Quest for the Well of Souls - By Jack L. Chalker & James P. Baen Page 0,3

you know—by knowing a password based on a system only I could possibly know. How? Because she was in league with that goddamned computer of Zinder's, that's how! It's self-aware, you know! It's the only answer. That means I haven't the slightest idea whether or not she really could get back through to that computer if she ever managed to get back up there! Even Yulin might have problems getting by the sentinels, but she won't! And her mind's so strange, so unfathomable, that no one knows what she'd do with that kind of power. She's vicious and vengeful, I know that. I lost a number of good syndicate hit men once when they killed her husband. I know what she'd like to do to me!"

Burodir shifted. She'd heard it all before. "But she won't!" she pointed out. "There's no way for anybody to get up there!"

"There's a perfectly preserved ship in the North," he retorted. "I ought to know—Ben and I crashed in it."

"But in a nontech hex populated by beings so alien they don't even understand what it is, and won't permit any other race to move it," she continued. "And, besides, it's impossible for a Southerner to go beyond North Zone. You know that. Any Zone Gate on the Well World, North or South, just brings you back to Makiem. You can't get beyond North Zone!"

That thought didn't bother him. "I'd have once said what Chang did was impossible," he pointed out. "I'd have said the Well of Souls, the Well World, Makiem, and all the rest were impossible, too. Besides, I've been reading the histories. A little over two centuries ago a Northerner did make it to the South, here. If it can be done that way, the same thing can be done in reverse."

She nodded. "I know, the Diviner and the Rel, or something. That whole story is so mucked up in distortion and legend, few believe it anyway. You know that. There was also supposed to be a Markovian then—still around a million or more years after the rest of his race died out—and the Well was supposedly opened, entered, and then sealed for all time. If you believe those kinds of fairy tales, you'll believe anything!"

He considered what she said. "Well, back where I came from, there were myths about weird, intelligent creatures in the dim past—centaurs and mermaids and pixies and fairies and flying winged horses and minotaurs and more. I have seen every one of those here. This Markovian—this Nathan Brazil, as he was called, from my sector of space—was a real person. There are records and descriptions of him in places like that plant-research center, Czill. Those people are not likely to accept fairy tales. And Serge Ortega believes in him, even claims to have known him."

"Ortega!" she sniffed. "A scoundrel. A prisoner in Zone because of his own quest for immortality, and centuries older than any Ulik has a right to be. He's a senile old man."

"Ancient he is," Trelig agreed, "but senile he is not. Remember, he's the one who has kept Mavra Chang on ice and protected, until such time as he finds his own solution to this Northern mess. He's the one who brought up that Diviner and Rel business. He was there!"

She tried to change the subject. "You know, it'll be our season in less than two weeks," she pointed out. "Have you cleared everything for it? I'm already starting to feel the urges."

Trelig nodded absently. "We've got twenty brats now. The worst curse of the war—this extreme fertility the Well imposed to replace the dead." But he continued to look out into the night, even though New Pompeii was now obscured by the western mountains. "Mavra Chang," she heard him mutter under his breath.

Burodir hissed in disgust. "Damn it! If she bothers you so much, why not do something about her? You're supposed to be a big plotter and dirty thinker. What would you do if some slip of a cripple was a threat to your power here?"

His great reptilian head cocked slightly as he considered her challenge. "But killing her wouldn't be enough," he responded. "No, I have to know what sort of things that computer put into her, and how much of it she's revealed to anyone else." His mind raced now. "A kidnapping, though. She's helpless to resist, given the situation she is in, and she's even isolated from Ortega's meddling. A kidnapping and a thorough hypno job in some high-tech