Exiles at the Well of Souls

South Polar Zone, the Well World

It looked like any major businessman’s office. There were maps, charts, and diagrams all over the walls, some strange-looking furniture, and a massive U-shaped desk that concealed large numbers of controls and also contained writing implements, communications devices, and the like. There was even a pistol of a strange sort in the upper left-hand desk drawer.

But the creature who sat behind that great desk, looking at a series of maps spread out before him, was not a human being in any sense of the word, although he definitely was strictly business.

He had a chocolate-brown human torso, incredibly broad and ribbed so that the chest muscles seemed to form squarish plates. A head, oval-shaped, was equally brown and hairless except for a huge white walrus mustache under a broad, flat nose. Six arms, arranged in threes, were spaced evenly in pairs down that torso and attached, except for the top pair, on ball sockets like those of a crab. Below that strange torso it all melted into an enormous brown-and-yellow striped series of scales leading to a huge, coiled serpentine lower half. If outstretched, the snakelike body would easily cover over five meters.

The creature used his lower pair of arms to spread out what proved to be a map of the southern and eastern hemisphere of the Well World. It looked like an odd assembly of perfectly equal hexagons printed in black, with surprinting in a variety of colors to show topography and water areas. While the lower arms kept the map spread wide, the upper left arm ticked off various hexes with a broad pencil, while the upper right hand jotted down notations on a pad with a different pencil.

The middle left hand punched an intercom to one side.

“Yes, sir?” a female voice asked politely.

“I’ll need close-ups of hexes twelve, twenty-six, forty-four, sixty-eight, and two hundred forty-nine,” he told the secretary in a deep, rich bass voice. “Also, kindly ask the Czillian ambassador to call on me as soon as possible.” He switched off without waiting for acknowledgment.

The creature studied the map again and tried to think. Nine sections total. Nine. Why did that strike a bell?

A buzzer sounded. He flipped a switch on a different intercom to his right. “Serge Ortega,” he answered curtly.

“Ortega? Gol Miter, Shamozan,” came a thin, reedy voice Ortega knew was coming from a translator device.

“Yes, Gol? What is it?” He glanced quickly at his map. Oh, yes, the three-meter-diameter tarantulas. Memory is the first thing to go, he told himself sourly.

“We have a plot on the new satellite. It’s definitely artificial; some of the shots from the North Zone telescopes have been fantastic. We did some spectroanalysis. The atmosphere is a pretty standard Southern Hemisphere mix, heavy on the nitrogen and oxygen, lots of water vapor. The pictures and our stuff match up pretty good. The thing is divided in half, with some sort of physical—not energy—bubble over it about two or three kilometers from the surface. That’s why we can’t get much surface detail. Too much distortion. Definitely green stuff all over, though, like somebody’s garden, and some really vague stuff that could be buildings. As if somebody’s got their own little private city-world there.”

Serge Ortega thought a moment. “What about the other half?”

“Not much. Raw rock, mostly standard metamorphic stuff. Probably the only part of the original natural object left. Except about halfway between equator and south pole, where there’s some kind of huge, shiny disk-shaped object practically built into the thing.”

Ortega frowned. “Propulsion unit?”

“I doubt it,” replied the giant spider. “This thing doesn’t seem to have been built for travel. That bubble is supported by an atmospheric renewal unit for sure. It undulates. Anything other than regular orbital movement would collapse it. There’s a point near the edge on one side that has a lot of radiating energy, though, and a funny pattern not consistent with the rest. Could be an airlock, maybe a small spaceport.”

Ortega nodded, mostly to himself. “That fits. But how the hell did it get here?”

“Well, that disk’s aimed at the Equatorial Barrier no matter what position. Either the Well brought it here or they brought themselves instantly to the Well, or so our scientists say.”

Ortega didn’t like that. Anybody fooling with the Well was fooling with the very nature of everybody’s reality. This sort of thing was not supposed to happen, he told himself grumpily. Two of his stomachs were developing ulcers from it all, he could tell.

“It’s my guess that they don’t know what they’ve gotten themselves into,” the snake-man said. “Kind of clear that they wound up here, saw the Well, decided to check it out, flew too low over a nontech hex, and lost power.”

Suddenly he was bolt upright. Nine sections! Of course! He cursed himself aloud, and the giant spider came back from the intercom with “What was that? I didn’t catch it.”

“Oh, nothing,” he mumbled. “Just kicking myself for being an old man whose mind is shot.”

“Kicking yourself would be a good trick,” the spider retorted lightly. “Why? What have you got?”

“Back in the dawn of prehistory, when I was still a Type 41 back on my home turf, I used to fly spaceships,” Ortega told him. “For a living, that is. They used to have a fail-safe mechanism against complete power failure in atmosphere.”

“That’s right!” Gol Miter exclaimed. “I forgot you were an Entry. Hell, you’re older than I am! You used to be a pirate, didn’t you?”

Ortega sniffed. “I was an opportunist, sir! There are only three kinds of people in the universe, no matter what their race or form. They are scoundrels, hypocrites, and sheep. With a choice like that, I proudly wear the badge of scoundrel.”

There was the translated sound of a chuckle. Ortega wondered what a chuckle from a giant spider really sounded like.

“Okay,” the spider replied, “so you were a pilot and they had fail-safe mechanisms. So?”

“Well, they used to break up on failure,” Ortega told the other. “Break into nine sections, so they could accommodate everybody and so the basic mechanical, pressure-activated parachute mechanisms would be able to support the weight. Nine, Gol!”

The spider considered this. “Just like our visitor, huh? Well, that would fit. Sure you got them all? Couldn’t be any unreported pieces?”

“You know my spy network is the best on the Well World,” retorted Ortega with pride. “Want to know who your fourth wife is with right now?”

“All right! All right!” laughed Gol Miter. “So, nine it is. Coincidence?”

“Possibly,” Ortega admitted, “but maybe not. If not, they are Type 41s. I’ve got rough descriptions of three of the sections. Two are rather nondescript compartments, hardly worth bothering about. One, however, has a rounded nose-shape, like a bullet. If it is a Type 41 ship, that’s the command module. That’ll be where the pilot is—or was.”

“Where did it come down?” the spider asked.

Ortega looked over his map, his deep-black eyes shining. His excitement faded, however, when he saw the probable location.

“Looks like about twenty kilometers inside Teliagin. Fat lot of good that does us. If those savages catch them, they’ll eat them.”

There was concern in the spider’s voice. “Can’t have that. They don’t man their embassy, do they?”

“No,” Ortega responded. “They only come in occasionally to trade a few things. It’s a nontech hex, so everything’s a little limited. Mostly pastoral nomads. Shepherds. They eat the sheep—raw and in big bites, usually while they’re still alive.”

“Well, I’ll check and see if anybody’s home,” Gol Miter said, “but if there isn’t—what then? We have to get our hands on at least one of those people, Serge! It’s the only way we’re going to find out what the hell is going on around here!”

Ortega agreed with him and looked again at his map. Teliagin was near the Equatorial Barrier, and so was his native Ulik, but it was too far away for anybody to get there in time. He looked at the nearby hexes, rejecting one, then another. His eye strayed to one two hexes away, just to the south and east. Lata! That might be just the thing. But—it was still a long ways. The Lata could fly, of course, and Kromm’s atmosphere was sufficient, but how long would it take? Two days, maybe? And then how long until they were found? The average Teliagin would be as likely to eat the Lata as help it, so asking for instructions was out.

Well, it was that or nothing.

“Look, Gol, you work on the contact end and keep those studies of the satellite coming in,” he told the spider. “I’m going to try and mount some kind of rescue party if I can. I hope we get there before the Teliagin do.”

The six-armed snake-man broke the contact and flipped his interoffice intercom again. “Jeddy? Anything from Czill as yet?”

“No, sir,” responded the secretary. “The ambassador’s not expected in until 1700. Remember, not everybody lives in his office.”

The snake-man scowled. Of all the ambassadors here, he was the only one trapped in South Zone. He could never leave it, never go home. It was the price he paid. By all rights he should have died of old age almost two centuries before. He did not, but that was because of a juicy bit of blackmail with the Magren, a hex where “magic” of a sort was possible, where the people would in slight ways tap the power of the Well World computer to defy certain laws. They had given him a youthful body, and it stayed that way, but there was a price. Magic did not hold outside the hex in which it was performed. The rules of the game changed 1560 times on the Well World—the number of hexes and races there were here. In some, the Well computer allowed full technological growth. In some, that technology was limited—say, to steam. In others, like Teliagin, nothing worked. The powers, possibilities—even atmospheric content changed with each hex and was maintained stable by the Well computer that was the entire planetary core.

In South Zone almost everything worked. The youth spell, cast here, held. But should he ever leave, even to see the sun and sky and stars, the spell would be canceled out, and he would instantly be subject to rapid aging.

“Call the Lata ambassador, Jeddy,” he ordered.

There was a minute or two while the connection was made, the call referred, and then a high, pleasant, light female voice came on.

“Hoduri here. What can I do for you, Ambassador Ortega?”

“You know the situation?” the Ulik asked, and proceeded to fill in the other on all matters to date, concluding, “You see? You’re the only ones with a crack at them. It’s dangerous and tough, but we need you desperately.”

The Lata thought for a moment. “I’ll see what I can do and call you back. Give me an hour or so.”

“All right,” Ortega told her, “but time is of the essence here. And if you can find one of your citizens named Vistaru and include her in your plans, it’ll be better. She’s an Entry from the spacial sector we believe these people come from, and could probably translate. We’ve worked together before. Tell her it’s me asking and tell her the whole situation.”

“Yes, if we can find her,” Ambassador Hoduri agreed. “Anything more?”

Ortega shook his head, although he knew the other couldn’t see it. “No, only hurry. Lives depend on it—maybe ours, too, if we don’t find out what’s going on here.”

He switched off, and was barely back to his maps when the interzone intercom buzzed again. It was the Czillian ambassador, in early.

“Hello? Vardia? Serge Ortega!” he boomed.

“Ortega!” the other responded, not exactly sounding as thrilled by Ortega’s voice as Ortega seemed with its. And it was an “it,” too—the Czillians were mobile unisexual plants.

“You know what’s going on?” Ortega asked.

“I’ve just been conferring on it,” the plant creature replied. “Why? Going to play games with somebody else?”

He shrugged off the minor nastiness. The plants duplicated, so it could be one of several Vardias, but they all had their basic memories. One time, long ago, he’d done the original Vardia rather dirty, and Czillians don’t forget.

“Bygones be bygones,” he retorted. “This is bigger than petty plots. We’ll need the Czillian Crisis Center activated immediately at the Center. Your computers are the best on the Well World, and we’ll need somebody to coordinate. A lot of different hexes are involved here.” He explained the situation as it stood to the Czillian.

“And what are you doing about it now?” Vardia asked him.

“I’ve sent Lata in to try and rescue the pilot if he’s still alive, and anybody else they can. If—and it’s a big if—we can get one of them here alive we’ll know what’s going on. But that’s not your worry right now. Follow through on the logic here and maybe you’ll understand.”

“I’m listening,” Vardia replied, still doubtful.

“I’ve located all nine modules. They’re all in the west, and dispersed in a southwesterly pattern, so I have an idea of what’s what. If I can do it, so can others. Probably have. Vardia, one of them is the engine module, intact! I’ll bet on that! There’s no way to build that in any hex on the Well World. The rest, though—that can be fabricated one place and another. Whoever reclaims the parts of that ship, particularly the engine module, might possibly make a spaceship that’ll fly. Launch it straight up, the right angle and pattern, and it’ll be free of the Well. If I thought of that angle, so have others. I’m talking about war, Vardia! War! There are enough old pilots around here that somebody might be able to fly it!”

Vardia still sounded doubtful, but now it was more in the nature of an unwillingness to think what Ortega was saying could be true. But—could they afford to take the chance?

“War is impossible,” the Czillian responded. “Triff Dhala demonstrated that by losing the Great War over eleven hundred years ago!”

“But that was for conquest,” Ortega pointed out. “This would be for limited objectives. I’ll bet five dozen rulers are reading Dhala’s Theory of Well Warfare cover to cover right now. A spaceship, Vardia! Think about it!”

“I don’t want to,” responded the Czillian. “But—I’ll relay all this to the Center. If the scholars and the computers agree with you, it will be done.”

“That’s all I ask,” the Ulik told the other, and switched off. He stared down at the map again, his eyes fixed on Lata and Teliagin. How had they come in? To the southwest. Okay, that meant they flew over the Sea of Storms, then got wiped out over Kromm. Then there was breakup because of Kromm’s limited tech restrictions, and they came down in Teliagin. They would have seen the seas and the mountains before they were depowered. If the pilot knew what he was doing, he’d know that the mountains and sea would be east of him. He’d make for it as soon as he caught sight of those Teliagin monstrosities.

If they made Kromm, and didn’t mind getting wet, they’d be okay. He had to bet on that pilot’s experience.

“Get me the Lata ambassador again, will you, Jeddy?” he asked. “I know he’s out, but I’ll talk to an assistant.”

His eyes went back to that map.

The Lata had to be in time. They just had to.