Midnight At the Well of Souls

by Jack L. Chalker

  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 op
portunity 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.

  The baron signaled a go-ahead, and the technicians touched the last controls.

  "Datham Hain!" the ambassador's brain called out.

  Hain, although unconscious, answered, "Yes?"

  "Your past to this point you retain, but it is an academic past, there to call upon if needed but irrelevant to your present and future," the baron told her. "What is important to you, what is the only thing of importance to you, is that you are a breeder Markling of the Barony of Azkfru. Your destiny is whatever the Baron of Azkfru wishes, and that is acceptable and normal to you. My will is your will, your only will. You exist to serve me alone. You would never betray me, nor allow harm to come to me. You are my own, my property, and that is all that is good and happy in your mind or life. When you serve me you are happy, and when you do not you are unhappy. That is the measure of your joy in life. I am your leader, your lord, and your only god. Your worship is normal. Do you understand this?"

  "I understand, my lord," replied Hain mechanically.

  The baron signaled to the technicians to break contact, which they quickly did, then unfastened the two cables from his antennae.

  "How did it take?" Azkfru asked one of the technicians.

  "The subject is receptive," replied one of the technicians, part of whose own conditioning was never to consider the idea that she might have been conditioned. "However, her psychological profile is one of extreme selfishness. That might eventually cancel the conditioning, producing mental breakdown."

  "What do you advise, then?"

  "Go along with the idea," the technician suggested. "Go back into her mind and tell her that her only avenue to wealth and power is through you and no one else. That's something her mind can completely accept, and it will be acted upon in concert with the standard conditioning you've already administered. Then, after she's awake and you are interviewing her, hold out the highest possible position a breeder Markling could attain."

  "I see," the baron replied, and he did see. That made everything perfect. "Let us complete the conditioning," he commanded.

  * * *

  Datham Hain awoke with a very strange set of feelings and yet not aware that over ten days had passed since she was first introduced to the land of the Akkafian.

  A Markling with the insignia of the Baron Azkfru entered and saw that she was awake. "You must be starved," the newcomer said pleasantly. "Follow me and we will take care of that."

  Starvation was close to what Datham Hain actually felt at that point, and she needed no further urging to follow the servant. The feeding room was filled with pens of large, white-ribbed worms that were indigenous to the soil of the land. Hain had no qualms this time about eating such prey, and found them most satisfying.

  "The baron raises his own fikhfs," the guide explained as she gorged herself. "Only the best for this household, till midnight at the Well of Souls."

  Hain suddenly stopped eating.

  "What was that you jus
t said?" she asked.

  "Oh, it's just a saying," the other replied.

  Hain forgot it for the moment and continued eating. When it was clear that her hunger had been satisfied, the guide said, "Now, follow me into reception, and you'll meet the baron."

  Hain obediently followed down several long and particularly plush corridors to a wide anteroom covered in that downy fur with a low-volume "music" background, pleasant but not lulling as the other had been.

  "Just relax for now," the baron's servant told her. "His Highness will call you in when he is ready."

  Relaxing was just the thing Hain felt least like doing; extremely awake and alert, she wished idly for something active to do, something to look at. A rack in one corner held a series of scrolls in that funny writing, but it was just random dots.

  Not even any pictures, she thought glumly.

  She paced nervously, awaiting the baron's pleasure.

  * * *

  The baron was already entertaining a guest—or guests, he wasn't sure which. Although he had communicated with a representative of whatever government this creature or creatures had, he had never met any of them and knew nothing about them. He still didn't, he realized sourly, and he didn't like the situation, either. The Northern Hemisphere was a place so alien to him that he felt more kinship with the most different of the Southern races compared to the closest of the North.

  The object of his speculation and apprehension was floating about three meters in front of him. Yes, floating, he decided—no visible means of support or locomotion. It looked like a slightly upcurved strip of crystal from which a set of dozens of small crystal chimes hung down, the whole thing about a meter long and ending just short of the floor. On top of the crystal strip floated a creature that seemed to consist of hundreds of rapidly flashing lights. Their pattern and their regularity suggested that they existed in a transparent ball fitting in the crystal holder—but, try as he would, he couldn't make out the ball he somehow felt was there.