Midnight At the Well of Souls

by Jack L. Chalker

  For the first time Brazil noticed that Hain had on some thin gloves. He hadn't seen them being put on—maybe they were already on during the scene he had just witnessed—but there they were.

  The fat man reached in and picked out a tiny object that almost dripped with liquid. The rest of the case bottom, Brazil could see, was filled with the stuff. His suspicions were confirmed.

  Datham Hain was a sponge merchant.

  The contraband was called sponge because that was what the stuff was—an alien sponge spawned on a distant sea world now interdicted by the Confederacy.

  The story came back to Brazil. A nice planet, mostly ocean but dotted with millions of islands connected in a network of shallows. A tropical climate except at the poles. It looked like a paradise, and, tests had shown nothing that could hurt the human race. A test colony—two, three hundred people—was landed on the two largest islands for the five-year trial, as per standard procedure. Volunteers, of course, the last remnant of frontiersmen in the human race.

  If they survived and prospered, they owned the world—to develop it or do with it what they would. But because man's test instruments could analyze only the known and the theoretical, there was no way to detect a threat so alien it hadn't even been imagined. That was the reason for the trial in the first place.

  So those people had settled in and lived and loved and played and built on their islands.

  For almost a month.

  That was when they started to go mad, the people of that colony. They regressed—slowly, at first, then increasingly faster and faster. They turned into primitive beasts as the thing that had caught them ate away at their brains. They became like wild apes, only without even the most rudimentary reasoning ability. Finally they died, from their inability to cope with even the basics of eating and shelter. Most drowned; some killed one another.

  And out of their bodies, eventually, grew the pretty flowers of the island, in new profusion.

  Scientists speculated that some sort of elemental organism—based not on carbon or silicon, but on the iron oxides in the rocks of their pretty island—interacted through the air not with them but with the synthetic food rations they brought to help them until they could develop their own native agriculture.

  And they had eaten it, and it had eaten them.

  But there had been one survivor—one woman who had hidden in the huge beds of alien sponge along a particularly rocky shoreline. Oh, she had died, too—but almost three weeks later than the others. When she no longer returned each evening to sleep in the sponge bed.

  The natural secretions of the sponge acted as a retardant—not as an antidote. But as long as a victim had a daily intake of the secretion, the mutant strain seemed inactive. Remove the substance—and the degenerative process began once again. But scientists had taken some samples of the mutant strain and of living sponge with them to study in their labs on far-off worlds. All of it was thought to have been destroyed afterward—but evidently some had not been. Some had been taken by the worst of elements and was developed in their own labs in unknown space.

  The perfect commodity.

  By secretly introducing the stuff into people's food, you gave them the disease. Then, when the first symptoms came and baffled all around you, the merchant would come. He would ease the pain and cause normality by giving you a little bit of sponge—as Hain was administering a dose to Wu Julee at that very moment.

  The Confederacy wouldn't help you. It maintained a sponge colony on that interdicted world for the afflicted, where one could live a normal, if very primitive, existence and soak each night in a sponge bath. If, that is, the victim could be gotten there before the disease became too progressive to bother.

  The sponge merchants chose only the most wealthy and powerful—or their children, if their world had families of any sort. There was no charge for the daily sponge supply, oh, no. You just did as they asked when they asked.

  There was even the suspicion that so many rulers of the Confederacy were hostage to the stuff now that that was the reason no real search for an antidote or cure had ever been started.

  For power was the ultimate aim of the sponge merchants.

  Nathan Brazil wondered who Wu Julee was. The daughter of some big-shot ruler or banker or industrialist? Maybe the child of the Confederacy enforcement chief? More likely she was a sample, he thought. No use risking exposure.

  She was his absolute slave, no question. The disease had been allowed to incubate in her just short of that critical point when the stuff multiplied exponentially. Human, yes, but probably already with her IQ halved, constantly in mild pain that started to grow as the effects of the sponge antitoxin wore off. An effective demonstration, which would keep the merchant from having to infect some innocent and let things run their full course. That was done, of course, when necessary—but it wasn't good to have a long period of time when it would be obvious to the agents of the Confederacy that a sponge merchant was at large.

  He wondered idly why the girl didn't commit suicide. He thought he would. A victim is probably too far gone to consider it by the time he realizes it is the only option, he decided.

  Brazil looked back up at the screens. Hain had repacked the case and stored it and was preparing to go to sleep. Clever, that case, the captain thought. Sponge is extremely compressible and needs only enough seawater to keep it moist. It even grew in there, he thought. As samples were dispensed, new ones would replace it. That was the reason only the minimum was ever given to a victim—get hold of enough of it, unused, and you could grow your own.

  Wu Julee was lying on her own bed, one leg draped down on the side. She was breathing hard but she had a sort of idiot's smile on her face.

  Relief for another day, the little sponge cube swallowed, the body breaking down the evidence.

  Nathan Brazil's stomach finally turned.

  What were you, Wu Julee, before Datham Hain served dinner? he mused. A student or scholar, or a professional, like Vardia? A spoiled brat? A young maiden, perhaps one day expecting to bear children?

  Gone now, he thought sadly. The recordings would nail Datham Hain clean—and the syndicate of sponge merchants would let him hang, too. Most he had ever heard of were compulsive suiciders when subjected to any psych probes or the like. They would get nothing from him but his life.

  But Wu Julee—without sponge, she needed eighteen days from where they would be at absolute flank speed to make that damned planet colony, and she was already near or at the exponential reproductive stage.

  She would arrive a mindless vegetable, unable to do anything not in the autonomic nervous system, having spent most of the voyage as an animal. A day or two after that, it would eat her nervous system away and she would die.

  So they wouldn't bother. They'd just send her to the nearest Death Factory to get something useful out of her.

  They said Nathan Brazil was a hard man: experienced, efficient, and cold as ice, never a feeling for anything but himself.

  But Nathan Brazil cried at tragedy, alone, in the dark, on the bridge of his powerful ship.

  * * *

  Neither Hain nor Wu Julee came to dinner again, although he saw the fat man often and kept up the pretense of innocent friendship. The sponge merchant could actually be quite entertaining, sitting back in the lounge over a couple of warm drinks and telling stories of his youth. He even played a fair game of cards.

  Vardia, of course, never joined in the games and stories—they were things beyond her conception. She kept asking why they played card games since the only practical purpose of games was to develop a physical or mental skill. The concept of gambling, of playing for money, meant even less to her—her people didn't use the stuff, and only printed it for interplanetary trade. The government provided everyone with everything they needed equally, so why try to get more?

  Brazil found her logic, as usual, baffling. All his life he had been compulsively competitive. He was firmly convinced of his uniqueness in the universe and his gen
eral superiority to it, although he was occasionally bothered by the universe's lack of appreciation. But she remained inquisitive and continued asking all those questions two cultures could never answer for each other.

  "You promised days ago to show me the bridge," she reminded him one day.

  "So I did," he acknowledged. "Well, now's as good a time as any. Why don't we go all the way forward?"

  They made their way from the aft lounge, along the great catwalk above the cargo.

  "I don't mean to pry," he said to her as they walked along, "but, out of curiosity, is your mission of vital importance?"

  "You mean war or peace, something like that?" Vardia responded. "No, very few are like that. The truth is, as you may know, I have no knowledge of the messages I carry. They are blocked and only the key from our embassy on Coriolanus can unlock whatever I'm supposed to say. Then the information will be erased, and I will be sent home, with or without a message in return. But, from the tone or facial expressions of those who give me the messages, I can usually tell if it's serious, and this one certainly is not."

  "Possibly something to do with the cargo," Brazil speculated as they entered the wardroom and walked through it this time and out onto another, shorter catwalk. The great engines which maintained the real-universe field of force around them throbbed below. "Do you know how bad things are on Coriolanus?"

  She shrugged. "Not too bad, I understand. No widespread famine yet. That will happen months from now, when the harvest doesn't come in because the rains didn't come last season and the ground is too hard. Then this cargo will be needed. Why do you ask?"

  "Oh, just curious, I guess," he responded, an odd and slightly strained tone in his voice.

  They entered the bridge.

  Vardia was immediately all over it, like an anxious schoolchild. "What's this?" and "How's that work?" and all the other questions poured from her. He answered as best he could.

  She marveled over the computer. "I have never seen one that you must write to and read," she told him with the awe reserved for genuine historical antiques. He decided not to respond that people these days were too mechanical for him so he couldn't bear to have a real mechanical person around, but instead he replied, "Well, it's what you get used to. This one's just as modern and efficient as any other; I tried it on and can handle it easier. Although I have little to do, in an emergency I have to make thousands of split-second decisions. It's better to use what you can use instinctively in such a situation."

  She accepted his explanation, which was partially the truth, and noticed his small library of paperback books with their lurid covers. He asked her if she knew how to read and she said no, whatever for? Certain professions on her world required the ability to read, of course, but very few—and if that wasn't required, as it certainly wasn't for her job as a reel of blank recording tape, she could see no reason to learn.

  He wondered if somewhere they simply had a single Vardia Diplo program, and they read it out, erased the whole thing, then rerecorded it for each trip. Probably, he decided—otherwise, she would have seen bridges before and encountered enough alien culture not to ask those naive questions. Most likely she was just new. It was tough to tell if her kind was fourteen or forty-four.

  At any rate, he was glad she couldn't read. He had suffered a very unsettling moment when she had gone over to that computer and he had noticed that he had forgotten to turn off the screen.

  The computer had been spewing its usual every-half-hour warning to him.

  unauthorized course correction, it said. this is not a justified action. course is being plotted and will be broadcast to confederacy as soon as destination is reached.

  And she wondered why he didn't have the talking kind of computer.

  And so they continued on the new course, all but Brazil and the computer oblivious to their real destination.

  A stroke of genius, he congratulated himself after Vardia had left. The courier's answers had eased his conscience on Coriolanus. They would get their grain—just late. In the meantime, Hain would continue to give Wu Julee the sponge, until that day came when they arrived over the sponge world itself. There he would lose two passengers—Wu Julee would have life, and Hain would be introduced to the colony as a pusher.

  Brazil didn't think any Admiralty Board in the galaxy would convict him; besides, he already had the largest number of verbal and written reprimands in the service. Vardia, though, would never understand his reasoning.

  A loud, hollow-sounding gong brought him out of his satisfied reverie. It reverberated throughout the ship. Brazil jumped up and looked at the computer screen.

  distress signal field intercepted, it read. await instructions.

  Seeing what the message was, he first flipped off the gong then flipped on the intercom. His three passengers were all concerned, naturally.

  "Don't be alarmed," he told them. "It's just a distress field. A ship or some small colony is having problems and needs help. I will have to answer the call, so we'll be delayed a bit. Just sit tight and I'll keep you informed."

  With that he turned to the computer, giving it the go-ahead to plot the coordinates of the signal. He didn't like the idea at all—the signal had to be coming from a place far off his approved course. That invited premature discovery. Nonetheless, he could never ignore such a signal. Similar ones had saved him too many times, and the odds of anybody else intercepting it were more astronomical than his own odds at happening on it.

  The ship's engines moaned, then the throbbing that was a part of his existence subsided to a dull sound as the energy field around the ship merged into normal space.

  The two screens suddenly came on with the real, not the fake, galaxy—and a planet. A big one, he noted. Rocky and reddish in the feeble light of a dwarf star.

  He asked the computer for coordinates. Its screens were blank for a long time, then it replied, dalgonia, star arachnis, dead world, markovian origin, no other information. uninhabited, it added needlessly. It was plain that nothing he knew could live here.

  plot distress coordinates and magnify when done, he ordered, and the computer searched the bleak panorama, quadrant by quadrant. Finally it stopped on one area and put it under intense magnification.

  The picture was grainy, snowy as hell, but the scene clearly showed a small camp. Something just didn't look right.

  Brazil parked the ship in a synchronous orbit and prepared to go down and see what was wrong. But first, he flipped on the intercom again.

  "I'm afraid I'll have to seal you aft," he told his passengers. "I have to check out something down on the planet. If I don't return within eight standard hours, the ship will automatically pull out and take you to Coriolanus at top speed, so you needn't be worried."

  "Can I come with you?" Vardia's voice came back at him.

  He chuckled. "No, sorry, regulations and all that. You'll be in contact with me through this intercom all the time, so you'll know what's going on."

  He suited up, reflecting that he hadn't been in one of the things in years. Then he entered the small bay below the engine well through a hatch from the bridge and entered the little landing craft. Within five minutes, he was away.

  The ship's computer took him to the spot by radio link, and he was at the scene in under an hour. He raised the canopy—the little craft had no air or pressurization of its own—and climbed down the side, striking the ground. The lighter gravity made him feel ten feet tall. The ship, of course, was kept at one gee for everybody's convenience.

  He needed only a couple of minutes to survey the scene and to report his findings back to the ship's recorders as the passengers anxiously followed his every word. "It's a base camp," he told them, "like the kind used for scientific expeditions. Tent-type units, modular, pretty modern—seem to have exploded somehow. All of them." He knew that was impossible—and he knew they knew—but those were the facts all the same.

  He was just wondering aloud as to what could have caused such a thing when he noticed
the piled-up pressure suits near what would have been the exit lock. He went over to them and picked one up, curiously.

  "The suits are outside the area—empty. As if somebody threw them there. The explosion or whatever couldn't have done it—not without some damage. Wait a minute, let me get over to the area of the dorms."

  Vardia listened with growing fascination, and frustration that she could see none of it, nor ask questions.

  "Yuk!' came Brazil's voice over the intercom. "Pretty messy death. They died when the vacuum hit, if the explosion didn't get them. Hmmm. . . . Seven. I can't figure it out. The place is a mess but the explosion didn't really do more than rip the tents to shreds. But that was enough."

  He moved over to another area that caught his eye.

  "Funny," he said, "looks like somebody's done a job on the power plant. Well, here's what did it, anyway. Somebody jacked up the oxygen to pure and shut off the rest of the air. Just takes a spark after that. Worries me, though. There are two dozen safeguards against that sort of thing. Somebody had to do it deliberately."

  The words sent a chill through all three passengers listening breathlessly to his account. Even Wu Julee seemed caught up in the drama.

  "Well, I just counted the beds," Brazil told them, his voice keeping calm but tinged with the concern he felt. "A dorm room for five, another one with three, and a single—probably the project chief's. Bodies in all but the chief's and one of the fivesome. Hmmm. . . . There were seven pressure suits. Should have been nine."

  They heard him breathing and moving around, but he was infuriatingly silent for the longest period.

  Finally he said, "Two flyers are gone, so the missing ones must be somewhere else on the planet. It's a sure bet that one of them, at least, killed the others."

  Again the long silence, punctuated only with breathing sounds. All aboard the freighter were holding their breaths. It took no imagination at all to figure out that one, maybe two, madmen were loose on that planet—and Brazil was alone.