Midnight at the Well of Souls

Midnight at the Well of Souls
Author(s)	Jack L. Chalker
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Science fiction novel
Publisher	Del Rey
Publication date	1977
Media type	Print (Paperback)
ISBN	0-7434-3522-2
OCLC Number	49523539
Followed by	Exiles at the Well of Souls

Midnight at the Well of Souls is the first book in the Well of Souls series by American author Jack L. Chalker, first published as a paperback in 1977.

Plot introduction

Nathan Brazil is the captain of the interstellar freighter Stehekin. While transporting three passengers, Captain Brazil receives a distress call from an uninhabited planet and makes a detour to investigate. There, they find the remains of a research team murdered by the rogue scientist Elkinos Skander in order to conceal his discovery of how to control Markovian technology. While exploring the planet, they are inadvertently transported to the Well World, where they must track down Skander and his equally brilliant and insane pupil. In addition, they must deal with being changed into bizarre alien creatures.

Plot summary

Elkinos Skander is an archaeologist stationed on the Markovian planet of Dalgonia. The Markovians are a species of non-human, intelligent life which disappeared several million years before humans came into existence. They have left behind a number of planets with massive computers built into the crusts and ruins upon their surface, but no artifacts nor traces of their former inhabitants. The novel opens with the arrival of eight new students at Skander's archaeological dig.

Unbeknownst to his superiors in the Confederation, Skander has discovered that this planet's "crust computer" (which had been believed to be dead) actually is still active. Humans had not previously been able to observe this as the computers use an energy unknown (and invisible) to human physics, but Skander has developed a device which allows him to observe it. One of the new students, patterned (and named) after a brilliant mathematician named Varnett, catches Skander viewing the energy pattern in cells from a core sample of the planetary computer. After viewing the pattern of the energy in the cells, Varnett deduces that this energy is the fundamental building block of the universe, representing the mathematics that govern existence. Both he and Skander conclude that the Markovian computer was created with the purpose of controlling the primal energy, and that the Markovians lived in a utopian society where anything they desired would be created for them by the planetary computer.

With this knowledge, Skander and Varnett attempt to learn how to access the planetary computer. Both believe that if they can find a location with direct access to the computer, their understanding of the mathematics the computer governs will give them the ability to manipulate reality the same way the Markovians had done. The team discovers a surface anomaly near the north pole of the planet, where a hexagonal hole appears for a brief interval every day. Skander and Varnett both believe that they will be able to use this anomaly to access the planetary computer.

Fearing the consequences of wider knowledge of the discovery (in part due to his hatred of what the human race had become), Skander attempts to murder the entire party of students. He kills seven of them as they sleep at their base station, leaving only Varnett (who had remained at the anomaly) alive. When Skander returns to the anomaly to attack Varnett, Varnett is ready for him. They struggle on the surface, and are taken by the anomaly when it reopens.

The interstellar freighter Stehekin is transporting grain intended for famine relief and three passengers. The passengers are a businessman named Datham Hain, his "niece" Wu Julee, and a diplomatic courier identified as Vardia Diplo 1261. During the trip, the ship's captain, Nathan Brazil, discovers that Hain is a "sponge merchant", a trafficker in an incurable, degenerative brain disease used to gain power over those it infects. Hain keeps Wu Julee as an example of what happens to someone if the antidote that arrests the progress of the disease is withheld; she has regressed to a mental age of five and will eventually be turned into a vegetable and allowed to die.

Brazil diverts the Stehekin from its course, in an attempt to reach the planet where the sponge sickness originated to obtain the antidote, but before they arrive, Captain Brazil receives a distress call from Dalgonia and detours to investigate. There, they find the seven students murdered by Skander. Subsequently, the entire party travels to the polar gate, and while they are investigating there, they are transported to the Well World.

At the Well World, Brazil and his companions are charged with tracking down Skander and Varnett, as the inhabitants of the planet are concerned that either of them could gain access to the central computer there and do untold mischief to the universe. The complication is that travelling through the polar gate has transformed all of the humans, with the exception of Nathan Brazil, into members of the various species which inhabit the planet. (The Well World is divided into "hexes", hexagonal areas each of which is inhabited by a different, and usually intelligent, race of creatures.) Brazil himself is forced to unravel the mystery of his forgotten past, to discover his true identity.

Characters

• Elkinos Skander, a brilliant (and psychotic) archaeologist
• Varnett, a brilliant mathematician
• Nathan Brazil, an unassuming freighter captain with a mysterious past
• Datham Hain, a sponge trafficker
• Wu Julee, his servant
• Vardia Diplo 1261, a diplomatic courier
• Serge Ortega, a former freighter captain reborn as a Ulik, a six-armed being that is half-walrus, half-snake