Quest for the Well of Souls

destroy your ship.”

Yulin almost jumped out of his skin; panic suddenly rose within him. He’d been so intent on the takeoff and approach he’d just about forgotten about the robot sentries. He could see them on the screen, little dots moving to intercept and take him out. He gulped.

His mind was a complete blank.

“Fifty seconds,” the voice said pleasantly.

He punched the intercom. “Is Chang awake yet?” he screamed.

“Still groggy,” Renard replied. “Why?”

“I need the damned code!” he yelled.

“Forty seconds,” said the voice.

“I thought you knew it,” Wooley responded accusingly.

“I can’t remember, damn it! Ask her the goddamned code now!”

“Thirty seconds,” said the voice. The little dots were in perfect attack position now.

Suddenly a new voice came in over the radio on the same frequency. It was a man’s voice, soft and pleasant.

“It’s Edward Gibbon, Volume One, Ben,” said the voice.

He was startled but he grabbed at it.

“Twenty seconds,” said the robot sentry.

“Edward Gibbon, Volume One!” he screamed.

There was silence, and he watched the LED clock tick off. It passed ten seconds, and there was no new warning. Now it counted off the last ten. As it did he glanced up and saw the little blips break formation and resume their stations. Ben Yulin almost fainted.

“It’s Edward Gibbon, Volume One, Ben,” Vistaru said pleasantly.

“I know, I know,” he growled, out of breath. “If I had to depend on you we’d have died thirty seconds ago.”

But who had given him the code? Not the Bozog. Though almost certainly they were monitoring the radio, it was too human a voice for that. A familiar voice, somehow, from the distant past. But this was a journey into that past, as much as into the future, he thought.

He flipped on the interspace radio and called, “Obie? Is that you?”

“Yes, Ben,” came the reply. “How have you been?”

“Obie—how the hell? Are you alone down there?”

“Oh, yes, quite alone,” responded the computer. “It’s been a long time, Ben. A lot longer for me than for you. I’ve followed some of your progress through the Well, though. Who wound up on the ship? I can’t tell that from here.”

Yulin told him, then asked, “Topside—what are the conditions there?”

“You know I have no voluntary circuits Topside,” the computer reminded him. “The atmosphere, pressure, and temperature have been maintained, and the electrical system is functioning normally. Beyond that I can’t say. I’ve nothing with which to monitor.”

Yulin thought for a moment. The ship was closing on the spaceport airlock as they spoke. “Obie—have you been incommunicado all this time? I mean, if you can talk to me, do you talk to others?”

There was silence at the other end.

“Obie? Did you hear me?”

“I heard you, Ben. We’ll talk again when you get here,” the computer said.

He tried to raise Obie several more times, but there was only silence. He sat back and thought for a moment. The computer was fully capable of deceit; it was as human as he in many ways. The fact that it had refused to answer his question was in itself an answer. The computer had been talking these past years with someone—and there was only one person who would know how to build the proper receiving equipment.

Dr. Gilgam Zinder, discoverer of the Markovian mathematics and creator of Obie, was still very much alive back on the Well World.

But back there, Yulin told himself confidently. He knew all the Southerners aboard, and Zinder would not have been processed as a Northerner. Zinder could talk with Obie, even consult the great machine, but he couldn’t actually operate it, change the programming. Only someone at one of the control panels inside Obie itself could do that, and even if Zinder were there, he did not know about Ben Yulin’s innovative circuit design. When he’d used it, he’d stunned Zinder to unconsciousness.

No matter what surprises Zinder and Obie had planned for him, they were in for a nasty shock, Ben Yulin thought confidently.

He watched the console. The ship closed gently. The first of the two locks was damaged; he probably had done that himself in his panic during the flight from New Pompeii, he reflected. The other was fine, though, and the computer headed for it.

A sudden scraping sound forward, and a wrenching jerk as the ship slipped into its berth and straightened itself heralded their safe landing.

They were back on New Pompeii.

He switched the ship to external power, drawing from the New Pompeii power plant. The instruments flickered briefly and it was done. The last step in the chain.

He undid his straps and stood, for the first time realizing the brutality of the takeoff.

Painfully, limping slightly, the minotaur made his way aft to see about his passengers.

New Pompeii

The airlock hissed, then the big amber stand-by light flashed off and the green went on. Ben Yulin threw the levers, pulled open the hatch, and walked to the other side. The proper light was on, so he opened that end as well. A breeze wafted back at them as the slight differences in pressure equalized. The group followed the Dasheen into New Pompeii’s spaceport.

To Mavra, despite her distorted, black-and-white vision, it looked very familiar. Renard, too, looked around in wonder at the familiarity of it all. To the others it was new, a plush, luxury lounge.

Yulin was cautious. “Funny,” he said. “Looks almost like somebody cleaned up here, doesn’t it? I’d expected it to be dirty. The carpet isn’t even stained—and I know a lot of shit went on in here just before I left. I don’t like this at all.”

They took the hint. Wooley and Vistaru drew pistols.

“An odd construction,” commented the medium-size Bozog. “I may have some problem getting my two- and-a-half meters through the door.”

“I think it’s wide enough for you to get through,” Renard said.

Yulin, who was unarmed, declined to lead the way. Finally Wooley volunteered. The door slid open before her.

The rest followed cautiously. Vistaru took advantage of the atmosphere and uncluttered corridor to fly; her race was not really built for walking, and she was otherwise too small to keep up. The lower gravity, which made the others feel wonderfully relieved, proved a problem at first, but she found the condition tolerable as long as she didn’t get fancy or ambitious. No use in slamming full tilt into a wall, she scolded herself.

Outside, the terminal looked like a Roman ruin. The grass was high, and the lawns were dotted with flowers. The walks were just about overgrown, and trees were more abundant and less perfectly manicured than those who had previously been to New Pompeii remembered. Ivy, ferns, and mosses had overgrown some of the buildings, giving them a haunted appearance. Antor Trelig had dreamed of a new Roman Empire with himself as God-Emperor, Caesar. New Pompeii reflected this; its architechture was Greco-Roman, with lots of columns, arches and domes. As a ruin, it was in some ways even more impressive and awesome than it had been.

“It’s incredible,” Wooley breathed.

Yulin nodded. “In its own way a great achievement. Under the dome, this world is completely self-sufficient.