Midnight at the Well of Souls wos-1

by Jack L. Chalker

  Varnett had vanished.

  Before this could sink in, a white figure jumped from atop the other flyer and hit him in the back. He went down, dropping the flare gun.

  The two figures, rolling across the rocky landscape, grappled for the knife. Skander was larger, but older and in worse physical condition than Varnett. Finally, with a shove, Skander pushed Varnett away from him and came upon the boy with the knife. Varnett let him get very close; then, as the knife made a quick stab, the boy’s arm reached out and caught the older man’s wrist. The two struggled and groaned in their suits as Skander tried to press the knife home.

  They were in that frozen tableau when, suddenly, the hole opened.

  They were both already in it.

  Both vanished.

  ANOTHER PART OF THE FIELD

  Nathan Brazil stretched back in his huge, pillowy lounge chair aboard the bridge of the freighter Stehekin, nine days out of Paradise with a load of grain bound for drought-stricken Coriolanus and with three passengers. Passengers were common on such runs—there were actually a dozen staterooms aboard—as freighter travel was much cheaper than passenger ships and a lot easier if you wanted to get where you were going in a hurry. There were a thousand freight runs for every passenger run to almost anyplace.

  The crew consisted only of Brazil. The ships were now automated, so he was there just in case something went wrong. Food had been prepared for all before takeoff and had been loaded into the automated kitchen. A tiny wardroom was used on those occasions when someone wanted to eat outside of his stateroom or with the captain.

  Actually, the passengers had more contempt for him than he for them. In an age of extreme conformity, men like Nathan Brazil were the mavericks, the loners, the ones who didn’t fit. Recruited mostly off the barbarian worlds of the frontier, they could take the loneliness of the job, the endless weeks often without human company. Most psychologists called them sociopaths, people alienated from society.

  Brazil liked people all right, but not the factory-made ones. He would rather sit here in his domain, the stars showing on the great three-dimensional screens in front of him, and reflect on why society had become alienated from him.

  He was a small man, around 170 centimeters tall, slight and thin. His skin was dark-complexioned. Two bright, brown eyes flanked a conspicuous Roman nose which sat atop a mouth very wide, rubbery, and full of teeth. His black hair hung long to his shoulders, but was stringy and looked overgreased and underwashed. He had a thin mustache and thinner full beard that looked as if someone had attempted to grow a full brush and hadn’t made it. He was dressed in a loose-fitting but loudly colorful tunic and matching pants, and wore sandals of a sickly green.

  The passengers, he knew, were scared stiff of him, and he liked it that way. Unfortunately, they were still almost thirty days out and their boredom and claustrophobia would sooner or later drive them meddling into his lap.

  Oh, hell, he thought. Might as well get everybody together. They have huddled back in that small lounge in the stern long enough.

  He reached up and flicked a switch.

  “The captain,” he intoned in a tenor voice that nonetheless had a gravelly undertone to it, making it sound a little harsh and unintentionally sarcastic, “requests the pleasure of your company at dinner today. If you like, you may join me in the wardroom forward in thirty minutes. Don’t feel put out if you don’t want to come. I won’t,” he concluded, and switched off the speaker, chuckling softly.

  Why do I do that? he asked himself for the hundredth—thousandth?—time. For nine days I chase them around, bully them, and see as little of them as possible. Now, when I start to be sociable, I blow it.

  He sighed, then reached over and dialed the meals. Now they would have to come up, or starve. He idly scratched himself and wondered whether or not he should take a shower before dinner. No, he decided, I had one only five days ago; I’ll just use deodorant.

  He picked up the book he had been reading off and on, a blood-and-guts romance on some faraway planet published centuries ago and produced in facsimile for him by a surprised and gratified librarian.

  He called librarians his secret agents because he was one of the very few who read books at all. Libraries were usually single institutions on planets and were patronized by only a very few. Nobody wrote books anymore, he thought, not even this garbage. They dredged up whatever information they needed for reference from the computer terminal in every household; even then the vast majority were the vocal types that answered questions. Only the technocrats needed to read.

  Only barbarians and wanderers read anymore.

  And librarians.

  Everybody else could just flip a switch and get a full, three-dimensional, sight-sound-and-smell creation of their own fantasies or those of a crew of dedicated fantasists picked by the government.

  Pretty dull shit, he thought. Even the people were bred without imaginations. The imaginative ones were fixed—or gotten rid of. Too dangerous to have a thinker unless he thought the government’s way.

  Brazil wondered idly whether any of his passengers could read. The Pig probably—his name for Datham Hain, who looked very much like one—but he probably only read up on the stuff he sold or some mundane crap like that. Maybe a manual on how to strangle people twenty ways, he thought. Hain looked as if he’d enjoy that.

  The girl with him was harder to figure. Like Hain, she obviously wasn’t from the communal factory worlds—she was mature, maybe twenty or so, and, if she didn’t look so wasted away, she might be pretty. Not built, or beautiful, but nice. But she had that empty look in her eyes, and was so damned servile to the fat man. Wu Julee, the manifest said her name was. Julie Wu? mused a corner of his brain. There it was again! Damn! He tried to grab onto the source of the thought, but it vanished.

  But she does look Chinese, said that little corner, and then the thought retreated once again.

  Chinese. That word meant something once. He knew it did. Where did those terms come from? And why couldn’t he remember where they came from? Hell, almost everybody had those characteristics these days, he thought.

  Then, suddenly, the thought was out of his mind, as such thoughts always were, and he was back on his main track.

  The third one—almost the usual, he reflected, except that he never drew the usual, permanently twelve-year-old automaton on his trips. They were all raised and conditioned to look alike, think alike, and believe that theirs was the best of all possible worlds. No reason to travel. But Vardia Diplo 1261 was the same underneath, anyway: looked twelve, was flat-chested, probably neutered, since there was some pelvic width. She was a courier between her world and the next bunch of robots down the line. Spent all her time doing exercises.

  A tiny bell sounded telling him that dinner was served, and he got up and ambled back to the wardroom.

  The wardroom—nobody knew why it was called that—merely consisted of a large table that was permanently attached to the floor and a series of chairs that were part of the floor until you pulled up on a little ring, whereupon they arose and became comfortable seats. The place was otherwise a milky white plastic—walls, floor, ceiling, even tabletop. The monotony was broken only by small plaques giving the ship’s name, construction data, ownership, and by his and the ship’s commissions from the Confederacy as well as by his master’s license.

  He entered, half expecting no one to be there, and was surprised to see the two women already seated. The fat man was up, intently reading his master’s license.

  Hain was dressed in a light blue toga that made him look like Nero; Wu Julee was dressed in similar fashion, but it looked better on her. The Comworlder, Vardia, wore a simple, one-piece black robe. He noted idly that Wu Julee seemed to be in a trance, staring straight ahead.

  Hain completed reading the wall plaques, then returned to his seat next to Wu Julee, a frown forming on his corpulent face.

  “What’s so odd about my license?” Brazil asked curiously.

 
“That form,” Hain replied in a silky-smooth, disquieting voice. “It is so old! No such form has been used in my memory.”

  The captain nodded and smiled, pushing a button under his chair. The food compartments opened up on top and plates of steaming food were revealed in front of each person. A large bottle and four glasses rose from a circular opening in the middle of the table.

  “I got it a long time ago,” he told them 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 diplomatic service.

  “I think it is fascinating you are so old, Captain,” she said pleasantly. “Perhaps you are the oldest man alive. My race, of course, has no rejuve—it is not needed.”

  No, of course not, Brazil thought sadly. They lived their eighty years as juvenile specialist components in the anthill of their society, then calmly showed up at the local Death Factory to be made into fertilizer.

  Anthill? he thought curiously. Now what in hell were ants?

  Aloud, he replied, “Well, old or not I can’t say, but it doesn’t do anybody much good unless you’ve got a job like mine. I don’t know why I keep on living—just something bred into me, I guess.”

  Vardia brightened. That was something she could understand. “I wonder what sort of world would require such a survival imperative?” she mused, proving to everyone else that she didn’t understand at all.

  Brazil let it pass.

  “A long-dead-and-gone one, I think,” he said dryly.

  “I think we shall go back to our rooms, Captain,” Hain put in, getting up and stretching. “To tell the truth, the only thing more exhausting than doing something is doing nothing at all.” Julee rose almost at the same instant as the fat man, and they left together.

  Vardia said, “I suppose I shall go back as well, Captain, but I would like the chance to talk to you again and, perhaps, to see the bridge.”

  “Feel free,” he responded warmly. “I eat here every mealtime and company is always welcome. Perhaps tomorrow we’ll eat and talk and then I’ll show you how the ship runs.”

  “I shall look forward to it,” she replied, and there even seemed a bit of warmth in her flat voice—or, at least, sincerity. He wondered how genuine it was, and how much was the inbred diplomatic traits. It was the sort of comment that was guaranteed to please him. He wondered if he would ever know what went on in those insect minds.

  Well, he told himself, in actual fact it didn’t make a damned bit of difference—he would show her around the ship and she would seem to enjoy it anyway.

  When he was alone in the wardroom, he looked over at the empty dishes. Hain had polished off everything, as expected, and so had Vardia and he—the meals were individually prepared for preference and body build.

  Julee’s meal was almost untouched. She had merely played with the food.

  No wonder she’s wasting away, he thought. Physically, anyway. But why mentally? She certainly wasn’t Hain’s niece, no matter what he said, and he doubted if she was an employee, either.

  Then, what?

  He pushed the disposal button and lowered the chairs back to their floor position, then returned to the bridge.

  Freighter captains were the law in space, of course. They had to be. As such, ships of all lines had certain safeguards unique to each captain, and some gimmicks common to all but known only to those captains.

  Brazil sat back down in his command chair and looked at the projection screen still showing the virtually unchanging starscape. It looked very realistic, and very impressive, but it was a phony—the scene was a computer simulation; the Balla-Drubbik drive which allowed faster-than-light travel was extradimensional in nature. There was simply nothing outside the ship’s energy well that would relate to any human terms.

  He reached over and typed on the computer keyboard: “i suspect illegal activities. show cabins 6 on left and 7 on right screen.” The computer lit a small yellow light to show that the instructions had been received and the proper code for the captain registered; then th
e simulated starfield was replaced with overhead, side-by-side views of the two cabins.

  The fact that cameras were hidden in all cabins and could be monitored by captains was a closely guarded secret, though several people had already had knowledge of the accidentally discovered bugs erased from their minds by the Confederacy. Yet, many a madman and hijacker had been trapped by these methods, and Brazil also knew that the Confederation Port Authority would look at the recordings of what he was seeing live and question him as to motive. This wasn’t something done lightly.

  Cabin 6—Hain’s cabin—was empty, but the missing passenger was in Wu Julee’s Cabin 7. A less-experienced, less-jaded man would have been repulsed at the scene.

  Hain was standing near the closed and bolted door, stark naked. Wu Julee, a look of terror on her face, was also naked.

  Brazil turned up the volume.

  “Come on, Julee,” Hain commanded, a tone of delightful expectancy in his harsh voice. There was no question as to what he had in mind.

  The girl cowed back in horror. “Please! Please, Master!” she pleaded with all the hysterical emotion she had hidden in public.

  “When you do it, Julee,” Hain said in a hushed but still excited tone. “Only then.”

  She did what he asked.

  Less-experienced and less-jaded men would have been repulsed at the sight, it was true.

  Brazil was becoming aroused.

  After she finished, Wu Julee continued to plead with the fat man to give it to her. Brazil waited expectantly, half-knowing what it was already. He just had to see where it was hidden and how it was protected.

  Hain promised her he would go get it and then donned the toga once more. He unbolted the door and appeared to look up and down the hallway. Satisfied, he walked out to his own cabin and unlocked the door. The unseen watcher turned his gaze to Cabin 6.

  Hain entered and took a small, thin attache case from beneath the washbasin. It had the high-security locks, Brazil noted—five small squares programmed to receive five of Hain’s ten fingerprints in a certain order. Hain’s body blocked reading the combination, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway—without Hain’s touch the whole inside would dissolve in a quick acid bath.