01. Midnight At the Well of Souls Read Online Free PDF

conversationally, as he chose a glass and poured some nonalcoholic wine into it.
    "You have been in rejuve then, Captain?" Hain responded politely.
    Brazil nodded. "Many times. Freighter captains are known for it."
    "But it costs—unless one is influential with the Council," Hain noted.
    "True," Brazil acknowledged, talking as he chewed his synthetic meat. "But we're well paid, in port only a few days every few weeks, and most of us just put our salaries into escrow to pay for what we need. Nothing much else to blow it on these days."
    "But the date!" Vardia broke in. "It's so very, very old! Citizen Hain said it was three hundred and sixty-two standard years!"
    Brazil shrugged. "Not very unusual. Another captain on this same line is over five hundred."
    "Yes,that's true," Hain said. "But the license is stamped Third Renewal—P.C. How old are you, anyway?"
    Brazil shrugged again. "I truthfully don't know. As old as the records, anyway. The brain has a finite capacity, so every rejuve erases a little more of the past. I get snatches of things—old memories, old terms—from time to time, but nothing I can hang on to. I could be six hundred—or six thousand, though I doubt it."
    "You've never inquired?" Hain asked curiously.
    "No," Brazil managed, his mouth full of mush. He swallowed, then took another long drink of wine. "Lousy stuff," he snorted, holding the glass up and looking at it as if it were full of disease cultures. Suddenly he remembered he was in the middle of a conversation.
    "Actually," he told them, "I've been curious as to all that, but the records just sort of fade out. I've outlived too many bureaucracies. Well, I've always lived for now and the future, anyway."
    Hain had already finished his meal, and patted his ample stomach. "I'm due for my first rejuve in another year or two. I'm almost ninety, and I'm afraid I've abused myself terribly these past few years."
    As the small talk continued, Brazil's gaze kept falling to the girl who sat so strangely by Hain. She seemed to be paying not the least attention to the conversation and had hardly touched her food.
    "Well," Brazil said, suppressing his curiosity about the strange girl, " my career is on the wall and Citizen Vardia's is obvious, but what takes you flitting around the solar systems, Hain?"
    "I am—well, a salesman, Captain," the fat man replied. "All of the planets are somewhat unique in the excesses they produce. What is surplus on one is usually needed on another—like the grain you have as cargo on this fine ship. I'm a man who arranges such trades."
    Brazil made his move. "What about you, Citizen Wu Julee? Are you his secretary?"
    The girl looked suddenly confused. That's real fear in her eyes, Brazil noted to himself, surprised. She turned immediately to Hain, a look of pleading in her face.
    "My—ah, niece, Captain, is very shy and quiet," Hain said smoothly. "She prefers to remain in the background. You do prefer to remain in the background, don't you, my dear?"
    She answered in a voice that almost cracked from disuse, in a thin voice that held no more tonal inflection than Vardia's.
    "I do prefer to remain in the background," she said dully, like a machine. A recording machine at that—for there seemed no comprehension in that face.
    "Sorry!" Brazil told her apologetically, turning palms up in a gesture of resignation.
    Funny, he thought to himself. The one who looks like a robot is conversational and mildly inquisitive; the one who looks like a real girl is a robot. He thought of two girls he had known long ago—he could even remember their names. One was a really sexy knockout—you panted just being in the same room with her. The other was ugly, flat, and extremely mannish in manner, voice, and dress—the sort of nondescript nobody looked at twice. But the sexy one liked other girls best, and the mannish one was heaven in bed.
    You can't tell by looks, he reflected sourly.
    Vardia broke the silence. She was, after all, bred to the