Jack Chalker: Twilight at the Well of Souls

“Ghlmonese,” Marquoz repeated, fascinated. His racial ancestors… Somehow that had never occurred to him. He decided he would like to visit there someday, if he could.

“You told Commander Zhart that you worked mostly on alien worlds in your old life,” the official continued. “Glathrielites and Dillians mainly. Naked apes and centaurs. Very unlike your own kind. You said you were a spy?”

Startled, Marquoz realized suddenly that somehow he had been bugged since being discovered on the surface by a military patrol. This explained Zhart’s chum-miness in contrast to the coldness the others showed— but it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that he should have anticipated this and had not. He hoped he wasn’t becoming old and senile.

“A spy, yes,” he admitted, realizing, too, that this individual was some sort of psychologist, possibly for the inevitable secret police. “You understand that my people were discovered by the others. They were an aggressive, warlike lot with a strong sense of cultural superiority that matched their real technological superiority. We hadn’t developed space travel, and most of our weaponry was museum vintage, even to us, except in sport. They had a big interworld council, of course, but we were entitled to only one seat and one vote as a one-world culture—hardly a position of influence. They needed somebody out there, traveling around, observing trends, attitudes, threats, and possibilities, and reporting same. A lot of somebodies, really, but I was the only one to really succeed at it.”

The psychologist was interested. “Why you? And why were you successful when the others of your kind were not?”

Marquoz shrugged. “I’m not sure. In terms of getting in the right positions, well, the dominant races have psychological quirks that make them either destroy lesser races, absorb lesser races, or, in some odd and perverse tendency, to bend over backward to show that they don’t consider your race lesser even if they actually do. I’ve always had some sort of knack for being where trouble is, even on my home world. If there was a big storm, or a fire, or some equally major event, I somehow usually wound up being there. Call it some kind of perverse precognition, I don’t know what. I happened to be in a position to overhear plans for a minor but nasty rebellion and took the opportunity to report it. The Com Police crushed the rebellion, of course, and I became some sort of minor celebrity to them. From there it was easy to worm my way into the Com Police itself, not only because I delivered the goods, so to speak, but also because, as a Chugach, I would be a symbol of their liberalism. There are some mighty guilty consciences there, I suspect. That helped immeasurably. And the deeper entrenched I became, the easier it was to pick up everything, from trade to forbidden technological information, and pass it along to my own people.”

The psychologist looked disturbed. “Do you think your being reborn as a Hakazit means that we are in for some particularly bad trouble?”

This race’s mouth wasn’t built for expression so Marquoz’s sardonic smile wasn’t evident to the other. “Oh, yes, I’d say so. I’d say that a catastrophe of major proportions is going to hit not only Hakazit but the whole of the Well World any minute now. I’m afraid I’m part of the cause this time, though. You see, I’m here on a mission.” He tried to sound really conspiratorial.

“A mission?” the psychologist echoed, looking more and more disturbed.

Marquoz nodded gravely. “Yes. You see, I’m here to save the universe in the name of truth and purity and justice.”

They kept him waiting for quite some time and he became very bored. There weren’t many people to talk to, and those who did come in or out were hardly the talkative type. He knew that somewhere in this building they were arguing, discussing, deciding his fate, and that he could do little about it, at least until they made their own moves. He wished terribly that he had a cigar. The Well World was supposed to change you, even make you comfortable in your new form—and it had. A rebirth is only a rebirth, he reflected glumly, but a good cigar is a smoke.

He tried a few of his old dance moves but soon discovered that those, too, were gone for good. Ballet ill-befitted armored tanks.

Finally someone came—not the same one, he decided, who had interviewed him. He was finding it easier to tell individuals apart now, more so as he went along, although he knew that non-Hakazit might have a problem in that direction.

“Thank you for waiting,” the newcomer said pleasantly, as if he had anywhere else to go. “The Supreme Lord will see you now. Follow me.”

He started and almost repeated the title aloud. The supreme lord? Well, no use getting your hopes up too far, Marquoz, he reminded himself. Around here that might be the term for chief palace janitor. These folks looked like they loved titles.

It was soon apparent, though, that this was a personage of considerable rank. Not only the smartly uniformed guards along the hall attested to this, but also the hidden traps, emplacements, and other nastiness that only his trained eye could make out signified rank and importance. Finally he entered a pair of huge, ornate steel doors and found himself in a barren hall. He looked around warily. Yes, television sensors, definitely, and a lot more—but no people. The steel grid he could barely make out under the flooring probably meant the possibilities of instant electrocution should he not meet with the unseen onlooker’s approval. He studied that great set of doors now sliding shut behind him. Some kind of detection system there, too, he noted. Probably x-ray, flouroscope, metal detector— the whole works. One thing beyond the power of this Supreme Lord was dead certain: Whoever and whatever he was, he was scared to death.

Finally he heard a click, as if a speaker had opened, and an electronically colored voice instructed, “You will go to the center of the room, under the large chandelier, and stay very still.” The voice held no menace, just a little suspicion. He did as instructed, and was told to move his tail a little this way or that, shift a bit here or there, until he was wondering if he was posing for a magazine layout. Finally the voice said, “That’s excellent. Now remain perfectly still. You will not be harmed.”

Suddenly he was engulfed in a series of colored beams, some of which felt oddly hot and irritating. That lasted only a few seconds, but it was damned uncomfortable. Even after they were cut off, he tingled uncomfortably.

“Now proceed to the door and enter the audience chamber,” the voice instructed. He looked around, realizing for the first time that an entire wall was silently sliding away. He shrugged and walked into the smaller chamber, which was spartanly furnished with a few tables, some glasses, and little else. The wall slid shut behind him, and he glanced back at it for a moment. Guards, booby traps, steel doors, wired rooms, sliding walls—what else?

What else proved to be a flickering in the air opposite him and the rapid fade-in of a figure much like himself, differing mainly in the fact that this newcomer wore a scarlet tunic and cape trimmed in expensive-looking exotic furs. The Supreme Lord, he knew, appearing as some sort of hologram. What kind of paranoia would sterilize somebody against germs when he was only going to meet a projection?

The Supreme Lord looked him over critically. “Well, I can tell you really are an Entry,” the Hakazit leader snorted. “None of the bowing and scraping or inbred social gestures.”

“For a solidograph?” Marquoz retorted.

The other laughed. “One of my predecessors had people salute his photograph, which was everywhere,” he responded. “He didn’t last long, needless to say.”