03. Gods at the Well of Souls (40 page)

On the Avenue floor the colonel and Tony flanked Terry and the baby and watched  with curious apprehension as the great yellowish hex switched on just in front  of them. 

Terry seemed to think it was funny. She gave a kind of delighted giggle and went  right up to it, cradling the sleeping baby as she did so. She approached so  closely that she could see her reflection in it, as well as the ghostly  reflections of the pair behind her. 

"She's going to do it! She's actually going to do it!" Campos breathed. "I think she may try," the colonel agreed. At that very moment Mavra Chang,  hoping that ancient instincts and the Well's own aid hadn't failed her, crossed  over into the Avenue's space and tried to center herself as she felt the lift  give out. She was going forward still and reasonably straight, but there was no  way in hell she could climb or in any way pull out of a shallow but definite  forward dive. 

Ahead, she saw it. The door to the Well! Open! Waiting for her! If she could  only stay airborne long enough to make it! 

It was going to be very close, and ahead now she could see figures standing  there. A Cloptan? Could that be Campos? But who, or what, were the others? Jeez,  that almost looked like a human woman just at the door itself. She hoped she  wouldn't crash behind them; that would be the worst result of all, to fail so  very close to the goal. But if she didn't, she risked knocking down the woman. Well, the hell with it! Precious little she could do about it now! What the hell? Suddenly the two Dillians were there, and one of them had a big  lizard on her back. Get out of my way! Get out of my way! 

She gave a horrendous, panicked screech that echoed through the whole of the  Avenue. All of the ones inside heard it and turned, as much in curiosity as in  fear. Eyes widened as they saw the huge kite coming, and only Campos had the  presence of mind to realize what it must be. 

"It's Chang! Shoot her! Shoot her down!" 

Mavra Chang came over the Dillian's head, so close that Anne Marie's hair was  blown by her passing. The four Cloptans who'd just reached the floor themselves  drew their weapons when they heard Campos cry, but the thing was too low. Not  only did the Dillians block any decent shot or view, if they shot through them,  it would be too late. 

The colonel sent out a pseudopod that actually touched the kite, wrenching it a  bit, but even though he had hold of it, he was too close to the door and the  thing still had too much momentum for such an unthinking chance grab. The girl, having seen what was coming, moved to one side and crouched low so  that first the kite went through the door with Mavra Chang still tied under it,  perhaps a meter off the Avenue floor, then the colonel was dragged in, too,  still clutching it. 

Campos had hit the floor when she'd seen that the kite couldn't be slowed. As  she got up, she watched in amazement as the girl looked at the baby, smiled, and  then stepped into the hex opening and vanished. 

"No!" Campos cried, and lunged forward, and was herself swallowed up. Tony and Anne Marie looked at each other quizzically. 

"I don't care if you have to throw me, get me the hell in there!" Gus growled at  them. 

Anne Marie shrugged, and Tony shrugged, and the two galloped right at the  opening and went through. 

The four Cloptans were totally confused by all this, and finally it was Kuzi who  screamed, "I don't give a damn 'bout nothin' no more! I say we follow the boss!" The others nodded, guns still drawn, but as they ran for the door, they were  almost knocked down by two horses, or something very like them, running at full  gallop toward the Well access. First Lori, then Julian ran right into the thing  and disappeared amid some wild but inaccurate firing by the Cloptan guns. Finally Kuzi started for the door, and the others followed, all angry, confused,  but determined to go through and find out what the hell was on the other side  and why everybody else had disappeared and to where. Kuzi marched right up to  the still-outlined door and right into a solid wall that knocked her down and  sent the others sprawling in back of her. 

The door remained visible for about another minute and a half, and the Cloptans  tried just about everything from firing energy weapons and conventional pistols  at it to pounding on it, but it did no good. Then it winked out, and they were  left alone in the suddenly silent and very deserted Avenue. 

"It ain't fair!" Audlay cried. "Everybody got to go but us!" 

The Well 

at Entrance Hall 9 

THE COLONEL WAS TOTALLY DISORIENTED, AND IT TOOK HIM A few moments to disengage  from the kite which lay, crashed, nearby and reform himself into a practical  shape. 

He was most conscious of the silence, sudden and absolute, but he was too  experienced to dwell on it at the moment. Instead, he went over to the kite, put  out two strong armlike pseudopods, and turned it over. 

Its struts were splintered, and it was virtually broken into two pieces:  whatever had ridden in on it must have taken a terrible jolt. 

But there was nothing in the harness. It looked in fact as if the straps had  been burst, as if by something suddenly enlarging to a point where the straps  could no longer contain it. 

If so, where was it? 

He looked around and saw the door behind him, as transparent as glass. He saw  the girl check the baby, smile, and walk through into the chamber where he now  was, the invisible surface parting as if it were a thin curtain of water. The girl stopped, then looked around in wonder at the whole of the enormous  chamber. Then the baby moved and made a sound, and all her attention came back  to it. 

Now Campos, looking very comical, picked herself up and almost stormed through.  She spotted the colonel immediately, paying little mind to the girl. "So? Where is she?" Campos asked, eyeing the broken kite. Her voice echoed in  the vastness of the hall. 

"She's not here," the colonel responded, gesturing toward the underside. "I  can't explain it. It couldn't have been more than a matter of seconds, a half  minute at most, until I was able to regain my composure and check it. I still  had hold of it!" 

Campos reached into a pocket, took out another in the dwindling supplies of  Taluud's cigars, and lit it. "I don't like this. I say we go with the original  plan and all get the hell out of here before it closes on us!" The colonel looked around at the eerie, empty hallway with its incredibly high,  nearly endless ceiling and vast expanse, and said, "I tend to agree. I-" Suddenly, the Dillians burst through the door, Tony with Gus on her back. "Who the hell said you all could come?" Campos snapped at them. "And why bring  him?" It was clear she meant Gus. 

"Because he asked us to," Anne Marie answered matter-of-factly. She looked  around the great hall, as did Tony, and both gasped at the scale. It made all of  them seem like a speck of dirt on a nice, clean floor. 

"Well, everybody can turn around and get out right now!" Campos thundered. "All  of us!" 

"Lost your nerve? So soon?" Gus taunted, then frowned. "Hey! I don't hurt no  more! in fact-" 

He rolled off Tony's back and onto the smooth floor, then looked down at his  side. Almost on impulse, he tore off the bandages. Underneath there was nothing  but smooth, undisturbed skin. Not even a scar was visible. 

"Well, I'll be damned! I'm beginnin' to like this place!" he said wonderingly. Campos was growing increasingly nervous. "Well, I, for one, do not! We go! Now!"  She looked at the other Cloptans coming toward the door. "If we don't, it's  going to be an even bigger mess! About the only ones missing are-" At that moment Lori and Julian came into view behind the Cloptans; they could  see but not hear the Cloptan group scatter as they passed and saw the Cloptans  firing wildly, but then first Lori and then Julian were inside the hall, their  hooves abruptly clattering against the smooth floor. 

"I had to open my big mouth," Campos said grumpily. "All right! Out!" "Who's gonna make us?" Gus asked him. "You?" 

"Colonel, I am suddenly very weary of that one. He has been a burden for too  long," Campos said to the Leeming. "Will you please see to him?" The colonel moved close to Gus, who had no armor and no defense and was still  all too visible to everyone there. The Leeming hesitated just a moment, and Gus  asked him, some obvious nervousness in his voice, "Well, Colonel, you and I  gonna finally finish it here, huh?" 

"Gus, I don't really want to kill you," Lunderman said with apparent sincerity.  "Just take the girl by the hand and let us leave." 

"No, Colonel. I don't think so. For some reason, I got this funny feelin' that  the rules are different here." He didn't sound very confident, but he wasn't  going to move, that was clear. 

"Finish him, Colonel, and get out!" Campos screamed. 

"Sorry, Gus. You chose it yourself," the Leeming said, shooting out a pseudopod  and flowing a part of himself up and around Gus's midsection. 

Gus's tooth-filled mouth opened in amusement and obvious relief. "That tickles,  Colonel. If I'da known that was all there was to it, I wouldn'ta bothered to  waste a shot on you back in Agon." 

The colonel withdrew rapidly. 

"What is wrong?" Campos asked, sounding nervous herself now. 

"It didn't work, that's all. It was as if there was something, some very thin  barrier surrounding the whole of his skin. I could not get through it." "Leave him, then! Get the baby and the girl and let's go!" 

"I wouldn't be all too certain that leaving is an option, Campos," Tony  commented, gesturing at the door, where even now the other Cloptans were trying  as hard as they could to penetrate without success. 

Campos broke for the door, ran to it, and reached out as if to show that it was  just a thin piece of nothing. 

It was hard as a rock. 

"Sorry, Campos. I want you right where I can see you," came a voice unfamiliar  to most of them but very recognizable to others. It was a deep, melodic woman's  voice, and it came to each of them in his or her native language. "Mavra! Is that you?" Tony called, her voice echoing like all the rest in the  vast chamber. 

She gave a low, gusty laugh. "Yeah, it's me. I made it! Against all the odds, I  made it! Me! First in and in control. Hey, I didn't call the Well to get here;  it called me! When I got this close, I knew that whatever the odds, it would  provide whatever I needed to get inside. I got to admit I was doubting it myself  there, particularly at the last minute, but I'm here now. I'm not sure why all  of you are here, but it seems appropriate somehow." 

"Where are you?" Campos yelled at her, defiance still in her voice. "Why do you  hide yourself from us?" 

"Well, you know, when I get in here, I'm really not myself," Mavra responded. "I  guess I wanted a little time for you to settle down. But if you want to see  what's become of your little birdie, then so be it!" 

All the lights inside the chamber came on, illuminating them as if in daylight.  "Oh, my God!" Julian gasped. They all turned toward where she was looking and  had a similar reaction. 

The creature that was approaching them was over two meters tall and reminded  most of them of nothing so much as a huge beating heart, skin a sickly blue and  red, pulsing rhythmically, moving forward on six powerful-looking, sucker-laden,  squidlike tentacles. 

"I told you I wasn't myself in here," Mavra's voice came from somewhere within  it. "You see what I mean about the shock value. It's a pretty practical form,  really, for this sort of thing, although it's not exactly current fashion. This  is what they looked like, the people who built this place, at least at the end.  By then they'd advanced far enough that they didn't need all the handy stuff  evolution had provided earlier. I can't describe it to you. I'm doing a thousand  different exchanges with the Well right now, each perfectly clear, while I'm  using just the tiniest part of myself to hold this conversation with you. I'm  running and checking out math and diagnostics on a scale even I can't believe.  I'm also seeing everything the Well is sending me, and I have 360-degree sight  and absolute hearing through all the frequency ranges. And even with all that, I  couldn't begin to build something like this. Imagine a whole race with this kind  of capability. It's staggering." 

"You-you really were one of them, then?" Julian managed, amazed. Mavra laughed. "Oh, no. I couldn't imagine being one of them, or how they lived  and thought. The Well just recreates me in the image of its makers, so to speak,  because otherwise I couldn't work the controls here. I guess by their terms I'd  probably be a low-grade moron, but the capacity and speed of the brain are such  that I can handle the routine stuff." 

"Everything-the whole Well World-is maintained and controlled from here?" Gus  asked, losing his abhorrence of her form and becoming more the old reporter  again. 

Again Mavra laughed. "No, that's just one tiny little area here. A kind of  microcomputer, compared to the whole thing, that does relatively simple jobs.  The main job of this thing, if you must know, is keeping the universe running." It was so staggering a concept and so impossible to believe that nobody had a  follow-up on it for a while. Finally Gus said, "So God is a computer?" "You might say that. I get the idea that this isn't all of it, but there are  limits on what I can understand or do here. They didn't want their repair  personnel playing too fast and loose with the universe. We're just dumb  lunkheads. We make decisions that are basically moral ones, ones the Well isn't  programmed to make for itself. If the fabric of space and time itself is  damaged, the way it was the last and only other time I was in here, we have to  choose to push the button and reset the universe. It's a mean responsibility if  you think about it. I wiped out whole worlds of civilizations last time,  probably killed multiple trillions of beings from all sorts of races, not just  the ones on the Well World. They didn't think a machine should ever have to make  decisions like that, so they assigned somebody to do it. The closest translation  to the job would be 'Monitors,' but it often comes out as 'Watchers,' 'cause  that's really the job, too. We just exist, and watch things, and make sure they  don't fall apart, while waiting for the phone to ring."