Exiles at the Well of Souls

Although physically adult, Nikki Zinder was emotionally very much a child and acted it. Too much, her father knew. She was overly protected here, cut off from people her own age, and spoiled rotten from an early age by her father’s inability to discipline her and everybody’s knowledge that she was the boss’s kid. Even her slight lisp was childish; often she seemed more like a pouting five-year-old than the almost fourteen she really was.

But, she was his, and he couldn’t bear to send her away, to put her in a fancy school or project far away from him. His had been a lonely life of figures and great machines; at fifty-seven he had had clone samples taken, but he wanted his own. Finally he had paid a project assistant back on Voltaire to give him a baby. She had been the first one willing to do it, just to see what the experience was like. She was a behavioral psychologist, and Zinder had had her assigned to his project until Nikki was delivered, then he paid her off, and she left.

Nikki looked like her mother, but that didn’t matter. She was his, and during the most trying periods of the project she had kept him from blowing his brains out. She was immature as hell. But he really didn’t want her to grow up. Nikki Zinder suddenly heard a woman cough, and she bounded up to the rail and looked down on the centaur.

“Oh, wow!” she exclaimed. “Hi! Zetta!”

The centaur looked up at the girl and smiled indulgently. “Hello, Nikki,” she responded automatically.

Both Zinder and Yulin were fascinated.

“Nikki, you don’t see anything, er, odd about Zetta?” her father prompted.

The girl shrugged. “Nope. Why? Should I?”

Ben Yulin’s mouth dropped open in honest surprise.

* * *

Over a week passed during which they noted various reactions to the new creature. Just about everyone at the center saw nothing unusual in Zetta Halib being half horse; that is, nothing newly unusual. They knew, of course, that she was a volunteer for the biological scientists attempting to adapt people to different forms. They knew she had been manipulated after conception to grow up as she had, and they remembered when she had arrived and recalled the initial reactions.

Everything checked out, of course, except for the fact that none of what they remembered had actually happened. Reality needed to explain her and had adjusted accordingly. Only two men knew the truth.

Ben Yulin puffed on his curved pipe in his boss’s office, rocking lazily back and forth in a spindly chair.

“So now we know,” he said at last.

The older scientist nodded and sipped some tea. “Yes, we do. We can take any individual, anything, and we can remake it if we can come up with the data Obie needs to make the transformation properly, and nobody will even know. Poor Zetta! A one-of-a-kind freak with a full history and memory of growing up that way. We’ll have to change her back, of course.”

“Of course,” Yulin agreed. “But let’s let her keep her good looks. She’s earned that much from us.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Zinder responded as if that meant little to him.

“Something is still bothering you,” Yulin noted.

Gil Zinder sighed. “Yes, quite a lot. This is a terrible power, you know, to play god like this. And I don’t like the idea of the Council getting control of it.”

Yulin looked surprised. “Well, they didn’t blow all this money for nothing. Hell! We’ve done it, Gil! We’ve knocked conventional science into a cocked hat! We’ve shown them how easily the rules of the game can be changed!”

The older scientist nodded. “True, true. We’ll win all sorts of awards and all that. But—well, you know what’s the real problem. Three hundred seventy-four human worlds. A lot. But all but a handful are Comworlds, conformist fantasies. Think what the rulers of those worlds could do to those people with a device like ours!”

Yulin sighed. “Look, Gil, our way is no different than the crude methods they use now—biological manipulation, genetic engineering, all those things. Maybe things won’t be so bad after all. Maybe our discovery will make things better. Hell, it can’t make them much worse.”

“That’s true,” Zinder acknowledged. “But the power, Ben! And,” he paused, turned in his swivel chair to face the younger scientist, “there’s something else.”

“Huh? What?” Yulin responded.

“The implications,” the physicist said worriedly. “Ben, if all this, this chair, this office, you, me—if we’re all just stable equations, matter created out of pure energy and somehow maintained as we are, what’s keeping us stable? Is there a cosmic Obie someplace, keeping the primary equations balanced?”

Ben Yulin chuckled. “I suppose there is, one way or another. God is nothing but a giant Obie. I kind of like that thought.”

Zinder didn’t find it amusing in the least. “I think there is, Ben. There must be, if everything else is correct. Even Obie agrees. But who built it? Who maintains it?”

“Well, if you want to be serious about it, I suppose the Markovians built it. For all I know they still maintain it,” Yulin responded.

Zinder considered that. “The Markovians. Yes, it must be. We’ve found their dead worlds and deserted cities all over. They must have done all this on a giant scale, Ben!” He was suddenly excited. “Of course! That’s why they never found any artifacts in those old ruins! Whatever they wanted, they just told their version of Obie and there it was!”

Yulin nodded approvingly. “You might be right.”

“But, Ben!” Zinder kept on. “All the worlds of theirs we’ve found! They’re all dead!” He sat back in his chair, voice and manner calming a bit, but his tone still agitated. “I wonder—if they couldn’t handle it, how can we?” He looked straight at the other scientist. “Ben, are we producing the means to wipe out the human race?”

Yulin shook his head slowly from side to side. “I don’t know, Gil. I hope not. But we haven’t much choice. Besides,” he smiled, tone lighter, “no matter what, we’ll all be long gone before that point is reached.”

“I wish I had your confidence, Ben,” Zinder said nervously. “Well, you’re right on one thing. We have to deliver. Will you set it up?”

Ben walked over and patted the old man on the shoulder. “Of course I’ll make the arrangements,” he assured the other. “Look, you worry too much, Gil. Trust me.” His tone changed, became more self-confident. The other didn’t notice. “Yes, I’ll set it up.”

* * *

In the old days there were nations, and they reached for space. And then there were planetary colonies of these nations, and they all had differing philosophies and life-styles. There followed wars, raids, engineered revolutions. Man expanded, the nations vanished, leaving behind only their philosophies for their heirs. Finally, rulers sick of it all got together and formed a trust. All competing ideologies were to be given free reign until one dominated a planet, but never by force and never with help from outside. Each planet would choose a member to sit on a great Council of Worlds and cast its vote.

The great weapons of terror and destruction were placed under seal and guarded by a tough force born and bred to the service—a force that could not itself use those weapons without authority. Such authority could come only from a majority of the 374 Council members, each of whom would have to appear personally to open his share of the seals.

Councillor Antor Trelig was one such guardian and a strong political force on the governing body. Technically, he represented the People’s Party of New Outlook, a Comworld where people were bred to obedience and to function perfectly in their jobs. Actually, he represented a lot more, for he had a great deal of influence over other Council members as well. Some said he was ambitious enough to dream of one day controlling a majority, of holding in his hands the keys to the weapons that could wreck worlds.

He was a big man, around 190 centimeters tall, who had broad shoulders and a strong hooknose set atop a squared jaw. He looked as though made of granite. But he didn’t look like the power-mad villain many painted him as being, not standing there, fascinated, watching two men and a machine unmake a centaur.