Exiles at the Well of Souls

South Zone

“They certainly look like the same people,” Vardia said in some amazement.

Serge Ortega nodded, looking at the two nearly comatose people lying on the floor in front of him. “That they do. Doctor?”

They were in the Zone clinic, and Dr. Muhar, the Ambreza who looked like a giant beaver, was examining Renard and Nikki Zinder.

“I wish I knew what kind of drug they’d been administered,” the doctor said. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it. But it’s brain-localized; the other infection isn’t.”

Ortega’s busy eyebrows went up. “Other infection?”

The Ambreza nodded. “Oh yes. It seems to have infested every cell of their bodies. Some sort of enzyme, it looks like, and quite parasitic. There is evidence of tissue breakdown everywhere, and it’s continuing at a fairly steady rate. Would you recognize this sponge if you saw it?”

The other two both shook their heads in the negative. “We have both seen the effects of it, long ago,” Vardia told the physician, “but the pure stuff, under a microscope, no.”

Just then there was a commotion near the door. It opened, and a creature new to the group stood there.

It was about 150 centimeters tall, and stood on two thick but jointless tentacles. It had some to spare—three more pairs, going up its midsection. Each seemed to have a cleft at its end, capable of picking up something much as a mitten might—or coil around, with the full forward part of the tentacle. It stood on the rear pair, but needed at least four to walk toward them. Its face was broad, with close-set, broad nose and flaring nostrils and two rounded eyes that looked like large velvet pads of glowing amber. Its mouth had a dislocatable jaw, and inside it was coiled, Ortega knew, a long and ropelike tongue that could be used as a ninth prehensile organ. It had two areas on either side of its head like saucers, and they were slightly offset from the head, yet seemed able to open and close on joints.

But as the creature entered the room, all else paled before the great wings, like a giant butterfly’s, along its entire back, the wings of brilliant orange and spotted with concentric brown rings.

Both Vardia and the Ambreza stepped back a bit at this entrance. Ortega had no such feelings, although its grim visage was frightening, almost menacing. Neither of the others had ever seen a Yaxa before, but Ortega had. He even knew this one. He slithered up to the newcomer.

“Wooley!” he boomed. “I’m very glad you could come.”

The creature remained coldly distant, but it responded, “Hello, Ortega.” It looked over at the comatose bodies of Renard and Nikki. “Are those the ones?”

Ortega nodded, all business suddenly. “Dr. Muhar has some cell tissue under the microscope. Can you look into it or should we project it?”

The Yaxa walked fluidly over to the microscope, peering at the sample with one of those impossible padlike eyes.

“It’s sponge,” the creature said. “No doubt about it.” It turned its gaze back to the two people on the beds. “How far advanced are they?”

“Five days with no dose,” Ortega told it. “What would you say?”

The Yaxa thought a moment. “Depends on how they started out. The cell deterioration isn’t far along, but the mind goes first. If they were around average intelligence, they should be a lot brighter than the village idiot—for about another day or two. Then the animal-reversion stage sets in. They become great naked apes. I’d run them through the Well as soon as possible. Now.”

“I agree,” Ortega told it. “And I appreciate your coming all this way to do this.”

“They’re from the new moon?” the Yaxa asked, its voice, even through the translator, cold, sharp, emotionless.

Ortega nodded. “And if they’re real we got big trouble. That means we got fooled by an earlier set of duplicates, at least one of which was the head of the sponge syndicate and the other two of whom know the principles of operating the Well.”

For the first time the creature showed emotion. Its voice was harsh, excited. “The head of the sponge syndicate? And you let it slip through you like that?”

Ortega turned all six palms up. “We didn’t know. They looked just like them. How was I to know?”

“It’s true,” Vardia put in. “They were so nice and gentle and civilized—particularly that one,” it gestured at Renard.

The Yaxa almost spit. “Agh! Fools! Anybody without sponge that long would have shown signs! You should have known!”

“Come on, Wooley!” Ortega chided. “You’re a fanatic, and with good reason. But, hell, we weren’t expecting this sort of thing. Everything’s been more than a little crazy around here lately.”

The great butterfly’s nostrils opened, and it actually snorted. “Oh, hell. Trust you to screw things up anyway.” It turned its great head, apparently on some kind of ball joint for a neck, and looked straight at him. “Give me the bastard’s name. He won’t always be so clever. One of these days I’ll get him. You know that.”

Serge Ortega nodded, knowing that nothing could stop Wooley except death. Sooner or later, if that man surfaced at all, it would nail him.

“Antor Trelig,” he told the Yaxa.

The creature nodded its great, strange head as if filing the information. Then it said, “I’ve got to get back home. A lot’s going on. You will hear from me, though.” And, with that, it turned, not easy in the clinic’s space with those great wings, and went out the door.

“Good heavens!” Vardia managed. “Who is that?”

Ortega smiled. “Somebody you used to know. I’ll tell you sometime. Now we have more urgent work to do. We have to get these two through the Well, and I have to talk to the Council.”

There was no Council chamber for the ambassadors. All communication was done through intercoms, both for diplomatic reasons and to make it easier on everybody. There wasn’t much room for everybody, anyway.

Ortega summarized the events to date, adding, “I’ve put out tracers on the first batch, and I hope that anyone will report their whereabouts if they appear in your hex. All Entries are to be checked out. These people are tricky as hell.”

The speaker cracked to life. “Ortega?” said a metallic, toneless voice. “This is Robert L. Finch of The Nation.”

Ortega couldn’t suppress a chuckle. “I didn’t know The Nation had names,” he remarked, remembering them as communal-minded robots.

“The Nation has its Entries, too,” Finch replied. “When it is matters concerning such, the appropriate persona is selected.”

Ortega let it go. “What’s your problem, Finch?”

“The woman, Mavra Chang. Why have you left her with the Lata? Not playing any little games again, are you, Ortega?”

Ortega took a deep breath. “I know she should be run through the Well, and she will be, sooner or later. Right now she is more useful in her original form—the only such Entry on the Well. I’ll explain all in due course.”

They didn’t like it, but they accepted it. Other questions followed, a torrent, mostly irrelevant. The tone of many was the usual, “it’s not my problem,” and Ortega got the impression that others were not being very straightforward. But he’d done his duty, and that was that. The meeting ended.

Vardia, the Czillian plant-creature, had sat in in Ortega’s office. There wasn’t anything its people needed to know that they didn’t already.

Except one.

“What about that Chang woman, Ortega?” Vardia asked. “What’s the real reason you’re keeping her under wraps.”

He smiled. “Not under wraps, my dear Vardia. All six hundred thirty-seven races with Zone embassies know she’s with the Lata. She’s bait—a recognizable object that could smoke out our quarries.”

“And if they don’t take the bait?” Vardia prodded. “The fact that she’s a fully qualified space pilot still in a form that would be best for operating a spaceship wouldn’t have anything to do with your thinking, would it?”

Ortega leaned back comfortably on his long coiled body. “Now isn’t that an interesting idea!” he responded sarcastically. “Thanks for the suggestion!”

If there was a sincere, honest, or straightforward bone in Serge Ortega’s massive body, nobody had found it yet.

Vardia decided to change the subject. “Do you think they’ll do it—report the Entries, that is?”

Ortega’s expression grew grim. “A few might. Lata, Krommians, Dillians, Czillians, and the like. Most won’t. They’ll either try to bury them—which would be a mistake on their part they’ll live to regret, I suspect—or they’ll go along with them. Team up any of them with an ambitious, greedy government, and you’ve got the nucleus of that war I spoke about. An alliance and a pilot to fly the ship. Even a scientist who might be able to help put the pieces back together.” He shifted slightly, turned to face the Czillian square on, and said: “And as for Mavra Chang—if we’ve got her, we have some control. If we put her through the Well, they’ve got her. No fuel for the fire yet, my dear. It’s going to get hot as hell all by itself without the likes of you and me pouring oil on it.”