Jack L. Chalker - WOS 1 - Midnight at the Well of Souls

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Midnight at the Well of Souls

On "Earth," a Planet Circling a Star

Near the Outermost Edge of the Galaxy

Andromeda

Paradise, Once Called Dedalus, a Planet

Near Sirius

On the Frontier—Harvich's World

Aboard the Freighter Stehekin

316

341

343

346

359

Dalgonia

MASS MURDERS ARE USUALLY ALL THE MORE SHOCK-

ing because of the unexpected settings and the past

character of the murderer. The Dalgonian Massacre

is a case in point.

Dalgonia is a barren, rocky planet near a dying sun,

bathed only in a ghostly, reddish light, whose beauti-

ful rays create sinister shadows across the rocky crags.

Little is left of the Dalgonian atmosphere to suggest

that life could ever have happened here; the water is

gone or, like the oxygen, now locked deep in rock. The

feeble sun, unable to give more than the deep reddish

tint to the landscape, is of no help in illuminating the

skyline, which was, despite a bluish haze from the in-

ert elements still present in it, as dark as the shadows.

This was a world of ghosts.

And it was haunted.

Nine figures trooped silently into the ruins of a city

that might easily have been mistaken for the 'rocky

. crags on the nearby hills. Twisted spires and crumbling

castles of greenish-brown stood before them, dwarf-

ing them to insignificance. Their white protective suits

were all that made them conspicuous in this darkly

beautiful world of silence.

The city itself resembled nothing so much as one

that might have been built of iron aeons before and

subjected to extensive rust and salt abrasion in some

dead sea. Like its world, it was silent and dead.

A close look at the figures heading into the city

would reveal that they were all what was known as

"human"—denizens of the youngest part of the spiral

arm of their galaxy. Five were female, four male, the

leader a thin, frail man of middle years. Stenciled on

his back and faceplate was the name Skander.

They stood at the half-crumbled gate to the city as

they had so many times before, gazing at the incred-

ible but magnificent ruin.

My name is Ozymandias.

Look on my works ye mighty,

and despair!

Nothing beside remains....

If those words from a poet out of their near-

forgotten past did not actually echo through each of

them, the concept and feeling of those lines did. And

through each mind, as they had through the minds of

thousands of others who had peered and pecked

through similar ruins on over two dozen other dead

planets, those endless and apparently unanswerable

questions kept running.

Who were they who could build with such magnifi-

cence?

Why did they die?

"Since this is your first trip as graduate students to

a Markovian ruin," Skander's reedy voice said through

their radios, startling them out of their awe, "I will give

a brief introduction to you. I apologize if I am redun-

dant, but this will be a good refresher nonetheless.

"Jared Markov discovered the first of these ruins

centuries ago, on a planet over a hundred light-years

distant from this spot. It was our race's first experience

with signs of intelligence in this galaxy of ours, and the

discovery caused a tremendous amount of excitement.

Those ruins were dated at over a quarter of a million

standard years old—and they were the youngest dis-

covered to date. It became obvious that, while our race

still grubbed on its home world fiddling with the new

discovery of fire, someone else—these people—had a

vast interstellar empire of still unknown dimensions.

All we know is that as we have pressed inward in the

galaxy these remains get more and more numerous.

And, as yet, we haven't a clue as to who they were."

"Are there no artifacts of any sort?" came a disbe-

lieving female voice.

"None, as you should know. Citizen Jainet," came

the formal reply in a mildly reproving tone. "That is

what is so infuriating about it all. The cities, yes, about

which some things can be inferred about their builders,

but no furniture, no pictures, nothing of an even re-

motely utilitarian nature. The rooms, as you will see,

are quite barren. Also, no cemeteries; indeed, nothing

mechanical at all, either."

"That's because of the computer, isn't it?" came an-

other, deeper female voice, that of the stocky girl

from the heavy-gravity world whose family name was

Marino.

"Yes," Skander agreed. "But, come, let's move in-

to the city. We can talk as we go."

They started forward, soon coming into a broad

boulevard, perhaps fifty meters across. Along each

side ran what appeared to be broad -walkways, each

six to eight meters across, like the moving walkways of

spaceports that took you to and from loading gates. But

no conveyor belt or such was evident; the walkways

were made of the same greenish-brown stone, or

metal, or whatever it was that composed the rest of

the city.

"The crust of this planet," Skander continued, "is

about average—forty to forty-five kilometers thick.

Measurements on this and other worlds of the Marko-

vians showed a consistent discontinuity, about one

kilometer thick, between the crust and the natural man-

tierock beneath. This, we have discovered, was an ar-

tificial layer of material that is essentially plastic but

seems to have had a sort of life in it—this much, at

least, we infer. Consider how much information your

own cells contain. You are the products of the best

genetic manipulation techniques, perfect physical and

mental specimens of the best of your races adapted

to your native planets. And yet, for all that, you are

far more than the sum of your parts. Your cells, par-

ticularly your brain cells, store input at an astonishing

and continuing rate. We believe that this computer

beneath your feet was composed of infinitely complex

artificial brain cells. Imagine that! It runs the entirety

of the planet, a kilometer thick—all brain. And all,

we believe, attuned to the individual brain waves of

the inhabitants of this city!

."Imagine it, if you can. Just wish for something, and

there it is. Food, furniture—if they used any—even

art, created by the mind of the wisher and made real

by the computer. We have, of course, small and prim-

itive versions now—but this is generations, possibly

millennia, beyond us. If you could think of it, it would

be provided'"

"This Utopian Theory accounts for most of what we

see, but not why all this is now ruins," piped in an

adolescent male voice, Varnett, the youngest—and

probably brightest—but unquestionably the most imag-

inative of the group.

"Quite true. Citizen Vamett," Skander acknowl-

edged, "and there are three schools of thought on it.

One is that the computer broke down, and another is

that the computer ran amok—and the people couldn't

cope either way. You know the third theory, anyone?"

"Stagnation," Jainet replied. "They died because

they had nothing left to live for, strive for, or work

for."

"Exactly," Skander replied. "And yet, there are

problems with all three suppositions. An interstellar

culture of this magnitude would have allowed for break-

downs; they'd have some sort of backup system. As

for the amok theory—well, it's fine except that every

sign shows that the same thing happened at once, all

across their entire empire. One, even several, okay,

but not all at the same time. I am not quite willing to

accept the last theory, even though it is the one that

fits the best. Something nags at me and says that they

would have allowed even for that."

"Maybe they programmed their own degeneration,"

Varnett suggested, "and it went too far."

"Eh?" There was a note of surprise but keen interest

in Skander's voice. "Programmed—planned degenera-

tion! It's an interesting theory, Citizen Varnett. Per-

haps we'll find out in time."

He motioned and they entered a building with a

strange, hexagonal doorway. All the doors were hexa-

gons, it appeared. The interior of the room was very

large, but there was no sign as to its purpose or func-

tion. It looked like an apartment or a store after the

tenants had moved out, taking everything with them.

"The room," Skander pointed out to them, "is hex-

agonal—as the city is hexagonal, as is almost everything

in it if you see it from the correct angle.- The number

six seems to have been essential to them. Or sacred. It

is from this, and from the size and shape of the door-

ways, windows, and the like—not to mention the width

of the walkways—that we have some idea of what the

natives must have been like. We hypothesize that they

were rather like a top, or turnip shape, with six limbs

which may have been tentacles usable for walking or

as hands. We suspect that things naturally came m

sixes to them—their mathematics, their architecture,

maybe they even had six eyes all around. Judging from

the doors and allowing for clearance, they were about

two meters tall on the average and possibly wider than

that at the waist—which is where we believe the six

arms, tentacles, or whatever were centered, and'that

must be why the doorways widen at that point." /

They stood there awhile, trying to imagine such

creatures living in the rooms, moving up and down the

boulevards.

"We'd best be getting back to camp," Skander said

at last. "You will have ample time to study here and

to poke into every nook and cranny of the place." They

would, in fact, be there a year, working under the pro-

fessor at the University station.

They walked quickly in the lighter gravity and

reached the base camp about five kilometers from the

city gates in under an hour.

The camp itself looked like some collection of great

tents of a strange circus, nine in all, bright white like

the pressure suits. Long tubes connecting the tents

occasionally flexed as the monitoring computers contin-

ually adjusted the temperature and barometric pres-

sure that kept each inflated. On such a dead world

little else was needed, and the insides were lined to

make punctures almost impossible. If any such did

happen, though, only those in the punctured area would

be killed; the computer could seal off any portion of

the complex.

Skander entered last, climbing into the air lock after

making certain that none of his charges or major equip-

ment was left outside. By the time the lock equalized

and allowed him into the entry tent, the others were

already all or partially out of their pressure suits.

He stopped for a minute, looking at them. Eight

representatives from four planets of the Confederation

—and, except for the one from the heavy-gravity

world, all looked alike.

All were exceptionally trim and muscular; they could

be a gymnastic team without any imagination. Although

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摘要：

MidnightattheWellofSoulsOn"Earth,"aPlanetCirclingaStarNeartheOutermostEdgeoftheGalaxyAndromedaParadise,OnceCalledDedalus,aPlanetNearSiriusOntheFrontier—Harvich'sWorldAboardtheFreighterStehekinvm316341343346359DalgoniaMASSMURDERSAREUSUALLYALLTHEMORESHOCK-ingbecauseoftheunexpectedsettingsandthepastcha...

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Jack L. Chalker - WOS 1 - Midnight at the Well of Souls

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