Quest for the Well of Souls

by Jack L. Chalker

  Vistaru, totally helpless in the battle because she was too small to man a weapon and her suit prevented flying or use of her stinger, sighed. "Poor Mavra!" was all she could manage.

  None of them slept the rest of the night, and they packed up and continued their journey at dawn's first light. None of the strange creatures had molested them further in mind or body, and they hoped it would stay that way.

  A couple of hours later they came upon the camp of the Yaxa party, saw the charred remains of the battle, and Vistaru noted with relief the lack of non-Pugeesh bodies about.

  "Too bad," Antor Trelig said sadly. "Looks like they're still in front of us."

  Wohafa

  Whether it was the promise, the fights, the threat, or other factors, the Pugeesh interfered no more. Both groups felt they were being watched, but as time passed and the truth of their claim that they were simply passing through became more obvious, they felt less threatened.

  Wohafa was an eerie scene. A bleak, copper-colored landscape set against a deep-pink sky through which wisps of anhydrous white clouds drifted. Lightning was so frequent that often the land seemed to be lit by a stroboscope, with everything moving in a jerky slow motion.

  The Wohafans themselves were odd creatures, balls of bright yellow light from which hundreds of lightninglike tendrils darted. A cross between creatures of matter and those of energy, they manipulated things with arms of energy, yet seemed to have mass and weight.

  As a high-tech hex, Wohafa had a large number of machines and artifacts, but, for the most part, these, too, reflected the ambiguity of their makers' nature and seemed odd lumps working from no apparent source and to no apparent purpose.

  They became aware that building in Wohafa was accomplished by matter-to-energy-to-matter conversion, when they watched rock worked by a number of Wohafans dissolve and reform in new and obviously planned forms.

  The Wohafans were a group neutral to them, though, which helped enormously. Having close contacts with the Bozog and a number of other high-tech Northern civilizations, they had almost daily contact with the South, obtaining whatever a customer wanted by making it from the surrounding rock and rearranging its atomic structure. They accepted the waste of other civilizations and remade it to order, so they were a key economic link in the loose economy of the Well World as a whole.

  They were also pragmatic. They understood the significance of the eerie silver moon that shined on the Southern horizon, and they appreciated its dangers, so they were willing to allow someone to reach it and remove the threat—for whatever purposes. As insurance, the Wohafans were willing to aid both sides so that, no matter who reached New Pompeii, they would bear the strange creatures no ill will.

  Wohafans created huge platforms that stood atop a strange blue-white glowing energy field, and transported first the Yaxa group and then the Ortega group across the hex, scrupulously maintaining the time interval between the two groups as well. The six hundred kilometers or so they needed to cross were wiped out in less than a day by this rapid and cooperative transportation system.

  A semitech hex, Uborsk was a bit more of a challenge but it bordered both Wohafa and Bozog and was partially dependent on them for some manufacturing. It could not afford to run afoul of the neighbors without causing long-range strains in which it had the most to lose.

  The Uborsk were enormous blobs of jelly, perhaps four meters around, who lived in a sea of soft, granular material that twinkled in sunlight. It was obvious that the Uborsk civilization was almost entirely hidden from the Southerners' sight.

  Out of the translucent blobs, however, could emerge tentacles, arms, anything they needed when they needed it. In order to facilitate commerce between Wohafa and Bozog, the Uborsk had allowed the two high-tech hexes to build an efficient railroad causeway along the Slublika border. The trains were an almost unending series of flatcars rolling on a continuous rail and powered externally by internal combustion engines at regular points along the almost four hundred kilometer route, like an enormous escalator. For allowing the construction and running the system, the Uborsk received raw materials they needed from the versatile Wohafans, manufactured goods their own technology could not produce from the Bozog. It was a good compromise that surprised the Southerners; interhex cooperation on a long-term basis was rare in the South, and it was all the more remarkable in the North because the three hexes involved were so different in composition that long-term stays even with protection were uncomfortable.

  The politics involved in the transportation systems were somewhat frustrating to the two groups, however; a five-and-a-quarter-hour interval had been established when the second group had crossed into Wohafa, and it was maintained absolutely. The trailing group was not permitted to close on the leaders, and the leaders were unable to prepare anything to eliminate their rivals.

  And thus, much more rapidly than they had dreamed, the leading group under Wooley and Ben Yulin pulled in to a strangely surrealistic station in Bozog.

  It was a surprisingly bright land; the pale-blue sky was reminiscent of the South, at least at the higher altitudes, and nearby mountains had what looked like snow. Spindly gnarled trees dotted the landscape, the fact that they were purple with orange leaves not in the least disconcerting. Only the midday temperature registering on the suit gauges offered any strong indication of difference: it was minus thirty degrees Celsius.

  But the Bozog were no distant relatives of the South. The Bozog were, if anything, more alien and enigmatic than any creatures they had met to date.

  A Bozog official rolled up to meet them on ballbearing feet. It was very thin, more or less round, and, except for the two orange circles on its back, rose no more than 30 or 40 centimeters from the ground.

  "Welcome to Bozog," it said in its most dignified voice, like a small-town Chamber of Commerce head greeting visiting dignitaries. "We are amazed and pleased at your rapid and safe arrival. If you will follow me across town, we will arrange for the final part of your journey."

  They followed it, noting the liquidity of its movements; the official seemed to flow rather than roll down broad streets, and almost oozed around corners.

  The city itself was low, and furnished with an incredibly intricate network of broad ramps. There were vehicles, too, resembling mechanical copies of the Bozog—low, flat, with two storage humps in the middle. A Bozog driver lay on a forward platform and seemed to have no means of control, yet the driving was perfect.

  Observing the odd people at work showed how they carried on the business of a civilization. Beneath each Bozog were what appeared to be millions of sticky cilia, so that a Bozog who lay over something could manipulate it quite well. For elaborate or problem work, the two orange spots proved singularly versatile. Out of each could rise a large orange tentacle or many smaller ones—the orange material seemed to be a viscous liquid that the Bozog formed into any shape and then held it under strain—to the limit of the amount of mass in the body containers.

  Another, final train took them to the launch site. It was in some ways similar to the Uborsk railroad in that it was a continuous line of flatcars, but it seemed to roll on soft noiseless tires or treads through a U-shaped channel, like a moving walkway, and was powered by a system much more sophisticated than the one used in the semitech hex.

  As they rode, Wooley signaled that they were to switch to low-power radio only. They were nearing the end of the journey, and it was time to discuss what would come next.

  "It's rather obvious that we haven't faced, or been able to face, our chief remaining problem," she pointed out.

  Yulin nodded. "The others are only a few hours behind. There's no way we'll launch immediately. The Bozog said they're still bringing the ship in from Uchjin. So we'll still be there when they arrive." He couldn't help wondering how the Bozog were bringing the ship from the nontech hex where he'd crash landed it over twenty-two years before, nor how this was being done against the wishes of the Uchjin themselves.

  "You could alw
ays compromise," Joshi suggested helpfully. "I mean, why don't we all go?"

  "Compromise with the Ghiskind is impossible," the Torshind pointed out. "We represent totally conflicting views, goals, and philosophies. As for the rest—only Trelig counts there, of course. Would any of you like to reinstate him on the world that he designed? Yulin? Do you know everything there is to know about New Pompeii? Would you trust the rest of us there with Trelig around?"

  Yulin shook his bull's head slowly from side to side. "You know the answer there. That place is built like a fortress. Not even the full weight of the Com could get in there with less than the full fleet and its terror weapons. Even I was confined for the most part to the Obie project underside—I was only allowed up for breaks, and then only to the luxury rooms. No, Underside I'm totally familiar with, but Topside and the little secrets, twists, turns, and traps I'm not."

  Mavra suddenly had a headache. It irritated her, and she shook her equine head in annoyance. It was a sharp, local ache that felt as if someone had inserted a glowing wire in her brain.

  And suddenly it exploded.

  She remembered. Remembered it all. When she was first on New Pompeii, Antor Trelig had run his political guests through the great computer, Obie, giving them horse's tails as demonstrations of his power. The computer, designed and built by Dr. Gilgam Zinder, was not friendly to Trelig. It simply obeyed whoever gave the orders from the console—but it was like making a deal with the devil, as Yulin had complained. If there was a loophole, Obie found it—and one such was Mavra herself. When she'd been run through, Obie had decided that she was best capable of escaping New Pompeii, of freeing Zinder's daughter, Nikki, and getting her off-planet before Zinder and his near-human machine carried out their ultimate double-cross of Trelig and Yulin: the reversal of the field of probability that had transferred them all to the Well World.

  She had almost made it, thanks to Obie. Obie had given her the complete plans and specifications for New Pompeii, down to the last nut and bolt. It had allowed her to foil Trelig's best defenses, nab Nikki Zinder, steal the ship, and bypass the robot sentinels. But it had been too late—they'd all crashed anyway after being translated with New Pompeii to Well World orbit.

  And all that knowledge had been locked inside her mind since that time. It was there now—more than she herself could follow. She suddenly understood Obie's dilemma with the Well World—too much input. The computer was in contact with the great Well computer, but could not absorb the knowledge. She concentrated, found that if she wanted a specific thing it could be retrieved—but only if she knew the right question to ask.

  The others ignored her.

  "It is important, then, that we have our showdown at the launch site," Wooley was saying. "We will have only a short time to prepare, so we must be extra careful. Remember, though, that this is a high-tech hex and everything works here."

  Yulin was thoughtful. "What about the Bozog, though? Won't they stop us from doing anything?"

  The Torshind answered that. "No. They are opportunists. They cannot operate the ship, but they want a representative on it when it goes. They do not care who the pilot is—or what. They are also far from stupid. They will know that this tension exists, and that it must be released. I would suspect that, as long as at least one pilot lives, they will not interfere."

  "I wish we could be sure of that," Wooley responded. "However, we will act as if it were true because we have no other choice. Remember, we will have only hours at the launch site before they arrive. Not much time to assess conditions and prepare." Her voice seemed to grow even colder, sharper than usual. "On no account must Antor Trelig survive," she concluded.

  * * *

  The launch site itself was impressive. The Bozog had had years to prepare, and they'd made the most of it. Huge buildings stood out from a flat, desolate landscape, and a massive version of the rail system on which the Southerners were riding ran about a kilometer from one huge building to the site itself. Around the site massive cranes were positioned to manipulate the ship onto the platform, a tremendous black metal structure reaching into the sky, with a tilt toward the northwest.

  "I'm not sure I like that angle," Yulin commented, surveying it from the train. "As it is, we'll have to build to full thrust before taking off, a tremendous danger to us even without other problems."

  "You will need to clear sixty-three kilometers within the first minute of flight," their Bozog host responded. "Using information supplied by you and by others, we calculate that you will have nine seconds to spare. The slight angle is to give you maximum high-tech free flight. A perfectly vertical takeoff is impossible with the ship's design, anyway, and you would run the risk of a high-altitude wobble that might take you for a moment over the wrong side of the border. Any power failure during takeoff will result in insufficient speed to break free of the Well's influence before normal rotation takes you over semitech Esewod or nontech Slublika. You of all people should know what that would mean."

  Yulin nodded soberly. He and Trelig had escaped New Pompeii in disguise to avoid being murdered by Trelig's former guards and slaves, who, seeing that they were now in an alien sector of space, realized they were dead people because they'd be deprived of their daily sponge supply. Trelig and Yulin had made the same mistake as Mavra Chang had a day earlier—they had flown too low over the Well World, so that the technological limitations of the hexes below had affected them, and they had plunged to the surface.

  But Chang's ship had broken up over the South; attempts to recover the sections, particularly the power supply, had been the cause of the wars of the Well. That had ended in failure with the destruction of the engines in a volcanic crater in high Gedemondas.

  Yulin's ship, however, was not designed to break up but was a smaller utility craft used mostly for in-system work. It had atmospheric-flight capabilities and collapsible wings, and he and Trelig had brought it intact to a dead-stick landing in nontech Uchjin.

  "Are you certain of those figures?" Yulin asked, worried. "I mean, absolutely certain?" Whoever was in that ship would have one crack at it, and one crack only.

  "We are," the Bozog assured him. "We have had independent channels of communication. We know as much about that ship as its designer. Only the lack of two key minerals anywhere on the Well World prevents us from constructing our own drive and building our own ships."

  "Curious," Mavra put in. "I wonder if the lack was deliberate?"

  "Probably. Makes no difference," the Bozog responded. "The fact is that nothing on the Well World so far discovered can power a plant with sufficient initial and sustained thrust to overcome the Well's effects. You might say we know how to build one, we just can't do it."

  They were taken to a large square building that proved to have a very conventional airlock. Inside, it contained a suite of comfortable rooms complete with closets, manipulable lights, and an intercom to the Bozog launch control complex, and the project director's office.

  It was also filled with a generic Southern atmosphere that was maintained at a temperature of twenty degrees Celsius, comfortable for all concerned.

  The atmospheric difference seemed to have no effect on the Bozog.

  "We are rather versatile in this department," it explained. "In general, we cannot stand the presence of certain lethal gases, but none of them are present in your atmosphere. You will excuse me if I do not elaborate on which gases and other substances are not to our liking."

  They understood. Why give a possible enemy the lethal weapon?

  "How do you breathe, then?" Joshi asked, fascinated.

  "We don't breathe, not in the sense you mean it," the creature replied. "What gases we require we obtain in our eating. There is as much gas in the rock we consume as in anything else. We just do not require constant respiration."

  Left alone shortly afterward, they were thankful to get out of their suits. The Torshind, who had no such problems, left its crystal crab shell and explored rapidly.

  "No locks," it
reported to them. "Heavily bugged, of course, but I find nothing threatening. It is my opinion that, if the Bozog remain neutral and don't warn our adversaries, we can surprise them shortly after they enter the airlock."

  The Yugash had used its crystal tentacles to draw a rough floor plan, and Wooley surveyed it critically.

  "I disagree," she responded. "There is too much danger of hitting a Bozog, and that we can't afford. No, this second chamber across the way is obviously for them. I would suggest we let them in, allow the Bozog to leave, then hit them as quickly as possible, before they even have a chance to unsuit."

  The Torshind considered it. "A bit more risky," it pronounced, "but politics is politics."

  Bozog, the Launch Site Five Hours Later

  The Ortega party looked at the block structure with more relief than apprehension. They had been in their suits for several days; they were smelly and itchy. Even Trelig and Burodir were uncomfortable: they needed an occasional rinse of water, and it had been the same water over and over for some time.

  Their number was greater, too; two large Dillians, two Makiem, plus Renard, Vistaru, and the Ghiskind made for an unwieldy assortment with different needs and comfort levels. All were out of their element.

  The Bozog stopped near the airlock. "The others are inside, in their own apartment," it warned. "They are out of their suits and have had a long time to prepare. They will do nothing as long as I am with you, of that we're certain—it would force us to take a hand. However, once I leave, you are all on your own. I will tarry as long as possible to give you as much chance as you can, but after that it's up to you."

  They understood perfectly, and were grateful that it bothered. The two Dillians pulled pistols and acted as guards; they would cover the others until they themselves could be guarded.

  There was no sign of the Yaxa party when they entered, went down a well-lit corridor, and through a top-hinged panel to their rooms. As they passed a similar panel on their right, the Bozog's rear spot had formed a shaky tentacle and pointed silently, then receded back into the orange mass.