01. Midnight At the Well of Souls (44 page)

And it stank—the odor of foul carrion after days in the sun. It stung their nostrils, making them slightly sick.

Skander began babbling excitedly, then turned to them. "See, Varnett?" he said. "See what I told you? Six evenly spaced tentacles, about three meters tall! That's a Markovian!" All traces of animosity were gone; this was the professor lecturing his student, in pride at the vindication of his theories.

"So you really was a Markovian, Nate," Ortega said wonderingly. "Well, I'll be damned."

"Nathan!" Wuju called out. "Is that—that thing really you?"

"It is," Brazil's voice came, but not as speech. It formed in each of their brains, in their own languages. Even The Diviner received it directly, rather than through The Rel.

Skander was like a child with a new toy. "Of course! Of course!" he chortled. "Telepathy, naturally. Probably the rest, too."

"This is a Markovian body," Brazil's voice came to them, "but I am not a Markovian. The Well knows me, though, and, since all lived as new races outside, it was only natural that we be converted to the Markovian form when entering the Well. It saved design problems."

Wuju stepped out ahead of them, drawing close to the creature.

"Wu Julee!" Hain shouted insanely. "You are mine!" The long, sticky tongue darted out to her, wrapped itself around her. She screamed. Ortega spun quickly toward the bug, pistols in two hands.

"Now, now, none of that, Hain!" he cautioned carefully. "Let the girl go." He pointed the pistols at the Akkafian's eyes.

Hain hesitated a second, deciding what to do. Finally the tongue uncoiled from Wu Julee, and she dropped about thirty centimeters to the floor, landing hard. Raw, nasty-looking welts, like those made by rope burn, showed on her skin.

The creature that was Nathan Brazil walked over on its six tentacles, until it loomed over her. One tentacle reached out, gently touched her wound. The smell was overwhelming. She shrank from the probe, fear on her face.

The heartlike mass tilted a little on its axis.

"Form doesn't matter," it mocked her voice. "It's what's inside that counts." Then it said in Brazil's old voice: "What if I were a monster, Wuju? What then?"

Wuju broke into sobs. "Please, Nathan! Please don't hurt me!" she pleaded. "No more, please! I—I just can't!"

"Does it hurt?" he asked gently, and she managed to nod affirmatively, wiping the tears from her eyes.

"Then trust me some more, Wuju," Brazil's voice came again, still gentle. "No matter what. Shut your eyes. I'll make the hurt go away."

She buried her head in her hands, still crying.

The Markovian reached out with a tentacle, and rubbed lightly against the angry-looking welt on her back and sides. She cringed but otherwise stayed still. The thing felt clammy and horrid, yet they all watched as the tentacle, lightly drawn across the wound, caused the wound to vanish.

As the pain vanished, she relaxed.

"Lie flat on your back, Wuju," Brazil instructed, and she did, eyes still shut. The same treatment was given to her chest and sides, and there was suddenly no sign of any welt or wound.

Brazil withdrew a couple of meters from her. There was no evident front or back to him, nor any apparent eyes, nose, or mouth. Although the pulpy mass in the center was pulsating and slightly irregular, it had no clear-cut directionality.

"Hey, that's fantastic, Nate!" Ortega exclaimed.

"Shall we go to the Well?" Brazil asked them. "It is time to finish this drama."

"I'm not sure I like this at all," Hain commented hesitantly.

"Too late to back out now, you asshole," Skander snapped. "You didn't get where you were without guts. Play it out."

"If you'll follow me," Brazil said, "and get on the walkway here; we can talk as we ride, and probably panic the border hexes at the same time."

They all stepped onto the walkway on the other side of the meter-tall barrier. The Avenue's strange light went out, and another light went on on both sides of the walkway, illuminating about half a kilometer to their left.

"The lights will come on where we are, and go out where we aren't," Brazil explained. "It's automatic. Slelcronian, you'll find the light adequate for you despite its apparent lack of intensity. You can get rid of that heat lamp. Just throw it over the barrier there. It will be disposed of by the automatic machinery in about fourteen hours." The Markovian's tentacle near the forward part of the walkway struck the side sharply, and the walkway started to move.

"You are now on the walkway to the Well Access Gate," he explained. "When the Markovians built this world, it was necessary, of course, for the technicians to get in and out. They were full shifts—one full rotation on, one off. Every day from dozens to thousands of Markovian technicians would ride this walkway to the control center and to other critical areas inside the planet. In those days, of course, The Avenue would stay open as long as necessary. It was shortened to the small interval in the last days before the last Markovian went native for good, to allow the border hexes some development and to keep out those who had second thoughts. At the end, only the three dozen project coordinators came, and then irregularly, just to check on things. As any technician was finally cleared out of the Well, the key to The Avenue doors was removed from his mind, so he could not get back in if he wanted to."

They moved on in eerie silence, lighted sections suddenly popping on in front of them, out in back of them, as they traveled. The walkway itself seemed to glow radiantly; no light source was visible.

"Some of you know the story of this place already," Brazil continued. "The race you call the Markovians rose as did all other species, developed, and finally discovered the primal energy nature of the universe—that there was nothing but this primal energy, extending outward in all directions, and that all constructs within it, we included, are established by rules and laws of nature that are not fixed just because they are there, but are instead
imposed.
Nothing equals anything, really; the equal sign is strictly for the imposed structure of the universe. Rather, everything is relative to everything else."

"But once the Markovians discovered the mathematical constructs governing stability, why didn't they change them?" Skander asked. "Why keep the rules?"

"They didn't dare try to tackle the master equations, those governing physical properties and natural laws," Brazil replied. "They could alter things a little, but common sense should tell you that in order to change the master equation you first have to eliminate the old one. If you do that, what happens to you and the rest of the universe? They didn't dare—so they imposed new, smaller equations on localized areas of the preexisting universe."

"Not gods, then," Vardia said quietly. "Demigods."

"People,"
Brazil responded. "Not gods at all. People. Oh, I know that this form I've got is quite different than you'd think, but it's no more monstrous or unusual than some of the creatures of this world, and less than some. The many billions of beings who wore bodies like this were a proud race of ordinary people with one finger on the controls. They argued, they debated, strove, built, discovered—just like all of us. Were their physical forms closer to the ones we're familiar with, you would possibly even like them. Remember, they achieved godhood not by natural processes, but by technological advancement. It was as if one of our races, in present form, suddenly discovered the key to wish fulfillment. Would we be ready for it? I wonder."

"Why did they die, Brazil?" Skander asked. "Why did they commit suicide?"

"Because they were not ready," Brazil replied sadly. "They had conquered all material want, all disease, even death itself. But they had not conquered their selves. They reveled in hedonism, each an island unto itself. Anything they wanted, they just had to wish for.

"And they found that wasn't enough. Something was missing. Utopia wasn't fulfillment, it was stagnation. And that was the curse—
knowing
that the ultimate was attainable, but not knowing what it was or how to attain it. They studied the problem and came up with no solutions. Finally, the best amplified Markovian minds concluded that, somewhere in their development, they'd lost something—the true fulfillment of the dream. The social equation did not balance, because it lacked some basic component. One plus two plus three equals six, but if you don't have the plus two in there, it can't possibly reach more than four.

"Finally, they came to the conclusion that they were at a dead end, and would stagnate in an eternal orgy of hedonism unless something was done. The solution seemed simple: start over, try to regain the missing factor, or rediscover it, by starting from the beginning again. They used a variety of races and conditions to restart, none Markovian, on the idea that any repetition of the Markovian cycle would only end up the same."

"And so they built this world," Varnett put in.

"Yes, they built this world. A giant Markovian brain, placed around a young but planetless sun. The brain
is
the planet, of course, everything but the crust. Gravity was no problem, nor was atmosphere. They created an outer shell, about a hundred kilometers above the surface. The hexagons are all compartments, their elements held in all directions by fields of force."

"So it was built to convert the Markovians to new forms?" Skander asked.

"Double duty, really," Brazil told them. "The finest artisans of the Markovian race were called in. They made proposals for biospheres, trying to outdo one another in creativity. The ones that looked workable were built, and volunteers went through the Zone Gate and became the newly designed creatures in the newly designed environments. Several generations were needed for even a moderate test—the Markovians didn't mind. A thousand years was nothing to them. You see, they could build, pioneer-style, but they were still Markovians. A lot of generations born in the biome and of the new race were needed to establish a culture and show how things would go. Their numbers were kept relatively stable, and the fields of force were much more rigid then than now. They had to live in their hex, without any real contact with other hexes. They had to build their own worlds."

They were riding
down
now, at a deceptively steep angle. Down into the bowels of the planet itself.

"But why didn't the first generation establish a high civilization?" Varnett asked. "After all, they were just like us, changed outside only."

"You overestimate people from a highly technological culture. We take things for granted. We know how to turn on a light, but not why the light comes on. None of us could
build
most of our artifacts, and most civilized races become dependent on them. Suddenly dumped in a virgin wilderness, as they all were, they had no stores, no factories, no access to anything they didn't make themselves out of what was available. A great many died from hardship alone. The tough ones, the survivors, they built their own societies, and their children's societies. They worked with purpose—if the test failed, then they died out. If they succeeded—well, there was the promise that the successful ones would someday go to the Well of Souls at midnight, and there be taken to a new world, to found a new civilization, to grow, develop, perhaps become the progenitors of a future race of gods who would be fulfilled. Each hoped to be the ones whose descendants would make it."

"And you were here when that happened," Wuju said nervously.

"I was," he acknowledged. "I assisted the creator of Hex Forty-one—One Eighty-seven, the hundred and eighty-seventh and last race developed in that hex. I didn't create it, simply monitored and helped out. We stole ideas from each other all the time, of course. Dominant species in one hex might be a modified pattern of animals in another. Our own race was a direct steal from some large apes in another hex. The designer liked them so much that not only did the dominant race turn out to be apes, but they were almost endlessly varied as animals."

"Hold on, Brazil," Skander said. "These others might not know much about things, but I'm an archaeologist. Old Earth developed over a few billion years, slowly evolving."

"Not exactly," Brazil replied. "First of all, time was altered in each case. The time frame for the development of our sector was speeded up. The original design produced the life we expected, but it developed differently—as giant reptiles, eventually. When it was clear that it wouldn't do to have our people coexist with them, a slight change in the axial tilt caused the dinosaurs to die out, but it placed different stresses on other organisms. Minor mammals developed, and to these, over a period of time, we added ours to replace the ones logically developing in the evolutionary scale. When conditions seemed suitable for us, when apelike creatures survived, we began the exodus. Soon the temperate zones had their first intelligent life. Again, with all the resources but nothing else. They did well, astonishingly so, but the long-term effects of the axial tilt produced diastrophism and a great ice age within a few centuries. Our present, slow climb has been the product of the extremely primitive survivors of those disasters. So, in fact, has it been with all your home worlds."

"Is there a world, then, or a network of worlds of the Akkafians?" Hain asked.

"There was," Brazil replied. "Perhaps there is. Perhaps it's larger and greater and more advanced than ours. The same with the Umiau, the Czill, the Slelcronians, the Dillians, and others. When we get to the Well itself, I'll be able to tell you at least which ones are still functioning, although not how, or if they've changed, or what. I would think that some of the older ones would be well advanced by now. My memory says there were probably close to a million races created and scattered about; I'll be curious to see how many are still around."

They had been going down for some time. Now they were deep below the surface, how deep they couldn't say. Suddenly a great hexagon outlined in light appeared just under them.

"The Well Access Gate," Brazil told them. "One of six. It can take you to lots of places within the Well, but it'll take you to the central control area and monitoring stations if you have no other instructions. When we get to it, just step on it. I won't trigger it until everyone is aboard. In case somebody else does, by accident, just wait for the light to come back on and step on again. It'll work."