Midnight at the Well of Souls

THE BARONY OF AZKFRU, AKKAFIAN EMPIRE

The baron was, if anything, more majestic than before, and Datham Hain was at her lowest ebb, at the brink of suicide from weeks now in the dung pits.

“You have your name back, now, Mar Hain,” the baron pronounced in that godlike tone he had.

That was a small gesture, yet to Hain it was as momentous as being crowned supreme ruler of the galaxy, for it restored a measure of her self-respect. It also bound the Entry all the more to the baron, from whom all blessings flowed.

“I have now a task for you, of the utmost difficulty,” the baron told her. “It will require loyalty and devotion, as well as all of your intelligence and cunning. If you fail me, you are lost forever; if you succeed, you shall sit beside me in an honored place as chief concubine of, not your baron, but at the very least the emperor, perhaps not only of this empire.”

“You have but to instruct this humble slave and I will obey though there be no reward and the cost be my life,” Hain groveled.

I’ll bet, the baron thought sarcastically. Once more he regretted having to trust such a one as this on so important a mission. Blast that Northerner! Yet, The Diviner had so far been a hundred percent correct on everything, and he dared not go against the creature, at least not until the final moments.

“Listen well, Mar Hain,” the baron said carefully. “Soon you will meet three aliens. You will have a translation device implanted so that you can follow all conversations. Also, two of them are Entries, and may be able to communicate in the nontranslatable tongue of your old life—so it is better if you feign both ignorance and stupidity whenever possible.

“You will be going on a great journey together. Now, here is what you are to do…”

“Those filthy bugs!” Vardia, now calling herself Chon, exclaimed as they set her down on a road with the others and flew off, making irritating buzzing noises as they did so.

“Let’s have no racial slurs,” Hain said sternly. “They think even less of you, and they are my people.”

“Come on, you two, cut it out!” Skander snapped. Unable to walk, they had built a saddle which left the mermaid perched only mildly comfortable atop Hain’s back. “We have a long and probably difficult journey ahead of us. Our lives may depend on each other, and I don’t want all this carping!”

“Quite so,” The Rel agreed. “Please remember, you two, that although you were kidnapped, we all have a common goal. Save all disputes for the time we reach our goal, not during the journey.”

They were at the imperial border, manned by bored sentries. The change in the landscape was tremendous. The arid, hilly, pinkish-gray land of the Akkafians ended abruptly as if there were some physical barrier, perfectly straight, stretching from horizon to horizon.

“All of you put on your respirators,” The Rel instructed, needing none for itself. They still didn’t know if it breathed. Hain’s was bulky, the great insect looking as if she were wearing some sort of giant, distorted earmuffs behind her eyes. Vardia’s hung on a strap around her neck and was attached to her lower legs by two cables ending in needles which were inserted in her skin. Skander’s was a simple mask over mouth and nose, with tubes leading to a tank also on Hain’s back. Vardia’s alone contained not an oxygen mixture but pure carbon dioxide. There was a mechanism by which the waste contents in her canister could be exchanged with those of Skander and Hain.

The hex they faced was bleak enough; the sky showed not the various shades of blue common to much of the world, but an almost irritatingly bright yellow.

“Sound will travel, but slowly and with great distortion,” The Rel told them. “The atmosphere has enough trace elements to allow us to get by with such simple devices, but that is mostly due to seepage—the other hexes surrounding it naturally leak a little. We will be able to refresh our tanks from supplies along the way, but under no circumstances remove your masks! There are elements all about which will not harm your exteriors but will, nonetheless, cause physical problems or even death if taken in great quantities in the lungs for any period of time.”

Vardia looked out over as much of the landscape as the glare permitted her to see. A very jagged, burnt-orange landscape, filled with canyons and strange, eroded arches and pillars. What erodes them? she wondered idly. And what sort of creatures could live in such a hostile place? Carbon-based life? All the South was supposed to be, yet there could be nothing carbon-based about anything able to stand such a place.

“Hain,” The Rel instructed, “remember to keep your beak tightly shut at all times. You don’t want to swallow the stuff. And, Skander, keep that blanket tightly on your lower parts and you’ll get and retain enough moisture to keep you from drying up. The respirator’s been designed that way. All set? Then, any last-second questions?”

“Yes, I have a couple,” Vardia said nervously. “What sort of creatures will we meet, and how will we possibly cross this place and survive?”

“The creatures are basically autonomatons, thinking machines,” The Rel replied. “This is a high-technological hex; more so, in fact, than the one we’ve been in. The only reason they coexist is that the Akkafians couldn’t exist here for very long, nor is there anything of use to them in The Nation, while the people of this hex would break down in an atmosphere more conducive to your form of life. Come! We’ve wasted enough time! You’ll see how we survive as we go along.”

With that The Diviner and The Rel floated quickly across the border. Vardia, a helpless feeling inside her, followed; and Hain and Skander brought up the rear.

Skander and Vardia both had the same impression: as if they were suddenly in an environment of kerosene. The odor permeated their bodies and penetrated their breathing. The atmosphere also felt heavy, almost liquid; and, while invisible, it rippled against their bodies like a liquid, even though it was plainly a gas. Moreover, it burned slightly, like a strong alcohol. It took them awhile to get used to it.

The Rel paced them at close to Vardia’s maximum stride; Hain followed at the same pace, between eight and ten kilometers per hour. In less than an hour they came upon a paved road, although the paving stone looked like a single long ribbon of smoothly polished jade. And, as with most roads and trails in the various hexes, this one contained traffic.

The first thought they all had was that no two denizens of The Nation were alike. There were tall ones, thick ones, thin ones, short ones, even long ones. They moved on wheels, treads, two, four, six, and eight legs, and they had every imaginable type of appendage and some not very imaginable as to purpose. Although all obviously machines of dull-silver metal, all looked as if they had been fashioned in a single stroke. No bolts, joints, or any other such were visible; they bent and flexed the metal like skin, and in any way they wanted.

Vardia understood and marveled at this.

Each one was made for a single purpose, to fulfill a single need of the society. It was built to order to do a job, and this it did where and when needed. It was, she thought, the most practical of all the societies she had seen, the perfection of social order and utilitarianism—a blend of the best of the Comworlds’ concepts with the lack of physical dependencies of the Czillians.

She only wished she understood what the people of The Nation were doing.

There were structures, certainly, more and more of them as they went on. Some were recognizable as buildings, although as varied and oddly shaped as the inhabitants of this strange land. Other structures seemed to be skeletal, or spires, twisted shapes of metal, and even apparently girders of some sort arranged in certain deliberate but baffling ways. Functionally built workmen rushed to and fro. Some were building, of course, but many seemed to be digging holes and filling them up again, while others carried piles of sand from one point and dumped them to form new piles of sand elsewhere. None of it made sense.

They continued to follow The Diviner and The Rel. They went on through this landscape for hours without stopping and without any of the creatures taking the slightest notice of them. More than once, in fact, both Hain and Vardia had had to move out of the way quickly to avoid being run over by some creature or by the creature’s load.

They came upon a building that seemed to be made of the same stuff as the creatures themselves, but was shaped something like a large barn. The Diviner and The Rel surprised them by turning in at the building’s walkway. It waited until they were all at the rather large sliding doorway, then glided up to a very large button, then back, up again, and back again.

“Do you wish me to push it?” Vardia asked. The response sounded like garbled nonsense to her own ears. The Rel jumped up and down, and The Diviner’s lights blinked more agitatedly, and so Vardia pushed the button. The door slid aside with entirely the wrong sounds, and the strange creature that led them glided inside. They followed and found themselves in a very large but barren chamber. Suddenly the door slid shut behind them, and they were in total darkness, illuminated only by the oddly nonilluminating blinks of The Diviner.

They had gotten so used to the strange sensations produced by the atmosphere of the place that the gradual absence of them was almost as harsh as their original exposure to them.

There were whirring, clicking, and whooshing noises all around them, going on for what seemed to be several minutes. Then, finally, an inner door slid open to reveal another large barren chamber, this one lit by some kind of indirect lamps in the ceiling. They went in.

“You may remove your breathing apparatuses now,” The Rel told them clearly. “Skander, will you pull Mar Hain’s up and off? Thank you. Now, Hain, can you gently—gently—remove the two tubes from Citizen Chon’s legs? Yes, that’s right.”

They all breathed in fresh air. It was stuffy, weak, and slightly uncomfortable to Vardia; to the others, it was exhilarating.

“You’ll be all right in a little while, Citizen Chon,” The Rel assured her. “The atmosphere is mostly pure oxygen, with just a trace of carbon dioxide. This will be added, both from our companions and artificially, in a little while.”

There was another hissing sound, and one of the metallic creatures came out of a side door that had been almost invisible in the back wall. It was humanoid, about the same height as Vardia’s 150 centimeters, and was featureless except for a triangular screen on the head.

“I trust all is satisfactory?” it said, in a voice pleasantly and unexpectedly filled with human tonality. It sounded, in fact, like an eager, middle-aged hotel clerk, far more human than The Rel’s monotone.

“The green one, there, the Czillian, is a plant, not an animal,” The Rel told the creature. “It requires carbon dioxide of at least point five percent. Will you raise the level? It is in much discomfort.”

“Oh, I am so very, very sorry,” the robot replied so sincerely that they almost believed it. “The matter is being adjusted.”

Just like that Vardia could sense a difference, growing with every minute. She found it much easier to breathe, and the feeling that she was going to black out evaporated. Obviously these things were all linked together. The Czillian marveled at their efficiency, quietly envying their unity.

“What environments do you require?” the creature asked.

“Types Twelve, Thirty-one, One Twenty-six, and Thirteen Forty,” The Rel told it. “Adjoining, with private intercom, please.”

“It is being prepared,” the robot assured them, and bowed slightly.

“What sort of a place is this?” Skander asked sharply.

The robot reared back, and Vardia swore that its featureless face had a shocked expression to match the tone of the reply.

“Why, this is a first -class transient hotel, of course. What else?”

One at a time they were taken to their rooms by small wheeled robots with places for luggage and the like. They put all their gear in storage, except for the air tanks, which were ordered cleaned and refilled, with particular attention to Vardia’s getting the right gas.

Strong hands lifted Skander gently out of the saddle and onto the back of one of the carts. The scientist found herself traveling at high speed down a lighted tunnel, and deposited next to a room with no apparent exterior markings. It opened automatically, and the cart glided inside and stopped.

Skander was amazed. It was a swimming pool, with a dry slope going gently down into blue water which became deeper and deeper as it went toward the back of the room—the pool was perhaps fifteen meters long by about ten wide. In the water, clearly visible, were several small fish of the kind the Umiau liked the most, and clumps of the blue-green seaweed that was the other staple of their diet.

Skander rolled off and happily plunged into the water. It was only about four meters deep at its deepest point, but it felt wonderful.

The little cart left, the door closing behind it. It returned for Hain, who was too large for it. Another cart appeared in seconds, and the two, working in concert, took Hain down the same tunnel to the next door, which was furnished in the zagrt fur of the best nobles and was stocked with a nice supply of the juicy white worms.

Next, Vardia was taken to a room that had a rich black soil and good artificial sunlight. The room even had a chain dangling from its center, labeled, in Czillian, Pull for darkness. All guests awakened in eight hours after darkness pulled or twelve hours after occupancy. There was a small pool of clear water in the corner, and even a small desk with paper and pen.

She guessed from her own surroundings what the others’ must be like, and only wished she could see The Diviner and The Rel’s room. That would almost certainly tell more about the mysterious creatures than anything seen so far.

There was a mild crackling sound in their rooms, and then The Rel’s odd, toneless voice came to the other three.

“Please enjoy this night at the baron’s expense,” it said. “Tomorrow I shall arrange transportation for us which will take us to the border. We shall not have such pleasant and easy accommodations after this, so enjoy it. After tomorrow, things get tough.”

Vardia took a long drink and then sank her roots into the rich soil that felt incredible, indescribable. With a feeling of total well-being, she turned off the lights.

Skander was the last to sleep, since the Umiau had been cooped up in the saddle harness and was enjoying the freedom of the waters. At last she, too, crawled up the bank and pressed the light switch on the wall.

Each of them slept soundly (except possibly for The Diviner and The Rel, who didn’t seem to need it—the others weren’t sure), and all were awakened not only by the automatic turning on of the lights but by the voice of The Rel.

The creature conveyed emotion for the first time, not by tone but by the sharp, fast, excited way it spoke. “Something is terribly wrong!” it told them. “We are being detained for some technicality! We cannot leave today!”

“Do you mean,” Skander’s voice came to all of them in a tone of almost total disbelief, “that we’re under arrest?”

“It would seem so,” replied The Rel. “I cannot understand it.”