Midnight At the Well of Souls Read online

  Varnett shrugged and left.

  Skander sat in his chair for several minutes. His hands—in fact, his whole body—began shaking violently, and it was a while before the attack subsided. Slowly, a panicked look on his face, he went over to the microscope and carefully removed the special filter. His hand was still so unsteady he could hardly hold on to it. He slipped the filter into its tiny case with difficulty and placed it in the wide belt for tools and personal items that was the only clothing any of them wore inside.

  He went back to his private room in the dorm section and lay down on his bed, staring up at the ceiling for what seemed like hours.

  Varnett, he thought. Always Varnett. In the three months since they had first arrived, the boy had been into everything. Many of the others played their off-duty games and engaged in the silliness students do, but not he. Serious, studious to a fault, and always reading the project reports, the old records.

  Skander suddenly felt that everything was closing in on him. He was still so far from his goal!

  And now Varnett knew. Knew, at least, that the brain was alive. The boy would surely take it the step further—guess that Skander had almost broken the code, was ready, perhaps in another year or so, to send that brain a message, reactivate it.

  To become a god.

  He would be the one who would save the human race with the very tools that must have destroyed its maker.

  * * *

  Suddenly Skander jumped up and made his way back to the lab. Something nagged at him, some suspicion that things were even more wrong than he knew.

  Quietly, he stepped into the lab.

  Varnett was sitting at the television console. And, on the screen, the same cell Skander had been examining was depicted with its energy connectors clearly visible!

  Skander was stunned. Quickly his hands reached for the little pocket in which he kept his filter. Yes, it was still there.

  How was this possible?

  Varnett was doing computations, checking against a display on a second screen that hooked him to the math sections of the lab computer. Skander stood there totally still and silent. He heard Yarnett mumble an assent to himself, as if some problem he had been running through the computer had checked out correct.

  Skander stole a glance at his chronometer. Nine hours! It had been nine hours! He had slept through part of his dark thoughts and given the boy the chance to confirm his worst nightmare.

  Something suddenly told Varnett he wasn't alone. He sat still for a second, then glanced fearfully around.

  "Professor!" he exclaimed. "I'm glad it's you! This is stupendous! Why aren't you telling everyone?"

  "How—" Skander stumbled, gesturing at the screen. "How did you get that picture?"

  Varnett smiled. "Oh, that's simple. You forgot to dump the computer memory when you closed up. This is what you were looking at, which the computer held in new storage."

  Skander cursed himself for a fool. Of course, everything on every instrument was recorded by the computer as standard procedure. He had been so shook up by Varnett's discovery of his work that he had forgotten to dump the record!

  "It's only a preliminary finding," the professor managed at last. "I was waiting until I had something really startling to report."

  "But this is startling!" the boy exclaimed excitedly. "But you have been too close to the problem and to your own disciplines to crack it. Look, your fields are archaeology and biology, aren't they?"

  "They are," Skander acknowledged, wondering where this conversation was leading. "I was an exobiologist for years and became an archaeologist when I started doing all my work on the Markovian brains."

  "Yes, yes, but you're still a generalist. My world, as you know, raises specialists in every field from the point at which the brain is formed. You know my field."

  "Mathematics," Skander replied. "If I recall, all mathematicians on your world are named Varnett after an ancient mathematical genius."

  "Right," the boy replied, still in an excited tone. "As I was developing in the Birth Factory, they imprinted all the world's mathematical knowledge directly. It was there continuously as I grew. By the time my brain was totally developed at age seven, I knew all the mathematics, applied and theoretical, that we know. Everything is ultimately mathematical, and so I see everything in a mathematical way. I was sent here by my world because I had become fascinated by the alien mathematical symmetry in the slides and specimens of the Markovian brain. But all was for nothing, because I had no knowledge of the energy matrix linking the cellular components."

  "And now?" Skander prodded, fascinated and excited in spite of himself.

  "Why, it's gibberish. It defies all mathematical logic. It says that there are no absolutes in mathematics! None! Every time I tried to force the pattern into known mathematical concepts, it kept saying that two plus two equals four isn't a constant but a relative proposition!"

  Skander realized that the boy was trying to make things baby-simple to him, but he still couldn't grasp what he was saying. "What does all that mean?" he asked in a puzzled and confused tone.

  Varnett was becoming carried away with himself. "It means that all matter and energy are in some kind of mathematical proportion. That nothing is actually real, nothing actually anything at all. If you discard the equal sign and substitute 'is proportional to' and, if it is true, you can alter or change anything. None of us, this room, this planet, the whole galaxy, the whole universe—none of it is a constant! If you could alter the equation for anything only slightly, change the proportions, anything could be made anything else, anything could be changed to anything else!" He stopped, seeing from the expression on Skander's face that the older man was still lost.

  "I'll give a really simple, basic example," Varnett said, calmed considerably from his earlier outburst. "First, realize this if you can: there is a finite amount of energy in the universe, and that is the only constant. The amount is infinite by our standards, but that is true if this is true. Do you follow me?"

  Skander nodded. "So you're saying that there is nothing but pure energy?"

  "More or less," Varnett agreed. "All matter, and constrained energy, like stars, is created out of this energy flux. It is held there in that state—you, me, the room, the planet we're on—by a mathematical balance. Something—some quantity—is placed in proportion to some other quantity, and that forms us. And keeps us stable. If I knew the formula for Elkinos Skander, or Varnett Mathematics Two Sixty-one, I could alter, or even abolish, our existence. Even things like time and distance, the best constants, could be altered or abolished. If I knew your formula I could, given one condition, not only change you into, say, a chair, but alter all events so that you would have always been a chair!"

  "What's the condition?" Skander asked nervously, hesitantly, afraid of the answer.

  "Why, you'd need a device to translate that formula into reality. And a way to have it do what you wished."

  "The Markovian brain," Skander whispered.

  "Yes. That's what they discovered. But this brain—this device—seems to be for local use only. That is, it would affect this planet, perhaps the solar system in which it lies, but no more. But, somewhere, there must be a master unit—a unit that could affect at least half, perhaps the whole, galaxy. It must exist, if all the rest of my hypothesis is correct!"

  "Why must it?" Skander asked, a sinking sensation growing in his stomach.

  "Because we are stable," the boy replied, an awe-struck tone in his voice.

  Only the mechanical sounds of the lab intruded for a minute after that, as the implications sank home to both of them.

  "And you have the code?" Skander asked at last.

  "I think so, although it goes against my whole being that such equations can be correct. And yet—do you know why that energy does not show by conventional means?" Skander slowly shook his head negatively, and the mathematician continued. "It is the primal energy itself. Look, do you have that filter with you?"

  Skand
er nodded numbly and produced the little case. The boy took it eagerly, but instead of placing it in the microscope he went over to the outer wall. Slowly he donned protective coveralls and goggles, used in radiation protection, and told Skander to do likewise. Then he sealed the lab against entry and peeled back the tent lining in the one place where it covered a port—not used here, but these tents were all-purpose and contained many useless features.

  The baleful reddish landscape showed before them at midday. Slowly, carefully, the boy held the tiny filter up to one eye and closed the other. He gasped. "I was right!" he exclaimed.

  After a painful half-minute that felt like an eternity, he handed the little filter to Skander, who did the same.

  Through the filter, the entire landscape was bathed in a ferocious electrical storm. Skander couldn't stop looking at it.

  "The Markovian brain is all around us," Varnett whispered. "It draws what it needs and expels what it does not. If we could contact it—"

  "We'd be like gods," Skander finished.

  Skander reluctantly put down the filter and handed it back to Varnett, who resumed his own gazing.

  "And what sort of universe would you create, Varnett?" Skander almost whispered, reaching under the protective clothing as he spoke and pulling out a knife. "A mathematically perfect place where everyone was absolutely identical, the same equation?"

  "Put your weapon away, Skander," Varnett told him, not taking his gaze from the filtered landscape. "You can't do it without me, and if you think about it you'll realize that. In only a few months they'll find our bodies and you here—or dying in the city—and what will that get you?"

  The knife hesitated a long moment, then slowly slid back into the belt under the protective garment.

  "What the hell are you, Varnett?" asked Skander suspiciously.

  "An aberration," the other replied. "We happen, sometimes. Usually they catch us and that's that. But not me, not yet. They will, though, unless I can do something about it."

  "What do you mean, an aberration?" Skander asked unsurely.

  "I'm human, Skander. A real human. And greedy. I, too, would like to be a god."

  * * *

  It had taken Varnett only seven hours to crack the mathematics, but it would take a lot longer to make the Markovian brain notice them. Their project was so intense that the others began to take notice and inquire, particularly the research assistants. Finally, they decided to take them all in on it—Varnett because he was certain that, once in contact with the Markovian brain, he could adjust the others to his version of events, and Skander because he had no choice. While they worked the lab, the others combed the city and, using small flyers, the other cities and regions of the planet.

  "You are to look for some sort of vent, entrance, gate, or at least a temple or similar structure that might mean some kind of direct contact with the Markovian brain," Skander told them.

  And time went on, with the others, good Universalists all, looking forward to carrying the news back to the Confederacy that the perfect society was within man's grasp.

  Finally, one day, only two months before the next ship was due in, they found it.

  Jainet and Dunna, one of the research assistants, noticed through the large filters they had constructed for the search that one tiny area near the north pole of the planet was conspicuous by the absence of the all-pervasive lightning.

  Flying over to it they saw below them a deep hexagonal hole of total darkness. They were reluctant to explore further without consultation, and so radioed for the rest to come up.

  "I don't see anything," Skander complained, disappointed. "There's no hex hole here."

  "But there was!" Jainet protested, and Dunna nodded in agreement. "It was right there, almost directly over the pole. Here! I'll prove it!" She went over and rewound the flyer's nose camera recording disk a little more than halfway. They watched the playback in skeptical silence, as the ground rolled beneath them on the screen. Then, suddenly, there it was.

  "See!" Jainet exclaimed. "What did I tell you!"

  And it was there, clearly, unquestionably. Varnett looked at the screen, then to the scene below them, then back again. It all checked. There had been a hexagonal hole, almost two kilometers across at its widest point. The landmarks matched—it was at this spot.

  But there wasn't a hole there now.

  They waited then, almost an entire day. Suddenly the flat plain seemed to vanish and there was the hole again.

  They photographed it and ran every analysis test on it they could.

  "Let's drop something in," Varnett suggested at last.

  They found a spare pressure suit and, hovering directly over the hole, the light on the suit turned on, they dropped it in.

  The suit struck the hole. "Struck" is the only word they had for it. The suit hit the top of the hole and seemed to stick there, not dropping at all. Then, after hovering a moment, it seemed to fade before their eyes. Not drop, but fade—for even the films showed that it didn't fall. It simply faded out to nothingness.

  A few minutes later the hole itself disappeared.

  "Forty-six standard minutes," Varnett said. "Exactly. And I'll bet at the same time gap tomorrow it opens again."

  "But where did the suit go? Why didn't it drop?" Jainet asked.

  "Remember the power of this thing," Skander told her. "If you were to get to it, you wouldn't descend forty-plus kilometers. You'd simply be transported to the place."

  "Exactly," Varnett agreed. "It would simply alter the equation and you would be there instead of here."

  "But where is there?" Jainet asked.

  "We believe at the control center of the Markovian brain," Skander told her. "There would be one—the same way there are two bridges on a spaceship. The other is for emergencies." Or male and female members on your planet, Skander had almost said.

  "We'd best go back and run this all through our own data banks," Varnett suggested. "After all, it's been a long day for us anyway. The hole opens and closes regularly. So we can do the same things tomorrow as we can do today."

  They all muttered assent at this proposal, and several suddenly realized how tired they were.

  "Someone should stay here," Skander suggested, "if only to time the thing and keep the camera running."

  "I'll do it," Varnett volunteered. "I can sleep here on this flyer and you all can go back in the other two. If anything comes up I'll let you know. Then someone can spell me tomorrow."

  They all agreed to this, so after a short while everyone but Varnett headed back to base camp.

  Almost all went to sleep immediately, only Skander and Dunna taking the extra time to feed their records into the data bank. Then both went off to their own quarters.

  Skander sat on the edge of his bunk, too excited to feel tired. Curiously, he felt exhilarated instead, adrenalin pumping through him.

  I must take the gamble, he told himself. I must assume that this is indeed the gateway to the brain. In less than fifty days this crew will be replaced, and they'll go home to blab the secret. Then everyone will be in, and the Statists of the Confederacy will gain the power.

  Was that what had happened to the Markovians? Had they become so much a communal paradise that they stagnated and died out?

  No! he told himself. Not for them! I shall die, or I shall save mankind.

  He went first to the lab and wiped all information from the data banks. There was nothing left when he finished; then he wrecked the machinery so none could retrieve the faintest clue. Next he went to the master control center. There the atmospheric conditions were set. Slowly, methodically, he turned off all the systems except oxygen. He waited there almost an hour until the gauges read that the atmosphere was now almost entirely oxygen everywhere in the tents.

  That done, he made his way carefully to the air lock, anxious not to scrape against anything or to cause any sort of spark. Although nervous at the prospect that one of the sleepers would wake up and make that spark, he took the time to d
on his pressure suit and then take all the other such suits outside.

  Next he took from the emergency kit of one of the flyers a small box and opened it.

  Premanufactured items for all occasions. It was a flare gun.

  The puncture it would make would be sealed in seconds by the automated equipment, but not before it ignited the oxygen inside.

  It was over in one sudden flare, like flash paper.

  After, he could see the vacuum-exposed remains of the sleepers whose charred bodies were still in their beds.

  Seven down, one to go, he thought without remorse.

  He boarded a flyer and headed toward the north pole. He glanced at his chronometer. It took nine hours to fly back, he had been three doing his work, and now there was another nine to return to the pole.

  About an hour to spare until that hole opened up again.

  Enough time for Varnett.

  It seemed like days until he got there, but the chronometer said just a little over nine hours.

  As he came over the horizon he searched for Varnett's flyer. It wasn't to be seen.

  Suddenly Skander spotted it—down, down on that flat plain at the pole. He braked and hovered over it. Slowly, in the gloom, he made out a tiny white dot near the center of the plain.

  Varnett! He was going to be the first in!

  Varnett detected movement and looked up at the flyer. Suddenly he started running for his own.

  Skander came down on him, skirting the ground so low that he was afraid he would crash himself. Varnett ducked and rolled, but was unhurt.

  Skander cursed himself, then decided to set it down. He still had the knife, and that might just be enough. He took the flare pistol which, while it wouldn't necessarily penetrate the suit, might cause a blinding distraction. He was not a large man, but he was a head taller than the boy and the odds were otherwise even in his mind.

  Landing near Varnett's flyer, he got out quickly, flare gun in his right hand, knife in his left. Cursing the almost total absence of light and the fact that he had had to take his eyes off Varnett to land, Skander looked cautiously around.

  Varnett had vanished.

  Before this could sink in, a white figure jumped from atop the other flyer and hit him in the back. He went down, dropping the flare gun.