Midnight At the Well of Souls

by Jack L. Chalker

  "You really would have to be crazy to go there willingly, wouldn't you?" Hain said slowly, more to herself than to the others.

  "No water at all," Skander sighed.

  "No soil, nothing but sand," the Slelcronian added unhappily.

  "The first truly pleasant place we've seen in the South," said The Rel.

  Skander turned to The Rel. "Well, O leader, how do we proceed?" she asked sarcastically.

  "We keep to the coast," the Northerner responded casually. "Hain can continue to catch fish. The Slelcronian will have to go without vitamins for a day or two, but it will get plenty of sun. Better water in that stream back there," The Rel told the plant creature.

  While the Slelcronian did so, Skander asked, "What about you, Rel? Or don't you eat?"

  "Of course we eat," The Rel replied. "Silicon. What else?"

  In a few minutes, they crossed the border.

  The wind was close to forty kilometers per hour, the temperature around forty degrees Celsius. It was like going from midwinter into the worst day of summer, and the swirling sand bit deeply into all of them.

  They were still within sight of the Ekh'l mountains when they had to stop for the day. Skander collapsed on the hot sand and shook her head exhaustedly. "What kind of creatures could possibly live in this hell?" she mused.

  Almost as if to answer the question, a tiny head popped out of the sand near them. Suddenly, it leaped out of the sand, revealing a small, two-legged dinosaur, about a meter high, with short, stubby arms terminating in tiny but very human hands. It had a very long tail which seemed to balance it.

  It was a darker green than the Czillian, but this was broken by what appeared to be a tiny, rust-colored vest and jacket. The creature came up to them and stopped. Its flat head and raised eyes set on each side of a spade-shaped mouth surveyed them with quick, darting motions. Suddenly it leaned back on its tail in a relaxed posture.

  "I say, old fellows," it said suddenly in a casual tenor that seemed to come from deep inside its throat—suggesting a translator in use—"Are you the good guys or the bad guys?"

  IVROM

  "This turning you all back into what we think of as human has some definite drawbacks," Nathan Brazil, still a giant stag, complained as they walked up the beach. The packs were on him, since none of the other three could now manage the heavy load.

  "You think you have problems," Wu Julee responded. "We're all stark naked and none of the clothing in the packs fits anymore."

  "Not to mention feeling hunger, and pain, and cold again," Vardia put in. "I had forgotten these sensations, and I don't like them. I was happier as a Czillian."

  "But how is it possible?" Wuju asked. "I mean, how could things done by the Markovian brain be so undone?"

  "Why not ask Varnett?" Brazil suggested. "He's the brain that got this mess started, anyway."

  "You all are yelling about trivialities," Varnett sulked. "I could fly. And before I set out to catch you, Brazil, I experienced sex. For the first time, I experienced sex. Now I'm back in this retarded body again."

  "Not that retarded," Brazil responded. "You were arrested chemically, but that's all out of your body now. Just as the sponge is out of Wuju. You should mature normally, in a couple of years, depending on your genes and your diet. Good looking, too, if I remember rightly, since you're based on Ian Varnett. I remember him as one hell of a womanizer—particularly for a mathematician."

  "You knew Ian Varnett?" the boy gasped. "But—he's been dead some six hundred years!"

  "I know," said Nathan Brazil wistfully. "He got caught up in the great experiment on Mavrishnu. What a waste. You know it was a waste, Varnett—I saw your Zone interviews."

  "There has always been trouble with Varnetts on Mavrishnu," the duplicate of the great mathematician, made from cells of the long-dead original's frozen body, said with a gleam in his eye. "They tried three or four early on, but I'm the first one in more than a century. They needed him again, at least, his potential. I wasn't the first to interrupt Skander at his real work and inquiries—a lot of skillful agents put everything together. They were raising me for a different, more local set of problems, but I was already proving to be, I think, too much of a problem.

  They set me up on Dalgonia to see if I could crack Skander's work, figuring that whether I did or didn't they could get me when I returned."

  The group continued talking as they walked down the beach, unhampered—as the charge to the Faerie required—by any obstructions.

  "How much do you know, Varnett? About all this, that is," Brazil asked.

  "When I saw the cellular sample of the Dalgonian brain in the computer storage, I recognized the mathematical relationship of the sequence and order of the energy pulses," the boy remembered. "It took about three hours to get the sequence, and one or two more to nail it down with the camp's computers. I only had to look at the thing to see that the energy waveforms represented there bore no resemblance to anything we knew, and the matter-to-energy-to-matter process within the cells was easily observed. I combined what I saw with what we theorized must be the reason the Markovians had no artifacts. The planetary brain created anything you wanted, stored anything you wanted, on demand, perhaps even by thought. That gave me what was going on in that relationship, although I still haven't any idea how it's done."

  Vardia was impressed. "You mean it was like the spells on us here—they just wished for something and it was there?"

  "That's how the magic works here," Varnett affirmed. "The only way such a concept is possible is if, in fact, nothing is real. All of us, these woods, the ocean, the planet—even that sun—are merely constructs. There is nothing in the universe but a single energy field; everything else is taking that energy, transmuting it into matter or different forms of energy, and holding it stable. That's reality—the stabilized, transmuted primal energy. But the mathematical constructs that are so stabilized are in constant tension, like a coiled spring. The energy would revert to its natural state if not kept in check. These creatures—the Faerie—have some control over that checking process. Not enough to make any huge changes, but enough to change the equation slightly, to vary reality. That's magic."

  "I don't understand what you're saying too well," Wuju put in, "but I think I get the basic idea. You're saying that the Markovians were gods and could do or have anything they wished for, just like that."

  "That's about it," Varnett admitted. "The gods were real, and they created all of us—or, at least, the conditions under which we could develop."

  "But that would be the ultimate achievement of intelligence!" Vardia protested. "If that were true, why did they die out?"

  Wuju smiled knowingly and looked to Nathan Brazil, once the only human, now the only nonhuman in the party, who was being uncharacteristically silent.

  "I heard someone say why they died," Wuju replied. "That someone said that when they reached the ultimate, it became dull and boring. Then they created new worlds, new life forms here and there—and all went off as those new forms to start from the beginning again."

  "What a horrible idea," Vardia said disgustedly. "If that were true, it means that even perfection is imperfect, and that when our own people finally reach this godhood, they'll find it wanting and die out by suicide, maybe leaving a new set of primitives to do the same thing all over again. It reduces all the revolutions, the struggles, the pain, the great dreams—everything—to nonsense! It means that life is pointless!"

  "Not pointless," Brazil put in suddenly. "It just means that grand schemes are pointless. It means that you don't make your own life pointless or useless—most people do, you know. It wouldn't make any difference if ninety-nine percent of the people of the human race—or any other—lived or not. Except in sheer numbers their lives are dull, vegetative, and nonproductive. They never dream, never read and share the thoughts of others, never truly experience the fulfilling equation of love—which is not merely to love others, but to be loved as well. That is the ultimate point of lif
e, Vardia. The Markovians never found it. Look at this world, our own worlds—all reflecting the Markovian reality, which was based on the ultimate materialist Utopia. They were like the man with incredible riches, perhaps a planet of his own designed to his own tastes, and every material thing you can imagine producible at the snap of his fingers, who, nonetheless, is found dead one morning, having cut his own throat. All his dreams have been fulfilled, but now he is there, on top, alone. And to get where he was, he had to purge himself of what was truly of value. He killed his humanity, his spirituality. Oh, he could love—and buy what he loved. But he couldn't buy that love he craved, only service.

  "Like the Markovians, when he got where he'd wanted to be all his life, he found he didn't really have anything at all."

  "I reject that theory," Vardia said strongly. "The rich man would commit suicide because of the guilt that he had all that he had while others starved, not out of some craving for love. That word is meaningless."

  "When love is meaningless, or abstract, or misunderstood, then is that person or race also meaningless," Brazil responded. "Back in the days of Old Earth one group had a saying, 'What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?' Nobody listened then, either. Funny—haven't thought of that group in years. They said God was love, and postulated a heaven of communal love, and a hell for those who could not love. Later on that got crudded up with other stuff until the ideas were gone and only the artifacts were left. Like the Markovians, they paid more attention to things than to ideas—and, like the Markovians, they died for it."

  "But surely the Markovian civilization was heaven," Vardia said.

  "It was hell," Brazil responded flatly. "You see, the Markovians got everything their ancestors had ever dreamed of, and they knew it wasn't enough. They knew that something attainable was missing. They searched, poked, queried, did everything to try and find why the people were miserable, but since everything they had or knew was a construct of themselves, they couldn't find it. They decided, finally, to go back and repeat the experiment, little realizing that it, too, was doomed to failure—for the experiment, our own universe, was made in a variety of shapes and forms, but it was still in their own image. They didn't even bother to make a clean start—they used themselves as the prototypes for all the races they'd create, and they used the same universe—the one they'd lived in, rose in, and failed in. That's why their artifacts are still around—the two artifacts they had—their cities and their control brains."

  Varnett let out a gasp. "Suddenly I think I see what you mean. This Well World we're on, if you're right, not only provided the trial-lab runs for the new races and their environments, and the way of changing everything to match—it was also the control!"

  "Right," Brazil affirmed grimly. "Here everything was laboratory-standard, lab-created, monitored, and maintained by automatic equipment to keep it that way. Not all of them—just a representative sample, the last races to be created, since they were the easiest to maintain."

  "But our race here destroyed itself," Varnett protested. "I heard about it. Does that mean we're out of it? That the best we can do is destroy ourselves, destroy others, or, perhaps, reach the Markovian level and wind up committing suicide anyway? Is there no hope?"

  "There's hope," Brazil replied evenly. "And despair, too. That religion of Old Earth I told you about? Well, those who believed in it had the idea that their God sent his son, a perfect human being filled with nothing but goodness and love, to us humans. Son-of-God question aside, there really was such a person born—I watched him try to teach a bunch of people to reject material things and concentrate on love."

  "What happened to him?" Wuju asked, fascinated.

  "His followers rejected him because he wouldn't rule the world, or lead a political revolution. Others capitalized on his rhetoric for political ends. Finally he upset the established political system too much, and they killed him. The religion, like those founded by other men of our race in other times, was politicized within fifty years. Oh, there were some devoted followers—and of others like this man, too. But they were never in control of their religion, and became lost or isolated in the increased institutionalizing of the faiths. Same thing happened to an older man, born centuries earlier and thousands of miles away. He didn't die violently, but his followers substituted things for ideas and used the quest for love and perfection as a social and political brake to justify the miseries of mankind. No, the religious prophets who made it were the ones who thought in Markovian terms, in political terms—the founder of the Com, for example, saw conditions of material deprivation that made him sick. He dreamed of a civilization like that of the Markovians, and set the Com on its way. He succeeded the best, because he appealed to that which everyone can understand—the quest for material Utopia. Well, he can have it."

  "Now, hold on, Brazil!" Varnett protested. "You say you were there when all these people were around. That must have been thousands of years ago. Just how old are you, anyway?"

  "I'll answer that when we get to the Well," Brazil responded. "I'll answer all questions then, not before. If we don't get to the Well before Skander and whoever's with him, it won't make any difference, anyway."

  "Then they could supplant the Markovians, change the equations?" Varnett asked, aghast. "I at one time thought I could, too, but logic showed me how wrong I was. My people—my former people, those of the night—agreed with me. It was only when word came that Skander might make a run for it that they decided to send me to head him off. That's why I joined up with you, Brazil—you said you were going to do the same thing back in Zone. Our mysterious informant told us to link up with you if we could, and I did."

  "Now how could—" Brazil started, then suddenly was silent for a moment, thinking. Suddenly the voice box between his antlers gave off a wry chuckle. "Of course! What an idiot I've been! I'll bet that son of a bitch has bugged every embassy in Zone! I'd forgotten just what kind of a devious mind he had!"

  "What are you talking about?" Wuju asked, annoyed.

  "The third player—and a formidable one. The one who warned Skander against kidnap, got Varnett to link up with me. He knew all along where Varnett, here, and Skander were. He just wanted to be there for the payoff, as usual. I was his insurance policy, in case anything went wrong—and it did. Skander was kidnapped, and out of control or immediate surveillance. At least he has managed to delay one or another party on the way to the Well so that we're supposed to get there at about the same time—where he'll have a reception party waiting for us. He warned Skander so I'd have time to get to Czill, about even with them on the other side of the ocean. When we were trapped with the Murnies, he pulled strings to get the Czillians to put pressure on The Nation to bottle them up until we were even again! I don't wonder that he might have some influence with the Faerie—maybe the Skander party somehow got bogged down, too!"

  "Who the hell are you talking about, Nathan?" Wuju persisted.

  "Look!" Brazil said. "There's Ghlmon, the last hex before the equator! See the burned-out reddish sand? It goes across two hexes in width, a half-hex tall."

  "Who?" Wuju persisted.

  "Well," Brazil replied hesitantly, "unless I am wildly mistaken, somewhere out in the sunburned desert we'll meet up with him."

  "Are we going to cross the border today?" Varnett asked, looking at the sun, barely above the horizon.

  "Might as well," Brazil responded. "It's going to be pretty tough on all of us there, so we'd better get used to it. The heat's going to be terrible, I think, and my fur coat's going to be murder, while your naked skins will be roasted. So we'd better push on into the night as much as we can, following the shoreline as we have. Days may be unworkable there."

  Wuju had an infuriated look on her face, but Brazil speeded up, forcing them into a jog to keep up, and within a few minutes they crossed the border.

  The heat hit them like a giant blanket, and it was humid, too, this close to the ocean. Within minutes of crossi
ng the border, they had slowed to almost a crawl, the three humans perspiring profusely, Brazil panting wildly, tongue hanging out of his mouth. Finally, they had to stop and rest. Dusk brought only slight relief.

  Wuju looked again at Brazil with that I'd-like-to-kill-you expression. Hot, winded, the sand burning her feet and, when she sat down, her rear, she remained undeterred.

  "Who, Nathan?" she persisted, gasping for breath.

  Brazil's stag body looked as uncomfortable as anyone's, but that mechanical voice of his said evenly, "The one person who could know for certain that I would go after Skander, and that I would get to you in Dillia before going anywhere, was the only person who could tell Varnett where to find me and why. He was a pirate in the old days. You couldn't trust him with anything if he could make a shekel going against you, yet you could trust him with your life if there were no profit in it. That's what I forgot—the stakes are high here; there's a bigger profit potential than anyone could think of. He told me I could get help from everyone of all races, but trust none—including him, as it turned out. Although he figured I wouldn't think of him as an opponent since we'd been good friends and I owed him. He was almost right."

  Understanding hit her at last, and she brightened. "Ortega!" she exclaimed. "Your friend we met when we first entered Zone!"

  "The six-armed walrus-snake?" Vardia put in. "He's behind all this?"

  "Not all this," came a voice behind them—a clipped, casual male voice that carried both dignity and authority. "But he still is happy everything has turned out right."

  They all whirled. In the near-darkness, it was hard for any of them to see properly, but the creature looked for all the world like a meter-tall dinosaur, dark green skin and flat head, standing upright on large hind legs, while holding a curved pipe in a stubby hand. He also appeared to be wearing an old-fashioned formal jacket.

  The creature puffed on the pipe, the coals glowing in the dark.

  "I say," it said pleasantly, "do you mind if I finish my pipe before we travel? Terrible waste otherwise, y'know."