Jack Chalker: Midnight at the Well of Souls

“What’s the condition?” Skander asked nervously, hesitantly, afraid of the answer.

“Why, you’d need a device to translate that formula into reality. And a way to have it do what you wished.”

“The Markovian brain,” Skander whispered.

“Yes. That’s what they discovered. But this brain—this device—seems to be for local use only. That is, it would affect this planet, perhaps the solar system in which it lies, but no more. But, somewhere, there must be a master unit—a unit that could affect at least half, perhaps the whole, galaxy. It must exist, if all the rest of my hypothesis is correct!”

“Why must it?” Skander asked, a sinking sensation growing in his stomach.

“Because we are stable,” the boy replied, an awe-struck tone in his voice.

Only the mechanical sounds of the lab intruded for a minute after that, as the implications sank home to both of them.

“And you have the code?” Skander asked at last.

“I think so, although it goes against my whole being that such equations can be correct. And yet—do you know why that energy does not show by conventional means?” Skander slowly shook his head negatively, and the mathematician continued. “It is the primal energy itself. Look, do you have that filter with you?”

Skander nodded numbly and produced the little case. The boy took it eagerly, but instead of placing it in the microscope he went over to the outer wall. Slowly he donned protective coveralls and goggles, used in radiation protection, and told Skander to do likewise. Then he sealed the lab against entry and peeled back the tent lining in the one place where it covered a port—not used here, but these tents were all-purpose and contained many useless features.

The baleful reddish landscape showed before them at midday. Slowly, carefully, the boy held the tiny filter up to one eye and closed the other. He gasped. “I was right!” he exclaimed.

After a painful half-minute that felt like an eternity, he handed the little filter to Skander, who did the same.

Through the filter, the entire landscape was bathed in a ferocious electrical storm. Skander couldn’t stop looking at it.

“The Markovian brain is all around us,” Varnett whispered. “It draws what it needs and expels what it does not. If we could contact it—”

“We’d be like gods,” Skander finished.

Skander reluctantly put down the filter and handed it back to Varnett, who resumed his own gazing.

“And what sort of universe would you create, Varnett?” Skander almost whispered, reaching under the protective clothing as he spoke and pulling out a knife. “A mathematically perfect place where everyone was absolutely identical, the same equation?”

“Put your weapon away, Skander,” Varnett told him, not taking his gaze from the filtered landscape. “You can’t do it without me, and if you think about it you’ll realize that. In only a few months they’ll find our bodies and you here—or dying in the city—and what will that get you?”

The knife hesitated a long moment, then slowly slid back into the belt under the protective garment.

“What the hell are you, Varnett?” asked Skander suspiciously.

“An aberration,” the other replied. “We happen, sometimes. Usually they catch us and that’s that. But not me, not yet. They will, though, unless I can do something about it.”

“What do you mean, an aberration?” Skander asked unsurely.

“I’m human, Skander. A real human. And greedy. I, too, would like to be a god.”

It had taken Varnett only seven hours to crack the mathematics, but it would take a lot longer to make the Markovian brain notice them. Their project was so intense that the others began to take notice and inquire, particularly the research assistants. Finally, they decided to take them all in on it—Varnett because he was certain that, once in contact with the Markovian brain, he could adjust the others to his version of events, and Skander because he had no choice. While they worked the lab, the others combed the city and, using small flyers, the other cities and regions of the planet.

“You are to look for some sort of vent, entrance, gate, or at least a temple or similar structure that might mean some kind of direct contact with the Markovian brain,” Skander told them.

And time went on, with the others, good Universalists all, looking forward to carrying the news back to the Confederacy that the perfect society was within man’s grasp.

Finally, one day, only two months before the next ship was due in, they found it.

Jainet and Dunna, one of the research assistants, noticed through the large filters they had constructed for the search that one tiny area near the north pole of the planet was conspicuous by the absence of the all-pervasive lightning.

Flying over to it they saw below them a deep hexagonal hole of total darkness. They were reluctant to explore further without consultation, and so radioed for the rest to come up.

“I don’t see anything,” Skander complained, disappointed. “There’s no hex hole here.”

“But there was!” Jainet protested, and Dunna nodded in agreement. “It was right there, almost directly over the pole. Here! I’ll prove it!” She went over and rewound the flyer’s nose camera recording disk a little more than halfway. They watched the playback in skeptical silence, as the ground rolled beneath them on the screen. Then, suddenly, there it was.

“See!” Jainet exclaimed. “What did I tell you!”

And it was there, clearly, unquestionably. Varnett looked at the screen, then to the scene below them, then back again. It all checked. There had been a hexagonal hole, almost two kilometers across at its widest point. The landmarks matched—it was at this spot.

But there wasn’t a hole there now.

They waited then, almost an entire day. Suddenly the flat plain seemed to vanish and there was the hole again.

They photographed it and ran every analysis test on it they could.

“Let’s drop something in,” Varnett suggested at last.

They found a spare pressure suit and, hovering directly over the hole, the light on the suit turned on, they dropped it in.

The suit struck the hole. “Struck” is the only word they had for it. The suit hit the top of the hole and seemed to stick there, not dropping at all. Then, after hovering a moment, it seemed to fade before their eyes. Not drop, but fade—for even the films showed that it didn’t fall. It simply faded out to nothingness.

A few minutes later the hole itself disappeared.

“Forty-six standard minutes,” Varnett said. “Exactly. And I’ll bet at the same time gap tomorrow it opens again.”

“But where did the suit go? Why didn’t it drop?” Jainet asked.

“Remember the power of this thing,” Skander told her. “If you were to get to it, you wouldn’t descend forty-plus kilometers. You’d simply be transported to the place.”

“Exactly,” Varnett agreed. “It would simply alter the equation and you would be there instead of here.”

“But where is there?” Jainet asked.

“We believe at the control center of the Markovian brain,” Skander told her. “There would be one—the same way there are two bridges on a spaceship. The other is for emergencies.” Or male and female members on your planet, Skander had almost said.

“We’d best go back and run this all through our own data banks,” Varnett suggested. “After all, it’s been a long day for us anyway. The hole opens and closes regularly. So we can do the same things tomorrow as we can do today.”

They all muttered assent at this proposal, and several suddenly realized how tired they were.