Jack Chalker: Midnight at the Well of Souls

He sighed, then reached over and dialed the meals. Now they would have to come up, or starve. He idly scratched himself and wondered whether or not he should take a shower before dinner. No, he decided, I had one only five days ago; I’ll just use deodorant.

He picked up the book he had been reading off and on, a blood-and-guts romance on some faraway planet published centuries ago and produced in facsimile for him by a surprised and gratified librarian.

He called librarians his secret agents because he was one of the very few who read books at all. Libraries were usually single institutions on planets and were patronized by only a very few. Nobody wrote books anymore, he thought, not even this garbage. They dredged up whatever information they needed for reference from the computer terminal in every household; even then the vast majority were the vocal types that answered questions. Only the technocrats needed to read.

Only barbarians and wanderers read anymore.

And librarians.

Everybody else could just flip a switch and get a full, three-dimensional, sight-sound-and-smell creation of their own fantasies or those of a crew of dedicated fantasists picked by the government.

Pretty dull shit, he thought. Even the people were bred without imaginations. The imaginative ones were fixed—or gotten rid of. Too dangerous to have a thinker unless he thought the government’s way.

Brazil wondered idly whether any of his passengers could read. The Pig probably—his name for Datham Hain, who looked very much like one—but he probably only read up on the stuff he sold or some mundane crap like that. Maybe a manual on how to strangle people twenty ways, he thought. Hain looked as if he’d enjoy that.

The girl with him was harder to figure. Like Hain, she obviously wasn’t from the communal factory worlds—she was mature, maybe twenty or so, and, if she didn’t look so wasted away, she might be pretty. Not built, or beautiful, but nice. But she had that empty look in her eyes, and was so damned servile to the fat man. Wu Julee, the manifest said her name was. Julie Wu? mused a corner of his brain. There it was again! Damn! He tried to grab onto the source of the thought, but it vanished.

But she does look Chinese, said that little corner, and then the thought retreated once again.

Chinese. That word meant something once. He knew it did. Where did those terms come from? And why couldn’t he remember where they came from? Hell, almost everybody had those characteristics these days, he thought.

Then, suddenly, the thought was out of his mind, as such thoughts always were, and he was back on his main track.

The third one—almost the usual, he reflected, except that he never drew the usual, permanently twelve-year-old automaton on his trips. They were all raised and conditioned to look alike, think alike, and believe that theirs was the best of all possible worlds. No reason to travel. But Vardia Diplo 1261 was the same underneath, anyway: looked twelve, was flat-chested, probably neutered, since there was some pelvic width. She was a courier between her world and the next bunch of robots down the line. Spent all her time doing exercises.

A tiny bell sounded telling him that dinner was served, and he got up and ambled back to the wardroom.

The wardroom—nobody knew why it was called that—merely consisted of a large table that was permanently attached to the floor and a series of chairs that were part of the floor until you pulled up on a little ring, whereupon they arose and became comfortable seats. The place was otherwise a milky white plastic—walls, floor, ceiling, even tabletop. The monotony was broken only by small plaques giving the ship’s name, construction data, ownership, and by his and the ship’s commissions from the Confederacy as well as by his master’s license.

He entered, half expecting no one to be there, and was surprised to see the two women already seated. The fat man was up, intently reading his master’s license.

Hain was dressed in a light blue toga that made him look like Nero; Wu Julee was dressed in similar fashion, but it looked better on her. The Comworlder, Vardia, wore a simple, one-piece black robe. He noted idly that Wu Julee seemed to be in a trance, staring straight ahead.

Hain completed reading the wall plaques, then returned to his seat next to Wu Julee, a frown forming on his corpulent face.

“What’s so odd about my license?” Brazil asked curiously.

“That form,” Hain replied in a silky-smooth, disquieting voice. “It is so old! No such form has been used in my memory.”

The captain nodded and smiled, pushing a button under his chair. The food compartments opened up on top and plates of steaming food were revealed in front of each person. A large bottle and four glasses rose from a circular opening in the middle of the table.

“I got it a long time ago,” he told them conversationally, as he chose a glass and poured some nonalcoholic wine into it.

“You have been in rejuve then, Captain?” Hain responded politely.

Brazil nodded. “Many times. Freighter captains are known for it.”

“But it costs—unless one is influential with the Council,” Hain noted.

“True,” Brazil acknowledged, talking as he chewed his synthetic meat. “But we’re well paid, in port only a few days every few weeks, and most of us just put our salaries into escrow to pay for what we need. Nothing much else to blow it on these days.”

“But the date!” Vardia broke in. “It’s so very, very old! Citizen Hain said it was three hundred and sixty-two standard years!”

Brazil shrugged. “Not very unusual. Another captain on this same line is over five hundred.”

“Yes, that’s true,” Hain said. “But the license is stamped Third Renewal—P.C. How old are you, anyway?”

Brazil shrugged again. “I truthfully don’t know. As old as the records, anyway. The brain has a finite capacity, so every rejuve erases a little more of the past. I get snatches of things—old memories, old terms—from time to time, but nothing I can hang on to. I could be six hundred—or six thousand, though I doubt it.”

“You’ve never inquired?” Hain asked curiously.

“No,” Brazil managed, his mouth full of mush. He swallowed, then took another long drink of wine. “Lousy stuff,” he snorted, holding the glass up and looking at it as if it were full of disease cultures. Suddenly he remembered he was in the middle of a conversation.

“Actually,” he told them, “I’ve been curious as to all that, but the records just sort of fade out. I’ve outlived too many bureaucracies. Well, I’ve always lived for now and the future, anyway.”

Hain had already finished his meal, and patted his ample stomach. “I’m due for my first rejuve in another year or two. I’m almost ninety, and I’m afraid I’ve abused myself terribly these past few years.”

As the small talk continued, Brazil’s gaze kept falling to the girl who sat so strangely by Hain. She seemed to be paying not the least attention to the conversation and had hardly touched her food.

“Well,” Brazil said, suppressing his curiosity about the strange girl,” my career is on the wall and Citizen Vardia’s is obvious, but what takes you flitting around the solar systems, Hain?”

“I am—well, a salesman, Captain,” the fat man replied. “All of the planets are somewhat unique in the excesses they produce. What is surplus on one is usually needed on another—like the grain you have as cargo on this fine ship. I’m a man who arranges such trades.”

Brazil made his move. “What about you, Citizen Wu Julee? Are you his secretary?”

The girl looked suddenly confused. That’s real fear in her eyes, Brazil noted to himself, surprised. She turned immediately to Hain, a look of pleading in her face.