Exiles at the Well of Souls

lot tougher, though. Any ideas?”

Trelig thought for a moment, eyes gleaming. The immediate threat over, he was beginning to enjoy this.

“Ask the machine if anyone Topside is aware of who escaped in the first ship,” he ordered.

“How could Obie know?” Yulin asked. “I mean, if he can’t even monitor communications. Why? What have you got in mind?”

“To get to my position, you have to think of all the angles,” the syndicate boss told him. “For example, either ship was capable of carrying at least half the guests, yet only Mavra Chang, Nikki Zinder, and the guard went. Why?”

Yulin thought a minute. “Because they sneaked out. Chang was paid to get the girl, not save everybody on Topside. The more people in a plot, the more chance for a foul-up.”

Trelig nodded. “Now you begin to see. There are a lot of them, and they barely know one another. I’d guess, too, that they have, at best, an uneasy relationship with the guards. All hell broke loose not long after the ship left. Want to bet some of them don’t even know a ship is gone?”

“The guards—” Yulin objected.

“Will know only that the ship is gone,” Trelig completed. “They also know that without the codes the second ship would be blasted by the orbiting sentries. Hell, they won’t remember who’s who or how many there are, you know that. The girl’s been more or less sealed off, and the guard—what’s one guard? Could have been killed down here. Getting the idea now?”

“You mean impersonate the ones who got away?” Yulin gasped.

Trelig’s expression looked impatient, impatient at this elementary step.

“Look,” he said. “We need a way to gain their confidence. Take them off guard. We need a way to get to those visitors as friends, convince them it’s us against the guards, get their help in taking the ship. We must get that ship away until they’ve died out here. We can’t do it alone.”

Yulin nodded. “I see,” he said, but he didn’t like it. He looked over at Gil Zinder. The older man was slumped, a vacant expression. He looked tired and defeated.

“What about him?” Ben Yulin asked, gesturing.

“He has to go with us,” Trelig answered quickly. “He knows how to operate Obie, and Obie will do anything for him. To leave him here would be like jumping into the pit out there.”

Yulin nodded, his mind already considering several things, all unpleasant. For one thing, he didn’t like the idea of going through the thing himself. Sending others through, that was fine—a tremendous feeling of godlike power. But himself—to become someone, something else. Trelig’s plan worried him, worried him as much as having to bring it about using his own special circuitry, revealing to Zinder—and to Trelig—his own mastery of the machine.

He looked again at Trelig. The councillor had a curious half-smile on his face and still held the pistol in his hand. He’d seen similar expressions on his boss when administering sponge to new victims and when ordering nasty executions.

“You want to go first?” he suggested hopefully.

That evil grin spread wider. “No, I don’t think so,” the syndicate boss replied acidly. “You can do it, then?”

Yulin nodded dully, still grasping at straws. He did not want to surrender to permanent second-class status.

“Then we’ll do it this way,” the big man continued. “First, you will try to find out the identity of the guard. If Obie can keep track of people, he should know who it was. Then one of us becomes the guard—minus the sponge addiction, make sure of that!—and one becomes Nikki Zinder and the third becomes Mavra Chang. All preprogrammed in noninterruptable sequence, of course.” He shrugged disarmingly. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, you understand. It’s just that you get on top by doing the unthinkable and you stay on top by thinking the unthinkable.”

Yulin sighed, surrendering. The better part of valor and all that, he decided.

“Who do you want to be?” he asked.

“We have to think this through, and time’s pressing,” Trelig replied. “The old man, there—well, we’ll need some sort of mind-bind, of course. Make him his own flesh and blood. Behavior patterns will also have to be programmed in,” he reminded the younger scientist. “We don’t want any slip-ups. We will not just have to look like these people, but walk like them, talk like them, almost think like them, while remaining ourselves inside. The odds are the guard’s one of the supervisors, and they’re all sexual foul-ups. I’m hermaphroditic, so that shouldn’t pose a problem. That makes you Mavra Chang.”

“I’d rather not be a woman,” Yulin protested weakly.

“You won’t mind when you’ve been through the disk,” Trelig retorted. “Now, let’s get the instructions letter- perfect, so everything’s right and we get nothing funny added or subtracted by the machine. And—when you’re doing it, Ben, you will show me how.”

Yulin started to protest, then decided there was no point to it. He turned to the console.

“Obie? Do you have the identity of the guard who escaped with Mavra Chang?” he asked.

“It was Renard,” replied the computer. “I have no reading for him and he did not leave Topside for here. A few died Topside, though, so a slight chance exists that it was not.”

“It has to be,” Trelig decided. “He was one of the girl’s guards. Everything fits. I’ll take a chance on it.”

Ben Yulin nodded. “I don’t think it’d be a good idea if the Doc, here, knows the access,” he pointed out.

Trelig agreed, turned, and shot a short stun beam at the helpless Zinder, who collapsed in a heap. “Five minutes,” Trelig warned his associate. “No more.”

Ben Yulin nodded, then turned back to the console. He didn’t like doing what he was about to do, and in front of the one man who could later use it against him, but a double cross at this point had too many risks to be worth it.

“Obie?” he called.

“Yes, Ben?” the computer responded.

He punched some buttons on his keyboard, acutely aware of Antor Trelig’s steady gaze at the combinations.

“Unnumbered transaction,” he told the machine. “File in aux storage under my key only.”

“What?” The computer seemed slightly startled, then, as access to the sealed-off sections became open to him, Obie realized what was going on.

“How many times have you used this, Ben?” Obie asked, marveling as always at the discovery of a part of himself he’d not known was there.

“Not often,” Yulin responded casually. “Now, Obie, I want you to listen carefully. You will carry out my instructions to the letter, neither adding nor subtracting anything on your own. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Ben,” Obie replied resignedly.

Yulin paused a moment to choose his words, conscious of the dangers in giving Obie an opening, and also of Trelig’s ready pistol. There were tiny beads of sweat on his forehead.

“Three transactions, in sequence, which must be completed before any additional instructions may be given you,” he said cautiously. “One, Dr. Gilgam Zinder, outward form to be that of the last coding of Nikki Zinder minus the sponge presence. Memory will remain Gil Zinder’s, with all attendant knowledge and skills, but subject will be unable to transmit this fact or information except on instruction from Antor Trelig or myself. Otherwise, subject will possess all behavior patterns of the frame of reference, including walk, emotive reactions, and speech, and all other characteristics to render subject indistinguishable from the frame of reference. Subject will further be unable to convey by any means the true identities of Antor Trelig or myself. Clear?”

“I understand, Ben,” Obie replied.

Yulin nodded, certain he had completed that step correctly. “Two. Subject Antor Trelig. Subject is to be physically fitted to the last coding of the guard Renard, minus the sponge addiction. Subject will be provided with all behavior modes of the frame of reference, including walk, emotive reactions, speech, and all other characteristics to render subject indistinguishable from the frame of reference. However, memory will remain Antor Trelig’s, with all attendant knowledge and skills, able to call upon his true self at any point.” Yulin suddenly