Twilight at the Well of Souls

the more I realized that you were the best qualified person I knew to take over—the best qualified, but, almost for that reason, I can’t do it. I can’t condemn you to that loneliness. I just can’t do it to someone else, damn it!”

She looked at the strange shining creature with renewed interest and curiosity, almost wonder. “You’ve never really lost it, have you? Not deep down, you haven’t. You’re very tired, Nathan, and you’ve been horribly hurt by all this, but, deep down inside there’s still a fire going in that spirit of yours. You still believe in something, in your old ideals. You still believe it’s possible for people to reach God, a God you very much believe in even if you’re not God himself.”

“I’ll only tell you this,” he responded seriously. “There is something beyond all that we can see, all that we know, something that survives beyond the Well of Souls. Perhaps it’s in another parallel universe, perhaps it’s all around us but unseen, like the Markovian primal energy. But it’s there, Mavra, it’s there. Three Gedemondans laid hands on us and our minds went into those of beasts. That’s impossible under even these rules, Mavra. What got transferred? Whatever it was, it’s the only important part of either of us, and it was absolute enough that the Well has twice recognized me as who I am despite both times being in the body of an animal. Can you quantify it, identify it, even here, inside the Well, in Markovian form? Can you see it, see it shining brightly, as I see it in you? What is it? The soul? What’s ‘soul’ but a term for describing that which we can now recognize, and which others throughout time have recognized occasionally but never been able to pin down? What rules do these parts of us obey? Do they die when our bodies die, snuffed out like candles? Ours certainly didn’t. Your body is dead, mine probably is. It makes no difference.”

“Do you know the answer?” she asked him.

“Of course not, for I have never died,” he replied. “And it looks like another long time before I will.”

She hesitated before going on. “Nathan, if you want to go, I’ll do it. I’ll take the responsibility from you. You’re free as of this moment. For the first time in your life, Nathan, you’re free.”

He took that in for a brief moment, then answered, “No, Mavra. I am not free. I’m not free because you were right a moment ago. God help me, I still care!” He paused. “Shall we pull the plug?”

“We must,” she responded. “You know it.”

“Before we do, I’m going to try something that worked last time,” he told her. “It’s obvious there are a lot more races than hexes. We might be able to salvage most of them, at least to the same degree that we’re doing here. Some won’t survive, of course, either because of the damage or because of miscalculation, the laws of physics, or a lot of other things, but there’s a chance. It worked last time. It might work again, particularly for those races with some space capabilities.”

They went back to the control room and he made a number of adjustments. She didn’t realize what he was doing at first, but as she watched she understood.

“We can’t do it without souls, Mavra,” he reminded her. “We got to have something to work with.”

Slowly, out in space, across the limitless reaches of the universe, the Well Gates came on—came on and, more, started to move. Great, yawning, hexagonal shapes of blackness lifted off their native worlds, lifted off and rose into space. They had but two dimensions, discontinuities in the fabric of reality, for their depth was here, at the other end, at the Well Gate.

“Timing will be critical,” he reminded her. “I’m setting them up as best I can so they’ll hit equally, but I can only stall this end for a few seconds at best. When I give you the word, you must pull the plug. Understand?”

She understood now. Understood a great deal. Understood how so many races could have survived this before, understood how a number of races could wind up mixed on the same world. It would be impossible to achieve perfection.

The gates moved into their respective positions. Not all could be used, of course, but there would be enough, enough, if all went right. He would still lose some races, still lose some whole civilizalions and ideas forever, but he could save a great many of them.

After a while—who knew or could tell if it was a few minutes, a few centuries?—he said, “All in position. Best I could do. We’re going to lose a few thousand civilizations, damn it, but that’s better than all of them. I’m moving in, now, moving on the nearest inhabited planet in each region.”

On a million different worlds, a million races were startled by the small yawning blackness that descended on their worlds out of the sky, a blackness that was complete, absolute, and resisted any attempts to harm it, to blow it up. There was panic, then, only heightened by what the yawning hexagon did once it touched their worlds. It started to move, rapidly, almost impossibly fast, too fast to do anything about, swallowing people wholesale.

“They’re in! Holy shit! What a headache I’m getting! Can’t hold off the Well Gate much longer. Damn it! Not enough! Not every race got enough through! Shit! I’ll have to let go. For God’s sake, Mavra, pull the plug now!”

A thought, an impulse, a single exact, deliberate mathematical command went out. She did it, she, herself, alone. She killed them all—all except the ones on the Well World and the ones caught in transit.

Across the night side of the Well World, people would look up at the stars and see a wondrous sight. The great, brilliant, wondrous starfield that was the night sky simply flickered, then winked out. There was only blackness where it had been, a blackness as absolute as anyone had ever seen.

It was reported from one end of the Well World to the other, told and retold, and the nervous panic began.

Brazil has reached the Well of Souls. The stars have gone out.

Some died by their own hand, some went mad, but most simply watched and waited and stared at the horrible empty sky, the lonely, desolate nothingness that surrounded them and seemed almost to close in on them.

At both North and South Zone, the Well Gate ceased to operate. Seals that none had ever known were there slid automatically into place, suddenly and abruptly. Many were trapped inside and could only wait it out. Those who knew quickly threw up additional guards around their hex Zone Gates lest anyone be lost. For you would not go to Zone through those gates, not while the Well Gates were shut. They were being diverted, the Well Gate itself reversed. Anyone going through a Zone Gate now would never see the Well World again.

But also, those in the various hexes, North and South, particularly those who ruled, knew they had a deadline, that they had to provide roughly half, their populations for that Gate, and that if they did not, the Gates would move and do it for them, indiscriminately. The message was now out, automatically, to all the creatures of the Well World, a message that, until this day, they had believed a meaningless, mythical, or archaic phrase, but a message they all now well understood.

It was Midnight at the Well of Souls.

The Well of Souls

“I’m surprised there’s still air and light in here,” Mavra commented.

“What did you think—that they built this thing in a vacuum?” he retorted. “In order to construct the Well they had to have light and heat and air. It comes with the rest of the planet. But the computer is definitely shut down now, and so are the Well Gates. Nobody in or out. The Zone Gates now take you directly to the Well Gate, one way.”

“How many people do you think we trapped in there?”

He laughed. “Mostly Olympians, I’d say, who know what’s going on, and maybe some odd guards, patrols, and the like. Maybe even a couple of ambassadors, huh? Scared shitless at the moment, probably.”

“Isn’t it going to get awfully crowded in there when the others start going through the Zone Gates?” she asked him. “I mean, the Well Gates are big places, but they couldn’t possibly hold the huge numbers going through.”

“They won’t have to,” he assured her. “They’ll be hung up, like those billions we kidnapped a few minutes ago, waiting until there’s an outlet. It’s pretty confusing, I admit, but, damn it, the system was set up to populate one world at a time. It was never designed to do what we’re doing to it. That’s why we’ll get mostly the population we want on the world we want, but some of the others will get through as well. That’s how half the creatures in Old Earth’s mythologies got in there to begin with. Don’t worry. They’re not properly