Exiles at the Well of Souls

He sighed. “Well, brain cells are the first to go. Each time one of these little attacks comes on—and each one gets worse—you lose some of your body cells, and some of your brain cells. It’s kind of a slowdown rather than a death. I’ve seen it in others. You still have all your memory, but you become less and less able to use it. Thought processes, reasoning, all become harder and harder to do. The barely possible today becomes the impossible tomorrow. Like getting dumber and dumber as time goes on. How long the process takes varies with the individual, but, well, the rough rule is that you lose ten percent of your capacity per day, and that can never be reclaimed, even if you get more sponge later—which isn’t likely. I was always a pretty smart fellow—I used to teach, you know—but I can already tell that something is happening. I’m ten percent dumber than yesterday, but that doesn’t really mean much if you start reasonably high. But if you have an IQ of around 150, well, figure out the time.”

Mavra did. If Renard had been a 150 capacity yesterday, he was a 135 today. Okay, not really noticeable. But that meant 122 tomorrow, 110 the day after, putting him at about average ability. Then the deterioration really started, though. 110 would become 99, and 99 would be 89. That was slow—what was that, four more days? Then 80 in five, 72 in six—a low-grade moron. 65 in a week, about the mental and motor levels of a three-year- old child. After that—perhaps an automaton, or some sort of animalistic type, since memory would still be there, it was ability that was being attacked.

“Nikki?” she wondered.

“Less time, I’m sure. Maybe a day or two less to the critical point,” Renard responded.

Mavra thought for a moment. A week, no more, maybe less. She wondered what it was like, living with the knowledge of an inevitable, creeping death sentence. Did Renard really believe such a thing could happen to him? No one could conceive realistically of their own death, she once read. But as the process continued, and you knew it continued, the frustration and fear would mount.

She reached over, gently took his arm. He moved next to her. Suddenly, with her lightning speed, she pricked his arm with some of the hypnotic fluid and injected a full load. He started in surprise, then seemed to go limp.

“Renard, listen to me,” she commanded.

“Yes, Mavra,” he responded, sounding something like a little child.

“Now, you will trust me completely. You will believe in me and my abilities completely, and do what I say without question,” she told him. “You will feel strong and good and well, and you will not feel any pain, longing, ache, or agony from the sponge. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Mavra,” he repeated dully.

“Furthermore, you will not think of the sponge. You will not think you are going to die, or fall apart. The thoughts just will not enter your mind. When you wake up each morning, you will not notice yourself as being any different than you have ever been, nor will you notice any difference in Nikki. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mavra,” he agreed.

“Okay, then. Now you will go over to your place and lie down and get a really good, deep, dreamless sleep, and wake up feeling wonderful with no memory of this conversation, but you will do as I have told you. Now— go!”

He broke free from her and went back over to where his clothing was spread out, lay down, and in seconds was sound asleep.

The suggestion wouldn’t last, of course. She knew that. She would have to renew it every once in a while, and now she’d have to try the same thing on Nikki, also putting thoughts of her consuming hunger out of her mind.

But it would only make her problem easier, not theirs. They would continue to deteriorate, to disintegrate, until she would no longer be able to control them or influence them.

Six days maximum to that point.

Emotion welled up in her. Somewhere, someone on this crazy world knew how to help them, could help them, would help them. She had to believe that. Had to.

Six days.

She moved silently over to Nikki Zinder.

South Polar Zone, the Well World

It looked like any major businessman’s office. There were maps, charts, and diagrams all over the walls, some strange-looking furniture, and a massive U-shaped desk that concealed large numbers of controls and also contained writing implements, communications devices, and the like. There was even a pistol of a strange sort in the upper left-hand desk drawer.

But the creature who sat behind that great desk, looking at a series of maps spread out before him, was not a human being in any sense of the word, although he definitely was strictly business.

He had a chocolate-brown human torso, incredibly broad and ribbed so that the chest muscles seemed to form squarish plates. A head, oval-shaped, was equally brown and hairless except for a huge white walrus mustache under a broad, flat nose. Six arms, arranged in threes, were spaced evenly in pairs down that torso and attached, except for the top pair, on ball sockets like those of a crab. Below that strange torso it all melted into an enormous brown-and-yellow striped series of scales leading to a huge, coiled serpentine lower half. If outstretched, the snakelike body would easily cover over five meters.

The creature used his lower pair of arms to spread out what proved to be a map of the southern and eastern hemisphere of the Well World. It looked like an odd assembly of perfectly equal hexagons printed in black, with surprinting in a variety of colors to show topography and water areas. While the lower arms kept the map spread wide, the upper left arm ticked off various hexes with a broad pencil, while the upper right hand jotted down notations on a pad with a different pencil.

The middle left hand punched an intercom to one side.

“Yes, sir?” a female voice asked politely.

“I’ll need close-ups of hexes twelve, twenty-six, forty-four, sixty-eight, and two hundred forty-nine,” he told the secretary in a deep, rich bass voice. “Also, kindly ask the Czillian ambassador to call on me as soon as possible.” He switched off without waiting for acknowledgment.

The creature studied the map again and tried to think. Nine sections total. Nine. Why did that strike a bell?

A buzzer sounded. He flipped a switch on a different intercom to his right. “Serge Ortega,” he answered curtly.

“Ortega? Gol Miter, Shamozan,” came a thin, reedy voice Ortega knew was coming from a translator device.

“Yes, Gol? What is it?” He glanced quickly at his map. Oh, yes, the three-meter-diameter tarantulas. Memory is the first thing to go, he told himself sourly.

“We have a plot on the new satellite. It’s definitely artificial; some of the shots from the North Zone telescopes have been fantastic. We did some spectroanalysis. The atmosphere is a pretty standard Southern Hemisphere mix, heavy on the nitrogen and oxygen, lots of water vapor. The pictures and our stuff match up pretty good. The thing is divided in half, with some sort of physical—not energy—bubble over it about two or three kilometers from the surface. That’s why we can’t get much surface detail. Too much distortion. Definitely green stuff all over, though, like somebody’s garden, and some really vague stuff that could be buildings. As if somebody’s got their own little private city-world there.”

Serge Ortega thought a moment. “What about the other half?”

“Not much. Raw rock, mostly standard metamorphic stuff. Probably the only part of the original natural object left. Except about halfway between equator and south pole, where there’s some kind of huge, shiny disk- shaped object practically built into the thing.”

Ortega frowned. “Propulsion unit?”

“I doubt it,” replied the giant spider. “This thing doesn’t seem to have been built for travel. That bubble is