04. The Return of Nathan Brazil (28 page)

"Listen well. I will tell you your role in what is to come. Brazil will be in charge, but I already know the basic idea that must be used. Accept his leadership— but never think of him as a god. He's not—he is a very human being, something which puzzles me a great deal. Think of him as the only known repairman for a broken machine. Act accordingly. Your job is to get him to the Well. On the Well World yourself, you will survive. Receive the information."

Yua received much the same instruction, although when she emerged from the violet glow she seemed a different person, more knowledgeable, more worldly, more self-confident. Obie had given her what he thought she'd need.

Gypsy was next. He didn't want to go, but the riflemen gave him little choice. He sighed and let the glow take him.

"Hello, Obie," he said casually.

"Hello, Gypsy," the computer replied. "I am giving you the least instruction and the least well-defined role in the coming drama because I believe you are the most resourceful of the bunch." He hesitated. "You agree with what I am about to do and what I am forcing?"

All the playful pretense was gone now. "Yes, Obie. You
know,
don't you? How?"

"You couldn't hide it from me forever. Yes, I know —and I think I understand, in a way. I didn't ask you anything about your motives or your own 'how.' I only asked you if you agreed."

"This is very hard on me," Gypsy said hesitantly. "Academically, yes. I guess I'm more like Brazil than like you, Obie. I—I just couldn't do it. I couldn't insist somebody else do it, either."

"You did once," the computer said.

He nodded absently. "I guess I did at that. I suppose we know our own selves the least of anyone." He looked up, although there was no one to see. "Obie? Do you forgive me?"

"I forgive you," the computer replied softly. "There is little to forgive. Help them, though, won't you?"

"I'll do what I can," he promised. "Who would have thought it would have come down to me, eh?" The chuckle was without humor.

"Good-bye—Gypsy."

"Obie—there must be another—" he began, then stopped. "So long, Obie," he said at last. The glow was gone.

"It's time, Nathan Brazil."

Brazil looked around at the others, all staring intently at him. "You're all
crazy!
"
he muttered. "Crazy!" He turned and faced the pedestal. "Obie—it means this much to you?"

"It does," the computer responded.

Brazil hesitated a moment. "Then I'll do it. Now. Get me to the Well World, shoot me down to an Avenue, and I'll do it."

The computer hesitated—Brazil could feel it—and his hopes rose. They were quickly dashed when Obie replied, "I would like to believe that. I really would. But, once in, you could simply wish me out of existence and do nothing else. You could turn us all into toads. Anything but what must be done. We've been through this discussion before, Nathan Brazil. Besides, what you ask is now impossible. I am injured. I am in great pain. I can no longer handle the type of drop necessary for the Well World with any certainty. The hard way, Brazil. Try not to kill me."

Nathan Brazil sighed. "Now, damn it, I'm not going to do this and that's that!"

"On the count of three those riflemen will shoot you," Obie said flatly. "It's set on needle stun. It will hurt—hurt a lot. And when you're disabled and in pain they will come down and throw you up here. This is the time for us both, Nathan Brazil. One . . . two . . ."

Brazil looked uneasily at the riflemen and jumped up on the podium. "What a bunch of melodramatic bullshit," he muttered defiantly; but he looked nervous.

The violet glow reached down and surrounded the little man and then he winked out.

"Obie! No!" Mavra Chang screamed, rushing to the podium. But it was too late. Brazil was already gone.

They waited. Mavra listened for explosions, vibrations, or other signs of terrible things happening to Obie, but she heard only the smooth, ever-present hum of a machine-world. Perhaps Obie would be all right.

Obie, who could remold a planet in an hour or two, spent four with Brazil locked into him with no visible sign of an end. It got hard on the observers' nerves; Yua paced, Marquoz and Gypsy played gin rummy but neither's mind was on the game, and Mavra finally became so irritated that she started berating the guards for their actions even though she realized they were under mental compulsion from Obie. They took her outburst patiently, then, when she'd run down, two of them went Topside for food and drinks for the rest.

More time passed. Yua suggested they try to rest, but the others, even Gypsy, refused. "I don't know about you," Marquoz told the rest of them, "but I'm staying here until Hell freezes over. I
have
to know the end of this." He looked idly at Mavra. "You know, if something
does
go wrong with Obie you're going to be a Rhone woman from now on."

She hadn't even considered that. "It doesn't matter," she decided at last. "If Obie can't get us to the Well World we'll have to go in through a Markovian gate anyway. That means going through the Well and being changed into another creature, anyway. And this time whatever it makes us we will be for the rest of our natural lives."

It was a sobering thought.

Gypsy chuckled. "Yeah, Marquoz. They'll change you into a human."

"Heaven forbid!" the little dragon sniffed. "The odds are one in seven hundred and eighty, I believe. Don't bet on it. Remember—you could become a Chugach."

"Oh, my god!" Gypsy responded, mock-stricken. "Still, it would give me an easy way to light cigarettes. Or don't they have cigarettes on this Well World?"

Yua got into the discussion turning to Mavra, whose equine body towered over them. "You've been there," she said. "What is it like?"

Mavra smiled wanly. "Like anyplace else, really. Just imagine a planet that was a lot of little planets— fifteen hundred and sixty of them, in fact, each roughly six hundred and fifteen kilometers wide at the Well World's equator—they get a little distorted as you go toward the poles. Each one is shaped like a hexagon— the Markovians were nutty about the number six. Each one with its own plants, insects, you name it, and all with different dominant races. All the carbon-based ones are south of the equator—seven hundred and eighty in all. The ones north of the equator are non-carbon based. They can be anything."

"And you can walk between them?" the Olympian pressed.

Mavra nodded. "It's like an invisible, intangible wall. It can be freezing on one side and hot as hell on the other. But things like rivers, mountain ranges, and whatnot run through them without regard to the borders. It sounds like a boxy place but it's not—the coastlines are irregular, erosion, deposition, and volcanic forces all work there as elsewhere. But each hex is an artificial area ecologically perfect for that form of life specified by the Markovians. Supposedly each was a little laboratory. Markovian technicians dreamed up the places, established them, watched them develop to see if they'd work. Weather, climate, atmospheric conditions, all optimized for a particular set of planetary conditions. There are handicaps, too—in some of them no machines will work that are not muscle-powered. In others, only limited machines, like steam engines, work—and in some everything works, like here. This ranking of technologies was supposed to compensate, I think, for resources—or the lack of them—the new races would find on the planets they'd be seeded on. Magic, too, in some instances—the ability to control some powers through the Well. Artificial magic, yes, but no less real because only the one race can use it. Other handicaps might have existed too, I guess."

"You'd think they'd fight like hell—or overpopulate," Marquoz commented.

"The Well controls population, maintains it at around a million or so per hex," Mavra explained. "If something comes up—war, plague, natural disaster— that decimates a batch, then they reproduce like bunnies until the loss is made up. As for wars—well, there have been minor skirmishes. The humans there developed a high technological civilization that finally ran out of resources so they attacked the nontechnological Ambreza next door. The Ambreza found a gas from a strange Northern Hemisphere race—although all the Northerners are strange, even by Well World standards —and gassed the humans back into the stone age, then swapped hexes with them. The humans are primitive and tribal—were the last time I was there, anyway—and are kept on that level by the Ambreza, who enjoy the resources of their former land and the technology of the human's past. One big export is tobacco, Gypsy. It's not common but it's known and prized there. It can be an expensive habit, though."

"But there must be bigger wars, too," Marquoz prodded. "I would think it'd be natural."

"Natural, maybe," Mavra admitted, "but there have been only two that I know of. There was a famous conqueror who had problems because his high-tech weapons wouldn't work in a majority of hexes— a nonworking laser pistol is a poor match against a well-trained crossbowman—and some hexes were uncomfortable enough that his supply lines became too long, impossible to maintain. That was the big lesson— you can't conquer the Well World. Then, when Obie and I were there last, a war broke out to get to the shuttle spacecraft that brought some of us down. The object was to reach and control Obie. Space travel simply won't work on the Well World if developed from scratch, but here was a ready-made vessel. The war was bloody and brutal but settled nothing because the spacecraft engines were destroyed by a hermit race who didn't believe anybody should have them."

Marquoz nodded. "I've read the Com records."

"You said you crashed there," Yua noted. "That means you have never been through the Well of Souls transformation yourself."

She nodded assent. "That's right. A very nasty race called the Olborn had stones that could change any other creature—or themselves—into beasts of burden, like tiny donkeys. I got half the treatment, so I spent many long years facing down, on four hooved feet, with no hands and no way even to look up." There was an angry gleam in her eyes. "They kept me on ice in case they needed a pilot. They couldn't afford to let me go through the Well since they had no control over what or where I'd come out."

"They?" Marquoz prompted.

She sniffed. "A bastard named Serge Ortega. A giant creature with a head like a walrus, six arms, and a long snakelike body. An ex-human, it's told, and a former freighter captain. Somehow he found a way to make himself virtually immortal as long as he stays in Zone, the normal entryway to the Well World and a sort of embassy. He practically ran the Well World. Probably still does." She chuckled dryly. "You know, if there's any man I still truly hate it is probably Ortega. I swore I'd kill him someday, as I killed the men who murdered my husband. He had no
right
to do what he did to me!"

The sudden violence of her tone alarmed them. It was Gypsy, heretofore silent, who said, "I'd have thought you'd have gone to the Well World and done him in long ago."

"Obie wouldn't permit it," she responded. "Obie had no power over the Well World and wasn't about to put me back on it just to settle an old score. I have the funny feeling he always liked Ortega for some reason. I don't know. Ortega and I were bound up together for years yet I never once met him. Strange."

Clearly   old  wounds  were  being   reopened;   half-forgotten experiences were creeping out from the dimly lit back halls of her brain.

"And we'll all be going there," Yua breathed. "It sounds incredible. Exciting. I can hardly wait."

"Enjoy it while you can," Mavra said sharply. "The Well World is anything but romantic. It's dangerous and deadly. I never missed it."

"Well, even so, I—" Yua started to respond, but at that moment there was a sharp crackling noise as if a great bolt of lightning had struck near them. They all jumped, startled, and turned.

White-faced and shaking Nathan Brazil stood on the pedestal. He stared straight ahead, looking at empty space. They didn't move for a moment, just watched him apprehensively.

He tottered slightly, still looking vacantly ahead. Finally he said, "I need a drink. No, check that. I need to get very, very drunk."

And then he collapsed into an unconscious heap.

Nautilus—Topside

THEY WAITED TWO DAYS FOR NATHAN BRAZIL TO come out of it. His pulse rate was very weak, at times dropping so low it could barely be detected; he ran serious fevers, but never lapsed into delirium. He just lay there, almost dead, making the medical people wonder if he'd ever rise again. They brought him Topside, placed him in a luxury suite under guard, and summoned the medical staff. The diagnosis was simple: He was suffering from extreme shock, and little could be done for him except to see that he was kept warm, regularly massaged, and fed intravenously.

In the meantime, to forestall half the planet coming to the
Nautilus,
Yua and Gypsy visited Olympus. They returned a day later to report that Obie had worked some major magic—including the removal of tails from all but Yua. Still, the change unsettled Yua a little since Olympian history now clearly showed that no one on Olympus
ever
had a tail; the now-tailless women were called Pallas. All sight that there had ever been two varieties, the Athene and the Aphrodite, had vanished. They never were.

There were men, too, on Olympus—out in the open. They ran nothing and were still regarded as sex objects, but they were part of the society—and always had been.

More, the Fellowship of the Well had changed course—in this case by simultaneous "divine revelation" to all High Priestesses so there would be no mistake. In order to create universal Paradise, they had been told, Nathan Brazil must first go to the Well World itself, pass into the Well, and eradicate the old Universe. The forces of evil would try to stop him. For Olympus to share in the Heaven to come, they and their followers must form an army to help Brazil attain his goal. As reward they would be a part of the new, Holy Universe, for though the powers of evil held sway in this Universe they, too, would be swept away in the re-creation, leaving a Universe without evil. Even to die in this holy crusade would guarantee a place in the next, great Universe.