Midnight At the Well of Souls

by Jack L. Chalker

  "Why, to exist in happiness and harmony with all others for all times," she replied as if reciting a liturgy—which is what it was, taught from the day she was produced at the Birth Factory.

  Gringer's long tentacles showed agitation. Its right one reached down and pulled up a single blade of the yellowish grass that grew for kilometers in all directions. It pushed the long stalk in front of her, waving it like a pointer. "This blade of grass is happy," Gringer stated flatly. "It gets what it needs to survive. It doesn't think or need to think. It remains happy even though I've pulled it up and it will die. It doesn't know that, and won't even know it when it's dead. Its relatives out there on the plains are the same. They fit your definition of the ultimate goal of civilized society. It knows nothing, and in perfect ignorance is its total perfection and its harmony with its surroundings. Shall we, then, create a way to turn all sentient beings into blades of field grass? Shall we, then, have achieved the ultimate in evolution?"

  Vardia's mind spun. This sort of logic and these kinds of questions were outside her experience and her orderly, programmed universe. She had no answers for these—heresies, were they? Cornered but as yet unwilling to give up the true faith, she regressed.

  "I want to go back to my own world," she wailed plaintively.

  Brouder's expression was sad, and pity swept the crowd, pity not only at her philosophical dilemma but also for her people, the billions blindly devoted to such a hollow goal. Its rubbery tentacle wrapped itself around hers, and pulled her back into the reddish-brown, upturned soil of the camp.

  "Any other questions or problems can wait," it said gently. "You will have time to learn and to fit here. It is getting dark now, and you need rest."

  The shadows were getting long, and the distant sun had become an orange ball on the horizon. For the first time since waking up, she did feel tired, and a slight chill went through her.

  "Except under the artificial light of the Center we are inactive in darkness," Brouder explained. "Although we could go indefinitely there, we need the rooting to remain healthy and active. We gain minerals and strength from it, and it is also necessary for mental health."

  "How do I—ah, root?" she asked.

  "Just pick a spot not too near anyone else, and wait for darkness. You will see," Brouder told her.

  The Czillian pointed out a good spot, then moved about five long paces from her.

  Vardia just stood there for a while, looking at the small community in the gloomy dusk. She discovered that, although her eyes remained open, she was having trouble seeing. Everything looked very dark, as if she were peering through a piece of film that was badly underexposed. Then she felt the myriads of tiny tendrils in her feet creep out in response to some automatic signal and extend deep into the loose soil. The chill and tiredness seemed to lift, and she felt a warmth rising within her. Every cell of her new body seemed to tingle, and she was consumed in an orgasmic feeling of extreme pleasure that canceled out thought.

  All over the hex of Czill, all who were not working in the Center were similarly rooting. To an alien observer, the land would be punctuated with over a million tall, thick vines as motionless as the trees.

  And yet the landscape was not motionless. Millions of nocturnal insects set up a chorus, and several small mammals scurried around looking for food and, in the process, moving, aerating, and fertilizing the soil. They provided the carbon-dioxide-from-oxygen conversion needed for atmospheric balance in this hex. The teeming legions of life coexisted with the daylight Czillians in perfect balance. They existed under the thousands of stars in the night sky the sleeping plant-people could not see.

  * * *

  Because her eyes were lidless she saw the awakening even as she underwent it. It was strange to come out of that infinitely pleasurable sleep and see the morning simply fade in. Several of the others were in her field of vision, and she saw that the sleeping position was very stiff. Tentacles ran down and almost blended with the trunk, the legs almost forming a solid front.

  She noted absently that picking one's spot for the night was more important than had been first indicated. The unrooting was apparently triggered by the sun's rays falling on the single leaf atop the head, so the more objects scattered about blocked the sun's first rays, the slower one was to be freed. She felt her own tendrils retract and suddenly she could move freely, as if a paralysis had worn off.

  Brouder came up to her. "Well? Do you feel better?" it asked cheerfully.

  "Yes, much," she replied, and meant it. She did feel better, her fears and insecurities fading into a tiny corner of her mind. For the first time she noticed that Brouder wore a neck chain similar to the ones on the two she had followed. Now she looked at the tiny object suspended from it.

  It was a digital watch.

  Brouder looked at it and nodded. "We're early," it said, then looked somewhat sheepish. "I always say that, even though we always wake up at the same time."

  "Then why wear a watch?" she asked. "It is a watch, isn't it?"

  "Oh, yes," the Czillian affirmed. "I need it to tell me the time and day so I can make my meetings at the Center. It's been hectic lately, and I am always afraid that I'm going to get trapped and not be able to come home nights."

  "What are you working on?" she asked.

  "A very strange project, even for this place," came the reply. "We are attempting to solve a probably unsolvable riddle that is endemic to this world—a great deal of the Center is devoted to it right now. And the worst part is that most of us feel it is unsolvable."

  "Then why bother with it?" she asked.

  The Czillian looked at her, a grave expression coloring its body movements.

  "Because, while we are the best equipped to work on the problem, others are also at work on it. If there is any chance it is solvable, the ultimate knowledge will be ours. In others' hands, that knowledge might threaten the very survival of us all."

  Here was something Vardia could understand, and she pressed her new friend for more information. But the Czillian dismissed further inquiry for the time being. She had the strong impression that the work was of too high a grade for her to be trusted, even though she was now one of them.

  "I am going to the Center now," Brouder told her. "You should come with me. Not only will that give you a chance to see a little of our country—it's your country now, you know—but only at the Center can you be tested and assigned."

  She agreed readily and they started off, back down the road she had followed the day before. As they walked, Brouder pointed out the land and vegetation and sketched out the country for her. "Czill is six hundred fourteen point eight-six kilometers across, as is every other hex on the Well World except the equatorial hexes."

  She marveled at the knowledge that the measurement it used bore no relationship to the metrics of her own world, yet was translated to the decimal points instantly inside her head.

  "We have, of course, six neighbors, two of which are ocean species. Our seven great rivers are fed by hundreds of streams like the one at our camp. The rivers in turn empty into a great ocean—one of three in the South—covering almost thirty hexes. This one of ours is the Overdark Ocean. One of the sea folk is a marine mammal, half-humanoid and half-fish. They are air-breathers, but live most of their lives underwater. They are the Umiau, and you might run into a few at the Center. We are always cooperating on a number of projects, particularly oceanographic studies, since we can't visit their world except in pressure suits. The other ocean species is a nasty group called the Pia—evil characters with great brains and humanoid eyes. But they have ten tentacles with slimy, adhesive suckers and a gaping mouth with about twenty rows of teeth. You can't really talk to them, although they are quite intelligent. They tend to eat anybody not of their race."

  Vardia shuddered, imagining such horrors. "Then why don't they eat the Umiau?" she asked.

  Brouder chuckled. "They would if they could, but, as with all hexes near antagonistic species on the Well World, natural
limitations are designed into the system. The Umiau's land is near the mouth of three rivers and the low salt content isn't to a Pia's liking. Also, the Umiau do have certain natural defenses and can swim faster and quicker. They're in some kind of uneasy truce now, anyway, since the Umiau, although they aren't fanatical about it, can and will eat Pia, too."

  They remained silent for a while, until they came to a major fork in the road.

  "We go to the left," Brouder said. "Don't ever go down that right fork—it leads to the camps of the diseased and isolated."

  "What sort of diseases?" she asked uneasily.

  "About the same number as anywhere else," Brouder replied. "But every time we discover an immunizing agent, something new mutates in the viruses. I wouldn't worry about it, however. The average Czillian life span is over two hundred and fifty years, and if nothing serious happens to change that, you'll twin several times anyway. The population's a stable million and a half—crowded, but not so much that we cannot have empty spaces and camp room. Our births and deaths are almost exactly even—the planet's master brain sees to that. Besides, since we don't really age in the sense most other things do, and since we can regenerate most of our parts that go bad or get injured, there's naturally a constant death factor to keep the population in bounds. The master brain only interferes in critical situations."

  "Regenerate?" Vardia asked, surprised. "Do you mean that if I lose an arm or leg it will grow back?"

  "Just so," Brouder affirmed. "Your entire pattern is held within every cell of your body. Since respiration is direct, through the pores, as long as your brain's intact, you'll come back. It's painful—and we don't experience much pain—but possible."

  "So the only area I have to protect is my head," she remarked.

  Brouder laughed a high, shrill laugh. "No, not your head, certainly not! Either foot," it said, pointing to her strange feet that looked like inverted bowls with spongy lids for soles.

  "Do you mean I'm walking on my brains?" she gasped incredulously.

  "Just so, just so," affirmed Brouder. "Each controls half of your body, but each has the total content of the body's input, including thought and memory. If we were to chop you off at the bottom of the stalk, your two feet would dig into the ground and each would sprout a new you. Your head contains sensory input neural circuits only—in fact, it's mostly hollow. Chop it off and you'd just go to sleep and dig in until you grew a new one."

  Vardia marveled at this news as much as she had at Ortega back at Zone. But this isn't some alien creature I just met, she told herself. It is me it is talking about.

  "There's the Center," Brouder said as they came over a rise.

  It was a great building that seemed to spread out for kilometers across the horizon. There was a great bubble in the center that reflected light like a mirror, then several arms—six of them, she noted with dry amusement—made of what appeared to be transparent glass—spread out symmetrically. She saw skyscrapers of the same transparent material, a few twenty or more stories, rising around the bubble and opposite the tips of the arms.

  "It's incredible!" she managed.

  "More than you know," Brouder replied with a touch of pride. "There our best minds work out problems and store the knowledge we obtain. The silvery rails that thread through the walls and ceilings are artificial solar light sufficient to keep us awake and fed through the night, and if you look to the horizon you'll see the River Averil coming in. The Center's built over it, giving us a constant water source. With light and water provided—and some vitamin baths—you can work around the clock for seven to ten days. But sooner or later it catches up with you and the longer you stay awake the longer you will have to plant in the end."

  Something made her think of Nathan Brazil and that book he had been reading, the one with the lurid cover.

  "You have a library here?" she asked.

  "The best," the other boasted. "It has everything we've ever been able to collect, both from our studies on this planet and from Entries like yourself who provide history, sociology, and even technical information."

  "Any stories?" she asked.

  "Oh, yes," came the reply. "And legends, tales, whatever. The Umiau are particularly fertile in that department. The river's how they get up to the Center."

  "What keeps the Pia away, then?" she asked apprehensively.

  "They can't take fresh water, and they'd have to breathe it, remember? The Umiau are mammals so they don't care what sort of water they're in."

  Brouder went on to explain the social structure of the Center. It was headed by a small group of specialists called Elders, not because they were old but because they were the best in their fields. Below them were their assistants, the Scholars, who did the research and basic project work. Brouder was a Scholar, as was Gringer. Under them were the Apprentices who learned their fields and waited for their chance to prove themselves and advance. The bottom level was the Keepers—the cleaners, gardeners, and technicians who maintained everything so that everyone could get on with his work. The Keepers chose their own lives and professions and many were retired upper-level folk who had decided they had gone as far as they could, or who had reached dead ends. But some just liked to do what they did.

  Brouder took her inside and introduced her to a Scholar whose name was Mudriel. Basically, the Scholar was an industrial psychologist, and over the next several days—weeks, in fact—Vardia was kept busy with interviews, tests, and other experiments to see her total profile. In addition, they began to teach her to read the Czillian language. Mudriel, in particular, was pleased with the speed and ease with which she was mastering it.

  Every evening they sent her out to a special camp near the Psych Department but out of the shade of the building. The nights saw a strange forest grow up on all sides of the Center as thousands of workers of all ranks came out and rooted. Some stayed rooted for days, even several days, sleeping off long, around-the-clock stints at work.

  Vardia seemed to be Mudriel's only customer, and she remarked on it.

  "You are the first Entry to be a Czillian in our lifetimes," Mudriel explained. "Normally, I study various departments and workers to see if they are ruining their health or efficiency, or are misplaced. It happens all the time. Sometimes, whenever possible, we bring Entries from other hexes here for debriefing. When that is not possible, I go to them. I am one of perhaps a thousand, no more, who has been in the Northern Hemisphere."

  "What's it like?" she asked. "I understand it's different."

  "That's the word for it," Mudriel agreed, and gave a brief shudder. "But we have some just as bad on our side, in one way or another. Ever think of interviewing a Pia in its own domain when it's trying to be helpful and eat you at the same time? I have."

  "And yet you've survived," she said in admiration.

  Mudriel made a negative gesture. "Not always. I've been down to my feet once, practically wrecked for weeks three or four times, and killed twice."

  "Killed!" Vardia exclaimed. "But—"

  Mudriel shrugged. "I've twinned four times naturally," it replied matter-of-factly, "and once when I was left with only my brains. There are still four of me. We stay in the same job and take turns on the travel to even out the risk."

  Vardia shook her head in wonder, a gesture more human than Czillian.

  While most twins were turned to other fields by the Psych Department, ones with critical jobs or super-specialized knowledge and skills often worked together side by side. Vardia met several people at the Center several times to mutual confusion.

  One day Mudriel called her into its office, where it was thumbing through an enormously thick file.

  "It's time to assign you and go on to other things," the psychologist told her. "You've been here long enough for us to know you better than we know almost any other Czillian. I must say, you've been a wonderful subject, but a puzzling one."

  "In what way?" Vardia asked. As time went by she had become more and more accustomed to her new form and surr
oundings, and less and less had felt the social alienation of that first night.

  "You have normalized," Mudriel pointed out. "By this time you are feeling as if you were born one of us, and your past life and that which went with it is a purely intellectual memory experience."

  "That's true," Vardia acknowledged. "It almost seems as if all my past happened to someone else, that I just watched it unfold."

  "That's true of all Entries," replied Mudriel. "Part of the change process, when the biological changes adjust and remake the psyche. Much of our personality and behavior is based on such biological things. In the animals, it's glands, enzymes, and the like, but with us it's various different secretions. Hormonal imbalances in your former race cause differences; by artificially injecting certain substances into a male of your species who was sexually developed, he could be given female characteristics, and vice versa. Now, time has rebalanced your mind with your new body, and it is for the best."

  "What puzzles you about me, then?" Vardia prodded.

  "Your lack of skills," replied the psychologist. "Everybody does something. But you were apparently raised to be highly intelligent yet totally ignorant. You could carry messages and conversations with ease, yet do nothing else. Your ignorance of much of your own sector amazes us.

  "You were, in effect, a human recording machine. Did you, for example, realize that in the eighty-three days you've been with us you've had a longer existence than ever in your short life?"

  "I—I don't know what you mean," Vardia stammered.

  Mudriel's expression and tone were of mixed pity and disgust. "They bred you with an extremely high intelligence, but while you grew up, they administered extremely deep programming to make certain you never used it. Over all this was lightly placed the persona known as Vardia Diplo Twelve Sixty-one, a number whose implications are distasteful to me. This made you curious, inquisitive, but only on the surface. You could never act on any information gained, nor did you have any desire to. The persona was mainly to help others feel comfortable. When you reached your destination, an embassy employee would put you under hypnosis, read off the message—and, in the process, wipe your memory. Then the same persona would be reimposed with a reply message, if any. Had you reached Coriolanus, this would have been the case. You now have vivid memories of your Captain Brazil and the other passengers, and of Dalgonia. All of these would have been gone. Any whom you knew who had previously encountered you would be strangers to you. They would just assume, as you would, that it was another Vardia Diplo they knew. Think back—what do you remember of your life before boarding Brazil's ship?"