Chalker, Jack L. - Well of Souls 02 (6 page)

"So he knew when Zinder got results, and he has someone else able to check the work. Who do you think was snatched?" Mavra Chang asked.

"Zinder's daughter. She has vanished, gone long before the project closed down. He doted on her. We think she's a hostage, held to make Zinder build a big model of whatever he had at Makeva. Think of it! A weapon you point at a world, then tell it what you want that world to be, to look like, to think, whatever— and presto! There it is!"

Mavra nodded. "I'm not sure I can believe in something like that, but— " she paused, remembering. "Way, way back, when I was tiny, I can remember my grandparents telling stories about something like that, about a place built by the Markovians where anything was possible." She smiled wistfully. "Funny, I never remembered that until just now. They were fairy tales, of course."

"Antor Trelig isn't," Alaina responded flatly. "And neither, I think, is this device."

"And you want me to wreck it?" Mavra guessed.

Alaina shook her head. "No, I don't think you could. It's too well defended. The best we can shoot for— and even this is close to impossible— is to get Dr. Zinder out. And, if our guess is correct, that means rescuing his daughter, Nikki, too."

"Where is this installation?" Chang asked, all business again.

"Antor calls the place New Pompeii," replied the old woman. "It's a private planetoid, his own personal property and preserve. It's also the center of the sponge syndicate and source of supply for the entire sector."

Mavra whistled. "I know it. It's impregnable. You'd need the force Trelig wants to command to get there. Impossible!"

"I didn't say you had to get into it," the councillor pointed out. "I said you had to get two people out. We have to know what they know, have what they have. I can get you in— I'm considered such a doddering old relic that everyone would be amazed I had even traveled this far. I have been invited to the demonstration, but they don't expect me to come personally. Like some of the others, I'll send a representative close to me, someone I can trust. You."

Mavra nodded. "How long will I have on this asteroid?"

"Antor has asked for three days. One day he'll use to entertain and to show off New Pompeii. The second day he'll give his demonstration. On the third— well, the ultimatums and more sugary charm over them."

"Not much time," Mavra Chang commented. "I have to find two probably widely separated individuals, get them out— all under the nose of Trelig's watchdogs, on his schedule, and on his turf."

Alaina nodded. "I know it's impossible, but we have to try. At least get the daughter away. I'm sure they've hooked her on sponge, but that can be worked out. Make sure nothing worse happens to you, too. Sponge is the ugliest of narcotics, and that may only be a prelude to what Antor is capable of."

"Suppose he just hooks us all on sponge in our after-dinner drinks," Mavra worried.

"He won't," Alaina assured her. "No, he won't want anything to happen to the representatives that could spoil his party. He wants everyone hale, healthy, and in their right minds to be suitably terrified into telling people like me to surrender. But if he discovers your real purpose, he'll write me off and do what he wants with you. You understand that."

Mavra nodded silently.

"Will you do it?"

"How much?" was the young captain's response.

Alaina brightened. "Anything at all if you succeed, and I mean that. To half succeed, bring Nikki out. With his daughter gone, I'm sure Zinder will foul up the works. For that, shall we say— ten million?"

Mavra gasped. Ten million would buy the Assateague. With that much and the ship, she could do just about anything.

"Failure means death," the councillor warned, "or worse— slavery to Antor Trelig, or slow death by the sponge. Only once in every century, sometimes not for a millennium, are men like Antor Trelig born. Ruthless, amoral, sadistic, dominant monsters. In the end they've all been stopped, but countless millions are dead because of them. Antor is the worst. New Pompeii will convince you of that all by itself, I feel certain. See what he thinks of people and worlds, and then you'll know."

"Half in advance," responded Mavra Chang.

Councillor Alaina shrugged. "If you fail, what good will money be anyway?"

New Pompeii

Antor Trelig stood over the pit into which Obie had been integrated into the larger design. Seven months and a fortune large enough to finance whole planetary budgets had gone into that hole. Now he watched as giant cranes placed the "big dish" in place. It, along with the whole complex below, would take up close to half the underside of his asteroid. From the outside the system would look much like the largest radio-telescope ever built.

But its purpose was far more sinister.

Antor Trelig cared little about the expense; it was a trifle to him, tribute extracted from his take of the syndicate and from the pilfered budgets of a hundred syndicate-controlled worlds. Money meant nothing to him in any case, except as a means to power.

Huge space tugs lowered the great mirrorlike device into place, slowly, ever so slowly. That didn't matter to him, either. That the project was so close to completion was all that mattered.

He walked over to where Gil Zinder sat watching the procedure, like himself at the mercy of the engineers and technicians. Zinder looked around, saw who approached. There was unconcealed contempt on his face.

Trelig was cheery. "Well, Doctor," he said lightly, "almost there. It's a momentous occasion."

Zinder frowned. "Momentous, yes, but not my idea of a happy time," he replied. "Look, I've done it. Everything. Now let me run my daughter through the small disk and cure her of the sponge."

Trelig smiled. "There's no problem, is there? Yulin has succeeded in trimming her back every few weeks so her obesity won't kill her."

Gil Zinder sighed. "Look, Trelig, why not trim her back at least to her normal weight? Ninety kilos is far too large for someone of her height."

The master of New Pompeii chuckled. "But, here, she weighs only sixty-four kilos! Why, that's less than she weighed on Makeva!"

The scientist started to say something nasty, then thought better of it. Of course Nikki weighed less here, as they all did; but by now her muscles had become accustomed to the lighter gravity, and extreme obesity was more than merely a scale's weight; it was ugly and damaging to the body, as well as awkward. On Makeva at 1 G she probably would be exhausted just walking a hundred meters; here the effect wasn't much better.

But Zinder realized that Nikki would have to stay on the other side until Trelig's plans were completed, and he knew, too, why the ambitious and treacherous Ben Yulin was the only one trusted with Nikki under the little mirror.

So all the scientist could do was wait, wait until the big device was in place, wait for his time.

Yulin bothered him most of all. The man was brilliant, yes, but he was one of Trelig's kind. He was secure in his own technological superiority over Trelig and any of Trelig's experts— he was safe. Trelig could not operate Obie's mirror without Yulin, and Yulin was a follower of Zinder's theories without having the decades of theoretical research that went into programming the monster. He could never have built this machine.

But he could operate it.

And that was Zinder's greatest fear. Once completed and tested, he and Nikki, especially Nikki, would be superfluous.

Nor could he secretly program Obie to go so far and no further with Yulin; although he was the designer, he was never allowed at the control console without Ben Yulin's being there as well.

New Pompeii had shown Gil Zinder the plans Antor Trelig had for everyone, the kind of master he'd make. He'd mentally calculated and checked and rechecked everything, but his only hope lay in unfounded ideas, untried paths. There had never been a machine like this before.

* * *

Mavra Chang eased her small but speedy diplomatic ship into a parking orbit about a light-year from New Pompeii. She wasn't the first to arrive; seven or eight similar ships had preceded her and now floated in a neat line. Except for a long-sleeved black pullover and her belt, she was dressed in the same manner as when she met Councillor Alaina. The belt was done up to look like a broad band made up of many strands of thick, black rope, bound together with a much larger and more solid dragon buckle. No one would know that it was actually a three-meter bullwhip. Compartments in the buckle contained a number of injectors and nodules for various purposes; the hidden lifts in her boots and their high, thick heels contained other useful materials. Yet, the whole outfit was so natural and formfitting that it appeared she carried nothing at all. She also wore small earrings that looked like long crystal cubes strung together. They, too, disguised more surprises.

She rubbed her rear a little. It still stung where they'd loaded her with antidotes and antitoxins to protect her from just about everything they could think of. She felt as if, should she get a cut, her veins would drip clear liquid.

"Mavra Chang as representative of Councillor Alaina," she told the unseen guardians of New Pompeii on the frequency they'd instructed.

"Very well," replied a toneless voice only vaguely male. "Stand to in line. We will wait for the others before transferring."

She cursed silently at this last. They weren't taking any chances— the special properties of this ship, and its nicely disguised life-support modules, would be useless. They would go together, in their ship.

She took out a mirror and checked herself out. She was wearing some light cosmetics this time— a little brown lipstick, a slight sheen on the hair giving it a reflective, almost metallic blue cast. She had even painted her metallic nails a dull silver. It served to disguise the fact that they were somewhat unusual. The cosmetics were for Trelig. Although literally bisexual, like all his race— he had both male and female sex organs— he tended to favor the male in appearance and in sexual appetite.

Finally they had all arrived. A large ship came from the direction of the star Asta, a fancy private passenger liner; one by one they docked with it, put their own ships on automatic station, and transferred.

The group, which ultimately included fourteen, had only two councillors. The rest were representatives, and Mavra could see by the look of some that she was not the only diplomatic irregular in the crowd. The situation worried her; if she noticed this, then surely Trelig would, too. He probably expected it. This, then, was confidence.

The cabin attendants were polite but efficient. They were true citizens of New Harmony, bred to service. Dark, hairless, each about 180 centimeters tall, muscular, and dressed only in light kilts and sandals, their eyes had the dullness that was typical of Comworlders.

The Com was the descendant of every utopian group of the original race. They fulfilled the dream of every utopian state: an equal share of all wealth, no money except for interstellar trade, no hunger, no unemployment. Genetic engineering made them all look alike, too, and biological programming devices fitted them to their jobs perfectly. They were also programmed to be content with whatever job they had— their goal was service. The individual meant nothing; humanity was a collective concept.

The people's appearance and jobs did differ from Com world to Com world, tailored to the different environments, the different requirements, and such on each. The systems, too, varied slightly from one world to another. Some bred all-females, some retained two sexes, and some, like New Harmony, bred everyone as a bisexual. A couple had dispensed with all sexual characteristics entirely, depending on cloning.

Most worlds were set up by well-intentioned visionaries who would establish the system. Then the hierarchy would itself be remade, and there would be a perfect society, one without any frustrations, wants, needs, or psychological hang-ups.

Perfect human anthills.

But, in most cases, the party that established them never seemed to get around to phasing itself out. A few had tried, and the societies they'd established had collapsed from their inability to deal with natural disaster or unanticipated problems.

Most, like New Harmony, never tried. The ambition, greed, and lust for power that created the dedicated revolutionary and sustained him in bad times clung to existence for a variety of reasons. Having eradicated those wretched tendencies in their populations, they could not wipe out those weaknesses in themselves. And so New Harmony, after five hundred years in the Com, still had a party hierarchy of several thousand administrators for the various diplomatic and economic zones, and they had Anton Trelig as the one born to lead them.

Now the rest of the human race was discovering how well he had been bred.

There were a few perfunctory introductions and such, but not much conversation on the trip in. Mavra immediately realized, though, that Trelig would not be fooled by this motley crew. A two-meter-tall, ruddy-faced, and full-bearded man with bright-blue eyes was definitely not from the Com world of Paradise, where all the people were bisexual, identical, and about two-thirds his height. He was definitely a freighter captain like herself, or a barbarian from the newer settled worlds. Eight males and six females— she thought; with two it was hard to tell— all there more to get information than to be overawed.