Anne Marie didn't try at all, noting that the English  had never had to learn other people's languages and she did not intend to start.  Alowi, however, managed to read many basic texts at the end of only three  months. 
     
    It had been learning Agonese that had been the key. With both Agonese and Erdoma  to go by, she was able to isolate and assemble key concepts from the two totally  different languages and see how the trade language accommodated the concepts of  both. It still wasn't easy, but it seemed, well, obvious to her, and it had  already become merely a matter of memorizing vocabulary. 
     
    Tony in particular was impressed. While still back on Earth she'd considered  herself something of a linguist, which was useful for an international airline  pilot. In addition to her native Portuguese and essential English for aviation,  she knew Spanish, French, and German well enough to converse and read a  newspaper. This, however-this was Sanskrit as written by a mad chicken that had  gone amok in an ink factory. 
     
    "You can really read this?" 
     
    Alowi shrugged modestly. "Enough. What I do not know, I can usually interpolate.  I think that if I were writing books or treaties, I would need several more  years, and about a third that applies to specific races and hexes that I cannot  imagine would require some context for me to understand, such as going there and  talking with them. But yes, I can make do in it. I will never write it, though.  With these hands I can stir, chop, pick up, do quite a number of things, but  only those things which can be done with broad motion and much toleration for  error. To make these fine marks with pen or brush, where slight deviations  change whole meanings-no. Even doing block English letters is crude, much like a  child just beginning to learn them." 
     
    "Then why go through all this?" 
     
    "Because the one thing that works as well as before, perhaps better, is my  brain. It is odd-I seem to be able to concentrate as I never could before, to  grasp and memorize things easily that before would have been much more  difficult. I have always been a good learner, but I do not know why it is  suddenly much easier. What is not so easy is chemistry." 
     
    What?" 
     
    "This body was built for sensation. It demands things, and the cravings can  become overpowering at times. I have compensated with creativity and with some  unconventional use of objects I have picked up in stores here, but it is not the  same as the real thing, and the only place I can get what I truly need would  also almost certainly give me a lobotomy. Erdomese just are not built to be  loners. I know that now. I have been kidding myself all along. So I cannot go  back, but if I do not go back, I will go mad." 
     
    Tony sighed. "So what are you going to do? We're here mainly because of you and  because we hope to find out what the hell happened to the others, but time is  dragging on and on. The council is only certain that nobody has yet entered the  Well. There are certain places at the equatorial barrier, called Avenues, where  anyone who knows how- and only two people on this world do-can get in, and those  are all carefully monitored. It is almost as if one of those hex gates opened  and swallowed the two of them." 
     
    Alowi nodded. "I know. I truthfully have expected to hear the worst, but I never  expected to go this long and hear nothing. That makes it all the harder." She  paused a moment. "Do you remember the clinic here that had some doctors of other  races as well as Agonese? Where I got the translator?" 
     
    "Yes, it mostly serves the ships' crews