Jack Chalker - Exiles at the Well of Souls

She stepped out into the hall and carefully closed the door behind her without a sound. There were no flags. She was safe.

This would have been harder if he’d kept the hall lit, she thought.

But nothing was impossible in this line to the Cat Goddess, as she was called on lots of wanted lists. They even suspected who she was, but they had never proved anything.

She met no one on her way back to the banquet hall, which, she discovered, was the only obvious entrance or exit. Only one camera there; she’d checked that at dinner.

She moved as close to the entrance as she could and peered out of the curtains. The camera, which was linked to a small paralyzer, rotated along a rail on the base of the dome. A single fixed camera in the dome itself wouldn’t have supplied adequate coverage; the moving one covered the entire area in thirty seconds. She timed the movements repeatedly to see that they hadn’t varied it. Only for twelve seconds was the entrance out of view. And the entrance was about ninety meters from her.

Experience and training paid in the calculations—the area of view and the like going through her mind. She took two deep breaths, then watched the little camera go around, hit the precisely calculated point. At that instant she sped for the entrance, making it outside in under eleven seconds, something considered impossible, she knew, for such a tiny woman.

But this was.7 G.

She didn’t take the steps, but climbed, catlike, over the side and down to the bushes below. It was not dark outside, but there was no one in view, and she was quick despite the vertical drop.

The trick was a tiny little bubble, several of which she carried in her belt. The bubble, no larger than the head of a pin, formed an incredibly thin secretion that created tremendous suction when rubbed between the palms of her hands. It had been her special secret of success in burglary; she had created the stuff herself.

She descended thirty meters in seconds. Taking refuge behind some bushes, she rubbed her hands, causing the substance to solidify and ball up, then fall away. The stuff didn’t last long, but it was excellent for thirty or forty seconds.

She would have preferred darkness, but there was no darkness beneath the reflective plasma dome. Daylight would have to do.

Creeping around the side of the central building, she heard voices and froze. When they continued in a sort of rhythmic chant, she ventured out, keeping close to the walls and cover, then looked in on one of the open plazas. Four women, dressed as the servants had been, were practicing some sort of dance to the tune of a lyrelike instrument played by another of them. They all seemed to move in that dreamy state, oblivious to the world. Something was odd in their appearance.

They were too beautiful, Mavra decided. Incredibly, almost deformed in their sexual characteristics, the type of dream girl lovesick prospectors bought pictures of. Their movements, too, seemed unusual; there was a sense of total femininity there, as if they might be some sort of mythological fertility goddesses. Such manners and moves were eerie, unnatural, even a little inhuman. They were more erotic caricatures of people than real human beings.

She decided not to test their apparent dreaminess, though; she needed someone alone.

The little world seemed to keep Trelig’s hours; few were about. She wished she knew exactly how many people were on the planetoid; it didn’t seem like many.

Slipping into the next building, a lower but still grand marble structure, she practically ran into someone. The young woman was average-looking, a little unkempt, and had dirty feet. She was nude. Next to her stood a bucket on three little wheels. She was down on all fours, and, as Mavra watched, she realized the woman was scrubbing the marble floor with a stiff brush.

Mavra looked around but saw no sign of anyone else. Quietly she stepped out and started toward the woman, whose back and rear were open to her as she made her way slowly backing down the hall.

Mavra straightened her right little finger while clenching the others. The straightening made the little injector head reach the tip of the nail.

The woman noticed something odd before Mavra reached her. When she turned around, she saw the small, black-covered woman.

“Hi!” she said, a crooked smile on her face. Mavra looked down at her with pity. The expression was simple, the eyes dull and blank; A spongie, Mavra realized. She stooped to the woman’s level.

“Hi, yourself,” she responded kindly. “What’s your name?”

“Hiv—Hivi—” the woman struggled, then she turned sheepish. “I can’t say it good no more.”

Mavra nodded sympathetically. “Okay, Hivi. I’m Cat. Will you tell me something?”

The woman nodded slowly. “If I can.”

“Do you know somebody called Nikki Zinder?”

The woman looked blank. “I don’t ’member names so good, like I told ya.”

“Well, is there any place they keep people here who never come out?” Mavra tried.

The girl shook her head uncomprehendingly. Mavra sighed. Obviously Hivi or whatever her name was was too far gone on the drug to tell her what she needed. She decided on another tack.

“Well, do you have a boss, then? Somebody who tells you where to clean?”

The girl nodded. “Ziv do it.”

“Where is Ziv now?” Mavra prodded.

The woman looked blank, then brightened for a moment. “Down there,” she replied, pointing away down the hall.

Mavra was tempted just to leave her there; the girl was no threat. However, Hivi retained some intelligence, and that might mean an unintentional betrayal. As she reached out to caress the woman, the nail of her right little finger touched the girl’s arm and the injector shot its fluid into her.

The girl jumped a little, and put her hand on her shoulder, a puzzled expression on her face. Then came a general rigidity, the girl frozen, looking at her shoulder.

Mavra leaned close to her, nervous that someone else would come by. “You did not see anyone while washing this hall,” she whispered. “You did not see me. You will not see me. You will not see anything I do. Now you will go on with your work.”

The girl unfroze, seemed even more puzzled. She looked around, right at Mavra Chang, then past her, unseeing. Finally, she shrugged, turned, and resumed her brushing of the floor. Mavra went on.

It would have been easier to have killed her; a few simple pressings on certain nerves in the neck would not have wasted a hypno on such a dry hole. Doing so would, perhaps, have been more merciful. But, although Mavra Chang had killed before, she killed only those who deserved it. Antor Trelig, perhaps, for what he did to these once-normal people and for what he might do to others—but not a helpless slave.

And that’s what all those women were, she knew. The serving girls, the dancers, the scrubwoman. Slaves, created by the sponge, by the underdoses and overdoses of the mutant disease.

She did not find Ziv; she did, however, prowl silently through many halls, often dodging occasional dull-eyed slaves and security eyes. She moved stealthily through several rooms decorated with great opulence and through other rooms of extreme decadence. Spongies so catatonic they could be placed rigidly in positions to serve as lamps and furniture—the sight made her ill even while the practical part of her wondered how they were fed.

She did not, however, find anyone in obvious authority, and she started back to the sleeping quarters disappointed and disgusted. If this was Antor Trelig’s way of treating the humans who came within his control, what sort of a master would he make of the civilized worlds? Alaina had been right; the man was not a human but a monster.