Echoes of the Well of Souls

South Zone

In an instant that silly, high-pitched voice with a trace of a lisp in it, the riotous colors, and the comment and tone made Lori think more of the Reluctant Dragon than of a terrible monster.

“I don’t know what this place is coming to,” the creature went on, speaking aloud mostly to itself. “Gentlemen, soldiers, and savages, all Type 41 Glathrielians, of all things, plus dumb animals, outright junk—what’s next? This used to be such a peaceful posting!”

“Who are you?” Mavra Chang asked him in a normal, civil tone. Interestingly to Lori and Campos, the device on the necklace—obviously some sort of advanced translating computer—picked up her strange tongue and echoed it to them.

“I am Auchen Glough, Ambassador from Kwynn and the unfortunate current Duty Officer at South Zone. I assume you all fell in from this terrible planet called Dirt just like the others?”

“Close enough,” Mavra responded. “There have been others?”

“Oh, my, yes! Not on my watch, I admit, but we’ve all seen the pictures and gotten the reports. First there was a party of three, then, a day or so later, two more, and now, after an interminable period when it’s rained junk in here, the four of you. How many more?”

“No more, I shouldn’t think,” Mavra told him.

“Most unusual, most odd,” muttered the ambassador. “We have had new arrivals here, but never, never from a planetbound group. Well, I suppose we should get this over with. If everyone will stand, I will take us back to the office for indoctrination and briefing.”

“He can’t stand,” Lori said of Gus. “He’s very weak and ill. He needs attention.”

“Hmmm. Well, carry him over the junction points, and that will be enough for now. He’s not likely to die in an hour or two, is he?”

“No. At least I don’t think so. But if he doesn’t get some kind of attention, he’s going to die fairly soon.”

“Then we’d best get on with it. Come.”

Juan Campos felt some of his confidence coming back. “I am not following that thing until I find out where I am and what the hell this is all about!” he stated.

“If you follow me, I will tell you,” the ambassador responded. “If you don’t, you will get very hungry and very thirsty out here. We are headed for the only exit.”

For now, at least, that seemed good enough.

With Gus in her arms, Lori stepped past the wall opening. Mavra was already there, and Campos followed last, wary but more worried about remaining alone than about going with what he still thought of as a potentially vicious monster.

The ambassador turned around, showing that the spiny plates did indeed extend down the tail and that the tail itself terminated in a very nasty-looking bony spike. He struck the side twice, and the moving walkway started, carrying them back down the chamber toward the unknown.

They were barely out of sight when Terry materialized on the concave floor.

She was a little confused and disoriented, having gone from a very unusual encounter with the Brazilian sergeant to a rain-soaked climb and then a fall through darkness, but she felt glad to be alive and looked around, amazed at the size and strangeness of the place.

I don’t know where this is, but it sure isn’t Brazil, she thought, gaping. Sweet Jesus! I thought the People were weird enough, but this is getting weirder by the minute!

She got up, unarmed and naked as the day she was born with nothing that wasn’t glued in or tattooed on, and looked around. She was wondering what to do next when she heard sounds of what might have been voices coming from very far away to her left. It wasn’t much, and the sounds seemed to be diminishing with each passing moment, but, naked and unarmed or not, there wasn’t much choice but to head off in that direction. She eyed the openings and the low barrier wall and scrambled up to the top of the nearest one.

She looked around, but the sounds were gone now, and there was an unnerving quiet and stillness about this massive place. There seemed nothing to do but head in the direction she’d thought the sounds had come from and hope for the best. She was certainly exposed as hell here.

She stared off into the distance and sighed. It was going to be a long walk.

No seats in the South Zone conference room seemed to be designed for humans, but there was plenty of floor space.

The Kwynn ambassador went to the front and pushed a concealed panel in the wall, and a small lectern and operating console rose from the floor until it was at the considerable height most useful to him.

“I realize that you all are very confused right now as to where you are and all the rest,” he began hesitantly, trying to find the right words for what he considered the most primitive-looking bunch he’d ever known to come through. “I will try to make it as simple as I can. You are no longer on the planet on which you were born and raised. Somehow, by accident or design, you entered a device which transported you here. Never mind how—you could not possibly understand it even if you were the most advanced of races.”

You don’t understand it at all yourself, you old fraud, Mavra thought, but kept silent.

“Seeing you, I believe it,” Juan Campos responded. “But my only question is, How do I get back?”

“Um, well, you don’t. It’s strictly a one-way system now, although it once went in both directions. That was ages ago, beyond any living memories and all but the most basic of our records. I’m afraid you are here to stay.”

“That is impossible! If one can get somewhere, one can get back!”

“Well, you are welcome to try, but I wouldn’t suggest poking blindly even around here. You would be taken as a Glathrielian and could wind up being in a deadly situation. Glathriel doesn’t really have any representation here except the Ambreza, and I doubt if you’d fare too well with them, either.”

“What will you do with us?” Lori asked nervously.

“If you will kindly just allow me to continue, I think I can answer all your questions!” the ambassador snapped irritably. “It is difficult enough trying to simplify this when you don’t have the background to understand it. Uh, you do know what planets are, don’t you?”

“We are not as we appear,” Mavra told him. “I think everyone will understand what you say. Do not simplify anything. If there’s something we don’t understand, we’ll ask questions afterward.”

“Oh, very well. You might understand what this place is a little better if you have some basic background, though. The universe as we know it is around twenty-four billion years old, give or take a few billion. On the vast number of worlds in the vast number of galaxies that it contains, life of all sorts evolved. It stands to reason that someone had to evolve up to a high standard first. There are many terms for them, but the one we use these days is simply the First Race. They were nothing like anything you know or even I know, and we have little direct information about them. What we do know is that they came up just like every other race does in the natural system and reached a level well beyond where any races are today. At least a billion or maybe more years ago they reached the top. They were everywhere, they’d explored everything that could be explored, and they were so advanced, they didn’t need spaceships or much of anything to move from point to point. You arrived by one of their methods of travel. We call them hex gates, for obvious reasons. They did an awful lot of things based on sixes, and the hexagon was their sort of ‘pet shape,’ as it were. Finally they reached the point where they were like gods, permanently linked to their machines and able to have or do or experience almost anything they wanted just by, well, thinking of it.”

Lori tried to imagine what they must have been like and failed. A race so advanced that they were magic. Whatever they wished, they could have. “Where are they now?” she asked. “Here?”

“No. And yes. And maybe. That is the impossible question, and it has a lot of answers, not all of them verifiable. You—all of us—would think that such an existence would be the ultimate one, and it probably was for quite a while. They banished fear and want and desire and even death. They probably had a lot of fun, maybe for millions of years, but after a while something we might not imagine happened.”

“They started losing it?” Campos guessed. “No. They grew bored. Horribly, horribly bored. Have any of you ever played any gambling game? Any game of chance at all?”

They all nodded. “Of course,” Campos responded. “What would happen if you discovered one day that you couldn’t lose. That you could never lose?”

“I would settle a lot of old scores and wind up owning the world!” Campos replied.

But Lori said, “I think I see what you mean. It would get boring. It wouldn’t be any fun anymore. If you can’t lose, then winning is meaningless.”

“Yes, precisely so. And that’s what happened to them. Life lost all its meaning. There was nothing more to learn, nothing more to do that they hadn’t all done a thousand times, no surprises, no reason for existence anymore.”

“You mean they killed themselves out of boredom?” Lori was appalled.

“The ancient records imply that this is indeed what started happening; others went a bit mad, imagining a higher state beyond where they were and believing that they had a way to get there—which also, of course, meant death if they were wrong. It was the first crisis they faced in so long it was beyond their memory, so they got together and tried to figure out why being omnipotent was so empty. They couldn’t believe that a permanent state of ultimate happiness was impossible, since their whole racial effort had been directed for so long at attaining just that, so they came up with the only other answer they could. They figured that they were somehow flawed. That they had evolved incorrectly. And since their experiments showed that they would wind up the same way if they started from scratch, they decided that their whole race had evolved wrongly, that it was impossible to reach that state as the First Race. It sounds crazy, I know, and perhaps it is, but that’s the way they thought. Which of us could understand their thinking? And thus came about their Great Project.”

“I do not think that I would get so bored,” Campos commented. “Such power!”

“Perhaps. But we are not they. As I was saying, the Great Project. Even now I don’t think we can even understand it. It is very unclear. It seems, however, that a giant experiment and computer—you know what a computer is? Good!—was built the size of a reasonable planet. On it, 1,560 laboratories, in fact, were built, each containing a unique ecosystem. They took beings from worlds where life had evolved, and they in many cases altered or speeded up the evolution of those races. In some cases, what had once been animals became a thinking and dominant race. In other cases, they made things up from whole cloth, often taking variations of ideas done by others. The idea was to create and test as large and varied a selection of potential master races starting from different worlds and backgrounds, to try and design the one system that would in fact produce the heaven they dreamed of. The laboratory areas, tightly controlled to make them simulate the theoretical planets and systems they’d invented, were divided into two segments. Since about half of all life that had evolved in the universe, including apparently them, was based on carbon, half the world was given over to carbon-based life-forms. The other half, just to be sure, was given over to non-carbon-based forms, like silicon, even pure energy and for forms with alternative atmospheres like ammonia and methane. A great barrier was placed between the two halves so that they could not interact with one another, and the non-carbon-based half had extra barriers guarding against one environment polluting another. The southern half was the carbon-based half. You are carbon-based, as am I, so we are in the south.”

Lori was fascinated. “You mean this is the laboratory? And the experiment is still going on?”

“Well, this is the laboratory world, yes, but we think the experiment is long over with. In fact, it is somewhat humbling to realize that someone else got first crack. The last ones to have at it were the bottom of the barrel—still godlike creatures, nonetheless. We here now are, sad to say, among the last created. We call our current state the Last Races, for obvious reasons.”

“Fifteen hundred and sixty different races?” Lori said as much as asked. “All here? Now? How big is this place, anyway?”

“Not huge, but big enough. Unfortunately, the translator has limits, one of which is measurement systems. From what I have learned from watching the recordings of prior entries here, I gather we are somewhat close to the same size as your home world.”

“Huh? On a world the size of Earth, you’ve got 1,560 little worlds? It sounds like a collection of small domes.”

“No, no, it’s not like that. You will see.”

“You were talking about those god creatures,” Juan Campos put in. “You never said why they did this thing or what happened to them.” He didn’t like the idea of a whole race of godlike beings looking over his shoulder.

“Oh, yes. Well, it is unclear what happened, but it is clear that for the experiments to prove that their systems had possibilities, they used themselves.”

“What?” This was getting too much for Lori to handle. “You mean they became the races they invented?”

“So it would seem. All but the control group. That one worked on the ‘next phase’ of evolution some thought must exist. They were also supposed to be the guardians to ensure that those who became part of the experiment might be able to back out. After a while, though, it didn’t happen. The control group vanished—nobody knows where or how or why. Some say they found their higher state. Others say they killed themselves attempting it. It is unknown what happened, but one thing was sure: When they left, no pure members of the First Race remained. The First Race had been consumed by retaking on mortality in the course of its experiment. The new races that had proved themselves were moved out to worlds to begin a natural evolution. Only the last series of experiments were left, and because there was no control, they were never shut down even when they were used as the templates for worlds like the one you came from. Nobody left here knew how to get off of this world or how to get to, much less operate, the computer and machinery, so we have been here ever since, maintained by the master computer as we were, free only within the limits of its programming. You are here because all the First Race hex gates all over the universe were left switched on, all with this place as their terminus; there was no one to turn them off.”

“I see,” Lori said, nodding. But she didn’t see, not totally. How did that explain this Alama, this Mavra Chang?

“Two ancient terms have come down from those past ages,” the ambassador told them. “The word that appears to refer to this laboratory world seems to translate out, for no discernible reason, as ‘well.’ Thus we refer to this as the Well World. The operating computer that maintains it and us, and possibly a lot more, has the ancient name of the Well of Souls. Very poetic, actually.”

“You said that most of them left the way we came in,” Juan Campos noted, thinking of what he and his family might do with access to all this. “Then there is a way to get out.”

“Oh, certainly. You simply have to get into the master computer and give it the proper instructions. That’s obvious. The trouble is, the last race to leave locked the master computer and took the keys with them, as it were. It is likely that the gate you used—a meteor, I believe—was one of the gates used when your world was being prepared and designed for full habitation. A work-gang gate, as it were, parked somewhere after it was no longer needed. Some cosmic catastrophe jolted it out of its orbit, and it came down and snared you and the others. This happens. Some races, as I have said, who are already spacefaring sorts have accidentally bumped into them, mostly on ancient, deserted worlds once inhabited by the First Race. The gates are locally controlled, and it appears that because the races involved are the recognized designs of the First Race, it can’t tell you apart from them. So it brings you here. And here you will remain for reasons I have already stated.”

“You said that we were—what did you call it?—Glath something?” Lori said, thinking.

“Glathriel. Yes. You are different in minor details but basically the same race and clearly of their origin. It is understandable that, stuck here over vast periods of time, differences would fade as evolution produced single uniform races, and that is pretty much the rule in all of the hexes.”

“Hexes?” Campos prompted.

“Yes. All of the experimental areas, the ‘nations’ of the Well World now, are hexagonal in shape except at the equator and at the poles. The ones abutting both are of more a wing shape but still manage six sides. The equator, as I said, is an impenetrable barrier. None of us could survive for long in most of the North, and few of those races could survive here. There are a couple of exceptions, but not many. We do some limited trade and contacts through this zone—there is a local hex gate that goes between them— but very little. We haven’t much in common. Each hex also has its own local gate, but it will carry you only to here and then will return you back to your ‘native’ hex when you leave.”

“Where is ‘here’ exactly in all this?” Lori asked him.

“South Zone. The south polar region. The ‘cap,’ as it were. You cannot enter this zone except by the local hex gates or the way you arrived. You can leave only through the local gates. This area was once the social control center, transport hub, you name it, of the Great Project. Now it is used essentially as embassies for the various hexes. Not every hex has an ambassador or representative here—some do not socialize much with other races—though about half do, mostly the high-tech hexes and some of the semis.”

“Huh?”

“I told you each hex was an artificially created environment in which various conditions were duplicated or enforced to simulate real worlds. Resource- and food-rich worlds would eventually evolve technological civilizations. Those hexes are fully controlled by natural law, and many, like my own, are extremely developed. Others might have a very livable ecosystem but lack the sort of resources that would allow the easy development of a high-tech civilization. In those, some natural laws are, for lack of a better term, deactivated. Those are the semitech hexes, in which things like steam power are allowed, but not more advanced systems. In yet others, those with few resources or particularly harsh environments, survival itself was the primary aim and the races had to be tested on that basis. It was also thought, or so it is surmised, that these hexes might be an attempt to see if a race could attain perfection in a natural state and to explore the idea that machines and high technology might well be the corrupting influence. In these hexes only direct mechanical energy works. Muscle power, water power, and the like, but always in a preindustrial stage. Do not take them lightly. Some of them have developed amazing powers that seem almost like magic to the rest of us, although most are stagnant to a large degree.”

“The other creatures—they are like you?” Campos asked.

“Oh, my, no! Only the Kwynn are like the Kwynn. Our land is on the equator west of the Sea of Storms. And yes, there are vast ocean areas and water-breathing races who live here under the same rules. There are 1,560 different races. There are some similarities among these, even some outright mixture of racial traits. A Dillian might be considered a mixture of a draft animal from Glathriel and the dominant Glathrielian race, for example. There are also somewhat similar combinations of my own kind, from cold-blooded to warm, short to tall, and all sorts of mixtures. A few are, well, unique.”

“You brought up this Glathriel again,” Lori noted. “Why don’t they have an embassy here?”

“Glathriel was, as you might expect, a high-tech hex,” the Kwynn replied. “It reached a very high level very fast, partly because, it is said, they were so violent and warlike. In ancient times a king arose who decided to expand beyond his hex and conquer other hexes, either enslaving or exterminating the natives to increase his own race. A peaceful nontech agrarian hex that had an abundant supply of food and an extremely fertile land was to be the first target, since Glathriel had become too developed to support its own population and did not have sufficient trade to buy what it needed. This other race, the Ambreza, got wind of the plot and somehow created a kind of gas, harmless to Ambreza, that would interact with the atmosphere in Glathriel and become quickly pervasive. It appears to have altered brain chemistry or some such. In quite a short period of time, before they could even realize what was happening, it reduced the entire Glathrielian population to moron level, barely more than animals. The Ambreza then moved into Glathriel and enjoyed the benefits of high technology, then they rounded up the Glathrielians, perhaps a million of them, and forced them into Ambreza, where they are used as draft animals, tilling the fields under Ambreza plantation supervisors. Of course, the only account we have is the Ambreza one, so we don’t know if the Glathrielians were really that mean or simply outsmarted themselves by forgetting that nontech is not a synonym for ‘stupid,’ ‘ignorant,’ or ‘defenseless.’ ”

“How horrible! And you said ‘are used.’ You mean they were genetically altered? They remain—moronic?”

“No, not at all. But they remain a rather primitive bunch, I fear. Apparently, over the generations they achieved a tolerance for the gas, which is actually a derivative of a natural marsh product. The Ambreza retained a fairly good-sized chunk of the place for their plantations bordering on the new Ambreza, and the rest was left to the remaining Glathrielians, who regained their senses over time but never more than a fraction of their previous numbers. Indeed, their population has been stable at about fifteen or twenty thousand for as long as we have valid records. The rest of the hex that the Ambreza didn’t need was allowed to grow wild. Today they live in tribal groups as simple hunter-gatherers and remain very primitive. The Ambreza say that a wild plant they always considered a nuisance proved a mild drug to Glathrielians, who use it quite a lot.

It has sapped their ambition as well as their fierceness and is at the center of their primitive homegrown religion. A few of the tribes are willing to work on the Ambreza plantations as farm labor, getting good-quality fruits and vegetables for their effort. Most consider the Ambreza devils, although they don’t really know why. They have totally lost their past.”

Lori could just imagine the Glathrielians. All the

Amazonians might feel right at home there. “But isn’t there some sense of guilt that these people should be so limited because of crimes by an ancestral group that nobody remembers except in the winner’s legends?” she asked.

“One might say that,” the ambassador conceded, “but the vast gulf of time also argues for leaving them just that way. We are, after all, the leftovers from the Grand Experiment, no matter what we think of ourselves now; we are not the experiment itself. They are not that much different, and no worse off, than many other races and hexes. Indeed, we have only the Ambreza legends and the fact that when Ambrezans come here, they must leave to Glathriel, not their own hex, to show that there is any truth to it, anyway. After all this time, no one is much worried about it.”

“Ain’t nobody gonna expose me to a gas that turns me into no animal!” Juan Campos declared. “I won’t let it happen!”

“Nobody said it would,” the ambassador pointed out.

“But you said we were Glath—those people! The place used to be ours and is now in the hands of these guys who steal our minds with drugs! I mean, it took the people generations to get used to it. We’re not used to it. We breathe that stuff, and we’re just big hairless apes!”

“No. It is true that there is a slight danger, but if you were going to Glathriel, you’d emerge not there but in Ambreza. Besides, whoever said you were going to Glathriel? The odds are something like 779 to 1 against it.”

Even Lori was suddenly confused. “But you said that’s where we’d go!”

“Uh, yes, if you were Glathrielians. But that is not how it works. After all, our ancestors also used this mechanism to become our ancestors, you see. The computer here things in a careful balance. If a hex becomes overpopulated, then no babies are born until the population levels out. If a hex is underpopulated, it can’t avoid having more children. You are not yet in the census. When you go through the hex gate for the first time, you will be detected by the master computer as a newcomer not in its data base. It will then look at that data base and see where one extra person might fit without disturbing any balances. No one actually comes through a gate as he is. You are broken down and converted into energy, and the blueprint for ‘you’ is sent along with the energy packet. You are then reconstructed at the other end according to that blueprint. When you go through the first time, the computer will decide where you best fit in its system, and it will alter the blueprint. Just as the First Race were converted into their creations, so will you be. Your packet will be reconstructed with a new blueprint. Your mind, your memories, won’t change, but your physical, racial form will. You will become a new creature of a race new to you.”

“What!” both Lori and Campos exclaimed at much the same time.

“Yes. And certain—adjustments will be made so that you can survive. For one thing, you will begin at or just beyond the age of adulthood. That varies, of course, but you will be younger certainly. The primary thinking and memory areas of the brain will be retained, so you will still be pretty much the person you are, but the more animal levels of the brain and its functions will be those of the new race, not the one you have now. Thus, you will be able to handle the body comfortably and will not be repulsed by the sight of others. It is an adjustment mechanism, although, to be sure, making the sentient mental adjustment to fully accept what you are and that you will be that way forever is easier for some than for others. The rest you will learn from the natives. They will want to know about you as much as you will want and need to learn from them.”

Campos was appalled. “You mean I could walk through that thing and come out looking like you?”

“I am a diplomat, so I will ignore the insult. Yes, you could. Race, sex, all that will be computer-selected based on the needs of the Well World. There have always been theories that the individual does unconsciously influence the selection to some degree, but it is not clear how or why. Don’t be upset. You have a whole new life, starting with coming of age. A whole new start.”

“Well, I don’t want it!” Juan Campos proclaimed. “I want my old life back—as me!”

“You have no choice, as I say. You will either walk through or, to be blunt, you will be thrown through. I assure you that the personnel here in South Zone and even the automated systems here will use force if need be.”

Campos let it go, but he was clearly not at all pleased.

“The others who came before—they have already all gone through?” It was Mavra’s first question in the session.

“Yes, all, and quite some time ago.”

“Who were they? Can you say?”

“Not exactly. Let me punch up the records. Hmmmm. First was a very civilized fellow named David Solomon— pardon the pronunciation. He came nicely dressed, along with two companions, both older, I believe—it is not easy for me to tell much about your race—who were both crippled in some way. The male, who said he was named Joao Antonio Guzman, could not see, as I remember, and the woman, Anne Marie Guzman, presumably a relation, had a terrible disease and could not even move much on her own. Then, a few days later, two males came through. One was definitely an older man in a uniform who said he was Colonel Jorge Lunderman of something called the Brazilian Air Force, whatever that is, and the other was a much younger man in a different uniform named Captain Julian Beard of somebody else’s air force.”

“I wonder where they came from?” Lori mused. “I wonder if they were part of the first investigative team there and got caught?”

“You would not think it would be two officers,” Campos commented. “I mean, always send the privates in first is the old rule.”

“Perhaps. But if they were part of the science team, it might make sense,” Lori said.

“And now the four of you. And I hope that is it for now,” the ambassador added.

“Almost certainly,” Mavra told him. “Umm… just out of curiosity, is there any account in any of the legends of any of the races here of a surviving member of the First Race? Of somebody who could work the big computer?”

“Odd you should ask. Yes. The name is part of so many similar legends and sagas here that it is believed that he must have once been real, although whether of the First Race is not known. Come to think of it, he is always said to be a Glathrielian! Indeed, there are so many stories and legends about him that it is not totally certain if he is a real character, a composite, or a part of our extensive mythology. That is hotly debated. But there are ancient battle sites and legends in many hexes, including some that are very alien to Glathriel and very far from it, that have their own stories.”

“Uh huh. And his name?”

“It varies, but there is one that is most common. It is, and pardon the translator limitations, urn, let’s see—yes, that’s it. Brazil. Nathan Brazil.”

Nathan Brazil.Mavra remembered him now. She remembered a lot about Nathan Brazil.

“Is there any consistency to what he looked like?”

“I’m afraid not, and any records of him that might have contained such information are apparently lost. Besides, what sort of consistency might you expect from all those races, most of whom could not tell one of you from the other?”

“Point taken. Any other specific names and people in those legends?”

“Many. I am not too proficient in such things myself; the Kwynn were apparently not involved in that, and our sagas are different.”

“No Glathrielian woman hero?”

“I do not recall one, although there may be. Why?”

“Just wondering.” Mavra in fact felt some vague disappointment at the news that she wasn’t even a footnote. Somehow it was a little insulting, all things considered.

Still, what was irritating to her ego might actually be an asset. It would be a lot harder to move around here if one were a world-class legend who could open the Well. Others would get ideas.

Still, she vowed that this time they would not forget her!

“I believe,” said the ambassador calmly, “that it is time to process you through. This has been a very busy day.”

“Two favors, if I might,” Mavra responded quickly. “First, are pictures of the earlier arrivals available so that we may see if there is anyone we know in them? And second, may I use your translating device to speak to the others here briefly? We have no practical common tongue, I’m afraid.”

Lori, astounded at the modern bearing and sophistication in Mavra’s conversation, couldn’t suppress a smile. In the tongue of the People she said, “I know you cannot explain this in the tongue.”

Unexpectedly, the translator issued only an echo of exactly what she had spoken, untranslated, although it clearly caught the conversation. Even the ambassador was surprised. “I’ve never seen one of these do that before,” he commented worriedly.

Mavra, too, was surprised and responded, “It knows not the magic of the People.”

Again, the words were echoed unchanged.

Mavra gestured toward the ambassador. “Remember,” she told Lori. “It might be very good to have a tongue that cannot be known here.” Lori nodded, thinking much the same thing.

The ambassador sighed. “Well, stop doing that! It’s annoying! Let’s see… What was it you wanted? Oh, yes. Pictures of the arrivals. Of course, they do not look like this now .”

He punched some buttons on the console, and a wall screen showed three people in the very same conference room they were using. A twist of a dial focused entirely on one and blew it up to full screen. It showed a very handsome man of clear Latin American ancestry, his hair in the process of going gray, dressed in casual but clearly expensive clothes.

“That’s all right. Just one at a time, thank you,” Mavra said.

Another twist, and the picture showed a woman, very frail although by no means old, with short hair in a prim bun and thick horn-rimmed glasses. She was in a wheelchair.

Another twist, and a third man came into view, dressed more casually than the other but still quite well. He was a small man, not merely short but thin and wiry, with a large nose and deep-set eyes that seemed almost black and neatly trimmed black hair. He was clean-shaven, but Mavra recognized him in an instant and a clear memory of his face, his voice, his personality filled in inside her mind. There was no question, no doubt about it.

Nathan Brazil had returned to the Well World before her.

“You say it has been a fairly long time since they came through,” she noted. “Has he returned to South Zone at all since arriving?”

“I couldn’t say. Those records would not be here, if any records of such a visit were actually kept at all. He’d be dealing with his hex ambassador in any event.”

“But does it say what they became? The man and the woman in particular?”

“Well, that would be appended here for informational purposes if the race has an embassy here and if the ambassador bothered to register them. Let me check. Ah, yes. Two of them, anyway. The first man went to Zumerbald, the woman to Dillia, and the third—well, there’s no record on him, although that means little, as I said.”

I know where he went, she thought, and I know just what he looks like.

The picture changed, and two other men came up on the screen, neither familiar.

“This is the colonel and the captain?”

“Yes, if you prefer.” A close-up of the older man, the colonel, showed a gruff middle-aged man with gray hair and dark complexion but with distinctly Germanic rather than Brazilian features—not uncommon in Brazil, although Mavra would not know that. The close-up of the other showed a much younger and quite handsome man with thick brown hair and a medium complexion which suggested he hadn’t been in the tropics very long. His uniform was khaki-colored and had nothing on it but a name tag and captain’s bars on the shoulders.

“The older man went to Nanzistu,” the ambassador told her, “and the younger went to—odd, it’s not there, but I could have sworn somebody or other said he went to Erdom. Well, they don’t keep a permanent ambassador here, and they’re a tribal people, so perhaps they didn’t do much updating. But that’s the lot.”

“He looks familiar somehow,” Lori said, looking at the handsome man. “I wonder if I met him somewhere. I wouldn’t forget a face and body like that. It’s an American uniform.”

“Well, perhaps you will remember; it might be useful,” Mavra replied, then turned to the ambassador. “And one other favor,” she reminded him.

“Eh? What?”

“Your translator. I would like to speak directly to my companions for a moment. A few minutes, no more.”

“Well, you can do that now, can’t you?”

“It would be easier if I didn’t have to shout. May I just borrow it for a moment and place it right here? Where are we going to go?”

“Oh, very well.” He lifted it from around his neck, and she went and took it from him. “Be careful with it, though!”

She took it over and knelt beside Gus. “Gus, can you hear me?”

“Um… Huh? Yeah. Been listenin’ to this bullshit. Still hung over from them drugs, though. I’d swear that guy over there was a giant pink talking dinosaur.”

“You’re not hung over, and he’s more or less exactly that,” Lori assured him. “Look, Gus, you heard it. Whether you believe it or not, they’re going to force us through, and who knows where or even what we’ll be if he’s telling the truth?”

“Believe it, Gus,” Mavra said firmly. “But that’s not the point right now. The point is what happens after. I’m going to tell you all right now that I will not change. I am already registered here. I’m going to Ambreza, the old Glathriel, and so did that small fellow up there. You heard my questions about the legends?”

Lori frowned. “Yes, but I don’t see—”

“You don’t have to. That man is Nathan Brazil. The one in the legends. The man who can work the computer that runs not only this place but every place. Sooner or later that is going to get out. Sooner if I have anything to do with it. And although I doubt he’s even started yet, sooner or later he’s going to head north, to the equator, and go inside. When he does, he is going to become like one of the ancient people that built this place. He’ll go down into the guts of this world, check it out, then he’ll do a reset.”

“A what!” Juan Campos and Lori almost said together.

“A reset. It won’t affect this world, but it will affect Earth. Drastically. Time, space, everything will be changed. They had few rules, those ancient people. In the end he’ll bring Earth and the other inhabited planets back up to speed, to where, in our case, true humans develop. But everybody now alive on Earth, and everybody who’s lived up to that point, will be destroyed first. It will all start out from scratch. I—I think that they’ll all be stored here in the memory banks of the Well World. But all of it, everything and everyone you ever knew, will be gone.”

Lori shook her head in wonder. “I’m still having trouble with this place. I can’t really handle that .”

“Yes, how do you know this to be true?” Juan Campos added.

“I was there the last time he did it. I—helped. It was necessary, I swear. It was do that or the entire universe would die forever, even this place. But when we started it back up, nothing was made better. Everything developed exactly as it had before. All the suffering, the misery, the evil. I don’t know if this crisis is as serious as that one. I don’t think it is. Lori, you trusted me enough to come this far, and I wasn’t lying, was I? Trust me on this one, too. I want to stop him this time. I want to see if it’s necessary to destroy the universe and reset it when a few minor repairs and adjustments will suffice. Maybe this time I can save everybody and make things a little better. I can do that, but only if I beat him inside, to the master control.”

“What are you?” Lori asked her. “One of those creatures like him?”

“No. I was born on a distant planet so long ago, it doesn’t matter. I was a product of the last creation, or recreation, maybe. There is a certain bond between us, and I helped him then. He repaid the kindness by making me more like himself, registering me with the master control and making me virtually immortal. That is why a gate was sent for each of us. Never mind—time is short, I’m afraid, and they like this to go very fast once you’re briefed. The plain fact is, I have to beat him there.”

“He’s got one hell of a head start,” Juan Campos noted.

“Not necessarily. You don’t know him like I do. He will do anything to put it off, but he finally will be forced to do it. The Well will see to that. Right now he’s probably enjoying himself, finding out what’s new and what’s old here, and trying to think of a thousand reasons why he should not go. At some point he will also try to at least make contact with his companions. That is in his nature, and I know in any event that he has a special fondness for Dillians. It is a very long and very dangerous journey from Glathriel, not far north of Zone, to the equator.”

“But you said he couldn’t be killed!” Lori pointed out.

“He can’t, and neither can I, but almost everything else bad can happen to us. This is unlike anyplace else. It is like crossing dozens of little alien worlds, each a few hundred kilometers across. Many are friendly, but others are hostile to all outsiders, and even the weather and climate change. Some of the places, and races, have great power and can be downright ugly. It is almost a cosmic joke that we both start far away in Glathriel. Almost as if, perhaps unconsciously, he wanted it to be as hard as possible. And whichever of us gets there first will have great power—and great discretion. I don’t know if I can beat him there, but if I waste little time and get to it, I might. He won’t go alone, and if any of the natives here pick up on who he is, they will try and insure that they are there, too. I cannot beat him alone. That is why we are having this conference. I need your help. I won’t do much selling. Come to save your family, friends, and world. Come to gain what rewards I can shower on you if I win. Come for the most unique adventure of your lives. But I need friends and allies.”

“But what can we do?” Lori asked her. “We don’t even know where or, if I can believe it, what we’ll be!”

“No, you don’t. But any hex gate—and there is one in each hex—will bring you back here. Leave a message telling me where you are. I will find you. Do not try and find me. I will have to avoid Brazil, and you will not be prepared for such a journey. But I need to know where and what you are. If you cannot do it yourself, send word. I will find you. I have already had the worst done to me on this world, and I am better suited for it. Understand?”

“Yes, I think so,” Lori answered, and Juan Campos nodded thoughtfully. If she can work this thing, then she has access to all that power… “Gus?”

“Yeah, sure. Do they have cameras here? And news?”

“Some hexes do, of various kinds. Some do not. Depends on where you are. It even depends on where you are whether any sort of camera will work. As to news, that, too, varies. You will find something, Gus. The Well is random but not completely random. The important thing is that you will be hale, hearty, healthy, and ready to go no matter what you are, and soon.”

“You can count on me,” Juan Campos told her, and Lori looked over at him and frowned.

“I’ll come,” she said, “if only to make sure you don’t get to like this slime ball before you get to know him.” Campos looked pained.

“I don’t believe a word of this, so why the hell not?” Gus told her.

Mavra smiled. “Good. You get that word to me, and I will get to you. Do it as soon as you can. I cannot wait in Ambreza for long, and I certainly will not want to return here again once I have set out. I will give you—let’s see—a month. Four weeks. That will give you enough time and will allow me to find out what I need to know and secure what I will require for the journey. Four weeks.”

There was a sudden loud series of grunts and roars from across the room. The translator said faintly, “That’s enough! Let’s go!”

“Good luck to you all,” Mavra told them, and hugged Lori. Then she picked the translator up and returned it to the Kwynn.

“I thought you were saying good-bye, not giving speeches,” he harrumphed. “All right, everyone! Outside that door and to your right!”

Lori bent down to pick up Gus, but he said, “I might make it. Help me to my feet.”

She did, worried about his long captivity in bonds and his weak condition, and sure enough, he collapsed. She reached down and picked him up gently.

“Damn! This is embarrassing!”Gus muttered.

They followed the ambassador down another long series of corridors, past rooms with strange-shaped entrances that contained a variety of horrific or mythical creatures and even worse smells and noises. Mavra could see Campos looking for a way out. Finally they reached the end of a dead-end corridor, and in front of them was a black hexagon as dark and nonreflective as the one atop the meteor.

“I still don’t see how this is possible,” Lori muttered aloud.

“Matter to energy conversion,” the ambassador replied. “And energy to matter. Quite simple in principle, although of course none of us know how to do it. Who is first?”

“Ah, hell,” Gus said with some disgust. “Does she have to carry me into that thing?”

“While there’s nothing specific against it, it’s not traditional to send two through at once,” the Kwynn replied. “However, it is not exactly a transit point. You could literally be thrown in and it would not matter. You would still feel as if you’d fallen asleep, so they tell me, and then awaken on the ground wherever you are assigned.”

“Well, if somebody’ll stand me up and give me a little push, I’ll go,” Gus told them.

Mavra went over and helped Lori, and together they got the man, taller than Lori by almost a head and taller than Mavra by head and shoulders, on his wobbly feet. Then, together, they gave him a push forward, and he managed a step into the blackness, pitched forward, and was gone.

Lori stood there looking nervously at the gate. “I really don’t know,” she sighed. “I never much liked the sight of myself in a mirror, but there’s a lot worse things to be than me. Now’s a hell of a time to find that out, though, isn’t it?” She took a deep breath. “Well, here goes nothing.” And with that, she leapt into the blackness.

Mavra looked at Campos, who bowed slightly and made a gesture that could only mean either “ladies first” or “after you.” She shrugged, smiled at him, and jumped in.

“Now you, sir,” the ambassador told him. “Go ahead.”

“I think I want to consider this a little more carefully,” Juan Campos replied. “Like a day or two. Maybe next year?”

The ambassador sighed and turned as if to lead the way back, and his huge tail came around, struck Campos a hard blow, and flung him into the blackness.

“Thank goodness for that!”sighed the ambassador, and began the walk back to his offices.

It had taken Terry some time to catch up with the others. She made several false turns, and though she had barely avoided some terrifying creatures, the place had been pretty deserted. She’d finally found them just as they were being led away by a pink dragon.

Hearing nothing of the briefing and knowing nothing of where they were, she made the instant assumption that her companions had been captured by the creature. She followed at a distance, hoping at least to see where they would be taken. Maybe, just maybe, she could get them out.

They went through a winding maze of corridors with so many twists and turns that she was not sure if she could find her way back. One problem at a time, she told herself.

She found that the last corridor ended in another of those black hexes. It figured, somehow. They were being sent someplace else. There was nothing to do but follow, she thought, but at least she had not been captured, and that might still come in handy.

From the corridor’s far corner she watched them disappear into the hex, too far away to distinguish what they were saying. She suppressed a giggle when she saw Campos being knocked in, though. When Campos, too, had gone, she backed off, found an empty room, and hid there until the pink dragon returned back up another corridor.

She wasn’t sure what was going on, where she was, or what lay on the other side of that black hex, but if Gus and Lori and Alama were there, then she had to follow before she got caught as well. It was sure better than staying here with those creepy monsters.

Allowing a good fifteen or twenty minutes to pass, hoping that whoever or whatever waiting on the other side of the black hex would be gone, she got up and made her way down the dead-end corridor where her companions had disappeared.

She was tempted to sleep first—she felt unimaginably tired as well as hungry and thirsty—but she knew she couldn’t let the trail grow too cold, and while sleep might be possible, she couldn’t chance discovery by any of the weird creatures she had glimpsed earlier.

Summoning up her last bit of willpower, she stepped into the blackness.