04. The Return of Nathan Brazil (33 page)

They left the big chamber now and headed down an oval tunnel, a large corridor whose junctions were curved and smooth. It seemed to be made of some heavy, grainy stone that had been painted a dull yellow.

They passed chambers as their tunnel twisted and turned; it wasn't a single corridor but a labyrinth. Each chamber, Ortega told them, contained a mini-biosphere for one of the Well World's fifteen hundred and sixty races. The ones in this section were the embassies of the seven hundred and eighty Southerners.

When they reached his office and began to relax, Ortega sent for food and drink. He told them what they already knew, about the Well World and its foundings, about the hexes, zones, and gates. They listened as if they had never heard any of it before, asking all the right questions; but it was Ortega's political map of the Well World that held their interest. Brazil had done a rough one from memory and it had been all they had; now they could see the true complexity of the Well World and the enormity of their task. In particular, they saw, for the first time, the vast oceans of the Well World and the topography of the landscape. Mavra located the areas she'd been in, and spotted Glathriel, which, Ortega explained needlessly, was where the human race now resided in tribal primitivism.

That hex held a different interest for them, for next to it was Ambreza, the original home of humanity and the point at which Nathan Brazil must emerge once he arrived. That was their initial goal.

Mavra knew the place well. Glathriel had been her prison so many years before, and she doubted the Ambreza had let it change much. Her eyes drifted northward, to Lata and Agitar and other exotic names from the Wars of the Well, and to Olborn, where she'd been half-turned into a beast, and to cold, mountainous Gedemondas, whose strange inhabitants had destroyed the rocket engines for which the war had been fought. They had also predicted her future. She wondered what the Gedemondas were predicting now.

Ortega replaced the map, seemingly oblivious to their real interests. "Enough politics," he told them. "After you arrive at your home hexes you will have opportunities for more relaxed studies."

Yua could hardly contain her fright at those words, but it only lent verisimilitude to her staged question. "What—what do you mean, our home hexes?"

Ortega smiled. "From here, you will shortly be taken to another gate. It is the Well Gate. It removes you from the Universe you have always known and makes you a part of the Well. Once inside, the Well analyzes you according to criteria we've never been able to understand and chooses a form for you. You will wake up, as if from a sleep, as one of the seven hundred and eighty Southern races—just as I did, long ago. The Well helps in that it makes you comfortable with your new form and conditions, so you won't feel totally alien, but it does not toy with your memories— you will still be you and you'll remember all that has been. From that point you're on your own. Don't fight it. Whatever you wake up as you will be for the rest of your natural lives."

It was a sobering thought. The rest of their lives as something—else. Something alien. To some it might have had a romantic ring, but to these comrades who were not on the Well World out of desperation but on a mission, the words had a particularly forbidding sound.

But Ortega wasn't through with them quite yet. He pumped them about conditions in the Com. They were pretty honest about it—they told him of the Dreel, and the Zinder Nullifiers, and the widening hole in space. They did not tell him about Obie or about Nathan Brazil. It was Ortega who brought up the latter's name.

"I wouldn't worry about it," he consoled them. "The Well will repair it. If it didn't there's a surviving Markovian around to make the repairs and he'd have been here by now if it were necessary."

"How do you know he hasn't?" Marquoz asked pointedly.

Ortega smiled. "I know him. He's human—looks like a skinny little runt, goes by the name of Nathan Brazil. If he'd passed through here I'd have heard of it." He scratched under his chin with his upper right arm and stared at them. "You know, it's funny. I been looking at you two women and feeling I know you—or should know you. Funny, isn't it? It isn't possible, of course."

Mavra coughed slightly. "No, hardly."

He shrugged. "I guess in your case," he decided, looking at Yua, "one or two of your fellow Olympians musta come through a long time ago. There's been so many and it's so long . . ." He seemed to be wandering, then looked back at Mavra, "And you—seems even further back. Damn if I can think why, though. You just look a little like somebody I used to know, way back—ah, well. No matter. Ready for the Well?"

"No," Marquoz told him. "But what choice do I have other than to move in with you or the—what was it?—Ghlmonese ambassador?"

Ortega laughed. "All right, then. Come along." The door opened and he slithered out. They followed as close as they dared, trying not to come too close to his lower coils.

They entered a normal room, a rectangle except for the rounded corners, barren of furniture. The door closed behind them.

Walls, floor, ceiling were of the same grainy yellowish material as the corridors except the far wall, which was another dose of total darkness.

"The Well Gate," he told them. "You have no choice at all now. The door behind me will not open from the inside. The only way out is through the gate —and the Well."

That was a lie, and Mavra knew it. Still, she could see that it would be useful in his line of work.

They had shed their spacesuits in Ortega's office and were all naked now. Marquoz had salvaged his cigar case and he and Mavra puffed on the last of them. Both wondered idly if they'd ever do it again.

Mavra looked at Ortega. She still hated the man, but he seemed less an ogre in person than as an untouchable she'd never even seen. He'd been quite pleasant with them, even a little charming, and that in itself was unsettling. Brazil had called him a total scoundrel yet liked him all the same, and they'd had long debates on whether to trust the snake-man with the advance secret. And after all these years, he was still here, still in charge, never leaving Zone, never getting a day older thanks to Well magic and a liberal dose of blackmail—Mavra knew he'd had just about every  embassy  in Zone—and possibly  a lot  more places—bugged.

"Who first?" she asked the others, feeling as if it were a replay of the scene back on that dead Markovian world. Then Gypsy had stepped forward and vanished—Gypsy, who had vanished utterly, it seemed.

Whatever you wake up as you will be for the rest of your natural lives.

The sentence haunted them all.

"Oh, the hell with it." Marquoz mumbled and stepped on the butt of his cigar. "I'm out of cigars, anyway." He walked up to the black wall and through. It swallowed him utterly.

Yua turned and looked at Mavra, and there was fear in her eyes. Not for the first time Mavra wondered why Obie had chosen this one from those he could have selected for this mission. Only Obie knew, and Obie was far, far away.

"We'll meet again," the Olympian said quietly to her, taking and squeezing her hand. Then, unhesitatingly, she turned and walked the route Marquoz had walked, stepping boldly into the engulfing blackness.

"And then there was one," said Serge Ortega behind her.

She smiled to herself. He was so cocksure, so rock steady. She took a step toward the darkness, then stopped, her mind, unbidding making the choice Brazil had left to her.

"Wait a minute, Ortega," she said coolly, and turning to face him. "I am going to need your help."

He was taken aback. "Huh?"

"The other two—they are meaningless to you or to anybody else. Window dressing. I'm not. I've been standing around debating this moment since I arrived at the entrance gate and had just about decided not to say anything, but I think I'm taking a reasonable risk."

He coiled his serpentine body tightly and rocked his torso atop the heap, all six arms folded. "Go on. I'm listening," he said, curious.

"The Well
is
broken. It's shorted out," she told him. "Slowly by cosmic standards but actually pretty quickly the whole damn Universe is being snuffed out. In a while the rift will grow so big it'll damage the Well beyond repair. Shortly—very shortly—you're going to be inundated with refugees, mostly Olympians, from the destruction of the Com."

"Go on," he said, not changing position or expression. "I'm listening."           

"They're to be the seed for new races," she continued. "They are the ones who'll provide the souls or whatever once the Well is fixed."

"But if the Well is fixed all will be as before," he pointed out.

"No, it has to be turned off first. The whole experiment of the Markovians is over, and it failed. Time to press
reset
and start again. You
must
help. Those people must be allowed to do what we are doing, go through the Well, come out as something else. You know better than I the reaction that that many people coming through is going to cause. We need your help."

Ortega remained impassive, saying nothing, betraying no emotion, for over a minute. Finally he said, "What you're telling me is that not only is Nathan Brazil coming back but this time he's going to really do something serious."

She nodded apprehensively.

"And how do you know all this?"

She considered how to tell him, had thought about this moment a long, long time. "Because this centaur body isn't the real me. Because it was made by Obie. Because I'm Mavra Chang."

Serge Ortega almost fell over backward. Then he chuckled, then he laughed, and continued laughing until he couldn't stop for a bit. Finally he said, "How is such a thing possible? Obie was destroyed. Mavra Chang was still on Obie, so she was destroyed with the computer. We had witnesses to this return."

"We faked it," Mavra told him. "We had to. Otherwise Obie, totally in control of himself and beyond any override—and a miniature Well of Souls—would have been hated, feared, perhaps eventually destroyed in spite of his powers. And me—if you'll remember, I was in the worst shape of anybody to face rejoining the human race. I had no desire to come back as a circus freak, didn't know that Obie was still alive, so to speak, and decided to die with him. I didn't. We went to a far galaxy and had a lot of fun together."

He swayed back and forth a little but Mavra couldn't tell what he was thinking. The reptilian part of him was in command now, a solid mask.

"And Obie? Where is he?"

She sighed. "Dead—or good as." Quickly she told the past history of Obie and Brazil as truthfully as she could.

"And Brazil? When is he coming through?" the snake-man pressed.

She shrugged. "I don't know. Nobody but he does— and I'm not sure if he isn't just waiting for the right moment."

"And he told you to tell me all this?" Ortega asked skeptically.

She smiled. "He left the decision to me. He said you'd be essential as an ally, but if you weren't to remind you that he beat you once when he didn't know who he was fighting and he could do it again with his eyes open if he had to."

Ortega rocked with laughter again. "Yes, yes! That is Brazil! Ah, this is marvelous!"

Then all the mirth seemed to drain from him. He suddenly looked very ancient, as ancient as he actually was, then his eyes seemed to soften. "You are really Mavra Chang?"

She nodded.

"Well, I'll be damned. God is good even to the fallen," he muttered to himself. He looked up at her, "You know, in all the time I lived I killed an awful lot of people, almost all of whom were either trying to kill me or who deserved killing, anyway. I screwed a lot of people who deserved to be screwed and, you know, if I had it to do all over again, I would. There's only one blot on my conscience, one person who has haunted me through the years—-even though I had no choice, which made it all the more maddening. What you're saying is that I have achieved absolution. That one person lives, and has lived a full life, lived longer than any except maybe Brazil and myself. You're telling me I did the right thing, that I'm forgiven now."

She peered at him, a little uncomfortable with his reaction. It was not what she'd expected from the man at all. She could almost swear that there were tears welling up in his eyes.

"I haven't forgiven you, Ortega," she said evenly. "You are the one man I could still cheerfully kill—if I didn't need you."

He chuckled. "You really are Mavra Chang?" He seemed to need the reassurance, as if he couldn't accept the truth. "I'll be damned." Suddenly he hardened. "Listen. If you
are
Mavra Chang, then you owe me."

It was her turn to be surprised. "
I
owe
you?"

He nodded. "If I hadn't done what I did back then you'd be out there someplace, right now, dead these seven hundred years, dead and buried. Dead never having gotten off this stinkin' world, never having seen the stars again. I saved you and you owe me that much. I saved you and that means everything to me." His eyes were burning now. "How I envy you. Seven hundred years out there. I haven't seen the stars in much longer than that. I haven't been out of this stinkin'
hole
since long before you were born. Do you know what that means? I was a captain too, you know."

She
did
know what that meant, although it was unnerving, somehow, to find it still in Ortega as well. She tried to imagine it. All this time Ortega had been built up as a Machiavellian mastermind, the true ruler of the Well World—and, in fact, he really had tremendous power, more power than anyone had ever had here. People lived or died, governments rose and fell, trade was or was not accomplished according to his will and whims. And yet . . .

He nodded and smiled slightly. "I see that you understand me. I am a prisoner, more than you ever were. All this power is meaningless. A diversion for an old man in an artificially lit prison cell who hasn't seen a star or a blade of grass except in pictures in almost a thousand years." He sighed. "You know, old memories keep popping up here and there. I remember the last time Nate was here. He said the only thing he wanted to do was die—he was sick of living. He'd done everything, been everything, lived too long. I thought he was nuts. The only difference between Brazil then and me now is that he took longer. So will you, although you probably won't live that long. You were probably just reaching the first stages of boredom, I think. You lasted longer than me because you could move, see the stars and trees and bright desert colors and blue skies. Even in Glathriel you had that. Imagine your last seven centuries locked in
here.
"