Midnight at the Well of Souls wos-1

by Jack L. Chalker

  “Found this Markling on the road, claims to be an Entry,” said the big guide in that same annoyed tone he had used with Hain.

  There was that word again. What in seven hells was a Markling, anyway?

  “Just a moment,” the clerk or whatever it was said, “I’ll see if His Highness will see you.”

  The office worker went into a side door and stayed several minutes. Hain’s hunger was increasing, and so was his apprehension. A hereditary empire, he thought. Well, it could be worse.

  Finally the clerk reappeared. “His Highness will see the Entry,” she said—for some reason Hain automatically thought of his guide as masculine and the receptionist and most of the other workers as feminine. The guide moved forward.

  “Just the Entry,” said the clerk sharply. “You will return to your duties.”

  “As you say,” the other replied, and turned and left.

  Hain gathered up his courage and entered the doorway.

  Inside was the biggest creature he had ever seen. But there was something else unusual about him.

  The hairs on his body were white.

  Hain suddenly realized just how hereditary this monarchy was.

  There were some boxes and bags around of more or less conventional design, and one of those typewriters with a much larger screen. Nothing else. The big one reared back on the last four of his eight legs. Hain was impressed and cowed; he hadn’t seen anyone else doing that.

  “What’s your name, Entry?” the big white one demanded imperiously. The tone, Hain realized by now, was conveyed by the intensity of the signal.

  “Datham Hain, Your Highness,” he replied in the most respectful way he could.

  The official ran his tongue over his beak in thought. Finally, he went over to the typewriter and started punching up something—something short, Hain saw, because the screen was still almost empty when the large creature punched the send bar or whatever it was. A moment’s wait. Then the screen started to fill with those funny dots.

  The official read the message carefully, studying it for several minutes. Finally it turned back to him as he stood there impatiently, needing almost four meters to negotiate the move.

  “Ordinarily, Hain, we’d just train and condition you to a position and you’d fit in or die.” Hain’s heart—if he still had one—sank. “But,” the royal official continued, “in this case we have special use for you. Too bad you turned up a Markling, but that’s to be expected. You’ll be quartered near here—I’ll have one of my assistants show you where. There’s a commissary three doors down. Most of you Entries come through starving, so go in there and eat your fill. Don’t worry about what it is—we can eat just about anything. Wait in your quarters until I get instructions from Imperial Headquarters.”

  Hain still stood there, digesting all this. Finally, he said, “Your Highness, might I be permitted one question?”

  “Yes, yes,” the other said impatiently. “What is it?”

  “What’s a Markling?”

  “Hain,” replied the official patiently, “life is hard and cheap in the Akkafian Empire. Infant mortality is extremely high, not only from normal factors imposed by nature but for other reasons you’ll find out sooner or later for yourself. As a result, to ensure racial continuation, about fifty females are born for every male.

  “A Markling is a female Akkafian, Hain. You’ve had a sex change.”

  * * *

  Datham Hain was led by one of the office staff to the commissary, which proved to be a large room filled with strange animals, plants, and worms, some still alive. Feeding as an Akkafian was not pleasant, at least to Hain’s unnormalized psyche, but it was necessary. The creatures frankly didn’t taste all that bad—in fact, they didn’t taste very much at all, but they filled the void in what seemed to be multiple stomachs. If he didn’t think about what he was eating, the changeling discovered, it went down all right.

  That tongue, like a sticky whip, was infinitely controllable. Live prey were simply picked up, thrown to the rear sting area to be paralyzed, then held and fed by the mandibles a little at a time through the beak.

  Discovering that he was now a she wasn’t much of a shock to Hain; the odds were that sexuality was so different among these people that it probably didn’t make much difference anyway. What was disquieting was that the males seemed to be in firm charge. The Nirlings, as the males were called, were larger and controlled the government and supervisory positions and the technology that kept them in power. The females, mostly neutered, did the work, apparently compulsively. Hain had seen no evidence of force or coercion; the workers carried out their tasks dedicatedly, unquestioningly, and uncomplainingly. Hain understood the system to a degree. It was not unlike that of the Comworlds, where people were bred to work.

  The only trouble, he—no, she—thought, is that I am on the low end of the scale. To be an alien creature, to be totally different—these things she could accept. To be female she could accept. To be a slave to such a system was intolerable.

  After feeding they took her to a rest area. This race worked at whatever it did around the clock, and individuals were spelled by others so they would get rest at scheduled intervals.

  The staging area rose for several storeys—a large, underground wall of cubicles each of which was just large enough to hold a single creature. About half were filled as they entered, and Hain was assigned a number and told to go into it and wait for instructions.

  Hain climbed up the side easily and entered the assigned cubicle. It was warm, and extremely humid, which felt oddly more comfortable than the drier air of the offices. There was a carpet of some sort of animal hair, and a small control panel with two buttons, one of which was depressed. Curious, she pressed the other one. She had apparently found a radio which was broadcasting a series of sound patterns whose pulses were oddly pleasing and calming. A wave of relief swept over her insect body and she found herself drifting off into a dreamless sleep.

  The office clerk noted with some satisfaction that Hain was asleep, then went over to the superintendent’s control console at the base of the rest area. The superintendent was emptying the catch trays of waste and other products, and she showed surprise when she recognized a clerk of the baron’s household.

  “By order of His Highness,” the clerk commanded, “the Markling in One Ninety-eight is to be kept asleep until called for. Make certain the pacifier remains on at shift change.”

  The superintendent acknowledged the order and went into her office. A panel of plastic buttons laid out and numbered corresponding to the cubicles was before her, with many of the buttons lit, including Hain’s. The superintendent held down number 198 with one foreleg while punching a small red control off to one side with the other.

  Hain was locked into blissful sleep until the button was depressed again.

  The clerk expressed satisfaction, and returned to the baron’s office to report. The great white Nirling nodded approval and dismissed her back to her desk.

  After a while, he went over to his communications console and punched the number for the Imperial Palace. He didn’t like to call the palace, since the king and the ambitious nobles surrounding him were unstable and untrustworthy. Barons were low on the pecking order, but they had a much longer survival rate because they were away from the palace. Make your quota and the living was pretty good.

  Communication was by audio only, so things had to be spelled out. Although the Akkafians had no ears, they “heard” in much the same way as creatures who did. Sound, after all, is a disruption of the surrounding atmospheric pressure by varying that pressure. Although he had never heard a sound as such, the baron’s hearing was better than most creatures on the Well World.

  After a long period, somebody at the palace woke up and answered. The Imperial Household was getting sloppy and degenerate, the baron reflected. Perhaps one day soon it would be time for a baronial revolt.

  Of course, the titles and such were not the same as human equivalents, but
if Hain could have overheard the conversation, it would have been translated much like this:

  “This is Baron Kluxm of Subhex Nineteen. I have an emergency topic for immediate transmittal to His Majesty’s Privy Council.”

  “The Privy Council is not assembled,” came a bored reply. “Can’t this wait, Baron?”

  Kluxm cursed silently at the insolence and stupidity of even the household help. The operator was probably one of the king’s Marklings.

  “I said emergency, operator!” he emphasized, trying to keep his temper from showing. “I take full responsibility.”

  The operator seemed unsure of herself, and finally decided in good bureaucratic fashion to pass the buck.

  “I will transfer you to General Ytil of the Imperial Staff,” she said. “He will decide.”

  Before Kluxm could even reply he heard the relay switch, and a new, male voice answered. “Ytil,” it said curtly.

  The baron had even less use for imperial military men; they generally went to war with other hexes when shortages developed every few years, and invariably lost them. However, he decided that Ytil would do for the same purpose as the operator had; after he explained the situation, it was somebody else’s problem.

  “I had an Entry today, one of the ones we’d been told to watch for.”

  “An Entry!” Ytil’s voice was suddenly very excited. The waves were so bad that the general’s voice started to give Kluxm a headache. “Which one?”

  “The one called Datham Hain. As a common Markling breeder,” he added.

  Ytil’s voice still quivered with excitement, although the last plainly disappointed him. “A Markling breeder! Pity! But to think we got one! Hmmmm. Actually, this might work out to our advantage. I’ve got to go over my files and recordings of Hain at Zone, but, if I remember, he’s the greedy and ambitious type.”

  “Yes, that’s what my file said,” Kluxm acknowledged. “But she was abnormally respectful and quiet while here. Seems to have adjusted to our form extremely well.”

  “Yes, yes, that’s to be expected,” Ytil replied. “After all, no use antagonizing everyone. Hain’s smart enough to see the social structure and her limits in it right off. Where is she now?”

  “In a rest area near my office,” Kluxm replied. “She’s on lull music and has a full stomach, so she’s out for two or three days until hunger sets in again.”

  “Excellent, excellent,” approved Ytil. “I’ll call the Privy Council together and we’ll send someone for her when we’re ready. You are to be commended, Baron! A fine job!”

  Sure, Kluxm thought glumly to himself. For which you’ll take all the credit.

  But credit was not what was on Ytil’s mind as the general scurried down the palace corridor after terminating the conversation. He stopped in a security room and picked up a tiny, black, jewel-like object on a large chain. Carefully he placed it over his right antenna and then went down to the lowest level of the palace.

  The guards weren’t very curious about him; it was normal to have high-ranking military and diplomatic people using the Zone Gate.

  The Akkafian general walked quickly into the darkness at the end of the basement corridor.

  And emerged in Zone.

  ZONE—THE AKKAFIAN EMBASSY

  The Markling receptionist looked startled as General Ytil emerged through the Zone Gate.

  Each hex had a gate somewhere, which would transport anyone to Zone instantaneously, and from Zone to his home hex. There were 780 such gates to the offices of each of the Southern Hemisphere races, as well as the one master Gate for Classification through which all entries passed and the huge input-only Gate in the center. It made things very easy for interspecies contact.

  General Ytil dismissed the startled exclamation and apologies of the receptionist and made his way immediately to the Imperial Ambassador’s office.

  The Baron Azkfru had barely been tipped off by the clerk when the general rushed in the door. The ambassador could see the obvious excitement and agitation in Ytil’s every movement.

  “My Lord Baron!” the general exclaimed. “It has happened! We have one of the new Entries as it was foretold!”

  “Calm down, Ytil,” Azkfru growled. “You’re losing your medals for dignity and self-control. Now, tell me rationally what this is about.”

  “The one called Hain,” Ytil responded, still excited. “It turned up earlier today over in Kluxm’s barony as a Markling breeder.”

  “Hmmmm…” Azkfru mused. “Too bad she’s a breeder, but it can’t be helped. Where is this Entry now?”

  “In lull sleep, safe for two or three more days,” the general told him. “Kluxm thinks I’ve notifled the Imperial Household and the Privy Council. He’s expecting someone to pick her up.”

  “Very good,” Azkfru replied approvingly. “It looks like things are breaking our way. I never put much stock in fortune-tellers and such crap, but if this has happened then Providence has placed a great opportunity in our hands. Who else knows of this besides Kluxm and yourself?”

  “Why, no one, Highness,” Ytil replied. “I have been most careful.”

  Baron Azkfru’s mind moved quickly, sorting out the facts and deciding on a course of action with a speed that had guaranteed his rise to the top.

  “All right, return to your post for now, and nothing of this to anyone! I’ll make all the necessary arrangements.”

  “You’re making the deal with the Northerners?” Ytil asked.

  Azkfru gave the Akkafian equivalent of a sigh. “Ytil, how many times do you need to be reminded that I am the baron? You take orders, and leave the questions and answers to your betters.”

  “But I only—” Ytil began plaintively, but Azkfru cut him off.

  “Go, now,” the ambassador said impatiently, and Ytil turned to leave.

  Azkfru reached into a drawer and pulled out a pulse rifle. This one worked in Zone, at least in his offices.

  “Ytil!” he called after the other, who was halfway out the door.

  Ytil stopped but couldn’t turn. “My Lord?” he called back curiously.

  “Good-bye, fool,” Azkfru replied, and shot the general repeatedly until the white-haired body was a charred ruin.

  Azkfru buzzed for his guard, and thought, Too bad I couldn’t trust the idiot, but his incompetence would give the show away.

  The guard appeared, and looked down at the general’s remains nervously but without curiosity.

  “The general tried to kill me,” he explained without any effort to be convincing. “I had to defend myself. It appears that he and the Baron Kluxm are at the heart of a baronial revolt. After you dispose of this carrion, go to Kluxm’s, and eliminate his whole staff and, of course, the baron. Then go to the rest area and bring a Markling named Hain to my estate. Do it quietly. I’ll report the revolt.”

  They nodded, and it look them only a few minutes to eat the body.

  After they had left, he buzzed for a clerk.

  “You will go to the Classification Gate and enter. It will take you to the North Zone. When you get there don’t leave the Gate room, but simply tell the first inquirer that you want to talk to Ambassador Thirteen Forty, and wait for that person. When it comes, tell it who you are, who sent you, and that we are ready to agree. Got that?”

  The clerk waved her antennae affirmatively and repeated the message.

  Dismissing her, he attended to the last detail. He flipped the intercom to the receptionist’s desk.

  “The General Ytil wasn’t here,” he told her. “Understand? You never even heard of him.”

  The clerk understood all too well, and rubbed out Ytil’s appearance in her logbook.

  It was a big gamble he was taking, he knew, and it would probably cost him his life. But the stakes! The stakes were too great to ignore!

  THE BARONY OF AZKFRU, AKKAFIAN EMPIRE

  Datham Hain’s massive body, now in a drugged sleep, rested in the center of the lowest floor of the Baron Azkfru’s nest. The room was filled
with computer banks flashing light-signals and making clicking and whirring sounds. Four large cables were attached to Hain’s head at key points, and two smaller ones were fixed to the base of her two antennae. Two neutered Markling technicians with the symbol of the baron painted between their two huge eyes checked readings on various dials and gauges, and checked and rechecked all the connections.

  Baron Azkfru’s antennae showed complete satisfaction. He had often wondered what the Imperial Household would say if they knew he had one of these devices.

  There would be civil war at the very least, he thought.

  The conditioner had been developed by a particularly brilliant Akkafian scientist in the imperial household almost eighty years before, when the ambassador himself was just a youngling. It ended the periodic baronial revolts, and assured the stability of the new—now old—order by making revolution next to impossible. Oh, you couldn’t condition everyone with certainty, so it was done subtly. Probably every baron dreamed of overthrowing the empire—it let the pressure and frustration out.

  But none of them could do it. Because, although they could dream about it, they couldn’t disobey a direct imperial command.

  But Azkfru could.

  His father had duplicated the device here in the earliest days of its development. Here, slowly, methodically, key ones were deconditioned and reconditioned. Even so, he reflected, you couldn’t change the basic personality of the conditioned. That was why Ytil had to go—too dumb to keep quiet. As for Kluxm—well, it was known for some particularly strong-willed Nirlings to break free, although never with any prayer of support from the rest of the conditioned leadership.

  “We are ready when you are, Highness,” called one of the Markling technicians. Azkfru signaled satisfaction and went down to the floor.

  Quickly and efficiently two additional cables similar to the ones on Hain were placed on his own antennae. When he now said something, it would be placed in the machine, amplified, processed, and fed directly into the brain of Datham Hain in such a way that it would be taken as acceptable input and engraved in the other’s mind.