Exiles at the Well of Souls

they reached the little house that it was some sort of high-speed elevator.

Trelig selected a smooth, bare area and placed his hand, palm down, on it. His fingers tapped out a pattern too rapid for any of them to catch, and, suddenly, the wall faded, showing the interior of a large high-speed car. There were eight seats with head rests and belts in it.

“We will have to make two trips,” Trelig apologized. “The first eight of you, here, please take the seats and fasten the straps. The descent is extremely fast and very uncomfortable, I’m afraid, although some gravity compensation has been built in to minimize the effect. Once the first group is away, the smaller maintenance car can be used for the rest of us. Don’t worry—there’s a two-level exit on Underside.”

Mavra was in the first group. She took a chair, relaxed, and fastened the straps. The door, actually some sort of force field with a wall projection over it, solidified again, and they felt themselves dropping quickly.

The trip was uncomfortable; small plastic bags had been provided for the two or three who needed them. Mavra was amazed at the little car system; she’d heard of such a thing but had never seen one, let alone been in one. They had been designed for a few of the planets whose surfaces were uninhabitable but where, for one reason or another, life at levels below the surface was possible.

It took over ten minutes to reach the other end, and, even at that, they traveled at a tremendous rate of speed. Finally they felt the car slow, and then crawl to a stop. They waited three or four minutes, nervously wondering if they were stuck. Then they heard the sound of something above them, and, less than a minute later, the force field and solid projection in front of them dissolved, and Trelig was there, smiling.

“Sorry about the delay. I should have warned you,” he said cheerily, sounding not the least bit sorry.

They unbuckled their belts and got up, stretching, and walked out into a narrow corridor. They followed their host down the steel-clad pathway. It turned and ended on a large riveted metal platform with railings all around. Ahead of them was an enormous shaft that seemed to have no top or bottom. The size of the round gap dwarfed them to insignificance, and they gasped in awe. All around the shaft were panels, countless modules with even, small gaps between.

A long bridge led from the platform across the shaft; a wide bridge of the same metal flooring as the platform but with 150-centimeter sidewalls of a plastic substance. They realized that they were somewhere in the bowels of a great machine.

Trelig stopped in the middle of the bridge, and had the party gather around him. Everywhere, were the hum and crackle of active circuits opening and closing, echoing off the shaft walls. He had to raise his voice to be heard.

“This shaft runs from a point about halfway between the theoretical equator and the South Pole of New Pompeii on the rocky and unprotected surface, almost to the core of the planetoid,” he shouted. “It is fusion powered, indirectly, through the solar and plasma network. For almost twenty kilometers in all directions around us is the computer—self-aware of course—which Dr. Zinder calls Obie. Into it we have been pouring all of the data at our command. Come.”

He continued the dizzying walk, past a shining copper-colored pole that ran lengthwise through the center of the shaft and seemed to disappear in both directions, and onto a platform identical to the first one. To their left a window opened on a large room filled with myriad apparently inactive electronic instruments. A door like that of an airlock stood directly before them. When it slid open with a hiss, there did in fact seem to be a slight change in pressure and temperature. They entered and found themselves in what seemed a miniature duplicate of the larger machine. A balcony and several control consoles surrounded an amphitheaterlike floor below, on which was a small, round, silvery disk. Overhead, what looked like a twenty-sided mirror with a small projecting device in its center was attached to a mobile arm that was suspended from a mount on one wall.

“The original Obie and the original device,” Trelig explained. “Obie is attached, of course, to the larger one, which is just nearing completion. Come! Fan out around the rail here so that you may all view the disk below.” He glanced over, and they saw a young, good-looking man dressed in a shiny lab tech uniform sitting at the far control panel.

“Citizens, that is Dr. Ben Yulin, operations manager here,” Trelig told them. “Now, if you’ll look below, you’ll see two of my associates bringing a third out and placing her on the disk.”

They looked down and saw two of the women Mavra recognized as guards gently leading a frightened girl of no more than fourteen or fifteen toward the disk.

“The girl you see is a victim of the addiction known as sponge,” Trelig explained. “Already the drug has rotted her mind so that she is no more than a childlike idiot. I have many such poor unfortunates here; they will soon be cured. Now, watch and be quiet. Dr. Yulin will take it from here.”

Ben Yulin flipped a couple of switches on his console. They heard the crackle of some sort of speaker and could hear his cool, pleasant baritone clearly.

“Good morning, Obie.”

“Good morning, Ben,” came Obie’s pleasing tenor—no longer coming from the console transceiver, but seemingly from the air around them. It was not a big voice or a threatening one, but it seemed to be all around them, every place and no place in particular.

“Index subject file code number 97-349826,” Yulin intoned. “Record on my mark— now!”

The mirror swung into place over the terrified girl, and the blue light shone from it, enveloping her. They saw the girl freeze, flicker, and wink out.

Trelig grinned and turned to them. “Well, what do you think of that?”

“I’ve seen holographic projectors before,” a little man said skeptically.

“Either that or you’ve disintegrated her,” another put in.

Trelig shrugged. “Well, what will convince you?” He brightened. “I know! Tell me, name a creature of the common forms! Anybody!”

They all remained silent for a second. Finally, someone called out, “A cow.”

Trelig nodded. “A cow it is. Did you hear, Ben?”

“Very good, Councillor,” Yulin responded through the speaker. His voice changed tone, and he called to his computer.

“Index RY-765197-AF, Obie,” he intoned.

“I know what a cow is, Ben,” Obie scolded gently, and Yulin chuckled.

“All right, then, Obie,” he replied, “I’ll leave it to you. Nothing dangerous, though. Docile, huh?”

“All right, Ben. I’ll do my best,” the computer assured him, and the mirror swung out once again, the blue light shone, and something flickered in.

“Magician’s tricks,” scowled the red-bearded man. “Woman into cow.”

But what materialized below was not a cow; it was a centauroid: a cow’s body—hooves, tail, and udder— and the girl’s torso and head, unchanged except that her ears stuck out as a cow’s ears would, and from the area around her temples grew two small, curved horns.

“Let’s go down and examine her,” Antor Trelig suggested, and they all moved single-file down a small staircase nearby.

The cow-woman stood there, looking blankly forward, hardly paying them notice.

“Go ahead!” Trelig urged. “Touch her. Examine her as closely as you want!”

They did, and the girl paid them little notice except when one observer touched the udder nipples, provoking a mild and annoying kick that missed its target.

“Good lord! Monstrous!” grumbled one councillor. Others were stunned.

Trelig then led them back up to the balcony, explaining that the viewing area had invisible shielding that was necessary to screen out the effects of the small mirror.

He nodded to Ben, who gave another series of instructions to Obie. The girl-cow vanished and was replaced, only moments later, by the girl. Again they went down, looked at her, found her dull-eyed and fearful but otherwise perfectly human—and unmistakably the same girl.

“I still don’t believe it,” the bearded man uttered. “Some kind of monstrous genetic cloning, yes, but that’s all.”

Trelig smiled. “Would you like to try, Citizen Rumney?” he prodded. “I assure you that we will not harm you in any way. Or, if not you, then anyone else?”

“I’ll try,” the red-bearded man replied. The girl was guided down from the disk and taken out a door below.