Exiles at the Well of Souls

computer-controlled ship so that no one could get a large quantity and rebel against Trelig. That piece of information was interesting. So the sponge was brought in on a little scout, made for four passengers if need be. The guard’s description suggested that it was a Model 17 Cruiser, a craft Mavra knew well. It would be perfect.

She took the guard’s pistol and shoulder belt after determining that the guards themselves checked their equipment in and out of a small guard locker. She suggested to the guard that the pistol and belt were still in place, so the gun would not be missed. It would be checked back in and perhaps not discovered gone for days. Mavra smiled; she was armed again, and luck was breaking her way due to Trelig’s conceit about his security.

“Where is Dr. Zinder?” she asked the guard, after giving her another jolt of the hypno.

“He is on Underside,” the guard replied. Of the forty-one people, one was Trelig, one was Nikki, one was Zinder, twelve were guards, five were assistants to Zinder, and the other twenty-one were slaves of one kind or another. That was enough to tell Mavra Chang that she hadn’t a prayer of getting Zinder himself out, but a good chance at Nikki. Ten million wasn’t “anything,” but it sure beat nothing.

After getting the guard routine from the hypnoed woman, Mavra told her to forget about her totally and resume her normal routine. The guard did so without further comment, and treated Mavra as if she weren’t there.

It took another forty minutes to return to the main building, avoid the cameras, and get back to her room. The strips were still in place on the door, and, after closing and relocking it, she carefully removed them. The holographic memory projector was still in place, so the camera was still showing an empty, quiet room with a meditating figure on the bed.

Tidying up, removing the blackface, reassembling the boot, and reloading and reforming the belt took more time. As soon as she finished, she edged over next to the projector on the bed, careful not to jiggle it too much, until she was next to it, almost touching it. Infinite patience is the best tool of a burglar.

Assuming the correct position, she took the little device, quickly palmed it, and slipped it out of sight when the camera was directed elsewhere. When the camera swung back, only a few seconds later, it photographed the same nude woman in the same meditating position. Only a fanatical observer, which no guard was—watching sleeping people was an incredibly dull job—would have realized that the figure was seated in a slightly different position at a slightly different angle.

Suddenly her breathing became more rapid, and then she stirred, flexed, stretched out on the bed, and turned over. Her right hand dangled just over the edge of the bed for a second, as she dropped an unseen object onto black cloth.

And only then did Mavra Chang sleep.

* * *

If anyone knew of her roamings, they did not betray that fact the next morning. The major dispute was over Trelig’s requirement that they all take showers and then don light, filmy garments and sandals. He apologized and offered to launder their own garments during their trip, but it was clear what he was doing. He could both examine their garments and make certain that little if anything was taken to Underside.

Mavra was confident that the shielding in her boots and in the belt would be sufficient to escape detection; however, if anyone did try to open them, there would follow a hard-to-explain and quite messy violent explosion. She doubted if Trelig’s people would go that far because of the defense mechanism risk; but her tools were to be denied her when they would do the most good. The pistol was not particularly hard to conceal; she’d hidden it against a hall cornice affixed with putty outside the room.

She saw the surprised expressions when she entered the hall for breakfast; without the boots she was even tinier than usual. They all noticed, but no one was tactless enough to mention the subject.

After eating, Trelig addressed them. “Citizens, distinguished guests all, may I now explain why you were all invited here, and what you will see today,” he began. “First, let me refresh your memories a bit. As you all no doubt know, we are not the first civilization to have colonized worlds far beyond the one of our civilization’s birth. The artifacts of that earlier, nonhuman civilization have been found on countless dead worlds. Dr. Jared Markov discovered them, and so we call them the Markovians.”

“We know all that, Antor,” snapped one councillor. “Get to the point.”

Trelig gave a killing glance, then continued. “Now, the artifacts they left us when they died out or disappeared over a million years ago consist entirely of ruined structures—buildings. No furniture, no machinery, no utensils, no objects of art, nothing. Why? Generations of scholars have mused on this, to no avail. It seemed as insolvable a mystery as why they died out. But one scientist, a Tregallian physicist, had an idea.”

They stirred slightly, nodding. They all knew who he meant.

“Dr. Gilgam Valdez Zinder,” Trelig went on, “thought that our failure to solve the Markovian riddle stemmed from our too orthodox view of the universe. First, he postulated the concept that the ancient Markovians did not need artifacts because, somehow, they could convert energy into matter merely by willing it. We know that deep beneath the crust of each Markovian world was a semiorganic computer. Zinder believed the Markovians were directly, mentally linked to their computers, which were, in turn, programmed to turn any wish into reality. So he set to work on duplicating this process.”

There were murmurings now. Trelig was confirming the rumors that had brought them here, rumors too horrible to believe.

“From this point, Zinder went on to postulate that the raw material they used for this energy-to-matter conversion was a basic, primal energy, the only truly stable component in the universe,” Trelig explained. “He spent his life searching for this primal energy, proving its existence. He worked out its probable nature mathematically, designing his own self-aware computer to help him in this end.”

“And he found it,” a woman who looked no more than a child but was an elder of a Com race interjected.

Trelig nodded. “He did. And, in the process, produced a set of corollaries that are staggering in their implications. If all matter, all reality, is merely a converted form of this energy, then where did we come from?” He sat back, enjoying the expressions on the faces of those who were able to grasp the implications.

“You’re saying the Markovians created us?” the red-bearded man called out. “I find that hard to accept. The Markovians have been dead for a million years. If their artifacts died with their brains, why didn’t we die, too?”

Trelig’s face showed surprise. “A very good question,” he noted. “One with no clear answer, though. Dr. Zinder and his associates believe that some sort of massive central computer was established, somewhere out there among the other galaxies, that keeps us stable. But its location is neither here nor there, since it is almost certainly beyond our capability to get there in the foreseeable future, even if we knew where ‘there’ is. The important fact is that such a computer does exist, or we wouldn’t be here. Of course, it allows, shall we say, local variations in the pattern. If it didn’t, then the local Markovian worlds would never have been able to use their own godlike computers. And, what they could do Dr. Zinder has discovered how to do! It is the ultimate proof of his theories.”

Several in the audience looked uneasy; there were a couple of nervous coughs.

“Do you mean, then, that you have built your own version of this god machine?” Mavra Chang asked.

Trelig smiled. “Dr. Zinder and his associate, Ben Yulin, the child of a close associate of mine from Al Wadda, have built a miniature version of it, yes. I persuaded them to move their computer here, to New Pompeii, where it would not fall into the wrong hands. The timing was perfect. They were just completing the hookup of a much, much larger version of the machine as well.” He stopped a moment, frowning slightly, but his overall expression was playful.

“Come with me,” he invited them, rising from the table. “I see disbelief and skepticism. Let us go to Underside and I’ll show you.”

They all got up and followed him out the entrance, across the grassy plaza, and toward a small structure that looked something like a solid marble gazebo, off by itself to the left.

Although its housing was built to blend with the Neo-Grecian and Roman architecture, it was clear when