04. The Return of Nathan Brazil (15 page)

"So I decided to become one of them. I fashioned a Markovian shell, and entered it."

The scene froze again, and Obie's voice returned to them. "A replay of the last time, over a thousand years ago, that the Well of Souls was entered and alterations made. Although the reality of what you have witnessed may be slightly different, since it was constructed from memories, I did have two accounts to work from so it is reasonably accurate."

They found themselves back on the platform again and the little dish was already returning to its rest position. Gypsy noted that Obie had taken the opportunity to clear the table.

"Hey! Computer! We could make a fortune if we could build that sort of thing for theaters," the dark con man called out hopefully. He was ignored.

Yua looked incredibly smug. "The final proof!" she breathed. "You see now that we are correct. You see now the problem and the urgency. Let us find Nathan Brazil so that we may worship Him and beseech His favors."

Marquoz was a little more cynical. "Obie? Did everybody buy that story of his?"

"Not Ortega—the Ulik, or six-armed snake you saw; nor the twin Vardia, the plant-creature, a Czillian, who agreed with Ortega that Brazil was a mad Markovian throwback who simply did not join the great experiment and was, perhaps, the operations manager of the Well Computer—the chief mechanic, if you will—left to see that all worked properly. Much of the Well World still thinks of him so."

"What do
you
think?" the Chugach pressed.

"That there was a First Creator, possibly the way he stated, is consistent with what we know of the dynamics of our Universe," the computer responded. "There is a great deal of inconsistency in Nathan Brazil's character. Some of it suggests that his story is true, some that he is far less than what he says. Ortega is an Entry. He was originally a Com freighter captain, who, like Brazil, was transformed into a member of the race you saw. Ortega knew Brazil personally and professionally, and even after this demonstration did not believe. I prefer, like Ortega and the Czillians, to reserve judgment. Ortega was a self-confessed liar, thief, and scoundrel; he characterized Brazil the same way.

"I would suggest, however, that it does not matter at all whether or not we believe Brazil is god. That is totally irrelevant, something we may never know. The only thing we know for sure is that he knows how to work the great machine called the Well of Souls. As such, he is the one and only entity known to us who might repair it. Since he set the Well to call him if there was any problem, we must assume it has done so—in fact, I have monitored the call. Hence, we must assume that, if Brazil is still alive, he has chosen not to answer the distress call. Why? In the earlier incident he had lost most of his memory. This or something equally debilitating could have happened to him now, in which case it is even more imperative that we find him. The last time he was in the Well he set it to open for no one but himself."

Marquoz sighed. "That's it, then. Let's do it."

The High Priestess looked surprised at this sudden and simple acquiescence, but was very pleased.

"We'll need a lot of help," Mavra Chang noted. "He'll have buried himself very well. Even if we manage to dig him up, he might catch on and rebury himself even deeper—if, indeed, his disappearance is deliberate and not a sign of something more ominous. We can't use the government—he's obviously got a lot of influence there. That means the Fellowship."

Yua was ecstatic. "Of course we will channel all our resources into the search. I will convey—"

"I
will convey!" Mavra snapped, cutting her off. "I think I had better see just who and what we'll be partners with myself."

"But you can not go to Olympus!" Yua protested. "It is forbidden—and you could not survive there, anyway. You haven't the physical adaptability for it!" Mavra smiled. "I will. Marquoz, will you and Gypsy please get off the platform and stand about where we did when we were served dinner?"

"With pleasure!" Gypsy responded and moved well away; Marquoz, too, was not eager to subject himself to the computer's scrutiny any more than necessary.

Mavra seemed satisfied. "Obie, you know what to do."

"Right, Mavra," the computer answered pleasantly. The dish swung out. Yua got up and started to say something, perhaps to protest, but it was too late. The forms, the table, the chairs were all bathed in the violet glow, and disappeared. The platform was bare. "Now what . . . ?" Gypsy mused aloud, but Marquoz held up a small green hand.

And they were. Two forms, minus the furniture, rematerialized.

Two
Yuas, absolutely identical, stood there. Two High Priestesses.

"Yua, you will take me to the Temple. We shall go by conventional ship; I wish no suspicions raised," one said in the High Priestess's voice.

The second Yua turned and actually kneeled before the speaker.

"Oh, yes, my Lady," she responded softly, almost adoringly. "You have but to command and I must obey."

Marquoz turned to Gypsy. "Remind me," he said casually, "not to get back on that platform, won't you?"

Gypsy nodded absently. "That thing changes minds faster than a fickle shopper at a bargain bazaar," he commented dryly.

Olympus

OLYMPUS WAS WELL OFF THE MAIN SHIPPING LANES. It had actually been discovered fairly early in Earth exploration and might have wound up as a grand Terraforming experiment except that the same space drive that allowed man to reach the planet also made possible the almost simultaneous discovery of a number of more attractive and less expensive planets more or less in a row.

It was roughly thirty-two thousand kilometers around at the equator, a bit smaller than old Earth, and farther out so it was colder. In fact, normal air temperature would be about three degrees Celsius on a summer's day, minus eighteen in winter. Geologically Olympus was very active. Volcanoes larger than any seen on old Earth spewed hot gases and molten magma all over the place; earthquakes were an everyday occurrence on most of the world, although severe ones were rare. To top it all off, the atmosphere was loaded with oxygen and a lot of other gases. The air smelled something like that around a huge chemical plant no matter where you were, and though it rained frequently the chemical content of that rain was a mixture of weak acids stronger by far than those around industrial areas on more Earthlike worlds. The usual materials wore away quickly here; the rains stung and irritated exposed human flesh, and the additives in the air were severe enough to require an artificial air supply. The place had developed a lush plant life well adapted to it as well as some minor insects and sea creatures, but nothing very elaborate. The environment was still too hostile.

The First Mothers, bankrolled by Councillor Alaina, had bought Olympus cheap. Although Ben Yulin had wished for idealized love-slaves, he had made them into superwomen able to withstand enormous extremes. Obie had been the engineer, and he'd done a fine job. The First Mothers found they could live easily on Olympus; their metabolisms permitted them to consume just about anything organic.

Initially, living conditions on Olympus were primitive; houses hewn from solid rock by borrowed lasers were the first homes, and for a generation the population was just a small band of primitives living as naked hunter-gatherers in an almost stone-age culture. They had two advantages, though, a large interest-accruing account in the Com Bank and continuous contact with the Com and its resources.

After a few months, all the First Mothers discovered that they were pregnant. All of the children born were female save two. It was then that they realized they could, in fact, found a new race.

Off-world cloning was employed to guarantee a large, steady supply of females who would be of roughly the same age as the two males when they matured.

The girls were raised to believe that it was their duty to have children as long as they were able and as often as they were able, and the population grew rapidly, eventually allowing the Olympians to dispense with cloning and the outside interests the process necessitated. Now, over seven hundred years later, the population of Olympus was well over thirty million and still growing, although the birth rate had been slowed centuries earlier.

And all the women, except for hair and eye color, looked exactly alike with one additional difference. Of the First Mothers, Yulin had created two before adding the decorative tail. After seven centuries, ten percent of the population lacked the tail. They were the Athenes. The tailed majority were Aphrodites (the last two syllables pronounced as one). They called their race the Pallas, although everyone outside of their culture referred to them as Olympians after their planet. (One of their early books had contained information on human myths, legends, and ancient religions.)

Mavra Chang, disguised as a Pallas, along with Yua made subservient to her by Obie, approached Olympus in an Olympian ship after transferring from a commercial freighter. Realizing the naivete and vulnerability of their early state, the First Mothers had severely restricted access to Olympus. Over the centuries the rules had been chiseled in stone and made absolute. Only Olympians were allowed on the planet. Even freighters had to be Olympian owned and operated.

Although the planet was now modern and civilized, it produced little that was marketable. The old bank funds had been invested in the freighting concern, though, which also did some work for Com worlds. Although it was little known, skilled Olympian females were available for hire, as couriers, as guards, as private ship captains. They were totally loyal to their employers, absolutely incorruptible, and, as super-women, not easy to tangle with. Their attributes made them very useful as couriers of secret information of vital material. The Temple, too, invested heavily in Com businesses; its recent growth had made its wealth astronomical.

All this Obie extracted from Yua's mind; also the linguistic differences, cultural forms and attitudes. Mavra would make no outward slips. But Yua was not the biggest help. She'd been raised in the Fellowship with the sole purpose of becoming a Priestess, so she had little contact with the greater society of her home planet, no more than one born and raised in a nunnery. Even her education had been turned toward dealing with the humans of the Com.

For example, she'd never seen a male Olympian. She knew they existed, of course; she was not sexually ignorant, although her drives in that direction had been in some way suppressed. Even though she had not met one, she retained a very low opinion of the males. They were not capable of advanced reasoning, she'd been taught, certainly incapable of any responsibility. They were little better than smart animals, sex machines good for little else.

Both Mavra and Obie found this attitude curious, but they reserved judgment. There was no reason for the males to be that way. Considering how Yulin created this race and his own egomania, the men would in fact be powerful sex machines but they should also be at least Yulin's intellectual equal, and he was, for all his amorality and ambition, certainly close to genius. Obie certainly hadn't programmed poor reasoning into the biology of the Olympian males.

There were no customs and immigration formalities at the small, spartan spaceport; if you weren't an Olympian you wouldn't be there. There were also no dives, bars, or other such spaceport fixtures—just the shuttle landing bays, the barge docks, and a small lounge. Everything was modern, functional; it all looked prefab and lacked traces of imagination.

The capital city, Sparta, reflected its name—no frills, all function. Set as it was in a huge bowl-shaped valley surrounded by snow-capped mountains on three sides and an oddly disturbing deep-purple ocean on the other, it seemed shameful that it was not as beautiful as its setting. Blocky buildings, wide streets with concrete medians, all dull grays and browns. Trolleys carried the people most places, smoothly and silently; the hill sections were served by cable cars. There seemed to be no private vehicles, although there were many trucks whirring back and forth in their own lanes.

People walked a lot, too, and in about every state of dress and undress often with gaudy cosmetics, lots of jewelry, every possible hairstyle—and tailstyle—and tattooing seemed to be in. Some of the people looked like old circus exhibits.

Mavra understood that needless decoration at once. All Olympians looked alike once they reached fifteen; then stayed that way, aging internally but not externally until they died, normally at the age of two hundred or so. They were all the same height; had exactly the same tone of voice, everything the same except for hair and eye color, which could be modified by dyes or special lenses.

So making oneself a recognizable individual was a passion to these women—and that's all Mavra saw.

Hundreds, thousands of identical women going about the city. No males at all.

Most of the drudge work, including that of moving the newcomers' luggage, was performed by robots built to withstand the corrosive atmosphere. There were smart and dumb Olympians because there were smart and dumb First Mothers and, of course, other factors of environment intervened as well, but nobody had to do manual labor and nobody did—machines were built for that.

"Hotel Central," Yua told the machine crisply; it looked like a glorified animated hand-truck to Mavra.

"Yes, ma'am," a mechanical voice responded and the machine quickly scuttled off to collect and transfer the luggage through underground commercial roadways.

There were no taxis; an Olympian was expected to know her way around and which trolley to take. Yua chose one and they jumped on as it rumbled off. The new arrivals joined standing ranks of neatly identical Olympians. Apparently nobody sat down in Sparta, Mavra thought glumly.

The trip took about ten minutes and the tram never stopped. It just crept slowly along with people jumping on and jumping off. Nobody tried to collect a fare.

The Hotel Central was a square block near the city center; like all Spartan buildings it was low, five stories, built for an earthquake zone on a planet that was entirely an earthquake zone. Mavra studied the building before following Yua through the front door. Probably rent closets where you can sleep standing up against concrete, she guessed. She was not impressed with what her grandparents' descendants had wrought, although, she knew, they would probably not be too thrilled by present-day Olympus, either. It's sometimes a blessing that great historical figures don't live to see what people do to their visions.