Midnight At the Well of Souls

by Jack L. Chalker

  "Most products of a bad environment turn out worse," Brazil admitted. "And yet, some of the greatest human beings came out of such miserable lots and conquered them. You didn't, yet you had the intelligence and potential to do so. Today, you stand as a contagion. I pity you, Hain, and because I pity you I will give you a localized wish."

  Hain grew slightly larger, her black color turning to white. She saw it in the fur on her forelegs.

  "You turned me noble!" she exclaimed, pleased and relieved.

  "You're the most beautiful breeder in the kingdom of the Akkafians," Brazil said. "When I return you to the palace, you won't be recognized. You'll be at the start of a breeding cycle. The Baron Azkfru will see you and go mad with desire. You will be his brood queen, and bear his royal young. That is your new destiny, Hain. Satisfied?"

  "It is all that I could hope for," Hain replied, and vanished.

  Wuju looked at Brazil, a furious expression on her face. "You gave that son of a bitch that? How could you reward that—that monster?"

  "Hain gets the wish, but it's not a reward, Wuju," Brazil replied. "You see, they withheld from their newcomer one fact of Akkafian life. Most Marklings are sterile, and they do the work. A few are raised as breeders. A breeder hatches a hundred or more young—but they hatch inside the mother's body and eat their way out, using the breeder's body for their food."

  Wuju started to say something, then formed a simple, "Ooooh," as the horror of Hain's destiny hit her.

  "Slelcronian!" Brazil pronounced. "You present me with a problem. I don't like your little civilization personally, and I don't like you much, either. I've adjusted things slightly, so the Recorders now only work with Slelcronians, not with any sentient plant. But you, personally—you're a problem. You're too dangerous to be let loose in the technology of Czill; you know too much. At the same time, you know too much of what is here to go back to Slelcron. It occurs to me, however, that you've really not altered the expedition in any significant way. If you had not taken over Vardia, nothing would have changed. Therefore, you didn't—and, in fact, couldn't."

  Nothing seemed to change, but there was a difference in the Czillian body.

  "So what are you going to do with me and my sister?" Vardia the Czillian asked. As far as everyone in the room was concerned, except for Brazil, the Slelcronian takeover had never happened. Slelcron was merely the funny place of the flowers and the giant bees, and their passage had been uneventful. Even so, the human Vardia had found her sister the Czillian as cold as the Slelcronian had been. She had gone through the same mental anguish as she had before and felt alienated from her sister.

  Everything was as it had been before.

  "Vardia, you are your old self, and no longer your sister," Brazil pointed out. "I think you'd be happiest returning to Czill, to the Center. You've much to contribute, to tell this story the way it happened. They won't be able to make use of what you say to get in, but it may cause the thinkers there to consider what projects are really worthwhile. Go!"

  She vanished.

  Now only Brazil, The Diviner and The Rel, Varnett, Wu Julee, Ortega, and the original Vardia were left.

  "Diviner and Rel," Brazil said, "your race intrigues me. Bisexual, two totally different forms which mate into one organism, one of which has the power and the other the sensory input and output. You're a good people, with a lot of potential. Perhaps you can carry the message and reach that plateau."

  "You're sending us back, then?" The Rel asked.

  "No," Brazil replied. "Not to the hex. Your race is on the verge of expanding outward in its sector. It is near the turning point where questions of goals are asked. I'm sending you to your own people on their world with the message I gave you here. The Diviner's gift will distinguish you. Perhaps you can turn your people, perhaps not. It's up to you. Go!"

  The Diviner and The Rel vanished.

  "Varnett," Brazil said, and the boy jerked as if he was shot.

  "What's in that little bag of tricks for me, Brazil?" he asked with false bravado.

  "There are degrees of Comworlds, some better than others," Brazil noted. "Yours isn't too far gone yet. Even Vardia's can change. The worst of the lot is Dedalus. It went the genetic engineering route, you know. Everyone looks alike, talks alike, thinks alike. They kept males and females, sort of, but the engineers thought of even that. The people are hermaphroditic—small male genitals atop a vagina below. They breed once, in an exchange, then lose all sexual desires and prowess. Each has one child, which is, of course, identical to the parents, turned over to and raised by the state. It's a grotesque anthill, but it may represent the future.

  "They don't even have names there. Obedience and contentment are engineered into them. Yet, the Central Committee retains power. This small group retains its sexual abilities, and the members are slightly different. The population is programmed to obey any one of those leaders unquestionably. The Committee was a perfect target, and they're controlled by the sponge syndicate. That sort of genetic engineering is, I fear, what the spongers have in mind for everyone eventually—with themselves on top.

  "I give you the chance to change things. As the Murnies did with me, I do to you. You will be the Chairman of the Central Committee of Paradise, formerly called Dedalus. You'll be the new Chairman. The old one just kicked the bucket, and you're now unfrozen to take command. If you meant what you told me, you can kick the spongers out of their most secure planethold and restore that planet to individual initiative. The revolution will be easy—the people will obey unquestionably. Your example and efforts could dissuade others from taking the Dedalus course. It's up to you. You're in charge."

  "What happens to the new Chairman's mind?" Varnett asked. "And my body?"

  "Even swap," Brazil told him. "The new boy will wake up a bat over in your old hex. He'll make out. He's born to command."

  "Not that madhouse," Varnett chuckled. "Okay, I accept."

  "Very good," Brazil told him. "But, I leave you this out. Should you ever want, any Markovian Gate will open for you—to bring you back here, for good. You'll be in a new body, so nobody knows what you would wind up as. You'd be here until you died, but you have that option."

  Varnett nodded soberly. "Okay. I think I understand," he said, and vanished.

  "Serge Ortega," Brazil sighed. "What in hell am I going to do with an old rascal like you?"

  "Oh, hell, Nate, what's the difference?" Ortega responded, and he meant it. "This time you won."

  "Are you really happy here, Serge? Or was that just part of the act?"

  "I'm happy," the snakeman replied. "Hell, Nate, I was so damned bored back in the old place I was ready to kill myself. It's gotten too damned civilized, and I was too old to go frontier. I got here, and I've had a ball for eighty years. Even though I lost this round, it's been great fun. I wouldn't have missed it for the world."

  Brazil chuckled. "Okay, Serge."

  Ortega vanished.

  "Where did you send him?" Vardia asked hesitantly.

  "Eighty's about the average life span for a Ulik," Brazil replied. "Serge didn't start as an egg, so he's a very old man. He has a year, five, maybe ten. I wouldn't put it past him to beat the system, but why the hell not? Let him go back to living and having fun."

  "And so that leaves us," Wuju said quietly.

  There was a sudden flicker in the image of the Markovian, then a sparkling graininess. The shape twirled, changed, and suddenly standing there in front of them was the old, human Nathan Brazil, in the colorful clothes he had first worn on the ship a lifetime ago.

  "Oh, my god!" Wuju breathed, looking as if she were seeing a ghost.

  "The God act's over," he said, sounding relieved. "You should see who you're really dealing with."

  "Nathan?" Wuju said hesitantly, starting forward. He put up his hand and stopped her, sighing.

  "No, Wuju. It couldn't work. Not now. Not after all this. It wouldn't work anyway. Both of you deserve much better than life's given you. There a
re others like you, you know—people who never had the chance to grow, as you did. They can use a little kindness, and a lot of caring. You know the horrors of the sponge, Wuju, and the abuse to which some human beings subject others. And you, Vardia, know the lies that underlie the Com philosophy. I've talked to both of you, observed you both carefully. I've fed all this information plus as much data as could be obtained from a readout by the brain while you were in this room. The brain responded with recommendations on what would be best for you. If we're wrong—the brain and I—after a trial of what I'm going to do, then you both have the same option that is open to Varnett. Just get near a Markovian Gate—you don't have to jump into it. Just get passage on a ship going near a Markovian world. If you want, the Gate will pluck you out without disturbing the ship, passengers, or crew. You'll somehow mysteriously vanish. And you'll wind up in Zone again. Like Varnett, you will have to take potluck with the Zone Gate again. Once here, again, there will be no returning.

  "But try it my way for a while. And remember what I said about your own contributions. Two people can change a world, if they wish."

  "But what—" Wuju started to ask, but was cut off in midsentence.

  The two bodies didn't vanish, they just collapsed, like a suit of clothes with the owner gone. They lay there in a heap on the floor.

  Brazil went over and carefully rearranged them so they looked as if they were sleeping.

  "Well, now what, Brazil?" he asked himself, his voice echoing in the empty hall.

  You go back, and you wait, his mind told him.

  What about the bodies? he wondered. Somehow he couldn't just vaporize them. Though their owners were gone, they lived on as empty vegetables.

  But there was nothing else to do, of course. They were just memories for him now, one a strange mixture of love and anguish. He was prolonging the inevitable.

  There was a crackle, and the bodies were gone, back to primal energy.

  "Oh, the hell with it," said Nathan Brazil, and he, too, vanished.

  The control room was empty. The Markovian brain noted the fact and then dutifully turned off the lights.

  ON "EARTH," A PLANET CIRCLING A STAR NEAR THE OUTERMOST EDGE OF THE GALAXY ANDROMEDA

  One moment Elkinos Skander had been perched atop Hain's back, looking at the control room and those in it. Then, suddenly, he wasn't.

  He looked around. Things looked funny and distorted. He was color-blind except for a sepia tone that lent itself to everything.

  He looked around, confused. I've gone through another change, he realized. My last one.

  A rather pleasant-looking place, he thought, once he got used to the distorted vision. Forests over there, some high mountains, odd-looking grass, and strange sort of trees, but that was to be expected.

  There were a lot of animals around, mostly grazing. They look a lot like deer, he noted, surprised. A few differences, but they would not look out of place on a pastoral human world.

  He looked down at himself, and saw the shadow of his head on the grass.

  I'm one of them, he suddenly realized with a shock. I'm a deer. No antlers like those big males over there, so I must be a doe.

  A deer? he thought quizzically.

  Why a deer?

  He was still meditating on this, when suddenly the grass seemed to explode with yells and strange shapes; great, rectangular bodies with their facial features in their chest, and big, big teeth.

  He watched as the Murnies singled out a large doe not far from him and surrounded it. Suddenly they speared it several times, and it went down in wordless agony and lay twitching on the ground, blood running, but still alive.

  The Murnies pounced on it, tearing at it, eating it alive.

  To be eaten alive! he thought, stunned, and suddenly blind panic overtook him. He started running, running away from the scene.

  Up ahead another band of Murnies leaped out of nowhere and cornered another deer, started to devour it.

  They're all over! he realized. This is their world! I'm just food to them!

  He ran narrowly avoiding entrapment several times. There were thousands of them here, and they all were hungry.

  And even as he ran in exhausted, dizzy circles, he knew that even if he avoided them today he would have to avoid them tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after, and wherever he ran on this planet there would be more of them.

  Sooner or later they'll get me! he thought in panic. By god! I'll not be eaten alive! I'll cheat Brazil of his revenge!

  He reached the highlands by carefully pulling himself together.

  Now that he had decided on a course of action, he felt calm.

  There! Up ahead! his mind said joyfully. He stopped and looked over the edge of the cliff.

  Over a kilometer straight down to the rocks, he saw with satisfaction. He ran back a long ways, then turned toward the cliff. With strong resolve, he ran with all his might toward the cliff and hurled himself over it.

  He saw the rocks coming up to meet him, but felt only the slight shock of pain.

  * * *

  Skander awoke. The very fact that he awoke was a shock, and he looked around.

  He was back on that plain at the edge of the forest. His shadow told him.

  He was a deer again.

  No! his mind screamed in horror. I'll cheat the bastard yet! Somehow I'll cheat him!

  But there were a lot of deer and a lot of Murnies on that world, and Skander still had six more times to die.

  PARADISE, ONCE CALLED DEDALUS, A PLANET NEAR SIRIUS

  Varnett groaned, then opened his eyes. He felt cold. He looked around him and saw a number of people peering at him anxiously.

  They all looked exactly alike. They didn't even look particularly male or female. Slight breasts and nipples, but nothing really female. Their bodies were lithe and muscular, sort of a blend of masculine and feminine.

  All of them had small male genitals where they should be, but, from his vantage point, he could see a small cavity beneath them.

  None of them had any body hair.

  If you did it upside down and the other was right side up, he thought, you could give and receive at the same time.

  "Are you all right?" one asked in a voice that sounded like a man's voice but with a feminine lilt.

  "Do you feel all right?" another asked in the identical voice.

  "I—I think so," he replied hesitantly, and sat up. "A little dizzy, that's all."

  "That will pass," the other said. "How's your memory?"

  "Shaky," he replied carefully. "I'm going to need a refresher."

  "Easily done," the other replied.

  He started to ask them their names, then suddenly remembered. They didn't use names on his planet.

  His planet! His!

  "I'd like to get right to work," he told them.

  "Of course," another replied, and they led him from the sterile-looking infirmary down an equally sterile corridor. He followed them, got into an elevator, and they rode up to the top floor.

  The top floor, it seemed, was an office complex. Workers were everywhere, filing things, typing things, using computer terminals.

  Everybody else was slightly smaller than he was, he realized. Not much, but in a world where everyone was absolutely identical such a slight difference was as noticeable as if Cousin Bat had entered the room.

  His office was huge and well-appointed. White wall-to-wall carpeting, so thick and soft his bare feet practically bounced off it. There was a huge desk, and great high-backed chair. No other furnishings, he noted, although their lack made the place look barren.

  "Bring me a summary of the status of the major areas of the planet," he ordered. "And then leave me for a while to study them."

  They bowed slightly, and left. He looked out the glass window that was the wall in back of his desk.

  A complex of identical buildings stretched out before him. Broad, tree-lined streets, some small parkland, and lots of identical-looking shapes walking about on v
arious business.

  The sky was an off-blue, not the deepness of his native world, but it was attractive. There were some fleecy clouds in the sky, and, off in the distance, he saw signs of cultivated land. It looked like a rich, peaceful, and productive place, he thought. Of course, weather and topography would cause changes in the life-styles planet-wide, but he wagered those differences were minimal.

  The aides returned with sheaves of folders bulging with papers. He acknowledged them curtly, and ordered them out.

  There were no mirrors, but the lighting reflected him in the glass windows.

  He looked just like them, only about fifty millimeters taller and proportionately slightly larger.

  He felt his male genitals. They had the same feel as the ones he had had as Cousin Bat, he thought.

  He reached a little lower, and found the small vaginal cavity.

  He spread some papers around to make it look as if he had been studying them. He would, in time, of course, but not now.

  He saw a small intercom on the desk and buzzed it, taking a seat in the big chair. At the far end of the room a clerk almost beat the track records entering, coming up to the desk and standing at full attention.

  "I have found indications," he told the clerk seriously, "that several members of the Presidium may be ill. I want a team of rural doctors—based, as far as possible, away from here—to be brought to my office as soon as possible. I want that done exactly and at once. How long before they can get here?"

  "If you want them from as far away from government centers as possible, ten hours," the clerk replied crisply.

  "All right, then," he nodded. "As soon as they arrive they are to see me—and no one else. No one is even to know that they have been sent for. I mean absolutely no one, not even the rest of the office."

  "I shall attend to it personally, Chairman," responded the clerk, and turned to leave. So much for the spongies, he thought.

  "Clerk!" he called suddenly, and the other halted and turned.

  "Chairman?"

  "How do I arrange to have sex?"

  The clerk looked surprised and bemused. "Whenever the Chairman wishes, of course. It is a great honor for any citizen."