Midnight at the Well of Souls wos-1

by Jack L. Chalker

  “Too late to back out now, you asshole,” Skander snapped. “You didn’t get where you were without guts. Play it out.”

  “If you’ll follow me,” Brazil said, “and get on the walkway here; we can talk as we ride, and probably panic the border hexes at the same time.”

  They all stepped onto the walkway on the other side of the meter-tall barrier. The Avenue’s strange light went out, and another light went on on both sides of the walkway, illuminating about half a kilometer to their left.

  “The lights will come on where we are, and go out where we aren’t,” Brazil explained. “It’s automatic. Slelcronian, you’ll find the light adequate for you despite its apparent lack of intensity. You can get rid of that heat lamp. Just throw it over the barrier there. It will be disposed of by the automatic machinery in about fourteen hours.” The Markovian’s tentacle near the forward part of the walkway struck the side sharply, and the walkway started to move.

  “You are now on the walkway to the Well Access Gate,” he explained. “When the Markovians built this world, it was necessary, of course, for the technicians to get in and out. They were full shifts—one full rotation on, one off. Every day from dozens to thousands of Markovian technicians would ride this walkway to the control center and to other critical areas inside the planet. In those days, of course, The Avenue would stay open as long as necessary. It was shortened to the small interval in the last days before the last Markovian went native for good, to allow the border hexes some development and to keep out those who had second thoughts. At the end, only the three dozen project coordinators came, and then irregularly, just to check on things. As any technician was finally cleared out of the Well, the key to The Avenue doors was removed from his mind, so he could not get back in if he wanted to.”

  They moved on in eerie silence, lighted sections suddenly popping on in front of them, out in back of them, as they traveled. The walkway itself seemed to glow radiantly; no light source was visible.

  “Some of you know the story of this place already,” Brazil continued. “The race you call the Markovians rose as did all other species, developed, and finally discovered the primal energy nature of the universe—that there was nothing but this primal energy, extending outward in all directions, and that all constructs within it, we included, are established by rules and laws of nature that are not fixed just because they are there, but are instead imposed. Nothing equals anything, really; the equal sign is strictly for the imposed structure of the universe. Rather, everything is relative to everything else.”

  “But once the Markovians discovered the mathematical constructs governing stability, why didn’t they change them?” Skander asked. “Why keep the rules?”

  “They didn’t dare try to tackle the master equations, those governing physical properties and natural laws,” Brazil replied. “They could alter things a little, but common sense should tell you that in order to change the master equation you first have to eliminate the old one. If you do that, what happens to you and the rest of the universe? They didn’t dare—so they imposed new, smaller equations on localized areas of the preexisting universe.”

  “Not gods, then,” Vardia said quietly. “Demigods.”

  “People,” Brazil responded. “Not gods at all. People. Oh, I know that this form I’ve got is quite different than you’d think, but it’s no more monstrous or unusual than some of the creatures of this world, and less than some. The many billions of beings who wore bodies like this were a proud race of ordinary people with one finger on the controls. They argued, they debated, strove, built, discovered—just like all of us. Were their physical forms closer to the ones we’re familiar with, you would possibly even like them. Remember, they achieved godhood not by natural processes, but by technological advancement. It was as if one of our races, in present form, suddenly discovered the key to wish fulfillment. Would we be ready for it? I wonder.”

  “Why did they die, Brazil?” Skander asked. “Why did they commit suicide?”

  “Because they were not ready,” Brazil replied sadly. “They had conquered all material want, all disease, even death itself. But they had not conquered their selves. They reveled in hedonism, each an island unto itself. Anything they wanted, they just had to wish for.

  “And they found that wasn’t enough. Something was missing. Utopia wasn’t fulfillment, it was stagnation. And that was the curse— knowing that the ultimate was attainable, but not knowing what it was or how to attain it. They studied the problem and came up with no solutions. Finally, the best amplified Markovian minds concluded that, somewhere in their development, they’d lost something—the true fulfillment of the dream. The social equation did not balance, because it lacked some basic component. One plus two plus three equals six, but if you don’t have the plus two in there, it can’t possibly reach more than four.

  “Finally, they came to the conclusion that they were at a dead end, and would stagnate in an eternal orgy of hedonism unless something was done. The solution seemed simple: start over, try to regain the missing factor, or rediscover it, by starting from the beginning again. They used a variety of races and conditions to restart, none Markovian, on the idea that any repetition of the Markovian cycle would only end up the same.”

  “And so they built this world,” Varnett put in.

  “Yes, they built this world. A giant Markovian brain, placed around a young but planetless sun. The brain is the planet, of course, everything but the crust. Gravity was no problem, nor was atmosphere. They created an outer shell, about a hundred kilometers above the surface. The hexagons are all compartments, their elements held in all directions by fields of force.”

  “So it was built to convert the Markovians to new forms?” Skander asked.

  “Double duty, really,” Brazil told them. “The finest artisans of the Markovian race were called in. They made proposals for biospheres, trying to outdo one another in creativity. The ones that looked workable were built, and volunteers went through the Zone Gate and became the newly designed creatures in the newly designed environments. Several generations were needed for even a moderate test—the Markovians didn’t mind. A thousand years was nothing to them. You see, they could build, pioneer-style, but they were still Markovians. A lot of generations born in the biome and of the new race were needed to establish a culture and show how things would go. Their numbers were kept relatively stable, and the fields of force were much more rigid then than now. They had to live in their hex, without any real contact with other hexes. They had to build their own worlds.”

  They were riding down now, at a deceptively steep angle. Down into the bowels of the planet itself.

  “But why didn’t the first generation establish a high civilization?” Varnett asked. “After all, they were just like us, changed outside only.”

  “You overestimate people from a highly technological culture. We take things for granted. We know how to turn on a light, but not why the light comes on. None of us could build most of our artifacts, and most civilized races become dependent on them. Suddenly dumped in a virgin wilderness, as they all were, they had no stores, no factories, no access to anything they didn’t make themselves out of what was available. A great many died from hardship alone. The tough ones, the survivors, they built their own societies, and their children’s societies. They worked with purpose—if the test failed, then they died out. If they succeeded—well, there was the promise that the successful ones would someday go to the Well of Souls at midnight, and there be taken to a new world, to found a new civilization, to grow, develop, perhaps become the progenitors of a future race of gods who would be fulfilled. Each hoped to be the ones whose descendants would make it.”

  “And you were here when that happened,” Wuju said nervously.

  “I was,” he acknowledged. “I assisted the creator of Hex Forty-one—One Eighty-seven, the hundred and eighty-seventh and last race developed in that hex. I didn’t create it, simply monitored and helped out. We stole ideas from each ot
her all the time, of course. Dominant species in one hex might be a modified pattern of animals in another. Our own race was a direct steal from some large apes in another hex. The designer liked them so much that not only did the dominant race turn out to be apes, but they were almost endlessly varied as animals.”

  “Hold on, Brazil,” Skander said. “These others might not know much about things, but I’m an archaeologist. Old Earth developed over a few billion years, slowly evolving.”

  “Not exactly,” Brazil replied. “First of all, time was altered in each case. The time frame for the development of our sector was speeded up. The original design produced the life we expected, but it developed differently—as giant reptiles, eventually. When it was clear that it wouldn’t do to have our people coexist with them, a slight change in the axial tilt caused the dinosaurs to die out, but it placed different stresses on other organisms. Minor mammals developed, and to these, over a period of time, we added ours to replace the ones logically developing in the evolutionary scale. When conditions seemed suitable for us, when apelike creatures survived, we began the exodus. Soon the temperate zones had their first intelligent life. Again, with all the resources but nothing else. They did well, astonishingly so, but the long-term effects of the axial tilt produced diastrophism and a great ice age within a few centuries. Our present, slow climb has been the product of the extremely primitive survivors of those disasters. So, in fact, has it been with all your home worlds.”

  “Is there a world, then, or a network of worlds of the Akkafians?” Hain asked.

  “There was,” Brazil replied. “Perhaps there is. Perhaps it’s larger and greater and more advanced than ours. The same with the Umiau, the Czill, the Slelcronians, the Dillians, and others. When we get to the Well itself, I’ll be able to tell you at least which ones are still functioning, although not how, or if they’ve changed, or what. I would think that some of the older ones would be well advanced by now. My memory says there were probably close to a million races created and scattered about; I’ll be curious to see how many are still around.”

  They had been going down for some time. Now they were deep below the surface, how deep they couldn’t say. Suddenly a great hexagon outlined in light appeared just under them.

  “The Well Access Gate,” Brazil told them. “One of six. It can take you to lots of places within the Well, but it’ll take you to the central control area and monitoring stations if you have no other instructions. When we get to it, just step on it. I won’t trigger it until everyone is aboard. In case somebody else does, by accident, just wait for the light to come back on and step on again. It’ll work.”

  They did as instructed, and when all were on the Gate, all light suddenly winked out. There followed a twisting, unsettling feeling like falling. Then, suddenly, there was light all over.

  They stood in a huge chamber, perhaps a kilometer in diameter. It was semicircular, the ceiling curving up over them almost the same distance as it was across. Corridors, hundreds of them, led off in all directions. The Gate was in the center of the dome, and Brazil quickly stepped off, followed by the others, who looked around in awe and anticipation.

  The texture of the place was strange. It seemed to be made up of tiny hexagonal shapes of polished white mica, reflecting the light and glittering like millions of jewels.

  After they stepped off the Gate, Brazil stopped and pointed a tentacle back over it.

  Suspended by force fields, about midway between the Gate and the apex of the dome, was a huge model of the Well World, turning slowly. It had a terminator, and darkness on half of its face, and seemed to be made of the same mica-like compound as the great hall. But the hexagons on the model were much larger, and there were solid areas at the poles, and a black band around its middle. The sphere seemed to be covered by a thin transparent shell composed of segments which exactly conformed to the hexagons below.

  “That’s what the Well World looks like from space,” Brazil told them. “It’s an exact model, fifteen hundred sixty hexagons, the Zones—everything. Note the slight differences in reflected light from each hex. That’s Markovian writing—and they are numbers. This is more than a model, really. It’s a separate Markovian brain, containing the master equation for stabilizing all of the new worlds. It energizes the Well, and permits the big brain around us to do its job.”

  “Where are the controls, Nate?” Ortega prodded.

  “Each biome—that is, planetary biome—has its own set of controls,” Brazil told him. “This place is honeycombed with them. Each hex on the Well World is controlled as a complement to the actual world. Most controls, of course, do not have corresponding hexes. What we’re left with today are the last few hexes created and some of the failures—not necessarily the ones that died out, but the ones that didn’t work out. The Faerie, for example. Some of them snuck into the last batch of transits, and several of the others who were leftovers from closed and filled projects, some Dillians, some Umiau, and the like, who wanted to get out of the Well World and thought they could help, came, too. Not many, and they were disrupted by civilization’s rises and falls, and became the objects of superstition, fear, hatred. None survived the distance on Old Earth, but we didn’t get many to begin with, and reproduction was slow. But, come, let’s go to a control center.”

  He walked toward one of the corridors on his six tentacles, and they followed hesitantly. All of them held their pistols tightly, at the ready.

  They walked for what seemed an endless time down one of the corridors, passing closed hexagonal doors along the way. Finally Brazil stopped in front of one, and it opened, much as the lens of a camera opens. He walked in, and they followed quickly, anxious not to lose sight of him even for a moment.

  The room lit up as they approached. It was made of the same stuff as the great hall and the corridors. There were, however, walls of obvious controls, switches, levers, buttons, and the like, and what looked like a large black screen directly ahead of them. None of the instruments held any sort of clue as to what they were, or had anything familiar about them.

  “Well, here it is, and it’s still active,” Brazil announced. “Let me see,” he murmured, and went over to a panel. Their faces showed sudden tension and fear, and all of the pistols were raised, trained on him. The Diviner’s blinking lights started going very, very fast.

  “Don’t touch nothin’, Nate!” Ortega warned.

  “Just checking something here,” Brazil responded, unconcerned. “Yes, I see. In this room is the preset for a civilization that has now expanded. It’s interstellar, but not pangalactic. Population a little over one and a quarter trillion.”

  “If it’s a high-tech civilization, then it is not ours,” the Slelcronian said with some relief.

  “Not necessarily,” Brazil replied. “The tech levels here on the Well World were not imposed on the outside at all. They were dictated by the problems you might find in your own world. A high-tech world had abundant and easily accessible resources, a low-tech much less so. Since the home world had to develop logically and mathematically according to the master rules of nature, some worlds were better endowed than others. By making the trial hex here a low-tech, no-tech, or the like, we simply were compensating for the degree of difficulty in establishing technological civilization on the home world, not preventing it. We made them develop alternatives, to live without technology so they’d be better prepared on their home worlds. Some did extremely well. Most of the magic you find here is not Well magic, but actual mental powers developed by the hexes to compensate for low-tech status. What they could use here, they could use there.”

  “The Diviner says you are truthful,” The Rel commented, one of the first things the Northerner had said since they set out. “The Diviner states that you were responsible for its prophecy that we would be here.”

  “In a way, yes,” Brazil replied. “When I went through the Zone Gate, the Markovian brain recognized me as a native of Hex Forty-one and sent me there. However, in its analysi
s, it also found what I, myself, didn’t know—that I had an original Markovian brain-wave pattern. It then assumed that I was here to give it further instructions or to do work. When it concluded this, The Diviner, extremely sensitive to such things, picked up the message, however garbled.” He paused, and that central mass tilted toward them a little.

  “And now,” he said, sadness in his voice, “here we are, in the control center, and you’ve all got fear on your faces and your guns trained on me.” Even you, Wu Julee, he thought, immeasurable sadness coursing through him. Even you.

  “I tried to give mankind rules for living which would avert a second disaster like the first, would keep it from self-destruction. Nobody listened. Nobody changed. Type Forty-one was badly flawed—and it beat the odds anyway, this time. It made its way to the stars, and that was an outlet for its aggression, although, even there, even now, its component parts are looking at ways to dominate one another, kill one another, rule one another. And the drive for domination is there even in the nonhumans, you, Northerner, and you, Slelcronian. Look at you all now. Look at yourselves! Look at each other! Do you see it? Can you feel it? Fear, greed, horror, ambition burning within you, consuming you! The only reason you haven’t killed one another by now is your common fear of me. How dare you condemn a Hain, a Skander—a society? How dare you?

  “How many of you are thinking of the people these controls represent? Do you fear for them? Do you care about them? You don’t want to save them, better their lives. That fear is inside you, fear for your own selves! The basic flaw in the set-up equation, that burning, basic selfishness. None of you cares for any but yourself! Look at you! Look at what monsters you’ve all become!”

  Their hearts pounded, nerve ends frayed. The Diviner and The Rel were the first to respond.

  “What about yourself, Nathan Brazil?” The Rel chimed. “Isn’t the flaw in us simply a reflection of the flaws in yourself, in your own people, the Markovians, who could not give us what we lack because they did not themselves possess it?”