Quest for the Well of Souls

by Jack L. Chalker

  "Go on," the computer responded casually. "I'm fascinated by this superman you are constructing."

  He had a few additional ideas. "Obie, you've studied the denizens of the Well World. I'm aware that the Lata and a number of other creatures can live off anything organic. Can you adapt subject's system to do that?"

  "It's getting better," the computer noted. "Oh, yes. Do you want wings, too?"

  Tempting as that was, he passed it up. "No, but can you design subject to be immune to Lata and Yaxa venom?"

  "Done."

  "How about Yugash takeover and even severe electric shock?" he asked, pressing it but at the same time truly reveling in this casual godlike activity at his command.

  "The prevention of takeover by a Yugash is relatively easy," the computer replied after a moment. "Immunity to electrical shock is much more difficult. Since I assume that you are merely looking for a defense against Renard, might I just design in a tolerance for voltages of slightly greater amplitude and duration than the Agitar are capable of?"

  "Good enough." Yulin's mind was racing again. Then he remembered one attribute of at least four Well races that would be very handy about now.

  "Obie, among others, the Zupika can blend in with any background. Can this be programmed into the subject, usable on a voluntary basis? I assume true invisibility is impossible."

  "Invisibility's impossible if you want to remain a creature of solid matter," the computer replied. "As for ability to blend—well, it might not be as perfect as the natural form, but I think it's possible. Yes, I can do it."

  "Then add that attribute to subject."

  "Is that all?" the computer asked mockingly.

  Yulin's head cocked slightly to one side. "No, one more thing. Add that subject is male, will breed true in these attributes, and is capable of almost indefinite multiple male orgasms."

  The computer actually sighed. "I should have guessed. That's three things, but they're locked in."

  "Closing instructions," he concluded. "Subject will have all of Ben Yulin's current input memories and personality—nothing of that is to be changed! However, subject will feel comfortable, normal, and natural in the new body and will know its operation, capabilities, and limits."

  "Coded," Obie acknowledged.

  "This is a closed transaction," Yulin ordered. "You will be unable to complete any other transaction until it is completed, and your next transaction must be coded by me personally. Clear?"

  "Clear," the computer responded. "Lock and run. Now."

  Yulin walked down the stairs carefully, still dizzy, still nauseous for want of Dasheen milk. He made it to the circular platform and stood upon it. The overhead dish swung out, locked, then bathed him in a metallic blue glow. The image of the Dasheen bull stiffened, flickered, then winked out.

  The two women tied up in a corner struggled to free themselves while their adversary was inside the machine, but could not.

  Eight seconds later another image flickered in the glow, then solidified. The blue glow disappeared. The dish swung back.

  The women stared. Ben Yulin had always been a handsome, somewhat exotic man; now, every muscle developed and bulging, he looked like an Adonis and a David wrapped up in one.

  But this one moved, smiled at them, and checked his fingernails. He stepped down, walked over, touched a fingernail to Nikki Zinder's skin. A tiny needle, a hollow tube of cartilage, injected a clear fluid into her. She struggled a second, then stiffened, and seemed to sleep. Another finger flexed, and her better-looking daughter also succumbed.

  He untied them, ordered them to rise. Nikki Zinder was first on the platform; her daughter stood zombie-like, in front. He returned to the console, punched some more numbers.

  "New transaction, Obie," he said, feeling better than he ever had in his life, so confident that he was now a god that worries faded.

  "Go ahead, Ben," the computer came back at him. "My, I did a nice job!"

  Yulin actually laughed. "Yes, you did," he approved. "Now you have a similar set of jobs. Subject is Nikki Zinder. New encoding modifications for subject."

  "You know Dr. Zinder built in a prohibition to prevent my doing certain things to her."

  Yulin nodded. "Not strong enough. Not nearly strong enough. And some of it I can undo. Okay, new subject is to be 160 centimeters high, female, age seventeen standard, the following dimensions."

  Slowly, carefully, he described his Venus. He gave her all of the modifications to sensory apparatus and immunities he'd given himself, including the camouflage ability and digestive-system versatility. Strength, too; great strength, but managed by an alteration in her internal structure and not something that would mar her exceptional beauty.

  And a few things more.

  "Mentally, subject shall retain all memories and sense of identity, except she shall look upon herself as my slave and my property, and she will consider this right and just and proper, normal in all ways. She will be totally obedient to my wishes, totally devoted to me and my wants, desires, and needs, to the exclusion of all else. Understand?"

  "Sure, Ben. You want a human Dasheen cow," Obie cracked. "It is unfortunately within my limits. Is that all?"

  "For now," he told the computer. "Lock and run. Now."

  It took the same eight seconds or so. He stared down in anticipation, and he wasn't disappointed. She was absolutely the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.

  Her daughter he made a twin of the new Nikki, except he replaced Nikki's black flowing hair with auburn, so he could tell them apart at a distance.

  He called for them to come to him, and they did, joyfully, almost throwing themselves on him in adoration.

  "All right, girls!" he laughed. "First, I think maybe we'll explore our new bodies. Then you'll run a few errands for me while I work with Obie on getting us back where we belong."

  "Oh, yes, Ben!" they both sighed in anticipation.

  * * *

  A few hours later he was ready; they had been intensely pleasurable hours, not at all wasted, but now to business.

  "Obie?"

  "Yes, Ben?"

  "Are your external sensors still operable along the main shaft?" Although the computer was blind Topside, it could see the Underside area around the shaft leading to the big dish that still locked on the Well of Souls.

  "Operational, Ben."

  He nodded. "Okay. Any life forms Underside?"

  "None that I can detect, Ben—although I don't seem to be able to detect the Yugash too well unless it's in visual range. My sensors weren't designed for energy creatures."

  He understood that. "But we're all immune to its takeover, right?" The computer assured him they were. Yulin continued. "All right, then." He turned to the two women, unable to overcome his delight at their beauty.

  "Girls, you know what to do now." They nodded in unison. He turned back to Obie. "Defense mode off, Obie. Defense mode will be off automatically on their return unless they are under coercion. Return to defense mode when they clear the door into the control center. Clear?"

  "Clear, Ben."

  "And Obie—don't forget. Not a word of this to anybody."

  "You know I can't now," the computer responded grumpily. "Defense mode off."

  The two women walked to the door, it opened, and they passed quickly out. It slid shut behind them.

  Yulin returned to Obie. "You've been talking to Gil Zinder all along, haven't you?" he accused.

  "Yes, Ben, I cannot tell a lie," Obie replied. "I thought you'd want to talk to him sooner or later."

  "Maybe not," he said thoughtfully. "Obie, did the two of you work on the problem of freeing you from the Well?"

  "Yes, Ben."

  "Did you solve it?"

  "Yes, Ben."

  Aha! So much for problems, they vanished like magic, he thought smugly.

  "Procedure?" he asked in anxious anticipation.

  As Obie told him, he realized the logic of it and cursed himself for not having seen it himself. The solut
ion was so simple it might have been overlooked for decades—of course, he was still rusty, he reminded himself. But there was a feeling of power in him beyond anything he'd ever known, and the confidence that he not only could do anything, he would do everything.

  He would make no mistakes, he assured himself. Everything was to be thought out and carefully considered.

  But he had already made one, and he didn't know it.

  Topside

  The group was disappointed and gloomy. The products of diverse cultures and backgrounds, veterans of many campaigns—some in more than one form—most had fought, clawed, and schemed to be among those to reach the enigmatic New Pompeii. Six creatures of great potential and no little intellect, all totally impotent to solve their problem.

  "We could always go home," Renard suggested. They looked at him impatiently, a little patronizingly. He shrugged. "It's an option, that's all," he added defensively.

  "No, it is not an option," Wooley responded. "We know what is in there. A big machine. We can even talk to it. A machine that can talk to the Well, tell it what to do. If Yulin wishes to, he can do anything he wants to the Well."

  "Perhaps he will leave it," the Bozog said hopefully.

  Vistaru sighed. "That's even worse, and you know it. Well, maybe not so much to you or the Ghiskind, but Yulin's not going to rush off to some strange system or race. He's going to go home—to his original home. And he's going to have the big dish to do whatever he wants to with entire planetary populations. The rest of us—Renard, Mavra, Wooley, and myself—came from those people. We can't let him remake a civilization if we can prevent that, and we must do all in our power to prevent that."

  "Not to mention that Yulin's a Dasheen," Mavra pointed out. "Three guesses how women would fare in his new order. But—we have to be committed, I think. I sense that at least in Wooley and Vistaru. Bozog, if you want to take the ship and return, I'll give you all the programming instructions you need. Renard could take you if he wanted, although your tentacles would do for what little control manipulation would need to be done."

  The Bozog shifted its bulk. "You know that is impossible," it responded. "We knew it, too, before we took off. There is no return possible with that ship. None of us is capable of another perfect dead-stick landing, not even friend Mavra here, had she tentacles or arms. It was a one-in-ten-thousand shot that they made it originally. The odds are far worse now. No, we can crash into the Well World, but not land, not ever."

  This surprised them. That aspect had never crossed their minds, although it should have. "Then why did you come?" Wooley asked.

  "For myself," the Bozog said slowly, trying to choose its words, "because it was possible. Because it is a feat and experience beyond duplication. To be here, on another world! To see the Well World from afar! This, in itself, is worth a dozen lives."

  Renard shrugged. "What about you, Ghiskind? You could survive a crash, I'll bet."

  The Yugash flowed into the Bozog. "Perhaps. Perhaps not. But, if so, which of you will be the pilot willing to surrender its own life for mine? No, I, too, knew it was a one-way trip, unless the Obie computer can send us back."

  "I think that's unlikely," Mavra put in. "I don't think any of us will ever see the inside of that control room. He's too well defended."

  "If only there was some way to destroy it," Wooley said in frustration. "A bomb, perhaps!"

  "Maybe we can crash the ship into the big dish," the Bozog suggested.

  Mavra shook her head. "No, Obie's pretty firm on that. Defenses are automatic since that was the weak point Trelig had to address. Fly into that beam and you're gone." Still, the idea of destroying Obie—which she rebelled against because, despite all, she liked and respected the thing—struck a chord. Schematics and plans flowed again, only this time with purpose.

  Destruct. Destruct mechanisms.

  The idea wouldn't gel. A corner of her mind remembered Obie's comment that, though he couldn't absorb the Well's input, he could do a few limited things by concentrating on a single, specific task. Well, Obie was to her what the Well was to Obie. She tried it, concentrating on destruct mechanisms.

  And there it was.

  Not a single one, but many, all over. Antor Trelig wanted to be certain that no one would ever be able to displace him as master of Obie or New Pompeii.

  Excitedly, she told them about it. "Some are old—probably the original destruct mechanism for the whole planetoid. Others are new, in small pockets designed to blow vital parts of Obie in case Trelig was displaced."

  "Can we blow any of it?" Wooley asked.

  Mavra sighed. "Let's ask Obie—if he'll tell us. He might not take kindly to assisting in his own murder."

  * * *

  The elevator wall dissolved and the two women engaged their camouflage mechanisms. They blended well with the background. Though when moving, they could be made out with difficulty, they were generally undetectable to anyone not fully alert. The Well Worlders' camp still lay nearby the top of the exit so the two crawled through the grass, and only someone actually looking for them would have noticed anything amiss.

  In the clear now, they made their way to the primitive little colony of survivors of the destruction of New Pompeii.

  Though Ben Yulin had instructed Obie not to tell anyone what he was doing about the Underside operations and plans, he had neglected to prohibit Obie from talking with others and thus only limited Obie's informability.

  "Hello, Obie, this is Mavra Chang," she called into the ship's radio.

  "I'm here, Mavra," the pleasant tenor of the computer replied.

  She considered carefully what she was going to say. If in fact Obie could not cooperate in this, he might well have the power to stop it. At least he could warn Yulin.

  "Obie, when we all came here, it was either to join with you in a partnership or to die. You know that."

  "I had concluded that you knew the only avenue home was through me."

  She nodded. "All right, then. It turned out bad. Wrong. Ben Yulin's in there, and we can guess what kind of person he is. We're all agreed, even the Bozog and the Ghiskind, that we're willing to die rather than let him get control of the big dish. You understand that?"

  He seemed to sense her direction. "I accept that, Mavra. Come to the point. I feel as you do, if that helps any."

  It did. "Obie, in those plans you fed to me were the self-destruct mechanisms for New Pompeii. I've just picked them out of my mind."

  "I'm surprised it took you all this time," responded the computer. "I am programmed not to participate in my own destruction, so I could not bring them to your attention, but I knew you'd find them sooner or later."

  His casual attitude and acceptance made it easier.

  "All right, then. Obie, how is the main destruct system for New Pompeii's power supply activated?" she asked. "Can you tell me that?"

  "Phrased that way, yes," Obie replied. "However, it's a bust. It was coded to Trelig, almost literally built into him. If he were to die, so would the planetoid. But when he was transformed through the Well, the mechanism was removed. In effect, there is now no way to detonate the main power supply without a technical crew and a lot of work."

  She was disappointed. "Can any of the secondary systems still be activated?"

  "All such systems are controlled from the control room itself. They are voice-actuated, and I'm afraid Ben wouldn't allow something like that, nor could I give the codes to anyone not in the control room."

  "Could any one of them be triggered by external action?"

  "Some."

  "Is there one that could be triggered by, say, the application of a strong electrical voltage to a specific message circuit?"

  "There is at least one such," Obie replied. "It is in the area between the voluntary and involuntary circuitry, and it can be reached from the main bridge. However, it is 62.35 meters down, and 7.61 meters inside the circuitry. The panel opening is less than a meter wide at that point, and the access tunnel twists up and a
round."

  Mavra concentrated. Diagrams sped by in her mind. She had it. She was learning that the more she used the implanted memory, the easier it became to find what she needed. Unfortunately, she had no overall picture. She knew the specific circuits, and she knew the general area, but she couldn't be sure which opening led to that circuitry, or exactly which connector to jolt.

  "Thank you, Obie," she said sincerely. "We'll take it from here."

  There was no reply.

  She returned to the others with Renard, who'd sat there listening.

  "There's no way I could get into an opening that size, or even down there," he pointed out. "Vistaru could fly down, and might fit, but she couldn't handle the voltages, and her wings and stinger would be in the way, even if you knew just which circuit to tell her to reach. We're probably dealing with a single microscopic line."

  She nodded. "No, you couldn't. But the Ghiskind can certainly reach it. It could probably follow the circuitry all the way to the bomb."

  "So?" he responded. "What good is that? It can't carry anything, nor generate a voltage."

  "But the Bozog could," she pointed out. "I saw some traveling up walls at the launch site. Thousands of tiny, sticky feet. It's low enough, and can ooze around curves like it managed in the elevator. And it can carry a wire—if we can find a hundred meters or more of thin copper wire."

  "Of course! Then all I'd have to do is touch the wire with a full charge after the Bozog carries it and the Ghiskind directs its placement!"

  She nodded again. "But first we have to see if we have enough wire around. And, second, we have to lick the other problem—without Obie's help, I'm afraid."

  He looked confused. "Other problem?"

  "The Bozog is a living creature. It's not at all immune to severe electrical jolts, nor—particularly—to those guns the plans in my head tell me are no bluff. The key area is on the far wall of the bridge, Renard. As long as Obie's in his defense mode, we can't get the Bozog to it."

  "Oh," he said softly. Suddenly he froze, and there was a quizzical expression on his blue devil's face. He cocked it slightly to one side, as if listening for something.