"02 - Exiles at the Well of Souls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

Exiles at the Well of Souls by Jack L. Chalker

Well of Souls Book Two

Copyright 1978

From the back Cover:

Antor Trelig, archvillain ond head of the Sponge Syndicate, had captured Obie, a supercomputer that could control all matter and all worlds. With Obie's help-willing or unwilling-Trelig would become omnipotent...and he was sure nothing could stop him now.

Against him, the Council had only one weapon-Mavra Chang, the amoral female adventurer who had trained herself to be humanity's master criminal. They offered her any reward if she succeeded. For failure, there was certain, horrible death.

Neither Trelig nor Mavra had counted on being drawn across space to the Well World, master planet of the ancient Markovians. There, in new-alien-bodies, they were faced with countless bizare ecologies. And there they were caught up in a battle of intrigue where strange races fought for control of the Universe!

ABOUT TIME . . .

The format of this book is extremely episodic; the action will shift to several different people and events very rapidly, and this might cause some temporal disorientation to those used to reading a straight-line narrative. Therefore, the reader is cautioned to keep in mind that, unless the text specifically says otherwise, a scene-change is considered to be going on simultaneously with the preceding action, and that this is true, regardless of the number of scene changes, until the original characters come up again. The scheme may sound difficult, but it shouldn't cause problems. JLC



GAEMESJUN LABORATORIES, MAKEVA



It wasn't the fact that Gilgam Zinder's lab assistant had a horse's tail that was the oddest fact; the really strange thing was that she didn't seem to think her condition odd or unusual.

Zinder was tall and thin, a gaunt man with gray hair and a long gray goatee that made him seem even older than he was, and more drawn. His blue-gray eyes, bloodshot and surrounded with darkening shadow, showed his overwork. He hadn't thought to eat in more than two days, and sleep had become academic.

The place was a strange-looking lab at that. It was designed something like an ampitheater, with a circular raised pedestal about forty centimeters above the plain flooring that served as the stage. Above the stage was a device hanging like a great cannon but terminating in a small mirror with a tiny point coming out from it.

A balcony surrounded the apparatus; here, along the walls, were thousands of blinking lights, dials and switches, and central consoles, four of them, evenly spaced around the circle below. Zinder sat at one; directly across from him a much younger man in shiny protective lab clothing sat at another. Zinder's lab suit looked as if it had been made in the last century.

The woman standing on the raised disk was an ordinary-looking sort, late thirties and a little dumpy and saggy, the kind that looks far better with proper clothes than nude as she now was.

Only she had a horse's tail, long and bushy.

She looked up at the two men with puzzlement and some impatience.

"Well, come on," she called to them, "aren't you going to do anything? It's cold down here."

Ben Yulin, the younger man, smiled and leaned over the rail.

"Swish your tail awhile, Zetta. We're working as fast as we can!" he called down good-naturedly.

And she was swishing the tail, slowly back and forth, routinely, echoing her frustration.

"You really don't notice any difference, Zetta?" Zinder's thin, reedy voice asked her.

She looked puzzled, then down at herself, running her hands along her body, including the tail, as if to find out what they did.