Quest for the Well of Souls

by Jack L. Chalker

  But her life had been ten normal ones, and rough as no one person should ever have to endure. No wonder she was bitter, no wonder she was unable to relate much to other people.

  How Ortega longed to talk to her, to reveal to her her true history and heritage, which he alone completely knew—but he couldn't. He couldn't be sure of its effect on her, and he needed her to remain as tough, nasty, and self-confident as she was. She needed that strength to survive, and he would need it if he ever needed her.

  He checked the sheet.

  "Subject was given annual check by Dr. Quozoni 13/12," it read. "Had minor skin and dysentery problems from not taking proper care of herself, easily correctable. Although a balanced diet is mandated, subject tends to obesity, apparently from unauthorized foodstuffs. Her apparent obesity is aggravated by permanent curvature of the spine resulting from body adjustments to the deformities and from the fact that breasts and fat hang as dead weight. However, overweight is not considered serious enough to jeopardize life as yet. Major organs in excellent shape considering the obesity, probably from the forced heavy exercise she gets when walking. Hearing has deteriorated with age, but normally and not seriously, considering that she started with above-normal acuity. Eyesight, which is not a serious factor considering her condition, is far above Type 41 norm at night but very poor in daylight, partially a result of her adopting a nocturnal schedule. Thankfully, aging has brought on nearsightedness, which does not warrant correction considering her three-meter maximum range due to head limitations.

  "Mental state appears to be continuing in that odd new track. There have been no attempts at escape in the past eleven years, which had us worried; but she also seems to have developed a total alienation from humanity. She can no longer even conceive of herself as anything but what she is. To watch her one would swear that she is, indeed, a truly natural creature. Recently she has taken an abnormal interest in biology and genetic structure and has talked of founding a race. We find that optimistic, and yet psychologically and scientifically intriguing. Of course, she had herself sterilized at an early age, but this blossoming maternal interest and the continuing relationship between her and Joshi bears watching. One cannot but think of the possibilities of designing a part of one hex, either Glathriel or Olborn—which owes it to her—into an ecosystem in which such creatures as she would survive on their own. We are sufficiently indebted to her that we are looking into this."

  Ortega looked away from the sheet, reflecting. Odd how she was changing, yet, somehow, still in character. Escape—even if it could be attained—was futile: where could she go and for how long could she survive on her own? So she'd turned to a different form of coping, a dream of founding a race of her own kind designed, like a minihex, for its physical requirements. If it could be done, Ortega decided, it would be.

  He sighed, filed the report without reading the rest, and pulled out a communications device from a drawer with his middle right hand.

  It was on an odd circuit, and so could not easily be intercepted, he felt, by anyone else. The office itself was debugged daily, so he was confident about its security. The line went directly from his office across to the other side of Zone, to the embassy of Oolakash, deep in the Overdark Ocean.

  The connection buzzed a number of times, and, for a moment, he felt that he'd picked the wrong time. But, finally, he heard a click, and a hollow, high-pitched voice answered him via a translator. What with the water, the connection, and the double translator, it sounded eerie, as though made by an electronic instrument, yet it was intelligible. He wondered what he sounded like to the Oolakash.

  "Tagadal," said that voice.

  Ortega smiled. "Tag? Ortega. I have a little ecology problem for you to run through Obie, and a genetic question, too."

  "Fire away," replied Dr. Gilgam Zinder.

  North Zone

  Like its counterpart in the South, the Northern Hemisphere, with 780 noncarbon-based life forms, had its Zone and its own embassies and ambassadors. In all, 702 hexes maintained permanent or semipermanent representatives in Zone, and had their own interzone council with rotating chairmanship. Yet the North had more problems than the South, which though it had races so alien from one another as to make identification difficult, had more of a sense of unity. The Markovians had been carbon-based, and they naturally devoted much of their energies to other forms also based on carbon.

  But they couldn't overlook a bet. In their suicidal project to find for their children the glory their forebears had missed by attaining a stagnant godhead, the Markovians could not afford to miss the slight chance that they were doomed because they were carbon-based.

  North Zone was the true experimenter's paradise. There were no rules or restrictions on the 780 Northern hexes, and some of the life forms were so wildly alien that they could not even find common ground with one another. Such had been the way with the Uchjin, in whose nontech hex Trelig and Yulin had crashed. They had an ambassador on station—it was the only reason the refugees had made it to the South—but few could talk to them. Their utterances just didn't make sense; their frame of reference, concepts, and the like were so totally alien that it would have been impossible even to convey to them what the ship was or what it represented.

  "No," however, translated quite well, even to the Northern races who had themselves tried to gain control of the ship—and some in the North were fully as greedy and Machiavellian as others in the South—and they had really tried.

  To no avail.

  The creature standing in the Well Gate at North Zone did not belong there. It was large—over two meters, not counting the vast orange-and-brown spotted butterfly's wings now compactly folded along its back—and its shiny rock-hard body rested on eight rubbery black tentacles, each of which terminated in soft, sticky claws. Its face was like a human skull, jet black with small yellow half-moons making it a devil's mask; two feelers rose interminably from it, vibrating. Its eyes were velvet pads of deep orange, clearly marking a visual system different from the common one of the South.

  The Yaxa never felt comfortable in North Zone, fearing that a sprung seal or some overzealous controlling hand might admit whatever atmosphere boiled on the other side of that door. For lack of interest and proper equipment, this was as far as Southerners usually came.

  The Well Gate would zip a Northerner to South Zone or the reverse, and that's what made traveling so frustrating: there was just no opening from either Zone to the outside world; only the Zone Gates provided transportation in and out of the hexes. And any Zone Gate, North or South, always brought one back immediately to his home hex.

  This time the Yaxa wore no pressure suit, which was one thing that made it nervous. The other was what it was about to meet.

  The Yaxa had been among the originators of the Wars of the Well that had ended so futilely, and they had never given up on the North. Once, long ago, a Northerner went through a Southern Zone Gate—and had come out in that Southern zone's hex. The evidence was irrefutable.

  How?

  The Yaxa had worked on that problem for years, with very little to go on. They knew the Northerner had been a symbiont called The Diviner and the Rel, who came from the Northern hex the translator reproduced as Astilgol—none of the Northern hex names really translated, but that's the way the sound always came out.

  The Astilgol were interested in the ship; they had already tried to talk to the Uchjin, but failed like everyone else. Floating just off the ground, the Astilgol looked totally alien to any Southerner—just a long stream of glistening silver chimes suspended from a crystal bar with a series of tiny lights glowing atop it, like fireflies caught in a round bowl. Yet no bowl was visible—only the sense that one was there.

  The Astilgol ambassador had been interested in the Yaxa's contacts; they were in the North, and the Yaxa controlled Yulin. They'd also listened to Trelig's Makiem, and to Ortega as well.

  But they could not help with the basic problem: the Diviner, it seemed, had been born a bit of a
mutant, able to tune in occasionally on the internal processes of the Well. Sometimes it could prophesy when the Well calculated probabilities on new input—but this was not common. Only three Diviners had been born in known history, and the one that journeyed south had never returned. It was the last.

  Why had the Well allowed the Diviner and the Rel through? Nobody knew. The Well was a computer but not an entity; it didn't decide to let the Diviner through—somehow the fused creature had interacted with the Well's transport system in a way no other could.

  The Yaxa had theorized about this for years. The solution had boiled down to how the Well classified a creature. It had always been assumed that this was determined from its physical makeup, but what if that wasn't so?

  Had the Diviner's relationship to the Well somehow jammed the normal translation process? Or had the Diviner somehow simply informed the Well that it was a different kind of creature than it actually was? Did the Well recognize an individual by its self-image? Could the Well, then, be fooled? Had the Diviner said to the Well, then, be fooled? Had the Diviner said in the South, "I am an Azkfru," and wound up not in Astilgol but in Azkfru?

  They'd tried some experiments using deep hypnos on other creatures to convince them that they were Yaxa. They'd done the hypnos well, but the creatures continued to pop out in their true hexes.

  Northern races maintained some trade with the South. The translators, for example, were actually grown inside the Northern creatures in Moiush and traded for iron that the Moiush needed. Thus, some Northern races had Southern contacts, just as some Southern races cooperated with the North. Word gets around on any project after awhile.

  Finally it even got to the Yugash.

  They never manned their embassy at Zone; they were neither liked nor trusted; they apparently had nothing of value to trade, and they generally treated the other races as mere animals, beneath their notice.

  Their physical structure was just bonded energy. Wild creatures of unimaginable shapes and sizes inhabited their crystalline hex; the Yugash grew an organism to order—and then they entered it in some way, possessed it, and controlled it completely.

  Physical creatures were but tools to the Yugash, things to be used until they were broken or no longer useful. As natives of a high-tech hex they were aware of the spaceship in Uchjin; it had passed over them on the way down, but crashed three hexes away. Some of the Yugash had even risked traveling to Uchjin, although the surrounding races hated and feared them and made it difficult.

  Then suddenly the Yugash appeared, for the first time in any memory, at North Zone. They received reports of the Southern wars and read them avidly. They too started working on the problem, for their agents had told them that, though they could grow a creature to fly the ship, there was no one in the North who understood its operation. It was too alien for even the Entries.

  They had tenuous contacts with Trelig, Ortega, and Yulin, and that last had referred them to the Yaxa. The people of his own hex—mostly farmers—would have lynched him if they knew he still contemplated getting that ship.

  Suddenly, it had all come together. Yaxa theoretical research with the potential the Yugash believed they needed.

  The airlock door opened, and the Yugash walked in.

  Floated in was a more apt term. The creature looked strange, almost invisible in the light. Suspended a good fifty centimeters above the floor, a series of horizontal and vertical lines formed what appeared to be a red-pencil outline of a great hooded cloak—with no one in it.

  Even the Yaxa, whose vision had the best resolution of any on the Well, had trouble keeping the creature in focus. The creature might be very visible in total darkness, but almost any light, let alone the bright ones here, washed it out.

  The Yugash seemed to nod, but said nothing. It was one of the few creatures for whom a translator was totally useless; there was no place to affix it, for the Yugash had no material being.

  The creature floated slowly by the Yaxa and up to the blackness of the Well Gate. It turned, nodded again, and drifted into the Gate, sharply visible as a strange specter before it was swallowed up. The Yaxa followed, more nervous now than ever, and emerged from the South Zone Well Gate instantaneously.

  The Yugash floated up to it, touched it. The Yaxa felt an eerie, uncomfortable tingling, but nothing else. It was suddenly chilled, stuffy, nervous. Blending into the Yaxa body, the Yugash now vanished.

  There were a few other creatures about in Zone, but none gave the Yaxa much notice. The huge butterflies were cold and aloof always, and they inspired fear in some others. Only another Yaxa would have noticed how awkward the creature seemed, how unsure of itself.

  It entered the Yaxa embassy, almost bruising its wings on the doorway. Inside were the ambassador and several other Yaxa leaders—all females. The male of the species was groundbound, a soft, pulpy caterpillar designed for only one purpose, and it responded with abandon. The males were kept dormant until needed. The Yaxa female always ate her mate after.

  The ambassador looked concerned. "There is something wrong?"

  The newcomer stopped and wobbled unsteadily on four tentacles. Its voice was hard to understand, and it was unlike anything they had ever heard before.

  "I am the Torshind of Yugash," it mumbled. "You must forgive me. I am still learning to use this body. In Yugash we grow the bodies we need, and they are of good crystals and bred to their tasks. Yours is an incredibly complex creature, and there is also a great deal of resistance from the host."

  "Do you mean," one asked, "that you are a Northern creature currently occupying the body of our sister?"

  The strange Yaxa nodded. "Yes. Will you please instruct the creature not to resist me so? We cannot complete this test until I am in complete control of the cranial area."

  They all looked nervous, uncomfortable now, both from the implications of what they were seeing and hearing and from being called "creatures."

  "Please!" asked the Torshind again. "Do so or one of two alternatives will result. I shall either have to abandon the body, or there will be permanent brain damage!"

  That last got them. "Hypno!" one ordered, and soon a syringe to Yaxa requirements was produced.

  The doctor, if that was what she was, looked uncertain. "You're sure this won't put you under, too?" she asked, worried. "And a total takeover—it's reversible?"

  The Yaxa-Yugash nodded. "Totally. The creature will simply not be able to recall more than dimly the possession. Come! It is becoming more difficult!"

  The syringe was inserted through a joint, and in a few minutes the jerking ceased. The Yaxa was in a deep hypnotic sleep. Suddenly it became animated. It rose on all eight tentacles confidently, flexing its wings and tentacles. It donned a Yaxa pressure suit.

  "That is much better," said the Torshind. "I am in complete control now. I would have to spend several days in a body as complex as this to learn it all, but I think I can manage. Shall we go?"

  They left, the whole party, and walked to the nearest Zone Gate. Everyone, including the Torshind, was tense.

  The ambassador and the project leader entered the Zone Gate first, then the Yaxa-Yugash, followed by the rest.

  In his office far down the corridor, Serge Ortega cursed. His monitors had told him everything except whether the experiment had worked. Was the Torshind now in Yaxa or in Yugash?

  Only the Yaxa knew, but Ortega would fix that.

  Glathriel

  The Gedemondan, almost three meters high, of white fur, with padlike legs and a dog's snout, chuckles.

  "But the true test of awesome power is the ability not to use it." He looks toward her and points a clawed, furry finger.

  "No matter what, Mavra Chang, you remember that!" he warns sharply.

  She feels puzzled. "You think I'm to have great power?" she asks skeptically and a little derisively, reflecting the way she feels about such mysticism.

  "First you must descend into Hell," the Gedemondan warns her. "Then, only when hope is gone, wi
ll you be lifted up and placed at the pinnacle of attainable power, but whether or not you will be wise enough to know what to do with it or what not to do with it is closed to us."

  Vistaru, the Lata pixie challenges it. "How do you know all this?" she asks.

  The Gedemondan chuckles. "We read probabilities. You see, we see—perceive is a better word—the math of the Well of Souls. We feel the energy flow, the ties and bands, in each and every particle of matter and energy. All reality is mathematics, all existence—past, present, and future—is equations."

  "Then you can foretell what's to happen," Renard the Agitar satyr points out. "If you see the math you can solve the equation."

  The Gedemondan sighs. "What is the square root of minus two?" it asks smugly.

  Mavra Chang awoke, the words of the snow-giant echoing as always in her ears. She'd dreamed that dream a thousand times since the actual event. How long ago? Twenty-two years, the Ambreza doctor had said.

  She had been twenty-seven then; she was approaching fifty now. All those years, she thought, lying here on her cushions. A lifetime.

  She stretched, and thought about it for a bit. About herself, how she had changed so much in the years.

  She no longer thought about the time she'd been human. She knew they'd hypno-burned that impression into her twenty-two years before, but it had worn off, in time, with the dreams and the thoughts.

  And, for a while, it had mattered. She remembered the Gedemondans, even if they'd made sure nobody else did—their power and wisdom, the way one of them had simply pointed a finger at the engine pods and they had toppled and exploded.

  She remembered being captured by the Olbornians—great bipedal cats in ancient livery—and taken to their temple, where they had touched her extremities to that curious stone. But she couldn't remember what life was like before that.