Jack Chalker: Midnight at the Well of Souls

They had been going down for some time. Now they were deep below the surface, how deep they couldn’t say. Suddenly a great hexagon outlined in light appeared just under them.

“The Well Access Gate,” Brazil told them. “One of six. It can take you to lots of places within the Well, but it’ll take you to the central control area and monitoring stations if you have no other instructions. When we get to it, just step on it. I won’t trigger it until everyone is aboard. In case somebody else does, by accident, just wait for the light to come back on and step on again. It’ll work.”

They did as instructed, and when all were on the Gate, all light suddenly winked out. There followed a twisting, unsettling feeling like falling. Then, suddenly, there was light all over.

They stood in a huge chamber, perhaps a kilometer in diameter. It was semicircular, the ceiling curving up over them almost the same distance as it was across. Corridors, hundreds of them, led off in all directions. The Gate was in the center of the dome, and Brazil quickly stepped off, followed by the others, who looked around in awe and anticipation.

The texture of the place was strange. It seemed to be made up of tiny hexagonal shapes of polished white mica, reflecting the light and glittering like millions of jewels.

After they stepped off the Gate, Brazil stopped and pointed a tentacle back over it.

Suspended by force fields, about midway between the Gate and the apex of the dome, was a huge model of the Well World, turning slowly. It had a terminator, and darkness on half of its face, and seemed to be made of the same mica-like compound as the great hall. But the hexagons on the model were much larger, and there were solid areas at the poles, and a black band around its middle. The sphere seemed to be covered by a thin transparent shell composed of segments which exactly conformed to the hexagons below.

“That’s what the Well World looks like from space,” Brazil told them. “It’s an exact model, fifteen hundred sixty hexagons, the Zones—everything. Note the slight differences in reflected light from each hex. That’s Markovian writing—and they are numbers. This is more than a model, really. It’s a separate Markovian brain, containing the master equation for stabilizing all of the new worlds. It energizes the Well, and permits the big brain around us to do its job.”

“Where are the controls, Nate?” Ortega prodded.

“Each biome—that is, planetary biome—has its own set of controls,” Brazil told him. “This place is honeycombed with them. Each hex on the Well World is controlled as a complement to the actual world. Most controls, of course, do not have corresponding hexes. What we’re left with today are the last few hexes created and some of the failures—not necessarily the ones that died out, but the ones that didn’t work out. The Faerie, for example. Some of them snuck into the last batch of transits, and several of the others who were leftovers from closed and filled projects, some Dillians, some Umiau, and the like, who wanted to get out of the Well World and thought they could help, came, too. Not many, and they were disrupted by civilization’s rises and falls, and became the objects of superstition, fear, hatred. None survived the distance on Old Earth, but we didn’t get many to begin with, and reproduction was slow. But, come, let’s go to a control center.”

He walked toward one of the corridors on his six tentacles, and they followed hesitantly. All of them held their pistols tightly, at the ready.

They walked for what seemed an endless time down one of the corridors, passing closed hexagonal doors along the way. Finally Brazil stopped in front of one, and it opened, much as the lens of a camera opens. He walked in, and they followed quickly, anxious not to lose sight of him even for a moment.

The room lit up as they approached. It was made of the same stuff as the great hall and the corridors. There were, however, walls of obvious controls, switches, levers, buttons, and the like, and what looked like a large black screen directly ahead of them. None of the instruments held any sort of clue as to what they were, or had anything familiar about them.

“Well, here it is, and it’s still active,” Brazil announced. “Let me see,” he murmured, and went over to a panel. Their faces showed sudden tension and fear, and all of the pistols were raised, trained on him. The Diviner’s blinking lights started going very, very fast.

“Don’t touch nothin’, Nate!” Ortega warned.

“Just checking something here,” Brazil responded, unconcerned. “Yes, I see. In this room is the preset for a civilization that has now expanded. It’s interstellar, but not pangalactic. Population a little over one and a quarter trillion.”

“If it’s a high-tech civilization, then it is not ours,” the Slelcronian said with some relief.

“Not necessarily,” Brazil replied. “The tech levels here on the Well World were not imposed on the outside at all. They were dictated by the problems you might find in your own world. A high-tech world had abundant and easily accessible resources, a low-tech much less so. Since the home world had to develop logically and mathematically according to the master rules of nature, some worlds were better endowed than others. By making the trial hex here a low-tech, no-tech, or the like, we simply were compensating for the degree of difficulty in establishing technological civilization on the home world, not preventing it. We made them develop alternatives, to live without technology so they’d be better prepared on their home worlds. Some did extremely well. Most of the magic you find here is not Well magic, but actual mental powers developed by the hexes to compensate for low-tech status. What they could use here, they could use there.”

“The Diviner says you are truthful,” The Rel commented, one of the first things the Northerner had said since they set out. “The Diviner states that you were responsible for its prophecy that we would be here.”

“In a way, yes,” Brazil replied. “When I went through the Zone Gate, the Markovian brain recognized me as a native of Hex Forty-one and sent me there. However, in its analysis, it also found what I, myself, didn’t know—that I had an original Markovian brain-wave pattern. It then assumed that I was here to give it further instructions or to do work. When it concluded this, The Diviner, extremely sensitive to such things, picked up the message, however garbled.” He paused, and that central mass tilted toward them a little.

“And now,” he said, sadness in his voice, “here we are, in the control center, and you’ve all got fear on your faces and your guns trained on me.” Even you, Wu Julee, he thought, immeasurable sadness coursing through him. Even you.

“I tried to give mankind rules for living which would avert a second disaster like the first, would keep it from self-destruction. Nobody listened. Nobody changed. Type Forty-one was badly flawed—and it beat the odds anyway, this time. It made its way to the stars, and that was an outlet for its aggression, although, even there, even now, its component parts are looking at ways to dominate one another, kill one another, rule one another. And the drive for domination is there even in the nonhumans, you, Northerner, and you, Slelcronian. Look at you all now. Look at yourselves! Look at each other! Do you see it? Can you feel it? Fear, greed, horror, ambition burning within you, consuming you! The only reason you haven’t killed one another by now is your common fear of me. How dare you condemn a Hain, a Skander—a society? How dare you?

“How many of you are thinking of the people these controls represent? Do you fear for them? Do you care about them? You don’t want to save them, better their lives. That fear is inside you, fear for your own selves! The basic flaw in the set-up equation, that burning, basic selfishness. None of you cares for any but yourself! Look at you! Look at what monsters you’ve all become!”