Exiles at the Well of Souls wos-2

by Jack L. Chalker

  “The three, who crashed,” Gil Zinder tried dryly. “Did they—did they… survive?”

  “Unknown,” Obie replied truthfully. “Since they are not part of the Well World matrix, they are not in the computer’s storage. Even if they were, I doubt if they could be picked out. There are too many sentient beings down there.”

  “Why don’t you ask him something practical, like how the hell we get out of here?” Trelig snapped, breaking the reverie. “The fact that there’s only one ship left makes the matter even more pressing!”

  Yulin nodded, unhappy to break this fascinating new line of discovery but unable to argue with Trelig’s practicality. But the computer was a hostile accomplice; questions would have to be in absolutes. Yulin suddenly felt like he knew what it was like to have to strike a bargain with the devil.

  And then, suddenly, without Obie’s aid, he had it. Yulin let out a disgusted exclamation that made the others turn, then slammed his right fist into his left palm. “Curse me for a fool!” he swore. “Of course!” Calming himself down, he asked, “Obie, is your little disk still operable?”

  “Yes, Ben,” Obie replied. “But only within its previous limits. The big disk is locked into the Well computer until I or somebody can figure out how to disengage it, and I have no ideas at all on that right now.”

  Yulin nodded, more to himself than to the machine. “Okay. Okay. The little one’s all I need now. Obie, you have the formula for sponge, don’t you?”

  “Of course,” came the reply, a little startled. “From the bloodstream of a number of early subjects.”

  “Uh, huh,” Yulin muttered. He was all business now. “Activate and energize. I want a small quantity of sponge, say five grams, in a leakproof plastic container. The straight stuff. And, I want an additional kilogram of the stuff with the following chemical substitutions.” He proceeded to rattle off a long chemical chain that startled the others.

  Zinder was the first to realize where Yulin was headed, and almost moaned, “But—you can’t do that!”

  But Yulin could, had ordered it, energized Obie, and the disk was even now swinging out over the circular platform, and the blue field was forming.

  “What the hell are you going to do?” Trelig shouted.

  “He’s going to poison the poor bastards,” Gil Zinder replied. He looked up at Yulin. “But—why? With sponge they’ll be back under your command again anyway.”

  Ben Yulin shook his head. “Maybe upstairs—maybe. But not these folks out there. They are already resigned to death and they’re committed.” He turned to Trelig. “Keep a watch on old doc here while I get the stuff,” he called.

  In a flash Yulin was off, bounding down the stairs to the platform. Carefully, he examined the two packages, found some gloves, and picked up both of them. He still didn’t quite trust Obie. And then he was back.

  “Have we still got communication?” he asked the councillor.

  Trelig nodded. “I think so, unless they’ve shot out the circuits. Try it.”

  Yulin went over to the wall, flipped a switch. “You, out there!” he called, hearing his own voice echoing eerily from the vast pit beyond the wall. “Listen to me! We have sponge! Things aren’t hopeless! We’ll give it to you if you surrender your weapons!” He flipped the intercom back to Open.

  There was a sudden silence from the outside, as if the news had unsettled the others, which was good. There was no reply as yet, but no shots, either.

  After what seemed like an interminable wait, Trelig growled, “They didn’t buy it.”

  Yulin, although fearing much the same thing himself, replied, “Don’t jump the gun. They’re probably voting on it. And thinking about the pain of no-dose for the first time. Even though they won’t really start to feel the effects for a while, they feel it in their minds even now.”

  And he was right. A few minutes later the intercom burst into life.

  “Okay, Yulin, maybe you get out,” came a rather pleasant voice with a very unpleasant undertone. “But how do we know you aren’t lying? We know how much sponge comes in. Every gram.”

  “We can make it! All you need!” Yulin responded, trying to keep his tension and anxiety out of his tone. “Look, I’ll prove it to you. Send a representative over the bridge. Any one. I’ll toss out a fiver. Try it. You’ll know what I say is the truth.”

  There was another long silence, and then the same voice came back, “All right. I’m coming over. But if I don’t make it or the stuff’s no good, the other six will get you if it’s the last thing they do—and there’s plenty more of us Topside. They know what’s going on down here.”

  Yulin grinned to himself. Another piece of useful information. The intercoms on Topside still worked. Now he knew just how much of the story they would know, and that intelligence would possibly make the difference.

  A few minutes later a lone figure could be seen walking across the great bridge that spanned the pit to Obie’s major core. It was a tiny, frail-looking figure, dwarfed almost to insignificance by the magnitude of the structure around it. It was either a very young girl or one of the screwy sexers. It didn’t matter.

  The former guard seemed to take forever to get there, and finally stopped about ten meters from the doorway.

  “I’m here!” she (he?) announced needlessly.

  Yulin gripped the small bag of pure sponge. “Here it comes!” he shouted and tossed it onto the bridge. It hit with a pock sound and slid almost to the other’s feet.

  The guard picked it up, looked at it, then tore open the plastic and pulled out the tiny piece of yellow-green sponge, an actual living creature of sorts. It really was a sponge, too, a denizen of a beautiful world that had been settled centuries ago by a prototype human colony. Interaction of alien bacteria with some of the synthetic elements in the colony’s initial food supply had spawned the horror that made Antor Trelig and his vast syndicate so powerful. The new mutated substance had permeated every cell of the humans’ bodies, replacing vital substances. The cells took to it fantastically; once in, it was neither rejected nor displaced. Indeed, the cells actually started making more of the stuff. The initial contamination was irreversible. A moderate amount caused no apparent physical changes, but was there all the same. A large amount, as the guards had gotten, caused cells to trigger in strange ways, causing deformity, accenting opposite sexual characteristics, or, as in Nikki Zinder’s case, causing runaway obesity or other equally horrible characteristics. It varied with the individual, although sexual characteristics, being the most sensitive, were the most common.

  The organism, however, was totally parasitic. It would consume the host, particularly its brain, where brain cells died irreplaceably in a great progression. Unchecked, the mutant substance would slowly destroy the mind well ahead of the body; it was painful. Since the stuff was not selective, often mental capacity was reduced or limited for all intents and purposes while the central core of one’s being was the last to go. One knew what was happening, knew until it struck the cerebral cortex full and turned one first into an animal, then into a vegetable that would simply lie there and starve to death. A slow-motion lobotomy.

  Sponge was not the drug, it was the antidote. Not an effective one, since it had to be periodically renewed, but the secretions of the native sponge plants did in fact arrest the growth of the mutant strain. To need sponge was to become the syndicate’s slave. The stuff was too dangerous for the Com to keep around; the sponge itself contained the addicting material. But greedy, ambitious politicians had it, grew it, and ruled with it.

  Facing such a future, the guard greedily and unhesitantly gobbled up the sponge in the plastic envelope. It was not a sufficient dose—all of New Pompeii’s personnel were deliberately given massive overdoses, which required massive amounts of sponge to counter—but it would be convincing.

  It was. “It’s real!” the guard shouted, clearly amazed. “It’s the pure stuff!”

  “A kilo in exchange for your weapons!” Trelig yelled, feeli
ng in charge once again. “Now—or we wait you out!”

  “The word has gone to Topside!” came a new, deeper voice from the intercom. “Okay, we’re coming over—four of us. The others will make sure you don’t blast us. You get their weapons when we get the kilo and you come out. Not before.”

  Trelig waited what he thought would be a convincing period of time, grinning evilly now. Their ploy was all too obvious.

  Three more joined the first one, looking somewhat eagerly at the very door that, just moments before, they’d been trying to blast.

  “Okay, here’s the kilo!” shouted the master of New Pompeii, as he heaved it out.

  They almost pounced on it, and two of them made a simultaneous grab for the package. One scooped it up and started running back to the other side, while the other three nervously blocked Trelig’s view.

  “What if they don’t take it right away?” Yulin whispered, worried.

  “They will,” Trelig replied confidently. “They’re overdue, remember. How powerful is that stuff?”

  “It should feel great for five or six minutes,” the younger man told him. “After that, well, they should just all get massive heart seizures and keel over.”

  Trelig looked suddenly worried. “Should? You mean there’s some doubt?”

  “No, no, not really,” Yulin replied, shaking his head. “I didn’t really mean that. No, what’s in there is enough to kill an army. Give them ten minutes, no more.”

  “Think they’ll run for Topside?” Trelig continued, still worried. “Or maybe one will live long enough to radio a warning.”

  Yulin considered this. “No, I doubt if they’ll wait to get to Topside. You yourself just said they’re overdue. As for one giving a warning, well, if you can find a personal intercom, we ought to be able to find out.”

  They waited anxiously. Trelig could not find the intercom; the one he had originally worn was long smashed in the reversal. “We’ll just have to bluff it through,” he growled, uncertainty again in his voice. “Say—how will we know they’re gone? You want to be the first target? Or maybe Doc, there?”

  Yulin shook his head. “Not necessary. Obie’s sensors are still on.” He walked over to the console.

  “Obie, are the guards still alive?”

  “No, Ben,” responded the computer. “At least, I register no life forms in their old area. They winked out pretty suddenly. You murdered them clean.”

  “Save your sarcasm,” Yulin growled. “Did you monitor any transmissions to Topside?”

  “I haven’t much capability there,” Obie noted. “I don’t know.”

  Ben Yulin nodded, then turned to Trelig. “Well, we got by obstacles one through six. Topside’s gonna be a lot tougher, though. Any ideas?”

  Trelig thought for a moment, eyes gleaming. The immediate threat over, he was beginning to enjoy this.

  “Ask the machine if anyone Topside is aware of who escaped in the first ship,” he ordered.

  “How could Obie know?” Yulin asked. “I mean, if he can’t even monitor communications. Why? What have you got in mind?”

  “To get to my position, you have to think of all the angles,” the syndicate boss told him. “For example, either ship was capable of carrying at least half the guests, yet only Mavra Chang, Nikki Zinder, and the guard went. Why?”

  Yulin thought a minute. “Because they sneaked out. Chang was paid to get the girl, not save everybody on Topside. The more people in a plot, the more chance for a foul-up.”

  Trelig nodded. “Now you begin to see. There are a lot of them, and they barely know one another. I’d guess, too, that they have, at best, an uneasy relationship with the guards. All hell broke loose not long after the ship left. Want to bet some of them don’t even know a ship is gone?”

  “The guards—” Yulin objected.

  “Will know only that the ship is gone,” Trelig completed. “They also know that without the codes the second ship would be blasted by the orbiting sentries. Hell, they won’t remember who’s who or how many there are, you know that. The girl’s been more or less sealed off, and the guard—what’s one guard? Could have been killed down here. Getting the idea now?”

  “You mean impersonate the ones who got away?” Yulin gasped.

  Trelig’s expression looked impatient, impatient at this elementary step.

  “Look,” he said. “We need a way to gain their confidence. Take them off guard. We need a way to get to those visitors as friends, convince them it’s us against the guards, get their help in taking the ship. We must get that ship away until they’ve died out here. We can’t do it alone.”

  Yulin nodded. “I see,” he said, but he didn’t like it. He looked over at Gil Zinder. The older man was slumped, a vacant expression. He looked tired and defeated.

  “What about him?” Ben Yulin asked, gesturing.

  “He has to go with us,” Trelig answered quickly. “He knows how to operate Obie, and Obie will do anything for him. To leave him here would be like jumping into the pit out there.”

  Yulin nodded, his mind already considering several things, all unpleasant. For one thing, he didn’t like the idea of going through the thing himself. Sending others through, that was fine—a tremendous feeling of godlike power. But himself—to become someone, something else. Trelig’s plan worried him, worried him as much as having to bring it about using his own special circuitry, revealing to Zinder—and to Trelig—his own mastery of the machine.

  He looked again at Trelig. The councillor had a curious half-smile on his face and still held the pistol in his hand. He’d seen similar expressions on his boss when administering sponge to new victims and when ordering nasty executions.

  “You want to go first?” he suggested hopefully.

  That evil grin spread wider. “No, I don’t think so,” the syndicate boss replied acidly. “You can do it, then?”

  Yulin nodded dully, still grasping at straws. He did not want to surrender to permanent second-class status.

  “Then we’ll do it this way,” the big man continued. “First, you will try to find out the identity of the guard. If Obie can keep track of people, he should know who it was. Then one of us becomes the guard—minus the sponge addiction, make sure of that!—and one becomes Nikki Zinder and the third becomes Mavra Chang. All preprogrammed in noninterruptable sequence, of course.” He shrugged disarmingly. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, you understand. It’s just that you get on top by doing the unthinkable and you stay on top by thinking the unthinkable.”

  Yulin sighed, surrendering. The better part of valor and all that, he decided.

  “Who do you want to be?” he asked.

  “We have to think this through, and time’s pressing,” Trelig replied. “The old man, there—well, we’ll need some sort of mind-bind, of course. Make him his own flesh and blood. Behavior patterns will also have to be programmed in,” he reminded the younger scientist. “We don’t want any slip-ups. We will not just have to look like these people, but walk like them, talk like them, almost think like them, while remaining ourselves inside. The odds are the guard’s one of the supervisors, and they’re all sexual foul-ups. I’m hermaphroditic, so that shouldn’t pose a problem. That makes you Mavra Chang.”

  “I’d rather not be a woman,” Yulin protested weakly.

  “You won’t mind when you’ve been through the disk,” Trelig retorted. “Now, let’s get the instructions letter-perfect, so everything’s right and we get nothing funny added or subtracted by the machine. And—when you’re doing it, Ben, you will show me how.”

  Yulin started to protest, then decided there was no point to it. He turned to the console.

  “Obie? Do you have the identity of the guard who escaped with Mavra Chang?” he asked.

  “It was Renard,” replied the computer. “I have no reading for him and he did not leave Topside for here. A few died Topside, though, so a slight chance exists that it was not.”

  “It has to be,” Trelig decided. “He was one
of the girl’s guards. Everything fits. I’ll take a chance on it.”

  Ben Yulin nodded. “I don’t think it’d be a good idea if the Doc, here, knows the access,” he pointed out.

  Trelig agreed, turned, and shot a short stun beam at the helpless Zinder, who collapsed in a heap. “Five minutes,” Trelig warned his associate. “No more.”

  Ben Yulin nodded, then turned back to the console. He didn’t like doing what he was about to do, and in front of the one man who could later use it against him, but a double cross at this point had too many risks to be worth it.

  “Obie?” he called.

  “Yes, Ben?” the computer responded.

  He punched some buttons on his keyboard, acutely aware of Antor Trelig’s steady gaze at the combinations.

  “Unnumbered transaction,” he told the machine. “File in aux storage under my key only.”

  “What?” The computer seemed slightly startled, then, as access to the sealed-off sections became open to him, Obie realized what was going on.

  “How many times have you used this, Ben?” Obie asked, marveling as always at the discovery of a part of himself he’d not known was there.

  “Not often,” Yulin responded casually. “Now, Obie, I want you to listen carefully. You will carry out my instructions to the letter, neither adding nor subtracting anything on your own. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Ben,” Obie replied resignedly.

  Yulin paused a moment to choose his words, conscious of the dangers in giving Obie an opening, and also of Trelig’s ready pistol. There were tiny beads of sweat on his forehead.

  “Three transactions, in sequence, which must be completed before any additional instructions may be given you,” he said cautiously. “One, Dr. Gilgam Zinder, outward form to be that of the last coding of Nikki Zinder minus the sponge presence. Memory will remain Gil Zinder’s, with all attendant knowledge and skills, but subject will be unable to transmit this fact or information except on instruction from Antor Trelig or myself. Otherwise, subject will possess all behavior patterns of the frame of reference, including walk, emotive reactions, and speech, and all other characteristics to render subject indistinguishable from the frame of reference. Subject will further be unable to convey by any means the true identities of Antor Trelig or myself. Clear?”