Midnight At the Well of Souls

by Jack L. Chalker

  After a few days of feeling each other out, they started talking as they worked. Cannot, she thought, reminded her of some of the instructors at the Center.

  Every question seemed to get a lecture.

  One day she asked Cannot just what they were looking for. The work so far consisted of feeding legends and old wives' tales from many races into the computer to find common factors in them.

  "You have seen the single common factor already, have you not?" Cannot replied tutorially. "What, then, is it?"

  "The phrase—I keep hearing it off and on around here, too."

  "Exactly!" the mermaid exclaimed. "Until midnight at the Well of Souls. A more poetic way of saying forever, perhaps, or expressing an indefinite, like: We'll keep at this project until midnight at the Well of Souls—which seems likely at this rate."

  "But why is it important?" she quizzed. "I mean, it's just a saying, isn't it?"

  "No!" the Umiau replied strongly. "If it were a saying of one race, perhaps even of bordering races, that would be understandable. But it's used even by Northern races! A few of the really primitive hexes seem to use it as a religious chant! Why? And so the saying goes back as far as antiquity itself. Written records go back almost ten thousand years here, oral tradition many times that. That phrase occurs over and over again! Why? What is it trying to tell us? That is what I must know! It might provide us with the key to this crazy planet, with its fifteen hundred and sixty races and differing biomes."

  "Maybe it's literal," Vardia suggested. "Maybe people sometime in the past gathered at midnight at some place they called the Well of Souls."

  The mermaid's expression would have led anyone more knowledgeable in all-too-human emotions to the conclusion that the dumb student had finally grasped the obvious.

  "We've been proceeding along that tack here," Cannot told her. "This is, after all, called the Well World, but the only wells we know of are the input wells at each pole. That's the problem, you know. They are both input, not opposites."

  "Must there be an output?" Vardia asked. "I mean, can't this be a one-way street?"

  Cannot shook her statuesque head from side to side. "No, it would make no sense at all, and would invalidate the only good theory I have so far as to why this world was built and why it was built the way it was."

  "What's the theory?"

  Cannot's eyes became glazed, but Vardia could not tell if it was an expression or just the effect the Umiau had when closing the inner transparent lid while keeping the outer skin lid open.

  "You're a bright person, Vardia," the mermaid said. "Perhaps, someday, I'll tell you."

  And that was all there was to that.

  A day or two later Vardia wandered into Cannot's office and saw her sitting there viewing slides of a great desert, painted in reds, yellows, and oranges under a cloudless blue sky. In the background things got hazy and indistinct. It looked, Vardia thought, something like a semitransparent wall. She said as much aloud.

  "It is, Vardia," Cannot replied. "It is indeed. It's the Equatorial Barrier—a place I am going to have to visit somehow, although none of the hexes around it are very plentiful on water, and the trip will be hard. Here, look at this," she urged, backing the slides up several paces. She saw a view taken through the wall with the best filters available. Objects were still indistinct, but she could see just enough to identify one thing clearly.

  "There's a walkway in there!" she exclaimed. "Like the one around the Zone Well!"

  "Exactly!" the mermaid confirmed. "And that's what I want to know more about. Do you feel up to working through the night tonight?"

  "Why, yes, I guess so," she replied. "I've never done it before but I feel fine."

  "Good! Good!" Cannot approved, rubbing her hands together. "Maybe I can solve this mystery tonight!"

  * * *

  Stars swirled in tremendous profusion across the night sky, great, brilliantly colored clouds of nebulae spreading out in odd shapes while the starfield itself seemed to consist of a great mass of millions of stars in swirls the way a galaxy looked under high magnification. It was a magnificent sight, but one not appreciated by Vardia, who could not see it with her coneless eyes as she worked in the bright, artificial day of the lab, or by unseen onlookers out in the fields to the south.

  At first they looked like particularly thick grains of the wild grasses in the area. Then, slowly, two large shapes rose up underneath the stalks, shapes with huge insect bodies and great eyes.

  And—something else.

  It sparkled like a hundred trapped fireflies, and seemed to rest atop a shadowy form.

  "The Diviner says that the equation has changed unnaturally," said The Rel.

  "Then we don't go in tonight?" one of the Akkafian warriors asked.

  "We must," replied The Rel. "We feel that only tonight will everything be this auspicious. We have the opportunity of an extra prize that increases the odds."

  "Then the balance—this new factor—is in our favor?" asked the Markling, relieved.

  "It is," The Rel replied. "There will be two to carry back, not one. Can you manage it?"

  "Of course, if the newcomer isn't any larger than the other," the Markling told The Rel.

  "Good. They should be together, so take them both. And—remember! Though the Czillians will all sleep as soon as the power-plant detonator is triggered, the Umiau will not. They'll be shocked, and won't see too well or get around too much, but there may be trouble. Don't get so wrapped up in any struggle that you sting either of our quarry to death. I want only paralysis sufficient to get us back to the halfway island."

  "Don't worry," the warriors assured almost in unison. "We would not fail the baron like that."

  "All right, then," The Rel said in a voice so soft it was almost lost in the gentle night breeze. "You have the detonator. When we rush at the point I have shown you, I shall give a signal. Then and only then are you to blow it. Not sooner, not later. Otherwise the emergency generators will be on before we are away."

  "It is understood," the Markling assured the Northerner.

  "The Diviner indicates that they are both there and otherwise alone in their working place," The Rel said. "In a way, I am suspicious. This is too good fortune, and I do not believe in luck. Nonetheless, we do what we must.

  "All right—now!"

  DILLIA—UPLAKE

  Wu Julee groaned and opened her eyes. Her head was splitting and the room was spinning around.

  "She's comin' around!" someone's voice called out, and she was suddenly conscious of a number of people clustering around her.

  She tried to focus, but everything was blurry for a few moments. Finally, vision cleared enough for her to see who each was, particularly the one non-Dillian in the crowd.

  "Brazil!" she managed, then choked. Someone forced a little water down her throat. It tasted sour. She coughed.

  "She knows you!" Yomax yelled, excited. "She remembers things agin!"

  She shut her eyes tightly. She did remember—everything. A spasm shook her, and she vomited the water.

  "Yomax! Jol!" she heard the Healer's voice call. "You louts take her behind! Captain Brazil, you pull; I'll push! Let's try and get her on her feet as soon as possible!"

  They fell to their tasks and managed to pull it off with several tries. No thanks to me, Brazil thought. Man! These people have muscles!

  She was up, but unsteady. They put side panels padded with cloth under her arms and braced them so she could support herself. The room was still spinning, but it seemed to be slowing down. She still felt sick, and started trembling. Someone—probably Jol—started stroking her back and that seemed to calm her a little.

  "Oh, my God!" she groaned.

  "It's all right, Wu Julee," Brazil said softly. "The nightmares are past, now. They can't hurt you anymore."

  "But how—" she started, then threw up again and kept gagging.

  "All right, all of you outside now!" the Healer demanded. "Yes, you, too, Yomax! I'll call you wh
en I'm ready."

  They stepped out into the chill wind. Yomax shrugged, a helpless look on his face.

  "Do you drink ale, stranger?" the aged centaur asked Brazil.

  "I've been known to," Brazil replied. "What do you make it out of?"

  "Grains, water, and yeast!" said Yomax, surprised at the question. "What else would you make ale out of?"

  "I dunno," Brazil admitted, "but I'm awfully glad you don't either. Where to?"

  The three of them went down the main street, Brazil feeling like a pygmy among giants, and up to the bar, front on now.

  The place was full of customers—about a dozen—and they had trouble squeezing in. Brazil suddenly became afraid that he would be crushed to death between equine rumps.

  The conversation stopped when he entered, and everyone looked at him suspiciously.

  "I just love being made to feel welcome," Brazil said sarcastically. Then, to the other two, "Isn't there a more, ah, private place to talk?"

  Yomax nodded. "Gimme three, Zoder!" he called, and the bartender poured three enormous steins of ale and put them on the bar. He handed one to Jol and the other to Brazil, who almost dropped it when he found out how heavy the filled stein really was. Using two hands, he held on and followed Yomax down the street a few doors to the oldster's office.

  After Jol stoked the fire and threw some more wood in, the place seemed to warm and brighten spiritually as well as literally. Brazil let out a long sigh and sank to the floor, resting the stein on the floor beside him. As the place warmed up, he took off his fur cap and coat. Underneath he didn't seem to be wearing anything.

  The two centaurs also took off their coats, and both of them stared at him.

  Brazil stared back. "Now, don't you go starting that, or I'll go back to the bar!" he warned. The Dillians laughed, and everybody relaxed. Brazil sipped the brew, and found it not bad at all, although close to two liters was a bit much at one time for him.

  "Now, what's all this about, mister?" Jol asked suspiciously.

  "Suppose we swap information," he offered, taking out his pipe and lighting it.

  Yomax licked his lips. "Is that—is that tobacco?" he asked hesitatingly.

  "It is," Brazil replied. "Not very good, but good enough. Want some?"

  Yomax's expression, Brazil thought, was as eager and unbelieving as mine was when I saw that steak at Serge's.

  Was that only a few months ago? he asked himself. Or was it a lifetime?

  Yomax dragged out an old and battered pipe that resembled a giant corncob and proceeded to fill it. Lighting it with a common safety match, he puffed away ecstatically.

  "We don't get much tobacco hereabouts," the old man explained.

  "I never would have guessed," Brazil responded dryly. "I picked it up a fair distance from here, really—I've traveled nine hexes getting here, not counting a side trip to Zone from my home hex."

  "Them rodent fellas are the only ones in five thousand kilometers with tobacco these days," Yomax said ruefully. "That where?"

  Brazil nodded. "Next door to my home hex."

  "Don't think I remember it," the old official prodded curiously. "Except that you look like us, sort of, from the waist up, I don't think I ever seen your like before."

  "Not surprising," Brazil replied sadly. "My people came to a no-good end, I'm afraid."

  "Hey! Yomax!" Jol yelled suddenly. "Lookit his mouth! It don't go with his talkin'!"

  "He's using a translator, idiot!" snapped Yomax.

  "Right," the small man confirmed. "I got it from the Ambreza—those 'rodent fellas' you mentioned. Nice people, once I could convince them that I was intelligent."

  "If you and they was neighbors, why was that a problem?" Jol asked.

  The sadness crept back. "Well—a very long time ago, there was a war. My people were from a high-tech hex, and they built an extremely comfortable civilization, judging from the artifacts I saw. But the lifestyle was extremely wasteful—it required enormous natural resources to sustain—and they were running out, while the by-products curtailed good soil to the point where they were importing eight percent of their food. Unwilling to compromise their life-style, they looked to their neighbors to sustain their culture. Two hexes were ocean, one's temperature was so cold it would kill us, two more weren't worth taking for what they had or could be turned into. Only the Ambreza Hex was compatible, even though it was totally nontechnological. No steam engines, no machines of any kind not powered by muscle. The Ambreza were quiet, primitive farmers and fishermen, and they looked like easy prey."

  "Attacked 'em, eh?" Yomax put in.

  "Well, they were about to," Brazil replied. "They geared up with swords and spears, bows and catapults—whatever would work in Ambreza Hex—with computers from home telling them the best effective use. But my people made one mistake, so very old in the history of many races, and they paid the price for it."

  "What mistake was that?" asked Jol, fascinated.

  "They confused ignorance with stupidity," the man explained. "The Ambreza were what they appeared to be, but they were not dumb. They saw what was coming and saw what they had to lose. Their diplomats tried to negotiate a settlement, but at the same time they scoured other hexes for effective countermeasures—and they found one!"

  "Yes? Yes? And that was . . . ?" Yomax prompted.

  "A gas," Brazil said softly. "A Northern Hemisphere hex used it for refrigeration, but on my people it had a far different effect. They kidnapped a few people, and the gas worked on them just as the Northerners said it would. Meanwhile the only effect on the Ambreza was to make them itch and sneeze for a while."

  "It killed all your people?" asked Yomax, appalled.

  "Not killed, no—not exactly," the small man replied. "It made, well chemical changes in the brain. You see, just about every race is loosely based on, or related to, some animal past or present."

  "Yup," Yomax agreed. "I once tried to talk to a horse in Hex Eighty-three."

  "Exactly!" Brazil exclaimed. "Well, we came from—were a refinement of, really—the great apes. You know about them?"

  "Saw a few pictures once in a magazine," Jol said. "Two or three hexes got kinds of 'em."

  "That's right. Even the Ambreza are related to several animals in other hexes—including this one, if I recall," Brazil continued. "Well, the gas simply mentally reverted everyone back to his ancestral animalism. They all lost their power to reason and became great apes."

  "Wow!" Jol exclaimed. "Didn't they all die?"

  "No," Brazil replied. "The climate's moderate, and while many of them—probably most of them—did perish, a few seemed to adapt. The Ambreza moved in and cleared out the area afterward. They let them run free in small packs. They even keep a few as pets."

  "I ain't much on science," the old man put in, "but I do remember that stuff like chemical changes can't be passed on. Surely their children didn't breed true as animals."

  "The Ambreza say that there has been slow improvement," answered the small man. "But while the gas has to be extremely potent to affect anybody else, it appears that the stuff got absorbed by just about everything—rocks, dirt, and everything that grows in it or lived in it. For my people, the big dose caused initial reversion, but about one part per trillion keeps it alive. The effect is slowly wearing out. The Ambreza figure that they'll be up to the level of basic primitive people in another six or seven generations, maybe even start a language within five hundred years. Their—the Ambreza's, that is—master plan is to move the packs over into their old land when they start to improve. That way they'll develop in a non-technological hex and will probably remain rather primitive."

  "I'm not sure I like that gas," Yomax commented. "What worked on them might work on us." He shivered.

  "I don't think so," Brazil replied. "After the attack, the Well refused to transport the stuff anymore. I think our planetary brain's had enough of such things."

  "I still don't like the idea," Yomax maintained. "If not that, then somethin
' else could get us."

  "Life's a risk anyway, without worrying about everything that might happen," Brazil pointed out. "After all, you could slip on the dock and fall in the lake and freeze to death before you got to shore. A tree could fall over on you. Lightning could strike. But if you let such things dominate your life, you'll be as good as dead anyway. That's what's wrong with Wu Julee."

  "What do you mean?" Jol asked sharply.

  "She's had a horrible life," Nathan Brazil replied evenly. "Born on a Comworld; bred to do farm labor, looking and thinking just like everybody else, no sex, no fun, no nothing. Then, suddenly, she was plucked up by the hierarchy, given shots to develop sexually, and used as a prostitute for minor visitors, one of whom was a foreign pig named Datham Hain."

  He was interrupted at this point and had to try to explain what a prostitute was to two members of a culture that didn't have marriage, paternity suits, or money. It took some doing.

  "Anyway," he continued, "this Hain was a representative of a group of nasties who get important people on various worlds hooked on a particularly nasty kind of drug, the better to rule them. To demonstrate what it did if you didn't get the treatment, he infected Wu Julee first and then let the stuff start to destroy her. There's no cure, and on most worlds they just put such people to death. Most of those infected, finding their blood samples matching Wu Julee's blood, played Hain's game, taking orders from him and his masters.

  "The stuff kind of does to you, but very painfully, what that gas did to my Hex Forty-one, only it also depresses the appetite to nonexistence. You eventually mindlessly starve to death."

  "And poor Wuju was already pretty far gone," Jol interpolated. "In pain, practically an animal, with all that behind her. No wonder she blotted all memories out! And no wonder she had nightmares!"

  "Life's been a nightmare to her," Brazil said quietly. "Her physical nightmare is over, but until she faces that fact, it still lives in her mind."

  They just stood there for several minutes, there seeming to be nothing left to say. Finally, Yomax said, "Captain, one thing bothers me about your gas story."