Quest for the Well of Souls.

by Jack L. Chalker.

Kyrbizmyth, a Hex to the South of the Overdark

A dark road is dangerous anywhere; but here, on the Well World, in a nontech hex whose diurnal creatures literally became comatose after sundown, it was moreso. The atmosphere was as close to average for the Southern Hemisphere as it could get, and, unlike many other places, almost any race could exist here-all easy prey. Internal defenses protected the Kyrbizmythians; one could not even touch them and hope to remain sane and whole. But nothing protected the traveler so foolish as to tread the well-marked but unlighted lanes after sundown.

The Tindler was such a fool. Resembling a giant armadillo with long, clawed hands used for walking and for grasping, he moved down the road, confident that his thick sh.e.l.l could protect him from any inhabitant of a nontech hex. His night vision would alert him well in advance of any traps.

"Help me! Oh, please! Someone! Help me!"

There it was again-a strange, high-pitched voice pierced the darkness. From its sound, it had obviously been processed by a translator. The Tindler, himself a far-traveling trade negotiator, used one. When both speakers wore them the voices sounded slightly more artificial.

"Help me! Please! Somebody! Help!" The mysterious voice pleaded just ahead of him. The Tindler grew wary, automatically suspecting a trap set by brigands reported to be in the area. Worse, he feared someone had somehow inadvertently touched one of the great trees that ab.u.t.ted one another across the whole hex. These were the immobile Kyrbizmythians themselves, who moved by swapping minds with one another and who would absorb the mind of anyone touching them without approval.

Suddenly he saw it, a tiny thing lying in the roadway. The creature was no more than seventy centimeters of bright-red fur tinged with gold. Its bushy foxlike tail was almost as long as its body, and its build was something like that of a small monkey. As the Tindler drew cautiously closer, the creature, a kind he'd never seen before, emitted a low moan; then he saw that one of its hind legs seemed set at an odd angle-almost certainly broken.

The Tindler's bulk made it impossible to conceal his presence; the little creature's head, lying in the roadway, turned and stared at him with beady little eyes from a curious face that resembled an owl's, complete to a tiny beak.

The Tindler stopped, looked around cautiously. Although his night vision was excellent, he could see no other life forms about except those of the hulking, ever-silent tree-creatures. From those he had nothing to fear if he stayed on the road.

Slowly the Tindler rumbled up to the stricken creature. Surely a being of his bulk had nothing to fear from one so tiny and frail.

"What's the matter, friend?" he called, trying to sound as concerned and helpful as possible.

The little creature groaned again. "Brigands, sir! Thieves and scoundrels set upon me a half-hour or so ago, took my pouch and everything, and twisted my leg right out of its socket, as you can see, leaving me to die here alone in the dark!"

The plight of the poor creature touched the Tindler deeply.

"Look, perhaps I can lift you atop my sh.e.l.l," he suggested. "You would be in pain, but it's not far to the Bucht border and a high-tech hospital."

The little creature brightened. "Oh, thank you so so much, good sir!" it exclaimed happily. "You have saved my life!" much, good sir!" it exclaimed happily. "You have saved my life!"

The two eyes at the end of the Tindler's long, narrow snout lowered to the little thing.

"Tell me," the Tindler asked, not a little nervous himself, "what did the monsters who would do this look like?"

"There were three of them, sir. Two of them were huge-and just about invisible. You couldn't see them until they moved!"

The Tindler thought that a little hard to believe, but so were the Kyrbizmythians. On the Well World, anything was possible somewhere.

"And the third?" the Tindler prompted. "Was it different than the other two? We have a long way to go, remember."

The tiny creature nodded, and tried to raise itself a little. It looked the Tindler straight in the eyes, only a fraction of a centimeter from its round nostrils. "It looked just like me!"

And before the great sh.e.l.led creature could react, the owl-monkey held a strange-looking pistol in its prehensile left foot. The furry animal pressed the trigger, and an enormous cloud of a yellowish gas gushed out. The movement was too sudden and too close; the Tindler's nostril flaps didn't close in time.

As the Tindler lost consciousness, two huge shapes detached themselves from the landscape where nothing could be seen before and moved toward them.

The last he heard was the little one yelling to somebody, "Hey! Doc! Get ready! This one's got a translator!"

Makiem

His name was Antor Trelig and he looked a lot like a giant frog. Nothing much unusual in this; in Makiem, everybody everybody looked like a giant frog. looked like a giant frog.

Trelig's chest bore the tattoo of the Imperial Household. From his office in the palace he could look out across the great city of Druhon-a lively, medieval center for 250,000 Makiem-to the great lake beyond that reflected the city's gaslights and the fairyland lighting of the castle. In the lake the land-dwelling Makiem could wet down their bodies as needed, swim underwater for long periods for recreation, and there, for one glorious week a year, the otherwise nons.e.xual Makiem bred.

Looming like dark shadows on either side of the lake were high mountains that provided an irregular frame for the great starfield mirrored in the lake. The sky of the Well World was spectacular to an unimaginable degree; from the Southern Hemisphere it was dominated by a great globular cl.u.s.ter and clouds of swirling gas, punctuated by an impossibly dense starfield that reflected the Well's position near a galactic center. Trelig often reclined on his balcony seat, looking out at the vista on clear nights. There was no other sight quite like it.

He heard a noise behind him but didn't turn away from the view. Only one person could enter his office without challenge or concern.

"You've never given up, have you?" The voice just behind him was somewhat softer than his, but with a toughness that showed that his wife, Burodir, was not just another pretty face.

"You know I haven't," he almost sighed. "And I never will. I can't when-now, for instance-you can actually see the d.a.m.n thing tantalizing me, almost mocking me. Challenging me." He pointed a clawed and webbed index finger out at the dark.

She sat beside him. Theirs was not a romantic union. She had been married off to him because her father was the power behind the throne and needed a watch kept on this stranger. Though rumor said the old man had choked to death on a bad mork-worm mork-worm, she knew deep inside that Antor Trelig had somehow arranged his demise, and then moved into the vacated place.

She was her father's daughter, though, so revenge was out of the question. She would remain loyal and faithful to Trelig-unless and until she could increase her own powers safely by knocking him off.

He understood that. He was the same way.

She peered out into the darkness and the U-shaped starfield showing through the Mountain Gate. "Where is it?" she asked.

"Almost at the horizon," he gestured. "About the size of a twenty-nug piece. See it, all silvery in the reflection of the sun?" piece. See it, all silvery in the reflection of the sun?"

Now she had it in sight-it was huge, really, but so low down and so oddly colored that it would often escape detection if one had a limited view of the horizon.

"New Pompeii," he breathed. "It was mine once-it will be mine again."

Once he'd been what he called human-resembling the folk of Glathriel far to the southeast. He'd been born unguessable billions of light-years from this spot, born to rule the Comworld of New Harmony, where everyone was hermaphroditic and all looked the same, but where party leaders like him had been larger, grander, than the rest.

He loved power; he'd been born to it and raised to wield it. Wealth and position meant nothing to him unless they served his l.u.s.t for power. That was why he was content for now to be Minister of Agriculture, an anonymous lower cabinet position. Few knew him even in Makiem, except as the Entry who'd crashed there in a s.p.a.ceship.

"Up there is all the power one could want," he told her, for perhaps the nine-thousandth time. She didn't mind; she was just like him. "A giant computer is the entire southern half of that little world," he continued. "It's a small-scale Well of Souls, able to transform physical and temporal reality on a scale that might be planetwide. See that sparkle, about halfway down? That's the edge of the big dish, locked on the Well of Souls at the equator, frozen in place. But if freed, it would be able to transform a world as large as this one. Think of it! A world! With the people designed to your pattern, the land and resources laid out to your specifications, and everything absolutely loyal to you-you who can be made immortal. And that computer can accomplish it all merely by adjusting reality in such a way that n.o.body would even know anything had been done. Everyone would just accept it!"

She nodded sympathetically. "But you know there is nothing on the Well World that could build an engine with sufficient thrust to reach New Pompeii," she pointed out. "You and I both saw the engines tumble and explode in that glacial valley in Gedemondas."

He nodded absently. "Fourteen thousand already dead from the Alliance that warred to get that fragmented ship, perhaps another forty thousand dead in the war itself-and the same number from the opposition alliance that the Yaxa and Ben Yulin headed."

He talked as if he were sincerely pained by the waste and futility the war represented, but she knew it was the compulsive politician in him that made it sound so. He couldn't care less about the dead and crippled, only that the war had been for nothing and had cost Makiem its friendship with its allies and neighbors, who took a dimmer view.

"What about Yulin?" she asked. Yulin had been the brilliant engineer who had kidnapped Gil Zinder's daughter, Nikki, and forced Zinder, who had designed the computer, to move and expand the project to New Pompeii, Trelig's private little world. Yulin was the only other creature who knew the code to bypa.s.s New Pompeii's computer defenses and could get in to operate the great machine. Not even Gil Zinder, who had somehow totally vanished on the Well World, as had his daughter, could get in without the pa.s.swords.

The mention of Yulin brought a chuckle to Trelig's great reptile lips. "Yulin! He's a semiretired farmer in Dasheen. He's got a hundred minotaur cows bred to adoring slavery for him. He's done some engineering work for his former allies, the Yaxa and Lamotien, but the Well math is beyond him-a great engineer, a so-so theoretical scientist. Without Zinder he can run, even build, some of the great machines, but he can't design one from scratch. They've tried! Besides, I think he's rather happy in Dasheen. It's the kind of place he's always fantasized about, anyway. The Yaxa had to drag him kicking and screaming into the war."

She was thoughtful. "This Zinder, though. He He could build another such computer, couldn't he? Doesn't that worry you?" could build another such computer, couldn't he? Doesn't that worry you?"

He shook his head. "No. If he was in a position to do so, he'd have done it by now, I'm sure-and such a ma.s.sive undertaking would be impossible to hide. No, with all the searches that have been launched over all this time, I'm certain that he's dead, or locked in one of those ma.s.s-mind worlds or nontech immobile-plant hexes. Nikki, I'm sure, is also dead. I doubt if she could survive anywhere anywhere on her own." First one, then the other of his huge independent eyes seemed to fog a bit. "No, it's not Yulin or Zinder I fear-it's that girl who troubles me." on her own." First one, then the other of his huge independent eyes seemed to fog a bit. "No, it's not Yulin or Zinder I fear-it's that girl who troubles me."

"Humph!" his wife snorted. "Mavra Chang, always Mavra Chang. It's an obsession with you! Look, she's deformed-she couldn't run a ship even if you put her in charge. No hands, face always looking down. She can't even feed herself. Better face it, Antor, dear. There is no way of ever returning to that glittering bauble of yours up there in the sky, and no way anybody else can, either-particularly not Mavra Chang!"

"I wish I had your confidence," he responded glumly. "Yes, it's true I'm obsessed with her. She's the most dangerous antagonist I ever faced. Tiny little slip of a girl-not much bigger than Parmiter's owl-faced apes. And yet, she managed to get devices of incredible complexity past my detectors-and they were the best you could buy! Then she slipped into Nikki Zinder's prison, past all but a couple of the guards, talked one guard into deserting with her, and managed to steal a ship and not get shot down by my robot sentinels-they're still up there, too, you know-by knowing a pa.s.sword based on a system only I could possibly know. How? Because she was in league with that G.o.dd.a.m.ned computer of Zinder's, that's how! It's self-aware, you know! It's the only answer. That means I haven't the slightest idea whether or not she really could get back through to that computer if she ever managed to get back up there! Even Yulin might have problems getting by the sentinels, but she won't! And her mind's so strange, so unfathomable, that no one knows what she'd do with that kind of power. She's vicious and vengeful, I know that. I lost a number of good syndicate hit men once when they killed her husband. I know know what she'd like to do to me!" what she'd like to do to me!"

Burodir shifted. She'd heard it all before. "But she won't!" she pointed out. "There's no way for anybody to get up there!"

"There's a perfectly preserved ship in the North," he retorted. "I ought to know-Ben and I crashed in it."

"But in a nontech hex populated by beings so alien they don't even understand what it is, and won't permit any other race to move it," she continued. "And, besides, it's impossible for a Southerner to go beyond North Zone. You know that. Any Zone Gate on the Well World, North or South, just brings you back to Makiem. You can't get beyond North Zone!"

That thought didn't bother him. "I'd have once said what Chang did was impossible," he pointed out. "I'd have said the Well of Souls, the Well World, Makiem, and all the rest were impossible, too. Besides, I've been reading the histories. A little over two centuries ago a Northerner did did make it to the South, here. If it can be done that way, the same thing can be done in reverse." make it to the South, here. If it can be done that way, the same thing can be done in reverse."

She nodded. "I know, the Diviner and the Rel, or something. That whole story is so mucked up in distortion and legend, few believe it anyway. You know that. There was also supposed to be a Markovian then-still around a million or more years after the rest of his race died out-and the Well was supposedly opened, entered, and then sealed for all time. If you believe those kinds of fairy tales, you'll believe anything!"

He considered what she said. "Well, back where I came from, there were myths about weird, intelligent creatures in the dim past-centaurs and mermaids and pixies and fairies and flying winged horses and minotaurs and more. I have seen every one of those here. This Markovian-this Nathan Brazil, as he was called, from my sector of s.p.a.ce-was a real person. There are records and descriptions of him in places like that plant-research center, Czill. Those people are not likely to accept fairy tales. And Serge Ortega believes in him, even claims to have known him." a real person. There are records and descriptions of him in places like that plant-research center, Czill. Those people are not likely to accept fairy tales. And Serge Ortega believes in him, even claims to have known him."

"Ortega!" she sniffed. "A scoundrel. A prisoner in Zone because of his own quest for immortality, and centuries older than any Ulik has a right to be. He's a senile old man."

"Ancient he is," Trelig agreed, "but senile he is not. Remember, he's the one who has kept Mavra Chang on ice and protected, until such time as he finds his own solution to this Northern mess. He's He's the one who brought up that Diviner and Rel business. He was the one who brought up that Diviner and Rel business. He was there! there!"

She tried to change the subject. "You know, it'll be our season in less than two weeks," she pointed out. "Have you cleared everything for it? I'm already starting to feel the urges."

Trelig nodded absently. "We've got twenty brats now. The worst curse of the war-this extreme fertility the Well imposed to replace the dead." But he continued to look out into the night, even though New Pompeii was now obscured by the western mountains. "Mavra Chang," she heard him mutter under his breath.

Burodir hissed in disgust. "d.a.m.n it! If she bothers you so much, why not do something about her? You're supposed to be a big plotter and dirty thinker. What would you do if some slip of a cripple was a threat to your power here?"

His great reptilian head c.o.c.ked slightly as he considered her challenge. "But killing her wouldn't be enough," he responded. "No, I have to know what sort of things that computer put into her, and how much of it she's revealed to anyone else." His mind raced now. "A kidnapping, though. She's helpless to resist, given the situation she is in, and she's even isolated from Ortega's meddling. A kidnapping and a thorough hypno job in some high-tech hex that could be bought or blackmailed. Of course!"

"It took you all these years to figure that out?" his wife responded sarcastically.

He didn't recognize the tone. "Nine years to get a position here, almost the same to get the diplomatic mess straight, to repair and rebuild," he replied seriously. "Plus all the work on the Northern problem. Priorities. But-why not?"

"Want me to arrange it?" Burodir asked, thankful that, perhaps, this obsession could finally be cleared up. "Makiem will have to be well out of the affair on the surface, or we undo the diplomatic ties and bring Ortega and the rest down on us. But, it can be done."

Trelig nodded idly. "Mavra Chang!" he breathed.

South Zone

There were 780 races in 780 hexes in the Well World's Southern Hemisphere. In each self-contained little world was at least one Zone Gate-a yawning hexagonal blackness that would instantly bring any of the hemisphere's creatures pa.s.sing through it to an area around the South Pole known as Zone. Around a huge central Well-the input staging area for Markovians who had taken part in the great experiment to repopulate the stars by becoming lesser creatures of their own design, living, reproducing, dying so the children could go out again to a universe their parents had abandoned-were 780 small areas. Airlocks and atmospheric controls adapted each to one of the 780 life forms of the South; they were all connected by long corridors.

Here and here alone, all the races of the South could meet. Here most technology worked-as did magic, too, for some of the races had powers given by the Well to simulate some condition on the real planets their races were designed to inhabit. However, high-tech pistols would not fire, a diplomatic nicety.

Zone, too, was halved, with one half for the water races and the other for the land races. But high-tech hexes had long ago rigged intercoms among them all, and it was here that senior amba.s.sadors with translators could conduct interhex business, try and keep the peace, deal with common problems, work out trade negotiations and the like.

Not all the emba.s.sies were manned, or had ever been. Some hexes remained complete mysteries, trafficking in nothing to no one. One such was the s...o...b..und, mountainous hex of Gedemondas, where the war had ended in a fiery display as the s.p.a.ceship's engine module plunged into a valley in full sight of the warring parties. It exploded as it pierced a thin floor of solidified lava masking volcanic magma. Other creatures, such as those Antor Trelig would once have called "human," also went unrepresented. The Glathriel, for instance, lost a war with their nontech neighbors, the Ambreza, who had secured a Northern Hemisphere gas that reduced the humans to the most basic primitive tribalism and then took their hex. The Ambreza controlled both Zone Gates, and made certain that, if humanity rose again, it would do so in ways they, not the humans, chose.

Amba.s.sadors came and went in the 679 currently manned offices. Time went on, people grew old, or they got tired of the monastic life the emba.s.sies imposed, or they got promoted within their own hexes, which were their countries.

All but one-the amba.s.sador from Ulik, a hex that lay along the Equatorial Barrier. Ulik was a high-tech hex, but one with a harsh, desert environment. Its people were great reptiles, snakelike to five or more meters beyond the waist, with humanoid torsos to which were attached three pairs of muscular arms with broad hands, the bottom four on crablike ball sockets. Their heads were squarish, thick, and both males and females had huge walruslike mustaches. Egg-layers who nursed their young when hatched, to non-Ulik eyes the only difference between males and females was the breast between each pair of arms on the female.

Serge Ortega was a male, and an Entry. Long ago he had been a freighter pilot for the Com who, old and bored, had unknowingly opened up an ancient Markovian Well Gate that had transported him to the Well World, which had in turn transformed him into a Ulik. He liked being a Ulik; the Well, while never changing one's memories or basic personality, made you feel comfortable and normal as whatever creature it made of you. Thus, Ortega was still the scoundrel, pirate, freebooter, and manipulator he'd been before.

The Ulik usually lived for about a century; none had ever lived past a century and a half. Serge Ortega, however, was already over three hundred years old, and he looked about fifty. He had blackmailed a race capable of magic into giving him immortality, but that, too, had its price. Such spells were effective only inside the hex of the casters or in Zone. Since the only way out of Zone was back to the nonmagical Ulik, Orgeta was a prisoner in the emba.s.sy, but an active one. Zone was his world and he made the most of it.

In his time there he'd foiled many plots, helped defuse several wars, combined hexes into effective alliances, and, by fair means or foul, learned from his bugs, blackmail, and agents pretty much of everything that happened in the South. Data reached him in mountains of paper, in reports, computer printouts, and photographs. He lived in quarters behind his huge office, with its communications devices, computers, and other marvels giving him the data and the means of correlating it.

In his own way, by his own labors and unique position, he was the closest thing to a head of government the Southern Hemisphere had-a Chairman or coordinator. And for every favor done, eventually a favor was asked in return. Some liked him, some admired him, many hated and feared him-but he was there and everyone had almost begun to take him for granted. He was de facto de facto Chairman of the Southern Hex Council, an informal body of amba.s.sadors called by intercom when matters of extreme gravity, such as the long-dead wars, threatened them all. Chairman of the Southern Hex Council, an informal body of amba.s.sadors called by intercom when matters of extreme gravity, such as the long-dead wars, threatened them all.

And now he sat, coiled on his serpentine body, rocking slightly back and forth, looking things over.

One report among all the others caused him to pause. It was the Ambreza's annual report on Mavra Chang, the one item he hated to see.

Serge Ortega in his time, and always for what he believed to be the best of motives, had lied, cheated, stolen, and committed practically every other offense. Since he always believed he was working in a good cause-whether true or not-he regretted none of it, felt no pity or remorse.

Except in this matter.

His mind returned to the time a new satellite had suddenly appeared around the Well World. One ship, launched from it, had approached too close to the Well over hexes where the ship's technology just wouldn't work. The craft divided into nine modules, and each came down in a different hex. Sometime later a second ship, one not designed to break up, managed a dead-stick landing in the North, where the locals had shoved the pa.s.sengers through Zone Gates to get them to the South where they, being carbon-based life, obviously belonged.

That Northern ship had carried one Antor Trelig, would-be Emperor of a new interstellar Rome controlled by a home-built miniature version of the Well World, and Ben Yulin, his engineer-a.s.sociate and the son of the sponge syndicate's number-two man. Trelig was number one. Also on that ship had been Gil Zinder, the scientist whose incredible mind had actually solved the basic principles of the Well World without even knowing of the Well's existence. He had built the great self-aware computer, Obie. They had come disguised as innocent victims-something Obie had managed-and they were through the Well before their true ident.i.ties had been revealed.

Gil's naive and pudgy fourteen-year-old daughter, Nikki, had been in the second ship along with Renard, a rebellious guard. Both were hooked on the mind-destroying, body-distorting drug called sponge. And there was Mavra Chang.

He sighed. Mavra Chang. Feelings of guilt and pity arose whenever he thought of her, and he tried to think of her as little as possible.

With the Northern ship barred to them, some Well World nations had allied to seize the engine module in the South. The coldly inhuman Yaxa b.u.t.terflies, the resourceful high-tech metamorphs of the Lamotien, and Ben Yulin, now a minotaur living in Dasheen's male paradise, had marched and killed and conquered. The froglike Makiem, the little satyrs of Agitar, who rode great winged horses and had the ability to store in their bodies and discharge at will thousands of volts, and the pterodactylic Cebu had marched and triumphed and killed in their own war. They were confident in Antor Trelig's ability to lead them back to New Pompeii and Obie.

All so long ago, he reflected.

He remembered Renard, the guard, cured of sponge by the Well when it turned him into an Agitar. How the man had rebelled when he found he was still serving his old master, Antor Trelig! He then sought the woman who had never given up the struggle to survive on this hostile world and had kept him alive until he was rescued.

Odd that Mavra Chang affected him so, Ortega thought. He had never met her, and quite possibly never would. But he owed her, and he could repay that debt only by inflicting misery. He was the one who had dispatched the small party to Gedemondas, high in the silent mountains, where the engine pods lay. Whoever reached them first would get the one thing the Well World had not the resources nor the skills to manufacture. The team consisted of two Lata, flying pixies, because they were friendly to him and he knew one well, Renard on his great pegasus Doma, and Mavra Chang, because, as a qualified pilot, she would be the only one able to recognize and evaluate the engines.

And she had completed her mission, he reflected, as he did every year when that report came by. She had witnessed the destruction of the great engines. Along the route, she was captured by fanatical great cats of Olborn. Their unique power was derived from six stones that somehow allowed them to turn their enemies into mulelike beasts of burden. Unfortunately they'd done a halfway job with Mavra before the others rescued her.

He felt a certain satisfaction that Olborn had been practically destroyed in the war, and its own leaders turned into little mules.