Exiles at the Well of Souls

New Pompeii—1150 Hours

A blue-white shot sang out across the great void that was the pit of the big disk. A little bit of the molding around the control room smoldered and hissed. Somebody cursed. All over were blotches where previous shots had struck, and the window out onto the pit was long gone.

Gil Zinder sat nervously hunched back against his control panel on the balcony. Antor Trelig was growling and using the scarred but still reflective side molding of the door to try and ascertain the location of the shooters. Ben Yulin, on the opposite side of the doorway, checked his own pistol for its remaining charge.

“Why don’t you close the door?” Zinder shouted feebly. “Those shots are starting to come into here!”

“Shut up, old man,” snarled Trelig. “If we shut it they can seal it with their fire and then we might never get out of here. Ever think of that?”

Yulin snapped his fingers and made his way to the interior control panel. A shot came near him, but the control panel was angled away from the door sufficiently so that anybody shooting at it would be a perfect target for Trelig.

Anxiously, Yulin flipped the intercom open. “Obie?” he called.

“Yes, Ben?” the computer replied.

“Obie, how are your visuals in the tunnel? Can you give us a fix on how many there are and what damage there is?”

“My visuals are unimpaired,” Obie responded. “There are seven of them left. You shot three and they are gone. There is a lot of damage to the pit control room and the facing wall, but nothing major.”

Yulin nodded to himself, and Trelig suddenly and quickly crouched, leaned out of the doorway, and shot a volley.

“Missed them by a kilometer, Trelig,” Obie observed in a tone that indicated a smug satisfaction. Trelig, hearing it, bristled but said nothing.

“Obie, how operational are you?” Yulin asked, gesturing to Zinder to crawl over to the console. The older man at first seemed too scared to move, but then, slowly, started inching his way there.

“Not very,” the computer told them. “The computer that runs the world down there is both infinitely more complex and simpler than I am. Its input capabilities appear to be unlimited, and it has complete control of all prime and secondary equations at output—but it is entirely preprogrammed. It is not self-aware, not an individual entity.”

Gil Zinder reached the console and sighed, then crouched next to Yulin.

“Obie, this is Dr. Zinder,” he told the machine. “Can you break contact with the other computer?”

“Not at this time, Dr. Zinder,” Obie responded, his tone much nicer now, and more tinged with concern. “When we activated the reverse field, we released the tension of the energy controlling our own existence. It brought us here. Apparently the world computer has been preprogrammed for just such an event, but the programmers assumed that anyone who could tap the Markovian equations in such a manner and bring themselves here would be at close to the same technological level as the builders of the world computer. We are supposed to supersede previous programming, tell it what to do next.”

“Where is here, Obie?” Zinder asked.

“The coordinates would be useless, even if I had a frame of reference,” Obie replied. “We are, in a sense, in the center of the tangible universe, or so I gather from what I can make of the other computer’s information circuits.”

Even Trelig understood the implications. “You mean this is the center for all existence of all matter in the galaxy?” he shouted.

“Just so,” agreed Obie. “And all energy, too, except the primal energy that is the building blocks for everything else. This is the central Markovian world, from which, as near as I can see, they recreated the universe.”

That thought sobered all of them. Trelig’s eyes shone, and his expression took on new determination. “Such awesome power!” he said, too low for the others to hear. A blue-white shot didn’t snap him out of it but did bring him back to reality. With such power within his grasp, he still had to survive this experience.

“Obie, can you converse with this big machine?” Yulin asked eagerly.

The computer seemed to think for a moment. “Yes and no. It’s hard to explain. Suppose you had a functional vocabulary of just eighty words? Suppose, in fact, you were only capable of knowing eighty words. And suppose someone from your culture with a doctorate in physics started talking his technical field with you. You couldn’t even absorb all the words, let alone understand any of the conversation.”

“But you could talk to it in those eighty words,” Yulin pointed out.

“Not if you couldn’t even phrase the question,” Obie retorted. “I haven’t the ability even to say ‘hello’ in an understandable manner—and I’m almost afraid to try. There is an incredibly elaborate preprogrammed sequence that I am aware of but cannot follow or comprehend. I don’t dare try. It might wipe out all reality, or the other computer and all reality as well, leaving me as the only thing left. What then?”

The scientists saw what he meant. The Markovians had preprogrammed the computer to turn over everything to their successors, when they reached the Markovian level. It apparently had never occurred to them that a Gil Zinder, a primitive ape, would stumble onto their precious formula millennia before man was ready. The master computer out there was waiting for Obie to tell it to shut down, that new masters were taking over.

But the new masters were three very scared primitives and an equally scared computer, the primitives trapped by the former employees of one of them. The guards, seeing the change in position and realizing that the sponge supply ship would not be coming, knew they were going to die horribly.

But they were going to die free. They were going to take their hated master with them.

“Obie?” Yulin called.

“Yes, Ben?”

“Obie, can you figure out how the hell we can get out of here?”

The computer had anticipated that one.

“Well, you could just wait them out,” Obie suggested. “There are provisions here for a week, and I can create more than enough to sustain you. In three weeks or so all the guards will be dead; in two they will be in no condition to oppose you or do you harm.”

“No good!” Trelig shouted to them all. “There are two ships up there that must be placed under our control—otherwise we’re trapped. Remember, there are a lot of agents and diplomatic people who won’t be affected by the sponge wearing off! With the guards gone wild, some are probably armed by now and might be able to take the ships. If they jump away, we’re stuck for good!”

“Correction,” Obie responded. “There is one ship. Mavra Chang, Nikki Zinder, and a guard named Renard got off in one.”

Gil Zinder seemed to come to life again. “Nikki! Away from here! Obie—did they make it out? Are they back home?”

“Sorry, Dr. Zinder,” the computer said sadly. “The early start for the tests forced my hand. They were taken in the vortex with us, and have since crashed on the Well World.”

The old scientist’s look of hope gave way to despair, and he seemed to crumble. Trelig was upset by a different point entirely.

“What do you mean, forced your hand?” the erstwhile master of New Pompeii snarled angrily. “You treasonous machine!”

Obie was nonplussed. “I am a self-aware individual, Councillor. I do what I must do, and yet I have certain freedom of action outside those parameters. Just like people,” he added, not a little smugly.

Ben Yulin’s mind was the engineer’s. “What did you call that world they crashed on, Obie?” he asked, ignoring the others.

“The Well World,” responded the computer. “That is its name.”

Yulin thought for a moment. “The Well World,” he murmured, almost to himself. Now he looked straight at the speaker. More shots were being exchanged between Trelig and the guards outside.

“Obie?” Ben almost whispered, “tell me about this Well World. Is it just a big Markovian computer, or what?”

“I have to interpolate, Ben,” Obie apologized. “After all, I’m getting this information in bits and pieces and it’s all coming in at once. No, I don’t think so, though. The computer—the Well—is the entire core of the planet. The planet itself seems to be divided into many more than a thousand separate and distinct biospheres, each with its own dominant life form and supporting its own flora, fauna, atmospheric conditions, and the like. It’s like a massive number of little planets. I infer these as prototype colonies for later implantation into the universe in their true, mathematically precise environments. They are alive, they are active, they exist.”

The other two were listening now, fascinated in spite of themselves.

“The three, who crashed,” Gil Zinder tried dryly. “Did they—did they… survive?”

“Unknown,” Obie replied truthfully. “Since they are not part of the Well World matrix, they are not in the computer’s storage. Even if they were, I doubt if they could be picked out. There are too many sentient beings down there.”

“Why don’t you ask him something practical, like how the hell we get out of here?” Trelig snapped, breaking the reverie. “The fact that there’s only one ship left makes the matter even more pressing!”

Yulin nodded, unhappy to break this fascinating new line of discovery but unable to argue with Trelig’s practicality. But the computer was a hostile accomplice; questions would have to be in absolutes. Yulin suddenly felt like he knew what it was like to have to strike a bargain with the devil.

And then, suddenly, without Obie’s aid, he had it. Yulin let out a disgusted exclamation that made the others turn, then slammed his right fist into his left palm. “Curse me for a fool!” he swore. “Of course!” Calming himself down, he asked, “Obie, is your little disk still operable?”

“Yes, Ben,” Obie replied. “But only within its previous limits. The big disk is locked into the Well computer until I or somebody can figure out how to disengage it, and I have no ideas at all on that right now.”

Yulin nodded, more to himself than to the machine. “Okay. Okay. The little one’s all I need now. Obie, you have the formula for sponge, don’t you?”

“Of course,” came the reply, a little startled. “From the bloodstream of a number of early subjects.”

“Uh, huh,” Yulin muttered. He was all business now. “Activate and energize. I want a small quantity of sponge, say five grams, in a leakproof plastic container. The straight stuff. And, I want an additional kilogram of the stuff with the following chemical substitutions.” He proceeded to rattle off a long chemical chain that startled the others.

Zinder was the first to realize where Yulin was headed, and almost moaned, “But—you can’t do that!”

But Yulin could, had ordered it, energized Obie, and the disk was even now swinging out over the circular platform, and the blue field was forming.

“What the hell are you going to do?” Trelig shouted.

“He’s going to poison the poor bastards,” Gil Zinder replied. He looked up at Yulin. “But—why? With sponge they’ll be back under your command again anyway.”

Ben Yulin shook his head. “Maybe upstairs—maybe. But not these folks out there. They are already resigned to death and they’re committed.” He turned to Trelig. “Keep a watch on old doc here while I get the stuff,” he called.

In a flash Yulin was off, bounding down the stairs to the platform. Carefully, he examined the two packages, found some gloves, and picked up both of them. He still didn’t quite trust Obie. And then he was back.

“Have we still got communication?” he asked the councillor.

Trelig nodded. “I think so, unless they’ve shot out the circuits. Try it.”

Yulin went over to the wall, flipped a switch. “You, out there!” he called, hearing his own voice echoing eerily from the vast pit beyond the wall. “Listen to me! We have sponge! Things aren’t hopeless! We’ll give it to you if you surrender your weapons!” He flipped the intercom back to Open.

There was a sudden silence from the outside, as if the news had unsettled the others, which was good. There was no reply as yet, but no shots, either.

After what seemed like an interminable wait, Trelig growled, “They didn’t buy it.”

Yulin, although fearing much the same thing himself, replied, “Don’t jump the gun. They’re probably voting on it. And thinking about the pain of no-dose for the first time. Even though they won’t really start to feel the effects for a while, they feel it in their minds even now.”

And he was right. A few minutes later the intercom burst into life.

“Okay, Yulin, maybe you get out,” came a rather pleasant voice with a very unpleasant undertone. “But how do we know you aren’t lying? We know how much sponge comes in. Every gram.”

“We can make it! All you need!” Yulin responded, trying to keep his tension and anxiety out of his tone. “Look, I’ll prove it to you. Send a representative over the bridge. Any one. I’ll toss out a fiver. Try it. You’ll know what I say is the truth.”

There was another long silence, and then the same voice came back, “All right. I’m coming over. But if I don’t make it or the stuff’s no good, the other six will get you if it’s the last thing they do—and there’s plenty more of us Topside. They know what’s going on down here.”

Yulin grinned to himself. Another piece of useful information. The intercoms on Topside still worked. Now he knew just how much of the story they would know, and that intelligence would possibly make the difference.

A few minutes later a lone figure could be seen walking across the great bridge that spanned the pit to Obie’s major core. It was a tiny, frail-looking figure, dwarfed almost to insignificance by the magnitude of the structure around it. It was either a very young girl or one of the screwy sexers. It didn’t matter.

The former guard seemed to take forever to get there, and finally stopped about ten meters from the doorway.

“I’m here!” she (he?) announced needlessly.

Yulin gripped the small bag of pure sponge. “Here it comes!” he shouted and tossed it onto the bridge. It hit with a pock sound and slid almost to the other’s feet.

The guard picked it up, looked at it, then tore open the plastic and pulled out the tiny piece of yellow-green sponge, an actual living creature of sorts. It really was a sponge, too, a denizen of a beautiful world that had been settled centuries ago by a prototype human colony. Interaction of alien bacteria with some of the synthetic elements in the colony’s initial food supply had spawned the horror that made Antor Trelig and his vast syndicate so powerful. The new mutated substance had permeated every cell of the humans’ bodies, replacing vital substances. The cells took to it fantastically; once in, it was neither rejected nor displaced. Indeed, the cells actually started making more of the stuff. The initial contamination was irreversible. A moderate amount caused no apparent physical changes, but was there all the same. A large amount, as the guards had gotten, caused cells to trigger in strange ways, causing deformity, accenting opposite sexual characteristics, or, as in Nikki Zinder’s case, causing runaway obesity or other equally horrible characteristics. It varied with the individual, although sexual characteristics, being the most sensitive, were the most common.

The organism, however, was totally parasitic. It would consume the host, particularly its brain, where brain cells died irreplaceably in a great progression. Unchecked, the mutant substance would slowly destroy the mind well ahead of the body; it was painful. Since the stuff was not selective, often mental capacity was reduced or limited for all intents and purposes while the central core of one’s being was the last to go. One knew what was happening, knew until it struck the cerebral cortex full and turned one first into an animal, then into a vegetable that would simply lie there and starve to death. A slow-motion lobotomy.

Sponge was not the drug, it was the antidote. Not an effective one, since it had to be periodically renewed, but the secretions of the native sponge plants did in fact arrest the growth of the mutant strain. To need sponge was to become the syndicate’s slave. The stuff was too dangerous for the Com to keep around; the sponge itself contained the addicting material. But greedy, ambitious politicians had it, grew it, and ruled with it.

Facing such a future, the guard greedily and unhesitantly gobbled up the sponge in the plastic envelope. It was not a sufficient dose—all of New Pompeii’s personnel were deliberately given massive overdoses, which required massive amounts of sponge to counter—but it would be convincing.

It was. “It’s real!” the guard shouted, clearly amazed. “It’s the pure stuff!”

“A kilo in exchange for your weapons!” Trelig yelled, feeling in charge once again. “Now—or we wait you out!”

“The word has gone to Topside!” came a new, deeper voice from the intercom. “Okay, we’re coming over—four of us. The others will make sure you don’t blast us. You get their weapons when we get the kilo and you come out. Not before.”

Trelig waited what he thought would be a convincing period of time, grinning evilly now. Their ploy was all too obvious.

Three more joined the first one, looking somewhat eagerly at the very door that, just moments before, they’d been trying to blast.

“Okay, here’s the kilo!” shouted the master of New Pompeii, as he heaved it out.

They almost pounced on it, and two of them made a simultaneous grab for the package. One scooped it up and started running back to the other side, while the other three nervously blocked Trelig’s view.

“What if they don’t take it right away?” Yulin whispered, worried.

“They will,” Trelig replied confidently. “They’re overdue, remember. How powerful is that stuff?”

“It should feel great for five or six minutes,” the younger man told him. “After that, well, they should just all get massive heart seizures and keel over.”

Trelig looked suddenly worried. “Should? You mean there’s some doubt?”

“No, no, not really,” Yulin replied, shaking his head. “I didn’t really mean that. No, what’s in there is enough to kill an army. Give them ten minutes, no more.”

“Think they’ll run for Topside?” Trelig continued, still worried. “Or maybe one will live long enough to radio a warning.”

Yulin considered this. “No, I doubt if they’ll wait to get to Topside. You yourself just said they’re overdue. As for one giving a warning, well, if you can find a personal intercom, we ought to be able to find out.”

They waited anxiously. Trelig could not find the intercom; the one he had originally worn was long smashed in the reversal. “We’ll just have to bluff it through,” he growled, uncertainty again in his voice. “Say—how will we know they’re gone? You want to be the first target? Or maybe Doc, there?”

Yulin shook his head. “Not necessary. Obie’s sensors are still on.” He walked over to the console.

“Obie, are the guards still alive?”

“No, Ben,” responded the computer. “At least, I register no life forms in their old area. They winked out pretty suddenly. You murdered them clean.”

“Save your sarcasm,” Yulin growled. “Did you monitor any transmissions to Topside?”

“I haven’t much capability there,” Obie noted. “I don’t know.”

Ben Yulin nodded, then turned to Trelig. “Well, we got by obstacles one through six. Topside’s gonna be a lot tougher, though. Any ideas?”

Trelig thought for a moment, eyes gleaming. The immediate threat over, he was beginning to enjoy this.

“Ask the machine if anyone Topside is aware of who escaped in the first ship,” he ordered.

“How could Obie know?” Yulin asked. “I mean, if he can’t even monitor communications. Why? What have you got in mind?”

“To get to my position, you have to think of all the angles,” the syndicate boss told him. “For example, either ship was capable of carrying at least half the guests, yet only Mavra Chang, Nikki Zinder, and the guard went. Why?”

Yulin thought a minute. “Because they sneaked out. Chang was paid to get the girl, not save everybody on Topside. The more people in a plot, the more chance for a foul-up.”

Trelig nodded. “Now you begin to see. There are a lot of them, and they barely know one another. I’d guess, too, that they have, at best, an uneasy relationship with the guards. All hell broke loose not long after the ship left. Want to bet some of them don’t even know a ship is gone?”

“The guards—” Yulin objected.

“Will know only that the ship is gone,” Trelig completed. “They also know that without the codes the second ship would be blasted by the orbiting sentries. Hell, they won’t remember who’s who or how many there are, you know that. The girl’s been more or less sealed off, and the guard—what’s one guard? Could have been killed down here. Getting the idea now?”

“You mean impersonate the ones who got away?” Yulin gasped.

Trelig’s expression looked impatient, impatient at this elementary step.

“Look,” he said. “We need a way to gain their confidence. Take them off guard. We need a way to get to those visitors as friends, convince them it’s us against the guards, get their help in taking the ship. We must get that ship away until they’ve died out here. We can’t do it alone.”

Yulin nodded. “I see,” he said, but he didn’t like it. He looked over at Gil Zinder. The older man was slumped, a vacant expression. He looked tired and defeated.

“What about him?” Ben Yulin asked, gesturing.

“He has to go with us,” Trelig answered quickly. “He knows how to operate Obie, and Obie will do anything for him. To leave him here would be like jumping into the pit out there.”

Yulin nodded, his mind already considering several things, all unpleasant. For one thing, he didn’t like the idea of going through the thing himself. Sending others through, that was fine—a tremendous feeling of godlike power. But himself—to become someone, something else. Trelig’s plan worried him, worried him as much as having to bring it about using his own special circuitry, revealing to Zinder—and to Trelig—his own mastery of the machine.

He looked again at Trelig. The councillor had a curious half-smile on his face and still held the pistol in his hand. He’d seen similar expressions on his boss when administering sponge to new victims and when ordering nasty executions.

“You want to go first?” he suggested hopefully.

That evil grin spread wider. “No, I don’t think so,” the syndicate boss replied acidly. “You can do it, then?”

Yulin nodded dully, still grasping at straws. He did not want to surrender to permanent second-class status.

“Then we’ll do it this way,” the big man continued. “First, you will try to find out the identity of the guard. If Obie can keep track of people, he should know who it was. Then one of us becomes the guard—minus the sponge addiction, make sure of that!—and one becomes Nikki Zinder and the third becomes Mavra Chang. All preprogrammed in noninterruptable sequence, of course.” He shrugged disarmingly. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, you understand. It’s just that you get on top by doing the unthinkable and you stay on top by thinking the unthinkable.”

Yulin sighed, surrendering. The better part of valor and all that, he decided.

“Who do you want to be?” he asked.

“We have to think this through, and time’s pressing,” Trelig replied. “The old man, there—well, we’ll need some sort of mind-bind, of course. Make him his own flesh and blood. Behavior patterns will also have to be programmed in,” he reminded the younger scientist. “We don’t want any slip-ups. We will not just have to look like these people, but walk like them, talk like them, almost think like them, while remaining ourselves inside. The odds are the guard’s one of the supervisors, and they’re all sexual foul-ups. I’m hermaphroditic, so that shouldn’t pose a problem. That makes you Mavra Chang.”

“I’d rather not be a woman,” Yulin protested weakly.

“You won’t mind when you’ve been through the disk,” Trelig retorted. “Now, let’s get the instructions letter-perfect, so everything’s right and we get nothing funny added or subtracted by the machine. And—when you’re doing it, Ben, you will show me how.”

Yulin started to protest, then decided there was no point to it. He turned to the console.

“Obie? Do you have the identity of the guard who escaped with Mavra Chang?” he asked.

“It was Renard,” replied the computer. “I have no reading for him and he did not leave Topside for here. A few died Topside, though, so a slight chance exists that it was not.”

“It has to be,” Trelig decided. “He was one of the girl’s guards. Everything fits. I’ll take a chance on it.”

Ben Yulin nodded. “I don’t think it’d be a good idea if the Doc, here, knows the access,” he pointed out.

Trelig agreed, turned, and shot a short stun beam at the helpless Zinder, who collapsed in a heap. “Five minutes,” Trelig warned his associate. “No more.”

Ben Yulin nodded, then turned back to the console. He didn’t like doing what he was about to do, and in front of the one man who could later use it against him, but a double cross at this point had too many risks to be worth it.

“Obie?” he called.

“Yes, Ben?” the computer responded.

He punched some buttons on his keyboard, acutely aware of Antor Trelig’s steady gaze at the combinations.

“Unnumbered transaction,” he told the machine. “File in aux storage under my key only.”

“What?” The computer seemed slightly startled, then, as access to the sealed-off sections became open to him, Obie realized what was going on.

“How many times have you used this, Ben?” Obie asked, marveling as always at the discovery of a part of himself he’d not known was there.

“Not often,” Yulin responded casually. “Now, Obie, I want you to listen carefully. You will carry out my instructions to the letter, neither adding nor subtracting anything on your own. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Ben,” Obie replied resignedly.

Yulin paused a moment to choose his words, conscious of the dangers in giving Obie an opening, and also of Trelig’s ready pistol. There were tiny beads of sweat on his forehead.

“Three transactions, in sequence, which must be completed before any additional instructions may be given you,” he said cautiously. “One, Dr. Gilgam Zinder, outward form to be that of the last coding of Nikki Zinder minus the sponge presence. Memory will remain Gil Zinder’s, with all attendant knowledge and skills, but subject will be unable to transmit this fact or information except on instruction from Antor Trelig or myself. Otherwise, subject will possess all behavior patterns of the frame of reference, including walk, emotive reactions, and speech, and all other characteristics to render subject indistinguishable from the frame of reference. Subject will further be unable to convey by any means the true identities of Antor Trelig or myself. Clear?”

“I understand, Ben,” Obie replied.

Yulin nodded, certain he had completed that step correctly. “Two. Subject Antor Trelig. Subject is to be physically fitted to the last coding of the guard Renard, minus the sponge addiction. Subject will be provided with all behavior modes of the frame of reference, including walk, emotive reactions, speech, and all other characteristics to render subject indistinguishable from the frame of reference. However, memory will remain Antor Trelig’s, with all attendant knowledge and skills, able to call upon his true self at any point.” Yulin suddenly looked around at Trelig and asked, “All right so far?” Trelig nodded cautiously.

“Three,” Yulin continued. “Subject Abu Ben Yulin. Subject is to be fitted physically to the last coding of Mavra Chang. Subject will be provided with all behavior modes of the frame of reference, including walk, emotive reactions, speech, and all other characteristics to render subject indistinguishable from the frame of reference. However, memory will remain Abu Ben Yulin’s, with all attendant knowledge and skills, able to call upon his true self at any point. Clear?”

“Yes, Ben,” Obie responded. “Clear and locked in.”

Yulin, still nervous about undergoing the process himself, added, “And, Obie, for all three transactions, subjects are to be acclimated so that they feel physiologically and psychologically comfortable with the new bodies and external behavior patterns. Understand?”

“Yes, Ben. I understand you don’t like to be a woman,” Obie responded acidly. Yulin scowled but let the remark go. He turned to Trelig. “Okay, take the doc down,” he said.

“First, tell the machine that the transactions are locked in,” Trelig responded softly. Yulin grinned sheepishly and shrugged. There was no doubt whatsoever as to how Antor Trelig had attained and kept his position of power.

“Lock on all transactions now,” he told Obie.

“Locked and running,” Obie responded. “Go ahead with the run.”

Satisfied now that Yulin could do nothing to override the instructions, Trelig gestured with the pistol and took Gil Zinder downstairs.

The transformation didn’t take long. Yulin watched as first Gil Zinder dissolved in blue sparkles and reformed as an absolute duplicate of Nikki Zinder. The older scientist could do nothing, and so stood and watched as Trelig nervously mounted the disk, and threw his pistol hesitantly to Ben Yulin. Yulin thought, as Trelig dissolved and a few seconds later started reforming as the guard, how easy it would be to shoot Trelig. Zinder seemed to catch the younger man’s thoughts, and said, in Nikki’s adolescent tones, “No, Ben! You can’t! He’s the only one who knows how to get us off the planet!”

Yulin sighed, realizing the truth of that statement and accepting it grudgingly. He had to assume that the robot sentinels had also been transported, or else the nonspongies Topside would have taken off in the ship by now.

Yulin almost chuckled at Trelig’s new appearance. Male sex organs on a very female-looking body. Trelig stepped off, nodded in satisfaction, and took the pistol from Yulin’s hand. Ben had the uncomfortable idea suddenly that there was nothing to stop Trelig from shooting him, but he was helpless. Nervous both from anticipation of the process and from the sudden eerie feeling of impending death, he stepped up on the disk, watched the little arm swing out over him, and felt a warm, tingling glow course through his body. The lab, the watchers, seemed to flicker out, then flicker back in again. He knew that there had probably been several seconds between the flickers, but the sensation was not unpleasant.

The two watchers waited as an exact duplicate of Mavra Chang materialized where Ben Yulin had been. The new, tiny figure looked at Trelig’s pistol a little anxiously, then saw that it was held casually, sighed, and stepped off the platform, which seemed much higher than it had getting on.

“Incredible!” Trelig breathed. “You even move like her—feminine, catlike, almost.”

Yulin nodded. “Now let’s go see about those guards,” he suggested in Mavra’s rich, exotic and slightly accented voice.

The guards had died in a brief moment of extreme agony, that much was clear from the expressions on their faces.

“Remember not to touch them or that packet!” Yulin cautioned. Trelig nodded as he gingerly reached out, took a pistol by the barrel from the holster of one, examined it, wiped it off on the clothing of another, and handed it to Yulin, who just nodded. Next they found the portacom, with its working linkage to Topside. It was on Standby and there was nothing but a hiss coming through it.

Yulin looked at Trelig. “Ready?” he asked.

The councillor, who now looked like one of his guards, nodded and picked it up, switched it to Receive.

There was still nothing for a minute or two, then a small voice came at them.

“Underside! Come in! What’s happening down there?” came a tinny, nasal voice that belonged to one of the guards. Trelig sighed, and said softly to Yulin, “Well, may as well find out now if the bluff works.” Punching the Send button, he said: “This is Renard. I was bringing the prisoners Mavra Chang and Nikki Zinder down for Trelig when all this chaos broke out. They got them—all of them, but the cost was heavy. Me and my prisoners are the only ones left down here, and the old scientist also got it. They lied about the sponge.”

There was silence for quite some time, and for a moment Trelig thought they hadn’t bought the story, but then the Topside voice came back with a tired and defeated tone. “All right, then. But if Chang and the girl are down there, who took off in that ship? Marta said—”

Trelig thought fast. “There were some New Harmony crew on that thing, remember. I guess they panicked and ran out on the boss.”

There was no other logical explanation, so they accepted it.

“Okay,” came the reply. “Come on up and bring your prisoners with you. We have to get together and think this out.” That wasn’t said with any enthusiasm; without sponge, they knew what was about to happen.

“Acknowledge and out,” Trelig said, and switched to Standby. “I guess this calls for some cheering,” he said to his partner.

Yulin still looked concerned. “This is only the start of it,” he reminded the other. “We still have to get up there and somehow take over that ship.” He had a sudden thought. “Is there enough food and water on that ship for a long stay?”

Trelig nodded. “Oh, yes. We’ll probably kill some time taking a close look at that weird planet out there. When the spongies are gone, we can make a deal by radio with the surviving representatives.”

And then what?Yulin wondered, considering their luck so far.

“Let’s make sure Obie’s safe from prying while were away,” Trelig suggested, and they returned to the internal control room.

Yulin punched the codes. “Obie?”

“Yes, Ben?”

“First off, as soon as we are in the car to Topside you will file all transactions under my personal key. Understand?”

“Yes, Ben.”

Trelig thought a moment. “Then how will we get back in? He’ll only recognize us as Renard and Mavra Chang. And if Chang’s survived, that will open Obie to her if she manages to get back here. We don’t know if they might not have some sort of spacecraft on that world out there.”

Yulin thought a minute, realizing that Trelig had seen a nasty trap. The odds were against Chang surviving—he didn’t worry about Nikki Zinder or Renard, the sponge would kill them anyway—but they had come so far now on long shots that the breaks would have to go the other way once in a while.

“How about a code word or sequence?” he suggested to the syndicate boss. “Then one of us would have to be here, no matter what form.”

Trelig nodded. He didn’t bother to ask why not both of them; he would not like to have to need Yulin in a pinch, and they weren’t out of the woods yet. “But what code?” he asked.

Yulin smiled. “I think I know one. But what about Zinder? We don’t want anyone else to know.”

Trelig nodded, then set the pistol again for short stun. He looked at the duplicate of Nikki Zinder, who responded, pleadingly, “Not again!” Trelig fired, and the girl who was something else collapsed in a heap.

“The same five minutes,” Antor Trelig cautioned. “Get moving!”

Yulin nodded, then turned back to the board. Both he and Gil Zinder had been fairly tall men, and the control boards were set for that. Now he was a much smaller individual, and had to almost lean over on the control board from the chair to reach some of the controls.

“Obie?”

“Yes, Ben?”

“This is on open-file storage, not keyed,” he told the computer. “At the same time as you file the previous transactions, you will energize into the Defend mode. All systems will be locked and frozen, and you will kill anyone attempting to gain entry to this area from the point of the center of the bridge. Can you hear audibles from the center of the bridge?”

Obie considered a second. “Yes, Ben. You might have to yell.”

Yulin accepted this. “All right, then, you will remain in Defend until someone comes to the center of the bridge with his arms raised high over his head, palms out. I will shoot a small mark on the bridge as we leave. At that mark, this individual must say, ‘There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.’ Got that?”

Trelig chuckled. “Old habits are hard to break, eh?” But it pleased him—easy to remember, but nobody was ever likely to say that one and include the appropriate gestures, unless they knew.

“I understand, Ben.”

He switched off, and they waited for Zinder to come around. It took about six minutes, these things varying with the individual. Zinder was tingling, as though his whole body were asleep, but the effect wore off quickly enough.

“Let’s go,” Yulin said, and they walked out across the bridge. About halfway, Yulin set his pistol to Full and shot at the restraining wall over the pit. It was a hard, tough material, but the shot gouged a nasty scar that was visible, yet would be mistaken by others as perhaps a remainder of the gun battle.

They walked on, got into the car, and settled back. Trelig pressed the stud, the door closed, and the car started Topside.

Inside Obie, as this happened, circuits opened and closed, energy danced, and Obie went into the defense mode, but he could not remember how to break it. That disturbed him. The last thing he remembered was Yulin at the control panel and the guards dying of the poisoned sponge.

It was an impossible mystery. He returned quickly to his primary job of trying to disengage himself from the great Well World computer, or, failing that, to create some sort of partnership with it.

It would be long, tough work.