Jack Chalker - Shadow of the Well of Souls

Julian also lowered her voice to a high whisper. “Is it just me, or is it really difficult to tell which is which unless they speak? I mean, I’ve had the eeriest feeling that the same one I spoke to who was Tony, definitely Tony, was later talking like Anne Marie.”

“I know what you mean,” Mavra whispered back. “Actually, I’m sort of relieved that somebody else feels it, too. Maybe it’s just how absolutely identical they look, but it’s spooked me more times in the past few weeks than I can tell you.”

“That is what I mean. Is there something else about them I do not know but should?”

“Could be, but if so, I don’t know it, either. If it is more than mental confusion on our part, I’m absolutely positive that they aren’t aware of it themselves. I just don’t know. Every time I say that absolutely nothing can surprise me anymore, something does. How the two of them were processed is unprecedented; you and Lori make a different but equally unprecedented case. I don’t know what’s going on here, but until I get to the Well, I can’t find out for sure myself. Even the Well World seems odd. I always thought of it as static, too tightly managed to change radically, but there are many differences. Differences you wouldn’t notice from one time here, but it’s different. Some of the cultures are changed, a few radically so. There are differences in alliances, attitudes, you name it. Even the races are different. Not a lot in some cases, a great deal in one or two that I’ve seen, but there are changes from radical to subtle in all the ones I knew. It may be a normal thing, as with all worlds, but this is not a normal world, nor was it ever intended to be. I can’t help wondering if it feels the same way to Nathan, wherever he is.”

That brought up a point Julian was even more interested in. “This Nathan. Tell me about him.”

“He is—well, he cannot be described. Oh, I can tell you what he looks like, more or less, and from what Tony and Anne Marie have told me he’s changed very little. You’d like him. Most people do. There’s a kindness and gentleness in him that comes through, and he’s the loneliest creature in all the cosmos.”

“You were not just—associates. Or even teacher and pupil.”

“No.”

“You still speak of him with affection, yet this kind, wise, gentle man you describe is out to get you and maybe worse.”

Mavra sighed. “I think so. At least the evidence points that way, and it almost feels like his handiwork. You can be seduced by him in many ways, and at the time he means it, but deep down, where the soul resides, he’s also something else. Something almost—monstrous. It’s hidden most of the time, I think even from himself, but it’s always there, and in the end it’s always in control. You won’t see it much when he’s human, but inside the Well it’s much clearer. It is nothing less than the collective will of the ancient creatures that built this place and remade the universe as they pleased. He doesn’t even like it. Last time he fought like hell against it and wound up almost forced to do its will, kicking and screaming all the way. It is there, and I find it most significant that this time he didn’t even try to fight it. He’s surrendered to it, I think, and that alone makes him the most dangerous creature since the universe was born.”

“And yet—he gave you immortality and the key to this Well, this God-computer,” Julian noted.

“Yes. I’ve come up with many theories as to why, some more flattering to my ego than others, but it wasn’t until I came here once again that I found out the truth. He is two creatures—the kind, gentle, but tough and resourceful man I knew and described and this— thing. He’s been the man so long, it is more his true self than that hidden within him, but he knows he’s in a trap, an eternal trap. By taking me in there, by making me reset things last time, he dodged his own conflict while still doing what he was compelled to do. Now I think it was more than that. I don’t have this thing inside me. I was born to this form and grew up as you see me. I think his human half wants to be stopped. In the end, I think that was the idea all along. The next time, this time, I’d be there, too. Something inside him wants me to beat him and seize control. To stop his compulsive pattern. Maybe it’s because he became too much like us; maybe it’s simple logic. The stress of last time and its responsibilities brought it home to him that there was a flaw in the plans of those who created this place. They wanted a new, even greater race of true gods to evolve, but even they couldn’t foresee all the things that could happen in so vast a universe over so much time. So they left him as their guardian, to keep it on track, but they blew it. They didn’t just set it going, they made it a controlled experiment instead, all the variables taken into account.”

Julian saw where she was going, or thought she did, as much as this whole place made any sense. “You are saying that they overcontrolled. That by insisting on things developing as they designed, they gave it no opportunity to develop differently.”

“Well, they sure weren’t as godlike as they thought they were, that was for sure,” Mavra agreed. “They couldn’t conceive that being a race of true gods would become boring as hell after some great length of time. Their whole racial history was motivated by a belief that true and absolute perfection was possible. They could not face the fact that it wasn’t, and so they built this world, and the races that were successful here were sent out into the universe to see if they could attain that perfection. If anything loused up the experiment beyond repair, though, they had a mechanism for resetting things to start so absolute that everything would develop exactly the same, except that whatever caused the collapse would be factored out. Even you were probably there in the past creation, the one that I, many relative centuries in the future, wiped out and re-created. The same nations, the same races, the same people, being born, living, progressing, dying, over and over.”

“My God! You mean I’ve done this before? Or someone exactly like me?”

“No. I have no doubt there was a Julian Beard who lived your life and did all the same things—up to the point where you were sent to investigate the meteor. And a Lori who remained the first female full professor of astronomy at wherever she taught, and a Tony and Anne Marie who probably died in a suicide pact, and the others as well. Your coming here changed that for you and for the others. I believe Nathan has at one point or another changed a number of individuals’ lives. It is difficult to say this, but most individual lives, if removed or altered, won’t change the fabric very much so long as the number of them is kept very small. It is said that the Well Gates react to people’s wills and that no one who would mess up the master plan is ever transported here. I don’t know. But I do know it can’t continue. Reset after reset, the same people, the same races, the same lives over and over… In the end, if that keeps happening, then nobody really matters. Nobody at all. And if I fail this time, that’s what is going to keep going on again and again. A continuous wheel, a perpetual replaying of the same damned recording over and over until the universe dies. That’s what this is all about. That’s why you’re all here.”

“Sweet Jesus!” Julian gasped, thinking of the implications of what she was saying.

“What are you two girls whispering about?” Lori called to them.

Mavra Chang gave a crooked smile. “Us women are talking woman talk ,” she replied aloud.