But some signal in the mind said, “Pay no attention to him. Don’t notice him at all. He’s not interesting or important.”
Gus, he decided, for all his worldly experience and ambitions, was a bit too much the product of his roots to see the real possibilities here. Why, with a little technical help, Brazil thought, the Dahir could become the greatest bank robber in history.
Still, for all the problems a being he never noticed until it yelled for his attention presented to his nerves and his longstanding paranoia, he was glad to have the big creature along. In one being Gus gave his team physical strength, unparalleled scouting, and spying potential, and most of all, Gus gave him somebody to talk to.
“How long can you keep this up?” Gus asked him worriedly, watching the small man fighting the wheel and seemingly doing three things at once all the time.
“Oh, a good while. I’ve had a lot of rest these past several weeks, and I’ve seen worse than this. If I can get us around the storm to where we can use it, you might spell me. Until then you’ll probably have to find me something to serve as a chamber pot before long. Until then, could you get me a tankard or mug or whatever they use of that beer?”
“Sure. You want some of the bread, too? It’s hard as nails, but it looks edible. At least, I’d have eaten it if I were hungry enough and still my old self.”
“Yeah, thanks. You didn’t mention the bread. That will help. But make sure those charts don’t blow off anywhere! We’re gonna need them bad as soon as I can get a look at them.”
“I’ll be sure. I’ll leave them below until you want them. Beats me, though, how they’ll do you much good here. I mean, how the hell do you know where you are now? We could be going in circles for all we know.”
“No, I’m a better sailor than that. You’re right, though, in the sense that we’ll need to see the sun or stars to get a bearing and figure out exactly where we are. You see that little dome atop the wheel housing?’
“Uh, yeah, now that you mention it.”
“Well, that’s the equivalent of a compass here. That bubble is always at true north in this hemisphere. That’s how I know we’re not going in circles. We have been going farther west than I’d planned, but I couldn’t guess at our speed or how far we’ve come, but against this wind it hasn’t been all that much. That’s why I’m trying to get the western edge of the storm. If I can catch it and keep steering forward with the wind at our back, we can hoist some real sail and make good time. Now, how about that beer and bread or whatever it is? And if you can, find me something to sit on!”
The wind was brisk but behind them, and under nearly full sail they were making excellent time in a north-northwesterly direction. Although he was more than a little hesitant, Gus took the wheel after some basic coaching by Brazil and found that it wasn’t that hard, provided that little changed in the weather conditions and the seas remained fairly steady. Gus still didn’t really want to do it, but he knew that Brazil had been at the wheel and fighting the storm for the better part of a day and into the night; he had to be totally exhausted.
Still, the little man hadn’t gone down for a rest yet. He had taken the opportunity to inspect the ship from bow to stern and to inventory the supplies below, but he insisted on remaining near the wheel in case Gus should run into problems and need him in a hurry. Protesting that he was literally “too tired to sleep,” he now used an oil lamp and sat there going over the charts and navigational books about the region.
Although they were out of the rain, the sky was still completely overcast, and in the darkness the stars could give him no guidance. He knew the bearing they were now on and had a fair estimate of their speed, but the hours of battling the storm itself gave him no clue as to just where on the charts he’d started from. He particularly worried that they might have gone far enough west to cross the Mowry border, though he thought he would have felt the passage through the hex boundary. While that wasn’t in itself a problem, Mowry was a high-tech hex with all the sophisticated technology for locating almost anything on, above, or below its surface, and it was dotted with thousands of small volcanic islands, some of which were submerged and could easily wreck a ship.
Dlubine suited him far more. While he probably couldn’t outrun a sleek steamer without a wind at least this good if not better, both mass communications and navigation were far more basic. Before he could be caught, they would have to know that it was he and immediately engage the chase.
Dlubine, too, had a number of islands, both volcanic and coral, but they would be more handy than a threat, or so he hoped. He wasn’t at all sure what the Dlubine looked like, but the chart showed small harbors on some of the islands, indicating that they did a direct trade with surface ships. He was willing to take the risk.
If Gus could continue to bury his moral qualms, there should be little problem picking up what they needed on one of those. He hoped the natives were at least initially friendly, but that was a secondary concern. First, of course, he had to find them.
Finally, in spite of everything, he drifted off into a deep, deep sleep.
When he awoke groggily, feeling as if someone had beaten the hell out of him and he’d just recovered consciousness, he grew suddenly aware that the wind was down and there was direct sunlight hitting his skin. He opened his eyes, and for a moment sheer panic went through him as he saw no one at the wheel.
“Gus!” he called.
“Oh, you’re awake,” the gravel-voiced Dahir responded, and in the blink of an eye the huge, colorful snakelike form was there, less steering the ship than kind of leaning lazily on the wheel. “I was thinking of waking you up, considering I haven’t had much rest myself.”
Nathan Brazil nodded and got painfully to his feet. “God! I need an intravenous coffee transfusion,” he groaned.
“Sorry. Fresh out. Never touch the stuff myself. You’re stuck with water or beer for breakfast. I used to have a ‘Beer—Breakfast of Champions’ shirt once. Wouldn’t fit now, though, I suppose, and I don’t have much of a taste for beer anymore, either.”
“Well, let me get some water on my face and see if I can wake up,” the captain moaned. “Then, if you can hold on for another couple of minutes, I want to take some sightings of the sun and get a rough position.” He went over to the small jug that was just where he’d left it in the night and splashed some of the water on his face and neck. It felt warm, but it was better than nothing. “How long was I out?”
“Can’t say, not having a watch, but the sun’s been up quite a while.”
Nathan Brazil looked up and took a sight reading. “Um, yeah. Way up. Sun’s not quite over the yardarm, though, so I’ll pass on the beer. Uh, don’t take this personally, but just exactly what the hell do you eat, anyway?”
“Most anything that won’t eat me, really. Preferably live when I get it, but anything that’s reasonably fresh is okay. Strictly carnivore. These small vampire teeth inject a nasty venom into whatever I want that kind of kills it and then softens it up so it goes down. Not much in the taste business, but if the critter’s big enough, I don’t have to eat or even drink much for days. Don’t worry—I’d eaten just the night before we all scrammed out of Hakazit.”
Brazil wasn’t all that worried, but he decided for now not to ask what, in high-tech Hakazit, the Dahir had eaten.
“Have you ever heard of Dlubine?” Nathan Brazil asked the Dahir, changing the subject.
“No. Sounds like the noise you make when you throw up, sort of. Hell, I’m new here. You’re supposed to be the expert, right? The god of the Well World, or am I being too limited?”
Brazil chuckled. “No, that’s the reputation but hardly the truth. I’m the genuine handpicked successor to the equally genuine handpicked successor of the creatures that helped build this whole thing. We used to call them Markovians in the old days, a term without meaning now, but if I use it, you should know that’s who I mean. The highest race in all creation, at least as far as there’s any evidence. Got to the point where matter-to-energy and energy-to-matter conversions were old hat. Roamed the whole universe using interdimensional pathways; never needed to take a lot with them because they could have anything they needed by just willing it. They could become anything, too—so close, nobody could tell the difference. Just rearrange the atoms. They knew they were gods, too. And that’s what drove ’em nuts.”
“Huh?”
“Well, you ever consider the real problem of being a god? No surprises, nothing more to learn, nothing new to discover, everything you ever wanted or needed there at your whim. Not even time has any real meaning to a god, not in the sense that it does to most folks. After a billion years or so things are absolutely the same, nothing to look forward to, just an endless present. Of course, they built this world as the center—the center of the universe, more or less. All their roads led to here, and from here. A whole damned planet-sized master computer that coordinated all the zillions of lesser ones and was the true source of their power. It’s still here, still working, maybe thirty, thirty-five kilometers beneath us now. The whole damned ball except this surface shell is self-repairing, self-maintaining, just going on and on long after there was anybody around who could use its power.”
Gus was appalled. “You mean they died of boredom?”
“More or less, I guess. I wasn’t there, but I’ve kind of felt an affinity for them over time. But with me it’s strictly one-way, from the Well to me, not me to the Well. To get in real communication with it and have access to any of its power, I have to be inside, at the controls, in the form of one of the founding race. No other form I know can handle it. A big lump of rubbery brain case with six huge but remarkably sensitive tentacles. You don’t even need eyes or a nose or a mouth or any of that. You’re kind of beyond all that. You don’t just see an object in three dimensions, you see it in all dimensions, and you see it from all angles at once. Things you couldn’t even keep all in your head become so simple and obvious, they don’t even require thought. And what you don’t know, the Well does, and it’s all there and available to you. The powers of God almighty, almost.”
“I’m surprised that you change back,” the Dahir commented. “Seems to me it’d be kinda hard to give that up, at least until you had your own billion years or so to get bored in.”
“No, it’s not that simple. Maybe if I was one of them it would be, but I’m not. I have strict limitations on what I can and can’t do. I’ve got the form and the power while I’m in there, yeah, but not the independence. I’m not there to tell the Well what to do, I’m there because the Well needs me to do something it can’t do itself. And when I do it, it wants me out of there, pronto. Back in the tool chest, as it were, until the next time.”
“But it’s true you can’t be killed?”
“It’s true. Something, no matter how ridiculous the odds, always comes along to save my ass. Not that I can’t get hurt or have all the other problems that anybody else might have, including all the weaknesses, but no matter what, I’ll survive. The Well manipulates probability so I’m available if needed. You know, I once stood in front of a firing squad, and every damned rifle was defective. I’ve survived massacres, even a crucifixion or so. Even so, I guess I’ve been shot, stabbed, speared, strangled, drowned, you name it, many a time. No matter what, something happens to save me. I will tell you, though, that it’s no fun at all.”
“Yeah, I can believe that. Still, I’d think you’d be a mass of stumps and scars by now.”
Nathan Brazil shook his head. “Nope. Every part of me constantly regenerates. Cut off an arm and it’ll hurt like hell, but eventually I’ll grow a new one. Even my brain regenerates, which causes trouble over time. There’s not enough room in there to store or copy all the information you get from living so long. Eventually, things you don’t need or haven’t thought about in a long time just get spooled off, stored by the Well, outside of your head. I don’t know how much I’ve forgotten, but it must be an enormous amount. There were times, I know, when I had no memory of who or what I was at all, until I got manipulated and wound up spending time here. The funny thing is, while I don’t remember those periods all that much, I think of them as the happiest of times. After you live as long as I have, you discover that ignorance really is bliss.”
“You sound like you’d almost like to join those Ancient Ones,” Gus noted.
“Sometimes, maybe a lot of times, I think about that. The last time—the details are hazy, but I know I’d just gotten so damned sick of it, I was ready to at least start the process. See, I’m the safety valve, the one left around just in case there was something those Ancient Ones hadn’t thought of. Like my predecessor, I can’t quit until somebody else is groomed to take my place and has proved acceptable and competent to the Well.”
“This Mavra Chang. She was supposed to be your replacement?”
He nodded. “In a way, anyway. At least it was a start. I took her in, changed her so that she was part of the Well’s system, and made her do all the work. I remember that much. Then we had to go through a whole new cycle to see if she could and would be able to handle the burden. I really thought she could, but now I’m not so sure.”
“You were—together? For a long time?”
“Yeah, a long time. Oh, we split up on occasion, but we always arranged to meet at some place, some time. Then, one time, she just said she was going down to the bazaar for a few things, walked out of the place where we were staying, and I never saw or heard from her again. We had our fights, but we weren’t fighting then. There wasn’t anything I ever could put a finger on. She just vanished. I searched for her, of course, not just then but for many long years after. Occasionally I’d hear stories or tales or ninth-hand legends that sounded like her, but they never panned out. After a while I just stopped looking. I figured that if she really wanted to find me, my habits and preferences were an open book to her and she’d eventually at least get word to me. She never did.”
“Huh! How long ago was it when she split?”
He shrugged. “I’ve lost count. But the house was just inside the Ishtar Gate in Babylon during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar the Great. What would that be in current Earth terms? A few hundred b.c., I guess.”
“Jesus! That’s like twenty-five hundred years or so!”
Brazil shrugged again. “I said it had been a long time. You ever notice that the older you get, the faster time seems to run?”
“Yeah. It’s a cruel joke. I guess it’s because each day you live becomes a smaller fraction of your total life, or so I’ve been told.”
“That’s about it. Well, you can see how even that kind of time span might not seem so ancient to me. Funny, though. Some of that ancient stuff I can see like it was yesterday, while other stuff, maybe only a few months or years ago, I can’t remember at all. I guess we remember the highlights and the lowlights, and the rest gets caught in the cracks.”
Gus thought about it, but such a life over so much time made his head spin. “Sure would’ve liked to have had a camera and tape along back there, though. Man, I bet it was somethin’!”
“Yeah, well, it was. But it was also before any real medicine, before mass communication, before a lot of creature comforts. People died young, and they lived lives harder than you can imagine, most of them. Even the rich didn’t live all that great by modern standards. Smelled like a garbage dump, too. Folks just tossed it anywhere at all, and almost nobody took baths because the water had so many parasites in it, you could die slowly from a refreshing dip. No, on the whole I prefer things as high-tech as you can get, except, of course, on this particular trip.”
Gus wasn’t thinking of Brazil’s colorful past, though, but of what he’d said before. “This Mavra Chang—this Well computer or whatever it is considers her the same as you?”
“Pretty much, yes. Oh, I see what you’re driving at. You’re asking if she could do the kinds of things that are supposed to be my job if she got inside.”
“Right. Could she?”
“Yes, I’m pretty sure she could.”
“She’s nuts, Cap. You know that. I mean, livin’ as one of those naked savages in the middle of the jungle, all them women—she sure don’t have much liking for men. Maybe she did once, but not now. I remember enough of it to say that for sure. Maybe she just couldn’t handle it, Cap. Maybe all them years, what you got as memories she’s got as hurts. Some guy, or a lot of ’em, put her ’round the bend but good. I hate to point this out, Cap, but you’re the only equal she’s got, and you’re a man. You said she was groomed to take over. If she gets in there first, she could unplug you same as you plugged her in, couldn’t she?”
Nathan Brazil felt a numbing chill deep inside him in spite of the tropical warmth as he saw just what Gus was trying to point out. It was the one thought he had not wanted to think or dared consider, yet there it was.
“Yes, Gus,” he admitted. “Yes, I suppose she could.”
It was something he had long thought about and even occasionally desired, but always before it had been an abstract problem, something safe to think about because it was impossible.
It wasn’t impossible. Not this time. Gus was absolutely right.
I might actually die this time . . .
Gekir
EVEN IN THE NEARLY TOTAL DARKNESS IT WAS EASY TO KNOW when they had crossed the border from Itus into Gekir.
The dense jungle ended abruptly, as if cut off, and in its place was a wide, flat expanse of grasslands punctuated with groves of trees. The nearly omnipresent clouds were gone as well; the sky blazed brightly from the dense stars in the Well World’s spectacular sky.
Walking through the hex barrier instantly lowered the humidity to a small percentage of what it had been, and instead of feeling heavy, tired, and dragged down by the earth underfoot, all of them felt a sudden sense of relief as if a very heavy pack had been lifted from each of their backs.
“Now, is this gravity back to normal, or is this place actually below normal as the last one was above it?” Julian asked quizzically, as much of herself as of the others.
“Impossible to say,” a weary Mavra replied. “It would make sense to have a fairly large disparity, though, simply because it would keep Ituns from being interested in spreading out over here and probably the other way around, too. To tell you the truth, it hadn’t been so dramatic in the places I was last time, at least so I could notice.”
“Now what?” one of the centauresses—Tony, from the accent—asked. “Is anybody around here we should worry about?”
“You worry about everything on this world,” Mavra warned. “Even the friendly places. There’s not much chance of diseases—all but a very few don’t even travel well between species on Earth, and they’re all much closer than the ones here—but meat eaters will eat the meat of carbon-based forms and many plants and animals are potentially poisonous. Even potentially friendly tribes tend sometimes to shoot first and ask questions later. Julian?”
The Erdomese shifted to the infrared spectrum and scanned the relatively flat grasslands. “There are whole herds of creatures out there, most bunched close together and showing little signs of activity. Asleep, probably.”
“You think they’re natives?” Anne Marie asked, suddenly feeling a little bit refreshed by the lowered gravity and humidity but still feeling sore from the burdens of Itus.
“Who can say? But I tend to doubt it. I’ve seen the same sort of patterns with cows out on the western ranges and such, and you’d figure that a race would have some kind of night watch and probably fires or the remains of fires that I could easily see. If Earth is any example, and it seems to be to at least some extent, then this is a savanna, much like east Africa. That means lots of herd-type animals, which is what the patterns here suggest. Like the antelope. There are probably a lot of other creatures who are also grass eaters here.”
Lori had slept for a while and had finally awakened just before the crossing when he’d shifted a bit and his horn had jabbed Tony in the back.
“Where there’s a lot of herbivores,” he noted, “there are also carnivores. Probably not all intelligent, either. You’ve got a finite space here, no matter how large a hex is, so something, usually a combination of things, has to keep the population managed. The gravity barrier and maybe incompatible vegetation would keep the animals on this side of the line, but what keeps them in balance?”
Mavra nodded. “We’ve got to make a camp. Tromping through this meter-high grass for any length of time at night, we’re likely to start a stampede, and that’s the last thing we want. Who knows what this stuff could conceal, too?”
“There is a large stand of trees just about two kilometers in,” Julian noted. “It would afford some shelter and protection.”
Mavra was dubious. “That’s your Erdomese instincts talking. In the desert you head for the trees and the oasis. Think more like the Africa you talked about. I remember a part of it much like this, going on almost forever. It was huge, with vast herds of game and great cities and civilizations, until the coastal folks chopped down all the trees and the rains were able to erode and undermine the soft rock and good soil and the whole thing turned into a desert. The last time I was there, it was desert wasteland from almost the Mediterranean shore as far in as I knew. When I saw what had happened and what greatness had been lost, I cried, and I don’t do that much.”
She paused a moment, remembering the devastation, the eternity of baking hot sand, then regained control.
“Well,” she continued, “the point is that when you had thick areas of trees like the ones you describe, it meant a water hole, maybe a spring at the surface, just as in the desert, but it also was where all the nastiest predators went and spent the night. Wouldn’t you? They sure don’t sleep out here in the grass. Otherwise the herds of prey would be somewhere else. You don’t see any signs of some kind of camp, some kind of civilization in that grove, do you?”
Both Julian and Lori looked hard, using magnification as well. “No,” Lori answered after a bit. “But you’re right; there are some pretty large creatures in those trees.”
Julian pointed to their left a bit. “The grass seems to get lower over there. It is possible that there is some surface rock. I do not see anything much right in that area, either. Lori?”
“No, I don’t, either. It’s a good bet, although it won’t give us a lot of cover.”
“Better than nothing,” Mavra said at last. “We’re not exactly inconspicuous anywhere in these parts, you know.”
“Or anywhere else, as a group,” Lori agreed.