Quest for the Well of Souls

by Jack L. Chalker

  A final step was necessary.

  "You noticed the highly developed brain," it lectured. "My first inclination was to trim it to what was needed, but it is too complex; there is too much room for error there. However, it will be necessary that they acclimate to their new situation. Animals are creatures of habit and instinct, and since these two have the wrong habits and no proper instincts for their new existence, this must be provided. You are familiar with the principles of hypno-programming; it is my belief that these two are developed enough to absorb it on a basic level."

  "But, Senior!" one young Wuckl protested. "These are still not of any life of the island, let alone Wuckl. How will you do this?"

  "The creature is common, however, and in the Catalog," the gamekeeper replied. "I had its Catalog requirements transmitted by phone from the University. A bit esoteric, of course—I had to trade on an old friendship or two and will owe some explanations later, particularly for those who compiled the two modules at this late hour, but they are here. We will administer the treatment while they are in the electrobath. I will keep them sedated until certain that all the work is progressing satisfactorily."

  "Then what?" another asked. "What will you do with them?"

  The senior's bill opened wide in all four directions, the Wuckl equivalent of a smile. "They will awaken in their new and permanent homes, happy and cared for. I will arrange it. Do not fear. What we have done is ethical and right."

  * * *

  Mavra Chang awoke as if from a total absence of prior sensation. It was almost like being born; it was the beginnings of consciousness. Her mind was a complete blank; no words formed there. Then suddenly her senses brought input. She opened her eyes and looked around. It was dark, and hard to see. She got up and walked around the area with aimless curiosity. It was a straw-floored enclosure; over to one side, the only thing present, was a large male.

  She sensed somehow that he was male and she female; the concepts were natural, like walking, sleeping, eating—not verbal concepts, just what was. The male was still asleep.

  She found an opening and walked to it. She sniffed at it briefly, then walked through. At the other end lay the outside.

  She looked around with that same nonintellectual curiosity, seeing a clipped grassy hill that smelled good and, nearby, a trough of aromatic stuff and, surrounding it all, a moat that was clear to its artificial rock bottom, perhaps four or five meters down. At one end of their compound, beyond the moat, a stone wall rose a meter or so higher than the hill; from the water, though, it was three meters to the top, effectively blocking any exit.

  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.

  Finally, when the feeder lowered the ramp and brought the food over, she had an idea. The thing was confident that the food smell would keep them next to it, away from the bridge—and for the first couple of times she did find the smell irresistible. But while the thing brought food to the trough, the ramp was down. Here was a way to get over that wall.

  Vaguely, she was certain that they were in a zoo, though the concept was a hazy one. It was hard to think, to form plans, to plot on many levels or be very subtle about it. She tried running as fast as she could, and discovered that, despite being fat and low to the ground, she had short bursts of remarkable speed when she needed it. She felt she could withstand the food odor if she really tried and make for that bridge. She wished she could convey this thought to the male. But although she'd tried—and he'd tried—they could manage only deep grunts. But he followed her around, ran when she did, stopped when she did, and that should be enough. If he didn't follow, it would be bad, but she knew that she had to reach the strange place that haunted her dreams.

  The Wuckl, a very young feeder, came by near dusk as usual. It had been working at the preserve for several months and had its routine down pat. When it got to the new ones and picked up the heavy buckets of food for them, they were there waiting for him as usual, and the female was grunting more excitedly than usual, but that was all right.

  The feeder stared curiously at them for a moment. From a hex far to the northeast of the island, they filled a gap in the zoo's displays, although the Wuckl had wondered why such a grandiose place—once the pen for a large group of domestic animals—had been picked for only two of them.

  They were curious creatures to see. Fat, they ate whenever and whatever they could—including the organic garbage from the city, which was their standard fare. They stood on four funny little legs that were set far back on their
bodies and ended with small cloven hooves. They could not see their own legs because their heads took up the whole forward part of their bodies, allowing only a relatively inflexible neck.

  The quadrupeds were not to be taken lightly, though; although almost bare when they arrived at the zoo, in the days that followed a brown growth sprouted all over their bodies except on the underside, legs, and face. The brown coat was deceptive—it was stiff, sharp, and needlelike, and to pet one would risk getting multiple punctures.

  In fact, they looked like large pigs covered with porcupine quills, although the Wuckl, never having seen a hog, would not have recognized the analogy. There were some differences. They were tailless, and their ears were tall and pointed. The male was neutral pink in the face and legs, contrasting with the bitch's burnt orange.

  A kick of its taloned leg and the ramp flipped up and over. The Wuckl hopped up before it swung back, holding it down with its weight as it crossed. Across the moat but still on the bridge, it put down one of the food buckets and reached down and put a small hook in an eye socket in the ground, thereby anchoring the bridge.

  Mavra looked at her mate and gave a loud grunt that momentarily took his mind and eye off the food. As the Wuckl walked to the trough, she ran for the bridge, then crossed it with a clatter of tiny hooves. Joshi looked about, confused for an instant, then ran after her.

  The feeder turned at the noise, shocked. "Hey!" it screamed, and started running after them. It was so upset that it tripped on the edge of the bridge and fell into the moat.

  In the precious minute or two this mishap bought, Mavra was away. Her vision was limited, but she smelled the scents of numerous things like the feeder, and wherever the scent grew stronger she followed it.

  The, preserve was closed; the staff on duty were busy at their tasks or eating, so they went on unimpeded. She'd guessed right; the stronger the scent, the more Wuckl had passed the more likely she would find the entrance or exit. There was a chain across it, but it was too high to block them, and they were soon out into a parking area. They ran to the left, toward some trees barely visible in the growing darkness. The scent was strong, and it seemed a natural place to go. Behind them, the feeder had by then pulled itself from the moat and raised the alarm. But the fugitives were away and running, even though Joshi hadn't the slightest idea why.

  Even though she thought she was a pig, and for all intents and purposes was a pig, and still couldn't think clearly or remember why, Mavra Chang was heading to Gedemondas.

  Oolakash

  The city resembled a great reef of bright-colored coral stretching out in all directions. It was not wholly natural, though; it had been formed by the biological processes of the inhabitants and by an advanced technology.

  Inside, vast halls were connected by long, narrow tunnels; living units, offices, everything was communal. One knew where everything was and who was in charge of what.

  The inhabitants of this high-tech hex were themselves long and thin, with bony exoskeletons. One such, tall and still very young, emerged from a passage into the clear dark waters. Its head bore a slight resemblance to that of a horse, but was actually a bony shell in which two tiny, unblinking red eyes were set atop a long snout that was actually a tube. As a result, the facial expression seemed one of permanent surprise. Two small ears, hardly more than folds in the exoskeleton, and two tiny horns over the eyes instantly relayed data on the water through which the creature moved effortlessly. Below its head was a body like an elongated turnip, from which a series of armored tentacles covered with suction cups emerged. The body ended in a long, curved tail that coiled and uncoiled as it moved.

  Dr. Gilgam Zinder, despite so many years as an Oolakash, still marveled at this life and these—now his—people. Movement was like floating at will in thick air, a slight flick of tail here or there taking you up, down, or wherever else you wanted to go. It was wonderful, a feeling of total freedom and command.

  In many ways he was a totally different person from the middle-aged human who had cracked the Markovian code.

  Unorthodox, dogmatic, egocentric, and eccentric, nonetheless he understood the mathematics of reality better than any before him, and he had landed in a high-tech hex—albeit a water world.

  This took a lot of new education.

  It was an incredible world, though, a world with every modern convenience, even high-speed tubes in which water pressure could propel one to the various points of the hex. Oolakash had somehow attained a limited but efficient atomic technology adapted to underwater use, having bypassed some of the intermediate stages.

  When Zinder arrived, he thought he was isolated, forever cut off. He had no idea where the others had gone, or if they had even survived.

  Culturally, Oolakash had taken some getting used to. There was little privacy, but the people were good, honest, and serious. They were organized into guilds, which trained and developed their own and were interdependent for services. Each guild elected one member to a governing guild, which in turn elected a leader, who held absolute power for a two-year term, after which that person could never hold any office again.

  Essentially their society was a matriarchy. Women did the majority of the work, dominated the guilds and the leadership. Males, with the ability to control their body coloring, were prissy peacocks who spent a good deal of time trying to attract females.

  But the Oolakash had recognized an exception in Zinder; they'd known who and what they had, and they had erected a wall of secrecy and silence around him. All who knew of his origin had such knowledge erased from their minds when their need to know no longer was necessary—even the leadership. To the others, he was just Tagadal, a scientist who was exceptionally bright even if he was a male.

  The island lay ahead. Below, it was festooned with marine life; above, it was a barren rock in a smooth sea; inside, it was a communications center of a very unique sort.

  The hardest part had been placing the transmitter above the surface and disguising it. But they had managed it, with remote devices, partially of Zinder's own design. The communications system itself was an ingenious hybrid of Zinder and Oolakash design. The surface of the sea was used, making possible the reception of a strong signal at a distance, but one too diffuse, close up, for proper triangulation to locate the ultimate source. In effect, the signal was unintelligible to any except the one for whom it was intended.

  Zinder nodded to the technical people as he floated into his office to check a few reports before swimming up to the transmission chamber. Devices had had to be constructed just to allow his voice to be used; the Oolakash used a series of very rapid high-frequency pulses for communication. Instead of placing a translator on him, the solution was to wire it into the transmission circuitry itself. He talked normally; in Zone, a device was used to slow the speech to other-race norms, although it was often frustrating for an Oolakash to hold a conversation with such slow-thinkers. He figured it was something like talking between planets in a large system with an enormous time-lag. There was no problem, however, with the party to whom he talked using the big transmitter above.

  Tentacles laced through controls with lightning speed. Lights and dials spun, power built up, and it was time to begin.

  "Obie?" he called.

  There was a slight delay, a real-time lag this time, and then a reply, in his own language, at his own speed.

  "Yes, Doctor? I am here," came a distant voice.

  "Do you have any way of calculating the progress of the Northern expeditions?" he asked.

  "No one has left yet, if that's what you mean," the computer responded carefully. "I have been monitoring the Yugash Zone Gate inputs. Only the norm so far, and nothing from the South that correlates. I have also managed to pick up some Yaxa transmissions as you requested."

  Zinder nodded. Those he needed. Obie was a great computer, true, but it was a minor toy compared to the Well of Souls. The Well, of course, was not self-aware, but its contents were open to Obie—who, unfortunately,
hadn't the capacity to interpret such a mountain of complex data. Over the years, however, Obie had learned how to utilize subsets of the data from the Well; the Yaxa transmissions were low-volume enough to be usable, but it had taken Obie weeks to isolate them.

  "So how far along are they?" Zinder prodded.

  The computer didn't hesitate. "Many problems have cropped up. For one, the poor initial suit tests; the rebreather apparatus didn't work well, and almost caused two deaths," he reported. "They've started over from the beginning. Their error is fundamental to the limitations of semitech hex requirements—I could solve it in an instant—but they are still stuck awhile."

  That was good, Zinder thought with satisfaction.

  The problem, of course, was that while Yugash was fairly close to Uchjin, where the downed ship had sat these many years, it was not next to it but several hexes away. In none of the Northern nations was there atmosphere a carbon-based life form could use. An ordinary spacesuit would not do; a Southern native would need a truckload of oxygen canisters just to travel the 355 kilometers of a nontech hex side. Electrical rebreathers wouldn't work in a semitech hex either; some solution had to be found or, even if the Yaxa and Ben Yulin could get to the North, they would be unable to live to reach Uchjin.

  Ortega no longer had such a problem. Obie had long ago solved it, and the devices, now secreted in safe and ignorant hexes, had been manufactured according to Gil Zinder's specifications. Ortega could get to Uchjin, but he could not fly the ship. Nor could Zinder go along; the Oolakash were almost invulnerable in their own environment, but they could not leave it. Besides, the available types of power on the Well World could not develop sufficient thrust to overcome the Well's effects on the hex and adjoining nontech and semitech hexes to allow such a cart to get into space.

  Gil Zinder was a participating bystander.

  "What of this Chang woman and her companion?" he asked Obie.

  The computer emitted a very human sigh. "You know that since she has never been through the Well she does not register at all," he reminded the scientist. "As for Joshi, her companion, well, you know the number of life forms on the Well World. If I had his type's pattern to begin with, yes, I could trace him—but, now, even if I were directly monitoring him, I would have no way of knowing it was the correct individual."