Exiles at the Well of Souls

The Lift Car Nearing Topside, New Pompeii

“You’re too tense,” Antor Trelig told Ben Yulin. “Relax. Become Mavra Chang. Act like her, react like her, think like her. Let her persona completely control you. I want no slip-ups here.”

Yulin nodded and tried to relax. He tapped his fingernail on the chair side—long, sharp, hard nails, like steel. He looked suddenly down. He felt something funny, odd, just then. He stared down at the chair arm and saw that there was a tiny pool of liquid there. He dabbed a finger in it, put it up to his nose, and sniffed it. Odorless. He touched a little bit to his tongue. There was a mild numbing sensation there. Now what the hell? he wondered.

Suddenly he was looking at all ten fingers in curiosity. Some kind of cartilage, just a little fatter than human hair. A tube that was rigid and controlled by a tiny muscle. Poison? he wondered.

He resolved to try it when he got the opportunity.

A warning light went on and the car started to slow.

“Okay, here we go,” Trelig said lightly, and they braced for a stop. Gil Zinder could do nothing, his personality forced into the back of his mind. He was Nikki Zinder until one of the two in the car let him out; they were the guard Renard and Mavra Chang, and he had to act like it, really believe it. Obie had taken the easiest path—he literally had made the old man his own daughter and isolated the new personality from reality.

The door opened and they walked out, out into the warm, fresh air and bright sunlight. Everything was slightly different now—there were shadows, the sun was at a different distance and of a slightly different color, which changed everything, and there was that planet up there, filling a tenth of the sky.

They all gasped. Nothing had prepared them for the sight of the thing, like a glistening, silvery, multifaceted ball twinkling in the sun; below a swirl of clouds it was blue to the south, while the north seemed awash with reds and yellows. The plasma shield’s distortions made it look ghostly.

“Oh, wow!” breathed Gil.

Trelig, ever practical, was the first to break the spell. “Come on!” he said. “Let’s see who’s running this place.”

Several guards ran out to greet them, and a serving girl or two.

“Renard! Thank god!” said one, and Trelig noted that he didn’t know what relationships these people had. He did, however, know their names and backgrounds, and that helped.

“Destuin!” he responded, and hugged the little man. No, that’s right, Destuin was a woman, he thought angrily to himself.

He looked at them gravely. “Thanks for what?” he asked sourly. “Another five days?”

That seemed to take their minds off any further comparisons.

“Where are the rest of the guests?” Ben asked.

“Around,” one of the guards said. “We haven’t bothered them much, and they’ve stayed away from us. It doesn’t matter much. You’re in the same fix we are.” The guard pointed toward the Well World. “See that little black dot there against the planet? There, just below the split in the big one, and a little to the right.”

Ben looked hard, and finally saw it—a tiny black pinhead, like a hole in the bigger world. It was moving.

“That’s a sentinel,” the guard told her. “It’ll blow the hell out of any ship that tries to take off. Only Trelig knew the stop codes, and he’s gone. So you get to see us die, but four, maybe five weeks from now you’ll run out of food, and go, too. Or make a run for it in the remaining ship and get blown up. Maybe that’s what we all should do. Better than the other ways.”

That was grim talk, and not the kind the newcomers wanted to hear.

“I’m an expert with these ships,” Ben told them. “Let me go down and see if there isn’t something I can do about it. What can it hurt?”

The guard shrugged. “Why not? Want somebody to go along?”

“Renard? How about you?” Ben prompted.

Trelig, however, was better than that. Too much danger right now. “You go ahead. Take the girl with you. It won’t make much difference to us anyway. I’ll come down later and see how you’re doing.”

Yulin was disappointed; it had seemed so easy. But, there was little that could be done. “Come on, Nikki,” he said, and started walking. The fat girl followed meekly, but kept glancing back up at the glowing, strangely surrealistic planet half-visible on the horizon.

That planet was on Yulin’s mind, too. He knew that they’d never have seen it at all if the big dish had been directly opposite New Pompeii, but it was angled, so two thirds of the big planet was visible.

There were few people about, and they made it to the spaceport area in about fifteen minutes. The little spaceport terminal seemed deserted. Yulin really relaxed for the first time. This was almost too easy. He entered the terminal and stopped.

A big man with a Viking-like visage was perched there. He was sitting on a counter, and he seemed to be quite drunk.

Yulin thought him an attractive man, and the fact that it didn’t bother him to have that thought showed the thoroughness of Obie’s conditioning. He tried to remember the man’s name.

“Aha! So you’re trapped like the rest of us!” he roared, and took another long swig from a bottle. “I thought you’d gotten away!”

He stood there, wondering what to do. The man was huge compared to him, and even though he was Mavra Chang physically, Ben Yulin hadn’t been a fighter and those skills were sorely needed now.

Rumney was naked. He jumped up, facing her. “All is lost!” he proclaimed. “You can’t leave, I can’t leave, ain’t nobody can leave!” he almost sang. “So there’s nothin’ to do but get drunk and have a last fling. Why not, honey? Com’on! I’ll take you both on at the same time!” A casual observation of his midsection left no doubt as to his meaning. He pushed out the bottle. “Have a snort?”

Fear replaced any feelings of attraction for this man. Yulin edged back toward the door, but the man was quick, too quick. He was playing with her, and laughing like a maniac.

Yulin moved, and Rumney moved, chuckling all the time. The tiny female frantically looked for some avenue of escape, but the terminal was too small. Zinder gaped at the tableau in confused amazement. This was a Nikki Zinder sex fantasy, and she couldn’t shake that dreamlike quality. Deep inside her mind, Gil Zinder sat, resigned, not caring about anything any more.

“Look—whatever your name is,” Ben tried. “All isn’t lost! I think I can get us out of here if you’ll let me!”

Rumney thought about this a half-second, then grinned. “Nice try,” he approved. “Afterward, tinker away.”

Yulin cursed the fact that he’d had to get rid of the incongruous pistol and wished for Trelig or a guard, anybody, to get him out of this.

“All I want is a piece of tail,” Rumney chided. “I got a tail, you got—” Suddenly he stopped, and tried to focus his eyes.

“You ain’t got no tail!” he accused.

Now Yulin felt even more terrified. It was true! Damn Obie! He’d asked for the last pattern of Mavra Chang, not the alterations!

Yulin edged toward the gateway to the remaining ship slowly. “Take it easy, big man,” he breathed cautiously, soothingly. “You spotted something, okay. Now you know that maybe I can get you out. Let me try.”

Yulin started deliberately for the ramp, and Rumney leaped for him, knocking him down on the floor, holding him there. The bottle went flying against a far wall, missing Zinder by centimeters.

He had Yulin pinned, and started tearing away at the nearly transparent clothing he wore. “Let’s see if you’re a woman under that,” he growled.

Yulin was terrified, more than he had ever been in his life. As Rumney pawed, Yulin managed to get his right arm partly free and jab him with his sharp nails. He felt something extra there; those little muscles in the back of his nails twitched. Rumney gave a sharp cry of pain, then he seemed to stiffen and collapsed on top of him. Rumney was like a lead sack. Yulin couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.

“Nikki!” he gasped. “Help me get him off me!” But Zinder wasn’t about to obey.

He pushed and cursed and heaved, trying to wiggle loose. “I wish you’d roll over, damn it!” he swore—and, to his amazement, Rumney did.

Feeling terribly bruised and slightly crushed, he managed to get up slowly. It felt as if a rib was broken and his body was a mass of internal bruises. There were pains in his back and side and—well everywhere. Coughing and spitting a little blood, Yulin gasped for several minutes, trying to get some control back. Doing so felt awful, but it did the job.

Ben Yulin decided then and there that he very much preferred being 180 centimeters tall and male.

But, trapped for now in Mavra’s body, Ben got hold of himself.

“You on the floor! What’s your name?” he shot, trying a theory.

“Rumney. Bull Rumney,” he murmured.

Ben Yulin marveled at Mavra Chang’s resourcefulness. Obviously these triggers had been surgically implanted by somebody really talented. This was one dangerous lady, he decided, not without some admiration. In a way, he hoped she was still alive.

“Well, Bull Rumney, listen good,” Yulin said sharply. “You are to lie there, unmoving, a statue, until I tell you to do something. Understand?”

The big man nodded slowly, then froze.

“Fetal position, Rumney,” he said, enjoying himself for a minute. Rumney obliged, and froze again.

“Come on, Zinder, let’s see to this ship,” he snapped, sounding more like Mavra Chang than he knew. They went into the ship.

This wasn’t Trelig’s yacht; Chang had taken that. They were left with the shuttle, which was basically well stocked. There were enough emergency rations for maybe three weeks, no more. Yulin cursed under his breath. Enough to take care of the spongies, but not the others. Oh, well, Trelig said he wanted to deal with them, and he was sure they didn’t know how little food there was. Obie, of course, could create more when things settled down. Create the food, and also use the people on New Pompeii to replace the expired guards. Slavery without sponge—that would appeal to Trelig.

He checked everything out. He wasn’t the best pilot in the world, but he was an adequate one, and the ship was rather simple. Barring a major emergency, he could run it without much trouble. It had been charging all the time it was in dock, so there was no problem there. Atmosphere good, pressurization potential normal. He nodded as he checked each one. He looked for a weapon, but found none—naturally. Trelig had taken no chances.

Sighing, he closed the port and sat down to wait. There was no way he was going back to the buildings of New Pompeii.

Trelig was several hours in coming, and Ben Yulin had started to worry again. There were several false alarms—guards stopping by to check, a few of the bigwigs, too. Since he’d placed the bottle next to Rumney, nobody questioned him being there. Nobody even blamed him.

Finally, hearing some noise outside, Yulin opened the hatch and spied three guards coming in. One, he was sure, was Trelig. Those sexual screw-ups all looked alike. All three looked grim, and one, not Trelig, entered the ship first, followed by the other two. Ben caught Trelig’s eyes and a subtle nod. The nerves were back.

“We’ve decided to let anybody who wants to make a break for it,” the lead guard told the woman in the pilot’s chair. “If you get blasted, well, then it’s quick. If you don’t—more power to you.”

“And you?” Yulin asked.

That grim expression hardened. “I will die—quickly, not slowly. We have already held a meeting to decide that. We’ve just finished killing the poor devils who were much worse than we. None of us wants to become like that. We’ll go help the people who want to run for it to get everything together, and then—well, that’s it.”

Yulin, facing them, saw Trelig slowly draw his pistol and point it at the two guards. He uttered a silent prayer to ancestral gods never believed in, and nodded to the other two.

“I understand. We’ll try and do our best. I guess this is good-bye.”

The guard started to say something, but at that moment Trelig fired, two short bursts at very close range and at full power. Yulin and Zinder ducked in reflex, but the former councillor’s aim had been perfect. The two guards seemed bathed in a bright-orange glow, then faded out. There was nothing left of them but some burns in the ship’s carpet and an extremely unpleasant odor.

“Close the hatch! Let’s get out of here!” Trelig shouted, and Yulin needed no more urging. There was a shudder and a whine, and the clunking sound of docking equipment being jettisoned, and then, almost before the other two were seated and strapped in, Yulin took off.

“Hold it, you idiot!” Trelig snapped. “You don’t want to kill us! We’re away! They can’t get to us now!”

Yulin seemed to stare at the man and at the controls for a moment, as if in a daze. Then, with a little quiver, he snapped out of his trance.

The robot sentinels shot their challenges, and Trelig gave the codes needed to get past them.

“Where to?” Ben Yulin asked Antor Trelig.

“Might as well take a look at this incredible planet,” the boss replied. “I’m kind of curious about it myself.”

Yulin brought the ship around, and eased slowly back toward the strange-looking orb.

Trelig turned to the figure of Nikki. “Gil Zinder!” he called. “Come to the fore and join us!”

There was a slight, subtle change in the manner of the fat girl, and she slipped off the straps and came up to the screen.

Gil Zinder was fascinated in spite of himself. “Incredible!” he said in his daughter’s voice.

“But why are there two completely different halves?” Trelig wondered. “Look—you got all those jewel faces on the south, but you can tell it’s lots of green and ocean and stuff like that. Our kind of world. Then you got that great dark-amber strip around the equator, and then a whole different kind of world up top.”

“The poles are interesting, too,” Gil Zinder noted. “See how dark and thick they are, and how huge. Almost like great buildings hundreds, maybe thousands, of kilometers across.”

“Let me swing down around one of those poles,” Yulin suggested. “Look at the center of them.”

They looked, and saw what he meant. In the center was a great, yawning hexagonal shape composed of absolute darkness. “What is it?” Trelig wondered aloud.

Gil Zinder thought a moment. “I don’t know. Perhaps something like our big dish, only much more sophisticated.”

“But why hexagons?” Trelig persisted. “Hell, they’re all hexagons, even the little facets both north and south.”

“The Markovians were in love with the hexagon,” Yulin told him. “Their ruins are full of them; their cities are built in that shape. I saw one as a child.”

“Let’s take a look at the north,” Trelig suggested. “It’s so wildly different. There must be a reason for it.”

Yulin applied power, and the image swirled and whirled on the screen. “Kind of tricky,” the pilot told them. “Ships like this weren’t built to go this slow except in landing and docking modes.”

They crossed the equator, a true barrier they saw—strange, imposing, and opaque.

“I wish we had some instruments,” Zinder said, genuinely interested in something again. “I would love to know what makes those strange patterns. Methane, ammonia, all sorts of stuff, looks like.”

They crossed the terminator and went into darkness.

“Somebody’s living there, though,” Trelig noted, pointing. Some of the areas in some of the hexes were lit, and there were a few clear major cities down there.

“A pity we can’t get a little closer,” Zinder said sincerely. “The atmospheric distortion is really intense.”

“Maybe a little lower,” Yulin answered. “I’ll try to skim just over the top of the stratosphere. That’ll keep us high enough to be effectively in a vacuum, but low enough to see some detail.”

Hearing no dissent, he cautiously took the ship down. They crossed the terminator once again and went into blinding sunlight.

And then the engine seemed to give a start, and the lights flashed.

“What’s the matter?” Trelig snapped.

Yulin was genuinely puzzled. “I—I don’t know.” It happened again, and he took over manual helm and started to fight it. “Sudden losses of power, very intermittent.”

“Take us up!” Trelig commanded, but, at that moment, the lights really went out.

“We’re dropping like a stone!” screamed Yulin. “My God!”

Trelig reached over, threw two switches. Nothing happened. He threw a third. Still nothing. They were in almost total darkness in the cabin, and even these actions were made more by feel.

And then everything came on again. There was a whining noise from the rear and in front.

Ahead, a panel rolled back, revealing a nasty landscape only ten or so kilometers beneath them. Trelig reached out, grabbed a wheel-shaped device depressed into the copilot’s panel.

Lights and power went out again, but now it was a rocky trip, the ship banged and buffeted by strange forces. Trelig grabbed the wheel and started fighting for control of the ship.

The view, Yulin realized, was a real one—they were looking out some sort of forward window.

“This thing was designed for in-atmosphere work as well as shuttle,” Trelig said between clenched teeth, fighting for control with the weakened muscles of Renard. “The wings finally deployed. Even if power cuts out again, I think I can dead-stick it in.”

Yulin watched the landscape approach with horrifying suddenness. Trelig fought to keep the nose up, yet he had to be cautious or he would miss seeing the ground at all.

The power was out again now, and Trelig had managed to slow the craft, but not enough.

“Find me a level spot with about twenty kilometers to roll in!” he yelled.

“This thing’s got wheels?” Yulin managed, peering out.

“Don’t be funny!” snapped the boss. “Both of you get strapped in! I don’t think we’ll get power again long enough to get her up, and this will be a real wallop!”

“There! A flat area ahead! See it?” Yulin screamed.

Trelig saw, and aimed for it, the ship rocking this way and that. They hit. What saved them, they decided later, was the much denser atmosphere, which slowed the craft enough. Just enough.

They hit with a tremendous bang, and Yulin cried out in pain as the cracked rib and other bruises were suddenly fully activated once again.

They skidded over barren rock, seemingly forever, and they had to ride it out. Finally, they struck an upward incline that almost turned them over, but managed to spin them around and finally halt them instead.

Trelig groaned, undid his straps, and looked around. Yulin was out cold. For the first time he noticed the torn clothing and bruises and gashes. He wondered where Mavra Chang had come by them.

Zinder fared little better. The bouncing and straps had caused some deep depressions and gashes and cut off the circulation in a few places, but he now seemed to be all right, just dizzy from shock.

Trelig tried to get up and discovered that he, too, was dizzy. He fell down twice, and his head pounded. His arms ached horribly from the effort of the landing. But he’d made it. He’d brought them in.

He looked out at the bleak landscape. A lot of barren, blackish rock against a dark and dense atmosphere of—who knew? Nothing they could breathe, anyway.

They were alive—but for how long?