Free 01. Midnight At the Well of Souls by Jack L. Chalker Page A

done, he grunted and put the man down on the floor. Brazil collapsed in a heap, and the snakeman turned his attention to Hain.
    "I thank you, sir," Hain gasped, his hand going involuntarily to his throat. "You have surely saved my life."
    "I didn't want to do it, nor would I have done so in normal times," Ortega snapped back acidly. "And if Nate ever catches up to you on the outside, I won't be there to save you—and, if I am, I'll cheerfully join him in tearing you limb from limb. But I will not allow such a thing here!" He turned his attention back to Brazil, who was just coming around.
    Hain seemed taken aback by the creature's comments, then saw that his pulse pistol had fallen when they had tumbled and now was a foot or so from him on the floor. Slowly, his hand crept toward it.
    "No!" Wu Julee suddenly screamed, but Hain already had the weapon, and was pointing it at both the snakeman and Brazil, who was sitting up, shaking his head and rubbing his jaw. Ortega's back was to Hain, but Brazil suddenly looked up and spotted the gun. Ortega saw him stare and turned to face the fat man.
    "Now both of you behave and I won't do anything rash," Hain told them in that same cool, confident tone he always used. "But I am leaving this charming place right now."
    "How?" asked Serge Ortega.
    The question seemed to bother Hain, who was used to simple answers to simple questions. "The—the way we came in," he said at last.
    "The doorway leads to a corridor. The corridor leads to the Well in one direction—and that is strictly one way," Ortega told him. "In the other direction are more rooms like this—seven hundred and eighty of them, in a honeycombed labyrinth. Beyond them are housing and recreation facilities for the types of creatures that use those offices—seven hundred and eighty different types of creatures, Hain. Some of them don't breathe what you do. Some of them won't like you a bit and may just kill you."
    "There is a way out," Hain snarled, but there was desperation in his voice. "There must be. I'll find it."
    "And then what?" Ortega asked calmly. "You're out in a world that is moderately large. The surface area is best expressed as five point one times ten to the eighth power kilometers squared. And you don't even know what the planet looks like, the languages, anything. You're a smart man, Hain. What are the odds?"  
    Hain seemed confused, hesitant. Suddenly he looked at the pistol in his hand and brightened. "This gives me the odds," he said firmly.
    "Never play the odds until you know the rules of the game," Ortega warned softly, and advanced slowly toward him.
    "I'll shoot!" Hain threatened, his voice an octave higher than usual.
    "Go ahead," Ortega invited, his great serpentine body sliding slowly toward the panicked man.
    "All right, dammit!" Hain cried, and pulled the trigger.
    Nothing happened.
    Hain pulled the trigger again and again. It clicked, making contact with the solenoid firing pin, but did nothing else.
    Ortega suddenly moved with that blinding speed, and the gun seemed to vanish from the fat man's hand.
    "No weapon works in this room," Ortega said crisply. Hain sat, a stupefied expression on his face, mouth half open. Possibly for the first time in his life that arrogant self-confidence was gone out of him.
    "You all right, Nate?" Ortega shot to the small man, who still sat half-rising, holding his sore jaw.
    "Yeah, you son of a bitch," Brazil replied mushily, shaking his head to clear it. "Man! You sure as hell pack a wallop!"
    Ortega chuckled. "I was the only man smaller than you once in a bar on Siprianos. I was full of booze and dope, and ready to take on the house, all of whom would have cheerfully slit my throat for the floor show. I just started to pick a fight with the bouncer when you grabbed me and knocked me cold. Took me ten weeks before I realized that you'd saved my neck."
    Brazil's jaw dropped in wonder, and the pain hit him as he did so and he groaned. Still, he managed: "You are