“Why didn’t you step in then?” Ortega wanted to know. “Tell them what they were doing wrong?”
Zinder shrugged. “What could I do? By the time I knew what they were working on it was too late. Even then I was really blocked. Suppose I had suddenly showed up and said, ‘Hi! I’m Gil Zinder! I know you think I’ve been dead a thousand years, but I was only fooling.’ Who would have believed me or paid attention to me? I’d never have gotten through the bureaucracy. It’s much easier to make a bureaucracy not notice you than to notice and take you seriously. I left them the keys to godhood, to the universe, and they took it and destroyed themselves with it. And me—look at what it’s cost me! Nikki . . . Obie . . . All that was dear to me.”
Marquoz still couldn’t quite believe all this. “So you killed Nikki Zinder? Your own daughter? Did Obie know?”
“He knew,” Zinder assured him. “Although I didn’t realize that until I was inside him myself and we could talk. We talked it out at great length, a sort of mutual catharsis. He would have had to do it if I hadn’t, and that was the one thing he simply could not do. He could not harm Nikki. I even tried to talk him out of trying to integrate with Brazil, but to no avail.”
“Brazil,” the Hakazit muttered. “Why did Brazil do that to Obie?”
“Short him out, you mean? For much the same reason that I lose my powers when he turns it off. You see, we have a mathematical matrix here, a set of relationships that says, ‘I am the universe and I am this way, according to these laws.’ That’s the original universe, the Markovian, or naturally formed one. It’s quite small, really, compared with ours. The whole thing was barely the size of a small galaxy. Now, the Markovians did it over themselves. They had a second creation, you might say, which, since it originated from the same point as their own for safety’s sake, destroyed their planets and incorporated that old universe into ours. And since ours was a much larger explosion, it expanded with ours as well, which is why you find more Markovian worlds out there than around here. But they’re the old, dead, original universe. Ours is superimposed on it—they didn’t dare wipe theirs out or they’d wipe themselves out as well. This is the matrix imposed by the Well, the mathematical formulae of the Markovian computers, and that is what I came to decipher. With it I can adjust the superimposed mathematical building blocks just a tiny bit to suit myself. Obie could do no more than I, but he could do it over a planetary area. The individual Markovians, I believe, could do it even better, since it was matched to their brains specifically. But it is the Well that maintains this mathematically superimposed set. When Brazil turns it off, that set of mathematics will cease to exist. And, when he repairs it and turns it back on, he’ll have to instruct it to build a new mathematical model. A new one. It’ll be very much like the original, but it will differ in many specifics. It can’t be as far-reaching, for example, since he’ll have only 1,560 races here to work with. It’ll also be formed from the power of his mind, and that will color it ever so slightly. It will be slightly different. Very slightly, perhaps one digit in a billion-place equation, but it will be different. He can’t help it. Obie is part of the old math. So is the universe we knew—the Com, the stars and planets, the races out there.”
“I think I understand you,” Ortega put in. “Obie was built to cope with this superimposed set of rules, or math, or whatever you want to call it. So is everything we know—except the Well World, which is on a separate, model computer not affected. And Brazil is from the old math, the Markovian math, and Obie simply couldn’t cope with him because he was slightly, ever so slightly, off, and that blew Obie’s circuits.”
Zinder nodded. “A tiny difference, but vital. He just couldn’t cope with that difference. The same reason why Brazil can’t really change his appearance once he sets it in the Well. He’s not a part of the math of the known universe; he reverts always to form. We can’t even kill him. There is always a way out provided by circumstance, which is another way of saying that the Well looks out for him. Only inside the Well can he die, since the Well was partly designed to change Markovians to the new mathematics.”
“Do you think he’ll kill himself?” Ortega asked. “I think I understand him now, a little. I’ve lived too long and I’m ready to go, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Now I can, and it’s a blessing and a relief. You can’t believe the lack of a burden I feel. You can live too long, Doctor. Particularly when you can’t change.”
Zinder considered the question. “Will he kill himself? He’s said so, many times. He’s said that that’s the only thing he wants to do. I think that’s what Mavra Chang is there for—to receive the passing of the torch. She will go inside and be taught the workings of the Well, and it’ll be matched to her. Once that happens and he checks her out on it, well, then he can die with a clear conscience. Somebody will be left to guard the truth, and instead of the Wandering Jew the new humans will have the mysterious, immortal woman.”
“What a horrible fate,” Ortega sighed.
“But it’s of her own free will,” Zinder pointed out. “When she tells him to turn off the machine, she takes full responsibility for the consequences, all of them. When she emerges, she’ll be the only being anywhere left based on the present, rather than the new mathematics. She won’t be able to be killed, or changed, and she’ll be like that until she can turn it over to some wiser future race, if it ever arises, that again discovers the Well equations and does something with them other than destroy itself. If they do destroy themselves, some billions of years, perhaps, from now, she’ll have the job of starting it all over again and maybe passing the torch herself at that point.”
They thought about it, thought about the loneliness, the aimless wandering, without change, without end, the Well not even permitting madness. For a while she would enjoy it, of course, as Brazil must have, as Ortega had in his more limited yet no less oppressive self-exile. But, eventually, she would reach that point when she had lived too long, and she would know. “I don’t think she realizes the devil’s bargain she’s making,” he said sadly.
Zinder shrugged. “Does anyone? And can we go back and do it all again? Can I undo the damage to the universe? To the Well? No, I think not. Not any more than you can take back any of your crucial decisions.” He paused. “I better go now. Yua must be told —and I want to be back by dawn.”
Serge Ortega put out his hand and Zinder took it. “Until dawn, then, Gilgram Zinder. We shall meet, together, down there at the canal, eh?”
“At the canal,” the other man agreed. “But not Doctor Gilgram Zinder, no, not now. Most of him died in Oolakash about nine hundred years ago. What little of him survived that event died with Nikki on Olympus and the rest with Obie on Nautilus. I’m just Gypsy, Ortega. That’s the way I want it to be, and so that’s who I am. I can be whoever and whatever I want.”
“Wait! One more thing!” the Ulik almost shouted. “How will we know if we held long enough? Can you tell me that?”
Gypsy laughed. “If I’m here, you’ll know for sure and in a very sudden and messy manner. If not—well, if you can last until night, and if it’s clear and you’re in position to see a little bit of the sky, you’ll see the stars go out.”
“But that’s impossible!” Ortega protested. “Even if the universe goes out, it would be thousands of years before we’d know!”
“When he pulls that plug,” Gypsy told them both, “the universe won’t simply cease to be. For all practical purposes it will never have been. There never will have been those stars and dust to radiate that light. There’ll be nothing but the dead Markovian universe —and the Well World. Nothing else will exist, will ever have existed, beside that.”
It was a sobering thought.
“One last thing,” Marquoz put in. “Did you tell Brazil who you were?”
Gypsy chuckled. “Nope. He fished for it, but he wouldn’t tell me why a Markovian guardian should be a Jewish rabbi, so fair’s fair.” And he vanished.
“That’s a good point,” Ortega noted to nobody in particular. Finally he turned to Marquoz. “Since you’re going to be here, you’ll take command of the Verion side, I trust?”
Marquoz nodded. “It’s all arranged. They’re ready to fly me over whenever I’m ready.”
For the second time that night Ortega extended his hand in firm comradeship and for the second time it was taken in the same spirit.
“Like with Gypsy,” Ortega said. “We’ll meet at the canal.”
“At the canal,” Marquoz agreed. “We’ll be only thirty meters apart.”
“We’ll swim it,” Ortega said warmly.
There was a loud explosion downstream, not at all near them, and lights went on farther down. There was some automatic-controlled fire, then everything winked off and there was silence.
“I’d better go,” the Hakazit said, the echo of the explosion and shots still sounding up and down the canyon. He turned, then paused and looked back. “You know, wouldn’t it be crazy if we won?”
Ortega laughed. “It’d louse up all this for sure.”
Marquoz turned back and trudged off in the darkness. Ortega remained, sitting back on his tail and looking out into the darkness, settling down to wait for the dawn and trying, on occasion, to get a look at the obscured stars above.
The Avenue, at the Equatorial Barrier
serge ortega had been as good as his word. although they had passed signs of fighting and occasional dead bodies of hapless patrols, no opposition faced them all the way up the Avenue. A few times they had almost fallen into the water from the unstable rock slides, but that had been the extent of the problem.
Mavra had never seen the Equatorial Barrier except from space, and now that it loomed over her she found it much less a dark wall than it looked from a distance. Partially translucent, it went up as far as the eye could see, a huge dam at the head of the river, which was merely a trickle at this point. She noticed that the area where the Avenue reached the wall was absolutely dry; obviously the only water here would be that which struck and ran down from the enormous barrier.
It looked like a giant nonreflecting shield of glass, not very thick and amazingly shiny and free of any signs of wear. It was only here, at the wall itself, that the true Avenue could be seen—shiny and smooth, like the barrier itself. Where it joined the wall there was no seam, no crack; the two simply merged.
It was near dusk of the second day, but even Brazil could not enter immediately. Using the Gedemondan, now their only companion, he told the other two, “We have to wait for midnight, Well time, or a little more than seven hours after sunset. That means we sit and wait.”
Mavra relaxed and looked back up the canyon. “I wonder if they’re still alive back there?” she mused aloud.
“Yeah,” was all he could say in response. He didn’t really want to betray the fact to anyone, least of all Mavra, but he was deeply and sincerely affected by the sacrifice those creatures of many races, some of whom meant a good deal to him by this time, were making. The war was more of a mass thing, an abstract thing, and there were many possibilities in a battle. You could win or lose, you could live or die, but you always had a chance. They hadn’t had a chance and they knew it, yet they did it so that he could stand here.
His thoughts went back to Old Earth once again, to Masada in particular. He hadn’t been there, hadn’t really been very close to the place, but the history of the tremendous sacrifice they had put up, the miraculous amount of time they had held, and, in the end, their total commitment, which ordained death rather than surrender to tyrrany, had uplifted him at a time when he had felt desolate and dispirited. If man had such a spirit, there was hope.
There were few such examples of that spirit, he reflected sadly. Few, but always one, always at a time when one would swear greatness was dead, the human spirit dead, and all was lost. This was such a moment now, he reflected. It might be a long, long time before such a thing happened again, but for the first time he found himself believing that it would happen again.
He was amazed by the thought, by his capacity to still think it after such a long, long time. Could it be, he found himself wondering, that his spirit wasn’t dead, either?
He was amazed, too, that there was just the three of them. Just he, Mavra, and the Gedemondan they needed to speak to each other. He had offered it to more, to anybody who wanted to come, in fact. They had chosen to stay at the pass. Maybe they’re the smart ones, he thought wistfully. At least they had the choice.
“What will happen when we … go in?” Mavra asked him, eying the seemingly solid, impenetrable wall again.
“Well, at midnight the lights will go on for this section,” he told her. “Then this section around the Avenue will fade and you’ll be able to walk through to it inside. Once in there, neither you nor the Gedemondan will change, but I will. The thing was designed for Markovians, so it’ll change me into one. They’re pretty ugly and gruesome, worse than most anything you’ve seen to date. Don’t let it bother you, though. It’ll still be me in there. After that, we take a ride down into the control room area, I’ll make some adjustments to the Well World system to activate it once again and key the Call, then we’ll go down and see just how bad the damage is.”
“The Call?” she repeated.
He nodded. “The Call. Halving the populations of each hex, preparing the gateways, and impelling those we need to do the things we have to have done when we need them done. You’ll see. It’s not as complicated as it sounds.”
“And what about us?” she asked. “What happens to us?”
“You’re going to be a Markovian, Mavra,” he told her. “It’s necessary for several reasons, not the least of which is that the Well is keyed to the Markovian brain and it really is necessary to be a Markovian to understand what it is and what it’s doing. It’ll also give you the complete picture of what you will tell me to do. That’s the worst thing, Mavra. You’re going to know exactly what the effect of that repair will be—if it can be fixed. We won’t know that until we’re inside.”
He didn’t mention the Gedemondan, of course. He had no idea what he was going to do with the creature, but he would have to be disposed of fairly quickly or he would just get in the way. Obviously, when all was said and done, he deserved some kind of reward, but what he wasn’t quite sure yet. Certainly the possibility of a Gedemondan with access to the Well didn’t seem that appetizing.
It was quite dark now, and Mavra, gesturing to the Gedemondan, said to both of them, “Look! You can see the stars from here.”
The other two looked up, and, sure enough, in the wide gap between the end of the cliffs and the Equatorial Barrier the swirls and spectacular patterns of the Well World sky were clearly visible. It was the most impressive sky of any habitable planet Brazil had known, the great nebulae and massive collection of gasses filling the sky. The Gedemondan did not look long, though; in the well-known psychological quirk of many races and people who were born and lived near stunning beauty, they had simply taken the scene for granted.
Nobody had a watch or any way of telling time now; they would just have to settle back and wait that eternal wait for the light to come on.
Oh, hell, he decided. Might as well ask the Gedemondan straight out. “Communicator? What do you wish of all this? What shall I do for and with you?”
The Gedemondan didn’t hesitate. “For myself, nothing, except to be returned to my people,” he told the other. “For my people, I would wish that you examine why the experiment which succeeded here failed out there and make the necessary adjustments so that it at least has an even chance this next time.”
Brazil nodded slowly. That sounded fair enough. He wondered about the creature, though, and whether or not it was entirely on the up-and-up. Quite often more than one race would wind up on a given planet once a pattern was established, occasionally by design because they might have something to contribute, occasionally by accident. The process just wasn’t all that exact. The insectlike Ivrom, for example, had managed by accident or their own design to get a few breeders into Earth during the last time, and had become the basis for many of the legends of fairies, sprites, and other mischievous spirits. Some of the others, too; once Old Earth had had a colony of Umiau, what it called mermaids, on the theory that perhaps a second race could use the oceans as the main race used the land.
The Rhone—descendants of the original Dillian centaurs—had attained space flight at an early age. An exploratory group had crashed on Old Earth when the humans still thought it a flat land on the back of a giant turtle or somesuch, and they had managed to survive there, even be worshiped by some of the primitive humans as gods or godlike creatures. But they were too wise, too peaceful, for the rough primitivism of Earth; eventually they had been hunted down and finally wiped off the face of the planet. He himself had arranged to destroy their remains and wipe all but legend from the sordid history of what man did to the great centaurs, but when the Rhone, fallen back into bad times, first lost, then regained, space, and again probed the human areas, they had known, somehow, of the fate of those earlier explorers. Humans had appeared in their dreams, in their racial nightmares, long before lasting discovery, and it had kept them somewhat distant and apart from humanity even as they entered into a pragmatic partnership with it.
As for the Gedemondans, there were legends, both on the Rhone home world and on Old Earth, of huge humanoid, secretive creatures that lurked in the highest mountains and the most isolated wilderness, somehow avoiding technological man through his whole history except for brief glimpses, legends, half-believed tales. Were some of these, the Yeti, the Sasquatch, and others like them, truly the evolved descendants of some Gedemondans who had somehow gotten shifted to the wrong place? He couldn’t help but wonder.
Time dragged for them, on the Avenue, at the Equator. More than once any of the three of them had the feeling that more than seven hours must have passed, that somehow they had either missed it, or this entryway wasn’t working, or there was some other problem.
The waiting, Mavra decided, was the worst thing of all.
Suddenly the Gedemondan said, “I sense presences near us.” He sounded worried.
Brazil and Mavra looked around, back into the darkness, but could see and hear nothing unusual In both their minds was the fear that, now, at the last moment, the armed force would catch up to them, that Serge Ortega and his group had been unable to hold the Borgo Pass long enough.
The Gedemondan read their apprehension. “No. Just three. They appear to be to our right. It is very odd. They seem to be inside the solid rock wall, coming toward us fairly fast.”
Mavra’s head jerked up. “It’s the Dahbi!” she warned. “They can do that.”
“That’s twice I’ve underestimated that bastard,” Brazil grumbled. “While Serge’s people hold his army, Sangh goes around them in a way only he can. The force at the pass told him what he needed to know— we were here and on our way. At least he can’t take any weapons on that route.”
“He doesn’t need them,” she shot back. “Those forelegs are like swords and the mandibles are like a vise. And we don’t have any weapons, either.” She looked around. “Or anywhere to go.”
“Except in,” he sighed. “But we can’t count on that.”
The Gedemondan turned and stared at a rock wall not fifteen meters from where they stood. Slowly there was a brightening of the rock in three places. They watched in horrified fascination as three ghostly creatures oozed out of the solid rock, seemed to solidfy, and stood there, a huge one in front, two slightly smaller in back, like ghastly sheets with two black ovals cut in them for eyes.
Brazil stared at them, fascinated. So those are Dahbi, he thought to himself. He remembered them now, vaguely. More legends and ancestral memory. And the big one in the middle had to be—
“Nathan Brazil, I am Gunit Sangh,” said the leader. “I have come to take you back.”
Brazil started to move forward to make connection with the Gedemondan so he could reply, but the Gedemondan ignored him and walked to only a few meters from the Dahbi leader.
“You’ve lost, Sangh,” said the Gedemondan in almost perfect imitation of Brazil’s accent and mannerisms. “Even if we went back with you now, our own forces are behind yours at the pass. You may go through walls, but you can’t take me that way.”
“I won’t have to,” Sangh replied confidently. “We shall go back with you as hostage and we shall walk right through that pass to my own forces, which, by that time, will have it secured. Then we need only hold it until the balance of my forces moves up to collect us. Your pitiful force in between can’t hope to do much more. After all, look at how well your own small force has held the pass against us so far.”
Both Mavra’s and Brazil’s heads came up at this. They had still been holding the pass!
“I stand here in front of the Well,” the Gedemondan responded threateningly. “You know the rules, Sangh. I cannot be killed, and I do not wish to be taken.”
“I weary of this,” Gunit Sangh sighed irritably. “Take him!”
The two smaller Daahbi unfolded, showing their full, grim insectival forms. The effect was startling, particularly on Brazil, who had never seen it before.
The two moved on the Gedemondan, who stood firmly facing them. Sticky forelegs dripping some gruesome liquid reached out for the great white creature, and all along the legs flashed the natural sabers of the Dahbi. The foreleg of the one to the Gedemondan’s left touched the creature, who reached over and grabbed it, unexpectedly, in his left hand. There was a brilliant flash of blue-white fire that seemed to envelop the Dahbi, a supernova that flared into momentary monumental brightness, then was gone.
Taking advantage of the stunned shock of the other, the Gedemondan already was turning, his right hand reaching out and taking hold of the other’s foreleg before it could withdraw. Again the flare, again, when it suddenly faded, there was no sign of the Dahbi.
Gunit Sangh hadn’t lived this long or gotten this far without guts and quick thinking. In a display of courage that rivaled his ferocity, his own foreleg lashed out and took the Gedemondan’s head off with one swing.
The headless body spouted blood from the severed neck, which dyed the beautiful white fur, and it lurched forward as if with a will of its own as Sangh, moving with a speed that seemed impossible, retreated back out of the way of the decapitated thing.
The Gedemondan’s arms reached out and it took one or two steps forward, then shuddered and toppled to the ground, where it twitched for a few moments, then lay still. Abruptly the stored energy in the body flared up, another brilliant nova, and then it was over. There was nothing left, nothing but the blood and the severed head, staring glassily from the Avenue floor.
Gunit Sangh was shaken, obviously, and a number of different ideas came rapidly through his mind at one and the same time. It was Brazil, but it was now dead, and Brazil couldn’t die so it couldn’t have been Brazil but if it wasn’t, then who was Brazil . . . ?
He looked again at the Equatorial Barrier. Just two of the flying horses like the Agitar flew. What . . . ? And why two?
It struck him almost like a physical blow. Mavra Chang’s catatonia, Brazil’s comatose body, all the powers and magicians’ tricks they had pulled.
And then Gunit Sangh laughed, laughed so loud it echoed up and down the canyon. Finally, he looked at the two flying horses and said, “Well, well. The real Nathan Brazil, I presume. And who’s this with you? Not a genuine flying horse, I wouldn’t think. No, could it be that I’ve also found the mysteriously missing Mavra Chang? Ah! A start of recognition! Yes, yes, indeed it is.” And he laughed again. “I’ve won!” he cried. “All the way to the wire and I’ve won!”