Twilight at the Well of Souls

Above the Borgo Pass

Ortega had a fairly large force around, and as they walked with him the size became more apparent. They were also well armed and well equipped with the best in weaponry and detection gear and obviously digging in.

“I must say that it’s damned hard to think of you as a pegasus,” the Ulik said jokingly. “And a passionate pink one at that! My, my!”

Brazil could only snort at this commentary, since the Gedemondan could only be an effective speech conduit when they were standing still. He and Mavra could only seethe and take it; all hope was now gone.

“The Borgo Pass,” Ortega told them. “It’s the narrowest point in the whole chasm, barely ten meters clearance on either side of the Avenue and with nice, natural fortifications on both sides. As you saw from the landscape above, anyone who wants to reach the equator has to come up the Avenue itself—and has to get past this spot.”

There was a lot of activity around the mostly obscured pass; they could see a portable crane lifting some gun emplacement down into the mist and cloud layer below, supervised by a number of small flying things.

“You might be interested to know how I figured out your plot,” the Ulik continued, gloating unashamedly. “To be truthful about it, I deduced it as you went along and the final pieces only fell into place a couple of days ago, but I’d already guessed the rough outline. It was clear from the start, at least after I discovered how you’d evaded our traps in Zone, that yours was a campaign of misdirection. Still, nothing could deny the fact that, sooner or later, you would have to move in force toward one or more of the Avenues, and as soon as the Hakazit moved up the Isthmus I knew from its direction and the direction of the Dillians that you had to be coming to this area. Although your double in the ship gave me some uneasy moments, I admit, I rejected water Avenues as simply too risky. That left Yaxa-Harbigor or here. Now, you had an army for each, as did the council, and a double for each, which drove us crazy. So, which Avenue?” He paused, savoring his moment of triumph. “I rejected Yaxa-Harbigor not only because the inhabitants around there are incredibly formidable anywhere and damn near absolute in their own neighborhood, but also because that would put Gunit Sangh’s army in between, by far the more formidable of the two,” he continued. “But a glance at a map showed that, if you turned westward and started the other Awbrian force northward, you’d have a massive double army coming down on a smaller and less equipped council force. Ergo, Ellerbanta, since Verion is inhospitable, nasty, alien, and probably lethal. I’m not sure those fancy charged-up glowworms can be reasoned with. Good thing they’re superstitious, though, or we couldn’t hold both sides of the pass.”

Brazil halted and gestured with his head to the Gedemondan, who understood and made the link.

“All right, Serge, but how did you get here?” he wanted to know.

Ortega chuckled. “All in good time, my boy, all in good time. So, anyway, old Gunit Sangh and his crew wouldn’t listen to a lot of what I had to say and paid for their mistakes. They got outmaneuvered time and time again. Well, once I knew where you were headed, I decided to take matters into my own hands. Your curious friend Gypsy had told me that I could leave Zone without withering into dust, and I finally had it, completely, up to here, with sitting in my private little prison while everybody else had all the fun. Oh, I could have ordered folks over here, but I simply could not deny myself the pleasure of this. You don’t know what it’s meant to me, Nate, leaving that stinking hole. Seeing stars, breathing clean air, feeling the wind and heat and cold and rain… It’s almost like being reborn. I may be the only man anywhere who can identify with you, Nate. My little prison, really, isn’t that much different than the prison you’ve been living in all those thousands of years. We were both trapped by our own devices.”

“But how did you get here?” Brazil persisted. “I mean, Ulik’s almost on the other side of the world from here, even if it is at the equator, and that bulk of yours can’t fly.”

Ortega laughed. “Oh, but it can, Nate, although it damned near killed me from being out of practice. I’ll show you one in a little while.”

“One what?” he wanted to know.

“A trublak,” the Ulik replied. “It’s a huge, pulpy worm with six pairs of huge, tough, transparent wings, about six meters long. Nasty-looking, but harmless. They are to Ulik pretty much what the horse was to our ancestors—transportation, muscle power, you name it. They’re not very bright but easily domesticated. You have these reins, you sit on a saddlelike thing, and you use your own tail as part of the guidance. Took us about five days to get here, but we knew where you were heading before we started, even if you hadn’t taken off yet. And no matter what, a good look at the relief maps told me you had to come by the Borgo Pass. Just had to. It’s almost designed that way.”

“But how the hell did you know what we were or who we were?” he persisted. “We’re pretty well disguised, I think you’ll admit.”

Ortega shrugged. “Remember, the last time we met you were in the body of a stag. I knew the trick could be done and I knew you knew it. When we got word yesterday that your comatose body had been found in the rubble of battle I pretty well guessed what had happened—and waited here. It had to be a pretty fast ground animal or an airborne one, and I guessed a flyer since you’d want to make speed. What large, flying animal was on the continent and near where your armies had passed? It’s easy when you’re thinking dirty and playing with a full deck.”

Brazil looked around at the frantic activity, slightly puzzled. “What’s all this now, Serge?” he wanted to know. “You’ve won. Looks more like you’re still moving in than preparing to move out.”

Serge Ortega chuckled even more at some private joke, then called out, “All right, boys! Come on up!”

Out from a point beyond the portable crane came two figures. Two very familiar creatures.

One was a Hakazit, huge and imposing, and the other a tall human with a big grin on his face.

“Hello, Brazil,” called Gypsy. “We were wondering if we’d beat you here or not.”

“It would seem our timing was perfect,” Marquoz noted with satisfaction. “A last reunion before the windup.” He turned to Brazil. “I told you I wanted to be in on the finish.”

The shock of seeing those two was so great that the communications link was broken for a few moments. When he regained it, all Brazil could blurt out was, “What the hell is going on here?”

Ortega grinned. “I resigned from the council, Nate. Oh, I’ve got to admit, up to the last moment I didn’t know which way I would jump, didn’t even know if I had the nerve to ever leave that place, but, when push came to shove, I really didn’t have much choice. I couldn’t condemn you to the same prison I hated so much. Not me—anybody but me, maybe. But I couldn’t do that to somebody else, particularly an old buddy like you. I’d done all I could to keep the faith with the council; I’d given them every lead, prodded them this way and that, and even managed to save an awful lot of those Entries from being wiped out. I didn’t worry about that after a bunch of the boys decided to ignore me anyway and sent a squad of fifty in to start killing the Entries in the Well Gate. You know what happened? Those amazons of yours got so pissed when the first volleys of arrows flew, they charged that squad and tore it literally to bits! They can take care of themselves pretty good, they can! And since high-tech weapons won’t work in Zone, well, there’s nobody with nerve enough to try it now,”

Gypsy looked at him, a smile on his face. “And, of course, Saint Serge, personal motives had nothing to do with it at all.”

Ortega looked sheepish. “Well, of course, in a very minor way. I’ve been fighting that bastard Sangh for fifty years, and he’s going for broke with this one. If he loses, he really loses, this time. He’s the greatest threat to the stability of this world that ever was born, and he has to go. Some of the Dahbi aren’t that bad. Gruesome, maybe, but a lot of other races are, too. Evil, though? No, that’s reserved for Sangh. And his whole pitch has been that if he were in complete charge, he could do anything. Well, he’s been in complete charge, and he’s botched it. If you make the Well, he’s botched it totally. He’ll not only never be a threat but he’ll lose face and standing among his own people, maybe lose his power base. Nobody likes to back a loser, and there’ll be a lot of bitterness after all this. The Wars of the Well showed that—people don’t like their sons and daughters, friends and neighbors, to be sacrificed at all, but when they get slaughtered in a losing cause, well, that’s more than some can stand.”

“So you changed sides,” Brazil sighed.

Ortega’s bushy eyebrows went up. “Why, Nate! I’m surprised at you! You know there’s never been any side except my side. Hell, I’ve had my cake and eaten it too in this go-round. I’ve figured you out, outwitted and trapped you, and now I can turn around and stick it good to the ones I have a lot of scores to settle with. It’s the time to settle scores again, Nate, I’m dying now and you know it and I know it. There’s no way I’m going to die in peace and solitude.”

Mavra caught the attention of the Gedemondan, who linked her as well.

“Gypsy, this is Mavra,” she began, having to explain it because the Gedemondan was doing all the physical talking. “What happened—after we left? How did Marquoz get here?”

“I’ll answer that,” the Hakazit told the others. “What happened was that we really had to pull out too quickly and Sangh’s army was on the move. They caught us in Mixtim and there was a bloody battle. In strictly field terms, it was a draw—we might even be said to have won, since a lot more of them died than us. But, strategically, they managed to split our forces and ram through. We couldn’t hold, not forever, and the Awbrians were pinned down to the southwest of us, a little too far to help. Gunit Sangh wasn’t really fooled by your body, Brazil, any more than Ortega was. It’s something he’ll keep in reserve to claim a moral victory, maybe, but that’s all. He doesn’t know you’ve changed form but he guessed somehow you were making for the Avenue and he’s unnerved about what happened to Mavra, here. He took his fastest, most versatile, and nastiest two thousand and punched through the hole, heading straight for here. We couldn’t stop him; the balance of his army prevented that. His force is on the Avenue right now, and along about dawn tomorrow he’s going to be coming straight up that canyon.”

They all turned and looked in the indicated direction, although there wasn’t much that could be seen. Finally Mavra asked, “You said he punched through, Marquoz. What about Asam?”

The Hakazit paused a moment before answering. “He’s dead, Mavra,” he said flatly. “He went out like he’d have wanted to, though. In the midst of the battle, when Sangh’s forces bulged and broke the line, he left his command post with two submachine guns, one in each hand, trying to rally the troops to beat back the advance. He almost did it, too. Oh, he was a sight to see, all right! Galloping, cursing, yelling, and screaming as he fired both guns into the troops. His own just had to follow him in, and the carnage they wrought on the enemy was simply fantastic. But Sangh had better field generals than we, and there were simply too many at the breakthrough. He made them pay dearly for him, I’ll say that. They were piled up on all sides of him, mowed down like grains of wheat, but no matter how many he cut down, they just kept coming. And when his guns went dry, riddled with wounds himself, he pulled that old sword of his and waded on in, a magnificent madman. There’s never been anything like it before on this little world, nor many others, either, I’d say. The Dillians will make him their martyr and legend forever, and even his enemies will sing songs in praise of him.”

She said nothing, but there were huge tears in her eyes at hearing this. She hoped it was true, that it wasn’t being embellished for her benefit. But, then, she told herself, it was exactly what he would do under the circumstances.

“After the battle,” Marquoz continued, “I managed to get together with Gypsy, who’d changed form to avoid being captured, and we tried using Brazil’s old body as the final ploy. It looked like it worked—they cheered and celebrated, and the fighting stopped pretty well up and down the line. Still, the force that broke through didn’t stop and turn around; we figured Sangh wasn’t totally buying. We fooled him too many times before. He’s going to make sure this time. He’s coming all the way up the Avenue.”

“I decided to scout up ahead of them and see if I could locate you,” Gypsy added. “It wasn’t long before I came on Ortega’s group settling in here, and I decided to find out what was what. When I learned that he wasn’t here to capture you, and that you hadn’t been seen, I got back to Marquoz, and with the aid of one of those trublaks he’s got, we were able to get him up here to assess the situation.”

“You took a chance,” Brazil noted. “You couldn’t be sure of Serge’s intentions. He has a history of being devious.”

Marquoz only shrugged. “It didn’t really matter any more. The end of the game was up here, not back there. I’d done all I could. And, if there were any tricks, maybe Gypsy and I could do something about them. It worked out, anyway.”

“Yes, it worked out—somehow,” Brazil agreed. “It always seems to. It’s part of the system. The probabilities, no matter how impossible, always break for me when my survival is at stake.” He paused a moment, then continued.

“Serge, how many people you got here? I mean all told, except for us?”

“Sixty-four,” he replied. “We had to travel fast and light and I was cashing in I.O.U.s as I went on a target of opportunity basis. Got a lot of good equipment, but not much else. They’re all good people, though, Nate, and the position’s incredible.”

“Sixty-four,” Brazil repeated. “Against Gunit Sangh’s battle-hardened two thousand.”

Ortega grinned. “About even, I think. Oh, I don’t think we can hold forever, but we don’t have to. First we get you down to the bottom by crane or whatever it takes, get some food in your bellies, then you get the hell out of here. We did a sweep up and down the Avenue this morning—there won’t be any nasty surprises. We eliminated them for you.” His expression turned serious for a moment. “I had seventy-six when I started. Would have been worse if this high-tech hex didn’t abut the Avenue. You get on down there, now. We haven’t a lot of time to waste.”

Nathan Brazil looked up at the huge Ulik and cursed his inability in this animal body to express what he was feeling inside now. It was odd; until a few minutes ago, he would have sworn such emotions had died within him thousands of years before. Finally he said, “You could come with us, you know, Serge.”

“I thought about it,” he replied. “Thought about it a lot. But, now, standing here, I wouldn’t miss this for the world.” He stared hard at Brazil’s huge animal’s eyes. “I think you understand. You, of all people, should be the one to understand.”

Brazil gave an audible, long sigh. “Yeah,” he said at last. “I think I do.” He looked over at the crane. “Let’s get on the road, then.”

Serge Ortega nodded. “Good-bye, Nate. For all of it, it was fun, wasn’t it?”

“That it was,” Brazil responded a little wistfully. “That it was. So long, you old bastard. Give ’em hell.”

Ortega grinned. “Haven’t I always?”

High, towering cliffs rose from both sides of the Avenue as it made its way from the swampy lowlands up to the Equatorial Barrier. Wind whipped through the pass, creating an eerie, wavering whistle that also carried the subtle undertones of a crashing sea, although there was no sea nearby. The Avenue here was on two levels, a fairly deep center filled with crystal-blue water that allowed the summer melt to drain off, creating the Quilst swamp far to the south; the bank on either side was wide and smooth, although weather-worn and covered with a fine layer of silt and occasional rocks from the slides. It was quite a natural-looking valley except that the stream ran almost dead straight for the length of the border, more a canal than a river.

The valley ranged from twenty or more kilometers across to less than fifty here at the Borgo Pass. Large rock and mudslides had closed it in over the ages to such an extent that, from a practical standpoint, there was only two-or-three-meters clearance on the Ellerbanta side, even less on the Verion. The walls of the canyon, however, were not sheer and never less sheer than now, at the pass; craggy outcrops every ten or so meters on both sides of the narrow section made ideal emplacements and outposts.

Serge Ortega surveyed the scene from almost ground level with some satisfaction. Things were getting set up pretty good; as darkness fell there was little left to do.

Marquoz walked up to him and looked around, admiringly. “It’s damned good organization,” he told the Ulik. “I’m impressed.”

Ortega turned and gave an odd half-smile. “I am always this way,” he told the Hakazit. “Even more, now, at what might be the climactic point of my life.” He settled back on his huge tail and smiled fully now, eyes looking beyond the other, toward places only he could see. “Consider the life I lived,” he reflected. “It’s been a damned full one, an important one, I think. Rebel, privateer, smuggler, soldier-of-fortune, star pilot—you name it, I’ve done or been it. Then I came here where, in a very short time, I became a politician, then ambassador, statesman, and, ah, world-coordinator. I’ve romanced thousands, drank, fought, generally had one hell of a good time doing it all, too. Now I’m tired and I’m bored. The only thing I haven’t done is die.”

“You picked a hell of an exit,” the Hakazit noted good-naturedly.

“Hah! Think I could end a life like mine rotting away in some retirement home? A nice, peaceful death propped up by some nurses so I could gaze lovingly at the stars? Bullshit on that! No, sir! Never! When I go out it’ll be like Asam. They’ll make up songs about me for generations. The bards will tell the tales by firelight and my enemies and their children and their children’s children shall drink toasts to my glorious memory!”

“And use your memory to scare hundreds of races’ children into being good little kiddies,” Marquoz cracked. “Hell, man, you’ve been around so long they won’t believe you’re dead when they see your body.”

Ortega considered it. “That would take the cake, wouldn’t it, now? Marquoz, I want you to pass the word. When I go, they’re to burn my body beyond recognition, beyond any hope of even identifying what sort of creature I was. I want nothing of me left. That’ll scare the hell out of the bastards for two generations.”

The Hakazit chuckled. “It’ll be done,” he assured the other. He looked out and down the dark pass. “How soon do you think we’ll have company?”

“Advance scouts and patrols any time now,” Ortega told him. “No main force until dawn, though. A fly couldn’t get through this pass at night against those heat-ray generators up there. The cliff face and slides are in our favor, too. They can’t get a clear shot at any of them without exposing themselves.”

“In fact, I would come now,” Marquoz came back. “A small force, one traveling light and with skill and silence, with a large part nocturnals and the rest with sniperscopes and computer-guided lasers. I’d do it between midnight and dawn, positioning them just so, knocking out emplacements one by one and quietly. Then I’d charge up here with everything I had at dawn.”

“I’ve already considered that possibility,” the Ulik replied. “If there’s any hint of movement, we can hit floodlights throughout the fifty or so meters in front of us, radar controlled and tracker types, too. Some of my boys see just fine in the dark, too, and they’re up toward, on the watch. We’re cross-coding our emplacements, too. Every position fires a slightly changing code to its neighbors every ten minutes. No signal, we light up the place anyway and investigate. There’s challenge and reply codes, too, from one point to another. Now, Gunit Sangh probably assumes this, so he’ll try it anyway, not to expect anything but just to test out our defenses a little and keep us all awake until dawn when his well-rested troops will make the assault.”

Marquoz, who was somewhat nocturnal himself, looked again at the pass. “Hell of a thing, though, asking t oops to march up that. If there’s another way, he’ll take it.”

Ortega chuckled. “What are troops to him? He knows the score pretty well, too. Two thousand against sixty-six counting you and the Agitar.”

“I know, I know. The terrain is a leveler, but it’s not that much of a leveler. Not thirty to one. Not when you’ve got nice, mobile high-tech weapons carried by creatures that can climb sheer cliffs and others that maybe could swim right up that deep current there in the middle.”

Ortega shrugged. “The high-tech favors us,” he insisted. “They have only what the. brought with them and could drag through that gap. No armored vehicles, for example, that could really cause trouble. No aerials, not in this confined space. A full frontal attack through that little gap is what he can do best. He can’t even go over and around, as Nate found out.”

“But thirty to one…” Marquoz said doggedly.

“This is similar to a number of situations in my own peoples history,” Ortega told him. “My old people’s —and Mavra’s, and Nate’s, too, I think. Not the flabby, engineered idiots of the Com you knew. The ones who started with a flint in caves and carved out an intersellar empire before they’d run their course. The histories were full of stuff like that, although they probably don’t teach it any more. Six hundred, it was said, held a pass wider than this for days against an army of more than five thousand. Another group held a fortress with less than two hundred against a well-trained army of thousands for over ten days. We need only two. There are lots of stories like that; our history’s full of such things. I suspect the history of any race strong enough to carve civilization out of a hostile world has them.”

Marquoz nodded. “There are a few such examples in the history of the Chugach,” he admitted. “But, tell me, what happened to those who held that pass after their time limit was reached? What happened to those people in that old fort after the ten days?”

Ortega grinned. “The same thing that happened to the Chugach in your stories, I think.”

“I was afraid of that,” Marquoz sighed. “So we’re all going to die at the end of this?”

“Thirty to one, Marquoz,” the snake-man responded. “I think the terrain brings the odds down to, say, five to one. Only a few hundred of them will finally make it through, but they will make it. Too late to stop Nate, though, if we do our jobs right. But, tell me, Marquoz, why are you here? Why not with them? You could enter the Well with them, get immortality if you wanted it, or anything else you might wish. I think he’d do it for you—it’s a different situation than last time. He made you the offer, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” Marquoz replied. “He made the offer.”

“So why here, in a lonely pass on an alien planet? Why here and why now?”

Marquoz sighed and shook his massive head. “I really don’t know. Call it stubbornness. Call it foolishness, perhaps, or maybe even a little fear of going with them and what I might find there. Maybe it would just be a shame not to put this body and brain to important use. I really can’t give you an answer that satisfies me, Ortega. How could I give one that would satisfy you?”

Ortega looked around in the darkness. “Maybe I can help—a little, anyway,” he reflected. “I bet if we went around to every one of our people here, all volunteers, remember, we’d get the same sort of feeling I got now. A sense of doing something important, even pivotal. I think that in every age, in every race, a very few find themselves in positions like this. They believe in what they’re doing and the rightness of their cause. It’s important. It’s why they still tell the stories and honor the memory of such people and deeds even though their causes, in some cases their whole worlds, are long dead, their races dust. But you’re not stuck in the position, Marquoz. You put yourself directly into it when you could have sat back and made a nice profit.”

“But that’s exactly what I’ve been doing my whole life,” the Hakazit responded. “I could never really belong to my own Chugach society. I was the outsider, the misfit. My family had wealth, position, and no real responsibilities so I never really had to do anything. I studied, I read, I immersed myself in non-Chugach things as well. I wanted to see the universe when the bulk of my race had no desire to see the next town. I was the ultimate hedonist, I suppose— anything I wanted and no price to pay, and I hated it. Just me, me, me—the position most people say they’d like to be in. I can’t say I’ve lost my faith, because I never had any to begin with. The way of the universe was that the people with power oppressed the people without it. And if the people without it suddenly got it, by revolution or reform, they turned around and oppressed still other people or fought among themselves to have it all. Religion was the sham that kept the people down. I never once saw a god do anything for anybody, and most religions of all the races I knew were good excuses for war, mass murder, and holding onto oppressive power. Politics was the same thing by another name. Ideology. The greatest social revolutionaries themselves turned into absolute monarchs as soon as they consolidated their power. Only technology improved anything, and even that was controlled by the power brokers who misused it for their own ends. And what if everybody got rich and nobody had to work? You’d have a bunch of fat, rich, stagnant slobs, that’s all.”

Ortega grinned at the other’s cynicism, the first he had ever encountered that far exceeded his own. “No romances in your life?” he asked.

The other sighed. “No, not really. I never felt much of a physical attraction for anyone else. The Chugach are romantics in a sense, yes; sitting around drinking and telling loud lies about their clans, singing songs and creating artistic dances about them. But, personally, no. I never liked my people much, really. A bunch of fat, rich, lazy slobs themselves. You know, there are stories on many worlds about people lost in the wilderness as babies and raised by animals that come out thinking and acting like animals. There’s more to that than to physical form. Externally I was Chugach, yes; internally I was… well, something else. Alien.”

Ortega’s eyebrows rose. “Alien? How?”

Marquoz considered his words. “I once met a couple of Com humans who were males but absolutely convinced that, inside, somehow, they were spiritually female. They were going to have the full treatment, become biologically functioning females. Maybe it was psychological, maybe it was pre-birth hormones, maybe it was anything—but it wasn’t really sexual in the usual sense. Those two males were in love with each other, yet both were going to be females. Crazy, huh? I identified with them, though, simply because I was an alien creature in the body of a Chugach. No operation for me, though—it wasn’t that simple. I was an alien inside the body of a Chugach, trapped there. I didn’t feel like a Chugach, didn’t act like one, didn’t even think like one. I felt totally alienated among my own people.”

“I have to admit it’s a new one to me,” Ortega admitted. “But I can see how it might be inevitable.”

“Not so new. I think all races have their share. Here, on the Well World, with 1,560 races all packed closely together, I’ve run into a lot of it. I suspect it’s a more common ailment than we’re led to believe. People just don’t talk about it because there’s no point. They’re just called mad, given some kind of phobia label, and told they must learn to adjust. And what can you do about it? You can’t go to the local doctor and say, ‘Make me over into something else.’ Consider how many of the humans regarded the Well World with longing. A romantic place, a place where you could be changed into some other creature totally different than you were. And for every one that was repulsed by the idea, there was at least one who fantasized what they wanted to be and were excited by it.”

“And that’s why you volunteered to spy on the humans and Rhone?”

Marquoz chuckled. “No, I didn’t really volunteer —although I might have if I’d ever known about the program. They selected me. My psychological profile was the type they were looking for: somebody who’d feel as comfortable in an entirely alien culture as they did among their own kind.”

Ortega nodded. “Makes sense. And were you any happier in the Com?”

“Happier? Well, I suppose, in a way. I was still an alien creature, of course, but now I was an exotic one. It didn’t change my feelings toward my own racial form, but it turned it into something exciting, at least.”

It was growing quite dim now, and Ortega looked around. He could see almost nothing in the nearly total darkness, but there was the occasional flash that showed the coded “all’s well” from one emplacement to another. And, not far away, he could see a couple of dim figures checking the nets in the river and making certain the mines were active. Nobody would get up that way, either. He turned back to Marquoz and the conversation, a conversation he knew they wouldn’t be having under any other circumstances.

“You’re not a Chugach any longer,” he pointed out. “What did that to to your self-image?”

Marquoz shrugged. “Well, it’s not that much of a change, really. And I had no more choice in it than I had in being a Chugach. Makes no difference.”

“But that brings us back to my original question,” Ortega noted. “You could have been whatever you wanted if you’d just gone with them.”

Marquoz sighed. “You must understand, put the thing in the context of what I’ve been telling you. You see, this is the first operation I’ve been involved in that had any meaning. It’s something like you said for yourself. Found dead in his bed from jaundice, did nothing for anybody, made no difference if he had ever lived at all: that could be the obituary of just about everyone who ever lived, here and anywhere else in the universe. It makes absolutely no difference in the scheme of things whether all but a handful of people live or die. No more than the importance of a single flower, or blade of grass, or vegetable, or bird. It would make no difference if those men who held that ancient pass or that equally ancient fort had, instead, died of disease or old age or in a saloon fight. But it made a difference that they died where they did. It mattered. It justified their whole existence. And it matters that 1 am here, now, and make this choice. It matters to me and to you. It matters to the Well World and to the whole damned universe.”

He raised his arms in a grand sweep at the blackness. “Do you really understand what ws’re doing here?” he went on. “We’re going to decide the entire fate of the universe for maybe billions of years. Not Brazil, not Mavra Chang, not really. They’re only making the decisions because we are allowing them to! Right here, now, tomorrow, and the next day. Tell me, Ortega, isn’t that worth dying for? Others may be misfits; they may be born on some grubby little world or in some crazy hex, and they might grow up to be farmers or salesmen or dictators or generals or kings, only then to grow old and die and be replaced by other indistinguishable little grubs that’ll do the same damned things. And it won’t matter one damned bit. But we’ll matter, Ortega, and we all sense it. That’s why our enemies will sing songs about us and our names and memories will become ageless legends to countless races. Because, in the end, who we are and what we do in the next two days is all that matters, and we’re the only ones that are important.”

Ortega stared at him, even though all he could really make out were the creature’s glowing red eyes. Finally he said, “You know, Marquoz, you’re absolutely insane. What bothers me is that I can’t really find any way to disagree with you—and you know what that makes me.” He reached to the heavy leather belt between his second and third pair of arms and removed a large flask. “I seem to dimly recall from old diplomatic receptions that Hakazits have funny drinking methods but tend to drink the same stuff for the same reason as Uliks. Shall we drink to history?”

Marquoz laughed and took the bottle. “To history, yes! To the history of the future we write in the next two days! To our history, which we chose and which we determined!” He threw his head back and poured the booze down his throat, then coughed and handed the bottle back to Ortega, who started to work on the remains of it.

“That’s good stuff,” the Hakazit approved.

“Nothing but the best for the legion the night before,” Ortega responded.

A voice nearby said, “Got enough of that left for me? Or would it kill me?”

They jumped slightly, then laughed when they saw it was Gypsy. “Damn it. I keep expecting Gunit Sangh to pop out of the rocks,” Ortega grumbled. He threw the flask to the tall man, who caught it and took a pull, then screwed up his face in pleasant surprise.

“Whew! Nothing synthetic in that!” he approved, then got suddenly serious. “I’m about to go to Yua and tell her the situation. Last I heard she’d taken some of her squad and flown around Khutir’s main force on her way here. They surprised the old general good; gave him a sound thrashing. But they’re still three days behind.”

Marquoz chuckled. “Three days. Couldn’t be two.”

“Anything you want me to particularly tell her?” Gypsy asked.

“Tell her—” Ortega’s voice quivered slightly— “tell her… that we’ll hold for Brazil. We’ll hold until she gets here, damn it all. Tell her a lot of very brave and very foolish people are going to make it all work. And tell her thanks, and godspeed, from old Serge Ortega.”

Gypsy nodded understandingly, a sad smile on his own face. “I’ll be back in time for the battle, Serge.”

The Ulik chuckled and shook his head unbelievingly. “You, too? The number of martyrs we’re getting these days must set a new record. My, my!”

“Practicality,” Gypsy told him. “You see, when Brazil enters the Well and shuts it down I’ll lose my contact with it. I’ll no longer be a creature of the universe, only of the Well World from whence I came so long ago. And I was a deepwater creature. I’ll be dead from the pressure so fast I won’t have time to suffocate.”

“You can always return to Oolakash, Doctor, and do it all over again,” Ortega suggested. “It hasn’t changed all that much, even in a thousand years.”

Marquoz looked at them both, puzzled. “Doctor? Oolakash? What the hell is this?”

Gypsy stared at Ortega for a moment. “How long have you known?”

“Well, for a certainty only right at this moment,” the Ulik admitted. “I’ve suspected it almost since the first time we met. You could do the impossible and that wasn’t acceptable. The only possible explanation was that you had completely cracked the Markovian puzzle, completely understood just exactly what they did and how they did it. And I could think of only one man who could possibly do that. If you’d been from a race that had done it, well, there’d be more of you. If you were a long-gone Markovian, I think Brazil would have known you, at least when you met. So that left only one man, a man I once knew, the only man I ever knew who understood how the Well worked and whose lifework it was to learn all there was to learn about it—a man who vanished and was presumed dead long ago.”

“All right, all right,” growled Marquoz. “I think I’m entitled to know what the hell you two are talking about.”

“Marquoz,” Ortega said lightly, “I’d like you to meet the first man to tame the Markovian energies, the man who built the great computer Obie and whose fault most of this is. Marquoz, Dr. Gilgram Zinder.”

The Hakazit looked over at Gypsy, then laughed. “Gypsy? You? Zinder? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my whole life.”

“That’s what threw me,” Ortega admitted. “The man who did all that, who finally, first with Obie’s aid and then without, managed to be able to talk to the Markovian computers and make them obey his will—and he chooses to go home and become a wandering gypsy and bum?”

Gilgram Zinder chuckled. “Well, not at the start, no. And the human mind isn’t up to the training, nor is it perfectly matched for full communication. But I got to the point where I could influence it as regarded myself. Takes a lot of effort, and off the Well World it can cause monster headaches. I really never was able to do much with it beyond myself, and I realized that, without a lot of additional apparatus, I never would be able to get any further, and that needed apparatus would make Obie a toy. It would take something the size of the Well of Souls, and that was not worth thinking about for obvious reasons. So I used the power to wander a while, as Obie and Mavra wandered and explored, over the whole of the universe in various forms until I got bored with it. After all, unlike Obie, I could do little except survive and adapt. So, I went home at last to the Com and found it much improved from my day. It gave me a lot of satisfaction to see that a lot of the worst evils were gone, in part, at least, due to what we accomplished many years before. You understand, I always had lived a very restrictive sort of life. A lonely life. I wasn’t handsome, or even distinctive. I had my work, and that’s all I had. I had to bribe a woman to bear my child and build my other child myself.”

“But your work succeeded beyond your wildest dreams,” Ortega pointed out.

“Beyond my— Yes, I suppose it did. I’m now as close to a Markovian as I think it’s possible for one of our time to become.”

“Perhaps you should have completed your work,” the snake-man suggested. “Maybe if you had, we wouldn’t be in this situation now.”

“Perhaps,” he admitted grudgingly. “But, damn it, I gave my entire life to science and they laughed at me, those who didn’t try to use the new power for evil ends. And then I had to give my daughter and my race and environment to it, too. And even the good side in that fight, when they were presented with my work, got frightened of it and tried to bury it forever. So I looked at this and I thought, What about me? Where do I get anything but royally screwed by the system? Selfless men wind up in neglected graves. I felt like I’d been given a new life, a new chance at all the things I’d missed, and I took it. A new life— a new series of lives. Even the Well World gave you only one start, but I had an infinite number. I was a rich and handsome playboy. Then I tried the other side, as an exotic and beautiful dancer who had to beat off would-be lovers with a stick. I learned to play a variety of instruments and composed music that attracted a serious following. I painted, I sculpted, I wrote a few stories and some poetry. I was on my way to being everything everybody ever wanted to be. The ultimate fantasy was mine: I could be any fantasy I chose, and I was. I enjoyed it all, too. The Gypsy phase was just another one of those, one I particularly enjoyed after teaming up with Marquoz, here—enjoyed it, that is, until the fools dug up my work, misunderstood it, misapplied it, and abused it to their own destruction, the fools.”

“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.