Midnight at the Well of Souls

anything.

“Better get on,” he called back, “or you’ll lose me! I don’t know how to stop this thing!”

He was receding farther and farther, when Wu Julee stepped on. The other two immediately did likewise.

The speed wasn’t great, but it was faster than a man would walk briskly. A larger, broader platform loomed ahead before Brazil could see it. So he slid off onto it, stumbled, fell down, and rolled halfway across.

“Watch out! Platform coming up!” he warned. The others saw the platform and him in time to step off, although each one nearly lost his balance in the attempt.

“Apparently you’re supposed to be walking on the belt,” Vardia said. “That way you just walk onto the platform. See? There are actually several belts just before the platform, each one going at a slightly slower speed.”

The belt suddenly stopped.

“No doorway here,” Hain noted. “Shall we press on?”

“I suppose so—whoops!” Brazil exclaimed as he was about to step out. The other belt had started in the reverse direction!

“Looks like somebody’s coming to meet us,” Brazil said jokingly, a tone that didn’t match his inner feelings at all. Even so, he pulled and checked his pistol, noting that Hain was doing the same. Vardia, he saw, still held onto that sword.

They could see a giant figure coming toward them, and all stepped back to the rear edge of the platform. As the figure came closer, they could see that it was like nothing in the known universe.

Start with a chocolate brown human torso, incredibly broad, and ribbed so that the chest muscles seemed to form squarish plates. A head, oval-shaped, equally brown and hairless except for a huge white walrus mustache under a broad, flat nose. Six arms—in threes, spaced in rows down the torso—extremely muscular but attached, except for the shoulder pair, on ball-type sockets like the claws of a crab. Below, the torso melded into an enormous brown-and-yellow-striped series of scales leading to a huge, serpentine lower half, coiled, but obviously five or more meters in length when outstretched.

As the creature approached the platform, it eyed them with large, human-looking orbs punctuated with jet- black pupils. As it reached the edge of the platform, the lower left arm slapped the rail. The belt stopped just short of the platform. Then, for what seemed like forever, they just stared at each other—these four humans in ghostly white pressure suits and this creature of some incredibly alien spawning.

The alien finally pointed to them, then with its top pair of arms made a motion to remove their helmets. When it saw they made no move, it pointed again to them, then did what appeared to be a deep breathing exercise.

“I think it’s trying to tell us we can breathe in here,” Brazil said cautiously.

“Sure, he thinks so, but what does he breathe?” Hain pointed out.

“No choice,” Brazil replied. “We’re almost out of air anyway. May as well chance it.”

“I do,” came the unexpected voice of Wu Julee, and, with that, she unfastened her helmet—not without some trouble, for her coordination was shot. Finally the helmet fell to her feet, and she breathed in.

And continued breathing.

“Good enough for me,” said Vardia, and she and Brazil did the same. For a short time Hain continued to resist. Then, finally assured that everyone was still breathing, he removed his as well.

The air seemed a bit humid and perhaps a little rich in oxygen—they experienced a slight light-headedness that soon passed—but otherwise fine.

“Now what?” Hain asked.

“Damned if I know,” Brazil replied honestly. “How do you say hello to a giant walrus-snake?”

“Well I’ll be goddamned!” exclaimed the walrus-snake in perfect Confederation plain talk, “if it ain’t Nathan Brazil!”

ZONE (Enter Ghosts)

None of the group could have been more stunned than Nathan Brazil.

“Somehow I knew you’d wind up here,” the creature continued. “Sooner or later just about every old-timer does.”

“You know me?” Brazil asked incredulously.

The creature laughed. “Sure I do—and you know me, too, unless you’ve had one too many rejuves. I know, had the same problem myself when I dropped through the Well. Let’s just say that people really change around here, and let it go at that. If you’ll follow me, I’ll make you more comfortable and give you some orientation.” With that the creature uncoiled backward, then recoiled at a length about two meters back on the belt. “Step aboard,” it invited.

They looked at Brazil. “I don’t think we have much choice,” he told them. Then, noticing Hain’s pistol still drawn and pointed, he said to the fat man: “Put that popgun away until we find out the lay of the land. No use in getting popped yourself.”

They stepped onto the belt, which started not when they boarded but only after the rail was given another slap by their alien host. For the first time they could hear noise—giant blowers, it sounded like, echoing throughout the great hall. The belt itself gave off its own steady electric hum.

“Do you—eat what we eat?” Hain called out to the creature.

The alien chuckled. “No, not anymore, but, don’t worry, no cannibals around, either. At least, not Type Forty-ones like you. But I think we can round up some food—some real food, maybe the first in everybody’s except Nate’s whole life.”

They rode around three belts until they came to a platform much larger than the others. Here the walls curved and twisted away from the Well. Brazil could see why the configuration hadn’t been visible from afar.

Then they followed the snakeman—no mean trick, they found, with its enormous serpentine body—down a long corridor. They saw other corridors branching off, but they traveled over a thousand meters before they took one.

It led into a very large room set up something like a reception area. Comfortable, human-style chairs with plush cushions abounded, and a plastic wall covering was decorated with flowers. Here, such amenities seemed as incongruous as the alien would seem to their worlds. The creature had a sort of desk, semicircular in shape and seemingly form-fitted for him to coil comfortably behind. It held only a very ordinary-looking pen, a small pad of paper, and a seal—hexagonal of course—seemingly solid gold cast in clear plastic. The seal featured a snake coiled around a great cross, and it had a superscription around the edges in a script unfamiliar to any of them.

The snakeman lifted up a small part of his desk top to reveal an instrument panel underneath of unfamiliar design and purpose. A large red button was most prominent, and he pushed it.

“Had to reset the Well,” he explained. “Otherwise we could get some nonoxygen breathers in and they’d be hung up in storage until somebody remembered to press the button. Let me also punch in a food order for you— you always were a steak-and-baked-potato man, Nate. So that’s what it’ll be.” He punched some buttons in sequence on the console, then closed it. “Ten or fifteen minutes and the food will be here—and it’ll be cooked right, too. Medium, wasn’t it, Nate?”

“You seem to know me better than I do,” Brazil replied. “It’s been so long since I had a steak—maybe almost a century. I’d just about forgotten what one was. Where did you know me, anyway?”

A broad yet wistful smile crept across the creature’s face. “Can you remember an old bum named Serge Ortega, Nate? Long ago?”

Brazil thought, then suddenly it came to him. “Yeah, sure, I remember him—but that was maybe a hundred years ago or so. A free-lancer—polite name for a pirate,” he explained to the others. “A real rascal. Anything for a buck, was wanted almost everywhere—but a hell of a character. But you can’t be him—he was a little guy, from Hispaniola, before they went Com and changed the place to Peace and Freedom.”