Jack Chalker - Exiles at the Well of Souls

“You mean a planet!” someone gasped.

Trelig looked mock-thoughtful. He was enjoying this. “Yes, I suppose so. Why, yes, I do believe you’re right! If there is sufficient power, of course.”

They thought over what he had just said, each realizing that what they’d feared most of all was true. This madman possessed a device that could alter planets to his design in limited ways. Limited, perhaps, but he certainly wouldn’t be going to this extreme just to give the inhabitants funny ears and tails.

Trelig looked down, saw that Rumney, who could hear the conversation, hadn’t moved off the disk. He was waiting to be changed back.

“Now I’ll show you the full potential,” Trelig whispered, and nodded to Yulin.

Before he could do anything, the man with the ears and tail was captured again in the blue glow. When he winked back in a few moments later there had been an additional change. He still retained the ears and tail, and even his beard, but through the thin robe they could clearly see that he was now sexually a female despite the retention of the rest of his large, masculine body.

Trelig grinned evilly at the others, then called down. “Tell me, Citizen Rumney, do you notice any other changes?”

The person on the disk looked and felt all over, then shook his—her?—head. “No,” the person responded in a voice that unmistakably belonged to the same person but was now a half-octave higher in tone. “Should I?”

“You are female, now, Citizen Rumney.”

Rumney looked bewildered. “Why, yes, of course. I always have been.”

Trelig turned back to the group, a smug expression on his face. “You see? This time we altered something basic in the equations that created him. We made him a her. A simple thing, really—easier than the reverse since he is now XX where, in the opposite way, we have to postulate the Y factor. The important thing is that only we know a change has taken place. He doesn’t—and, if you returned with him like that, you’d find that everyone else remembered him as a female, too, that all his records were those of a female, that his whole past was adjusted to show he’d been born that way. That is the real power of the device. Only the shielding and our close proximity to the change allow us to be exempt from this change ourselves.”

They thought it over. New Pompeii, of course, would be shielded, probably something added to the plasma shield. When the big mirror did its work on a planet, no one in the whole galaxy would even know that anything was changed. The victimized world wouldn’t know it, either. The inhabitants would become his playthings and his property as a part of the natural scheme of things.

“You monster!” one of the councillors spat. “Why show us this at all? Why expose yourself, except for ego?”

Trelig shrugged. “Ego, of course, is part of it. But such power is no fun unless somebody knows what’s going on. But; no, there’s more to it than that.”

“You need the Council Fleet to move New Pompeii and protect it,” Mavra guessed.

He smiled. “No, not really. According to the calculations, if a reverse bias is applied to the device, it would be possible to envelop New Pompeii in the field and then transport it anywhere it wanted—sort of picking itself up by its own bootstraps. No, this concerns our own limitations. You can’t remake a planet into something else without knowing exactly what you want and then feeding the information into Obie. The ears and tail wouldn’t have been possible unless Obie had first had the code for the ass. It will take much time and research to remake a world properly, and I am an impatient man. If I tried a planet now, or in the next few years, the results would probably be monstrous. No, I need access to all the information, the best brains, the best of everything to carry it out. I need the resources of hundreds of worlds. To get the resources I need, I’ll need the Council Fleet under my control.”

Mavra and a couple of others turned a little at some movement behind them. Four guards had emerged there, all carrying nasty electron rifles.

Rumney called up from the disk. “Hey! Trelig! Are you going to let me keep these ears and tail?”

The master of New Pompeii looked over at Yulin and nodded. The blue light winked on again, and when it winked off Rumney was again male and had normal ears.

And he still retained the tail.

Trelig ordered him upstairs, and he came, grumbling. He reached the top and saw the guards. He almost started back again, but thought better of it and joined the rest.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Rumney grumbled, and the others added their complaints.

Trelig moved away from them slightly. “I need the Fleet and the Weapons Control Locker. Please don’t move toward me or the guards. The rifles are on high spray stun. It would do you no good, even if they shot me, too. Besides, I need you all alive to go back and tell your councillors what you have witnessed, except for you councillors, whose votes I need directly. I need you to tell your story, and I need to send some proof. Tell them that when the Council meets in four days time I will require a vote to make me First Councillor with sole authority over the Fleet and Weapons Locker. If the vote fails, then we will experiment with the big dish on those worlds you represent. New Pompeii will be everywhere and anywhere. You won’t catch it. I may not have all the data to alter a world, but I can cancel its existence with Obie! I can whittle the Council down to where I will have the votes!”

They were shocked. While he had them in that state, he pressed home, becoming friendlier, more conciliatory.

“You see, my friends,” he concluded, “not giving me that power will cause me a great deal of pain, cost a lot of lives, and give me a lot of time and trouble. But I’ll win either way. In four days—or in four years. It won’t matter. But, I’m impatient, and I am direct. We can save a lot of pain, trouble, and lives by conceding to my demands now.”

Rumney reached back, felt his tall unbelievingly. “And this tail—this is the proof?”

Trelig nodded. “Now, one at a time, each of you will go down and stand on the disk. A minor thing will be done to you, nothing more serious than what we did to Citizen Rumney here, unless you cause trouble. If you resist, we will stun you and, I assure you, the results will not be minor!” He underscored that last as if he hoped someone would resist. “But, as Rumney told you, the process is painless, and I do promise you that anyone whose world’s vote is with me will be changed back. That can be done without a return to New Pompeii.”

“What good is your promise?”

Trelig was genuinely surprised and a little hurt at the remark. “I always keep my word, Citizen. I always make good my promises—and my threats.”

Nobody did resist. It would have been futile. Even if they jumped Trelig, they would all get stunned, Trelig included, and then the alterations would be monstrous, as he promised. Even if they managed to rush the guards, they couldn’t operate the lift car, nor did they know how, if there was an alternate way, to get to the surface.

Trelig didn’t bother to be creative. Each, in turn, was given the same long horselike tail Rumney got, color-matched to their own hair. Mavra’s was jet-black, thick, and extended below her knees. The new condition took a little getting used to, although the tail muscle was almost infinitely controllable and the bone seemed soft and pliant. Even so, sitting in the chairs for the ride back up felt odd and uncomfortable, like sitting on a slightly hard object. When shifting position, one had a tendency to pull on the tail inadvertently, causing some pain.