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.”
She shook her head in wonder. “If you feel that strongly, why not just walk through that gate with me? Go home to Ulik and see the deserts and the stars?”
He chuckled dryly. “You want to know why? You think I haven’t thought about it, over and over again, every spare hour? Every time I feel the walls close in, or I see my distinguished colleagues return, rested, from trips home? You want to know? I’m scared. Me, Serge Ortega. I’ll match swords or guns or anything else—including wits—with anybody. I’ll charge into Hell itself—but I will not go there invited.”
She stood there, listening to him, and discovered to her surprise that much of the hate and resentment she had felt for him was gone now, replaced by a slight but no less genuine pity for a man who had built his own prison and had been suffering in it.
“You don’t have to worry about Hell, Ortega,” she said softly. “This is Hell. You made it. You created it out of your own fears and guilts. You live in it constantly, forever, all the more Hell because you know you can leave. I feel sorry for you, Ortega. I really do.”
She turned, faced the blackness. “I think I’m ready to go now. Take this trip I was due to take seven hundred years ago but for your own efforts. Full circle, Ortega. Will you help us? You don’t owe these people anything. Not now. Please help—if only for my sake.”
He smiled. “I’ll do what I can. But what’s interesting for me will be hell for the rest of the races here. You realize that. I might not be able to stop things.”
“Do what you can, then,” she responded. “If you do not, then we have a date, you and I, here, in Zone; this I swear.”
“I certainly hope the day never comes when I have to choose you or me,” he murmured, sounding sincere. “I—I just don’t know which I’d choose.”
“I’ll be back, Ortega, one way or the other I’ll be back. Bet on it!” she snapped and started off at a gallop, vanishing quickly into the darkness of the Well Gate.
Serge Ortega just sat, rocking back and forth on his serpent’s coils, for a long, long time, staring into the blackness.
Hakazit
marquoz awoke.
He groaned, stretched, and looked about curiously at his new land. It was not a cheering sight; he was on a high plateau and had a good view of the lay of the land for many kilometers. The land was rugged, almost ringed, it seemed, by towering volcanic peaks some of which were venting smoke. Below stretched a great plain, but a plain strewn with black rocks and boulders and thick layers of volcanic ash broken occasionally by tiny cinder cones that did not look reassuringly old or extinct.
There was grass, yes; a sickly yellow grass that grew tall and wild and waved in the wind that swirled around the volcanic bowl, and off in the distance he could see a huge body of blue-green water that had to be an ocean. Only near this great sea were there splotches of deep green indicating cultivation.
It was an active landscape. There were rivers, many of them, all in perpetual youth thanks to the obviously continuous volcanism. The source of the water was obvious; the prevailing winds blew in from the sea, were captured and forced up against the high volcanoes, many with snowcaps, and cooled, producing rains that flowed down here in the back country.
He marveled at the extent of his eyesight; everything was incredibly sharp and clear, and he could pick out individual trees farther away than he could have seen anything at all in his old body. His hearing seemed normal; he could hear the rush of wind and the sound of dripping water, neither anything he would expect to have heard differently—before.
Before what? he wondered suddenly. There were roads down there, nice-looking ones, but little sign of habitation. Were all the people in hibernation except him, or did they simply all live near the sea? Animal, vegetable, or mineral?
Well, he was one of them himself now, whatever. He knew that, felt strange and massive. He knew, too, that he could get some idea of his new race by simple self-examination, yet he hesitated, a little afraid at what he might find.
Some big, majestic black birds swooped nearby; for a second he was afraid that they were his new form— but, no, he had no wings, of that he was sure.
Slowly, acting as if the mere sight of his own body would turn him to stone, he looked down at himself.
His new body was massive; that was the only word to describe it. No, not huge—although far larger than his old form—but thick, dense. His skin was a metallic blue and seemed thick enough to stop arrow or, perhaps, bullet, and terminated in two very thick legs that rested on large, wide, wickedly clawed feet.
Those claws, he thought idly, look as if they are made of the strongest steel.
His old arms were short and stubby; they now matched the legs, perfectly proportioned to the body and so thick and powerful looking that he would not have been surprised to bend steel bars with them. As he’d seen but four toes he wasn’t surprised to find three long, thick fingers faced by an abnormally long opposable thumb.
He raised his hands to his face. The neck was thick and apparently bone plated, but it was difficult to tell anything about his head except that it was more ovoid and flatter than his had been, more like a human’s— although it felt hard, thick. It’s almost as if I am a huge insect, he thought, with leathery skin over my exoskeleton. He wasn’t sure—maybe his guess was close to the mark.
There was some room to move on the plateau so he took a hesitant step forward and immediately realized that, as before, he still had a thick supporting tail, this one longer than his old one. He looked over his shoulder while bringing the tail around, dislodging rocks in the latter operation, and stared. The tail, too, was thick and plated, but there were bony ridges running in pairs from his back down to the tip, and the tip terminated flatly, not pointed, and out of it rose two incredibly wicked-looking spikes, perhaps a meter each. He tested the tail as he would a weapon, and knew that it was exactly that. His old tail was strictly for sitting and balance; this one could be used like a thick tentacle, and those sharp points would close in on just about anything at great speed. He was certain that those of his new race practiced the wielding of it as some human cultures and his own Chugach practiced with swords.
I’m a creature built like a war machine, he told himself. He looked back again at the bleak and violent landscape. If each hex on the Well World was designed to test a lifeform, then that land down there must be very dangerous indeed.
He studied his hands again, flexing the fingers, and discovered that his first impression was correct—the nails were long, nasty sword-points that were retractable with a flick of internal muscles.
Still, he could see the logic of it. He had been assured by Obie that the computer had in some way influenced what each would become, and this form, for all its nasty toughness and bulk, was not so terribly alien to what he’d been. He was not, after all, to live in this place but to make war from it. This was a form built for war.
He tried to reach back into his throat, to the sacs where internal wastes produced the flammable gases of the Chugach, and tried to blow some fire. There was nothing; that ability was gone, and he would miss it. A pity, though, he reflected. Such an ability would be appropriate here, in a land of volcanoes.
The sun was already behind the mountains; dark shadows closed in on the landscape as he watched. Soon it would be very dark, he knew, and he was in the middle of nowhere with no sign of his new people, no sign of huge settlements or even tiny villages, and no weapon with which to defend himself against whatever might be laying in wait for him out there on that darkening plain. He wished for a club, something with which to arm himself against the hidden foes he knew must be waiting, but there weren’t even trees from which clubs might be improvised.
He considered staying on the little plateau until morning; it was tempting, but he was ravenously hungry and wasn’t even sure what the hell he ate.
He was still pondering this problem in the gathering gloom when the one thing he absolutely least expected occurred.
Down below, in orderly succession, the street lights came on.
It was amazing how the barren landscape was transformed by the tiny lights—thousands, no, tens of thousands of them, stretching out from just below him all the way to where he knew the sea to be. Tremendously variable in color, too; intelligently arranged in geometric patterns of greens, blues, reds, yellows—all the colors. It was beautiful, even if the landscape did now seem to look like a massive aircraft landing field.
Still, the sight puzzled him as much as it fascinated him; there had been roads, yes, but no sign of such an array of electronics that he’d been able to see, nor any sign of where the energy was coming from.
Almost in reply to his thoughts, he felt a slight rumble in the ground, and nearby, dislodged rock fell crashing to the plain below. He knew the answer in an instant—geothermal power. These people had learned to make such a violent land work for them.
There was a pathway down to his right, he saw, but he hesitated before using it. Those lights were electrical; that meant that this was a high-technology hex, a land where machines obeyed the same rules he’d been born and bred to take for granted. That meant communications networks, computers, perhaps, and— guns. He felt confident that he could stop most projectiles, but this skin and bone would be little protection against a laser pistol, for example—particularly one designed by a people to be used on their own kind.
He felt certain there was more danger from his own new race than from any hidden menaces. The civilization had proved out long ago, millions of years perhaps. It had proved itself by conquering whatever horrors his new body was designed to combat, and it had built a technologically sophisticated civilization on that result. There would be no hidden enemies down there, only new ones he would make.
He sighed and started carefully down the path. It wasn’t hard, although he had to remind himself now and then that his tail was longer and thinner and solidly weighted, and had to be watched lest it start a landslide of its own.
Vision wasn’t much of a problem, he noted with interest. The Chugach had terrible night vision, since they lived beneath the sands and used senses other than sight much of the time. This new form saw extremely well in the daylight and even better at night. Though it distinguished virtually no color the night vision was precise where it needed to be. As he had seen the greens and blues and yellows quite clearly earlier, Marquoz surmised that his night vision emphasized contrast and depth perception at the expense of color. It probably got in the way, he thought—but, no, the color sense was still there; he’d seen the differences in the mass of lights.
Tradeoffs, he decided. You had the senses you needed when you needed them. That was convenient.
He hadn’t expected much activity so close to the volcano slopes and he wasn’t disappointed; these giant volcanos were active. Anyone building at the base would be buried in stone and ash, probably. Only a nut would take the risk.
Still, there was some traffic; he heard it as he reached the bottom and started off on the plain. The sounds of trucks and heavy machinery all over. This was a busy place, anyway. He wondered what the hell they did.
It was not long before he reached a road. The lights outlined it in ghostly pale orange; small ball-shaped ones set into the ground, apparently to show the left and right limits of the road.
As he stood alongside the road a vehicle approached. He quickly saw why they needed the limit markers. Not only was the thing gigantic but it was bearing down on him at a tremendously high rate of speed. In only seconds it had approached and roared past him.
He saw the driver, although the maniac never took his eyes off the road markers. The vehicle itself had been a great mechanical shovel built to scoop huge amounts of earth and deposit it elsewhere. It didn’t look that different from those of several other races. The driver, though, had afforded him his first real look at his new people.
Centauroid, yes, but two-legged, his face a bony, demonic mask flanked by sharp horns, his eyes seemed to be seas of deep fiery red without pupils. He resembled the demons of Chugach mythology, the kinds of creature his people had used in their darker legends to scare the hell out of children and gullible adults.
He heard a rustling sound nearby. Startled, he whirled on it, only to discover a tiny lizard staring nervously back at him. At his movement it froze, then saw it was spotted and looked up into his face with a hopeful expression.
“Cherk?” it piped in a high, squeaky voice.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he told it, and it seemed to accept that and suddenly scampered off. Nothing nasty from that native.
He turned back to the road, trying to decide what to do. He would like merely to be noticed and picked up, he decided, but that was no sure thing along here, not at the speeds the natives drove—and that single-minded, straight-ahead stare on the driver didn’t inspire confidence. It would not do, he decided, to get run over by a truck before he’d even said hello.