Midnight at the Well of SoulsMidnight at the Well of Souls
On "Earth," a Planet Circling a Star
 
Near the Outermost Edge of the Galaxy
 
Andromeda
Paradise, Once Called Dedalus, a Planet
 
Near Sirius
 
On the Frontier—Harvich's World
Aboard the Freighter Stehekin

Dalgonia
 
MASS MURDERS ARE USUALLY ALL THE MORE SHOCK-
 
ing because of the unexpected settings and the past
character of the murderer. The Dalgonian Massacre
is a case in point.
 
Dalgonia is a barren, rocky planet near a dying sun,
bathed only in a ghostly, reddish light, whose beauti-
ful rays create sinister shadows across the rocky crags.
Little is left of the Dalgonian atmosphere to suggest
that life could ever have happened here; the water is
gone or, like the oxygen, now locked deep in rock. The
feeble sun, unable to give more than the deep reddish
tint to the landscape, is of no help in illuminating the
skyline, which was, despite a bluish haze from the in-
ert elements still present in it, as dark as the shadows.
This was a world of ghosts.
 
And it was haunted.
 
Nine figures trooped silently into the ruins of a city
that might easily have been mistaken for the 'rocky
. crags on the nearby hills. Twisted spires and crumbling
castles of greenish-brown stood before them, dwarf-
ing them to insignificance. Their white protective suits
were all that made them conspicuous in this darkly
beautiful world of silence.
 
The city itself resembled nothing so much as one
that might have been built of iron aeons before and
subjected to extensive rust and salt abrasion in some
dead sea. Like its world, it was silent and dead.
 
A close look at the figures heading into the city
would reveal that they were all what was known as
"human"—denizens of the youngest part of the spiral
arm of their galaxy. Five were female, four male, the
 
1
 
leader a thin, frail man of middle years. Stenciled on
his back and faceplate was the name Skander.
 
They stood at the half-crumbled gate to the city as
they had so many times before, gazing at the incred-
ible but magnificent ruin.
 
My name is Ozymandias.
Look on my works ye mighty,
 
and despair!
Nothing beside remains....
 
If those words from a poet out of their near-
forgotten past did not actually echo through each of
them, the concept and feeling of those lines did. And
through each mind, as they had through the minds of
thousands of others who had peered and pecked
through similar ruins on over two dozen other dead
planets, those endless and apparently unanswerable
questions kept running.
 
Who were they who could build with such magnifi-
cence?
 
Why did they die?
 
"Since this is your first trip as graduate students to
a Markovian ruin," Skander's reedy voice said through
their radios, startling them out of their awe, "I will give
a brief introduction to you. I apologize if I am redun-
dant, but this will be a good refresher nonetheless.
 
"Jared Markov discovered the first of these ruins
centuries ago, on a planet over a hundred light-years
distant from this spot. It was our race's first experience
with signs of intelligence in this galaxy of ours, and the
discovery caused a tremendous amount of excitement.
Those ruins were dated at over a quarter of a million
standard years old—and they were the youngest dis-
covered to date. It became obvious that, while our race
still grubbed on its home world fiddling with the new
discovery of fire, someone else—these people—had a
vast interstellar empire of still unknown dimensions.
All we know is that as we have pressed inward in the
galaxy these remains get more and more numerous.
And, as yet, we haven't a clue as to who they were."
 
"Are there no artifacts of any sort?" came a disbe-
lieving female voice.
 
'?
 
"None, as you should know. Citizen Jainet," came
the formal reply in a mildly reproving tone. "That is
what is so infuriating about it all. The cities, yes, about
which some things can be inferred about their builders,
but no furniture, no pictures, nothing of an even re-
motely utilitarian nature. The rooms, as you will see,
are quite barren. Also, no cemeteries; indeed, nothing
mechanical at all, either."
 
"That's because of the computer, isn't it?" came an-
other, deeper female voice, that of the stocky girl
from the heavy-gravity world whose family name was
Marino.
 
"Yes," Skander agreed. "But, come, let's move in-
to the city. We can talk as we go."
 
They started forward, soon coming into a broad
boulevard, perhaps fifty meters across. Along each
side ran what appeared to be broad -walkways, each
six to eight meters across, like the moving walkways of
spaceports that took you to and from loading gates. But
no conveyor belt or such was evident; the walkways
were made of the same greenish-brown stone, or
metal, or whatever it was that composed the rest of
the city.
 
"The crust of this planet," Skander continued, "is
about average—forty to forty-five kilometers thick.
Measurements on this and other worlds of the Marko-
vians showed a consistent discontinuity, about one
kilometer thick, between the crust and the natural man-
tierock beneath. This, we have discovered, was an ar-
tificial layer of material that is essentially plastic but
seems to have had a sort of life in it—this much, at
least, we infer. Consider how much information your
own cells contain. You are the products of the best
genetic manipulation techniques, perfect physical and
mental specimens of the best of your races adapted
to your native planets. And yet, for all that, you are
far more than the sum of your parts. Your cells, par-
ticularly your brain cells, store input at an astonishing
and continuing rate. We believe that this computer
beneath your feet was composed of infinitely complex
artificial brain cells. Imagine that! It runs the entirety
of the planet, a kilometer thick—all brain. And all,
 
3
 
we believe, attuned to the individual brain waves of
the inhabitants of this city!
 
."Imagine it, if you can. Just wish for something, and
there it is. Food, furniture—if they used any—even
art, created by the mind of the wisher and made real
by the computer. We have, of course, small and prim-
itive versions now—but this is generations, possibly
millennia, beyond us. If you could think of it, it would
be provided'"
 
"This Utopian Theory accounts for most of what we
see, but not why all this is now ruins," piped in an
adolescent male voice, Varnett, the youngest—and
probably brightest—but unquestionably the most imag-
inative of the group.
 
"Quite true. Citizen Vamett," Skander acknowl-
edged, "and there are three schools of thought on it.
One is that the computer broke down, and another is
that the computer ran amok—and the people couldn't
cope either way. You know the third theory, anyone?"
 
"Stagnation," Jainet replied. "They died because
they had nothing left to live for, strive for, or work
for."
 
"Exactly," Skander replied. "And yet, there are
problems with all three suppositions. An interstellar
culture of this magnitude would have allowed for break-
downs; they'd have some sort of backup system. As
for the amok theory—well, it's fine except that every
sign shows that the same thing happened at once, all
across their entire empire. One, even several, okay,
but not all at the same time. I am not quite willing to
accept the last theory, even though it is the one that
fits the best. Something nags at me and says that they
would have allowed even for that."
 
"Maybe they programmed their own degeneration,"
Varnett suggested, "and it went too far."
 
"Eh?" There was a note of surprise but keen interest
in Skander's voice. "Programmed—planned degenera-
tion! It's an interesting theory, Citizen Varnett. Per-
haps we'll find out in time."
 
He motioned and they entered a building with a
strange, hexagonal doorway. All the doors were hexa-
gons, it appeared. The interior of the room was very
large, but there was no sign as to its purpose or func-
 
 
tion. It looked like an apartment or a store after the
tenants had moved out, taking everything with them.
 
"The room," Skander pointed out to them, "is hex-
agonal—as the city is hexagonal, as is almost everything
in it if you see it from the correct angle.- The number
six seems to have been essential to them. Or sacred. It
is from this, and from the size and shape of the door-
ways, windows, and the like—not to mention the width
of the walkways—that we have some idea of what the
natives must have been like. We hypothesize that they
were rather like a top, or turnip shape, with six limbs
which may have been tentacles usable for walking or
as hands. We suspect that things naturally came m
sixes to them—their mathematics, their architecture,
maybe they even had six eyes all around. Judging from
the doors and allowing for clearance, they were about
two meters tall on the average and possibly wider than
that at the waist—which is where we believe the six
arms, tentacles, or whatever were centered, and'that
must be why the doorways widen at that point."    /
 
They stood there awhile, trying to imagine such
creatures living in the rooms, moving up and down the
boulevards.
 
"We'd best be getting back to camp," Skander said
at last. "You will have ample time to study here and
to poke into every nook and cranny of the place." They
would, in fact, be there a year, working under the pro-
fessor at the University station.
 
They walked quickly in the lighter gravity and
reached the base camp about five kilometers from the
city gates in under an hour.
 
The camp itself looked like some collection of great
tents of a strange circus, nine in all, bright white like
the pressure suits. Long tubes connecting the tents
occasionally flexed as the monitoring computers contin-
ually adjusted the temperature and barometric pres-
sure that kept each inflated. On such a dead world
little else was needed, and the insides were lined to
make punctures almost impossible. If any such did
happen, though, only those in the punctured area would
be killed; the computer could seal off any portion of
the complex.
 
Skander entered last, climbing into the air lock after
 
5
 
making certain that none of his charges or major equip-
ment was left outside. By the time the lock equalized
and allowed him into the entry tent, the others were
already all or partially out of their pressure suits.
 
He stopped for a minute, looking at them. Eight
representatives from four planets of the Confederation
—and, except for the one from the heavy-gravity
 
world, all looked alike.
 
All were exceptionally trim and muscular; they could
be a gymnastic team without any imagination. Although
they ranged in age from fourteen to twenty-two, they
all looked prepubescent, which, in fact, they were.
Their sexual development had been genetically ar-
rested, and would probably continue that way. He
looked at the boy, Varnett, and the girl, Jainet—both
from the same planet, the name of which eluded him.
The oldest and the youngest of the expedition, yet
they were exactly the same height and weight, and,
with heads shaved, were virtually identical twins. They
had been grown in a lab, a Birth Factory, and brought
up by the State to think as identically as they looked.
He had once asked why they continued to make both
male and female models, only half in Jest. It was, of
course, a redundancy system in case anything hap-
pened to the Birth Factories, he had been told.
 
Humanity was on at least three hundred planets,
and of those all but a handful were on the same line
as the world that had spawned these two. Absolute
equality, he thought sourly. Look alike, behave alike,
think alike, all needs provided for, all wants fulfilled
in equal measure to all, assigned the work they were
raised for and taught that it was the only proper place
for them and their duty. He wondered how the techno-
crats in charge decided who was to be what.
 
He thought back to the last batch. Three in that num-
ber came from a world that had even dispensed with
names and personal pronouns.
 
He wondered idly how different the human race was
at this point from the creatures of the city out there.
Even on worlds like his own home world it was like
this, really. True, they grew beards and group sex was
the norm, something that would have totally shocked
these people. His world had been founded by a group
 
6
 
of nonconformists fleeing the technocratic commu-
nism of the outer spiral. But, in its own way, it was
as conformist as Varnett's home, he thought. Drop
Vamett into a Caligristian town and he would be made
fun of, called names, even, perhaps lynched. He
wouldn't have the beard, or the clothes, or the sex to
fit into Caligristo's life-style.
 
You can't be a nonconformist if you don't wear the
proper uniform.
 
He had often wondered if there was something deep
in the human psyche that insisted on tribalism. Peo-
ple used to fight wars not so much to protect their'own
life-style but to impose it on others.
 
That's why so many worlds were like these people's
 
—there had been wars to spread the faith, convert
the downtrodden. Now the Confederacy forbade that
 
—but the existing conformity, world to world, was the
status quo it protected. The leaders of each planet
sat on a Council, with an enforcement arm capable of
destroying any planet that strayed into "unsafe" paths
and manned by specially trained barbarian psycho-
paths. But these weapons of terror could not be used
without the actions of a majority of the Council. ,
 
It had worked. There were no more wars.
 
They had conformed the entire mass of humanity.
 
And so had the Markovians, he thought. Oh, the
size and sometimes the color and workmanship of the
cities had varied, but only slightly.
 
What had that youth, Vamett, said? Perhaps they
had deliberately broken down the system?
 
Skander's face had a frown as he removed the last
of his pressure suit. Ideas like that marked brilliance
and creativity—but they were unsafe thoughts for a
civilization like the one the boy had come from. It
revived those old religious ideas that after perfection
came true death.
 
Where could he have gotten an idea like that? And
why had he not been caught and stopped?
 
Skander looked after their naked young bodies as
they filed through the tunnel toward the showers and
dorm.
 
Only barbarians thought that way.
 
7
 
Had the Confederacy guessed what he was up to
here? Was Vamett not the innocent student he was
supposed to be, but the agent of his nightmares?
 
Did they suspect?
 
Suddenly he felt very chilly, although the tempera-
ture was constant.
 
Suppose they all were. . . .
 
Three months passed. Skander looked at the picture
on his television screen, an electron micrograph of the
cellular tissue brought up a month before by the core
 
drill.
 
It was the same pattern as the older discoveries—
 
that same fine cellular structure, but infinitely more
complex inside than any human or animal cell—and
 
so tremendously alien.
 
And a six-sided cell, at that. He had often wondered
about the why of that—had even their cells been hex-
agonal? Somehow he doubted it, but the way that num-
ber kept popping up he wouldn't disbelieve it, either.
 
He stared and stared at the sample. Finally, he
reached over and turned up the magnification to full
and put on the special filters he had developed and re-
fined in over nine years on this barren planet.
 
The screen suddenly came alive. Little sparks
darted from one point in the cell to another. There
was a minor electrical storm in the cell. He sat, fas-
cinated as always, at the view only he had ever seen.
 
The cell was alive.
But the energy was not electrical—that was why it
 
had never been picked up. He had no idea what it was,
but it behaved like standard electrical energy. It just
didn't measure or appear as electricity should.
 
The discovery had been an accident, he reflected,
three years before. Some careless student had been
playing with the screen to get good-looking effects and
had left it that way. He had switched it on the next
day without noticing anything unusual, then set up the
usual energy-detection program for another dull run-
through.
 
It was only a glimpse, a flicker, but he had seen it
 
—and worked on his own for months more to get a
8
 
filter system that would show that energy photograph-
 
ically-
He had tested the classical samples from other digs,
 
even had one sent to him by a supply ship. They had
 
all been dead.
But not this one.
Somewhere, forty or so kilometers beneath them,
 
the Markovian brain was still alive.
 
"What is that. Professor?" Skander heard a voice be-
hind him. He quickly flipped the screen off and whirled
 
around in one anxious moment.
 
It was Vamett, that perennial look of innocence on-
 
his permanently childlike face.
 
"Nothing, nothing," he covered excitedly, the anxiety
in his voice betraying the lie. "Just putting on some
playful programs to see what the electrical charges in
 
the cell might have looked like."
 
Vamett seemed skeptical. "Looked pretty real to'
me," he said stubbornly. "If you've made a major
breakthrough you ought to tell us about it. I mean—"
 
"No, no, it's nothing," Skander protested angrily.
Then, regaining his composure, he said, "That will be
all. Citizen Vamett! Leave me now'"
 
Vamett shrugged and left.
 
Skander sat in his chair for several minutes. His
hands—in fact, his whole body—began shaking vio-
lently, and it was a while before the attack subsided.
Slowly, a panicked look on his face, he went over to
the microscope and carefully removed the special filter.
His hand was still so unsteady he could hardly hold on
to it. He slipped the filter into its tiny case with diffi-
culty and placed it in the wide belt for tools and per-
sonal items that was the only clothing any of them wore
 
inside.
 
He went back to his private room in the dorm sec-
tion and lay down on his bed, staring up at the ceiling
 
for what seemed like hours.
 
Vamett, he thought. Always Vamett. In the three
months since they had first arrived, the boy had been
into everything. Many of the others played their on-
duty games and engaged in the silliness students do,
 
9
 
but not he. Serious, studious to a fault, and always read-
ing the project reports, the old records.
 
Skander suddenly felt that everything was closing in
on him. He was still so far from his goal!
 
And now Vamett knew. Knew, at least, that the
brain was alive. The boy would surely take it the step
further—guess that Skander had almost broken the
code, was ready, perhaps in another year or so, to send
that brain a message, reactivate it.
 
To become a god.
 
He would be the one who would save the human
race with the very tools that must have destroyed its
maker.
 
Suddenly Skander jumped up and made his way
back to the lab. Something nagged at him, some sus-
picion that things were even more wrong than he knew.
 
Quietly, he stepped into the lab.
 
Vamett was sitting at the television console. And,
on the screen, the same cell Skander had been exam-
ining was depicted with its energy connectors clearly
visible!
 
Skander was stunned. Quickly his hands reached
for the little pocket in which he kept his filter. Yes, it
was still there.
 
How was this possible?
 
Vamett was doing computations, checking against a
display on a second screen that hooked him to the math
sections of the lab computer. Skander stood there to-
tally still and silent. He heard Vamett mumble an as-
sent to himself, as if some problem he had been running
through the computer had checked out correct.
 
Skander stole a glance at his chronometer. Nine
hours! It had been nine hours' He had slept through
part of his dark thoughts and given the boy the chance
to confirm his worst nightmare.
 
Something suddenly told Vamett he wasn't alone.
He sat still for a second, then glanced fearfully around.
 
"Professor!" he exclaimed. "I'm glad it's you! This
is stupendous! Why aren't you telling everyone?"
 
"How—*' Skander stumbled, gesturing at the screen.
"How did you get that picture?"
 
Vamett smiled. "Oh, that's simple. You forgot to
 
10
 
dump the computer memory when you closed up.
This is what you were looking at, which the computer
held in new storage."
 
Skander cursed himself for a fool. Of course, every-
thing on every instrument was recorded by the com-
puter as standard procedure. He had been so shook
up by Vamett's discovery of his work that he had for-
gotten to dump the record!
 
"It's only a preliminary finding,'* the professor man-
aged at last. "I was waiting until 1 had something really
startling to report.'*
 
"But this is startling!** the boy exclaimed excitedly.
"But you have been too close to the problem and to
your own disciplines to crack it. Look, your fields are
archaeology and biology, aren't they?"
 
"They are," Skander acknowledged, wondering
where this conversation was leading. "I was an exobi-
ologist for years and became an archaeologist when,
I started doing all my work on the Markovian brains."
 
"Yes, yes, but you're still a generalist. My world, as
you know, raises specialists in every field from the
point at which the brain is formed. You know my
field."
 
"Mathematics," Skander replied. "If I recall, all
mathematicians on your world are named Vamett after
an ancient mathematical genius."
 
"Right," the boy replied, still in an excited tone.
"As I was developing in the Birth Factory, they im-
printed all the world's mathematical knowledge di-
rectly. It was there continuously as I grew. By the
time my brain was totally developed at age seven, I
knew all the mathematics, applied and theoretical,
that we know. Everything is ultimately mathematical,
and so I see everything in a mathematical way. I was
sent here by my world because I had become fasci-
nated by the alien mathematical symmetry in the slides
and specimens of the Markovian brain. But all was
for nothing, because I had no knowledge of the energy
matrix linking the cellular components."
 
"And now?" Skander prodded, fascinated and ex-
cited in spite of himself.
 
"Why, it's gibberish. It defies all mathematical logic-
It says that there are no absolutes in mathematics'
 
11
 
None! Every time I tried to force the pattern into
known mathematical concepts, it kept saying that two
plus two equals four isn't a constant but a relative
proposition!"
 
Skander realized that the boy was trying to make
things baby-simple to him, but he still couldn't grasp
what he was saying. "What does all that mean?" he
asked in a puzzled and confused tone.
 
Vamett was becoming carried away with himself,
"It means that all matter and energy are in some kind
of mathematical proportion. That nothing is actually
real, nothing actually anything at all. If you discard
the equal sign and substitute 'is proportional to' and,
if it is true, you can alter or change anything. None
of us, this room, this planet, the whole galaxy, the
whole universe—none of it is a constant! If you could
alter the equation for anything only slightly, change
the proportions, anything could be made anything else,
anything could be changed to anything else!" He
stopped, seeing from the expression on Skander's face
that the older man was still lost.
 
"I'll give a really simple, basic example," Vamett
said, calmed considerably from his earlier outburst.
"First, realize this if you can: there is a finite amount
of energy in the universe, and that is the only constant.
The amount is infinite by our standards, but that is
true if this is true. Do you follow me?"
 
Skander nodded. "So you're saying that there is
nothing but pure energy?"
 
"More or less," Vamett agreed. "All matter, and
constrained energy, like stars, is created out of this
energy flux. It is held there in that state—you, me,
the room, the planet we're on—by a mathematical
balance. Something—some quantity—is placed in pro-
portion to some other quantity, and that forms us. And
keeps us stable. If I knew the formula for Elkinos
Skander, or Vamett Mathematics Two Sixty-one, I
could alter, or even abolish, our existence. Even things
like time and distance, the best constants, could be al-
tered or abolished. If I knew your formula I could,
given one condition, not only change you into, say, a
 
12
 
chair, but alter all events so that you would have al-
ways been a chair!"
 
"What's the condition?'* Skander asked nervously,
hesitantly, afraid of the answer.
 
"Why, you'd need a device to translate that formula
into reality. And a way to have it do what you- wished."
 
"The Markovian brain," Skander whispered-
 
"Yes. That's what they discovered. But this brain—
this device—seems to be for local use only. That is, it
would affect this planet, perhaps the solar system in
which it lies, but no more. But, somewhere, there
must be a master unit—a unit that could affect at
least half, perhaps the whole, galaxy. It must exist, if
all the rest of my hypothesis is correct!"
 
"Why must it?" Skander asked, a sinking sensation
growing in his stomach.
 
"Because we are stable," the boy replied, an awe-
struck tone in his voice.
 
Only the mechanical sounds of the lab intruded for
a minute after that, as the implications sank home to
both of them.
 
"And you have the code?" Skander asked at last.
 
"I think so, although it goes against my whole being
that such equations can be correct. And yet—do you
know why that energy does not show by conventional
means?" Skander slowly shook his head negatively,
and the mathematician continued. "It is the primal
energy itself. Look, do you have that filter with you?"
 
Skander nodded numbly and produced the little
case. The boy took it eagerly, but instead of placing
it in the microscope he went over to the outer wall.
Slowly he donned protective coveralls and goggles,
•used in radiation protection, and told Skander to do
likewise. Then he sealed the lab against entry and
peeled back the tent lining in the one place where it
covered a port—not used here, but these tents were
all-purpose and contained many useless features.
 
The baleful reddish landscape showed before them
at midday. Slowly, carefully, the boy held the tiny fil-
ter up to one eye and closed the other. He gasped. "I
was right!" he exclaimed.
 
After a painful half-minute that felt like an eternity,
he handed the little filter to Skander, who did the same.
 
13
 
Through the filter, the entire landscape was bathed
in a ferocious electrical storm. Skander couldn't stop
looking at it,
 
"The Markovian brain is all around us," Varnett
whispered. "It draws what it needs and expels what
it does not. If we could contact it—"
 
"We'd be like gods," Skander finished.
 
Skander reluctantly put down the filter and handed
it back to Varnett, who resumed his own gazing,
 
"And what sort of universe would you create,
Varnett?" Skander almost whispered, reaching under
the protective clothing as he spoke and pulling out a
knife. "A mathematically perfect place where every-
one was absolutely identical, the same equation?"
 
"Put your weapon away, Skander," Varnett told
him, not taking his gaze from the filtered landscape.
"You can't do it without me, and if you think about it
you'll realize that. In only a few months they'll find our
bodies and you here—or dying in the city—and what
will that get you?"
 
The knife hesitated a long moment, then slowly slid
back into the belt under the protective garment.
 
"What the hell are you, Varnett?" asked Skander
suspiciously.
 
"An aberration," the other replied. "We happen,
sometimes. Usually they catch us and that's that. But
not me, not yet. They will, though, unless I can do
something about it."
 
"What do you mean, an aberration?" Skander asked
unsurely.
 
"I'm human, Skander. A real human. And greedy.
I, too, would like to be a god."
 
It had taken Varnett only seven hours to crack the
mathematics, but it would take a lot longer to make the
Markovian brain notice them. Their project was so in-
tense that the others began to take notice and inquire,
particularly the research assistants. Finally, they de-
cided to take them all in on it—Varnett because he
was certain that, once in contact with the Markovian
brain, he could adjust the others to his version of
events, and Skander because he had no choice. WTiile
 
14
 
they worked the lab, the others combed the city and,
using small flyers, the other cities and regions of the
planet.
 
"You are to look for some sort of vent, entrance,
gate, or at least a temple or similar structure that might
mean some kind of direct contact with the Markovian
brain," Skander told them.
 
And time went on, with the others, good Universal-
ists all, looking forward to carrying the news back to
the Confederacy that the perfect society was within
man's grasp.
 
Finally, one day, only two months before the next
ship was due in, they found it.
 
Jainet and Dunna, one of the research assistants,
noticed through the large filters they had constructed
for the search that one tiny area near the north
pole of the planet was conspicuous by the absence of
the all-pervasive lightning.
 
Flying over to it they saw below them a deep hexag-
onal hole of total darkness. They were reluctant to
explore further without consultation, and so radioed
for the rest to come up,
 
"I don't see anything," Skander complained, disap-
pointed. "There's no hex hole here."
 
"But there was!" Jainet protested, and Dunna
nodded in agreement. "It was right there, almost di-
rectly over the pole. Here! I'll prove it!" She went over
and rewound the flyer's nose camera recording disk a
little more than halfway. They watched the playback
in skeptical silence, as the ground rolled beneath them
on the screen. Then, suddenly, there it was.
 
"See!" Jainet exclaimed. "What did I tell you!"
 
And it was there, clearly, unquestionably. Varnett
looked at the screen, then to the scene below them,
then back again. It al] checked. There had been a hex-
agonal hole, almost two kilometers across at its widest
point. The landmarks matched—it was at this spot.
 
But there wasn't a hole there now.
 
They waited then, almost an entire day. Suddenly
the flat plain seemed to vanish and there was the
hole again.
 
They photographed it and ran every analysis test
on it they could.
 
"Let's drop something in," Varnett suggested at last.
 
15
 
They found a spare pressure suit and, hovering directly
over the hole, the light on the suit turned on, they
 
dropped it in.
 
The suit struck the hole. "Struck" is the only word
 
they had for it. The suit hit the top of the hole and
seemed to stick there, not dropping at all. Then, after
hovering a moment, it seemed to fade before their
eyes- Not drop, but fade—for even the films showed
that it didn't fall. It simply faded out to nothingness.
A few minutes later the hole itself disappeared.
"Forty-six standard minutes," Vamett said. "Ex-
actly. And I'll bet at the same time gap tomorrow it
 
opens again."
 
"But where did the suit go? Why didn't it drop?"
 
Jainet asked.
 
"Remember the power of this thing," Skander told
 
her. "If you were to get to it, you wouldn't descend
forty-plus kilometers. You'd simply be transported to
 
the place."
 
"Exactly," Varnett agreed. "It would simply alter
 
the equation and you would be there instead of here."
"But where is there?" Jainet asked.
"We believe at the control center of the Markovian
brain," Skander told her. "There would be one—the
same way there are two bridges on a spaceship. The
other is for emergencies." Or male and female mem-
bers on your planet, Skander had almost said.
 
"We'd best go back and run this all through our
own data banks," Varnett suggested. "After all, it's
been a long day for us anyway. The hole opens and
closes regularly. So we can do the same things tomor-
row as we can do today."
 
They all muttered assent at this proposal, and sev-
eral suddenly realized how tired they were.
 
"Someone should stay here," Skander suggested,
"if only to time the thing and keep the camera run-
ning."
 
"I'll do it," Varnett volunteered. "I can sleep here on
this flyer and you all can go back in the other two. If
anything comes up I'll let you know. Then someone
can spell me tomorrow."
 
16
 
They all agreed to this, so after a short while every-
one but Vamett headed back to base camp.
 
Almost all went to sleep immediately, only Skander
and Dunna taking the extra time to feed their records
into the data bank. Then both went off to their own
quarters.
 
Skander sat on the edge of his bunk, too excited to
feel tired. Curiously, he felt exhilarated instead, ad-
renalin pumping through him.
 
I must take the gamble, he told himself. I must as- -
sume that this is indeed the gateway to the brarn. In
less than fifty days this crew will be replaced, and
they'll go home to blab the secret. Then everyone
will be in, and the Statists of the Confederacy will
gain the power.
 
Was that what had happened to the Markovians?
Had they become so much a communal paradise that
they stagnated and died out?
 
No! he told himself. Not jor them! / shall die, or I
shall save mankind.
 
He went first to the lab and wiped all information
from the data banks. There was nothing left when he
finished; then he wrecked the machinery so none
could retrieve the faintest clue. Next he went to the
master control center. There the atmospheric condi-
tions were set. Slowly, methodically, he turned off all
the systems except oxygen. He waited there almost an
hour until the gauges read that the atmosphere was
now almost entirely oxygen everywhere in the tents.
 
That done, he made his way carefully to the air
lock, anxious not to scrape against anything or to cause
any sort of spark. Although nervous at the prospect
that one of the sleepers would wake up and make
that spark, he took the time to don his pressure suit
and then take all the other such suits outside.
 
Next he took from the emergency kit of one of
the flyers a small box and opened it.
 
Premanufactured items for all occasions. It was a
flare gun.
 
The puncture it would make would be sealed in sec-
onds by the automated equipment, but not before it
ignited the oxygen inside.
 
It was over in one sudden flare, like flash paper.
 
17
 
After, he could see the vacuum-exposed remains of
the sleepers whose charred bodies were still in their
 
beds.
Seven down, one to go, he thought without remorse.
 
He boarded a flyer and headed toward the north
pole. He glanced at his chronometer. It took nine
hours to fly back, he had been three doing his work,
and now there was another nine to return to the pole.
 
About an hour to spare until that hole opened up
 
again.
 
Enough time for Varnett.
 
It seemed like days until he got there, but the chro-
nometer said just a little over nine hours.
 
As he came over the horizon he searched for
Varnett's flyer. It wasn't to be seen.
 
Suddenly Skander spotted it—down, down on that
flat plain at the pole. He braked and hovered over it.
Slowly, in the gloom, he made out a tiny white dot
near the center of the plain.
 
Varnett! He was going to be the first in!
Vamett detected movement and looked up at the
flyer. Suddenly he started running for his own.
 
Skander came down on him, skirting the ground so
low that he was afraid he would crash himself. Vamett
ducked and rolled, but was unhurt.
 
Skander cursed himself, then decided to set it down.
He still had the knife, and that might just be enough.
He took the flare pistol which, while it wouldn't nec-
essarily penetrate the suit, might cause a blinding dis-
traction. He was not a large man, but he was a head
taller than the boy and the odds were otherwise even
 
in his mind.
 
Landing near Varnett's flyer, he got out quickly,
 
flare gun in his right hand, knife in his left. Cursing
the almost total absence of light and the fact that he
had had to take his eyes off Varnett to land, Skander
looked cautiously around.
 
Vamett had. vanished.
 
Before this could sink in, a white figure jumped from
atop the other flyer and hit him in the back. He went
down, dropping the flare gun.
 
The two figures, rolling across the rocky landscape,
grappled for the knife. Skander was larger, but older
 
18
 
and in worse physical condition than Varnett. Finally,
with a shove, Skander pushed Varnett away from him
and came upon the boy with the knife. Varnett let
him get very close; then, as the knife made a quick
stab, the boy's arm reached out and caught the older
man's wrist. The two struggled and groaned in their
suits as Skander tried to press the knife home.
 
They were in that frozen tableau when, suddenly,
the hole opened.
 
They were both already in it.
 
Both vanished.
 
Another Part of the Field
 
NATHAN BRAZIL STRETCHED BACK IN HIS HUGE, PIL-
 
lowy lounge chair aboard the bridge of the freighter
Stehekin, nine days out of Paradise with a load of
grain bound for drought-stricken Coriolanus and with
three passengers. Passengers were common on such
runs—there were actually a dozen staterooms aboard
—as freighter travel was much cheaper than passenger
ships and a lot easier if you wanted to get where you
were going in a hurry. There were a thousand freight
runs for every passenger run to almost anyplace.
 
The crew consisted only of Brazil. The ships were
now automated, so he was there just in case something
went wrong. Food had been prepared for all before
takeoff and had been loaded into the automated
kitchen. A tiny wardroom was used on those occa-
sions when someone wanted to eat outside of his state-
room or with the captain.
 
Actually, the passengers had more contempt for
him than he for them. In an age of extreme conform-
ity, men like Nathan Brazil were the mavericks, the
loners, the ones who didn't fit. Recruited mostly off
the barbarian worlds of the frontier, they could take
 
19
 
the loneliness of the job, the endless weeks often with-
out human company. Most psychologists called them
sociopaths, people alienated from society.
 
Brazil liked people all right, but not the factory-
made ones. He would rather sit here in his domain,
the stars showing on the great three-dimensional screens
in front of him, and reflect on why society had become
 
alienated from him.
 
He was a small man, around 170 centimeters tall,
 
slight and thin. His skin was dark-complexioned. Two
bright, brown eyes flanked a conspicuous Roman nose
which sat atop a mouth very wide, rubbery, and full
of teeth. His black hair hung long to his shoulders, but
was stringy and looked overgreased and underwashed.
He had a thin mustache and thinner full beard that
looked as if someone had attempted to grow a full
brush and hadn't made it. He was dressed in a loose-
fitting but loudly colorful tunic and matching pants,
 
and wore sandals of a sickly green.
 
The passengers, he knew, were scared stiff of him,
and he liked it that way. Unfortunately, they were still
almost thirty days out and their boredom and claus-
trophobia would sooner or later drive them meddling
 
into his lap.
 
Oh, hell, he thought. Might as well get everybody
 
together. They have huddled back in that small lounge
 
in the stern long enough.
 
He reached up and flicked a switch.
 
"The captain," he intoned in a tenor voice that none-
theless had a gravelly undertone to it, making it sound
a little harsh and unintentionally sarcastic, "requests
the pleasure of your company at dinner today. It
you like, you may join me in the wardroom forward
in thirty minutes. Don't feel put out if you don't want
to come. I won't," he concluded, and switched ofE the
 
speaker, chuckling softly.
 
Why do I do that? he asked' himself for the hun-
dredth—thousandth?—time. For nine days I chase
them around, bully them, and see as little of them as
possible. Now, when I start to be sociable, I blow it.
 
He sighed, then reached over and dialed the meals.
Now they would have to come up, or starve. He idly
scratched himself and wondered whether or not he
20
 
should take a shower before dinner. No, he decided,
I had one only five days ago; I'll just use deodorant.
 
He picked up the book he had been reading off and
on, a blood-and-guts romance on some faraway
planet published centuries ago and produced in fac-
simile for him by a surprised and gratified librarian.
 
He called librarians his secret agents because he
was one of the very few who read books at all. Librar-
ies were usually single institutions on planets and were
patronized by only a very few. Nobody wrote books
anymore, he thought, not even this garbage. They
dredged up whatever information they needed for ref-
erence from the computer terminal in every house-
hold; even then the vast majority were the vocal types
that answered questions. Only the technocrats needed
to read.
 
Only barbarians and wanderers read anymore.
 
And librarians.
 
Everybody else could just flip a switch and get a
full, three-dimensional, sight-sound-and-smell creation
of their own fantasies or those of a crew of dedicated
fantasists picked by the government.
 
Pretty dull shit, he thought. Even the people were
bred without imaginations. The imaginative ones were
fixed—or gotten rid of. Too dangerous to have a
thinker unless he thought the government's way.
 
Brazil wondered idly whether any of his passengers
could read. The Pig probably—his name for Datham
Hain, who looked very much like one—but he prob-
ably only read up on the stuff he sold or some mundane
crap like that. Maybe a manual on how to strangle
people twenty ways, he thought. Hain looked as if
he'd enjoy that.
 
The girl with him was harder to figure. Like Hain,
she obviously wasn't from the communal factory
worlds—she was mature, maybe twenty or so, and, if
she didn't look so wasted away, she might be pretty.
Not built, or beautiful, but nice. But she had that empty
look in her eyes, and was so damned servile to the fat
man. Wu Julee, the manifest said her name was. Julie
Wu? mused a corner of his brain. There it was again!
Damn! He tried to grab onto the source of the thought,
but it vanished.
 
21
 
But she does look Chinese, said that little comer,
and then the thought retreated once again.
 
Chinese. That word meant something once. He knew
it did. Where did those terms come from? And why
couldn't he remember where they came from? Hell,
almost everybody had those characteristics these days,
 
he thought.
 
Then, suddenly, the thought was out of his mind,
 
as such thoughts always were, and he was back on his
 
main track.
 
The third one—almost the usual, he reflected, ex-
cept that he never drew the usual, permanently twelve-
year-old automaton on his trips. They were all raised
and conditioned to look alike, think alike, and believe
that theirs was the best of all possible worlds. No rea-
son to travel. But Vardia Dipio 1261 was the same
underneath, anyway: looked twelve, was flat-chested,
probably neutered, since there was some pelvic width.
She was a courier between her world and the next
bunch of robots down the line. Spent all her time doing
 
exercises.
 
A tiny bell sounded telling him that dinner was
 
served, and he got up and ambled back to the ward-
room.
 
The wardroom—nobody knew why it was called
 
that—merely consisted of a large table that was per-
manently attached to the floor and a series of chairs
that were part of the floor until you pulled up on a
little ring, whereupon they arose and became comfort-
able seats. The place was otherwise a milky white plas-
tic—walls, floor, ceiling, even tabletop. The monotony
was broken only by small plaques giving the ship's
name, construction data, ownership, and by his and the
ship's commissions from the Confederacy as well as
 
by his master's license-
He entered, half expecting no one to be there, and
 
was surprised to see the two women already seated. The
fat man was up, intently reading his master's license.
 
Hain was dressed in a light blue toga that made
him look like Nero; Wu Julee was dressed in similar
fashion, but it looked better on her- The Comworlder,
Vardia, wore a simple, one-piece black robe. He noted
 
22
 
idly that Wu Julee seemed to be in a trance, staring
straight ahead.
 
Hain completed reading the wall plaques, then re-
turned to his seat next to Wu Julee, a frown forming
on his corpulent face.
 
"What's so odd about my license?" Brazil asked
curiously.
 
"That form," Hain replied in a silky-smooth, dis-
quieting voice. "It is so old! No such form has been
used in my memory."
 
The captain nodded and smiled, pushing a button
under his chair. The food compartments opened up on
top and plates of steaming food were revealed in
front of each person. A large bottle and four glasses
rose from a circular opening in the middle of the table.
 
"I got it a long time ago," he told them conversa-
tionally, as he chose a glass and poured some nonal-
coholic wine into it.
 
"You have been in rejuve then. Captain?" Hain
responded politely.
 
Brazil nodded. "Many times. Freighter captains
are known for it."
 
"But it costs—unless one is influential with the
Council," Hain noted.
 
"True," Brazil acknowledged, talking as he chewed
his synthetic meat. "But we're well paid, in port
only a few days every few weeks, and most of us just
put our salaries into escrow to pay for what we need.
Nothing much else to blow it on these days."
 
"But the date!" Vardia broke in. "It's so very, -very
old! Citizen Hain said it was three hundred and sixty-
two standard years!"
 
Brazil shrugged. "Not very unusual. Another cap-
tain on this same line is over five hundred."
 
"Yes, that's true," Hain said. "But the license is
stamped Third Renewal—P.C. How old are you, any-
way?"
 
Brazil shrugged again. "I truthfully don't know. As
old as the records, anyway. The brain has a finite
capacity, so every rejuve erases a little more of the
past. I get snatches of things—old memories, old terms
—from time to time, but nothing I can hang on to. I
 
23
 
could be six hundred—or six thousand, though I
 
doubt it."
 
"You've never inquired?" Hain asked curiously.
"No," Brazil managed, his mouth full of mush. He
swallowed, then took another long drink of wine.
"Lousy stuff,'* he snorted, holding the glass up and
looking at it as if it were full of disease cultures. Sud-
denly he remembered he was in the middle of a con-
versation.
 
"Actually," he told them, "I've been curious as to
all that, but the records just sort of fade out. I've out-
lived too many bureaucracies. Well, I've always lived
for now and the future, anyway."
 
Hain had already finished his meal, and patted his
ample stomach. "I'm due for my first rejuve in an-
other year or two. I'm almost ninety, and I'm afraid
I've abused myself terribly these past few years."
 
As the small talk continued, Brazil's gaze kept fall-
ing to the girl who sat so strangely by Ham. She
seemed to be paying not the least attention to the
conversation and had hardly touched her food.
 
"Well," Brazil said, suppressing his curiosity about
the strange girl, "my career is on that wall and Citizen
Vardia's is obvious, but what takes you flitting
around the solar systems, Hain?"
 
"I am—well, a salesman. Captain,'* the fat man
replied. "All of the planets are somewhat unique in
the excesses they produce. What is surplus on one is
usually needed on another—like the grain you have
as cargo on this fine ship. I'm a man who arranges
 
such trades."
 
Brazil made his move. "What about you. Citizen
Wu Julee? Are you his secretary?"
 
The girl looked suddenly confused. That's real fear
in her eyes, Brazil noted to himself, surprised. She
turned immediately to Hain, a look of pleading in
 
her face.
 
"My—ah, niece. Captain, is very shy and quiet,*'
 
Hain said smoothly. "She prefers to remain in the
background. You do prefer to remain in the back-
ground, don't you, my dear?"
 
She answered in a voice that almost cracked from
 
24
 
disuse, in a thin voice that held no more tonal inflec-
tion than Vardia's.
 
"I do prefer to remain in the background," she said
dully, like a machine. A recording machine at that—
for there seemed no comprehension in that face.
 
"Sorry!" Brazil told her apologetically, turning
palms up in a gesture of resignation.
 
Funny, he thought to himself. The one who looks
like a robot is conversational and mildly inquisitive;
 
the one who looks like a real girl is a robot. He
thought of two girls he had known long ago—he could
even remember their names. One was a really sexy
knockout—you panted just being in the same room
with her. The other was ugly, flat, and extremely
mannish in manner, voice, and dress—the sort of
nondescript nobody looked at twice. But the sexy one
liked other girls best, and the mannish one was
heaven in bed.
 
You can't tell by looks, he reflected sourly.
 
Vardia broke the silence. She was, after all, bred to
the diplomatic service.
 
"I think it is fascinating you are so old. Captain,"
she said pleasantly. "Perhaps you are the oldest man'
alive. My race, of course, has no rejuve—it is not
needed."
 
No, of course not, Brazil thought sadly. They lived
their eighty years as juvenile specialist components in
the anthill of their society, then calmly showed up at
the local Death Factory to be made into fertilizer.
 
Anthill? he thought curiously. Now what in hell
were ants?
 
Aloud, he replied, "Well, old or not I can't say,
but it doesn't do anybody much good unless you've
got a job like mine. I don't know why I keep on liv-
ing—just something bred into me, I guess."
 
Vardia brightened. That was something she could
understand. "I wonder what sort of world would re-
quire such a survival imperative?" she mused, prov-
ing to everyone else that she didn't understand at all.
Brazil let it pass.
 
"A long-dead-and-gone one, I think," he said dryly.
"I think we shall go back to our rooms. Captain,"
Hain put in, getting up and stretching. "To tell the
 
25
 
truth, the only thing more exhausting than doing
something is doing nothing at all." Julee rose almost at
the same instant as the fat man, and they left together.
 
Vardia said, "I suppose I shall go back as well,
Captain, but I would like the chance to talk to you
again and, perhaps, to see the bridge."
 
"Feel free," he responded warmly. <1! eat here
every mealtime and company is always welcome. Per-
haps tomorrow we'll eat and talk and then I'll show
you how the ship runs."
 
"I shall look forward to it," she replied, and there
even seemed a bit of warmth in her flat voice—or, at
least, sincerity. He wondered how genuine it was,
and how much was the inbred diplomatic traits. It
was the sort of comment that was guaranteed to please
him. He wondered if he would ever know what went
on in those insect minds.
 
Well, he told himself, in actual fact it didn't make
a damned bit of difference—he would show her
around the ship and she would seem to enjoy it any-
way.
 
When he was alone in the wardroom, he looked
over at the empty dishes. Hain had polished off ev-
erything, as expected, and so had Vardia and he—
the meals were individually prepared for preference
and body build.
 
Julee's meal was almost untouched. She had merely
played with the food.
 
No wonder she's wasting away, he thought. Phys-
ically, anyway. But why mentally? She certainly
wasn't Hain's niece, no matter what he said, and he
doubted if she was an employee, either.
Then, what?
 
He pushed the disposal button and lowered the
chairs back to their floor position, then returned to the
bridge.
 
Freighter captains were the law in space, of course.
They had to be. As such, ships of all lines had cer-
tain safeguards unique to each captain, and some gim-
micks common to all but known only to those captains.
Brazil sat back down in his command chair and
looked at the projection screen still showing the virtu-
ally unchanging starscape. It looked very realistic, and
 
26
 
very impressive, but it was a phony—the scene was a
computer simulation; the Balla-Drubbik drive which
allowed faster-than-iight travel was extradimensional
in nature. There was simply nothing outside the ship's
energy well that would relate to any human terms.
 
He reached over and typed on the computer key-
board: "I SUSPECT ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES. SHOW CAB-
INS 6 ON LEFT AND 7 ON RIGHT SCREEN." The
 
computer lit a small yellow light to show that the in-
structions had been received and the proper code for
the captain registered; then the simulated starfield was
replaced with overhead, side-by-side views of the two
cabins.
 
The fact that cameras were hidden in all cabins and
could be monitored by captains was a closely guarded
secret, though several people had already had
knowledge of the accidentally discovered bugs erased
from their minds by the Confederacy. Yet, many a
madman and hijacker had been trapped by these
methods, and Brazil also knew that the Confederation
Port Authority would look at the recordings of what
he was seeing live and question him as to motive.
This wasn't something done lightly.
 
Cabin 6—Hain's cabin—was empty, but the miss-
ing passenger was in Wu Julee's Cabin 7. A less-
experienced, less-jaded man would have been repulsed
at the scene.
 
Hain was standing near the closed and bolted door,
stark naked. Wu Julee, a look of terror on her face,
was also naked.
 
Brazil turned up the volume.
 
"Come on, Julee," Hain commanded, a tone of
delightful expectancy in his harsh voice. There was no
question as to what he had in mind.
 
The girl cowed back in horror. "Please! .Please,
Master!" she pleaded with all the hysterical emotion
she had hidden in public.
 
"When you do it, Julee," Hain said in a hushed
but still excited tone. "Only then."
 
She did what he asked.
 
Less-experienced and less-jaded men 'would have
been repulsed at the sight, it was true.
 
Brazil was becoming aroused.
 
27
 
After she finished, Wu Julee continued to plead
with the fat man to give it to her. Brazil waited ex-
pectantly, half-knowing what it was already. He just
had to see where it was hidden and how it was pro-
tected.
 
Hain promised her he would go get it and then
 
donned the toga once more. He unbolted the door
and appeared to look up and down the hallway. Sat-
isfied, he walked out to his own cabin and unlocked
the door. The unseen watcher turned his gaze to
 
Cabin 6.
 
Hain entered and took a small, thin attache case
 
from beneath the washbasin. It had the high-security
locks, Brazil noted—five small squares programmed
to receive five of Hain's ten fingerprints in a certain
order. Hain's body blocked reading the combination,
but it wouldn't have mattered anyway—without
Hain's touch the whole inside would dissolve in a
 
quick acid bath.
 
Hain opened the case to reveal a tray of jewelry
 
and body paint. Normal enough, and the tray seemed
deep enough to fill the whole case. No customs prob-
lems.
 
Working a second set of fingerprint-coded combina-
tions through the thin plastic which hid the additional
guards, the tray came loose and appeared to be float-
ing on something else. The fat man lifted the tray out.
 
For the first time Brazil noticed that Hain had on
some thin gloves. He hadn't seen them being put on—
maybe they were already on during the scene he had
 
just witnessed—but there they were.
 
The fat man reached in and picked out a tiny ob-
ject that almost dripped with liquid. The rest of the
case bottom, Brazil could see, was filled with the stuff.
 
His suspicions were confirmed.
 
Datham Hain was a sponge merchant.
 
The contraband was called sponge because that
was what the stuff was—an alien sponge spawned on
a distant sea world now interdicted by the Confed-
eracy.
 
The story came back to Brazil. A nice planet,
 
mostly ocean but dotted with millions of islands con-
28
 
nected in a network of shallows. A tropical climate
except at the poles. It looked like a paradise, and tests
had shown nothing that could hurt the human race. A
test colony—two, three hundred people—was landed
on the two largest islands for the five-year trial, as per
standard procedure. Volunteers, of course, the last
remnant of frontiersmen in the human race-
If they survived and prospered, they owned the
world—to develop it or do with it what they would.
But because man's test instruments could analyze only
the known and the theoretical, there was no way to
detect a threat so alien it hadn't even been imagined.
That was the reason for the trial in the first place.
 
So those people had settled in and lived and loved
and played and built on their islands.
 
For almost a month.
 
That was when they started to go mad, the peo-
ple of that colony. They regressed—slowly, at first,
then increasingly faster and faster. They turned into
primitive beasts as the thing that had caught them ate
away at their brains. They became like wild apes,
only without even the most rudimentary reasoning
ability. Finally they died, from their inability to cope
with even the basics of eating and shelter. Most
drowned; some killed one another.
 
And out of their bodies, eventually, grew the
pretty flowers of the island, in new profusion.
 
Scientists speculated that some sort of elemental
organism—based not on carbon or silicon, but on the
iron oxides in the rocks of their pretty island—inter-
acted through the air not with them but with the syn-
thetic food rations they brought to help them until
they could develop their own native agriculture.
 
And they had eaten it, and it had eaten them.
 
But there had been one survivor—one woman who
had hidden in the huge beds of alien sponge along a
particularly rocky shoreline. Oh, she had died, too—
but almost three weeks later than the others. When
she no longer returned each evening to sleep in the
 
sponge bed.
 
The natural secretions of the sponge acted as a
 
retardant—not as an antidote. But as long as a victim
had a daily intake of the secretion, the mutant strain
 
29
 
seemed inactive. Remove the substance—and the de-
generative process began once again. But scientists
had taken some samples of the mutant strain and of
living sponge with them to study in their labs on
far-off worlds. All of it was thought to have been
destroyed afterward—but evidently some had not
been. Some had been taken by the worst of elements
and was developed in their own labs in unknown
space.
 
The perfect commodity.
 
By secretly introducing the stuff into people's food,
you gave them the disease. Then, when the first
symptoms came and baffled all around you, the mer-
chant would come. He would ease the pain and cause
normality by giving you a little bit of sponge—as Hain
was administering a dose to Wu Julee at that very
moment.
 
The Confederacy wouldn't help you. It maintained
a sponge colony on that interdicted world for the af-
flicted, where one could live a normal, if very primi-
tive, existence and soak each night in a sponge bath.
If, that is, the victim could be gotten there before the
disease became too progressive to bother.
 
The sponge merchants chose only the most wealthy
and powerful—or their children, if their world had
families of any sort. There was no charge for the daily
sponge supply, oh, no. You just did as they asked
when they asked.
 
There was even the suspicion that so many rulers of
the Confederacy were hostage to the stuff now that
that was the reason no real search for an antidote or
cure had ever been started.
 
For power was the ultimate aim of the sponge mer-
chants.
 
Nathan Brazil wondered who Wu Julee was. The
daughter of some big-shot ruler or banker or indus-
trialist? Maybe the child of the Confederacy enforce-
ment chief? More likely she was a sample, he thought.
No use risking exposure.
 
She was his absolute slave, no question. The disease
had been allowed to incubate in her just short of that
critical point when the stuff multiplied exponentially.
Human, yes, but probably already with her IQ halved,
 
30
 
constantly in mild pain that started to grow as the
effects of the sponge antitoxin wore off. An effective
demonstration, which would keep the merchant from
having to infect some innocent and let things run
their full course. That was done, of course, when nec-
essary—but it wasn't good to have a long period of
time when it would be obvious to the agents of the
Confederacy that a sponge merchant was at large.
 
He wondered idly why the girl didn't commit sui-
cide. He thought he would. A victim is probably too
far gone to consider it by the time he realizes it is the
only option, he decided.
 
Brazil looked back up at the screens, Hain had
repacked the case and stored it and was preparing to
go to sleep. Clever, that case, the captain thought.
Sponge is extremely compressible and needs only
enough seawater to keep it moist. It even grew in
there, he thought. As samples were dispensed, new
ones would replace it. That was the reason only the
minimum was ever given to a victim—get hold of
enough of it, unused, and you could grow your own.
 
Wu Julee was lying on her own bed, one leg
draped down on the side. She was breathing hard but
she had a sort of idiot's smile on her face.
 
Relief for another day, the little sponge cube swal-
lowed, the body breaking down the evidence.
 
Nathan Brazil's stomach finally turned.
 
What were you, Wu Julee, before Datham Hain
served dinner? he mused. A student or scholar, or a
professional, like Vardia? A spoiled brat? A young
maiden, perhaps one day expecting to bear children?
 
Gone now, he thought sadly. The recordings would
nail Datham Hain clean—and the syndicate of sponge
merchants would let him hang, too. Most he had
ever heard of were compulsive suiciders when sub-
jected to any psych probes or the like. They would
get nothing from him but his life.
 
But Wu Julee—without sponge, she needed eight-
een days from where they would be at absolute flank
speed to make that damned planet colony, and she
was already near or at the exponential reproductive
stage.
 
She would arrive a mindless vegetable, unable to
 
31
 
do anything not in the autonomic nervous system,
having spent most of the voyage as an animal. A
day or two after that, it would eat her nervous system
away and she would die.
 
So they wouldn't bother. They'd just send her to
the nearest Death Factory to get something useful
out of her.
 
They said Nathan Brazil was a hard man: ex-
perienced, efficient, and cold as ice, never a feeling
for anything but himself.
 
But Nathan Brazil cried at tragedy, alone, in the
dark, on the bridge of his powerful ship.
 
Neither Hain nor Wu Julee came to dinner again,
although he saw the fat man often and kept up the
pretense of innocent friendship. The sponge merchant
could actually be quite entertaining, sitting back in the
lounge over a couple of warm drinks and telling stories
of his youth. He even played a fair game of cards.
 
Vardia, of course, never joined in the games and
stories—they were things beyond her conception. She
kept asking why they played card games since the
only practical purpose of games was to develop a
physical or mental skill. The concept of gambling,
of playing for money, meant even less to her—her
people didn't use the stuff, and only printed it for
interplanetary trade. The government provided every-
one with everything they needed equally, so why try
to get more?
 
Brazil found her logic, as usual, baffling. All his
life he had been compulsively competitive. He was
firmly convinced of his uniqueness in the universe
and his general superiority to it, although he was
occasionally bothered by the universe's lack of ap-
preciation. But she remained inquisitive and continued
asking all those questions two cultures could never
answer for each other.
 
"You promised days ago to show me the bridge,"
she reminded him one day.
 
"So I did," he acknowledged. "Well, now's as good
a time as any. Why don't we go all the way forward?"
32
 
They made their way from the aft lounge, along
the great catwalk above the cargo.
 
"I don't mean to pry," he said to her as they
walked along, "but, out of curiosity, is your mission
of vital importance?"
 
"You mean war or peace, something like that?"
Vardia responded. "No, very few are like that. The
truth is, as you may know, I have no knowledge of
the messages I carry. They are blocked and only the
key from our embassy on Coriolanus can unlock
whatever I'm supposed to say. Then the information
will be erased, and I will be sent home, with or
without a message in return. But, from the tone or
facial expressions of those who give me the messages,
I can usually tell if it's serious, and this one certainly
is not."
 
"Possibly something to do with the cargo," Brazil
speculated as they entered the wardroom and walked
through it this time and out onto another, shorter cat-
walk. The great engines which maintained the real-
universe field of force around them throbbed below.
"Do you know how bad things are on Coriolanus?"
 
She shrugged. "Not too bad, I understand. No
widespread famine yet. That will happen months from
now, when the harvest doesn't come in because the
rains didn't come last season and the ground is too
hard- Then this cargo will be needed. Why do you
ask?"
 
"Oh, just curious, I guess," he responded, an odd
and slightly strained tone in his voice.
They entered the bridge.
 
Vardia was immediately all over it, like an anxious
schoolchild. "What's this?" and "How's that work?"
and all the other questions poured from her. He an-
swered as best he could.
 
She marveled over the computer. "I have never
seen one that you must write to and read," she told
him with the awe reserved for genuine historical
antiques. He decided not to respond that people
these days were too mechanical for him so he
couldn't bear to have a real mechanical person around,
but instead he replied, "Well, it's what you get used
to- This one's just as modern and efficient as any
 
33
 
other; I tried it on and can handle it easier. Although
I have little to do, in an emergency I have to make
thousands of split-second decisions- It's better to use
what you can use instinctively in such a situation."
 
She accepted his explanation, which was partially
the truth, and noticed his small library of paperback
books with their lurid covers. He asked her if she
knew how to read and she said no, whatever for?
Certain professions on her world required the ability
to read, of course, but very few—and if that wasn't
required, as it certainly wasn't for her job as a reel
of blank recording tape, she could see no reason to
learn.
 
He wondered if somewhere they simply had a single
Vardia Dipio program, and they read it out, erased the
whole thing, then rerecorded it for each trip. Prob-
ably, he decided—otherwise, she would have seen
bridges before and encountered enough alien culture
not to ask those naive questions. Most likely she
was just new. It was tough to tell if her kind was
fourteen or forty-four.
 
At any rate, he was glad she couldn't read. He
had suffered a very unsettling moment when she had
gone over to that computer and he had noticed that
he had forgotten to turn off the screen.
 
The computer had been spewing its usual every-
half-hour warning to him.
 
UNAUTHORIZED COURSE CORRECTION, it said. THIS
IS NOT A JUSTIFIED ACTION. COURSE IS BEING PLOTTED
AND WILL BE BROADCAST TO CONFEDERACY AS SOON AS
DESTINATION IS REACHED.
 
And she wondered why he didn't have the talking
kind of computer.
 
And so they continued on the new course, all but
Brazil and the computer oblivious to their real des-
tination.
 
A stroke of genius, he congratulated himself after
Vardia had left- The courier's answers had eased his
conscience on Coriolanus. They would get their grain
—just late. In the meantime, Hain would continue to
give Wu Julee the sponge, until that day came when
they arrived over the sponge world itself. There he
would lose two passengers—Wu Julee would have
 
34
 
life, and Ham would be introduced to the colony as a
pusher.
 
Brazil didn't think any Admiralty Board in the
galaxy would convict him; besides, he already had the
largest number of verbal and written reprimands in
the service. Vardia, though, would never understand
his reasoning.
 
A loud, hollow-sounding gong brought him out of
his satisfied reverie. It reverberated throughout the
ship. Brazil jumped up and looked at the computer
screen.
 
DISTRESS SIGNAL FIELD INTERCEPTED, it read. AWAIT
INSTRUCTIONS.
 
Seeing what the message was, he first flipped off
the gong then flipped on the intercom. His three pas-
sengers were all concerned, naturally.
 
"Don't be alarmed," he told them. "It's just a dis-
tress field. A ship or some small colony is having
problems and needs help. I will have to answer the
call, so we'll be delayed a bit. Just sit tight and I'll
keep you informed."
 
With that he turned to the computer, giving it the
go-ahead to plot the coordinates of the signal. He
didn't like the idea at all—the signal had to be com-
ing from a place far off his approved course. That
invited premature discovery. Nonetheless, he could
never ignore such a signal. Similar ones had saved
him too many times, and the odds of anybody else
intercepting it were more astronomical than bis own
odds at happening on it.
 
The ship's engines moaned, then the throbbing
that was a part of his existence subsided to a dull
sound as the energy field around the ship merged
into normal space.
 
The two screens suddenly came on with the. real,
not the fake, galaxy—and a planet. A big one, he
noted. Rocky and reddish in the feeble light of a
dwarf star.
 
He asked the computer for coordinates. Its screens
were blank for a long time, then it replied, DALGONIA,
 
STAR ARACHNIS, DEAD WORLD, MARKOVIAN ORIGIN, NO
 
OTHER INFORMATION. UNINHABITED, it added need-
35
 
lessly. It was plain that nothing he knew could live
here.
 
PLOT DISTRESS COORDINATES AND MAGNIFY WHEN
 
DONE, he ordered, and the computer searched the bleak
panorama, quadrant by quadrant. Finally it stopped on
one area and put it under intense magnification.
 
The picture was grainy, snowy as hell, but the
scene clearly showed a small camp. Something just
didn't look right.
 
Brazil parked the ship in a synchronous orbit and
prepared to go down and see what was wrong. But
first, he flipped on the intercom again.
 
"I'm afraid I'll have to seal you aft," he told his
passengers. "I have to check out something down
on the planet. If I don't return within eight standard
hours, the ship will automatically pull out and take
you to Coriolanus at top speed, so you needn't be
worried."
 
"Can I come with you?" Vardia's voice came back
at him.
 
He chuckled. "No, sorry, regulations and all that.
You'll be in contact with me through this intercom
all the time, so you'll know what's going on."
 
He suited up, reflecting that he hadn't been in
one of the things in years. Then he entered the small
bay below the engine well through a hatch from the
bridge and entered the little landing craft. Within five
minutes, he was away.
 
The ship's computer took him to the spot by radio
link, and he was at the scene in under an hour. He
raised the canopy—the little craft had no air or
pressurization of its own—and climbed down the side,
striking the ground. The lighter gravity made him
feel ten feet tall. The ship, of course, was kept at
one gee for everybody's convenience.
 
He needed only a couple of minutes to survey the
scene and to report his findings back to the ship's
recorders as the passengers anxiously followed his
every word. "It's a base camp," he told them, "like
the kind used for scientific expeditions. Tent-type
units, modular, pretty modern—seem to have ex-
ploded somehow. All of them." He knew that was
 
36
 
impossible—and he knew they knew—but those were
the facts all the same.
 
He was just wondering aloud as to what could
have caused such a thing when he noticed the piled-
up pressure suits near what would have been the exit
lock. He went over to them and picked one up,
curiously.
 
"The suits are outside the area—empty. As if
somebody threw them there. The explosion or what-
ever couldn't have done it—not without some dam-
age. Wait a minute, let me get over to the area of the
dorms."
 
Vardia listened with growing fascination, and frus-
tration that she could see none of it, nor ask ques-
tions.
 
"Yuk," came Brazil's voice over the intercom.
"Pretty messy death. They died when the vacuum hit,
if the explosion didn't get them. Hmmm. . . . Seven.
I can't figure it out. The place is a mess but the ex-
plosion didn't really do more than rip the tents to
shreds. But that was enough."
 
He moved over to another area that caught his
eye.
 
"Funny," he said, "looks like somebody's done a
job on the power plant. Well, here's what did it,
anyway. Somebody jacked up the oxygen to pure and
shut off the rest of the air. Just takes a spark after
that. Worries me, though. There are two dozen safe-
guards against that sort of thing. Somebody had to do
it deliberately."
 
The words sent a chill through all three passengers
listening breathlessly to his account. Even Wu Julee
seemed caught up in the drama.
 
"Well, I just counted the beds," Brazil told them,
his voice keeping calm but tinged with the concern
he felt. "A dorm room for five, another one with
three, and a single—probably the project chiefs. Bod-
ies in all but the chiefs and one of the fivesome.
Hmmm. . . . There were seven pressure suits. Should
have been nine."
 
They heard him breathing and moving around, but
he was infuriatingly silent for the longest period.
 
Finally he said, "Two flyers are gone, so the miss-
17
 
ing ones must be somewhere else on the planet. Ifs
a sure bet that one of them, at least, killed the oth-
ers."
 
Again the long silence, punctuated only with
breathing sounds. All aboard the freighter were hold-
ing their breaths. It took no imagination at all to
figure out that one, maybe two, madmen were loose
on that planet—and Brazil was alone.
 
"Now here's the strangest part," the captain re-
ported at last. They strained for every word, cursing
him for his maddening conversational tone. "I've got-
ten to the rescue signal. It's about a kilometer from
the camp, on a low ridge. But it isn't turned on."
 
It was almost two hours more before Nathan Brazil
was back aboard the ship. He didn't get out of his
suit, although he left the helmet on his chair while
he checked the computer. It assured him once again
that it was indeed receiving a distress signal from the
beacon below.
 
Only Brazil knew that it wasn't.
 
It just wasn't possible.
 
He unlocked the aft compartment and made his
way back to the passengers, all of whom were seated
in the lounge.
 
"So what do you make of it, Captain?" Hain asked
seriously.
 
"Well," replied the other hesitantly, "I'm about to
start believing in ghosts. That signal isn't on. To
make sure, I disabled it completely before coming
back. But it's still coming in loud and strong up
here."
 
"There must be another signal," Vardia suggested
logically.
 
"No, there isn't. Not only is one the standard issue
—and everything else there is standard issue—but a
computer that can plot a course in deep space through
the underdimensions and get you to a particular port
on a particular planet in the middle of nowhere doesn't
screw up in plotting the coordinates of a distress
signal."
 
"Let's proceed on what we do know, then," Hain
suggested. "We know that there is a signal—no, no,
 
38
 
let me finish!'* he protested as Brazil was about to cut
in. "As I said, there is a signal. It was set or sent by
someone who, presumably, is one or both of the peo-
ple who survived the—ah, disaster. Someone—or
something—wants us to come down, wanted us to
find the wrecked station, wants something."
 
"A malevolent alien civilization, Hain?" Brazil re-
torted skeptically. "Come on. We've got—what?—a

thousand, give or take, solar systems explored to
date, with more every year. We've found remains of
the Markovians—one of their cities is near the camp,
probably what the group was investigating—and lots
and lots of animal and plant life. But no living,
present-day alien civilizations."
 
"But we've done only a trifie!" Hain protested.
"There are a billion billion stars around. You know the
odds."
 
"But not here, inside our perimeter," the captain
pointed out.
 
"But, he is right, you know," Vardia interjected.
"Perhaps someone—or something—discovered us."
 
"No," Brazil told them, "it's not that. There is
some simple explanation. What happened down there
was cold-blooded human murder by one of the team.
For what madness, I can't guess. They can't get off
the planet with what they've got. If they don't starve
to death first, their pickup ship will get them."
 
"You mean you aren't going to try to find them?"
Vardia asked. "But you must! Otherwise some other
ship might answer them and the killers might be able
to overpower them before they are forewarned!"
 
"Oh, the odds against anyone else hearing that sig-
nal are astronomical," Brazil replied patiently.
 
"I assure you," Hain said flatly, "that the last thing
I wish to do is stalk a murderer on an unknown
world. Nevertheless, Citizen Vardia is correct. If we
found them, someone else might."
 
Brazil's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Can you
handle a pistol?" he asked the fat man. "Can you?"
he asked Vardia.
 
"I can," Hain replied evenly, "and have."
 
"That is left to the military caste," Vardia replied,
"but I am an expert with the sword, and I have a
 
39
 
ceremonial one with me. It will puncture a pressure
 
suit."
 
Brazil almost laughed. "A sword? You?"
 
She ran to her room and came back with a gleam-
ing, handsome blade that glittered as if it were made
of the finest silver. "It builds quick reflexes and good
muscles," she explained. "Also, for some reason the
sword is traditional in our service."
 
Brazil's face grew serious again. "And what about
Wu Julee?" he asked, not of her but of Hain.
 
"She goes where I go," Hain replied cautiously.
"And she will, in a pinch, help protect us with her
life."
 
I'll bet, Brazil thought sourly. You, anyway.
 
There was never any problem of pressure suits; they
expanded or contracted to fit almost any known hu-
man wearer, although Hain's did give him a little
problem. Each of them had worn one before, at least
in the practice drill before the ship left port. They
were extremely light, and, once the helmet had been
set into place and the seal activated, a person hardly
knew he had it on. Air was recirculated and refined
through two small, light filters on the side of the
helmet. The supply would last for almost a day. In
an emergency situation, the lifeboat could recharge the
air supply for fifteen people for a month, so there was
plenty of air to spare.
 
Brazil led them first to the distress beacon, if only
to prove to himself that he was correct. They exam-
ined it carefully, and agreed that there was no way it
could be sending.
 
But the little lifeboat monitor connection to the
mother ship still said it was.
 
So they climbed back in and sped northward, the
mystery so pressing on them that they barely noted
the Markovian ruins near the camp and along the
route. The ship's computer had located the two miss-
ing shuttlecraft on a plain near the north pole, and
that seemed the next likely place to investigate. If
anyone was left alive, he would be there.
 
"Why do you think they are up there?" Vardia
asked Brazil.
 
40
 
"My theory is that the murderer couldn't trap one
of them in the base camp and that that one took a
shuttle and flew off. There must have been a chase,
and that plain is where they met up," the captain re-
plied. "We'll know in a little while, because we're al-
most there."
 
Being in a lifeboat with a major spatial propulsion
unit, Brazil was able to make the long trip by going
back up info orbit and braking back down again.
Thus, the nine-hour journey was reduced to just a
little over ninety minutes. He braked to the slow-
est speed he could maintain as they cleared a last
mountain range and came upon a broad, flat plain.
 
"There they are!" Vardia almost shouted, and they
all looked ahead at the two craft, small silver disks in
the twilight, shown prominently at the edge of a slight
discoloration in the plain.
 
Brazil circled around the spot several times.
 
"I can see no one," Hain reported. "Not a sign of
life, not a pressure suit, nothing- They may still be in
the craft," he suggested.
 
"Okay," Brazil replied, "I'll set down a few hun-
dred meters from them. Hain, you stay back just out-
side this boat and cover me. The other two of you
stay inside. If anything happens to us, the mother
ship will reclaim the boat."
 
There was a soft bump, and they were down on
the surface of Dalgonia. Brazil reached into the
broad, black belt he wore on the outside of his pres-
sure suit and removed one of two pistols and handed
it to Hain.
 
The pistols didn't look like much, but they could
fire short pulses of energy at rates from one per sec-
ond to five hundred per second, the latter not doing
much for aim but able to spread things enough to knock
off a small regiment. There was a stun setting that
would paralyze a man for a half hour or more, but
both men placed their weapons on full.
 
There were seven ugly bodies far to the south.
 
Brazil eased out of the hatch in the eerie silence of
a near vacuum, and, keeping the two shuttlecraft al-
ways in view, moved to cover behind the lifeboat.
That was a relatively safe haven. Since the boat had
 
41
 
been built to take a tremendous amount of stress and
even friction, it would be impervious to any weapons
likely to be in the hands of their quarry.
 
Ham emerged shortly after, having more trouble
climbing down with his bulk despite the weak gravity.
He chose a position Just forward of the nose where he

was mostly sheltered but could still use the edge of the
boat to steady his pistol.
 
Brazil, satisfied, moved cautiously forward.
He reached the nearest craft in less than two min-
utes. "No sign of life yet," he told them. "I'm going
to climb up on top and have a look inside." He
mounted the rail-type ladder along the side of the
shuttle and walked over to the entry hatch.
 
"Still nothing," Brazil reported. "I'm going in."
It took only another three minutes to get inside
and find nobody home. He then repeated the se-
quence with the second craft and found it empty too,
although this one showed signs that somebody had
spent many hours there.
 
"Come on up, anybody," he called. "There's no
one here, or for many kilometers around. See what
you make of it."
 
Hain told Wu Julee to join him. Vardia climbed out
last, and they all went over to the captain, who was
standing near the second shuttle and looking anxiously
at the ground. Brazil noted with some amusement that
Vardia clutched her nice, pretty sword.
 
"Look at the ground here," he said, pointing to the
tracks of a person in a pressure suit coming up to a
point at which the dust around was greatly disturbed
for a large area.
 
"What do you make of it. Captain?" Hain asked.
"Well, it looks as if my theory's right, anyway.
See—the first one was here, then saw the second one
land, and he hid out on the back of the shuttle. When
the pursuer—the guy who landed second I assume
was the murderer—found nobody home, he walked
around to here"—Brazil gestured at the mottled
dust thrown about—"and was jumped by the first
person from on top. They fought here, then one took
off across the plain, the other in pursuit. See how we
get only the toe tracks coming out of the fight scene?"
 
42
 
Vardia was already following the tracks out onto the
plain. Suddenly she stopped short and stared, in-
credulous, at the ground. "Captain! Everyone! Come
here!" she called urgently. They rushed up to her.
She was pointing at the ground immediately ahead of
her.
 
The fine dust was thinner here, and the rock
changed color from a dull orange to more of a gray,
but at first they didn't see what she meant. Brazil
went over and stooped down. Then it sank in on
him.
 
At the place where one man had stepped, just
where the two strains of rock met, there was half a
footprint. Not the running type—it was angled, so
that a little less than half of a grown man's footprint,
pressure suit pattern and all, was visible in the or-
ange. Where it met the gray, there was unbroken
dust.
 
"How is it possible. Captain?" Vardia asked, awed
for the first time in her life—and not a little scared.
 
"There must be an explanation. It's a freakish
thing—but I'd believe almost anything after all we've
seen. I'm sure we'll find their prints continue farther
on. Let's see."
 
They all walked onto the gray area for some dis-
tance. Vardia suddenly looked back to make certain
that they were making footprints, and was relieved
to see that they were. Suddenly she stopped short.
 
"Captain!" she exclaimed, that toneless voice sud-
denly tinged with panic and fear. The rest caught it,
stopped, and turned. Vardia was pointing back at the
ships from which they had come.
 
There were no shuttlecraft. There was no life-
boat. Only a bleak, unbroken orange plain stretching
off to the mountains in the distance.
 
"Now what the hell?" Brazil managed, looking all
around him to see if they had somehow turned
around. They hadn't. He looked up to see if he could
spot anything leaving, but there was nothing but the
cold stars as darkness overtook them.
 
"What happened?" Hain asked plaintively. "Did
our murderer—"
 
"No, that's not it," Brazil cut in quickly, a cold chill
 
43
 
suddenly going through him. "No one person—not
even two—could have managed all three craft, and
nobody but me could have lifted that lifeboat for an-
other two hours."
 
There was a sudden vibration, like a small earth-
quake, that knocked them all off their feet.
 
Brazil broke his fall and held on in a crouch on his
hands and knees. He looked up suddenly.
 
The whole area seemed bathed in eerie flashes of
blue-white lightning, thousands of them!
 
"Damn me for an asshead!" Brazil swore. "We've
been had!"
 
"But by whom?" Vardia called out.
 
Wu Julee screamed.
 
Then there was nothing but darkness and that
weird, blue lightning, now laced, it appeared, with
golden sparks. They all felt the sensation of falling
and turning and twisting in the air, as if they were
dropping down some bottomless pit. There was no
up, no down, nothing but that dizzy sensation.
 
And Wu Julee kept screaming.
 
Suddenly they were lying on a flat, glassy-smooth
black surface. Lights were on around them, and there
seemed to be a structure—as if they were in some
building, like a great warehouse.
 
Things didn't stop spinning around for a while. They
were dizzy, and sick. All but Brazil threw up into
their helmets, which neatly and efficiently cleared the
mess away. A professional spaceman, Brazil was the
first to recover his equilibrium. Then he steadied him-
self, half sitting up on the black, glassy floor.
 
It was a room, he saw—no, a great chamber, with
six sides. The glassy area was also a hexagon, and
around it stretched a railing and what appeared to be
a walkway. A single great light, also six-sided, was
suspended above them in the curved ceiling. The
place was huge, Brazil saw, easily large enough to
house a small freighter.
 
The others were there. Vardia, he saw, was already
sitting up, but Wu Julee, it appeared, had passed out.
Hain just lay on the floor, breathing hard. Brazil strug-
gled to his feet and made his way unsteadily to Wu
 
44
 
Julee. He checked and saw that she was in fact still
breathing but unconscious.
 
"Everybody all right?" he called. Vardia nodded
and tried to rise. He helped her to her feet, and she
managed. Hain groaned, but tried, and was game
about it. He finally managed it.
 
"Just about one gee," Brazil noted. "That's in-
teresting."
 
"Now what?" asked Datham Hain.
"Looks like some breaks in that railing—the closest
one is over there to your right. We might as well
make for it." Taking their silence for assent, he
picked up Wu Julee's limp body and they started off.
She weighed hardly anything, he noted, and he wasn't
a particularly strong man.
 
He looked down at her, sorrow in his eyes. What
will happen to you now, Wu Juice? But I tried! God!
I tried!
 
Her eyes opened, and she looked up into his
through the tinted helmet faceplates. Perhaps it was
the gentle way he carried her, perhaps it was his ex-
pression, perhaps it was just the fact that she saw him
and not Hain, but she smiled.
 
She got much heavier about halfway there, he
noted, as his body was drained of the adrenalin that
had pumped into him during the—fall? Finally he
was straining at the weight, although she weighed no
more than half what she should. He finally admitted
defeat and had to put her down. She didn't protest,
but as they continued to walk she clung tightly to his
arm.
 
No matter what, Hain no longer owned her.
Steps of what looked like polished stone led up to
the break in the rail—six of them, they noted. Finally
they were all up on some kind of platform from which
a conveyor belt stretched out. But it was not moving
in either direction.
 
They all looked to the captain for guidance. For
the first time in his life, Nathan Brazil felt the full
weight of responsibility. He had gotten them into
this—never mind that they had talked him into it, it
was his responsibility—and he didn't have the slightest
idea what to do next.
 
45
 
"Well," he began, "if we stay here we starve to
death, or run out of air—or both. We may do so any-
way, but we at least ought to see what we're into.
There has to be a doorway out of this place."
 
"Probably six of them," Hain said caustically.
 
Brazil stepped out onto one of the conveyors, and
it suddenly started moving. The movement was so
unexpected that he found himself carried along far-
ther and farther away from the rest before anyone
could say anything.
 
"Better get on," he called back, "or you'll lose me!
I don't know how to stop this thing!"
 
He was receding farther and farther, when Wu
Julee stepped on. The other two immediately did
likewise.
 
The speed wasn't great, but it was faster than a
man could walk briskly. A larger, broader platform
loomed ahead before Brazil could see it. So he slid
off onto it, stumbled, fell down, and rolled halfway
across.
 
"Watch out! Platform coming up!" he warned. The
others saw the platform and him in time to step off,
although each one nearly lost his balance in the at-
tempt.
 
"Apparently you're supposed to be walking on the
belt," Vardia said. "That way you just walk onto the
platform. See? There are actually several belts just
before the platform, each one going at a slightly
slower speed."
 
The belt suddenly stopped.
 
"No doorway here," Hain noted. "Shall we press
on?"
 
"I suppose so—whoops!" Brazil exclaimed as he
was about to step out. The other belt had started in
the reverse direction!
 
"Looks like somebody's coming to meet us," Brazil
said jokingly, a tone that didn't match his inner feel-
ings at all. Even so, he pulled and checked his pistol,
noting that Hain was doing the same. Vardia, he saw,
still held onto that sword.
 
They could see a giant figure coming toward them.
and all stepped back to the rear edge of the platform.
 
46
 
As the figure came closer, they could see that it was
like nothing in the known universe.
 
Start with a chocolate brown human torso, incredi-
bly broad, and ribbed so that the chest muscles
seemed to form squarish plates. A head, oval-shaped,
equally brown and hairless except for a huge white
walrus mustache under a broad, flat nose. Six arms—
in threes, spaced in rows down the torso—extremely
muscular but attached, except for the shoulder pair,
on ball-type sockets like the claws of a crab. Below,
the torso melded into an enormous brown-and-
yellow-striped series of scales leading to a huge, ser-
pentine lower half, coiled, but obviously five or more
meters in length when outstretched-
 
As the creature approached the platform, it eyed
them with large, human-looking orbs punctuated with
jet-black pupils. As it reached the edge of the plat-
form, the lower left arm slapped the rail. The belt
stopped Just short of the platform. Then, for what
seemed like forever, they just stared at each other—
these four humans in ghostly white pressure suits and
this creature of some incredibly alien spawning.
 
The alien finally pointed to them, then with its
top pair of arms made a motion to remove their hel-
mets. When it saw they made no move, it pointed
again to them, then did what appeared to be a deep-
breathing exercise.
 
"I think it's trying to tell us we can breathe in
here," Brazil said cautiously.
 
"Sure, he thinks so, but what does he breathe?"
 
Hain pointed out.
 
"No choice," Brazil replied. "We're almost out of
air anyway. May as well chance it."
 
"I do," came the unexpected voice of Wu Julee,
and, with that, she unfastened her helmet—not with-
out some trouble, for her coordination was shot.
Finally the helmet fell to her feet, and she breathed
 
in.
 
And continued breathing.
 
"Good enough for me," said Vardia, and she and
Brazil did the same. For a short time Hain continued
to resist. Then, finally assured that everyone was still
breathing, he removed his as well.
47
 
The air seemed a bit humid and perhaps a little
rich in oxygen—they experienced a slight light-headed-
ness that soon passed—but otherwise fine.
 
"Now what?" Hain asked.
 
"Damned if I know," Brazil replied honestly. "How
do you say hello to a giant walrus-snake?"
 
"Well I'll be goddamned!" exclaimed the walrus-
snake in perfect Confederation plain talk, "if it ain't
Nathan Brazil!"
 
Zone
 
(Enter Ghosts)
 
NONE OF THE GROUP COULD HAVE BEEN MORE
 
stunned than Nathan Brazil.
 
"Somehow I knew you'd wind up here," the crea-
ture continued, "Sooner or later just about every old-
timer does."
 
"You know me?" Brazil asked incredulously.
 
The creature laughed. "Sure I do—and you know
me, too, unless you've had one too many rejuves. I
know, had the same problem myself when I dropped
through the Well. Let's just say that people really
change around here, and let it go at that. If you'll
follow me, I'll make you more comfortable and give
you some orientation." With that the creature un-
coiled backward, then recoiled at a length about two
meters back on the belt. "Step aboard," it invited.
 
They looked at Brazil. "I don't think we have much
choice," he told them. Then, noticing Haul's pistol
still drawn and pointed, he said to the fat man: "Put
that popgun away until we find out the lay of the
land. No use in getting popped yourself."
 
They stepped onto the belt, which started not when
they boarded but only after the rail was given another
slap by their alien host. For the first time they could
 
48
 
hear noise—giant blowers, it sounded like, echoing
throughout the great hall. The belt itself gave off its
own steady electric hum.
 
"Do you—eat what we eat?" Hain called out to the
 
creature.
 
The alien chuckled. "No, not anymore, but, don't
worry, no cannibals around, either. At least, not Type
Forty-ones like you- But I think we can round up some
food—some real food, maybe the first in everybody's
except Nate's whole life."
 
They rode around three belts until they came to a
platform much larger than the others. Here the walls
curved and twisted away from the Well. Brazil could
see why the configuration hadn't been visible from
 
afar.
 
Then they followed the snakeman—no mean trick,
they found, with its enormous serpentine body—down
a long corridor. They saw other corridors branching off,
but they traveled over a thousand meters before they
 
took one.
 
It led into a very large room set up something like
a reception area. Comfortable, human-style chairs
with plush cushions abounded, and a plastic wall cov-
ering was decorated with flowers. Here, such amenities
seemed as incongruous as the alien would seem to their
worlds. The creature had a sort of desk, semicircular
in shape and seemingly form-fitted for him to coil
comfortably behind. It held only a very ordinary-
looking pen, a small pad of paper, and a seal—hex-
agonal of course—seemingly solid gold cast in clear
plastic. The seal featured a snake coiled around a great
cross, and it had a superscription around the edges in a
script unfamiliar to any of them.
 
The snakeman lifted up a small part of his desk
top to reveal an instrument panel underneath of un-
familiar design and purpose. A large red button was
most prominent, and he pushed it.
 
"Had to reset the Well," he explained. "Otherwise
we could get some nonoxygen breathers in and' they'd
be hung up in storage until somebody remembered to
press the button. Let me also punch in a food order
for you—you always were a steak-and-baked-potato
man, Nate. So that's what it'll be." He punched some
49
 
buttons in sequence on the console, then closed it.
"Ten or fifteen minutes and the food will be here—
and it'll be cooked right, too. Medium, wasn't it, Nate?"
 
"You seem to know me better than I do," Brazil
replied. "It's been so long since I had a steak—maybe
almost a century. I'd just about forgotten what one
was. Where did you know me, anyway?"
 
A broad yet wistful smile crept across the creature's
face. "Can you remember an old bum named Serge
Ortega, Nate? Long ago?"
 
Brazil thought, then suddenly it came to him. "Yeah,
sure, I remember him—but that was maybe a hundred
years ago or so. A free-lancer—polite name for a pi-
rate," he explained to the others. "A real rascal. Any-
thing for a buck, was wanted almost everywhere—
but a hell of a character. But you can't be him—he
was a little guy, from Hispaniola, before they went
Corn and changed the place to Peace and Freedom."
 
"I'm sorry to hear that," the creature responded
sadly. "That means my people are dead. Who was the
mold? Brassario?"
 
"Brassario," Brazil confirmed. "But all this explains
nothing!"
 
"Oh, but it does," the snakeman replied. "Because
I am Serge Ortega, Nate. This world changed me into
what you see."
 
"I don't see what's wrong with factory worlds,"
Vardia interjected. They ignored her.
 
Brazil looked hard at the creature. The voice, the
eyes—they were dimly familiar, somehow. It did re-
mind him of Ortega, sort of. The same crazy glint to
the eyes, the same quick, sharp way of talking, the
underlying attitude of amused arrogance that had got-
ten Ortega into more bar fights than any other man
alive.
 
But it had been so long ago.
 
"Look here!" Ham put in. "Enough of old home
week, Ortega or not Ortega. Sir, or whatever, I should
very much like to know where we are, and why we are
here, and when we shall be able to return to our own
ship."
 
Ortega gave that evil smile. "Well, as to where you
are—you're on the Well World. There's no other name
 
50
 
for it, since that's exactly what it is. As to where it is
—well, damned if I know. Nobody here has ever been
able to leave it. I only know that the night sky is like
nothing you ever saw before. I spaced almost two
hundred years, and none of the extremely prominent
features look familiar. At the very least we're on the
other side of the galaxy, or maybe even in another
galaxy. As to why you're here, well, you somehow
humbled into a Markovian Gate like me and maybe
thousands of others did. And here you are, stuck just
like the rest of us. You're here for good, mister. Better
get used to it."
 
"See here!" Ham huffed. "I have power, influ-
ence—"
 
"Means nothing here," Ortega responded coldly.
"My mission!" Vardia protested. "I must perform my
 
duties'"
 
"No duties, nothin* anymore but you and here," the
snakeman said. "Understand this: you are on a world
built by the Markovians—yes, I said built. The whole
thing: lock, stock, and core. As far as we know, the
whole damned thing is a Markovian brain in perfect
working order, and preprogrammed."
 
"I figured we were inside Dalgonia," Brazil said.
"It felt as if we fell down into something."
 
"No," replied Ortega, "that was no fall. The Mar-
kovians really had godlike powers. Matter transmis-
sion was a simple thing for them. Don't ask me how
it works, but it does, because we got a local version
here. I wouldn't understand it if somebody did explain
it, anyway."
 
"But such a thing is impossible!" Hain objected. "It
is against the laws of physics!"
 
Ortega's six limbs shrugged. "Who knows? At one
tune flying was impossible. Then it was impossible to
leave a planet, then impossible to leave a solar sys-
tem, then impossible for anything to go faster than
light. The only thing that makes something impossible
is ignorance. Here on the Well World the impossible's
a fact of life."
 
At that moment the food arrived, brought-in on a
small cart that was obviously some sort of robot. It
went up to each in turn, and offered a tray of hot food,
 
51
 
which, when removed, revealed an identical tray be-
neath. Brazil removed the cover and just stared for a
minute. Finally, he said, in a tone of absolute awe
and reverence: "A real steak!" He hesitated a moment
and looked over at Ortega. "It is real, isn't it?"
 
"Oh, yes," the snakeman assured him. "It's real
enough. The potato and beans, too. Oh, not quite a
cow, not quite a potato, and so forth, but so close you'll
never be able to tell the difference. Go ahead, try it!"
 
Hain was already greedily tearing into his, while
Vardia looked at the food, bewildered.
 
"What's the trouble?" Brazil managed between
swallows. "Problems?"
 
"It's quite safe to eat," Ortega assured her. "There
are no microorganisms that will give you any real prob-
lems here—not until you go out, anyway. The stuff's
biologically compatible."
 
"No, no—it's—" she stammered. "Well, I have never
seen food like it before. How do you . ..?"
 
"Just watch me and follow my example," Brazil
laughingly replied. "See? You cut it with a knife and
fork like this, then—"
 
They dug into the meal, Vardia getting the hang of
it, although she protested several times that she
thought the food tasted terrible. But they were all too
hungry to protest.
 
Ortega's eyes fell on Wu Julee, who just sat there
staring at the food, not eating at all. "The girl—she
is ill?" he asked them.
 
Brazil suddenly stopped eating and looked at Ham,
who had already finished and was just letting out an
extremely noisy belch. The captain's face had a grave
expression on it, and the fine food suddenly felt like
lead in his stomach.
 
"She's a spongie," Brazil said softly. Ham's eye-
brows rose, but he said nothing.
 
Ortega's face, too, turned serious. "How far gone?"
he asked.
 
"Fairly bad, I'd say," Brazil replied- "Deep mental
maybe five years old, voluntary action basically emo-
tive only." Suddenly he whirled in his chair and faced
Hain, cold fury in his eyes. "How about it, Hain?" he
snarled. "Would you agree?"
 
52
 
Hain^s piggish face remained impassive, his tone of
voice seemed almost one of relief. "So you found out.
I thought perhaps I was overdoing the routine at that
 
dinner."
 
"If we hadn't been trapped on Dalgonia, I'd have
had you and her down on Arkadrian before you real-
ized what was what," Brazil told him,
 
Ham's face showed both shock and surprise.
BraziFs remarks had gotten to him. Then, suddenly,
a thought occurred to him and the old, smug self-
confidence returned.
 
"It would seem, then, that I have fallen not into a
terrible situation, but into a most fortunate one by
this—er, circumstance," he said calmly. "A pity for
the lady, though," he added in mock sympathy.
 
"Why you son of a bitch!" Brazil snarled and leaped
at the fat man's throat, spilling food everywhere. The
big man was a head taller and twice the weight of the
attacker, but Brazil's quickness and the sheer hatred in
his soul flowed into his arms and hands as they tight-
ened around the other's neck.
 
Hain thrashed and tried to push the smaller attacker
away, but all he managed was to cause both of them
to roll onto the floor, the small man still squeezing.
Hain's mouth was open, face red, as he gasped for
breath. The expression on Brazil's face was almost
demonic; nothing would keep him from his goal.
 
Vardia watched openmouthed, understanding the
situation only in the vaguest way and finding Brazil's
actions, both recounted and current, incomprehensible.
In her private universe, there were no people, only
cells composing a whole body. A diseased cell was
simply eliminated. So there was no place in her mind
for one who caused such a disease.
 
Wu Julee watched the two grapple impassively, her
 
meal still on her lap.
 
Suddenly Ortega bounded over his desk and
grabbed Brazil with massive arms. The giant creature
moved almost too fast for the eye to follow; Vardia
was stunned at the speed and surety with which the
 
creature acted.
 
Brazil fought to get free of the grip, and Ortega's
 
53
 
middle arm suddenly came from nowhere and punched
the small man hard in the jaw. He went slack, still held
aloft in the creature's strong grip.
 
Freed of his attacker, Hain gasped and choked for
air, finally rolling flat on his back and lying there, his
huge stomach rising and falling. He felt his neck, where
the imprint of Brazil's murderous hands could still be
seen.
 
Ortega began examining the unconscious man. Sat-
isfied that no bones were broken, nor permanent dam-
age done, he grunted and put the man down on the
floor. Brazil collapsed in a heap, and the snakeman
turned his attention to Hain.
 
"I thank you, sir," Hain gasped, his hand going in-
voluntarily to his throat. "You have surely saved my
life."
 
"I didn't want to do it, nor would I have done so in
normal times," Ortega snapped back acidly. "And if
Nate ever catches up to you on the outside, I won't be
there to save you—and, if I am, I'll cheerfully join
him in tearing you limb from limb. But I will not allow
such a thing here!" He fumed his attention back to
Brazil, who was just coming around-
 
Hain seemed taken aback by the creature's com-
ments, then saw that his pulse pistol had fallen when
they had tumbled and now was a foot or so from him
on the floor. Slowly, his hand crept toward it.
 
"No!" Wu Julee suddenly screamed, but Hain al-
ready had the weapon, and was pointing it at both the
snakeman and Brazil, who was sitting up, shaking his
head and rubbing his jaw. Ortega's back was to Hain,
but Brazil suddenly looked up and spotted the gun.
Ortega saw him stare and turned to face the fat man.
 
"Now both of you behave and I won't do anything
rash," Hain told them in that same cool, confident tone
he always used. "But I am leaving this charming place
right now.'*
 
"How?" asked Serge Ortega.
 
The question seemed to bother Hain, who was used
to simple answers to simple questions. "The—the way
we came in," he said at last.
 
"The doorway leads to a corridor. The corridor leads
to the Well in one direction—and that is strictly one
 
54
 
way," Ortega told him. "In the other direction are more
rooms like this—seven hundred and eighty of them,
in a honeycombed labyrinth. Beyond them are housing
and recreation facilities for the types of creatures that
use those offices—seven hundred and eighty different
types of creatures, Hain. Some of them don't breathe
what you do. Some of them won't like you a bit and
 
may just kill you."
 
"There is a way out," Hain snarled, but there was
desperation in his voice. "There must be. I'll find it."
 
"And then what?" Ortega asked calmly. "You're out
in a world that is moderately large. The surface area
is best expressed as five point one times ten to the
eighth power kilometers squared. And you don't even
know what the planet looks like, the languages, any-
thing. You're a smart man, Hain. What are the odds?"
 
Hain seemed confused, hesitant. Suddenly he looked
at the pistol in his hand and brightened. "This gives
me the odds," he said firmly.
 
"Never play the odds until you know the rules of
the game," Ortega warned softly, and advanced slowly
 
toward him.
 
"I'll shoot!" Hain threatened, his voice an octave .
 
higher than usual.
 
"Go ahead," Ortega invited, his great serpentine
 
body sliding slowly toward the panicked man.
 
"All right, dammit!" Hain cried, and pulled the trig-
ger.
 
Nothing happened.
 
Hain pulled the trigger again and again. It clicked,
making contact with the solenoid firing pin, but did
 
nothing else,
 
Ortega suddenly moved with that blinding speed, and
 
the gun seemed to vanish from the fat man's hand.
 
"No weapon works in this room," Ortega said crisply,
Hain sat, a stupefied expression on his face, mouth
half open. Possibly for the first time in his life that ar-
rogant self-confidence was gone out of him.
 
"You all right, Nate?" Ortega shot to the small man,
who still sat half-rising, holding his sore Jaw.
 
"Yeah, you son of a bitch," Brazil replied mushily,
shaking his head to clear it. "Man! You sure as hell
pack a wallop!"
 
55
 
Ortega chuckled. "I was the only man smaller than
you once in a bar on Siprianos. I was full of booze and
dope, and ready to take on the house, all of whom
would have cheerfully slit my throat for the floor show.
I just started to pick a fight with the bouncer when you
grabbed me and knocked me cold. Took me ten weeks
before I realized that you'd saved my neck."
 
Brazil's jaw dropped in wonder, and the pain hit him
as he did so and he groaned. Still, he managed: "You
are Serge Ortega!" in a tone of bewildered acceptance.
"I had totally forgotten that...."
 
Ortega smiled. "I said I was, Nate."
 
"But, oh, man, how you've changed," Brazil noted,
amazed.
 
"I told you this world changes people, Nate," Ortega
replied. "It'll change you, too. All of you."
 
"You wouldn't have stopped me from finishing the
pig in the old days. Serge."
 
"I guess I wouldn't have," Ortega chuckled. "And I
really wouldn't have now—except that this is Zone.
And, if you'll sit over there, across the room from
Hain," he said, pointing to a backless couch, and, turn-
ing to Hain, continued, "and if you will stop all your
little, petty games and promise to sit quietly, I'll ex-
plain just what the situation is here—the rules and lack
of them, and a few other things about your future."
 
Hain mumbled something unintelligible and went
back over to his seat. Brazil, still nursing his sore
jaw, silently got up and moved over to the couch. He
sank down in the cushions, his head against the back
wall, and groaned.
 
"Still dizzy," he complained. "And I'm getting a
hell of a headache."
 
Ortega smiled and moved back behind his desk.
 
"You've had worse and you know it," the snake-
man reminded the captain. "But, first things first.
Want some more food? You spoiled yours."
 
"You know damned well I won't eat for days,"
Brazil groaned. "Damn! Why didn't you let me get
him?"
 
"Two reasons, really. First, this is—well, a diplo-
matic legation, you might say. A murder by one En-
try of another would be impossible to explain to my
 
56
 
government no matter what. But, more than that,
she's not lost, Nate, and that makes your motive even
 
flimsier."
 
Brazil forgot his aches and pains. "What did you
 
say?"
 
"I said she's not lost, Nate, and that's right. Just
 
as this detour deprived Hain of justice, it also saved
her. Arkadrian was no solution, really. Obviously you
felt she was worth saving when you decided to detour
—but, just here, she's little more than a vegetable.
Obviously Hain was decreasing the dosage as she be-
came more and more accustomed to the pain. He was
letting her rot out—but slowly enough to make the
trip without problems. May I ask why, Hain?"
 
"She was from one of the Comworlds. Lived in the
usual beehive and helped work on a big People's Farm.
I mean the dirt jobs—shoveling shit and the like, as
well as painting the buildings, mending fences, and
suchlike. 10 genetically manipulated to be low—she's
a basic worker, a manual laborer, basically mentally
retarded and capable of carrying out simple com-
mands—one at a time—but not of much in the way of
original thought and action. She wasn't even good at,
that work, and they used her as a Party whore. Failed
 
at that, too."
 
"That is a slander of the Corn people!" Vardia pro-
tested vehemently. "Each citizen is here to do a par'
ticular task that needs doing, and is created for that
task. Without people such as she as well as ones like
me the whole society would fall apart."
 
"Would you change Jobs with her?" Brazil asked
 
sarcastically.
 
"Oh, of course not," Vardia responded, oblivious to
the tone. "I'm glad I'm not anything but what I am.
I would be happy at nothing else. Even so, such citi-
zens are essential to the social fabric."
 
"And you say my people have gone that route,"
Ortega said sadly, almost to himself. "But—I would
think the really basic menial stuff would be automated.
A lot of it was in my time."
 
"Oh, no," Vardia protested. "Man's future is with
the soil and with nature. Automation produces social
 
57
 
decay and only that necessary to the maintenance of
equality can be permitted."
 
"I see," Ortega responded dryly. He was silent for
a while, then he turned back to Ham. "But how did
you wind up with the girl? And why hook her on
sponge?"
 
"Occasionally we need a—a sample, as it were.
An example, really. We almost always use such peo-
ple—Comworld folk who will not be missed, who are
never much more than vegetables anyway- We con-
trol most of them, of course. But it's rather tough to
get the stuff into their food, or even to get an audience
with members of a Presidium, but, once you've done
it, you control the entire world—a world of people
programmed to be happy at whatever they're doing
and conditioned from birth to blind obedience to the
Party. Control the queen and you control all the bees
in the hive. I had an audience with a Presidium Mem-
ber on Coriolanus—took three years of hard work to
wangle it, I'll assure you. There are hundreds of ways
to infect someone once you're face-to-face. By that
point, poor Wu Julee would have been in the animal-
istic state from progressively smaller doses. She
would be the threat to show the distinguished Member
what my—er, client, would become if not treated."
 
"Such a thing would not work on my world," Vardia
stated proudly. "A Presidium Member so infected
would simply have you, her, and the Member all at
a Death Factory."
 
Ham laughed. "You people never cease to amaze
me," he chuckled. "You really think your Presidium
members are like you? They're descendants of the
early Party that spread out in past, mostly lost, his-
tory. They proclaimed equality and said they dreamed
of a future Utopia when there would be no govern-
ment, nothing. What they really wouldn't even admit
to themselves was that they loved power—they never
worked in the fields, they never worked at all, except
giving orders and trying out plans and novel experi-
ences. And they loved it! And their children's chil-
dren's children still love it. A planetload of happy,
contented, docile slaves that will do anything com-
manded of them. And when that pain starts, less than
 
58
 
an hour after infection, they will do anything to keep
 
alive. Anything."
 
"Still mighty risky for you, isn't it?" Ortega pointed
out. "What if you're knocked off by an egomaniac de-
spite all?"
 
Ham shrugged. "There are risks in anything. We lose
 
most of our people as they work themselves up. But
all of us are misfits, losers, or people who started at
the bottom of society on the worst of worlds. We
weren't bom to power—we work for it, take risks
for it, earn it. And—the survivors get the spoils."
 
Ortega nodded grimly. "How many—easy, Nate, or
I'll clout you again!—how many worlds do you control
 
now?"
 
Hain shrugged again. "Who knows? I'm not on the
 
Council. Over ten percent—thirty, thirty-five, maybe
•—and growing. And two new colonies are made for
every one we win, so it's an ever-expanding empire.
It'll be that someday—an empire." His eyes took on
a faraway look, a maniacal glow. "A great empire.
Perhaps, eventually, the entire galaxy."
"Ruled by scum," Brazil said sourly.
"By the strongest!" Hain responded. "The cleverest,
the survivors! The people who deserve it!"
 
"I hesitate to let such evil into this world," Ortega
said, "but we have had as bad and worse here. This
world will test you fully, Hain. I think it will ulti-
mately kill you, but that is up to you. Here is where
you start. But there's no sponge here, or other addic-
tives. Even if there were, you'd have fifteen hundred
and sixty different species to try it on, and some of
them are so alien you won't even understand what
they are, why they do what they do, or whether they
do anything. Some will be almost like those back
home. But this place is a madhouse, Hain- It's a
world created by madness, I think, and it will kill
 
you. We'll see."
 
They were silent for a while, Ortega's speech hav-
ing as unsettling an effect on Brazil and Vardia as on
Hain. Suddenly, Brazil broke the silence.
"You said she wasn't lost. Serge. Why not?"
"It has to do with this world and what it does to
people," the snakeman replied. "I will brief you later.
 
59
 
But—not only do you change here, but you also get
back what you've lost. You'll return to perfect health,
Nate, even get back that memory of yours. You'll
even remember things you don't want to remember.
And, you'll be prepared—programmed if you like—
for whatever and wherever you are. Not in the
Comworid sense—what you need. This gives you a
new start, Nate—but there's no rejuve here. This is
a one-shot deal, people—a fresh start.
 
"But you will die here, sooner or later, the span
depending on what you are."
 
They slept on cots provided by Ortega. All were
dead tired, and Brazil was also still smarting from
the knockout punch given him by the great creature
that seemed to be the reincarnation of his past friend.
Hain slept separately from the rest, under lock and
key, in an office the location of which was not told to
the fiery little captain.
 
Ortega woke them all up the next morning. They
assumed it was morning, although they hadn't actually
been outside and, in fact, had no idea what the out-
side looked like on this strange yet somehow familiar
world. An old-style breakfast of what appeared to be
normal hen's eggs, scrambled, sausage, toast, and cof-
fee awaited them, served by the same little cart that
had brought the previous night's supper. Brazil noted
that the mess from flying food had been carefully
cleaned away.
 
Vardia, of course, had trouble with the breakfast.
 
Wu Julee seemed no worse than the night before,
and in no more pain, if, indeed, she was in pain at all.
With a lot of coaxing from Brazil she managed to eat
some of the breakfast.
 
After they had finished and had returned the trays
to the little cart, which hummed away on small tires
with no apparent guidance. Serge Ortega pressed an-
other button on his little hidden console, causing a
screen to drop down at his right.
 
"Time, unfortunately, is limited here—both for you
and, because I have a great many other duties, for me
as well. When I got dropped into Zone long ago, I had
only a brief orientation before I was thrown out on
 
60
 
my ass. I wanted to give you a little bit more, to
make it a little easier on you than it was for me."
 
"Just how long ago did you drop here, Citizen
Ortega?" Vardia asked.
 
"Well, hard to say. Well over seventy standard
years—they still use the same years, don't they,
Nate?" Brazil nodded affirmatively, and Ortega con-
tinued.
 
"It was during a low-colonist period, and I was
gunrunning to a placer strike on some asteroids out
beyond Sirius. I dumped them fine, avoided all the
cops, but ran into some damned conduit out in the
middle of deep space, before I could go FTL or any-
thing- I'm told that most—maybe a majority—of the
gates are on planets, and maybe this was one, too, at
one time. Maybe all those asteroids were once a
Markovian planet that broke up for some reason."
 
"How long has this place—this planet—been here,
Serge?" Brazil asked-
 
"Nobody knows. Longer than people were people,
Nate. A coupl'a million years, it appears. Since the
oldest folk in the planet's oldest race are only four
hundred—and they're at death's door—the ancient his-
tory of the place is as shrouded in mystery and my-
thology as our own. You see, all this involves the
Markovians—any of you know about them?"
 
"Nobody knows much," Brazil replied. "Some sort
of super race that ran its planets from brains beneath
the surface and died out suddenly."
 
"That's about it," Ortega acknowledged. "They
flourished, scientists here think, between two and five
million years ago. And they were galaxy-wide, Nate!
Maybe even more. Hard to say, but we have a lot of
folk dropping through whose knowledge of the universe
doesn't match anything we humans know. And that's
the weirdest thing—a hell of a lot of them are close
to human-1*
 
"In what way do you mean that. Serge?" Brazil
asked. "Us-human or you-human?"
 
Ortega laughed. "Both. Humanoid would perhaps
be a better term. Well, first let me show you what
you're in for, and I'll add the rest as I go along."
 
The snakeman dimmed the lights, and a map show-
 
61
 
ing two hemispheres flicked on the screen. It looked
like a standard planetary map, but the two circles
were filled with hexagons from pole to pole.
 
"The Markovians," Ortega began, "who were nutty
over the number six, built this world. We don't know
why or how, but we do know what. Each of their
worlds had at least one gate of the kind that trans-
ported you here. You are now at the South Polar Zone,
which doesn't show accurately here for obvious rea-
sons. All carbon-based life comes here, and all of the
hexes north of us to that thick equatorial line are
carbon-based or could live in a carbon-based environ-
ment. The Mechs of Hex Three Sixty-seven, for ex-
ample, aren't carbon-based, but you could live in their
hex."
 
"So the North Polar Zone takes care of the biologi-
cally exotic, then?" Hain asked.
 
Ortega nodded. "Yes, there are the true aliens, be-
ings with which we have literally nothing in common.
Their hexes run down to the equator on the north
hemisphere."
 
"Is that black band at the equator just a map di-
viding line or is it something else?" Vardia asked
curiously.
 
"No, that's not just on the map," Ortega told her,
"and you were sharp to notice it. It is—well, the best
I can describe it is that it's a sheer wall, opaque and
several kilometers high. You can't really see it until
you're at it, outside the border of the last hex by a
hair. You can't get past it, and you can't fly over it or
anything. It's just, well, there. We have some theories
about it, of course, the best one being that it's the ex-
posed part of the Markovian brain that is, it seems,
of the entire core of this planet- The old name for it
seems to be the Well of Souls—so it probably is just
that. There's an old adage around here: 'Until mid-
night at the Well of Souls,' which you'll probably hear.
It's just an old ritual saying now, although it may have
had some real meaning in the distant past of prehis-
tory. Hell, if that's the Well of Souls, then it's always
midnight somewhere!"
 
"What do the hexagons represent?" Hain asked.
 
"Well, there are fifteen hundred and sixty of them
 
62
 
on the planet," Ortega replied. "Nobody knows the
reason for that, either, but at least the figure only has
one six in it. Each hex is identical in size—each one
of the six sides is just a shade under three hundred
fifty-five kilometers, and they're a shade under six
hundred fifteen kilometers across. Needless to say
they didn't use our form of measurements when they
built the place, and we don't know what system they
had, but that'll give you an idea in our terms."
"But what's in the hexes?" Brazil prodded.
"Well, you could call them nations with borders,"
Ortega replied, "but that would be understating things.
Each is a self-contained biosphere for a particular
life form—and for associated lower life forms. They
are all maintained by the Markovian brain, and each
is also maintained at a given technological level. The
social level is left to whatever the inhabitants can de-
velop or want to have, so you have everything from
monarchies to dictatorships to anarchies out there."
 
"What do you mean technological level?" Brazil
asked him. "Do you mean that there are places where
there are machines and places where there are not?"
 
"Well, yes, that, of course," Ortega affirmed.
"But, well, you can only get to the level of technology
your resources allow within the hex. Anything beyond
it just won't work, like Hain's pistol yesterday."
 
"It seems to me that you would have been popu-
lated to death here," Brazil commented. "After all, .1
assume all creatures reproduce here—and then the
Markovian brains keep shuttling people here as well."
 
"That just doesn't happen," Ortega replied. "For
one thing, as I said, people can die here—and do.
Some hexes have very cheap life, some species live a
comparatively short time. Reproductive rates are in
accordance with this death rate. If populations seem
to be rising too high, and natural factors—like catas-
trophes, which can happen here, or wars, which also
can happen, although they are not terribly common and
usually localized—don't reduce the numbers, .well,
most of the next batch is simply born sexually normal
in every way yet sterile, with just a very small num-
ber able to keep the breed going. When attrition takes
its toll, the species goes back to being born fertile.
 
63
 
Actually the population's pretty stable in each hex—
from a low of about twenty thousand to a high of over
a million.
 
"As for Entries like you—well, the Markovians
were extensive, as I said, but many of their old brains
are dead and some of the gateways are closed for-
ever for one reason or another. Others are so well
disguised that a one-in-a-trillion blunder uke mine is
needed to find the entrance. We get no more than a
hundred or so newcomers a year, all told. We have a
trip alarm when the Well is activated and some of us
take turns on a daily basis answering the alarms.
Sheer luck I ran into you, but I take a lot of turns.
Some of the folks here don't really like newcomers
and don't treat them right, so I take their duty and
they owe me."
 
"There are representatives of all the Southern
Hemisphere races here, then?" Vardia asked.
 
The snakeman nodded. "Most of them. Zone's really
a sort of embassy station. Distances are huge, travel
is long here, and so here at Zone representatives of all
of us can meet and talk over mutual problems. The
Gate—which we'll get to presently—will zip me back
home in an instant, although, curse it, it won't zip
anybody back and forth except from here to his own
hex. Oh, yes, there's a special chamber for Northern-
ers here and one for us up at the North Zone just in
case we have to talk—which is seldom. They occa-
sionally have something we are short of, or our
scientists and theirs want to compare notes, or some-
such. But they are so different from us that that's
rare."
 
Brazil wore a strangely fixed expression as he said,
"Serge, you've spelled out the world as much as you
can, but you've omitted one fact I think I can guess
—how did a little Latin shrimp like you become a
six-armed walrus-snake."
 
Ortega's expression was one of resignation. "I
thought it would be obvious. When you go out the
Gate the first time, the brain will decide which hex
could stand a person or four and that's what you will
become. You will, of course, also wind up in the
proper hex."
 
64
 
"And then what?" Hain asked nervously.
"Well, there's a period of adjustment, of course. I
went through the Gate the way Nate remembers me,
and came out in the land of the Uliks looking like this.
It took me a little while to get used to things, and
longer for everything to sort itself out in my head, but,
well, the change also produces an adjustment. I found
I knew the language, at least all the analogues to my
old one, and began to feel more and more comfortable
in my new physical role. I became a Ulik, Nate, while
still being me. Now I can hardly remember what it was
like to be anything else, really. Oh, academically, sure
—my mind was never clearer. But you are the aliens-
now."
 
There was a long silence as they digested the infor-
mation. Finally, Brazil broke it and asked, "But, Serge,
if there are seven hundred and eighty life forms with
compatible biospheres, why hasn't there been a cosmo-
politanism here in the South? I mean, why is every-
body stuck in his own little area?"
 
"Oh, there is some mingling," Ortega replied. "Some
hexes have been combined, some not. Mostly, though,
people stick to their own areas because each one is dif-
ferent. Besides, people have never liked other people
who were different. Humanity—ours and everybody
else's, apparently—has always found even slight pre-
texts to hate other groups. Color, language, funny-
shaped noses, religion, or anything else. Many wars
were fought here at various times, and wholesale
slaughter took place. Such things are rare now—every-
body loses. So, mostly, everybody sticks to his own hex
and minds his own business. Besides, there's the factor
of commonality, too. Could you really be good bud-
dies with a three-meter-tall hairy spider that ate live
flesh, even if it also played chess and loved orchestral
music? And—could a society based on high technology
succeed in capturing and subjugating a hex where none
of its technology worked? A balance is kind of main-
tained that way—technological hexes trade for needed
things like food with nontechnological farm hexes
where society is anarchistic and only swords will work."
 
Vardia looked up, eyes bright, at the mention of
swords. She still had hers.
 
65
 
"And, of course, in some hexes there are some pretty
good sorcerers—and their spells work!" Ortega warned.
 
"Oh, come on," Hain said disgustedly. "I am willing
to believe in a lot—but magic? Nonsense!"
 
"All magic means is a line between knowledge and
ignorance," Ortega responded. "A magician is someone
who can do something you don't know how to do. All
technology, for example, is magic to a primitive. Just
remember, this is an old world, and its people are dif-
ferent from anything in your experience. If you make
the mistake—any of you!—of applying your own stand-
ards, your own rules, your own prejudices to any of it,
it will get you."
 
"Can you brief me on the general political situation,
Serge?" Brazil requesied. "I'd tike to know a lot more
before going out there."
 
"Nate, I couldn't do it in a million years. Like any
planet with a huge number of countries and social sys-
tems, everything's in a constant state of flux. Condi-
tions change, and so do rulers. You'll have to learn
things as you go along. I can only caution that there is
a lot of petty warfare and a lot of big stuff that would
break out if one side could figure out a way to do it.
One general a thousand years or so ago took over sixty
hexes. But he was undone in the end by the necessity
for long supply lines and by his inability to conquer
several incompatible hexes in his backneld that even-
tually were able to slice him up. The lesson's been
well learned. Things are done more by crook than
hook here now."
 
Hain's eyes brightened. "My game!" he whispered.
 
"And now," Ortega concluded, "you must go. I can-
not keep you here more than a day and justify the de-
lay to my government. You cannot put off leaving
indefinitely in any case."
 
"But there are many more questions that must be
answered!" Vardia protested. "Climate, seasons, thou-
sands of needed details!"
 
"As for the climate, it varies from hex to hex but
has no relationship to geographical position," Ortega
told her. "The climate is maintained in each case by
the brain- Daylight is exactly fifty percent of each full
day anywhere on the globe. Days are within a few
 
66
 
hours of standard, so that's fourteen and an eighth
standard hours of day and the same of night. The axis
is straight up—no tilt at all. But it will vary artificially.
But—see! I could go on forever and you'd never know
enough. It is time!"
 
"And suppose I refuse?" Vardia challenged, raising
her sword.
 
With that same lightning-quick movement that had
marked the previous day's fight, Ortega's snake body
uncoiled like a tightly wound spring, snatched the
sword, and was back behind the desk in less than half
a second. He looked at her sadly. "You have no choice
at all," he said quietly. "Will you all now come with
me?"
 
They followed the Ulik ambassador reluctantly but
resigned. He led them again down that great, winding
corridor through which they had entered the day be-
fore, and it seemed to them all that their walk would
never end.
 
Finally, after what was about half an hour, they
found that the corridor opened into a large room.
Three sides were bare, plastic-like walls similar to
those in Ortega's office but without any pattern. The
fourth looked like a wall of absolute black.
 
"That's the Gate," Ortega told them, gesturing to
the black wall. "We use it to go back and forth be-
tween our own hexes and Zone, and you will use it to
be assigned. Please don't be afraid. The Gate will not
alter your personality; and, after the adjustment pe-
riod, you will find that you are even better, mentally,
than you were. For the little girl, here, passage through
will mean the restoration of normality, cure of the ad-
diction, and a correction of whatever imbalances they
used to limit her IQ and abilities. Of course, she may
still be a rather dull farm worker, but in no event will
she be worse off than she was before she was addicted."
 
None of them rushed into the Gate.
 
Finally, Ortega prodded them. "The doorway be-
hind you is closed. No one, not even I, may re'enter
Zone until he first goes to a hex. That's the way the
system works."
 
"I'll go first," Brazil said suddenly, and he took a
 
67
 
step toward the Gate. He felt a great hand on his
shoulder that stopped him.
 
"No, Nate, not now," Ortega almost whispered to
him. "Last." Brazil was puzzled, but realized the in-
tent. The ambassador had something else to say to him
without the others hearing. Brazil nodded and turned
 
to Hain.
 
"How about you, Hain? Or should I go at you again?
We're not in the embassy now."
 
"You caught me by surprise that time. Captain,"
Hain replied with the old sneer. "But if you stop and
think, you'll know I could break you in pieces. Am-
bassador Ortega saved your life back there, not mine.
Yet, I will go. My future is out there." And, with that,
Hain strode confidently to the blackness and, without
hesitation, stepped into it.
 
The darkness seemed to swallow him up the moment
he entered. There was no other visible effect.
 
Vardia and Wu Julee each stood solidly, not moving
from their places near the entrance.
 
Ortega turned and took Wu Julee's left arm with one
of his, urging her on across the room to the dark wall.
She didn't seem to protest until she was very near the
darkness. Then, suddenly, she stopped and screamed,
"No! No!" Her face turned and looked pleadingly at
Brazil.
 
"Go ahead," he urged her gently, but she broke free
ofOrtega's gentle grip and ran to the captain.
 
Brazil looked into her eyes with a gentle pity that
was almost tearing him apart inside.
 
"You must go," he told her. "You must go. I will
find you."
 
Still she didn't budge, but tightened her grip on him.
Suddenly she was yanked from him with such force
and speed that the movement knocked Brazil to the
ground. Ortega pulled her away and tossed her into the
blackness in one quick motion.
 
She screamed, but the scream stopped as the black-
ness absorbed her, so abrupt that it was like a record-
ing suddenly stopped in midsound.
 
"This business is a bitch sometimes," Ortega re-
68
 
marked glumly. He turned and looked at Brazil, who
was picking himself up off the floor. "You all right?"
 
"Yeah," Brazil replied, then looked into the crea-
ture's sad eyes. "I understand, Serge," he said softly.
Then, as if to break the mood, his tone took on that of
mock anger: "But if you're going to keep beating the
hell out of me I'm leaving here no matter what!"
 
His tone almost broke through the snakeman's mel-
ancholy, and Ortega managed a chuckle. He put his
right upper arm out and clasped Brazil to him, and
there were tears in his eyes. "God!" the snakeman ex-
claimed. "How can the greatness in people be so
unloved?"
 
Suddenly he relaxed and turned his gaze to Vardia,
who had remained motionless throughout the whole
episode.
 
Brazil guessed what must be going through her mind
now. Raised by an all-embracing state, trained and
bred to a particular function, she was simply not pro-
grammed for such a disruption of her orderly, planned
life. Every day for her had always been a certainty,
and she was secure in the knowledge of that sameness
and content with the belief that she was performing a
useful task.
 
Now she was, for the first time, on her own.
 
Brazil thought for a moment, then hit upon what he
hoped was a solution.
 
"Vardia," he said in his best command voice, "we
set out to do a job when we landed on Dalgonia. That
trail has led us here to this spot- Now it leads through
there. There are seven bodies back on Dalgonia,
Vardia. Seven, including at least one of your own peo-
ple. There is still a duty for you to perform."
 
She was breathing hard, the only sign of inner men-
tal torment. Finally, she turned and faced the other
two, then ran at the blackness of the Gate.
 
And was gone.
 
Brazil and Ortega were alone in the room-
 
*'What was that about seven bodies, Nate?" the
snakeman asked.
 
Brazil recounted the story of the mysterious distress
signal, the mass murder on Dalgonia, and the signs of
the two who had vanished as they had.
 
69
 
Ortega's expression was extremely grave. "I wish I
had known of this ten weeks ago when those two came
through here. It would have changed things a great
 
deal in Council."
 
Brazil's eyebrows rose. "You know them, then?"
Ortega nodded. "Yes, I know them. I didn't do the
processing, but I watched the recordings of their ar-
rival over and over- There was a great deal of debate
about them before they went through the Gate."
"Who were they? What was their story?"
"Well, they came through together, and one of them
was still trying to kill the other on the Well itself when
Gre'aton—he's a Type Six Twenty-two, looks kind of
like a giant locust—put a stop to it. A few of the more
human-looking boys took over, splitting them up so
 
they didn't see each other again.
 
"Each of them told a fantastic story, about how he
and he alone had discovered some sort of mathemati-
cal relationship used by the Markovian brains. Each
claimed that everything in the universe was a series of
preset mathematical relationships determined by a
master Markovian brain. When they were given the
standard briefing, both became terribly excited, each
convinced that the Well World was the master brain
and that they could somehow communicate with it,
maybe even run it. Each claimed the other had stolen
his discovery, tried to kill the other, and was here to
establish himself as god. Of course, each claimed that
he was trying to stop the other from doing so."
 
"Did you believe them?"
 
"They were mighty convincing. We used some of the
standard lie-detection stuff and tried some telepathy
using one of the North boys, and the results were al-
ways the same."
 
"And?" Brazil prompted.
 
"As far as we were able to determine—and we
don't have the methods for a really scientific study—
 
they were both telling the truth."
 
"Whew. You mean they're psychos through and
 
through?"
 
Ortega was solemn. "No, each truly believes he dis-
covered what the code was, and each truly believes the
 
70
 
other stole it, and each truly believes that he'd be good
for godhead and the other would be horrible."
 
"Do you really believe that godhead stuff?" Brazil
 
asked.
 
Ortega turned all six arms into a giant shrug. "Who
knows? A number of folk here have similar ideas, but
no one's ever been able to do anything about them. We
called a Council—a full Council, with over twelve hun-
dred ambassadors participating. All were given the
facts. Everything was debated.
 
"The idea explains a lot, of course. All magic, for
example. But it is so esoteric. And, as it was pointed
out by some of our mathematically minded folk, even
if true it probably didn't mean anything, since no one
could change the brain anyway. In the end, even
though a large number of members voted to kill them,
the majority voted to let them through."
 
"How did you vote. Serge?" Brazil asked.
 
"I voted to kill them, Nate. They are both maniacs,
and both are possessed of genius. Each believed he
could do what he set out to do, and both seemed to be-
lieve that it was destiny that, so soon after the discov-
ery, they were brought here."
 
"More to the point, do you believe it. Serge?"
 
"I do," the giant replied gravely. "Right now, I think
those two are the most dangerous beings in the entire
universe. And—more to the point—I think that one of
them, I can't tell which, has a chance of succeeding."
 
"What are their names. Serge, and their back-
grounds?"
 
Ortega's eyes brightened. "So God in His infinite
wisdom allows mercy after all! You do want to get
them, and God has sent you to us for that purpose!"
 
Brazil thought for a moment. "Serge, ever hear of a
Markovian brain actually, literally, trapping people by
sending out false signals or the like?"
 
Ortega thought for a moment. "No," he replied, "as
far as I know it's always accident or blunder. That's
why so few come. Now do you see what I mean about
God sending you to me?"
 
"Somebody sure did, anyway," Brazil acknowledged
dryly. "I wish I could see those films and learn a lot
 
71
 
about them before I tried to find two invisible needles
 
in a planet-sized haystack."
 
"You can," Ortega assured him. "I have all the ma-
terial back in my office."
 
Brazil's mouth was agape. "But you told us there
 
was no way back!"
 
Ortega shrugged monstrously again. "I lied," he said.
 
Several hours later Brazil learned as much as he was
going to from the recordings, testimony, and arguments
 
of the Council committees.
 
"So can you give me any leads on this Skander and
 
Vamett? Where are they now? And what?"
 
"Newcomers are pretty conspicuous around here,
since there are so few of them and they are so obvi-
ous," Ortega replied. "And, yet, I can give you noth-
ing on either. The planet seems to have swallowed
 
them up."
 
"Isn't that unusual?" Brazil asked. "Or, worse, sus-
picious?"
 
"I see what you mean. The whole planet saw what
 
you saw and heard what you heard. They could have
 
some natural allies."
 
"Yeah, that's what I'm most concerned about," Bra-
zil said bluntly- "The odds are that there's a monstrous
race going on here, and that this place is the soul of
reason compared to what everything we know would
 
become if the wrong side was to win."
 
"They could both be dead," Ortega suggested hope-
fully.
 
Brazil shook his head in a violent negative. "Uh-uh.
 
Not these boys. They're clever and they're nasty.
Skander's almost the archetypal mad scientist, and
Varnett's even worse—a renegade, mob-class Corn. At
least one of them will make it, and he'll have some
 
way to dump his allies afterward."
 
"You'll have the help of all the hexes who voted to
 
kill them," Ortega pointed out.
 
"Sure, Serge, and I'll use that when I have to. But
this is really a lone-wolf operation and you know it.
That Council was politically very slick. They could
count. Even a hex voting to kill them knew they
wouldn't be killed—so what was the use of their vote?
 
72
 
Getting there might take help—but once there, every
friend I have on this world will seek godhead, and
never mind that I don't know how to talk to the brain.
No, Serge, I have to kill both of them, absolutely, ir-
revocably, and as quickly as possible."
 
"Getting where might take help?" Ortega asked,
 
puzzled.
 
"To the Well of Souls, of course," Brazil replied
 
evenly. "And before midnight."
 
Now it was Onega's turn to look stunned. "But
that's just an old saying, like I said before—"
 
"It's the answer. Serge," Brazil asserted strongly.
"It's just that nobody has been able to decipher the
code and make use of it."
 
"There is no answer to that. It makes no real sense!"
 
"Sure it does!" Brazil told him. "It's the answer to
a monstrous question, and the key to the most mon-
strous of threats. I saw Skander's and Vamett's eyes
light up when they first heard the phrase, Serge. They
seized on it!"
 
"But what's the question?" Ortega asked bewil-
 
deredly.
 
"That's what I don't know yet," Brazil replied,
pointing his finger at the Ulik animatedly. "But they
thought it was the answer, and they both think they
can figure it out. If they can, I can.
 
"Look, Serge, why was this world built? No, not
the brain; we'll accept that as bringing some sort of
stability to the universe. In fact, if they're right, we're
all just figments of some dead Markovian's imagina-
tion. No, why all this? The Well, the hexes, the civili-
zations? If I can answer that, I can answer the bigger
question! And I'll find out!" Brazil exclaimed ex-
citedly, half-rising from his chair.
 
"How can you be so sure?" Ortega responded du-
biously.
 
"Because someone—or something—wants me to!"
Brazil continued in the same excited tone. "That's
why I was lured here! That's why I'm here at all,
Serge! That's what makes even the timing! Even-now
they've got a ten-week start! You, yourself, said as
much back at the Gate!"
 
73
 
Ortega shook his head glumly. "That was Just my
old Latin soul coming forth, Nate. I've been consort-
ing with Jesuits again—yes, we have several here, from
the old missionary days, came in a single ship and are
out trying to convert the heathen. But, be reasonable,
man! You never would have found Dalgonia were it
not for the detour. You wouldn't have detoured except
for Wu Julee's presence on your ship, and that could
hardly have been planned, let alone your act of
 
mercy."
 
"I think it was planned. Serge," Brazil said evenly.
 
"I think I've been conned all along. I don't know how,
or by whom, or for what purpose, but I've been had!"
"I don't see how," Ortega responded, "but, even if
 
so, how will you ever know?"
 
"1*11 know," Brazil said in a tone that was both firm
and somewhat frightening. "I'll know at midnight at
the Well of Souls."
 
They stood once again at the Gate, this time for
 
the last time.
 
"It's agreed, then," Ortega said to him. "As soon
 
as you pass through and get oriented, you announce
yourself to the local ruler. All of them will have been
notified of your coming through, with instructions to
render any assistance. But at least one of them is sure
to be in league with your enemies, Nate! Are you
 
sure? What if you are swallowed up?**
 
"I won't be. Serge," Brazil replied calmly. "Chess-
players don't sacrifice their queens early in the game."
 
Ortega gave one last massive shrug. "Believe what
you wish—but, be careful, my old friend. If they get
 
you, I shall avenge your death."
 
Brazil smiled, then looked at the Gate. "Is it best
 
to run at it, walk into it, or what?" he asked.
 
"Doesn't matter," Ortega told him. "You'll wake
up as if coming out of a long sleep, anyway. May you
 
wake up a Ulik!"
 
Brazil smiled, but kept his thoughts on being a
 
seven-meter, six-armed walrus-snake to himself. He
walked over to the gate, then turned for one last look
 
at his transformed old friend.
 
"I hope I wake up at all. Serge," he said quietly.
 
74
 
"Go with God, you ancient heathen," Ortega said.
"I'll be damned," Brazil muttered, half to himself.
"After all these years I might wake up a Gentile."
And, with that, he stepped through the Gate.
And in the darkness he dreamed.
 
He was on a giant chessboard, that stretched off
in all directions. Seven pawns were down on his side
—the white side. They looked like scorched and
frozen bodies, lying on blackened cots.
 
Through the mostly faceless field of black pieces,
he could see Skander and Vamett, queen and king.
 
Skander was a queen in royal robes, with a scepter
in hand. The queen looked around, but could not spot
the king. There was Wu Julee, a pawn, out front, and
Vardia, a knight with bright sword nashing-
 
Ortega, a bishop, glided by quickly, and was
struck by a black rook with the face of Datham Hain.
 
The queen glided quickly, trying not to trip over
her long skirts, toward Hain, the scepter ready to
strike that ugly, pig face, when suddenly Ortega re-
appeared and pushed him away.
 
"The black royal family has escaped. Your High-
ness!" Onega's voice shouted. "They are heading for
the Well of Souls!"
 
The queen looked around, but there was no trace
of the enemy's major pieces. Anywhere.
 
"But where is the Well of Souls?" screamed the
queen. "I cannot get to the king without knowing!"
 
A sudden burst of overwhelming, cosmic laughter
came from beyond the board. It was giant, hollow,
and all embracing. A giant hand gripped the queen
and moved it far away to the other side of the board.
"Here they are!" the great voice said mockingly.
 
The queen looked around and screamed in terror.
The king with Skander's face was but one square
right, and the queen with Vamett's face was one
square up.
 
"Our move!" they both said, and laughed mania-
cally.
 
Brazil awoke-
He got quickly to his feet. Odd, he thought curi-
 
75
 
ously. Fm more wide awake, feeling better, head
 
clearer than I can ever remember.
 
Quickly he examined his body to see what he was.
With a shock he looked up around him, to the shores
of a nearby lake. There were animals there, and
 
others of his kind.
 
"Well HI be damned!" he said aloud. "Of course!
 
That had to be the answer to the first question! I
should have figured it out in Serge's office!"
Sometimes the obvious needed to be belabored.
Considering how primitive the place was, Brazil
worriedly set out to see if he could find the Zone Gate.
 
Czill—Spring
 
(Enter Vardia Dipio 1261, Asleep)
 
SHE WAS NEVER CERTAIN WHY SHE HAD FINALLY
 
stepped through the Gate. Perhaps doing so was an
acceptance of inevitability, perhaps an obedience to
authority that was a part of her conditioning.
 
There were patterns of color, running in and out,
pulsating in a rhythmic, cosmic heartbeat: yellows,
greens, reds, blues—all forming kaleidoscopic patterns,
a mechanical ringing sound accompanying the pulses
in an odd symphonic monotone.
 
Then, quite suddenly, she awoke.
 
She was on a lush savanna, tall grasses of green
and gold stretching out to low foothills in the distance.
Some trees, reminiscent of gum trees, dotted the plain,
with odd growths that looked like barren stubs of
what once had been taller trees showing in some num-
bers in the distance.
 
With a start, she realized that the stubby trees were
 
moving. They moved in a syncopated rhythm that was
most strange. The trunks were actually legs, she re-
alized, and it seemed as if they were all moving in
great strides, yet were somehow arrested. It was like
 
76
 
watching a track meet in slow motion. That was de-
ceptive, though; the slower motion was apparently only
an illusion, and as she watched, some of them covered
pretty good distances in no time.
 
They all seem to have something to do or some-
place to go, she thought to herself. Purpose means
some sort of civilization, and I need to find out where
I am and what place this is before I can get my own
purpose clear.
 
She started toward the distant forms.
 
And suddenly stopped as she caught a glimpse of
her own body.
 
She looked down at herself in wonder.
 
She was a sort of light green, her skin a smooth,
vinelike texture. Her legs were thick and yet long and
rubbery, without an apparent Joint. The trunk of her
body showed no signs of breasts or of a vaginal cavity;
 
and though her feet were flat bases, her arms seemed
to be of the same nature as her legs, only thinner,
ending as tentacles rather than as hands. Another,
shorter tentacle grew out of the main arm about ten
centimeters from its tip. A thumb, perhaps?
 
She found that the rubbery arms worked well
either way, being pliant and without apparent Joint
or bone, and she felt her smooth backside. No rectum,
either, she found.
 
She ran her arm over her face. A wide slit was
no doubt the mouth, yet it opened only a tiny frac-
tion. The nose appeared to be a single, fixed, hard
hole above the mouth. Growing out of the top of her
head was something thin, tough, and about the size
of a mortarboard, although of irregular shape.
 
What have I become? she asked herself, feeling fear
bordering on panic.
 
Slowly she tried to regain control of herself. Taking
deep breaths had always helped, but she found she
couldn't even do that. She was breathing, all right,
she could sense that—but that nostril took in only a
very tiny part of the air.
 
She realized it was primarily a sensitive olfactory
organ; she was breathing by involuntary muscle ac-
tions through the pores in her smooth, green skin.
 
After a while her panic seemed to subside, and she
 
77
 
considered what to do. The distant shapes were still
going about their business, she saw. She seemed to be
on a road of some sort.
 
No matter what, she had to contact those creatures
and find out just what was happening. She again
started for the figures and found, with some surprise,
that she covered the distance—almost a kilometer
through the tall grass—in a much shorter time than
she would have expected.
 
It was a road, she saw—a dirt track, really, but
wide and made up of reddish-brown soil.
 
The creatures using it paid her no attention what-
soever, but she studied them intently. They were like
herself, she knew. Those things she couldn't discover
from self-examination were now apparent: two large,
round, yellow eyes with black pupils, apparently lid-
less. She suddenly realized that she hadn't been blink-
ing her own eyes, and could not,
 
The thing growing out of her head proved to be a
single large leaf of irregular shape—no two were
alike- The stalk was thick and very short. Its color
was a much deeper green than the body and it had an
almost waxy texture.
 
Not knowing how to talk to them, and almost afraid
to try, she decided to follow the road. It must go
•someplace, she told herself. It really didn't matter
which direction—one was as good as the other.
 
She walked onto the road and set off toward the
low hills to her left. The road really wasn't as crowded
as she had thought, but at least a dozen—people?—
were on the road ahead of her. She gained on a pair,
and as she did she became aware that they were talk-
ing. The sounds were musical, yet she discovered
that she could almost make out what was being said.
As she closed to within three or four meters of the
pair, she slowed, aware now that she could understand
the strange, whispering singsong.
 
"... got into the Bla'ahaliagan spirit-strata stuff,
and can't even be talked to these days. If the Blessed
Elder doesn't get off that crap pretty soon I'm going to
transfer over to cataloging."
 
"Hmmmm. . . . Dull stuff but I can see your point,"
the other sympathized. "Crindel got stuck under
 
78
 
Elder Mudiul on some esoteric primitive game an
Entry dropped on us ybout three hundred years ago.
Seems it has almost infinite patterns after the first few
moves, and there was this project to teach it to a com-
puter. Couldn't be done. Weird stuff. Almost went off
to the Meditations and rotted, Crindel did."
 
"How'd the Worthy get out of it?" the first one
asked.
 
"Mudiul got a virus and it got the Elder quaran-
tined for nine years," chortled the other. "By the time
the Worthy got out the Board had closed down the
project and redistributed the staff. The Old One's got
off on whether rocks have souls, and that ought to
keep the Worthy out of harm's way until rot wipes the
Worthy."
 
They went on like that for some time, and the con-
versation did little to clear up anything in Vardia's
mind. About the only useful fact that came out of
the discussion was the obvious limits of third-person-
singular pronouns in the language.
 
She noticed that both wore "old chains around their
necks as their only adornment of any kind, but, try-
ing not to be conspicuous, she couldn't see what was
fastened to them.
 
They had been walking for some time now, and
several other things came into her mind- First, the
locals seemed to live in communities. She passed
groups of them here and there, their numbers ranging
from three or four to several dozen. Yet there were
no signs of buildings. The ^roupin^s seemed to be
like camp circles, but without the fire. Occasionally
she could glimpse mv^ternus prtifact1; here and there
in the midst of the groups, but nothing large enough
to stand out. Some groups seemed to be singing, some
dancing, some both, v/hile others were engaged in
animated conversations so complex pnd esoteric that
they melded into a tuneful chatter like a blending of
insects.
 
Also, she was aware very suddenly, she felt neither
tired nor hunsry- That was ?. "ood thing, she reflected,
since she had no idea what these people ate.
 
She continued to think in her own, old language,
 
79
 
but had no trouble understanding others with their
singsong chirping so alien to her.
 
The two she had been following took a side path
down toward a large grouping that was gathered in a
particularly attractive spot. It was a pastoral setting
of multicolored flowers and bushes alongside a fast-
flowing stream.
 
She stopped at the junction of the main road and
the access trail to the lake, partially blocking the side
trail. Someone came up behind her and brushed past
her, making her conscious of her blocking.
 
"I'm sorry," she said automatically and stepped to
one side.
 
"That's all right," the other replied and continued
on.
 
It was almost a full minute before she realized that
she had spoken and been understood!
 
She hurried after the being who had spoken, now
far ahead.
 
"Wait! Please!'" she called after the creature. "I
need your help!"
 
The other stopped and turned, a puzzled expres-
sion on it.
 
"What seems to be the trouble?" the creature asked
as she came up to him.
 
"I—I am lost and confused," she blurted out to the
other. "I have just—just become one of you, and I
don't know where I am or what I'm supposed to do.'*
 
Realization hit the other. "A new Entry! Well, well!
We haven't had an Entry in Czill in my lifetime! Well,
of course you're confused. Come! You shall sleep with
us tonight and you will tell us of your origin and we'll
tell you of Czill," it said eagerly, like a child with a
new toy. "Come!"
 
She followed the creature down to the grove. It
moved very quickly, and eagerly gathered its com-
panions as fast as possible, excitedly telling them that
they had an Entry in Riverbend, as the camp was
apparently called.
 
Vardia took all the attention nervously, still bashful
and unsure of herself.
 
They gathered around asking questions by the hun-
dreds, all at once, each one canceling out the others
RO
 
in the general din. Finally, one with a particularly
strong voice appealed for quiet over the noise, and
after some work, got it.
 
"Take it easy!" it shouted, making canning ges-
tures. "Can't you see the poor one's scared to death?
Wouldn't you be if, say, you went to sleep this night
and woke up a Pia?" Satisfied, it turned to Vardia
and said gently, "How long have you been in Czill?"
 
"I—I have just arrived," she told them. "You are
the first persons I've talked to. I wasn't even—well,
I wasn't sure how."
 
"Well, you've fallen into the worst pack of jabbering
conversationalists," the one with the loud voice said,
amusement in its tone. "I am Brouder, and I will not
try to introduce everyone else here. We'll likely draw
a bigger and bigger crowd as word of you gets
around."
 
It was interesting, she thought, that such weird
whistlings and clickings should be instantly translated
in her mind to their Confederacy equivalents. The
creature's name was not Brouder, of course—it was
a short whistle, five clicks, a long whistle, and a
descending series of clicks. Yet that was what the
name said in her mind, and it seemed to work in
reverse as well.
 
"I am Vardia Dipio Twelve Sixty-one," she told
them, "from Nueva Albion."
 
"A Comworlder!" someone's voice exclaimed. "No
wonder it wound up here!"
 
"Pay the critics no mind, Vardia," Brouder told
her. "They're just showing off their education." That
last was said with a great deal of mysterious sar-
casm.
 
"What did you do before you came here?" some-
one asked.
 
"My job?" Vardia responded. "Why, I was a dip-
lomatic courier between Nueva Albion and Coriola-
nus."
 
"See?" Brouder snorted. "An educated one!"
 
"I'll still bet the Apprentice can't read!" called
out that one in the back.
 
"Forget the comments," Brouder urged her with
a wave of its tentacle. "We're really a friendly group-
 
81
 
I was—is something the matter?" it asked suddenly.
 
"Feeling dizzy," she replied, the ground and crowd
suddenly reeling a bit. She reached out to steady her-
self on Brouder. "Funny," she muttered. "So sudden."
 
"It comes on like that," Brouder replied. "I should
have thought of it. Come on, I'll help you down to
the stream."
 
It took her down to the rushing water, which had
a strangely soothing effect on her. It walked her
into the water.
 
"Just stand here a few minutes," the Czillian told
her. "Come back up when you feel better."
 
Automatically, she found, something like tendrils
were coming out of small cavities in her feet and were
digging into the shallow riverbed. She drank in the
cool water through them, and the dizziness and faint-
ness seemed to evaporate.
 
She looked at the riverbank and saw that they
were all watching her, a line of fifteen or twenty
light-green, sexless creatures with staring eyes and
floppy leaves on their heads. Feeling suddenly excel-
lent once more, she retracted her tendrils and walked
stiffly back to the bank.
 
"Feel all right now?" Brouder asked. "It was stupid
of us—you naturally wouldn't have had much water
in you. You're the first Entry in some time, and the
first one ever for us. Please, if you feel in the least
bit strange or ill, let us know. We take so much for
granted."
 
The concern in its voice was genuine, she knew,
and she took comfort from it. Ail of them had looked
concerned when she had been out in the river.
She really felt she was among friends now.
"Will you answer some of my questions, then?"
she asked them.
 
"Go ahead," Brouder told her.
 
"Well—these will sound stupid to you all, of
course, but this whole business is entirely new to
me," she began. "First off, what am I? That is, what
are we?"
 
"I'm Gringer," another approached. "Perhaps I can
answer that one. You are a Czillian- The land is called
 
82
 
CziII, and while that explains nothing, it at least gives
you a label."
 
"What does the name mean?" she asked.
 
Gringer gave the Czillian equivalent of a shrug.
"Nothing, really. Most names don't mean anything
these days. They probably all did once, but nobody
knows anymore.
 
"Anyway, we are unusual in these parts because
we are plants rather than animals of some sort. There
are other sentient plant-beings on the Well World,
eleven in the South here and nine in the North, al-
though I'm not sure those are really plants as we
understand them. We're a distinct minority here, any-
way. But there are great advantages to being in the
vegetable kingdom."
 
"Like what?" she asked, fascinated in spite of her-
self.
 
"Well, we are not dependent on any sort of food.
Our bodies make it by converting light from the sun,
as most plants do. Just get a few hours of real or
artificial sun a day and you will never starve. You
do need some minerals from the soil, but these are
common to much of the Well World, so there are few
places you can't get along. Water is your only need,
and you need it only once every few days. Your body
will tell you when—as it did just now. If you get
into a regular routine of drinking, you will never feel
dizzy or faint nor will you risk your health from its
lack. There is also no sex here, none of those primal
drives that get the animals in such a neurotic jumble."
 
"Such things have been minimized on my home
planet," she responded. "It would appear from what
you say that I will not find this place that far from
my own social concepts. But, if you have no sexes,
do you reproduce by some artificial means?"
 
The crowd chuckled at this.
 
"No," Gringer responded, "all races on the Well
World are self-contained biological units that could
survive, given certain ecological conditions, without
any aids. We reproduce slowly, for we are among
the oldest-lived folk on the planet. When something
happens to require additional population, then we
plant ourselves for an extended period and produce
 
83
 
another of ourselves by fission. This is far more
practical than the other way, for everything that
we are is duplicated, cell for cell, so that the new
growth is an exact copy that contains even the same
memories and personalities. Thus, even though you
will wear out in a few centuries, you will also live
forever—for the growths are so identical that not
even we are certain which one is which."
 
Vardia looked around, studying the crowd. "Are
there any such twins here?" she asked.
 
"No," Gringer replied. "We tend to split up, stay
far apart, until the years make us into different folk
by the variety of experiences. We live in small camps,
like this one, drawn from different occupations and
interests, so that the camps provide a wide range of
folk and keep things from getting too dull."
 
"What do you do for work?" Vardia asked. "I
mean, most—ah, animal civilizations are devoted to
food production, building and maintaining shelters,
educating the young, and manufacturing. You don't
seem to need any of those things."
 
"This is true," Brouder acknowledged. "Freed from
the animal demands of food, clothing, shelter, and sex,
we are able to turn ourselves to those pursuits to which
other races must, because of the primacy of those
needs, devote only a small part of their endeavors."
 
Vardia was more puzzled than ever. "What sort
of activities do you mean?" she asked.
 
"We think," Brouder replied.
 
"What Brouder means," Gringer cut in, seeing her
uncomprehending look, "is that we are researchers '
into almost every area. You may think of us as a
giant university. We collect knowledge, sort it, play
with problems both practical and theoretical, and add
to the greater body of knowledge. Had you followed
the main road in the other direction, you would have
come upon the Center, which is where those of us
who need lab facilities and technical tools work and
where people following similar lines meet to discuss
their findings and their problems."
 
Vardia's mind tried to grasp it, and could not.
"Why?" she asked.
 
84
 
Brouder and Gringer both showed expressions of
surprise. "Why what?" Gringer asked.
 
"Why do you do such work? To what goal?"
 
This disturbed them, and there were animated con-
versations through the gathered crowd. Vardia was
equally disturbed by the reaction to her question,
which she had considered very straightforward. She
thought perhaps she had been misunderstood.
 
"I mean," she said, "to what end is all of this re-
search? You do not seem to use it yourself, so who
is it for?"
 
Gringer seemed about to have a fit of some kind.
"But the quest for knowledge is the only thing that
separates sentient beings from the most common
grasses or lowest animals'" the Czillian said a bit
shrilly.
 
Brouder's tone was almost patronizing, as if ad-
dressing a small child. "Look," the researcher said
to her, "what do you think is the end result for
civilization? What is the goal of your people?"
 
"Why, to exist in happiness and harmony with all
others for all times," she replied as if reciting a liturgy
—which is what it was, taught from the day she was
produced at the Birth Factory.
 
Gringer's long tentacles showed agitation. Its right
one reached down and pulled up a single blade of
the yellowish grass that grew for kilometers in all
directions. It pushed the long stalk in front of her,
waving it like a pointer. "This blade of grass is
happy," Gringer stated flatly. "It gets what it needs to
survive. It doesn't think or need to think. It remains
happy even though I've pulled it up and it will die.
It doesn't know that, and won't even know it when
it's dead. Its relatives out there on the plains are the
same. They fit your definition of the ultimate goal of
civilized society. It knows nothing, and in perfect
ignorance is its total perfection and its harmony with
its surroundings. Shall we, then. create a way to turn
all sentient beings into blades of field grass? Shall we,
then, have achieved the ultimate in evolution?"
 
Vardia's mind spun. This sort of logic and these
kinds of questions were outside her experience and
her orderly, programmed universe. She had no an-
 
85
 
swers for these—heresies, were they? Cornered, but
as yet unwilling to give up the true faith, she re-
gressed.
 
"I want to go back to my own world," she wailed
plaintively.
 
Brouder's expression was sad, and pity swept the
crowd, pity not only at her philosophical dilemma
but also for her people, the billions blindly devoted
to such a hollow goal. Its rubbery tentacle wrapped
itself around hers, and pulled her back into the
reddish-brown, upturned soil of the camp.
 
"Any other questions or problems can wait," it
said gently. "You will have time to leam and to fit
here. It is getting dark now, and you need rest."
 
The shadows were getting long, and the distant
sun had become an orange ball on the horizon. For
the first time since waking up, she did feel tired, and
a slight chill went through her.
 
"Except under the artificial light of the Center
we are inactive in darkness," Brouder explained. "Al-
though we could go indefinitely there, we need the
rooting to remain healthy and active. We gain miner-
als and strength from it, and it is also necessary for
mental health."
 
"How do I—ah, root?" she asked.
 
"Just pick a spot not too near anyone else, and
wait for darkness. You will see," Brouder told her.
The Czillian pointed out a good spot, then moved
about five long paces from her.
 
Vardia just stood there for a while, looking at
the small community in the gloomy dusk. She dis-
covered that, although her eyes remained open, she
was having trouble seeing. Everything looked very
dark, as if she were peering throush a piece of film
that was badly underexposed. Then she felt the
myriads of tiny tendrils in her feet creep out in re-
sponse to some automatic signal and extend deep
into the loose soil. The chill and tiredness seemed to
lift, and she felt a warmth rising within her. Every
cell of her new body seemed to tingle, and she was
consumed in an orgasmic feeling of extreme pleasure
that canceled out thought.
 
All over the hex of CziH. all who were not working
 
86
 
in the Center were similarly rooting. To an alien
observer, the land would be punctuated with over a
million tall, thick vines as motionless as the trees.
 
And yet the landscape was not motionless. Millions
of nocturnal insects set up a chorus, and several
small mammals scurried around looking for food and,
in the process, moving, aerating, and fertilizing the
soil. They provided the carbon-dioxide-from-oxygen
conversion needed for atmospheric balance in this
hex. The teeming legions of life coexisted with the
daylight Czillians in perfect balance. They existed
under the thousands of stars in the night sky the
sleeping plant-people could not see.
 
Because her eyes were lidless she saw the awaken-
ing even as she underwent it. It was strange to come
out of that infinitely pleasurable sleep and see the
morning simply fade in. Several of the others were in
her field of vision, and she saw that the sleeping
position was very stiff. Tentacles ran down and al-
most blended with the trunk, the legs almost forming
a solid front.
 
She noted absently that picking one's spot for the
night was more important than had been first in-
dicated. The unrooting was apparently triggered by
the sun's rays falling on the single leaf atop the head,
so the more objects scattered about blocked the sun's
first rays, the slower one was to be freed. She felt
her own tendrils retract and suddenly she could move
freely, as if a paralysis had worn off.
 
Brouder came up to her. "Well? Do you feel bet-
ter?" it asked cheerfully.
 
"Yes, much," she replied, and meant it. She did
feel better, her fears and insecurities fading into a
tiny corner of her mind. For the first time she noticed
that Brouder wore a neck chain similar to the ones
on the two she had followed. Now she looked at the
tiny object suspended from it.
 
It was a digital watch.
 
Brouder looked at it and nodded. "We're early,"
it said, then looked somewhat sheepish. "I always say
that, even though we always wake up at the same
time."
 
87
 
"Then why wear a watch?" she asked. "It is a
watch, isn't it?"
 
"Oh, yes," the Czillian affirmed. "I need it to tell
me the time and day so I can make my meetings at
the Center. It's been hectic lately, and I am always
afraid that I'm going to get trapped and not be able
to come home nights."
 
"What are you working on?" she asked.
 
"A very strange project, even for this place," came
the reply. "We are attempting to solve a probably
unsolvable riddle that is endemic to this world—a
great deal of the Center is devoted to it right now.
And the worst part is that most of us feel it is un-
solvable."
 
"Then why bother with it?" she asked.
 
The Czillian looked at her, a grave expression
coloring its body movements.
 
"Because, while we are the best equipped to work
on the problem, others are also at work on it. If
there is any chance it is solvable, the ultimate knowl-
edge will be ours. In others' hands, that knowledge
might threaten the very survival of us all."
 
Here was something Vardia could understand, and
she pressed her new friend for more information.
But the Czillian dismissed further inquiry for the
time being. She had the strong impression that the
work was of too high a grade for her to be trusted,
even though she was now one of them.
 
"I am going to the Center now," Brouder told her.
"You should come with me. Not only will that give
you a chance to see a little of our country—it's your
country now, you know—but only at the Center can
you be tested and assigned."
 
She agreed readily and they started off, back down
the road she had followed the day before. As they
walked, Brouder pointed out the land and vegetation
and sketched out the country for her. "Czill is six hun-
dred fourteen point eight-six kilometers across, as is
every other hex on the Well World except the equato-
rial hexes."
 
She marveled at the knowledge that the measure-
ment it used bore no reh''onship to the metrics of
 
88
 
her own world, yet was translated to the decimal points
 
instantly inside her head.
 
"We have, of course, six neighbors, two of which
are ocean species. Our seven great rivers are fed by
hundreds of streams like the one at our camp. The
rivers in turn empty into a great ocean—one of three
in the South—covering almost thirty hexes- This one
of ours is the Overdark Ocean. One of the sea folk
is a marine mammal, half-humanoid and half-fish.
They are air-breathers, but live most of their lives
underwater. They are the Umiau, and you might
run into a few at the Center. We are always cooperat-
ing on a number of projects, particularly oceanographic
studies, since we can't visit their world except in pres-
sure suits. The other ocean species is a nasty group
called the Pia—evil characters with great brains and
humanoid eyes. But they have ten tentacles with slimy,
adhesive suckers and a gaping mouth with about twenty
rows of teeth. You can't really talk to them, although
they are quite intelligent. They tend to eat anybody not
 
of their race."
 
Vardia shuddered, imagining such horrors. "Then
 
why don't they eat the Umiau?" she asked.
 
Brouder chuckled. "They would if they could, but,
as with all hexes near antagonistic species on the
Well World, natural limitations are designed into the
system. The Umiau's land is near the mouth of three
rivers and the low salt content isn't to a Pia's liking.
Also, the Umiau do have certain natural defenses and
can swim faster and quicker. They're in some kind of
uneasy truce now, anyway, since the Umiau, although
they aren't fanatical about it, can and will eat Pia,
 
too."
 
They remained silent for a while, until they came
 
to a major fork in the road.
 
"We go to the left," Brouder said. "Don't ever go
down that right fork—it leads to the camps of the
diseased and isolated."
 
"What sort of diseases?" she asked uneasily.
"About the same number as anywhere else,"
Brouder replied. "But every time we discover an im-
munizing agent, something new mutates in the'vi-
ruses. I wouldn't worry about it, however. The
89
 
average Czillian life span is over two hundred and
fifty years, and if nothing serious happens to change
that, you'll twin several times anyway. The popula-
tion's a stable million and a half—crowded, but not so
much that we cannot have empty spaces and camp
room. Our births and deaths are almost exactly even
—the planet's master brain sees to that. Besides,
since we don't really age in the sense most other
things do, and since we can regenerate roost of our
parts that go bad or get injured, there's naturally a
constant death factor to keep the population in
bounds. The master brain only interferes in critical
situations."
 
"Regenerate?" Vardia asked, surprised. "Do you
mean that if I lose an arm or leg it will grow back?"
 
"Just so," Brouder affirmed. "Your entire pattern
is held within every cell of your body. Since respira-
tion is direct, through the pores, as long as your
brain's intact, you'll come back. It's painful—and we
don't experience much pain—but possible."
 
"So the oniy area I have to protect is my head,"
she remarked.
 
Brouder laughed a high, shrill laugh. "No, not your
head, certainly not! Either foot," it said, pointing to
her strange feet that looked like inverted bowls with
spongy lids for soles.
 
"Do you mean I'm walking on my brains?" she
gasped incredulously.
 
"Just so, just so," affirmed Brouder. "Each controls
half of your body, but each has the total content of
the body's input, including thought and memory. If
we were to chop you off at the bottom of the stalk,
your two feet would dig into the ground and each
would sprout a new you. Your head contains sensory
input neural circuits only—in fact, it's mostly hollow.
Chop it off and you'd just go to sleep and dig in until
you grew a new one."
 
Vardia marveled at this news as much as she had
at Ortega back at Zone. But this isn't some alien crea-
ture I just met, she told herself. It is me it is talking
about.
 
"There's the Center," Brouder said as they came
over a rise.
 
90
 
It was a great building that seemed to spread out
for kilometers across the horizon. There was a great
bubble in the center that reflected light like a mirror,
then several arms—six of them, she noted with dry
amusement—made of what appeared to be trans-
parent glass—spread out symmetrically. She saw
skyscrapers of the same transparent material, a few
twenty or more stories, rising around the bubble and
opposite the tips of the arms.
 
"It's incredible!" she managed.
 
"More than you know," Brouder replied with a
touch of pride. "There our best minds work out prob-
lems and store the knowledge we obtain. The silvery
rails that thread through the walls and ceilings are
artificial solar light sufficient to keep us awake and
fed through the night, and if you look to the horizon
you'll see the River Averil coming in. The Center's
built over it, giving us a constant water source. With
light and water provided—and some vitamin baths—
you can work around the clock for seven to ten days.
But sooner or later it catches up with you and the
longer you stay awake the longer you will have to
plant in the end."
 
Something made her think of Nathan Brazil and
that book he had been reading, the one with the lurid
cover.
 
"You have a library here?" she asked.
 
"The best," the other boasted. "It has everything
we've ever been able to collect, both from our studies
on this planet and from Entries like yourself who pro-
vide history, sociology, and even technical informa-
tion."
 
"Any stories?" she asked.
 
"Oh, yes," came the reply. "And legends, tales,
whatever. The Umiau are particularly fertile in that
department. The river's how they get up to the
Center."
 
"What keeps the Pia away, then?" she asked ap-
prehensively.
 
"They can't take fresh water, and they'd have to
breathe it, remember? The Umiau are mammals so
they don't care what sort of water they're in."
 
Brouder went on to explain the social structure of
 
91
 
the Center. It was headed by a small group of spe-
cialists called Elders, not because they were old but
because they were the best in their fields. Below them
were their assistants, the Scholars, who did the
research and basic project work. Brouder was a
Scholar, as was Gringer. Under them were the Appren-
tices who learned their fields and waited for their
chance to prove themselves and advance. The bottom
level was the Keepers—the cleaners, gardeners, and
technicians who maintained everything so that every-
one could get on with his work. The Keepers chose
their own lives and professions and many were retired
upper-level folk who had decided they had gone as far
as they could, or who had reached dead ends. But
some just liked to do what they did.
 
Brouder took her inside and introduced her to a
Scholar whose name was Mudriel. Basically, the
Scholar was an industrial psychologist, and over the
next several days—weeks, in fact—Vardia was kept
busy with interviews, tests, and other experiments to
see her total profile. In addition, they began to teach
her to read the Czillian language. Mudriel, in partic-
ular, was pleased with the speed and ease with which
she was mastering it.
 
Every evening they sent her out to a special camp
near the Psych Department but out of the shade of the
building. The nights saw a strange forest grow up on
all sides of the Center as thousands of workers of all
ranks came out and rooted. Some stayed rooted for
days, even several days, sleeping off long, around-the-
clock stints at work.
 
Vardia seemed to be Madrid's only customer, and
she remarked on it.
 
"You are the first Entry to be a Czillian in our
lifetimes," Mudriel explained. "Normally, I study
various departments and workers to see if they are
ruining their health or efficiency, or are misplaced.
It happens all the time. Sometimes, whenever possi-
ble, we bring Entries from other hexes here for de-
briefing. When that is not possible, I go to them. I
am one of perhaps a thousand, no more, who has
been in the Northern Hemisphere."
 
92
 
"What's it like?" she asked. "I understand it's
different."
 
"That's the word for it," Mudriel agreed, and gave
a brief shudder. "But we have some just as bad on
our side, in one way or another. Ever think of inter-
viewing a Pia in its own domain when ifs trying to be
helpful and eat you at the same time? I have."
 
"And yet you've survived," she said in admiration.
 
Mudriel made a negative gesture. "Not always.
I've been down to my feet once, practically wrecked
for weeks three or four times, and killed twice."
 
"Killed!" Vardia exclaimed. "But—"
 
Mudriel shrugged. "I've twinned four times natu-
rally," it replied matter-of-factly, "and once when I
was left with only my brains. There are still four of
me. We stay in the same job and take turns on the
travel to even out the risk."
 
Vardia shook her head in wonder, a gesture more
human than Czillian.
 
While most twins were turned to other fields by the
Psych Department, ones with critical jobs or super-
specialized knowledge and skills often worked to-
gether side by side. Vardia met several people at the
Center several times to mutual confusion.
 
One day Mudriel called her into its office, where it
was thumbing through an enormously thick file.
 
"It's time to assign you and go on to other things,"
the psychologist told her. "You've been here long
enough for us to know you better than we know al-
most any other Czillian. I must say, you've been a
wonderful subject, but a puzzling one."
 
"In what way?" Vardia asked. As time went by
she had become more and more accustomed to her
new form and surroundings, and less and less had
felt the social alienation of that first night.
 
"You have normalized," Mudriel pointed out. "By
this time you are feeling as if you were born one of
us, and your past life and that which went with it is a
purely intellectual memory experience."
 
"That's true," Vardia acknowledged. "It almost
seems as if all my past happened to someone else,
that I just watched it unfold."
 
"That's true of all Entries," replied Mudriel. "Part
 
93
 
of the change process, when the biological changes
adjust and remake the psyche. Much of our person-
ality and behavior is based on such biological things.
In the animals, its glands, enzymes, and the like, but
with us its various different secretions. Hormonal
imbalances in your former race cause differences; by
artificially injecting certain substances into a male of
your species who was sexually developed, he could
be given female characteristics, and vice versa. Now,
time has rebalanced your mind with your new body,
and it is for the best."
 
"What puzzles you about me, then?" Vardia
prodded.
 
"Your lack of skills," replied the psychologist.
"Everybody does something. But you were appar-
ently raised to be highly intelligent yet totally igno-
rant. You could carry messages and conversations
with ease, yet do nothing else. Your ignorance of
much of your own sector amazes us.
 
"You were, in effect, a human recording machine.
Did you, for example, realize that in the eighty-three
days you've been with us you've had a longer exist-
ence than ever in your short life?"
 
"I—I don't know what you mean," Vardia stam-
mered.
 
Mudriel's expression and tone were of mixed pity
and disgust. "They bred you with an extremely high
intelligence, but while you grew up, they adminis-
tered extremely deep programming to make certain
you never used it. Over all this was lightly placed
the persona known as Vardia Dipio Twelve Sixty-
one, a number whose implications are distasteful to
me. This made you curious, inquisitive, but only on
the surface. You could never act on any information
gained, nor did you have any desire to. The persona
was mainly to help others feel comfortable. When
you reached your destination, an embassy employee
would put you under hypnosis, read off the message
—and, in the process, wipe your memory. Then the
same persona would be reimposed with a reply mes-
sage, if any. Had you reached Coriolanus, this would
have been the case. You now have vivid memories of
 
94
 
your Captain Brazil and the other passengers, and of
Dalgonia. All of these would have been gone. Any
whom you knew who had previously encountered you
would be strangers to you. They would just assume,
as you would, that it was another Vardia Dipio they
knew. Think back—what do you remember of your
life before boarding Brazil's ship?"
 
Vardia thought back with the clarity and detach-
ment she now possessed. She remembered saying
good-bye to the Political Office staff, walking out,
riding to the spaceport, boarding the shuttle.
 
Nothing before.
 
"I never realized—" she began, but Mudriel cut her
off-
 
"I know," the psychologist said. "Part of the deep
program. It would never even occur to you. And you
didn't even know the message you carried, the one
that they would go to these lengths to keep private.
By programmed exercises you kept yourself in per-
fect physical condition, and if challenged or cornered
you would fight suicidally to free yourself. If trapped,
you would have triggered a series of impulses that
would have brought about your suicide." Mudriel
saw the mixed apprehension and disbelief in Vardia's
eyes.
 
"Don't worry," the psychologist assured her. "We
have removed the deep programming. You will re-
main you. Would you like to hear the message you
carried?"
 
Vardia nodded dully, her mind in a fog.
 
The psychologist took out a tiny translucent cube
and popped it into a well in a small recorder on a
 
table nearby.
 
Vardia suddenly heard her voice—her old voice,
incredibly, although she no longer possessed the
vocal chords to speak that way, saying in a tinny
way: "The Commisariat introduces you to Datham
Hain, who, with a companion, came on the same ship
as the courier. Citizen Hain is on a mission of vital
importance to the Commisariat and requires dinner
appointments with several Members of the Presidium
of Coriolanus, as many as can be accommodated.
 
95
 
You are to follow whatever might be his instructions
to the letter, without question or hesitation. Keep the
courier until at least one such meeting has been ar-
ranged, then reprogram it to report on that meeting,
said reprogramming to be in Hain's presence and with
his approval. All glory to the People's Revolution, all
glory to its prophets."
 
The psychologist studied Vardia closely as the re-
cording closed. The ex-courier was obviously stunned
and shaken, but that shock treatment had to be ad-
ministered. All over the Entry's body, the Czillian
read the mental struggle that had to be taking place
within.
 
It was a terrible thing to destroy someone's com-
placent world-picture.
 
Finally, the psychologist asked gently, "Would you
like to go root and meditate? Take as long as you
want."
 
Vardia shook her head negatively. "No," she said
at last, in a half-whisper, "no, I'm all right."
 
"I know," the psychologist soothed. "It is a terrible
thing to find the lie in life. That is one reason we are
dedicated here to the uncovering of truth. There are
societies and people just as bad on this world, maybe
even worse. Hain himself is here somewhere, and
probably has already fallen in with a bad bunch.
Such societies are the enemies of all civilization, and
it is with them that we war. Will you join us in the
fight?"
 
Vardia stood silent a few moments more. Then,
suddenly, something seemed to snap within her, and
with a fierceness and intensity that surprised even her
she said, "Yes!"
 
The psychologist gave the Czillian equivalent of a
smile and turned back to the file it had before it.
 
Picking up a stamp, it brought it down on an empty
block on the front of the file. In Czillian it read:
 
Ready for Assignment.
 
The last processing was over, and Vardia Dipio
1261 was extinguished.
 
Vardia the Czillian left the office.
 
96
 
The Akkafian Empire
 
(Enter Datham Hain, Asleep)
 
DATHAM HAIN HAD ENTERED THE GATE WITH A FALSE
 
sense of bravado, but he was scared to death. He had
nightmares of awful proportions, bringing forth every
fear in his long life. These surfaced as the Markovian
brain picked, analyzed, and classified each subject
according to some long-lost, preset reasoning.
 
He awoke suddenly, with a start, and looked
around. It was the strangest look in his experience.
 
He realized immediately that he was now color-
blind, although instead of merely the blacks, whites,
and shades of gray, there was a mild sepia-tone effect
that made certain things look fuzzy and others stand
out. His depth perception was remarkable, he real-
ized. At a glance he could tell exactly how far every-
thing in view was from everything else, and his vision
seemed to be enlarged to a 180-degree field. That
was amazing, as amazing as the view itself.
 
He seemed to be on a ledge overlooking an incred-
ible landscape far below. The land was bleak and sandy,
broken only by hundreds of cones that looked almost
like perfectly formed volcanoes. He strained to get a
better look, and found, suddenly, the scene magnifying
itself, each time by a factor of two. As it did, a hardly
noticed hairline-split midway in his vision also mag-
nified, so that it became a huge bar separating the
scene into right and left views. It was as if he were
peering through two windows while standing in front
of the post that separated them.
 
There were things down there, and they were mov-
ing. Hain stared in fascination at them, a corner of his
mind wondering why he was fascinated instead Of hor-
rified or repelled. They were great insects, ranging in
 
97
 
she from one to almost four meters long, the median
height being almost a meter. They had two large, ap-
parently multifaceted eyes fixed, like a fly's, forward
in the head. Below the eyes were huge mandibles flank-
ing a mouth resembling a parrot's beak. With surprise
he saw one creature stop while a long, snaky black
tongue emerged to clean the face.
 
The body was oblong and seemed to have hair on
it—the resolution of Hain's vision was so fine that he
could almost count the hairs. And yet—yes, flush
against the body in the hair were wings, several pairs
of them. The rear of the body exposed a barren, bony
tip that undoubtedly was a stinger.
 
Ham tried to imagine the fate of anyone stung with
something that size.
 
The head seemed to be on a hinge or circular joint,
as some of the creatures moved it slightly in one or
another direction.
 
For the first time he saw the feelers, giant things
that seemed to have a life of their own, moving every
way but forward—including straight up. They ended
in hair-covered nodules.
 
The eight legs were thick and were also covered with
hair, longer and down-angled. They were multijointed,
and he saw a pair of the creatures using their forward
legs like hands to move a rock away from a pathway
it was blocking. He could see that the tips were not
hair but spikelike and were covered with a secretion
that looked sticky.
 
The insects moved with amazing speed sometimes,
and, every once in a while, one would take to the air
briefly. Apparently they couldn't fly very far with all
that weight, but could manage a short hop when they
felt like it. As Ham watched, he saw that some of them
were operating machines! One looked like a snowplow,
and it was clearing dust and debris from the roadways
as it was pushed forward; others seemed to have no
obvious purpose.
 
With the realization that these were not animals but
one form of sentient life on the Well World, something
else hit, as well. He tried to turn his head to see him-
self, but could not. He opened his strangely rigid mouth
and stuck out his tongue. It was more than three meters
 
98
 
long, as controllable as an arm, and covered with an
incredibly sticky substance.
 
I'm one of them, he told himself, more in wonder
than in fear.
 
He raised his head up and brought his two forward
legs into view. He had been right, he saw. Three
joints, all bendable in any direction. The tips were
spikes, like hard rubber, and he experimented by reach-
ing out and picking up a small rock. As his legs
touched the rock, a sticky secretion gave him a grip.
When he let go, the secetion turned to a solid film and
fell away like used skin.
 
He noticed immediately that, when the dropped rock
hit, he did not hear it. Rather, he felt it, as a sharp,
single pulsation. The antennae, he told himself. They
sense air movement, but not as sound.
 
Suddenly he was aware that he was getting thou-
sands of tiny pulses through them, and, incredibly, he
almost sensed the source and distance of each.
 
This has possibilities, thought Datham Hain.
 
Using his tongue he surveyed his own body, being
careful not to come near the stinger at the rear which
he now realized he could feel when he wanted to. No
use in possibly poisoning myself this early in the game,
he thought cautiously.
 
He was about three meters long and almost a meter
high, he discovered. About medium-sized for those
creatures down there.
 
He flexed his wings—six pairs, he found—long but
looking extremely thin and frail to support his weight.
He decided he wouldn't try them out until he knew
more about his anatomy. Even birds have to be taught
to fly, he thought, and sentient creatures probably had
less instinct—if any at all—than the lower species-
Now how do I get down off this ledge? he wondered.
Finally, he decided to experiment, moving his body
close to the edge. As his front legs touched the side
they secreted that substance and stuck, he saw with
satisfaction.
 
Emboldened, he pushed off and started walking
down the side.
 
Doing so was incredibly easy, he found, confidence
growing with each step. He realized he could probably
 
99
 
walk on a ceiling, if the sticky stuff would support his
weight. The main problem would be getting used to the
fact that there was so much of him in back of his head.
The legs worked in perfect coordination, as if he had
been born with them; but the body was hard and
rigid, and took some practice to maneuver without
spilling end over end.
 
It took several minutes to descend the low cliff, al-
though he realized that, with practice, he could prob-
ably come back and do it in seconds. Once down, he
faced a problem that his reason wouldn't solve for
him. He wanted to get introduced quickly, to get set-
tled in here, and to check out the sociopolitical sys-
tem, the geography, and the like. Also, he was feeling
hungry, and he hadn't the slightest idea what these
creatures ate.
 
But how did they communicate? Not only language,
but even the means weren't all that apparent.
 
Well, that Ortega had said that the brain would
provide for such things, he told himself; but he was
exceedingly nervous as he approached one of the crea-
tures coming down the road.
 
The other saw him and stopped.
 
"What are you doing just standing there, Markling?"
the newcomer challenged sternly. "Don't you have any
work to do?"
 
Hain was stunned. The language was a series of in-
credibly rapid pulsations transmitted in some way from
the creature's antennae to his own, yet he had under-
stood everything! All but the last word, anyway. He
decided to try to talk back.
 
"Please. I am newly born to this world, and I
need help and guidance," he began, then felt his own
antennae quiver incredibly quickly as he talked. It
worked!
 
"What the hell?" responded the gruff stranger, al-
though not really in those terms. Hain's brain auto-
matically seemed to translate into familiar symbols.
"You sick or something?"
 
"No, no," Hain protested. "I have just come from
Zone, where I have just awakened as one of you."
 
The other thought about that for a minute. "I'll be
 
100
 
damned! An Entry! Haven't had one in over ten years!"
Suddenly the old skepticism returned. "You're not just
saying that to shirk, are you?"
 
"I assure you that I am what I say, and that up until
a very short time ago I was of a totally different race
and form."
 
"You adjust pretty well," the other noted. "Most of
*em have the creeping fits for days. Well, I'll take you
over to the nearest government house and it'll be their
problem. I have work to do. Follow me." With that, it
started on down the road, and Hain followed.
 
His guide was almost a third larger than he was,
Hain saw. Most of the creatures he passed seemed to
be about the same size or smaller than he. A few big
ones were around, and they seemed to be the bosses.
 
They walked past several of the huge cones, then up
the side of one that looked no different from the rest
and into the hole on top. Hain noted that the opening
was so even because it was rimmed with metal, like
an open hatch. He almost lost his nerve on entering.
The aboveground part of the cone, about ten meters
worth, was hollow to the outside structure. They were
not only walking down, but at an angle.
 
When they passed ground level, they walked onto
a floor which was also some kind of metal. Tunnels
lined with tile, with neon or some similar lighting
stretching down in long tubes, led away like spokes
on a wheel- They were wide enough to hold two of
the creatures abreast, and they passed several as his
guide led him down a near one.
 
Doorless openings into large chambers filled with
all sorts of strange stuff, often with dozens of the crea-
tures working, were passed before they reached one
with a hexagon in lights over the doorway. Inside the
hex was a wide gray ring, then a smaller black one,
then a white dot. It reminded Hain with some amuse-
ment of the view of his guide's posterior, with its
menacing stinger.
 
Several small and medium-sized creatures were
working, apparently at some sort of paperwork, Hain
noted with curiosity. Huge printing machines, like
typewriters, were all over, with television screens dis-
playing what the creatures, using their forward legs,
 
101
 
were typing on a strange keyboard. The keyboard was
a series of apparently identical cubes, forty or fifty of
them, which lit momentarily as they were touched. A
crazy dot pattern emerged on the screens in no apparent
logical order or pattern. When the screen was filled,
a hind leg would kick a large stud and the screen
would go blank—and they would be back to typing
again.
 
So I can't read the language, Hain noted to himself.
Well, can't have everything.
 
The guide waited patiently until somebody noticed
him and looked up from its keyboard.
 
"Yes?" asked the worker and the communicated
tone was one of irritated nastiness.
 
"Found this Markling on the road, claims to be an
Entry," said the big guide in that same annoyed tone
he had used with Hain.
 
There was that word again. What in seven hells was
a Markling, anyway?
 
"Just a moment," the clerk or whatever it was said,
"I'll see if His Highness will see you."
 
The office worker went into a side door and stayed
several minutes. Hain's hunger was increasing, and so
was his apprehension. A hereditary empire, he thought
Well, it could be worse.
 
Finally the clerk reappeared. "His Highness will see
the Entry," she said—for some reason Hain automati-
cally thought of his guide as masculine and the recep-
tionist and most of the other workers as feminine. The
guide moved forward.
 
"Just the Entry," said the clerk sharply. "You will
return to your duties."
 
"As you say," the other replied, and turned and left.
 
Hain gathered up his courage and entered the door-
way-
Inside was the biggest creature he had ever seen.
But there was something else unusual about him.
 
The hairs on his body were white.
 
Hain suddenly realized Just how hereditary this mon-
archy was.
 
There were some boxes and bags around of more
or less conventional design, and one of those type-
writers with a much larger screen. Nothing else. The
 
102
 
big one reared back on the last four of his eight legs.
Hain was impressed and cowed; he hadn't seen anyone
else doing that.
 
"What's your name. Entry?" the big white one de-
manded imperiously. The tone, Hain realized by now,
was conveyed by the intensity of the signal.
 
"Datham Hain, Your Highness," he replied in the
most respectful way he could.
 
The official ran his tongue over his beak in thought.
Finally, he went over to the typewriter and started
punching up something—something short, Hain saw,
because the screen was still almost empty when the
large creature punched the send bar or whatever it
was. A moment's wait. Then the screen started to fill
with those funny dots.
 
The official read the message carefully, studying it
for several minutes. Finally it turned back to him as he
stood there impatiently, needing almost four meters to
negotiate the move.
 
"Ordinarily, Hain, we'd just train and condition you
to a position and you'd fit in or die." Hain's heart—if
he still had one—sank. "But," the royal official
continued, "in this case we have special use for you.
Too bad you turned up a Markling, but that's to be
expected. You'll be quartered near here—I'll have
one of my assistants show you where. There's a com-
missary three doors down. Most of you Entries come
through starving, so go in there and eat your fill. Don't
worry about what it is—we can eat just about anything.
Wait in your quarters until I get instructions from Im-
perial Headquarters."
 
Hain still stood there, digesting all this. Finally, he
said, "Your Highness, might I be permitted one ques-
tion?"
 
"Yes, yes," the other said impatiently. "What is it?"
 
"What's a Markling?"
 
"Hain," replied the official patiently, "life is hard
and cheap in the Akkafian Empire. Infant mortality is
extremely high, not only from normal factors imposed
by nature but for other reasons you'll find out sooner
or later for yourself. As a result, to ensure racial' con-
tinuation, about fifty females are born for every male.
 
103
 
"A Markling is a female Akkafian, Ham- You've
had a sex change."
 
Datham Hain was led by one of the office staff to
the commissary, which proved to be a large room
filled with strange animals, plants, and worms, some
still alive. Feeding as an Akkafian was not pleasant,
at least to Hain's unnormalized psyche, but it was
necessary. The creatures frankly didn't taste all that
bad—in fact, they didn't taste very much at all, but
they filled the void in what seemed to be multiple
stomachs. If he didn't think about what he was eat-
ing, the changeling discovered, it went down all right.
 
That tongue, like a sticky whip, was infinitely con-
trollable. Live prey were simply picked up, thrown
to the rear sting area to be paralyzed, then held and
fed by the mandibles a little at a time through the
beak.
 
Discovering that he was now a she wasn't much of a
shock to Hain; the odds were that sexuality was so
different among these people that it probably didn't
make much difference anyway. What was disquieting
was that the males seemed to be in firm charge. The
Nirlings, as the males were called, were larger and con-
trolled the government and supervisory positions and
the technology that kept them in power. The females,
mostly neutered, did the work, apparently compul-
sively. Hain had seen no evidence of force or coer-
cion; the workers carried out their tasks dedicatedly,
unquestioningly, and uncomplainingly. Hain under-
stood the system to a degree. It was not unlike that of
the Comworlds, where people were bred to work.
 
The only trouble, he—no, she—thought, is that I
am on the low end of the scale. To be an alien crea-
ture, to be totally different—these things she could ac-
cept. To be female she could accept. To be a slave to
such a system was intolerable.
 
After feeding they took her to a rest area. This
race worked at whatever it did around the clock, and
individuals were spelled by others so they would get
rest at scheduled intervals.
 
The staging area rose for several storeys—a large,
 
104
 
underground wall of cubicles each of which was just
large enough to hold a single creature. About half
were filled as they entered, and Hain was assigned a
number and told to go into it and wait for instructions.
 
Hain climbed up the side easily and entered the
assigned cubicle. It was warm, and extremely humid,
which felt oddly more comfortable than the drier
air of the offices. There was a carpet of some sort of
animal hair, and a small control panel with two but-
tons, one of which was depressed. Curious, she pressed
the other one. She had apparently found a radio
which was broadcasting a series of sound patterns
whose pulses were oddly pleasing and calming. A
wave of relief swept over her insect body and she
found herself drifting off into a dreamless sleep,
 
The office clerk noted with some satisfaction that
Hain was asleep, then went over to the superintend-
ent's control console at the base of the rest area. The
superintendent was emptying the catch trays of waste
and other products, and she showed surprise when she
recognized a clerk of the baron's household.
 
"By order of His Highness," the clerk commanded,
"the Markling in One Ninety-eight is to be kept asleep
until called for. Make certain the pacifier remains on
at shift change."
 
The superintendent acknowledged the order and
went into her office. A panel of plastic buttons laid
out and numbered corresponding to the cubicles was
before her, with many of the buttons lit, including
Hain's. The superintendent held down number 198
with one foreleg while punching a small red control off
to one side with the other.
 
Hain was locked into blissful sleep until the but-
ton was depressed again.
 
The clerk expressed satisfaction, and returned to
the baron's office to report. The great white Nirling
nodded approval and dismissed her back to her desk.
 
After a while, he went over to his communications
console and punched the number for the Imperial
Palace. He didn't like to call the palace, since the king
and the ambitious nobles surrounding him were - un-
stable and untrustworthy. Barons were low on the
 
105
 
pecking order, but they had a much longer survival
rate because they were away from the palace. Make
your quota and the living was pretty good.
 
Communication was by audio only, so things had
to be spelled out. Although the Akkafians had no
ears, they "heard" in much the same way as creatures
who did. Sound, after all, is a disruption of the sur-
rounding atmospheric pressure by varying that pres-
sure. Although he had never heard a sound as such,
the baron's hearing was better than most creatures on
the Well World.
 
After a long period, somebody at the palace woke
up and answered. The Imperial Household was getting
sloppy and degenerate, the baron reflected. Perhaps
one day soon it would be time for a baronial revolt.
 
Of course, the titles and such were not the same as
human equivalents, but if Hain could have overheard
the conversation, it would have been translated much
like this:
 
"This is Baron Kluxm of Subhex Nineteen. I have
an emergency topic for immediate transmittal to His
Majesty's Privy Council."
 
"The Privy Council is not assembled," came a
bored reply- "Can't this wait. Baron?"
 
Kluxm cursed silently at the insolence and stupidity
of even the household help. The operator was prob-
ably one of the king's Marklings.
 
"I said emergency, operator!" he emphasized, try-
ing to keep his temper from showing. "I take full
responsibility."
 
The operator seemed unsure of herself, and finally
decided in good bureaucratic fashion to pass the buck.
 
"I will transfer you to General Ytil of the Imperial
Staff," she said. "He will decide."
 
Before Kluxm could even reply he heard the relay
switch, and a new, male voice answered. "Ytil," it
said curtly.
 
The baron had even less use for imperial military
men; they generally went to war with other hexes
when shortages developed every few years, and in-
variably lost them. However, he decided that Ytil
would do for the same purpose as the operator had;
 
106
 
after he explained the situation, it was somebody
else's problem.
 
"I had an Entry today, one of the ones we'd been
told to watch for."
 
"An Entry!" YtiTs voice was suddenly very excited.
The waves were so bad that the general's voice started
to give Kluxm a headache. "Which one?"
 
"The one called Datham Hain. As a common
Markling breeder," he added.
 
Ytil's voice still quivered with excitement, although
the last plainly disappointed him. "A Markling
breeder! Pity! But to think we got one! Hmmmm.
Actually, this might work out to our advantage. I've
got to go over my files and recordings of Hain at Zone,
but, if I remember, he's the greedy and ambitious
type."
 
"Yes, that's what my file said," Kluxm acknowl-
edged. "But she was abnormally respectful and quiet
while here. Seems to have adjusted to our form ex-
tremely well."
 
"Yes, yes, that's to be expected," Ytil replied.
"After all, no use antagonizing everyone. Hain's smart
enough to see the social structure and her limits in it
right off. Where is she now?"
 
"In a rest area near my office," Kluxm replied.
"She's on lull music and has a full stomach, so she's
out for two or three days until hunger sets in again."
 
"Excellent, excellent," approved Ytil. "I'll call the
Privy Council together and we'll send someone for
her when we're ready. You are to be commended,
Baron! A fine job!"
 
Sure, Kluxm thought glumly to himself. For which
you'll take all the credit.
 
But credit was not what was on Ytil's mind as the
general scurried down the palace corridor after ter-
minating the conversation. He stopped in a security
room and picked up a tiny, black, jewel-like object on
a large chain. Carefully he placed it over his right an-
tenna and then went down to the lowest level of the
 
palace.
 
The guards weren't very curious about him; it was
 
107
 
normal to have high-ranking military and diplomatic
people using the Zone Gate.
 
The Akkafian general walked quickly into the dark-
ness at the end of the basement corridor.
 
And emerged in Zone.
 
Zone—the Akkafian Embassy
 
THE MARKLING RECEPTIONIST LOOKED STARTLED AS
 
General Ytil emerged through the Zone Gate.
 
Each hex had a gate somewhere, which would
transport anyone to Zone instantaneously, and from
Zone to his home hex. There were 780 such gates to
the offices of each of the Southern Hemisphere races,
as well as the one master Gate for Classification
through which all entries passed and the huge input-
only Gate in the center. It made things very easy for
interspecies contact.
 
General Ytil dismissed the startled exclamation
and apologies of the receptionist and made his way
immediately to the Imperial Ambassador's office.
 
The Baron Azkfru had barely been tipped off by
the clerk when the general rushed in the door. The
ambassador could see the obvious excitement and agi-
tation in Ytil's every movement.
 
"My Lord Baron!" the general exclaimed. "It has
happened! We have one of the new Entries as it was
foretold!"
 
"Calm down, Ytil," Azkfru growled. "You're losing
your medals for dignity and self-control. Now, tell me
rationally what this is about."
 
"The one called Hain," Ytil responded, still ex-
cited. "It turned up earlier today over in Kluxm's
barony as a Markling breeder."
 
"Hmmmm . . ." Azkfru mused. "Too bad she's a
 
108
 
breeder, but it can't be helped. Where is this Entry
now?"
 
"In lull sleep, safe for two or three more days," the
general told him. "Kluxm thinks I've notified the Im-
perial Household and the Privy Council. He's expecting
someone to pick her up."
 
"Very good," Azkfru replied approvingly. "It looks
like things are breaking our way, I never put much
stock in fortune-tellers and such crap, but if this has
happened then Providence has placed a great oppor-
tunity in our hands. Who else knows of this besides
Kluxm and yourself?"
 
"Why, no one. Highness," Ytil replied. "I have
been most careful."
 
Baron Azkfru's mind moved quickly, sorting out
the facts and deciding on a course of action with a
speed that had guaranteed his rise to the top.
 
"All right, return to your post for now, and nothing
of this to anyone! I'll make all the necessary arrange-
ments."
 
"You're making the deal with the Northerners?"
Ytil asked.
 
Azkfru gave the Akkafian equivalent of a sigh.
"Ytil, how many times do you need to be reminded
that / am the baron? You take orders, and leave the
questions and answers to your betters."
 
"But I only—" Ytil began plaintively, but Azkfru
cut him off.
 
"Go, now," the ambassador said impatiently, and
Ytil turned to leave.
 
Azkfru reached into a drawer and pulled out a
pulse rifie- This one worked in Zone, at least in his
offices.
 
"Ytil!" he called after the other, who was halfway
out the door.
 
Ytil stopped but couldn't turn. "My Lord?" he called
back curiously.
 
"Good-bye, fool," Azkfru replied, and shot the gen-
eral repeatedly until the white-haired body was a
charred ruin.
 
Azkfru buzzed for his guard, and thought. Too bad
 
109
 
/ couldn't trust the idiot, but his incompetence would
give the show away.
 
The guard appeared, and looked down at the gen-
eral's remains nervously but without curiosity.
 
"The general tried to kill me,** he explained without
any effort to be convincing. "I had to defend myself.
It appears that he and the Baron Kluxm are at the
heart of a baronial revolt. After you dispose of this
carrion, go to Kluxm's, and eliminate his whole staff
and, of course, the baron. Then go to the rest area
and bring a Markling named Ham to my estate. Do
it quietly. I'll report the revolt."
 
They nodded, and it took them only a few minutes
to eat the body.
 
After they had left, he buzzed for a clerk.
 
"You will go to the Classification Gate and enter.
It will take you to the North Zone. When you get there
don't leave the Gate room, but simply tell the first
inquirer that you want to talk to Ambassador Thirteen
Forty, and wait for that person. When it comes, tell
it who you are, who sent you, and that we are ready
to agree. Got that?"
 
The clerk waved her antennae affirmatively and re-
peated the message.
 
Dismissing her, he attended to the last detail. He
flipped the intercom to the receptionist's desk.
 
"The General Ytil wasn't here," he told her. "Un-
derstand? You never even heard of him."
 
The clerk understood all too well, and rubbed out
Ytil's appearance in her logbook.
 
It was a big gamble he was taking, he knew, and it
would probably cost him his life. But the stakes! The
stakes were too great to ignore!
 
110
 
The Barony of Azkfru,
Akkafian Empire
 
DATHAM HAIN'S MASSIVE BODY, NOW IN A DRUGGED
 
sleep, rested in the center of the lowest floor of the
Baron Azkfru's nest. The room was filled with com-
puter banks flashing light-signals and making click-
ing and whirring sounds. Four large cables were
attached to Ham's head at key points, and two smaller
ones were fixed to the base of her two antennae. Two
neutered Markling technicians with the symbol of the
baron painted between their two huge eyes checked
readings on various dials and gauges, and checked
and rechecked all the connections.
 
Baron Azkfru's antennae showed complete satis-
faction. He had often wondered what the Imperial
Household would say if they knew he had one of
these devices.
 
There would be civil war at the very least, he
thought.
 
The conditioner had been developed by a particu-
larly brilliant Akkafian scientist in the imperial house-
hold almost eighty years before, when the ambassador
himself was just a youngling. It ended the periodic
baronial revolts, and assured the stability of the new
—now old—order by making revolution next to im-
possible. Oh, you couldn't condition everyone with
certainty, so it was done subtly. Probably every baron
dreamed of overthrowing the empire—it let the pres-
sure and frustration out.
 
But none of them could do it. Because, although
they could dream about it, they couldn't disobey a
direct imperial command.
 
But Azkfru could.
 
His father had duplicated the device here in the
earliest days of its development. Here, slowly, moth-
Ill
 
odically, key ones were deconditioned and recondi-
tioned. Even so, he reflected, you couldn't change the
basic personality of the conditioned. That was why
Ytil had to go—too dumb to keep quiet. As for
Kluxm—well, it was known for some particularly
strong-willed Nirlings to break free, although never
with any prayer of support from the rest of the con-
ditioned leadership.
 
"We are ready when you are. Highness," called
one of the Markling technicians. Azkfru signaled satis-
faction and went down to the floor.
 
Quickly and efficiently two additional cables similar
to the ones on Hain were placed on his own antennae.
When he now said something, it would be placed in
the machine, amplified, processed, and fed directly
into the brain of Datham Hain in such a way that it
would be taken as acceptable input and engraved in
the other's mind.
 
The baron signaled a go-ahead, and the technicians
touched the last controls.
 
"Datham Hain!" the ambassador's brain called out.
Hain, although unconscious, answered, "Yes?"
 
"Your past to this point you retain, but it is an
academic past, there to call upon if needed but ir-
relevant to your present and future," the baron told
her. "What is important to you, what is the only thing
of importance to you, is that you are a breeder
Markling of the Barony of Azkfru. Your destiny is
whatever the Baron of Azkfru wishes, and that is
acceptable and normal to you. My will is your will,
your only will. You exist to serve me alone. You
would never betray me, nor allow harm to come to
me. You are my own, my property, and that is all that
is good and happy in your mind or life. When you
serve me you are happy, and when you do not you
are unhappy. That is the measure of your joy in life.
I am your leader, your lord, and your only god. Your
worship is normal. Do you understand this?"
 
"I understand, my lord," replied Hain mechanically.
The baron signaled to the technicians to break con-
tact, which they quickly did, then unfastened the two
cables from his antennae.
 
112
 
"How did it take?" Azkfru asked one of the tech-
nicians.
 
"The subject is receptive," replied one of the tech-
nicians, part of whose own conditioning was never to
consider the idea that she might have been condi-
tioned. "However, her psychological profile is one of
extreme selfishness. That might eventually cancel the
conditioning, producing mental breakdown."
 
"What do you advise, then?"
 
"Go along with the idea," the technician suggested.
"Go back into her mind and tell her that her only
avenue to wealth and power is through you and no
one else. That's something her mind can completely
accept, and it will be acted upon in concert with the
standard conditioning you've already administered.
Then, after she's awake and you are interviewing her,
hold out the highest possible position a breeder Mark-
ling could attain."
 
"I see," the baron replied, and he did see. That
made everything perfect. "Let us complete the con-
ditioning," he commanded.
 
Datham Hain awoke with a very strange set of
feelings and yet not aware that over ten days had
passed since she was first introduced to the land of
the Akkafian.
 
A Markling with the insignia of the Baron Azkfru
entered and saw that she was awake. "You must be
starved," the newcomer said pleasantly. "Follow me
and we will take care of that."
 
Starvation was close to what Datham Hain actually
felt at that point, and she needed no further urging to
follow the servant. The feeding room was filled with
pens of large, white-ribbed worms that were indig-
enous to the soil of the land. Hain had no qualms this
time about eating such prey, and found them most
satisfying.
 
"The baron raises his own fikhfs," the guide ex-
plained as she gorged herself. "Only the best for this
household, till midnight at the Well of Souls."
 
Hain suddenly stopped eating.
 
"What was that you just said?" she asked.
 
113
 
"Oh, it's just a saying," the other replied.
 
Hain forgot it for the moment and continued eating.
When it was clear that her hunger had been satisfied,
the guide said, "Now, follow me into reception, and
you'll meet the baron."
 
Hain obediently followed down several long and
particularly plush corridors to a wide anteroom cov-
ered in that downy fur with a low-volume "music"
background, pleasant but not lulling as the other had
been.
 
"Just relax for now," the baron's servant told her.
"His Highness will call you in when he is ready."
 
Relaxing was just the thing Hain felt least like do-
ing; extremely awake and alert, she wished idly for
something active to do, something to look at. A rack
in one comer held a series of scrolls in that funny
writing, but it was just random dots.
 
Not even any pictures, she thought glumly.
 
She paced nervously, awaiting the baron's pleasure.
 
The baron was already entertaining a guest—or
guests, he wasn't sure which. Although he had com-
municated with a representative of whatever govern'
ment this creature or creatures had, he had never met
any of them and knew nothing about them. He still
didn't, he realized sourly, and he didn't like the situa-
tion, either. The Northern Hemisphere was a place
so alien to him that he felt more kinship with the
most different of the Southern races compared to the
closest of the North.
 
The object of his speculation and apprehension was
floating about three meters in front of him. Yes, float-
ing, he decided—no visible means of support or loco-
motion. It looked like a slightly upcurved strip of
crystal from which a set of dozens of small crystal
chimes hung down, the whole thing about a meter long
and ending just short of the floor. On top of the crystal
strip floated a creature that seemed to consist of hun-
dreds of rapidly flashing lights. Their pattern and their
regularity suggested that they existed in a transparent
ball fitting in the crystal holder—but, try as he would,
he couldn't make out the ball he somehow felt was
there.
 
114
 
The Diviner and The Rel might be looking at him
in an equally odd and uneasy way, he realized, but he
would never know. He would not like to be, would not
ever be, in its world. But it was in his, and that gave
him a small measure of comfort.
 
"Will this Hain stay loyal to you?" The Rel asked,
apparently using its chimes to form the words, which
gave it a total lack of tone or coloration.
 
"My technicians assure me so," replied Azkfru
confidently. "Although I fail to see why she is neces-
sary to us m any event. I feel uneasy trusting every-
thing to someone so new and unknown."
 
"Nevertheless," replied The Rel, "it is necessary.
Remember that The Diviner predicted that you would
receive one of the outworlders, and that the solution
to our problems was not possible without an out-
worlder present."
 
"I know, I know," Azkfru acknowledged, "and I am
grateful that it was me who was contacted by your
people. We have as much stake in this as you, you
know." He fidgeted nervously. "But why are you sure
that this one is the outworlder needed?"
 
"We're not," The Rel admitted. "The Diviner only
knows that one of the four who came in that party
is needed to open the Well. One was destined for
Czill, one for Adrigal, one for Dillia, and one for
here. Of the four, yours was known to be psychologi-
cally the most receptive to our offer."
 
"I see," Azkfru said, uncertainty mixed with resig-
nation in his tone. "So twenty-five percent was better
than zero percent. Well, why not just grab the others
so we're sure?"
 
"You know the answer to that one," The Rel re-
sponded patiently. "If we missed just one of these
Entries, it would hide and we couldn't monitor it. This
way, we will know where they are and what they are
doing."
 
"Urn, yes, and there's the second prediction, too."
 
"Quite so," The Rel affirmed. "When the Well is
opened all shall pass through. Thus, if we keep one
of them with us, we will stand the best chance of
going through with them."
 
115
 
"I stil! wish I were going with you," the baron
said. "I fee) uneasy that the only representative of my
people will be a conditioned alien of known untrust-
worthiness."
 
"One of you is going to be conspicuous enough,"
The Rel pointed out. "Two of you is an advertisement
for hundreds of other uneasy governments. Right now,
neither of us knows if our agreement is duplicated by
others with any or all of the other three."
 
That idea made Azkfru more uncomfortable than
ever.
 
"Well, damn it, you—or half of you, or whatever
—is The Diviner. Don't you know?"
 
"Of course not," replied The Rel. "The present is
as closed to The Diviner as it is to you. Only random
snatches of information are received, and that in
rather uncontrolled fashion. Getting this much is more
than we usually get on anything. Hopefully more
pieces will fit together as we progress."
 
Rather than disturbing him further, this news re-
assured him instead. So the damn thing wasn't omnip-
otent, anyway. Still, he wished he knew more about
the creature that stood before him. What were its
powers? What tricks did it have up its sleeve?
 
The fear that most consumed him was of a double
cross.
 
The Diviner—or The Rel—seemed to sense this,
and it said, "Our hexes are as alien as can be. We
have no commonality of interest or activity- You are
an incomprehensible peopie to us, and your actions
are equally so. Never would we be here, in peril of
our sanity, were it not for the urgent single common-
ality our races share: survival. We are satiated in the
summing process, and active in the coefficient of struc-
ture. Our sole object is to keep everything just the way
it is."
 
The baron didn't understand any of it, but he did
understand that mutual survival was a common bond,
and the assurance that they wanted to preserve the
status quo. The trouble was, he could say exactly the
same thing and not mean a word of it.
 
And now all of his future rested on Datham Ham.
116
 
The baron gave the Akkafian equivalent of a sigh ot
resignation. He had no choice in the matter. That
conditioning must hold!
 
"How soon do you wish to begin?" he asked the
Northerner.
 
"A lot depends on your end," The Rel pointed out.
"Without Skander the whole scheme falls apart, the
sum clouds and changes to an infinite number."
 
"And you can point him out, only you," the baron
replied. "I'm ready when you are."
 
"No more than a week, then," The Rel urged. "We
have reason to suspect that Skander will move out of
reach shortly after that."
 
"Very well," the baron sighed, "I'll condition two
of my best Markling warriors. You don't need Hain for
this part, do you?"
 
"No," responded The Rel. "That will do nicely.
We'll have to work at night and hide out during the
day, so it will take a good day to set us up once there.
Another two days to get there, inconspicuously, if
possible. Can you be ready within a day period from
this moment?"
 
"I think so," the baron replied confidently. "Any-
thing else?"
 
"Yes. While you prepare the two assistants I should
like to talk to one who understands structures and elec-
trical systems. Is that possible?"
 
"Well, yes," the baron affirmed with some surprise.
"But why?"
 
"It will be necessary to perform some minor sabo-
tage to ease our task," The Rel explained enigmati-
cally. "Although we have studied it, we want to
confirm our necessary actions to be doubly certain,
hopefully with one who comprehends such things."
 
"Done," Azkfru told the creatures. "Now I must
attend to other matters. Go out the side there and an
assistant will take you to a room that will be private.
I will send the technicians to you."
 
"We go to prepare," intoned The Rel, and floated
out the designated exit.
 
Azkfru waited several minutes until he was certain
the Northerner was well away, then went over to the
 
117
 
doorway to his main waiting room and pressed the
opening stud with his right foreleg.
 
"Enter, Mar Datham," he said imperiously, and
quickly got back to the dais that served as his work
area. He struck his most awesome pose.
 
Datham Hain entered on the words, a shiver going
through her at their majesty. Almost hypnotically, she
entered the office.
 
She stopped as she saw him, and bent down auto-
matically in a gesture of extreme subservience. Or-
giastic spasms shook her, and she cowed in awe and
fear.
 
He is God, she thought with absolute conviction. He
is the epitome of greatness.
 
"My Lord and Master, I am your slave, Datham
Hain. Command me!" she intoned and meant every
word of it.
 
The sincerity carried over to Azkfru, who received
it with satisfaction. The conditioning had stuck.
 
"Do you give yourself to me, Mar Datham, body
and soul, to do with as I would, forever?" he in-
toned.
 
"I do, Master, my Lord God, I do! Command me
to die and I shall do so gladly."
 
Great now. Forever, if she was around all the
time. But she would have only a few interviews until
he had to trust her with all he had. Well, here goes
the kicker, Azkfru thought.
 
"You are the lowest of the low, Mar Datham, lower
than the fikhfs that breed to be eaten, lower than the
defecations of the least of those fikhfs," he intoned.
 
And it was so, she realized. She felt as low and as
small as she could ever get. She felt so tiny and un-
important that she found it hard to think at all. Her
mind was a complete blank, yet basking on pure emo-
tion in the presence of Him who was All Glory.
 
"You will remain lowly scum," the Master pro-
nounced, "until I have other use for you. But as you
are the lowest of the low, so can you be raised to the
heights by my command." Now came the clincher.
"A great task will be placed in your hands, and your
 
118
 
love and devotion to me above all else will determine
all that is in your future, whether it be the mindless
cleaners of the defecation pits or," he paused for
added emphasis, "perhaps even the chief concubine of
 
a king."
 
Hain groveled all the more at this thought suddenly
 
placed in her witless head.
 
"And your name shall now be Kokur, nor wilt you
answer to any other but it, and so you will stay and
so you will be until you have successfully carried out
my tasks. Then only will you be restored to a name,
and then that name will be great. Go, now. My ser-
vant shall show you your duties until I shall call you
 
for the task."
 
She turned and left the office quickly, on quivering
 
legs.
 
When the door closed behind her, the baron relaxed.
 
Well, he thought, it is done. For the next few days,
if The Diviner and The Rel were successful, Dathana
Hain would truly be as low as one could get. Although
consciously obedient and happy, that nasty subcon-
scious would be helplessly humiliated by the job and
the status, and that was perfect. After a few days,
Ham would be willing to do anything to get out of
there, and she would be offered a permanent return to
that miserable state as opposed to elevation as high
as she could possibly reach.
 
Hain would serve him, he felt confidently.
Kokur wasn't a name, it was a job description.
Until The Diviner and The Rel returned, Datham
Hain would work in the defecation pits, piling up the
huge amounts of crap his barony produced—including
her own—and then treating it with a series of chem-
icals and agents that would change its composition
into a horrible but physically harmless mess. Hain
would not only work there, she would sleep in it, walk
m it, and, as her sole diet, eat it. And the only name
she could respond to or think of herself as was Kokur,
which meant dung-eater.
 
When off with The Diviner and The Rel, it would be
a constant and humiliating reminder of her' lowly
status and her lifelong fate for failure, a reminder
 
119
 
that would even reach others through the translating
 
devices used around the Well World.
 
Datham Hain would be a most obedient slave.
Actually kind of attractive, he thought. Too bad
 
she's a breeder.
 
Dillia—Morning
 
(Enter Wu Julee, Asleep)
 
WU JULEE AWOKE FROM A DREAMLESS SLEEP AND
 
looked around. She felt strange and slightly dizzy.
 
The overriding fact that hit her was that the pain

was gone.
 
She closed her eyes and shook her head briskly. The
dizziness worsened for a moment, then things seemed
to steady.
 
She looked around.
 
She was in a beautiful forest, the likes of which she
had never seen before. Trees grew straight as poles
fifty or more meters in the air, almost disappearing
into a slight morning mist. The undergrowth was
equally lush and a vivid green. Beautiful flowers grew
wildly all around her. There was a trail nearby, a
nicely maintained one made of deep sawdust lined
with small, irregular stones. There was a slight but
steady roaring sound in the distance, but it didn't seem
threatening, only curious.
 
The path seemed to lead toward the roar in one
direction, and she decided to follow it. Walking felt
strange to her, but she thought little of it. She felt
strange all over. She walked slowly down the trail
about a kilometer, and it led her to the source of the
increasing roar.
 
She came upon a waterfall, dropping majestically
in three stages down the side of a mountain whose
gray rocks were well worn by uncounted years of ero-
sion. The falls fed a stream, or river, which flowed
 
120
 
swiftly but rather shallowly over a rocky bottom seen
clearly through the greenish tinge to the water's sur-
face. Here and there, she saw logs and remnants of
logs that had fallen due to weathering or age. Many
were covered with mossy yellow-green growths and
several were nurse trees, their dead and decaying
limbs providing a haven from which newer trees of a
different type were growing. Small insects hummed
and buzzed all around, and she watched them curi-
ously.
 
A sudden crackle of underbrush made her turn with
a start. She saw a small, brown-furred mammal with
a rodent's face and a broad flat tail jump into the
stream carrying a twig in its mouth. Her eyes fol-
lowed it until it made the opposite shore and ran into
the underbrush formed by swampy weeds and long
grains of grassy plants diagonally opposite her.
 
Still acting without conscious thought, like a new-
born child seeing the world for the first time, she
went up to the stream just far enough down that she
wasn't caught in the spray from the great falls.
 
She looked down at her reflection. She saw the face .
of a young woman barely in her teens, a face that
looked back at her. Not beautiful, but pleasant, with
long brown hair falling down. over small but well-
formed breasts.
 
She reached up with one hand and brushed back
the hair on one side. Her skin was a light brown, her
palms a slightly lighter color but seemingly made of
a tougher skin. I've got pointy ears, she thought,
seeing them revealed by the brushed-back hair. And
they were pointed, the insides a soft pink. Although
not really large, she realized that they would probably
protrude slightly if she stood perfectly erect. On some
sort of impulse, she tried to wiggle her ears—and
they moved noticeably!
 
Then she looked down at her body. At the waist
the very light down that began just below her breast
thickened into hair of the same color as her skin. Her
eyes moved down to two stocky legs that ended in
 
large, flat hooves.
 
That's strange, she thought. Hooves and pointed
 
ears that wiggle.
 
121
 
For no reason in particular she turned her body at
the waist almost halfway around, and looked in back
of her. A long, sturdy-looking equine body supported
by two hind legs was clearly visible—and a tail! A
big, brushy tail she found she could wiggle.
 
What am I? she thought in sudden fear. Where is
this?
 
She tried to remember, but could not.
 
It's as if I was just bom, she thought. I can't re-
member anything. Not my name, not anything.
 
The reflection and the body looked totally strange
to her.
 
I remember the words, she thought. I know that
this is a stream and that is a waterfall and that that
person in the water is a reflection of me, and I'm a
young girl.
 
She hadn't even realized she was a girl until then.
There was a term for this, she thought, and she
tried to remember it. Amnesia, that was it. People
who couldn't remember their past. Somehow she felt
that she had never been to this place before, and
that something was different about her, but she
couldn't think of what. She Just stood there by the
edge of the stream for several minutes m stunned
silence, not knowing what else to do. Several insects
buzzed around her rear, and with an automatic mo-
tion she brushed them away with her tail.
 
Suddenly her ears picked up the sound of laughing
—a girl and a boy, she thought. They were coming
down the trail! Quickly, almost in panic, she looked
around for a place to hide, but found none before
the pair came trotting down the path. They look
like the top half of people stuck onto the bodies of
working ponies, her mind thought. Her face turned
quizzically at the thought. What were people anyway,
if not these? And what were ponies?
 
The two beings were not really large, but the boy
was almost a head taller and proportionately larger
than the girl. The male was a golden color, with
silver-white hair down to his shoulders and a full
beard, neatly trimmed, of the same color. The girl,
curiously, was a mottled gray mixed with large
black spots, and this coloration extended to her upper
 
122
 
torso. Her hair was a mixed gray and black, her gray
breasts much fuller than the amnesiac onlooker's.
 
No navels, she thought inanely. We don't have na-
vels.
 
The pair saw her and stopped almost in midlaugh.
 
They surveyed her curiously, but without any trace
of hostility or alarm, "Hello!" called the boy—he
looked no more than fourteen or fifteen, the girl about
the same. The voice was a pleasant tenor, with a slight,
indefinable accent. "I don't think we've seen you here
 
before."
 
She hesitated a moment, then replied hesitantly,
 
"I—I don't think I've ever been here before. I—I
just don't know." Tears welled in her eyes.
 
The two centaurs saw that she was in some distress
 
and rushed up to her.
 
"What's the matter?" the girl asked in a high"
 
pitched adolescent voice.
 
She started to cry. "I don't know, I can't remem-
ber anything," she sobbed.
 
"There, there," the boy crooned, and began to
stroke her back. "Get it all out, then tell us what's
 
going on."
 
The stroking had a calming effect, and she straight-
ened up and wiped her eyes with her hand.
 
"I don't know," she managed, coughing a little.
"I—I just woke up down the trail and I can't re-
member anything—who I am, where I am, even
 
what I am."
 
The boy, who was even larger in comparison to
 
her than he was to his companion, examined her face
 
and head, and felt the skull.
 
"Does it hurt anywhere when I do this?" he asked.
"No," she told him. "Tickles a little all over,
 
that's all."
 
He lifted up her face and stared hard into her
 
eyes.
 
"No glaze," he commented, mostly to himself. "No
 
sign of injury. Fascinating."
 
"Aw, come on, Jol, what'd you expect to find?"
 
his companion asked.
 
"Some sign of injury or shock," be responded, al-
 
123
 
most in a clinical tone. "Here, girl, stick out your
tongue. No, I mean it. Stick it out."
 
She did, feeling somewhat foolish, and he examined
it. It was a big tongue, fiat and broad, and a gray-
pink in color.
 
"All right, you can stick it back in now." he told
her. "No coating, either. If you'd have had some kind
of shock or disease, it'd show."
 
"Maybe she's been witched, Jol," the spotted gray
centaur suggested, and drew back a little.
 
"Maybe," he conceded, "but, if so, it's nothin' to
concern us.*'
 
"What d'you think we oughta do?" his girlfriend
asked.
 
Jol turned and for the first time Julee saw he had
some kind of saddlebag strapped around his waist.
 
"First we take our shower," he answered, remov-
ing an irregular bar of what must have been soap,
some cloths, and towels from the bag, then unstrap-
ping it and letting it fall to the ground. "Then well
take our mystery girl here to the village and let
somebody smarter than we are take over."
 
And they proceeded to do Just that. After some
more hesitation, she joined them, following their ac-
tions and sharing a towel.
 
"You don't have to get too dry," the girl, whose
name was Dal, told her. "You'll air-dry pretty good."
 
Together the three of them set on back down the
trail.
 
As they left the forest the village and lands beyond
came into view.
 
It was a beautiful land, she thought. The stream
flowed out of majestic, snow-capped mountains which
spread out on both sides to reveal a rich valley and
gently rolling hills.
 
The village—a collection of rough but sturdy log
buildings by the side of a blue-green lake—bustled
with activity. The fields were properly plowed and
planted, and she saw a few centaurs checking and
tending between stalks of unknown grain-
 
The whole place didn't seem as if it could support,
124
 
or had, more than a few hundred people, she thought
and commented on that to her companions.
 
Jol laughed. "That proves you must be from down-
lake," he said. "Some pretty big communities down
there. Actually, there's close to a thousand in the
valley, here, but we're spread out all over the land-
scape. Only fifty or sixty live in town all the time.*'
 
The main street was broad and maintained much
like the trails, of which she had seen quite a few, a
thick covering of sawdust making the paving.
 
Most of the buildings had an open side facing the
street. The largest building was the first one they
reached. It contained a huge forge on which several
male and female centaurs worked hot metal. She saw
with curiosity one woman lift a hind leg while a
brawny male, wearing a protective bib, hammered
something on her foot, apparently painlessly.
 
Other buildings proved to be stores selling farm
implements, seed, and the like. There was even a
barbershop and a bar, closed at the moment but
unmistakable in its huge kegs and large steins.
 
"Is it always this warm and humid here?'* she
 
asked Jol.
 
He chuckled again in that friendly way he had
about him. "No, this is a four-season hex," he ex-
plained enigmatically. "Then we all get out our gam-
mot fur coats and hats and gloves and romp in the
 
cold snow."
 
A gammot, she discovered, was one of the large
rodents she had spied down by the stream.
 
"It must be a huge coat," she remarked, and Dal
and Jol both laughed.
 
"You really do have amnesia!" Dal responded.
"The hair on our bodies and a nice, thick layer of fat
put on in summer and fall are pretty good insulators.
Only our hairless parts need protection."
 
"You can see the fireplaces and chimneys," Jol
pointed out. "In the fall the fronts are put back on
and they become warm as today inside."
 
Julee started to ask what happened when it rained,
but she saw that the roofs and ledges were angled
and the buildings so placed that it would take a really
terrible storm to get much rain inside.
125
 
"It looks as if anyone dishonest could steal anything
he wanted here," Julee commented.
 
They both stopped and looked at her strangely.
"That just isn't done here—not by any Dillian," he
huffed.
 
His reaction startled her, and she apologized. "I—
I'm sorry. I don't know why I think like that."
 
"We do get some alien traders from other hexes
in once in a while and they've tried taking stuff," Dal
put in to defuse the issue. "Won't do 'em no good
here, though. Only way in is by the lake—forty
kilometers, almost as deep as it is long. Nobody can
beat us in the woods, and anybody who wants to climb
six kilometers of mountain at steep grade and below
zero temperatures would lose more than he could
take."
 
They reached a small building about two-thirds of
the way down the thirty or so buildings of the town's
lone street. A wooden sign hung on a post, a hexago-
nal symbol of two small trees flanking a huge one,
burned in with some son of tool. Inside stood an
elderly centaur with long, white hair and unkempt
beard reaching down below his nipples. He had once
been coal black, she realized, but now the body hair
was necked with silvery white.
 
He would look very officious standing there at his
cluttered desk, she thought, amused, if he wasn't
sound asleep and snoring loudly.
 
"That's Yomax," Jol told her. "The closest thing
we've got to a government in the village. He's sort
of the mayor, postmaster, chief forester, and game
warden here. He always opens up at seven o'clock
like the duty book says, but since the boat doesn't
get in until eleven-thirty, he usually goes back to
sleep until just before then." He yelled, "Hey! Yomax!
Wake up! Official business!"
 
The old man stirred, then wiped his eyes and
 
stretched, not only his arms but also his entire long
body.
 
"Hmph! Whazzit?" he snorted. "Some damned brat*s
always foolin' with me," he muttered, then turned to
see who stood there.
 
126
 
His eyes fixed on Wu Julee, and he suddenly came
 
fully awake.
 
"Well! Hello!" he greeted in a friendly but puzzled
 
tone. "I don't remember seein' you around before."
"She's lost her memory, Yomax," Jol explained.
 
"We found her down by Three Falls."
 
"She don't know nothin' about nothin'," Dal put in.
"Didn't even know 'bout winter and coats and all."
 
The old man Crowned, and came up to her. Ignoring
Jol's protests that he had done it already, Yomax
proceeded to go through the same examination Julee
had had earlier—with similar negative results.
 
Yomax scratched his beard and thought. "And you
don't remember nothin'?" he asked for the fifth or
sixth time, and for at least that many times she an-
swered, "No."
 
"Mighty strange," he said. Then, suddenly, he
brightened. "Lift your right foreleg," he instructed.
She did, and he grasped the hoof firmly and turned
 
it up.
 
"I think she's been witched," Dal maintained.
"Com'mere and lookit this," Yomax said softly.
The other two crowded in to see.
 
"She ain't got no shoes!" Da! exclaimed.
"Not only that," the old one pointed out, "there's
no sign that she ever had any."
 
"Don't prove nothin'," Dal persisted. "I know
lots'a folks what don't wear shoes, particularly up-
valley."
 
"That's true," admitted Yomax, dropping the leg
and straightening up, for which Julee was thankful.
She felt circulation start to return. "But," the old
centaur continued, "that's a virgin hoof. No deep
stains, no imbedded stones, nothing. Hers are like a
 
newborn's."
 
"Aw, that ain't possible," Jol said scornfully.
"I told ya she was witched," Dal insisted.
"You two get along and do your chores or what-
ever," Yomax told them, waving them away with his
hands. "I think I know at least part of what this is
 
about."
 
They left reluctantly and then started to return.
Yomax had to bellow at them several times.
127
 
"Now, then, young lady," he began, satisfied of
some privacy at last, "let m« throw some names at
you- Let's see if any of 'em strike a bell."
 
"Go ahead," she urged him, intrigued.
 
"Nathun Brazzle," he began, trying to make do with
the strange names on a paper he had fished from a
crowded drawer in his desk. "Vardya Dipla Twelve
Sixty-one. Dayton Hain. Wo Jolie. Anything"
 
She shook her head slowly from side to side. "I've
never heard any of those names before," she told
him. "At least—1 don't think so."
 
"Hmmm . . ." the old man mused. "I'm sure I'm
right. Only possible explanation. Well. tell you what.
Got one test when the boat comes in. Old Entry
from the same neck of the woods as these folks—
ten, fifteen years ago. He pilots the ferry now, since
old Gletin refused to see how old he was and went
overboard in a storm 'couple years back," Yomax
told her. "He'll still remember the old language. I'll
git him to spout some of that alien gibberish at ya,
and we'll see if ya understand it."
 
They passed the time talking until the ferry arrived,
the old man telling about his land and people with
pride and affection. During the course of his rambling
but entertaining memoir/travelogue, which she was
sure was almost half-true, a great many facts
emerged. She learned about the Well World, and
what the hexes were. She learned about Zone and
gates, and the strange creatures that wandered
around. She found that, although the Dillians lived
to be well over a hundred Well World years on the
average, the population was relatively small. Females
went into heat only every other year, then only for
a short period, and invariably bore but a single
young—which had about an even chance of surviving
its first year.
 
If you made it through puberty, about a twenty
percent chance, then you would live a long life—
because you would already be immune to most of
what would kill you.
 
The various colors—Yomax said there were hun-
dreds of combinations—of the people didn't seem
 
128
 
to meld with interbreeding, she was told, since all
 
color genes were recessives.
 
"Rank comes with age," Yomax told her. "When
you get too old to plow, or build, or chop and haul
wood, they put you in charge of things. Since nobody
likes to admit they're old when the job's so little—
you saw how much respect I got from the young
ones—I wound up bein' about everything the village
 
needs."
 
The mother was the ultimate authority in child-
rearing, he explained, but the family group shared
moral responsibility. Since customs like marriage and
inheritances were unknown—everything was simplis-
tically communal—people formed family groups
with other people they liked, without much regard
to sex. The groups were mostly traditional now, but
occasionally new ones of three to six would be formed
by the young after puberty.
 
The entire hex was a collection of small towns
and villages, she learned, because of the low birthrate
and also because of innate limits on technology here.
Anything more ambitious than the most basic steam
engine just wouldn't work in Dillia.
 
That kept things extremely simple and pastoral, but
also stable, peaceful, and uncluttered.
 
"In some hexes you can't even tell what sort of
place it once was," Yomax told her. "All them ma-
chines and smelly stuff, everybody livin' in air-
conditioned bubbles. Then they want to come here
to get back to nature! They do some tourist business
in other parts of the country, but this place is so
isolated nobody's discovered it yet. And, when they
do, they'll find us damned hostile, I can tell you!"
 
With that impassioned statement, there came the
long, deep sound of a steam whistle, its call echoing
across the mountains.
 
Yomax grabbed a simple cloth sack tied with twine
and invited her down to the lakefront about 150 me-
ters from town. She saw a simple wooden wharf with
several huge posts, nothing more. A few townspeople
waited just off the dock, apparently having business
downlake or awaiting passengers.
 
Coming up on the wharf was the strangest craft she
 
129
 
had ever seen. A giant oval raft, it looked like, with
another raft built on top of it and supported by solid
log cross-bracing. In the middle was a single, huge,
black boiler, with a stack going up through the second
tier and several meters beyond, belching white smoke.
 
A single centaur, black and white striped all over, a
crazy-looking broad-brimmed hat on his head, stood at
a large wheel, which was flanked by two levers. The
levers went down through to the boiler level and
seemed to do nothing but signal a brown centaur-
engineer to turn some control or other on the boiler.
The boiler was attached by what looked more like
thick rope than chain to a small, wooden paddle wheel
in the back.
 
About twenty varicolored Dillians stood on the first
deck, some between oaken trunks full of unguessable
cargo. Under the cross-bracing there seemed to be a
counter and some kegs and steins. A large bale of
grain flanked it.
 
Wu Julee could guess that this was the snack bar.
She had already had a brunch with Yomax and dis-
covered that the centaurs were herbivores who occa-
sionally cooked various dishes but mostly ate raw
grains and grasses grown in their fields. Tasted good,
too, she had found.
 
Ropes from wooden posts on the side of the primi-
tive steamer were tossed to a couple of villagers on
the dock who tied the boat off. Satisfied, the captain
went to the back and came down an almost disguised
grooved ramp to the first deck.
 
Yomax tossed the mail to a crewman who idly threw
it toward the center of the boat. The captain picked up
a similar sack and jumped off to the dock, clasping
hands with Yomax and then handing the old official
the sack.
 
Yomax introduced the steamer captain to Wu Julee.
 
"This here's Klamath," the old man told her. "Not a
proper name for a good DiHian, but he was born with
it."
 
"Please to meet you, Lady urn . , .?" The captain's
expression prompted a lead.
 
"She don't know her name, Klammy," Yomax ex-
plained. "Just kinda showed up all blanked out eariy
130
 
this momin'. I think she's an Entry, and thought may-
be you could help." Quickly he explained his language
idea to the captain.
 
"Harder than you think," the captain replied
thoughtfully. "It's true that I think in the old tongue,
but everything's instantly and automatically translated
in and out. It'd be easier if I could write something
 
for her."
 
Julee shook her head sadly. "I am certain that I
never learned to read. I just know it,"
 
"Hmmm. . . . Well, Yomax, you're the control,"
Klamath said. "It's going to take a lot of concentration
to get out some old word stuff through the translation
process, and I'm not really going to know if I'm success-
ful or not. It all sounds the same to me. If she under-
stands it and you don't, then we'll have it made."
 
Klamath took chin in hand in a thoughtful pose, try-
ing to think of something he could do to break through
the barrier. Suddenly he brightened. "Worth a try," he
said at last, "but even if she doesn't understand it, it
won't prove much. Well, here goes.
 
"Using the Three KY spectroanalysis program, stel-
lar motion can be computed by phase-shifting obser-
vations using the infraspectrometer circuits in the
navigational matrix for visual course plots," Klamath
intoned. Suddenly he stopped and turned to Yomax.
 
"How was that?" he asked.
 
"I got maybe one word in four," the old man re-
plied. "How about the lady here?"
 
Julee shook her head in bewilderment. "A lot of big
words but I didn't understand what they meant."
 
"Can you remember a big word?" Klamath
 
prompted.
 
She thought for a minute. "Ma—matrix, I think,"
she said hesitantly, and, she looked totally perplexed,
"phase shifting?"
 
Klamath smiled. "Good old basic navigation man-
ual!" he exclaimed. "You're from my part of the uni-
verse, all right. There's just no equivalent for that stuff
in this language."
 
Yomax nodded, an expression of satisfaction on his
face. "So she's one of the last four."
 
131
 
"Almost certainly," Klamath nodded. "Fve been
keeping track of them since I know one, at least
slightly. He's almost a living legend among spacers,
and we know where he is and where the one called
Vardia is. You must be that girl that was sick; that
would explain the memory problems."
 
"Who am I, then?" she asked excitedly. "I want to
know."
 
"Probably a girl named Wu Julee," Klamath told
her.
 
"Wu Julee," she repeated. The name sounded
strange and totally unfamiliar to her. She wasn't sure
she liked it.
 
"I'll be heading back downlake in an hour or so,
and when I get to Donmin I'll see the local councilman
and pass the word along," Klamath said, "In the mean-
time, you might as well stay here. It's about the best
place to relax and enjoy things, and that might be just
what you need."
 
Their course of action agreed to, they all went to the
local bar. She felt somewhat left out of the conversation
after that, and the thick, dark ale made her slightly
giddy. She excused herself and wandered out onto the
main street.
 
Jol and Dal were there, and, seeing her, rushed up
for the news.
 
"They say I'm an Entry," she told them- "Someone
named Wu Juiee. They said I was sick."
 
"Well, you're healthy now," Jol replied. "And what-
ever you had got cured on the way in. Maybe your
memory will come back, too, after a while." He
stopped and fidgeted nervously for a time, glancing
once in a while to Dal. Finally the spotted female
threw up her hands.
 
"All right, all right. May as well," she said enigmati-
cally.
 
"Sure it's all right with you?" Jol responded.
 
"Why not?" his girlfriend replied, resigned.
 
Jol turned back to Wu Julee. "Look," he said ea-
gerly, "we—Dal and me—we been thinkin' of putting
together our own family, particularly with Dal preg-
nant and all. There's so few folks our age up here, and
 
132
 
we aren't gettin' along with our own families too good
now. Why don't you come in with us?"
 
Julee hesitated a moment, then replied, "I'd like that
—if it's all right with Yomax."
 
"Oh, he won't mind," Dal replied. "He's been itchin'
to see us take jobs anyhow, and if we form the group
we'll have to to get our share of the harvest."
 
And it was that easy.
 
They picked a spot fairly deep in the woods upvalley
and started by building a primitive but efficient trail to
the site- It required little clearing, but it did wind in
and out between the giant trees. Borrowing a large
handsaw and with some help from a forester they
chopped down two trees near a tiny creek and burned
out the stumps. Villagers helped them clear the area
and cut up the trees into useful sizes, as well as pro-
viding smaller, more useful logs and hauling reddish
clay used for insulation.
 
Wu Julee—the others nicknamed her Wuju, which
she liked better—threw herself into the work, putting
any thoughts of Klamath and governmental problems
out of her mind. She hadn't seen the captain after the
first day, since the boat came only once a day and
stayed barely over an hour. Weeks passed.
 
They put in the sawdust floor, and built a stone caim
to use as a stove and winter heater, fueled with wood
left over from the project. The cabin had a large cen-
tral area with crude tables and a work area, and five
stalls—bedrooms, really, with leaning supports, since
the Dillians slept standing up. The extra stalls were
for Dal's increasingly obvious new arrival and a spare
in case someone else would join them. Jol and Dal
took her trapping in the woods, and showed her how
to skin and weave the animal furs and the skin from
various plants into clothing. Once settled in, she and
Jol were assigned to survey and check some back-
country trails, particularly noting log bridges that might
not stand the weight of winter snows. It was easy and
pleasant work, and she enjoyed the peace and natural
wonder of the mountains. When winter came they
would help dig out snowed-in cabins and ensure safe
paths around the small lakeside community.
 
In late summer Dal dropped her foal, large and fully
 
133
 
formed but barely covered in a soft, neutral, downy
fur, with reddish, wrinkly skin that made the boy-child
look like a wizened old man.
 
Although born looking physically eight or nine in size
and proportion—and able to stand, walk, even run
within a few hours of birth—the child would be tooth-
less for over a year and could only feed by nursing. It
needed almost constant supervision, even though hair
developed in the first few weeks affording a measure ^
of protection. Bom only with the instincts of a wild an-
imal, the boy would have to leam how to reason, to
speak, to act responsibly. It was difficult for Julee to
get used to at first, since after the first month the child
looked like a boy of about ten.
 
But he would look that way for years, they told her,
perhaps eight or ten, until puberty. Until then they
would be his world; after that, he would have to pull
his own load.
 
But this peaceful, almost idyllic existence was inter-
rupted by the start of her nightmares. They often
involved racing pain, torture, and an evil, leering mon-
strous face that demanded horrible things of her.
Many nights she woke up screaming, and it took hours
to calm her down.
 
She began seeing the town Healer—the Dillian
wasn't a doctor, because they had never been able to
talk one into moving up into the isolated wilderness, but
she could treat minor injuries and illnesses and set
broken bones and the like. Anything really serious re-
quired using the old treadmill-powered raft to get the
patient downlake. That was not really as difficult as it
sounded because there was a fairly strong current that
led to the falls at the downlake town.
 
Talking to the Healer helped, but the sleeping pow-
ders didn't. As fall started turning the leaves a riot of
colors, and the snow began to creep down from the
mountaintops, with occasional cold winds breaking
through the still comfortable warm air, she was drawn
and looked not at all well. Drinking the warm, potent
ale seemed to help for a while, but she was more and
more in a state of intoxication which made her less use-
ful and harder to live with.
 
134
 
The villagers and her two companions were con-
cerned but felt helpless as she seemed to deteriorate
daily. The nightmares became worse and more fre-
quent, the drinking increasing to compensate. She had
been there almost twelve weeks, and she was miser-
able.
 
One particularly chilly day she came from the little
bar in a high state of inebriation that even the cold
wouldn't moderate, wandering down to the dock as the
steamboat came in. She stared at a figure dressed in
rugged furs sitting on the top deck, outside the little
pilothouse that had been erected when the season
changed.
 
It was alien. It looked human, but had only two legs
and no hindquarters. Its features were hidden under a
big fur hat, but it seemed to be smoking a pipe—a
habit only a few of the oldest around did because of
the difficulty of getting the weeds to stuff into it. She
wasn't sure if this was a creature of her drunk or of
her nightmares, and she just stared at it.
 
The boat tied up and the creature, or vision, joined
the captain in walking down to the first level and onto
the dock. Klamath spotted her, and pointed. The funny
two-legged creature, so small next to the Dillians,
nodded and walked over to her.
 
She drew back apprehensively, stifling a sudden and
overwhelming urge to run.
 
The creature approached her cautiously and called
out, in Dillian, "Wu Julee? Is that you, Wu Julee?"
The voice seemed familiar, somehow. He stopped
about two meters from her, took the huge, curved pipe
from his mouth, and pulled off the furry headpiece.
 
Wu Julee screamed and screamed, then suddenly
seemed to collapse, hitting the ground hard in a dead
faint.
 
Klamath and many of the villagers rushed up to her
in concern.
 
"Damn!*' said the creature. "Why do I always
have that effect on women?"
 
For the shock of seeing his face had brought it all
back to her suddenly and in full force. The only change
the Well World had made in Nathan Brazil was his
clothes.
 
135
 
The Barony of Azkfru,
Akkafian Empire
 
THE BARON AZKFRU WAS FURIOUS.
 
"What do you mean he wasn't there?" he stormed.
 
The Diviner and The Rel remained impassive and
apparently unperturbed as usual.
 
"We had no problems concealing ourselves through
the first day," The Rel reported, "and acted about an
hour after nightfall. When we approached the structure
where Skander almost had to be. The Diviner sensed
a change in the balancing equation. A new factor
had been introduced. Skander had been there, but had
left."
 
"What do you mean a new factor?" snarled the
Baron.
 
"In the most basic terms," The Rel explained pa-
tiently, "someone knew we were coming and what we
were after. So either by direct warning or the indirect
action of others, Skander was not there when we were.
It was much too dangerous to remain there any length
of time awaiting a possible return, so we broke off
and returned here."
 
Azkfru was stunned. "A leak? Here? But, that's im-
possible! It couldn't have been any of my people—
they're too thoroughly under my control. And, if any-
one from the Imperial Palace had a reconditioned plant
here, I wouldn't still be alive now. If there's a leak, it
must be on your side."
 
"It is possible our intentions were divined in the
same way we divine the actions of others," The Rel
admitted, "but it is impossible for any in my own lead-
ership to have betrayed us, and you, yourself, saw to
the security when we came cross Zone. A release of
information on your side remains the most likely ex-
planation."
 
136
 
"Well, we'll dismiss the blame for now," Azkfru
said more calmly, "and proceed from here. What do
we do now?"
 
"Skander is still the only link we have to concrete
knowledge of the puzzle," The Rel pointed out. "And,
its location is known, if presently unattainable. The
Diviner states that Skander's research was incom-
plete, and it must return to the learning place sooner
or later. We are now attuned to that, and will know
when. It is suggested that we bide our time until this
Skander is again within our grasp. We did not com-
promise the plan, we Just about proved it. It is still
workable."
 
"Very well," growled Azkfru. "Will you stay here?"
 
"We miss our homeland and constructive endeavor,"
The Rel replied, "but the mission is too vital. We will
remain. Our needs are few, our requirements simple.
A dark, bare cell will be sufficient, and an avenue to
the surface every once in a while to stand beneath the
stars. Nothing more. In the meantime, I would check
your own security. It will profit us little if such a thing
happens again!"
 
Soon after The Diviner and The Rel were seen to,
the baron flew to the Imperial Palace and, securing a
Zone pass, returned to his office in Zone. He was con-
fident that he wouldn't be alive if it were any of his
own people, so that left alien intervention—which
meant Zone.
 
The offices, even the walls, were practically torn
apart. It took almost two days and the destruction of
more than half the embassy to find it. A tiny little
transmitter inserted in his communications unit in his
own office! His technicians examined it, but could be
of little help.
 
"The range is such that it would carry to over four
hundred other embassies," one explained to him. "Of
the four hundred, almost three hundred are functional
and used, and, of those, more than half are technologi-
cally capable of creating such a device, while the rest
could probably purchase it untraceably, and almost all
could place the device during a slow period when you
were away."
 
He had most of his office staff ritually executed any-
 
137
 
way, not that it made him feel any better—just less
foolish.
 
Someone had heard him kill General Ytil.
Someone had spied when The Diviner and The Rel
had come through, and listened to their initial con-
versations in his office.
 
No more, he knew. But that was bad enough.
Someone else now knew at least what Skander was.
He had no choice, though, he realized. He had to
wait.
 
Almost fifteen weeks.
 
The Center in Crill
 
VARDIA WAS ASSIGNED A BASIC APPRENTICE'S JOB, DO-
 
ing computer research. She learned fast—almost any-
thing they taught her—even though she couldn't make
a great deal of sense out of her part of the project she
was on. It was like seeing only one random page from
a huge book. In itself, nothing made any sense. Only
when put together with thousands of other pages did a
picture finally emerge, and even then the top research-
ers had the unenviable job of fitting all the pages to-
gether in the proper order.
 
She enjoyed the life immensely. Even though she
didn't understand her work, it was a constructive func-
tion with purpose, serving the social need. It was a
comfortable niche. Here, indeed, is social perfection,
she thought. Cooperation without conflict, with no
basic needs beyond sleep and water, doing things that
meant something.
 
After a couple of weeks on the Job she began feel-
ing somewhat dizzy at times. The spells would come
on her, apparently without cause, and would disappear
just as mysteriously. After a few such episodes she
 
138
 
went to the central clinic. The doctors made a few very
routine tests, then explained the problem to her.
 
"You're twinning," the physician said. "Nothing to
be concerned about. In fact, it's wonderful—the only
surprise is that it has happened so fast after joining us."
 
Vardia was stunned. She had met some twins off
and on at the Center, but the idea that it would happen
to her Just never occurred to her.
 
"What will this do to my work?" she asked appre-
hensively.
 
"Nothing, really," the doctor told her. "You'll simply
grow as each cell begins its duplication process. A
new you will take shape growing out from your back.
This process will make you a bit dizzy and weak, and,
near its completion, will cause some severe disorienta-
tion."
 
"How long does the process take?" she asked.
 
"Four weeks if you continue a normal schedule,"
was the reply. "If you're willing to plant day and night,
about ten days."
 
She decided to get it over with if she could. Although
everyone else seemed excited for her, she, herself,
was scared and upset. Her supervisor was only too glad
to give her time off, as she had not worked on the
project long enough to be irreplaceable. So she
picked a quiet spot away from the Center and near the
river and planted.
 
There was no problem during the nights, of course,
but during the day, when she had to root by exercising
the rooting tendrils voluntarily, she quickly became
bored. Except for early morning and just before dusk,
she was alone in the camp or else surrounded by un-
conscious Czillians sleeping off long round-the-clock
work periods.
 
On the third day, she knew she had to have water
and uprooted to go down to the stream. Doing so was
more difficult than she would have thought possible.
She felt as if she weighed a ton, and balance was a real
problem. She could reach back and feel the growth out
of her back, but it didn't make much sense.
 
At the river's edge she saw a Umiau.
 
She had seen them at the Center, of course, but
only going from one place to another. This was the
 
139
 
first one she had seen close up, and it Just seemed to
be lying there, stretched out on the sand, asleep.
 
The Umiau had the lower body of a fish, silvery-blue
scales going down to a flat, divided tail fin. Above the
waist it remained the light blue color, but the shiny
scales were gone, leaving a smooth but deceptively
tough skin. Just below the transition line was a very
large vaginal cavity.
 
The Umiau had two large and very firm breasts, and
the face of a woman who, were she in Brazil's world,
would have been considered beautiful despite hair that
seemed to flow like silvery tinsel and bright blue lips.
The ears, normally covered by the hair, were shaped
like tiny shells and set almost flush against the sides
of the head, and, Vardia saw, the nose had some sort
of skin flaps that moved in and out as the creature
breathed, probably to keep water out when swimming,
she guessed. The long, muscular arms ended in hands
with long, thin fingers and a thumb, all connected by
a webbing.
 
Vardia stepped in to drink, and, as she did so, she
saw other Umiau on and off along the banks, some
swimming gracefully and effortlessly on or just be-
neath the surface. The river was shallow here, near the
banks, but almost two meters deep in the center. On
land they were awkward, crawling along on their hands
or, at the Center, using electric wheelchairs.
 
But, as she saw from the swimmers in the river's clear
water, in their own element they were beautiful.
 
Most, like the sleeper nearby, wore bracelets of some
colorful coral, necklaces, tiny shell earrings, or other
adornments. She had never understood jewelry as a
human, and she didn't understand it now.
 
They all looked alike to her except for size. She
wondered idly if they were all women.
 
Finishing her drink, she made her way, slowly, to
the shore. She made large splashes and was terrified
she would fall.
 
The noise awakened the sleeper.
 
"Well, hello!" she said in a pleasant, musical voice.
The Umiau could make the sounds of the Czillian
language, and most of them at the Center knew it.
 
X40
 
Czilllans could not mock any other, so all conversa-
tions were in the Czillian tongue.
 
"I—I'm sorry if I awakened you," Vardia apologized.
"That's all right," the Uniau replied, and yawned.
"I shouldn't be wasting my time sleeping, anyway.
The sun dries me out and I have a fever for hours af-
ter." She noticed Vardia's problem. "Twinning, huh?"
"Y-yes," Vardia replied, a little embarrassed. "My
 
first time. It's awful."
 
"I sympathize," the mermaid said. "I passed the egg
this cycle, but I'll receive it next."
 
Vardia decided to root near the stream for a while,
and did. "I don't understand you," she told the crea-
ture hesitantly. "Are you, then, a female?"
 
The Umiau laughed. "As much as you," she replied.
"We're hermaphrodites. One year we make an egg, then
pass it to another who didn't, where it's shot with sperm
and develops. The next year, you get the egg passed
to you. The third year you're a neuter; then the cycle
starts all over again."
 
"You cannot abstain, then?" Vardia asked inno-
cently.
 
The Umiau laughed again. "Sure, but few do, unless
they get themselves sterilized. When the urge hits,
honey, you do it!"
 
"It is pleasant, then?" Vardia persisted innocently.
 
"Unbelievably," the Umiau replied knowingly.
 
"I wish this was," Vardia pouted. "It is making me
miserable."
 
"I wouldn't worry about it," the Umiau told her.
"You only do it two or three times in your very long
lives." The mermaid suddenly glanced at the sun.
"Well, it's getting late. It's been pleasant talking with
you, but I have to go. Don't worry—you'll make out.
The twin's coming along fine."
 
And, without another word, it crawled into the
water more rapidly than Vardia would have suspected
possible and swam away.
 
The next few days were mostly boring repetitions
of the earlier ones, although she did occasionally talk
to other Umiau for brief periods.
 
141
 
On the ninth day when she needed water again,
she discovered she had little control over herself.
Every forward movement seemed to be countered by
the twin now almost fully developed on her back. Even
her thoughts ran confused, every thought seeming to
double, echoing in her mind. It took immense concen-
tration to get to the water, and, in getting out, she fell.
 
She lay there for some time, feeling embarrassed
and helpless, when she suddenly realized a curious
fact, a thought that echoed through her mind.
 
I'm I'm seeing seeing in in both both directions di-
rections, her mind thought.
 
Getting up was beyond her, she knew, and she waited
most of the afternoon for help. The confusing double
sight didn't help her, since both scenes seemed to be
double exposures.
 
She tried to move her head, but found she couldn't
without burying it in the sandy bank. Finally, an hour
or two before sunset, others came for rooting and pulled
her out and helped her back to a rooting spot.
 
The tenth day was the worst. She couldn't think
straight at all, couldn't move at all, couldn't judge
scenes, distances, or anything. Even sounds were du-
plicated.
 
The sensation was miserable and it seemed to go on
forever.
 
On the eleventh day nothing was possible, and she
was in a delirium. About midday, though, there was
a sudden release, and she felt as if half of her had
suddenly, ghostlike, walked out of her. Everything
returned to normal very suddenly, but she felt so ter-
ribly weak that she passed out in broad daylight.
 
The twelfth day dawned normally, and she felt much
better, almost, she thought, euphoric. She uprooted and
took a hesitant step forward. "This is more like it!"
she said aloud, feeling light and in total control again.
 
And, at exactly the same moment, another voice
said exactly the same thing! They both turned around
with the same motion.
 
Two identical Vardia's stood looking, amazed, at
each other.
 
"So you're the twin," they both said simultaneously.
 
"I'm not, you are!" they both insisted.
 
142
 
Or am I? each thought. Would the twin know?
 
Everything was duplicated. Everything. Even the
memories and personality. That's why they kept say-
ing and doing the same things, they both realized. Will
we ever know which is which? they both thought. Or
did it matter? They both came out of the same body.
 
Together they set out for the Center.
 
They walked wordlessly, in perfect unison, even
the random gestures absolutely duplicated. Communi-
cation was unnecessary, since each knew exactly what
the other was thinking and thought the same thing.
The procedure was well established. Once at the re-
ception desk, they were taken to different rooms where
doctors checked them. Pronounced fit and healthy to
go back to work, each was assigned to a part of the
project different from that she had previously been
working on, although with similar duties.
 
"Will I ever see my twin again?" asked the Vardia
 
who was in Wing 4.
 
"Probably," the supervisor replied. "But we're going
to get you into divergent fields and activities as quickly
as possible so each of you can develop a separate path.
Once you've had a variety of experiences to make you
sufficiently different, there's no reason not to see each
other if you like,"
 
In the meantime the other Vardia, having asked the
question sooner and having received the same answer,
was settling in to a very different son of position, even
though the basic computer problem was the same.
 
She began working with a Umiau, for all the world
identical to the one she had talked with along the
riverbank. Her name—Vardia's mind insisted on the
feminine for them even though they were neither—
and both—was Endil Cannot.
 
After a few days of feeling each other out, they
started talking as they worked. Cannot, she thought,
reminded her of some of the instructors at the Center.
 
Every question seemed to get a lecture.
 
One day she asked Cannot just what they were
looking for. The work so far consisted of feeding
legends and old wives' tales from many races into the
computer to find common factors in them.
 
"You have seen the single common factor already,
 
143
 
have you not?" Cannot replied tutorially. "What,
then, is it?"
 
"The phrase—I keep hearing it off and on around
here, too.'*
 
"Exactly!" the mermaid exclaimed. "Until midnight
at the Well of Souls. A more poetic way of saying
forever, perhaps, or expressing an indefinite, like:
 
We'll keep at this project until midnight at the Well
of Souls—which seems likely at this rate."
 
"But why is it important?" she quizzed. "I mean,
it's just a saying, isn't it?"
 
"No!" the Umiau replied strongly. "If it were a say-
ing of one race, perhaps even of bordering races, that
would be understandable. But it's used even by
Northern races! A few of the really primitive hexes
seem to use it as a religious chant! Why? And so the
saying goes back as far as antiquity itself. Written
records go back almost ten thousand years here, oral
tradition many times that. That phrase occurs over
and over again! Why? What is it trying to tell us?
That is what I must know! It might provide us with
the key to this crazy planet, with its fifteen hundred
and sixty races and differing biomes."
 
"Maybe it's literal," Vardia suggested. "Maybe
people sometime in the past gathered at midnight at
some place they called the Well of Souls."
 
The mermaid's expression would have led anyone
more knowledgeable in all-too-human emotions to
the conclusion that the dumb student had finally
grasped the obvious.
 
"We've been proceeding along that tack here,"
Cannot told her. "This is, after all, called the Well
World, but the only wells we know of are the input
wells at each pole. That's the problem, you know.
They are both input, not opposites."
 
"Must rtiere be an output?" Vardia asked. "I mean,
can't this be a one-way street?"
 
Cannot shook her statuesque head from side to
side. "No, it would make no sense at all, and would
invalidate the only good theory 1 have so far as to
why this world was built and why it was built the way
it was."
 
144
 
"What's the theory?"
 
Cannot's eyes became glazed, but Vardia could not
tell if it was an expression or Just the effect the Umiau
had when closing the inner transparent lid while keep-
ing the outer skin lid open.
 
"You're a bright person, Vardia," the mermaid
said. "Perhaps, someday, I'll tell you."
 
And that was all there was to that.
 
A day or two later Vardia wandered into Cannot's
office and saw her sitting there viewing slides of a
great desert, painted m reds, yellows, and oranges
-under a cloudless blue sky. In the background things
got hazy and indistinct. It looked, Vardia thought,
something like a semitransparent wall. She said as
much aloud.
 
"It is, Vardia," Cannot replied. "It is indeed. It's
the Equatorial Barrier—a place I am going to have to
visit somehow, although none of the hexes around it
are very plentiful on water, and the trip will be hard.
Here, look at this," she urged, backing the slides up
several paces. She saw a view taken through the wall
with the best filters available. Objects were still indis-
tinct, but she could see just enough to identify one
thing clearly.
 
"There's a walkway in there!" she exclaimed. "Like
the one around the Zone Well!"
 
"Exactly!" the mermaid confirmed. "And that's
what I want to know more about. Do you feel up to
working through the night tonight?"
 
"Why, yes, I guess so," she replied. "I've never
done it before but 1 feel fine."
 
"Good! Good!" Cannot approved, rubbing her
hands together. "Maybe I can solve this mystery to-
night!"
 
Stars swirled in tremendous profusion across the
night sky, great, brilliantly colored clouds of nebulae
spreading out in odd shapes while the starfield itself
seemed to consist of a great mass of millions of stars
in swirls the way a galaxy looked under high magnifi-
cation. It was a magnificent sight, but one not ap-
preciated by Vardia, who could not see it with her
coneless eyes as she worked in the bright, artificial
 
145
 
day of the lab, or by unseen onlookers out in the fields
to the south.
 
At first they looked like particularly thick grains of
the wild grasses in the area. Then, slowly, two large
shapes rose up underneath the stalks, shapes with
huge insect bodies and great eyes.
And—something else.
 
It sparkled like a hundred trapped fireflies, and
seemed to rest atop a shadowy form-
 
"The Diviner says that the equation has changed
unnaturally," said The ReL
 
"Then we don't go in tonight?" one of the Akkafian
warriors asked.
 
"We must," replied The Rel. "We feel that only to-
night will everything be this auspicious. We have the
opportunity of an extra prize that increases the
odds."
 
"Then the balance—this new factor—is in our
favor?" asked the Markling, relieved.
 
"It is," The Rel replied. "There will be two to carry
back, not one. Can you manage it."
 
"Of course, if the newcomer isn't any larger than
the other," the Markling told The Rel.
 
"Good. They should be together, so take them
both. And—remember! Though the Czillians will all
sleep as soon as the power-plant detonator is trig-
gered, the Umiau will not. They'll be shocked, and
won't see too well or get around too much, but there
may be trouble. Don't get so wrapped up in any strug-
gle that you sting either of our quarry to death. I
want only paralysis sufficient to get us back to the
halfway island."
 
"Don't worry," the warriors assured almost in uni-
son. "We would not fail the baron like that."
 
"All right, then," The Rel said in a voice so soft it
was almost lost in the gentle night breeze. "You have
the detonator. When we rush at the point I have
shown you, I shall give a signal. Then and only then
are you to blow it. Not sooner, not later. Otherwise
the emergency generators will be on before we are
away."
 
146
 
"It is understood," the Markling assured the North-
erner.
 
"The Diviner indicates that they are both there and
otherwise alone in their working place," The Rel
said. "In a way, I am suspicious. This is too good
fortune, and I do not believe in luck. Nonetheless,
we do what we must.
 
"All right—now!"
 
Dillia-Uplake
 
WU JULEE GROANED AND OPENED HER EYES. HER
 
head was splitting and the room was spinning around.
 
"She's comin' around!" someone's voice called out,
and she was suddenly conscious of a number of peo-
ple clustering around her.
 
She tried to focus, but everything was blurry for a
few moments- Finally, vision cleared enough for her
to see who each was, particularly the one non-Dillian
in the crowd.
 
"Brazil!" she managed, then choked. Someone
forced a little water down her throat. It tasted sour.
She coughed.
 
"She knows you!" Yomax yelled, excited. "She re-
members things agin!"
 
She shut her eyes tightly. She did remember—
everything. A spasm shook her, and she vomited the
water.
 
"Yomax! Jol!" she heard the Healer's voice call.
"You louts take her behind! Captain Brazil, you pull;
 
I'll push! Let's try and get her on her feet as soon as
possible!"
 
They fell to their tasks and managed to pull it off
with several tries. No thanks to me, Brazil thought.
Man! These people have muscles!
 
She was up, but unsteady. They put side panels
 
147
 
padded with cloth under her arms and braced them so
she could support herself. The room was still spin-
ning, but it seemed to be slowing down. She still felt
sick, and started trembling. Someone—probably Jol
—started stroking her back and that seemed to calm
her a little.
 
"Oh, my God!" she groaned.
 
"It's all right, Wu Julee," Brazil said softly. "The
nightmares are past, now. They can't hurt you any-
more."
 
"But how—" she started, then threw up again and
kept gagging.
 
"All right, all of you outside now!" the Healer de-
manded. "Yes, you, too, Yomax! I'll call you when
I'm ready."
 
They stepped out into the chill wind. Yomax
shrugged, a helpless look on his face.
 
"Do you drink ale, stranger?" the aged centaur
asked Brazil.
 
"I've been known to," Brazil replied. "What do you
make it out of?"
 
"Grains, water, and yeast!" said Yomax, surprised
at the question. "What else would you make ale out
of?"
 
"I dunno," Brazil admitted, "but I'm awfully glad
you don't either. Where to?"
 
The three of them went down the main street,
Brazil feeling like a pygmy among giants, and up to
the bar, front on now.
 
The place was full of customers—about a dozen—
and they had trouble squeezing in. Brazil suddenly
became afraid that he would be crushed to death be-
tween equine rumps.
 
The conversation stopped when he entered, and
everyone looked at him suspiciously.
 
"I just love being made to feel welcome," Brazil
said sarcastically. Then, to the other two, "Isn't there
a more, ah, private place to talk?"
 
Yomax nodded. "Gimme three, Zoder!" he called,
and the bartender poured three enormous steins of
ale and put them on the bar. He handed one to Jol
and the other to Brazil, who almost dropped it when
he found out how heavy the filled stein really was.
 
148
 
Using two hands, he held on and followed Yomax
down the street a few doors to the oldster's office.
 
After Jol stoked the fire and threw some more wood
in, the place seemed to warm and brighten spiritually
as well as literally. Brazil let out a long sigh and
sank to the floor, resting the stein on the floor beside
him. As the place warmed up, he took off his fur cap
and coat. Underneath he didn't seem to be wearing
 
anything.
 
The two centaurs also took off their coats, and both
of them stared at him.
 
Brazil stared back. "Now, don't you go starting
that, or I'll go back to the bar!" he warned. The Dil-
lians laughed, and everybody relaxed. Brazil sipped
the brew, and found it not bad at all, although close
to two liters was a bit much at one time for him.
 
"Now, what's all this about, mister?" Jol asked
 
suspiciously.
 
"Suppose we swap information," he offered, taking
 
out his pipe and lighting it.
 
Yomax licked his lips. "Is that—is that tobacco?"
he asked hesitatingly.
 
"It is," Brazil replied. "Not very good, but good
enough. Want some?"
 
Yomax's expression, Brazil thought, was as eager
and unbelieving as mine was when I saw that steak
 
at Serge's.
 
Was that only a few months ago? he asked himself.
 
Or was it a lifetime?
resembled a giant corncob and proceeded to fill it.
 
Yomax dragged out an old and battered pipe that
Lighting it with a common safety match, he puffed
away ecstatically.
 
"We don't get much tobacco hereabouts," the old
 
man explained.
 
"I never would have guessed," Brazil responded
dryly. "I picked it up a fair distance from here, really
—I've traveled nine hexes getting here, not counting
a side trip to Zone from my home hex."
 
"Them rodent fellas are the only ones in five thou-
sand kilometers with tobacco these days," Yomax
said ruefully. "That where?"
 
Brazil nodded. "Next door to my home hex."
 
149
 
"Don't think I remember it," the old official
prodded curiously. "Except that you look like us, sort
of, from the waist up, I don't think I ever seen your
like before."
 
"Not surprising," Brazil replied sadly. "My people
came to a no-good end, I'm afraid."
 
"Hey! Yomax!" Jol yelled suddenly. "Lookit his
mouth! It don't go with his talkin'!"
 
"He's using a translator, idiot!" snapped Yomax.
 
"Right," the small man confirmed. "I got it from
the Ambreza—those 'rodent fellas' you mentioned.
Nice people, once I could convince them that I was
intelligent."
 
"If you and they was neighbors, why was that a
problem?" Jol asked,
 
The sadness crept back. "Well—a very long time
ago, there was a war. My people were from a high-
tech hex, and they built an extremely comfortable
civilization, judging from the artifacts I saw. But the
Ufestyle was extremely wasteful—it required enor-
mous natural resources to sustain—and they were run-
ning out, while the by-products curtailed good soil to
the point where they were importing eight percent of
their food. Unwilling to compromise their life-style,
they looked to their neighbors to sustain their culture.
Two hexes were ocean, one's temperature was so cold
it would kill us, two more weren't worth taking for
what they had or could be turned into. Only the
Ambreza Hex was compatible, even though it was
totally nontechnological. No steam engines, no ma-
chines of any kind not powered by muscle. The Am-
breza were quiet, primitive farmers and fishermen,
and they looked like easy prey."
 
"Attacked 'em, eh?" Yomax put in.
 
"Well, they were about to," Brazil replied. "They
geared up with swords and spears, bows and cata-
pults—whatever would work in Ambreza Hex—with
computers from home telling them the best effective
use. But my people made one mistake, so very old in
the history of many races, and they paid the price for
it."
 
"What mistake was that?" asked Jol, fascinated.
 
"They confused ignorance with stupidity," the man
 
150
 
explained. "The Ambreza were what they appeared
to be, but they were not dumb- They saw what was
coming and saw they had to lose. Their diplomats
tried to negotiate a settlement, but at the same time
they scoured other hexes for effective countenneas-
ures—and they found one!"
 
"Yes? Yes? And that was . . .?" Yomax prompted.
"A gas." Brazil said softly. "A Northern Hemi-
sphere hex used it for refrigeration, but on my people
it had a far different effect. They kidnapped a few
people, and the gas worked on them just as the North-
erners said it would- Meanwhile the only effect on the
Ambreza was to make them itch and sneeze for a
while."
 
"It killed all your people?" asked Yomax, appalled.
*'Not killed, no—not exactly," the small man re-
plied. "It made, well chemical changes in the brain.
You see, just about every race is loosely based on, or
related to, some animal past or present."
 
"Yup," Yomax agreed. "I once tried to talk to a
horse in Hex Eighty-three.'*
 
"Exactly!" Brazil exclaimed. "Well, we came from
—were a refinement of, really—the great apes. You
know about them?"
 
"Saw a few pictures once in a magazine," Jol said.
"Two or three hexes got kinds of 'em."
 
"That's right. Even the Ambreza are related to
several animals in other hexes—including this one, if
I recall," Brazil continued. "Well, the gas simply
mentally reverted everyone back to his ancestral
animalism. They all lost their power to reason and be-
came great apes."
 
"Wow!" Jol exclaimed. "Didn't they all die?"
"No," Brazil replied. "The climate's moderate, and
while many of them—probably most of them—did
perish, a few seemed to adapt. The Ambreza moved
in and cleared out the area afterward. They let them
run free in small packs. They even keep a few as
pets."
 
"I ain't much on science," the old man put in, "but
I do remember that stuff like chemical changes can't
 
151
 
be passed on. Surely their children didn't breed true
as animals."
 
"The Ambreza say that there has been slow im-
provement," answered the small man. "But while the
gas has to be extremely potent to affect anybody else,
it appears that the stuff got absorbed by just about
everything—rocks, dirt, and everything that grows in
it or lived in it. For my people, the big dose caused
initial reversion, but about one part per trillion keeps
it alive. The effect is slowly wearing out. The Am-
breza figure that they'll be up to the level of basic
primitive people in another six or seven generations,
maybe even start a language within five hundred
years. Their—the Ambreza's, that is—master plan is
to move the packs over into their old land when they
start to improve. That way they'll develop in a non-
technological hex and will probably remain rather
primitive."
 
"I'm not sure I like that gas," Yomax commented.
"What worked on them might work on us.'* He shiv-
ered.
 
"I don't think so," Brazil replied. "After the attack,
the Well refused to transport the stuff anymore. I
think our planetary brain's had enough of such
things."
 
"I still don't like the idea,'* Yomax maintained. "If
not that, then somethin' else could get us.'*
 
"Life's a risk anyway, without worrying about
everything that might happen," Brazil pointed out.
"After all, you could slip on the dock and fall in the
lake and freeze to death before you got to shore. A
tree could fall over on you. Lightning could strike. But
if you let such things dominate your life, you'll be as
good as dead anyway. That's what's wrong with Wu
Julee."
 
"What do you mean?" Jol asked sharply.
"She's had a horrible life," Nathan Brazil replied
evenly. "Bom on a Comworld, bred to do farm labor,
looking and thinking just like everybody else, no sex,
no fun, no nothing. Then, suddenly, she was plucked
up by the hierarchy, given shots to develop sexually,
and used as a prostitute for minor visitors, one of
whom was a foreign pig named Datham Hain."
 
152
 
He was interrupted at this point and had to try to
explain what a prostitute was to two members of a
culture that didn't have marriage, paternity suits, or
money. It took some doing.
 
"Anyway," he continued, "this Hain was a repre-
sentative of a group of nasties who get important
people on various worlds hooked on a particularly
nasty kind of drug, the better to rule them. To dem-
onstrate what it did if you didn't get the treatment,
he infected Wu Julee first and then let the stuff start
to destroy her. There's no cure, and on most worlds
they just put such people to death. Most of those in-
fected, finding their blood samples matching Wu
Julee's blood, played Hain's game, taking orders from
him and his masters.
 
"The stuff kind of does to you, but very painfully,
what that gas did to my Hex Forty-one, only it also
depresses the appetite to nonexistence. You eventually
mindlessly starve to death."
 
"And poor Wuju was already pretty far gone," Jol
interpolated. "In pain, practically an animal, with all
that behind her. No wonder she blotted all memories
out! And no wonder she had nightmares!"
 
"Life's been a nightmare to her," Brazil said quietly.
"Her physical nightmare is over, but until she faces
that fact, it still lives in her mind."
 
They just stood there for several minutes, there
seeming to be nothing left to say. Finally, Yomax
said, "Captain, one thing bothers me about your gas
story."
 
"Fire away," the man invited, sipping more of the
ale.
 
"If that gas stuff was still active, why didn't it af-
fect you, at least slightly?"
 
"I honestly don't know," Brazil responded. "Every-
thing says I should have been reduced to the level
of the hex, including Ambreza chemistry. But I
wasn't. I wasn't even physically changed to conform
to the larger, darker version of humanity there. I
couldn't explain that—and neither can the Ambreza."
 
The Healer stuck her head in the door, and-they
turned expectantly.
 
153
 
"She's sleeping now," she reported. "Really sleep-
ing, for the first time in more than a month. I'll stay
with her and see her through."
 
They nodded and settled back for a long wait.
Wu Julee slept for almost two days.
 
Brazil used the time to tour the village and look at
some of the trails. He liked these people, he decided,
and he liked this isolated place, cut off from every-
thing civilized except for the one daily boat run.
Standing on a ledge partway up a well-maintained
cross-country trail, he was oblivious to the cold and
the wind as he looked out at the mass of snow-covered
mountains. He realized suddenly that almost the
whole mountain range was in the next hex, and he
speculated idly on what sort of denizens lived in that
kind of terrain.
 
After spending most of a day out there, he made
his way back to the village to check on Wu Julee's
progress.
 
"She came around," the Healer informed him. "1
got her to eat a little something and it stayed down.
You can see her, if you want."
 
Brazil did want, and went in.
 
She looked a little weak but managed a smile when
she saw him.
 
She hasn't really changed radically, he thought, at
least not from the waist up. He would have known
her anywhere—despite the different coloration and the
lower body, the pointy ears, and all. She actually
looked healthier than she had under the influence of
that vicious drug, the product of eating better and of
exercising.
 
"How are you feeling?" he asked, idly wondering
why that stupid question was always the first asked of
obviously sick people.
 
"Weak," she replied, "but I'll manage." She let out a
small giggle. "The last time we saw each other I had
to look up to you."
 
Brazil took on a pained expression. "It never
fails!" he wailed. "Everybody always picks on a little
man!"
 
She laughed and so did he. "It's good to see you
laugh," he said.
 
154
 
"There's never been much to laugh about, before,"
she replied.
 
"I told you I'd find you."
 
"I remember—that was the worst part of the
sponge. You know, you are aware of all that's hap-
pening to you."
 
He nodded gravely. "Throughout the history of man
there's always been some kind of drug, and people
stuck on it. The people who push the stuff are on a
different kind of drug, one so powerful that they are
not aware of its own, ravaging, animalistic effect on
them."
 
"What's that?"
 
"Power and greed," he told her. "The ugliest—no,
the second ugliest ravager of people ever known."
 
"What's the ugliest, then?" she asked him.
 
"Fear," he replied seriously. "It destroys, rots, and
touches everyone around."
 
She was silent for a moment. "I've been afraid most
of my life," she said so softly he almost couldn't make
out the words.
 
"I know," he replied gently. "But there's nothing
to fear now, you know. These are good people here,
and this is a spot I could cheerfully spend the rest of
my life in."
 
She looked straight at him, and her youthful looks
were betrayed by the eyes of someone incredibly old.
 
"They are wonderful," she admitted, "but it's their
paradise. They were born here, and they know noth-
ing of the horrors around them. It must be wonderful
to be that way, but I'm not one of them. My scars
seem huge and painful just because of their good-
ness and simplicity. Can you understand that?"
 
He nodded slowly "I have scars, too, you know.
And some of them are more than I can take at times.
My memory's coming back—slowly, but in extreme
detail. And, like Serge said, they're mostly things I
don't want to remember. Some good times, some won-
derful things, certainly—but some horrors and a lot
of pain, too. Like you, I blotted them out, more suc-
cessfully it seems, but they're coming back now—more
and more each day."
 
155
 
"Those rejuve treatments must have done a lot to
your memory," she suggested.
 
"No, nothing," he said slowly. "I've never had a
rejuve treatment, Wu Julee. Never. I knew that when
I blamed them for such things."
 
"Never—but that's impossible! I remember Hain
reading your license. It said you were over five hun-
dred years old!"
 
"I am," he replied slowly. "And a lot more. I've
had a hundred names, a thousand lives, all the same.
I've been around since Old Earth, and before."
 
"But that was bombed out centuries ago! Why, that
was back almost before history!"
 
His tone was casual, but there was no doubting his
sincerity. "It's been dropping like a series of veils,
little by little. Just today, up in the mountains, I sud-
denly remembered a funny, little, Old Earth dictator
who liked me because I wasn't any taller than he was.
 
"Napoleon Bonaparte was his name. . . ."
 
He slept on furs in Yomax's office for several days,
seeing Wu Julee gain some strength and confidence
with every visit.
 
But those eyes—the scars in her eyes were still
there.
 
One day the steamboat came in, and Klamath al-
most fell in the lake rushing out to meet him.
 
"Nate! Nate!" the ferry captain called- "Incredible
news!" From his expression it was nothing good.
 
"Calm down, Klammy, and tell me about it." He
spied a block-printed newspaper in the waterman's
hand, but couldn't read a word of the language.
 
"Somebody just busted into that university in Czill
and kidnapped a couple of people!"
 
Brazil frowned, a funny feeling in his stomach. That
was where Vardia was, where he was going next.
 
"Who'd they snatch?" he asked.
 
"One of yours, Vardia or something like that. And
a Umiau—they're sorta mermaids, Nate—named
Cannot."
 
The little man shifted uneasily, chewing on his
lower lip.
 
156
 
"Anybody know who?"
 
"Got a good idea, though they deny it. Bunch o*
giant cockroaches with some unpronounceable name.
Some of the Umiau spotted them in the dark when
they shorted out the power at the Center."
 
Slowly the story came out. Two large creatures
resembling giant flying bugs blew the main power
plant, causing the artificial sunlight to fail in one wing
of the Center. Then they crashed through the windows
of the lab, grabbed Vardia and Cannot, and took
them away. The leaders of the culprit's race were con-
fronted at Zone, but pointed out that there were al-
most a hundred insectival races on the planet and
denied they were the ones. Their tight monarchy, re-
sembling a Comworld with fancy titles, was leakproof
—so nobody was sure.
 
"But that's not the most sensational part!" Klamath
continued, his voice rising again. "These Umiau got
superupset at all this, and one of them let slip the
truth about Cannot.
 
"Seems they and the top dogs of the Center had a
real secret to keep. Cannot was Elkinos Skander,
Nate!"
 
Brazil just stood there, digesting the information. It
made sense, of course. Skander would use the great
computers of the Center to answer his big questions,
getting everything he needed so that, when he was
ready, he could mount an expedition under his di-
rection to the interior of the Well World. Power and
greed, Brazil thought sourly. Corrupting two of the
more peaceful and productive races on the planet.
 
Well, they wanted it all, and now all they've got
left is their fear, he reflected.
 
"I'll have to go to Czill now," he told the ferry
captain. "It looks as if my job is starting."
 
Klamath didn't understand, but agreed to hold the
boat until Nathan could say good-bye to Wu Julee.
 
She was standing unsupported and looking through
a book of landscape paintings by local artists when
he entered. His expression telegraphed his disquiet.
 
"What's the matter?" she asked.
 
"They've broken into a place a couple of hexes
 
157
 
over and kidnapped Vardia and Skander, the man
who might be the killer of those seven people back
on Dalgonia," he told her gravely. "I have to go, I'm
afraid."
 
"Take me with you," she said evenly.
 
The thought had never occurred to him. "But you're
still weak!" he protested. "And here is where you be-
long. These are your people, now. Out there is noth-
ing but worse and worse. It's no place for you!"
 
She walked over to him and looked down with those
old, old eyes.
 
"I have to," she told him. "I have to heal the scars."
 
"But there're only more scars out there," he
countered. "There's fear out there, Wu Julee."
 
"No, Nathan," she replied sternly, using his first
name for the first time. She tapped her forehead. "The
fear is in here. Until I face it, I'll die by inches here."
 
He was silent for a while, and she thought he still
wouldn't take her.
 
"I'm easier to care for than you are," she pointed
out. "I'm tougher of skin, more tolerant of weather,
and I need only some kind of grass and water."
 
"All right," he said slowly. "Come if you must. You
can get back to Dillia through a gate from anywhere,
anyway."
 
"That's what I've got to know, Nathan," she ex-
plained. "I'm cured of sponge, but I'm still hooked on
that ugliest drug, fear."
 
"You sure you're well enough?"
 
"I'm sure," she replied firmly. "This will give me
what I need."
 
She put on a coat and they went outside. When they
told Yomax and the others that she was going along,
the same round of protests started all over again, but
her mind was made up.
 
"I'll tell Dal and Jol," Yomax said, tears welling
in his eyes. "But they won't understand, neither."
 
"I'll be back, old man," she replied, her voice
breaking. She kissed him lightly on the cheek.
 
Klamath sounded the steam whistle.
 
They stepped on the board first floor of the steam-
ship and entered the partially closed cargo door that
enclosed the lower deck from the colder weather-
 
158
 
Five hours later they landed in the much larger
village of Donmin downlake. Compared to the uplake
community, it was a bustling metropolis of fifteen or
twenty thousand, stretching out across broad, cleared
plains. The streets were lit with oil lamps, although
Brazil had no idea what son of unrefined, natural oil
they used. It smelled like fish, anyway.
 
He reclaimed a well-made but crude backpack
from the shipping office and said good-bye to Klamath,
 
who wished them luck.
 
The packs, Wu Julee found, were largely filled
with tobacco, a good trade commodity. One pouch
had some clothing and toiletries.
 
Using the tobacco, Brazil managed to trade for
some small items he thought they would need, then
got a room for them at a' waterfront inn, where they
spent the night.
 
The next day they set out early across the trails of
Dillia toward the northeast. She had trouble staying
back with him, having to walk in almost uncomfort-
able slow motion. After several kilometers of particu-
larly slow going, she suggested, "Why don't you ride
 
me?"
 
"But you're already carrying the pack," he pro-
tested.
 
"I'm stronger than you think," she retorted. "I've
 
hauled logs heavier than you and the pack put to-
gether. Come on, climb on and see if you can keep
from falling off."
 
"I haven't been on a horse since I went to the first
Wilson inauguration," he muttered incomprehensibly.
 
"Well, I'll try."
 
It took him three tries, even with her help, to mount
her broad, stocky body that reminded him so much of
a Shetland pony. And he fell off twice, to her derisive
laughter, when she started to trot. She finally had to
put her arms behind her to give him something to
hold on to. When her circulation started going, he
had to hold on to the much-less-reassuring pack.
His own circulation was in no great shape. His legs
discovered a hundred new muscles he had never
 
159
 
known before, and the agony almost obliterated the
soreness of his rump from bouncing.
 
But they made good time, the kilometers flying
by. Near dusk they reached the Dillian border,
through the last village and seeing here and there only
an isolated farmhouse. It started to snow, but it was
only a flurry at first and didn't really bother either of
them.
 
"We're going to have to quit soon," he called to her.
 
"Why?" she mocked. "Scared of the dark?"
 
"My body just won't take much more of this," he
groaned. "And we'll pass into the Slongom Hex in a
little while. I don't know enough about it to want to
chance it in the dark."
 
She slowed, then stopped, and he got off. Pain shot
through him but it was the aching sort, not the driving
sharpness of riding. She was amused at his discomfort.
 
"So who couldn't make the trip because they were
too weak?" she teased. "Look at the brave superman
now! And we've already stopped five times'"
 
"Yeah," he grunted, stretching and finding that that
only made it hurt in different places. "But that was
only so you could eat. Lord! Do you people stuff your-
selves!"
 
And they did, he thought, consume an enormous
quantity to support their large bodies.
 
"Will we have to camp here?" she asked, looking
at the darkening woods with no sign of lights
nearby. "If we do, we'd better get some good shelter.
It looks like the snow may pick up."
 
"If that road we passed about a kil and a half ago
was the turnofE to Sidecrater Village, there should be a
roadhouse not too much farther on." He checked a
frayed and faded map he had in the pack.
 
"Why not go back to the village?" she suggested.
 
"Almost eight kils down a dead end?" he replied
skeptically. "No, we'll go on and hope the roadhouse
is still in business. But I'll walk for a while, no matter
what!'*
 
As darkness fell the snow did pick up, and started to
stick. The wind whistled through the trees, keeping
time with the subtle, quiet sound of the snow hitting
against trees, bushes, and them.
 
160
 
Visibility dropped to almost zero.
"Are we still on the road?" she yelled to him.
"I don't know," he admitted. "We should have come
to that roadhouse by now. But we don't have any
choice. We'd never build a fire in this stuff now. Keep
 
going!"
 
"I'm getting real cold, Nathan!" she complained.
 
"Remember, more than half of me is exposed'"
 
He stopped, and brushed the snow off her backside.
Insulating layer of fat or not, he realized she couldn't
 
continue too much longer.
 
"I'm going to climb on!" he yelled above the wind.
"Then go on as fast as you can! We've got to come to
something sooner or later!"
 
They pushed forward, he clinging to her back, but
it was slow going against the wind. They continued on
for what seemed like hours in the blowing cold and
 
darkness.
 
"I don't know how much longer I can go on!" she
 
called to him at last. "My ass is frozen solid now."
 
"Come on, girl!" he shouted. "Here's that adventure
you wanted! Don't give up now!"
 
That spurred her on, but it seemed hopeless as the
snow continued to pile up.
 
"I think I see something ahead!" she shouted. "I
can't be sure—I think my eyes are covered with ici-
cles!"
 
"Maybe it's the roadhouse!" he shouted. "Head for
 
it!"
 
She pushed on.
 
Suddenly, as if they passed through an invisible
curtain, the snow was gone—and so was the cold. She
stopped suddenly.
 
He got off and brushed the snow from him. After a
few moments to catch his breath, he walked back
 
several steps.
 
And back into the blowing snow and cold.
 
He went back to her.
 
"What is it, Nathan?" she asked. "What happened?"
 
"We must have missed the roadhouse," he told her.
"We've crossed the border into Slongorn!"
 
Her body began to thaw rapidly, and painfully.
Her eyes misted, then started to clear.
161
 
Looking back, she could see nothing but billowing,
snowy fog.
 
In any other direction, the spectacular night sky of
the Well World shone cloudlessly around them.
 
"We might as well camp right here," he suggested.
"Not only am I too tired to go any farther, but there's
no use chancing unfamiliar territory. Anything that
might cause us problems is unlikely to be this close to
the border, and we always have a convenient if chilly
exit if we find any real problems."
 
"It's hard to believe," she said as he unstrapped the
pack and removed a couple of towels, wiping his face
and hair, then starting to give her the much more dif-
ficult rubdown. "I mean—coming out of that awful
storm and into this—winter to summer, just like that."
 
"That's the way it can be," he replied. "Sometimes
there's no clear dividing line, sometimes it's dramatic.
But, remember, despite the fact that things interlock on
this world—tides, rivers, oceans, and the like—each
hex is a self-contained biological community."
 
"AH of a sudden I'm starting to sweat," she noted.
"I think I'll take these heavy fur clothes off."
 
"I'm ahead of you," he responded, drying her rear
and tail. She twisted around and saw that he had re-
moved almost all of his clothing. He looks even punier
naked, she thought. You can just about see every rib
on his body, even through that carpet of black chest-
hair.
 
He finished and came around to her front. Together
they stood and looked at the landscape eerily illumi-
nated in the bright starlight.
 
"Mountains, trees, maybe a small lake over there,"
he pointed out. "Looks like a few lights off in the dis-
tance."
 
"I don't think we're on the road," she commented.
They seemed to be on a field of short grasses. She
reached down almost automatically and picked a
clump.
 
"I'm not sure you ought to eat that right now," he
warned. "We don't know all the ground rules here."
 
She sniffed the grass suspiciously. Although Dillians
were moderately nearsighted, their senses of smell
 
162
 
.and hearing were acute. "Smells like plain old grass,"
she said. "Kind of short, though. See? It's been cut'"
 
He looked at the stuff and saw that she was right.
"Well, this is logically either a high-technology hex or
a nontechnologicat one, judging from the pattern I've
seen," he noted. "From the looks of things, it's high."
 
"The grass has been cut in the last day or two," she
observed. "You can still smell it."
 
He sniffed, but didn't notice much, and shrugged. He
never had much of a smeller despite the Roman nose,
he thought.
 
"I'm going to chance it," she decided at last. "It's
here, and I need it, and we have two or three days be-
fore we'll get through here." She took about three
steps, then stopped.
 
"Nathan?"
 
"Yes?"
 
"What kind of people live here? I mean, what—"
 
"I know what you mean. I couldn't get a really good
description out of anyone. It's not the most traveled
route, mostly a through route. The best I could get
was that they were two-legged vegetarians."
 
"That's good enough for me," she replied, and started
picking clumps of grass and chewing them.
 
"Don't get too far away!" he called. "It's too damned
hot to build a fire, and I don't want to attract the
wrong people. We might be—probably are—trespass-
ing."
 
Satisfied as long as he could still see her, he stretched
out the furs to dry and stripped completely. After dis-
covering that some of the grass was stiff and sharp,
he spread the three wet towels out to form a mat, then
got out a couple of large bricks of cooked confection
he had bought back in Donmin. He sat on the towels
and ate about half of one bar, which was hard and
crunchy but filling, and then came down with a terrible
candy-thirst.
 
He reached for the flagon containing water, but de-
cided to leave its half-empty contents if he could. No
telling what the water was like here.
 
He got up and went over to the border, only a few
meters away. He could hear the howling winds and
see the blowing snow. Some of the cold radiated out a
 
163
 
few centimeters from the border. He got down on his
knees, reached into the cold, and came up with a hand-
ful of snow.
 
That did the Job.
 
He went back and stretched out on the towels. He
still ached from the day's ride, but not nearly as bad.
He knew the pain would come back when he mounted
the next day, though. Maybe in three or four days he
would get used to riding- By his own estimates, they
were still almost nine hundred kilometers from the
Center.
 
She came back after a while and surveyed him ly-
ing there on the towels.
 
"1 thought you'd be asleep," she said.
 
"Too tired to sleep," he responded lazily. "I'll get
off in a little while. Why don't you get some? You're
doing all the work, and there's a lot yet to do. In the
next few days we'll sure find out if they have pneumonia
on this world."
 
She laughed and the laugh developed into a major
yawn.
 
"You're right," she admitted. "I'll probably fall over
in the night, though. Nothing to lean on here."
 
"Ummm-humm," he half-moaned. "Can you sleep
lying down?"
 
"I have, once or twice, mostly on the end of
drunks," she replied. "It's not normal, but if I don't
crush my arm, I can. Once we go to sleep we're just
about unconscious and unmoving for the night."
 
She came up close to him and knelt down, then
slowly rolled over on one side, very close to him and
facing him.
 
"Ahhh . . ." she sighed. "I think this is going to work,
tonight, at least."
 
He looked at her, still half-awake, and thought,
Isn't it funny how human she looks like that? Some of
her hair had fallen over in front of her face, and, on
impulse, he reached over and put it in back of her
gently. She smiled and opened her eyes.
 
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you," he whis-
pered.
 
"That's all right," she replied softly. "I wasn't really
asleep. Still ache?"
 
164
 
'"A little," he admitted.
"Lie with your back to me," she told him. "I'll rub
 
it out."
 
He did as instructed and she twisted a little to free
her left arm then started a massage that felt so good it
 
hurt.
 
After a few minutes he asked her if there was some-
thing he could do in return, and she had him stroking
and rubbing the humanoid part of her back and
shoulders. Doing so was awkward, but she seemed sat-
isfied. Finally, he finished and resumed his position on
 
the towels.
 
"We really ought to get some sleep," he said quietly.
 
Then, almost as an afterthought, he leaned over and
 
kissed her.
 
She reached out and pulled him to her, prolonging
the embrace. He felt terribly uncomfortable, and, when
she finally let him go, he rolled back onto the towels.
 
"Why did you really come with me?" he asked her
 
seriously.
 
"What I said," she replied in a half-whisper. "But,
also, I told you I remember. I remember all of it. How
you gambled to save my life. How you held me up in
the Well. And—how you came out of your way to
 
find me. I saw the map."
 
"Oh, hell," he said disgustedly. "This will never
work. We're two different kinds of creature, alien to
 
each other."
 
"You've been wanting me, though. I could feel it."
"And you know damned well our bodies don't match.
Anything like sex just won't work for us now. So get
those ideas out of your head! If that's why you're here,
you should go back in the morning!"
 
"You were the only clean thing I ever ran into in
that dirty old world of ours," she said seriously. "You're
the first person 1 ever met who cared, even though
 
you didn't know me."
 
"But it's like a fish falling in love with a cow," he
retorted in a strained, higher-than-normal tone. "The
spirits are there but they happen to come from two

 
different worlds."
 
"Love isn't sex," she replied quietly. "T. of all peo-
ple, know that better than nnvone. Sex is just a physical
 
165
 
act. Loving is caring as much or more about someone
else than you do about yourself. Deep down inside you
have the kind of feeling for others that I've never re-
ally seen before. I think some of it rubbed off. Maybe,
through you, I'll face down that fear inside of me and
be able to give myself."
 
"Oh, hell!" Brazil said sourly, turning his back to
her.
 
In the quiet that followed, they both went to sleep.
 
The centaur was huge. like a statue of the god
Zeus come to life, and if mated with the finest stal-
lion. He came out of his cave at the sound of foot-
steps, then saw who it was and relaxed.
 
"You're getting careless, Agorix," the man said
to him.
 
"Just tired," the centaur replied. "Tired of run-
ning, tired of jumping at every little noise. I think
soon I will go into the hills and end it. I'm the last,
you know."
 
The man nodded gravely. "I have destroyed
the two stuffed ones in Sparta by setting the temple
on fire."
 
The centaur smiled approvingly. "When I go,
there will be naught but legends to say that we were
here. That is for the best." Suddenly tears flowed
from his great, wise eyes. "We tried to teach them so
much? We had so much to offer!" he moaned.
 
"You were loo good for this dirty little world"
the man replied with gentleness and sympathy.
 
"We came of our own choice," the centaur re-
plied. "We failed, but we tried. But it must be even
harder on you!"
 
"I have to stay," the man said evenly. "You
know that."
 
"Don't pity me, then," the centaur responded
sharply. "Let me, instead, mourn for you."
 
Nathan Brazil awoke.
 
The hot sun was beating down on him, and had he
not already been tanned from earlier travels, he would
have had a terrible sunburn.
 
What a crazy dream, he thought. Was it touched off
 
166
 
by last night's conversation? Or was it, like so much
lately, a true memory? The latter scared him a little,
not because the dream was obscure, but because it
would explain a lot—and in a most unpleasant direc-
tion.
 
He put it out of his mind, or tried to.
Suddenly he realized that Wu Julee was gone.
He sat up with a start and looked around. There was
a large indentation in the grass where she had been,
and some divots kicked up where she had gotten up,
 
but no sign of her.
 
He looked around, noting several things about the
 
landscape.
 
For one thing, they had been fairly lucky. Although
 
the area around was a grassy hill, it sloped down into
dank, swampy wetlands not far away. There were
odd buildings, like mushrooms, scattered about near
the swamp and through it, but no sign of any real ac-
tivity. He looked back at the border. It was a snowy
forest scene that greeted him, but the storm had passed
and the sky was quickly becoming as blue there as it
was overhead. He walked over to the border, got some
snow, and nibbed his face with the cold stuff.
 
Blinking the sleep from his eyes, he turned back
to look for Wu Julee. He spotted her at last, coming
back toward him at full gallop.
 
He turned and packed the towels away in the pack,
removing from the clothing pouch a bundle of black
cloth. He unfolded it and looked at it. He had had it
made in another hex, awfully nonhuman, but it had
seemed right when he had tried it on.
 
The pants fitted, and his feet slipped into shoe-
shaped bottoms with fairly tough, leathery soles on the
outside. The material was of the stretchy type, and it
seemed to adhere to him like a second skin, as did the
pullover shirt. He had two of the latter, and chose the
one with no sleeves over the other, which had form-
fitting gloves.
 
It works, he thought to himself, and fairly comfort-
able, too. But it's so form-fitting and so thin I still feel
naked. Oh, well, at least it'll keep the sun out.
 
He wished for sunglasses, not for the first time. But
 
167
 
the first group he had hit who made them were the Dil-
lians, and the smallest was a bit too large for him.
 
Wu Julee came up to him at that point, looking ex-
cited.
 
"Nathan!" she called, "I've been out exploring and
you'll never guess what's over the next hill!"
 
"The Emerald City," he retorted, even though he
knew that expression would draw a blank look. In fact,
it went right past her.
 
"No! It's a road! A paved road! And it has cars on
it!"
 
He looked puzzled. "Cars? This close to the border?
What kind of cars?"
 
"Electric ones, I think," she replied. "They don't go
all that fast, and there aren't many of them, but there
they are. There's a little parking lot up by the border-
The Dillian roadhouse is a hundred meters or so far-
ther on!"
 
"So we did miss it in the storm and got off the
track!" he said. "They must supply the roadhouse with
various things, and use the roadhouse as a business
base. Funny you never heard of them."
 
"I've been uplake all my time here," she reminded
him. "The only others I ever heard about were the
mountain people, and I never saw any of them."
 
"Well, what do these people look like?" he asked
curiously. "We'll have to travel through most of their
hex."
 
"They're the strangest—well, you'll have to see.
Let's get going!"
 
He strapped the pack on her and climbed aboard.
She seemed particularly happy and eager and, well,
alive this morning, he thought.
 
They moved along at a fast clip, and the old pains
came back almost immediately, although he was get-
ting to the point where he was going up when she was
and down when she did. It helped a little, but not
much.
 
They cleared the top of the hill in about five min-
utes, and he saw immediately what she meant. A half-
dozen vehicles were parked in a little paved area near
the border. They were mostly open, except for one with
 
168
 
a roof of canvas or something like it. None of them had
seats, and, from the looks of the one with the top,
their drivers were very tall and drove by a two-lever
combination. The road was wide enough for one car
to pass another, and it had a white line painted down
the center of the black surface.
 
She stopped near the lot. "Look!" she said. "Now
you'll see what I mean by weird people!"
 
And she was most definitely right, Brazil decided.
The last time he had seen anything remotely resem-
bling it was on a long-ago, month-long bender.
 
Imagine an elephant's head, floppy ears and all, but
no tusks, with not one but two trunks growing from
its face, each about a meter long and ending in four
stubby, jointless fingers grouped around the nostril
opening. Mount the head on a body that looked too
thin to support such a head, armless and terminating
in two short, squat, legs and flat feet that made the
walker look as if he were slightly turning from side to
side as he walked. Now paint the whole creature a fiery
red, and imagine it wearing green canvas dungarees.
 
Nathan Brazil and Wu Julee didn't have to imagine
it. That was exactly what was walking at a slow pace
toward them.
 
"Oh, wow!" was all he could manage. "I see just
what you mean."
 
The creature spotted them and raised its trunks,
which seemed to grow out of the same point between
and just below the eyes, in a greeting. "Weli, hello!" it
boomed in Dillian in a voice that sounded like an in-
jured foghorn. "Better weather on this side of the line,
 
hey?"
 
"You can say that again," Brazil responded. "We al-
most got caught in the storm and missed the road-
house. Spent the night over in the field, there."
 
"Heading out, then?" the Slongornian asked pleas-
antly. "Going to tour our lovely country? Good time of
year for it- Always summer here."
 
"just passing through," replied Brazil casually.
"We're on our way to Czill."
 
The friendly creature frowned, which gave it an even
 
169
 
more comical aspect that was hard to ignore. "Bad
business, that- Read about it last night."
 
"I know," Nathan replied seriously. "One of the vic-
tims—the Czillian—was a friend of mine. Ours," he
quickly corrected, and Wu Julee smiled.
 
"Why don't you go into the roadhouse, have break-
fast, and try to bum a ride through?" the creature sug-
gested helpfully- "All of these trucks'll be going back
empty, and you can probably hitchhike most of the
way. Save time and sore feet."
 
"Thanks, we'll try it," Brazil called after the
Slongomian as that worthy climbed into the covered
truck and started backing it out, controlling the steer-
ing with a trunk on each lever. The truck made a whir-
ring noise but little else, and sped off down the road
at a pretty good clip.
 
"You know, I bet he's doing fifty flat out," he said to
Wu Julee as the truck disappeared from view. "Maybe
we can move faster and easier than we figured."
 
They walked over the border to the incongruously
snow-clad roadhouse. The cold hit them at once, Wu
Julee being unclad except for the pack, and his cloth-
ing not much more than protection from the sun. They
ran to the roadhouse, and she was inside almost a min-
ute ahead of him.
 
Five Slongornians stood at a counter shoving what
appeared to be hay down their throats with their
trunks. One drained a mug of warm liquid somewhat
like tea and then squirted it into its mouth. The inn-
keeper was a middle-aged female Dillian who looked
older than her years. Two young male centaurs were
sorting boxes in the back, apparently arranging the de-
liveries the Slongornians had made.
And there was one other.
 
It's a giant, man-sized bat! Brazil thought, and that
is what it did look like. It was taller than he was by a
little bit, and had a ratty head and body with blood-red
eyes; its sharp teeth were chewing on a huge loaf of
sweetbread. Its arms were slightly outstretched and
they melded into the leathery wings, the bones ex-
tended to form the structural support for the wings. It
had long, humanoid legs, though, with a standard knee
covered in wiry black hair like gorillas' legs, and end-
 
170
 
ing in two feet that looked more like large human
hands, the backs covered with fur. The thing was ob-
viously double- or triple-jointed in the legs, since it
was balanced on one with no apparent effort while
holding the loaf in the other, the leg brought up level
 
with the mouth.
 
The creature seemed to ignore them, and no one
else in the place seemed to pay any attention. They
turned and ordered breakfast, a thick porridge in a
huge bow! served steaming hot with wooden spoons
stuck in the stuff. Wu Julee just ordered water with it,
while Nathan tried the pitch-black tea. It tasted in-
credibly strong and bitter, and had an odd aftertaste,
but he had found from the days he had spent in Dillia
that the tea woke him up and got his motor started.
 
It didn't take long for one of the Slongomian truck
drivers to strike up a conversation. They seemed to be
an extraordinarily friendly and outgoing people, and
when curious about this strange-looking one in their
midst felt no hesitancy in starting things off. Between
comments about the weather, the porridge, and the
hard and thankless life of truck drivers, Brazil man-
aged to explain where he was going and as much of his
reason as he had told the one in the parking lot.
 
They sympathized and one offered to take them the
nineteen kilometers to his base in the nearest Slongom-
ian city, assuring them that they could probably hitch
rides from terminal to terminal across the country.
 
"Well, Wu Julee, no exercise and no aches today,"
Nathan beamed.
 
"That's nice," she approved. "But, Nathan—don't
call me by that name anymore. It's somebody else's
name—somebody I'd rather not remember. Just call me
Wuju. That's Jol's nickname, and it's more my own."
"All right," he laughed. "Wuju it is."
"I like the way you say it," she said softly. He re-
flected to himself that he didn't feel comfortable with
the way she had said that.
 
"Excuse me," said a sharp, nasal, but crystal-clear
voice behind them, "but I couldn't help overhearing
you on your travel plans, and I wondered if I. could
tag along? I'm going in the same direction for a while."
 
171
 
They both turned, and, as Brazil expected, it was
the bat.
 
"Well, I don't know . . ." he replied, glancing at
the willing truck driver who cocked his head in an un-
mistakable why-the-hell-not attitude.
 
"Looks like it's all right with the driver, so it's all
right with us, ah—what's your name? You've already
heard ours."
 
The bat laughed. "My name is impossible. The
translator won't handle it, since it's not only a sound
only we can make but entirely in the frequencies be-
yond most hearing." The creature wiggled his enor-
mous bat ears. "My hearing has to be acute, since,
though I have incredible night vision, I'm almost blind
in any strong light. I depend on my hearing to get
around in the day. As for a name, why not call me
Cousin Bat? Everyone else does."
 
Brazil smiled. "Well, Cousin Bat, it looks as if you're
along for the ride. But why not just fly it? Injured?"
 
"No," Cousin Bat replied, "but this cold's done me
no good, and I've traveled quite a distance. Frankly,
I'm extremely tired and sore and would just as soon let
machines do the work instead of muscle."
 
The bat went over to settle his bill, paying in some
kind of currency that Brazil guessed was valid in
Slongorn, which would be used to pay for the sup-
plies.
 
He felt a sudden, hard pressure on his arm, and
turned. It was Wu Julee—Wuju, he corrected himself.
 
"I don't like that character at all,'* she whispered in
his ear. "I don't think he can be trusted."
 
"Don't be prejudiced," he chided her. "Maybe he
feels uncomfortable around horses and elephants. Did
you have bats on your home world?"
 
"Yes," she admitted. "They were brought in years
ago to help control some native bugs. They did, but
they were worse than the bugs."
 
Brazil shook his head knowingly. "I thought so.
Well, we'll meet some even more unpleasant characters
along the way, and he seems straight enough. We'll
find out. If he's honest, he'll be a great night guard
and navigator."
 
172
 
She resigned herself, and the matter was settled for
the moment.
 
Actually, Brazil had an ulterior motive. With Cousin
Bat around, there was less likelihood of the emotions
of the night before getting aired or strengthened, he
thought.
 
The ride was uneventful. Cousin Bat took the floor
next to the Slongornian driver and promptly went to
sleep, while Wuju and Brazil sat in the rear bed, the
only place she could fit.
 
The Slongornian city was modem enough to have
traffic jams as well as signals and police. Had it not
been for the mushroom-shaped buildings and the total
incongruity of the inhabitants, it would have been very
comfortable. They waited there for two hours before
another truck going in their direction was sufficiently
empty to fit Wuju in the back, and even then she was
uncomfortably cramped. Still, it was faster than her
own speed,
 
Shortly after nightfall, they were more than halfway
across the hex. Cousin Bat was wide awake by this
time. Since there were no inns that could accommodate
someone of Wuju's size and build, they made camp in
the field of a friendly farmer.
 
The bat had looked like a cartoon version of a vil-
lain by day, but in the dark he took on a threatening
aspect, his red eyes glowing menacingly, reflecting any
light.
 
"You going to fly on now. Cousin Bat?" Brazil asked
after they were settled.
 
"I will fly for a while," the creature replied, "partly
for the exercise, and partly because there are some
small rodents and insects roaming about here. I am
sick and tired of wheat cakes and the like. My consti-
tution is not constructed for such fare. However,
Murithel, which is the next hex, is a bit nasty I'm told.
I'll stick with you to Czill, if you'll have me."
 
Brazil assured him he would, and the bat leaped up
into the evening sky with a flurry of leathery wings and
vanished.
 
"I still don't like him," Wuju insisted. "He gives me
the creeps."
 
173
 
"You'll have to get used to him," he told her. "At
least, until I find out what his game is."
 
"What?" she yelped.
 
"Oh, he's a phony, all right," Brazil said. "Remem-
ber, in the old life I was nothing much but a truck
driver like these folks here. 1 was even delivering
grain. Truck drivers see a little of everybody and ev-
erything, know isolated facts about all sorts of things
from the people they run into. They knew where our
flying companion's home hex was. It's nine hexes north-
northwest of here—almost exactly the opposite direc-
tion to the way we're going, at least the wrong point on
aV."
 
"Now who's getting nervous?" she retorted. "He
could be going someplace on business. He certainly
hasn't told us much about what he does."
 
"I know what he does," Brazil replied evenly. "One
of the other drivers saw him flying south, toward Dillia,
two days ae;o."
 
"So?"
 
"He was coming to meet us, Wuju. He stayed at that
roadhouse knowing we'd have to come that way to get
to Czill. He almost missed us in the storm, but we man-
aged to blunder into him anyway."
 
"Then let's get away, Nathan. Now. He might—kill
us, or kidnap us, or something."
 
"No," he said thoughtfully. "Nobody goes that far
out of his way to kill somebody. You just hire it done
and that's that. [f it's kidnap, it's the same gang that
got Vardia and Skander, and if we joined it would
solve one of my problems. But I smell something dif-
ferent here—f don't think he's one of their side, who-
ever they are."
 
"Then he's on our side?" she asked, trusting his
judgment.
 
Nathan Brazil turned over on his towels and
yawned. "Baby, you better remember now that the
only side anybody's ever on is his own."
 
He slept far better than she that night.
 
Cousin Bat, looking tired, woke them up in the
morning, but it was hours before they got a ride, and
they made poor time. Brazil was plainly worried.
 
"I'd hoped to get to the border before nightfall," he
174
 
told them, "so we could see what was what tomorrow.
Now, we won't get there until midday, and not really
in until nightfall."
 
"That suits me," the bat replied. "And both of you
can make do in the dark. 1 suggest we make the bor-
der, look over the terrain, but not enter until darkness
falls. Better to keep to the dark for movements."
 
Brazil nodded approval. "Yeah. At least that'll put
the Murnies on the same footing, and with your eyes
we ought to be able to even out the odds."
 
Wuju looked alarmed. "What are the Murnies?" she
 
asked.
 
"I see we've got the same information," Cousin Bat
 
said. "The Murnies are the folk of Murithel, of which
we have over three hundred kilometers to traverse.
They are a nasty bunch of carnivorous savages that
seem to be half-plant and half-animal. They'll try to
eat anything that doesn't eat them."
 
"Can't we go around them, then?" she asked, ap-
palled at the idea of crossing such a land.
 
"No," Cousin Bat replied. "Not from here. An arm
of the ocean comes in to the east, and from what
I've heard of the Pia we'll take the Murnies on dry
land. To go up the other way we'd go through
Dunh'gran, a land of nicely civilized flightless birds,
but then we'd have to cut through Tsfrin, where the
giant, crablike inhabitants are quite antisocial—not
to mention armor-plated—and down in through
Alisst, about which I know nothing. Not to mention
about fourteen hundred kilometers."
 
"He's right, Wuju," Brazil said. "We'll have to try
to sneak through the Murnies."
 
"Any weapons?" Cousin Bat asked.
 
"I've got a light-pistol," Brazil told him. "In the
 
pack, there."
 
"No good," the bat replied. "Nontechnological hex,
Those great weapons are never any use where you
 
need them."
 
Brazil rooted around in the pack and pulled out a
gleaming short sword. Looking at Wu Julee, he
asked, "Remember this?"
 
"It's that Corn girl's!" she exclaimed. "So'that's
 
175
 
what that damned thing was that kept hitting me on
the side! How in the world did you wind up with it?"
 
"It was left in Serge's office at Zone," he reminded
her. "I went back there a few days after arriving in
my home hex. I found the Zone Gate, dodged
Ambreza guards, and Jumped in, managing to get
word to Ortega before those giant beavers made me
into a domesticated pet. Old Serge gave it to me. Said'
it might come in handy. Ever used one?"
 
She looked at it strangely. "I—I don't think I've
ever even killed a bug. 1 don't know if I could."
 
"Well, you'll have to find out now," he told her.
"Your arm muscles and speed make it a better weapon
for you than for me."
 
"What will you use, then?" she asked.
 
"Five thousand safety matches and a can of flam-
mable grease," he replied cryptically. "You'll see.
What about you. Cousin Bat?"
 
"Carrying a weapon would keep me off-balance,
but I can always pick and drop rocks," the creature
replied. "Besides, my teeth and my airborne punch are
extremely effective."
 
"Okay, then," Brazil nodded, reasonably satisfied.
"We're as good as we're gonna get. Remember, our
best hope is no fight at all—to sneak through and
that's that."
 
Wuju took the sword and tried a few awkward
thrusts. She didn't look sure or confident. "What—
what do I aim at if I have to use it?" she asked un-
certainly.
 
"The head's always the best," Cousin Bat told her.
"Even if it isn't the brain, at least it's the eyes, nose
—things that matter. A second choice is the genitals, if
any."
 
No roads led to the Murithel border, and they had
to walk the last several kilometers in the dark.
 
"We'll stay on this side through tomorrow," Brazil
said tensely. "Then, near sundown, we'll go."
 
They spent the night talking, except for an hour
or so when Cousin Bat left for his nightly feeding.
Brazil tried to keep Wuju awake most of the night,
 
176
 
so they would sleep the following day, but well be-
fore the night was half over she had succumbed.
 
He decided to let her sleep, and spent the earlier
hours talking to the bat. The creature was easy to
talk to, but gave little useful information and rather
 
glib lies.
 
Brazil resisted the temptation several times to come
right out and ask Cousin Bat who he really was and
what he wanted, but never quite got to the point of
 
doing so.
 
Both finally were asleep by morning.
 
Wuju was up first, of course, but she didn't stray
far from them. Brazil slept until almost midday, and
Bat finally had to be awakened later on when he
showed every sign of sleeping until dark.
 
Murithel was clearly visible from their camp. It
didn't look very menacing; in fact, it looked beauti-
ful.
 
Brazil had one of those uneasy memories again.
He remembered a place long vanished and forgot-
ten. He'd been standing on a barren hill overlooking
some rough but scenic landscape. A couple of thou-
sand meters from that hill ran a line of trees lending
color to the landscape. What he could see of Murithel
reminded him of that long ago day, and gave him
the same feelings, for the river that had fed those
trees was something called the Little Bighorn, and a
few years before he had seen it, others had as well.
He bet that that landscape had looked as quiet and
peaceful as this one did to that general who came into
primitive territory.
 
How many Indians are behind those rocks and
trees? he asked himself.
 
The landscape was formed of low. rocky moun-
tains and rolling hills, some made up of bright orange
rock eroded into strange and eerie patterns. Others
were more a dull pink, with clumps of trees here and
there and grass on the tougher portions. A line of
trees betrayed a small river or stream off to their
left. The sky was cloudy and the sun reflected strange
shadows off the landscape.
 
177
 
"I think it's beautiful," WuJu said. "But it looks so
strange. Even the sky seems to be a lighter blue,
with yellows and greens in it. But it's so rough and
rugged—how will we know that we're going the right
way?"
 
"No problem on a clear night," Brazil replied.
"Just head toward the big, bluish-orange neb'Ula.
Looks as if it's clouding up in there, though."
 
"I agree," the bat put in, concern in his voice.
"We might have some rain. Bad for navigation, bad
for flying if need be. It'll slow us down."
 
"But it'll also keep the Murnies down," Brazil
pointed out. "If we get rain, we keep going as long
as it's possible. The Slongornians say that that low
pinkish range of hills with the little bit of green goes
pretty much northeast for almost half the distance.
I'd say we get to it and follow it. Looks as if there
may be caves and shelters there, too."
 
The bat nodded approval. "1 agree. If I were to
live in such a place, I'd make my camps and villages
along river and stream courses, on the flats but in
defensible positions. If we stay away from such places
unless absolutely necessary, we might Just make it."
 
"As close to sunset as possible, I want you to re-
connoiter the area from the air," Brazil told Cousin
Bat. "I want to know as much about what's in there,
reasonable paths and the like, before we go." He went
over and pulled the sword out of the pack, and
changed his shirt to the long-sleeved one with gloves.
With Bat's help, they tore the shirt he had been wear-
ing, twisted and tied it to make a makeshift scabbard
fixed around Wuju's neck and draped to one side
so all but the hilt was in the shirt.
 
"That ought to hold," he said with satisfaction,
"if the sword doesn't tear through the material and
if you remember to hold the cloth when taking out
the sword." Next he removed a small, battered tin and
took out something that looked like oily grease.
 
"What's that?" she asked, curious.
 
"Slongornian cooking fat," he replied, applying the
stuff to his face and neck. "Something in it is like a
 
178
 
dye. Bat's black and you're brown, but my light skin
will be a giveaway in close quarters. I want to be
able to blend in."
 
Satisfied, they settled back to wait for sundown.
 
The Barony of Azkfru,
Akkafian Empire
 
VARDIA REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS SLOWLY. EVEN WITH
 
the aid of what looked like a sunlamp, it was almost
half an hour before she could make any movement
at all.
 
The Umiau she knew as Cannot groaned softly.
With great effort she turned lier head ? little and saw
that the mermaid was having a similar struggle to
regain muscle movement.
 
"Son of a bitch!" the Umiau swore in Confederacy
plain talk.
 
She would have gasped had she the physical equip-
ment for it. She recognized the dialect at once. though
she hadn't heard it since she was in Ortega's office in
Zone.
 
"You—are—from—the—Confederacy," she man-
aged, the voice sounding strangely distant and fuzzy.
 
"Of course," the mermaid growled. "That's what
all this is about. I am Elkinos Skander."
 
Vardia stretched and flexed, feeling far surer of
herself with every passing moment.
 
The Umiau stared at her for a moment, a puzzled
frown on her face. "You mean you really haven't any
idea about what's going on?"
 
Vardia shook her head. "No, nothing."
 
Skander was thunderstruck. It simply hadn't oc-
curred to her that anyone hadn't known at least part
of the story. "Look," she began, "you're Vardia, right?
You came in with that party from Dalgonia?" She
 
179
 
nodded, and the mermaid continued. "Well, I came
in a few weeks ahead of you."
 
Now it was Vardia's turn to be astonished. "Then
you—it was your tracks we followed!"
 
"Indeed they were!" Skander replied and proceeded
to tell her the entire story—the discovery, the open-
ing of the gate, even the murders. Only the point of
view had changed on the latter.
 
"I returned to the camp instead of staying on sta-
tion," Skander lied. "By the time I arrived, this
rascal Varnett had already killed them. There was
no way out, no chance of holding him off, so I made
for the Gate. I hadn't any real idea where it would
take me, or if it would kill me; but I was being
chased by a madman. I had no choice. When I ar-
rived, the Gate had not yet opened, and Vamett
caught me. We struggled—he was much younger,
but I was in far better condition—and the Gate
opened beneath us."
 
He went on and told how they were separated, in-
terrogated for several days, and finally allowed to
pass through the same Gate she had gone into. "I don't
know what happened to Varnett," Skander finished.
"I woke up a Umiau and damned near drowned
those first few hours. The Umiau spotted me and I
was taken immediately to government Center by two
police. They kept me locked up until I normalized,
and while there I was apprised of the unique situa-
tion here and of my own new situation. When I
heard about the Center and the contacts with your
people, we decided to strike a bargain—me with my
new people, and my people with yours—to solve the
problem of this planet once and for all and," the mer-
maid concluded, with a strangely fiery look in her
eyes like those of a religious fanatic, "whoever does
solve it will control this world at the very least, and
perhaps all of them."
 
"But none of our people has ever sought power,"
she objected.
 
"All people seek power," Skander replied firmly.
"Few, however, are ever given the opportunity to
grab it."
 
180
 
"I still can't see my people wanting to rule the
world or whatever," she said stubbornly. "Perhaps
yours, but not mine."
 
Skander shrugged. "Your people are a mystery to
me, just as mine would be to yours. Maybe they only
wanted to add the ultimate knowledge. Maybe they
still wouldn't have done it, but for one factor."
 
"Which is?" she asked, still unwilling to accept
what she was hearing.
 
"Varnett, of course. He's out there; he has the same
formulae I do for contacting the brain, and he's at
least as smart, perhaps smarter than myself. We
couldn't take the chance. If anyone was to break the
final puzzle and control the brain of this world, it
would better be the Umiau—and the Czillians, o£
course," the scientist added hastily.
 
"So how did we come to this?" Vardia asked, wav-
ing her tentacles around at the barren dirt chamber
with its incongruous electrical outlet.
 
"Because I was stupid," Skander replied harshly.
"Someone found out who I was—how I don't know.
But our ambassador at Zone got a warning that some-
one was out to kidnap me, and so I cleared out and
lay low for several weeks. I relied on the fact that
most species can't tell individuals of another species
apart. I came back. eventually, using a colleague's
name and office, and tried to complete the last few
days' work. That's why we were pushing it around
the clock. I'd already solved half the puzzle and hoped
I could crack the rest. 1 even had you transferred up
—not for what you were doing, but because I could
talk conversationally to you about the Dalgonian
Gate and your own experiences."
 
Now she was really puzzled. "Why would my ex-
periences be any different than yours?"
 
"Because the Gate should have closed behind us!"
Skander exclaimed excitedly. "We—Varnett and I—
opened it when we cracked the code. Our minds
opened it. But there's no reason why the thing re-
mained active—if it has. The resupply ship should
have been in shortly after you and gone through the
same motions—-then most of them should have ar-
rived here."
 
181
 
Vardia thought back, and told about the strange
emergency signal.
 
"'Another funny thing. I hadn't really thought
about it, but—"
 
"Go on!" Skander prompted. "What was it?"
 
"I—I'd swear that your two ships vanished—just
weren't there—before the Gate opened."
 
The Umiau was suddenly very excited. "Vanished!
Yes, that would explain it! But, tell me, who else was
in your party? I glanced at the information but didn't
pay much attention at the time."
 
"There was a big, ugly fat man, I don't remember
his name," she recalled, straining. It all seemed so
long ago. "He turned out to be a sponge merchant—
and he had this girl, Wu something, who was all
fouled up on the stuff."
 
"No one else? Wasn't there a pilot?"
 
"Oh, yes, Nathan Brazil. A funny little man no big-
ger than I was. But old—his pilot's license was pre-
Confederacy!"
 
Suddenly Skander laughed and rocked back against
the wall on her long fish's tail, clapping her hands
once in amusement-
 
Vardia didn't understand at all and said so.
 
"They've kidnapped the wrong person!" the Umiau
replied, still chuckling.
 
"That's very interesting. Dr. Skander, but where
does that leave us?" came a weird, unearthly yet
quiet voice that seemed to be made up of pulses and
chimes, although both kidnap victims understood every
word. They both turned, as The Diviner and The
Rel glided out of a nook hidden in shadows-
 
"What the hell are you?" Skander said, more in
wonder than in fear.
 
"We are, I'm afraid, behind your rough treatment
and discomfort," The Rel replied.
 
"You're not from around Czill," Vardia observed
almost accusingly. "Nothing like you is related to the
kind of life we have here."
 
"We are from the Northern Hemisphere," The Rel
explained. "However, we were obliged, upon learning
of Dr. Skander's mission through means not worth
182
 
explaining to you, to forge an alliance. You are in
the Akkafian Empire, on the other side of the ocean
from Czill."
 
"Those big bugs," Vardia put in. "The ones that
came through the glass—they're not . . ."
 
"They are," The Rel replied. "I fail to see why
that should disturb you. So far we haven't found much
difference in any of you Southern races."
 
"No difference!" Vardia exclaimed, upset by the
comment. "Why, just look at the two of us! And—
how can you compare us to those bugs?"
 
"Form doesn't matter," observed The Rel. "Only
content. I find most of your actions and reactions
incomprehensible, but consistent. As for tnose bugs,
we'll have one with us for quite some time, I fear.
I have arranged it so that we draw only the weakest
link in this society, but it takes no deduction to assume
that the creature will be incredibly brave and loyal
in our defense until that final moment when we are
at the controls of the planetary brain. Then, of course,
it will kill us all."
 
Skander opened her mouth but said nothing. The
score was perfectly clear, except The Diviner and
The Rel's role and side.
 
"That's all very well," Vardia said at last, "but
won't these people think of that?"
 
"Oh, they will perform what is known as the
double cross," The Rel replied casually in that same,
even tone. "But The Diviner's talents are real. We
will make it—all but one of us. We shall do this."
 
"Which one?" Skander asked quietly.
 
"I have no idea, and neither does The Diviner,"
replied The Rel. "Perhaps it's one of you, or the
Akkafian. Perhaps it is we, for no Diviner can foretell
its own demise."
 
They digested that awhile. Finally, Skander broke
the new silence.
 
"You say you're not like us. But here you are,
kidnapping me, trying for the same goal as all the
other races would if they had the chance. Power is
still the name of the game."
 
"You misunderstand us," The Rel said. "We have
 
183
 
power. We have powers we choose not to reveal at
this time. We have no wish to interfere in your petty
goals, wars, sex, politics, or anything else. Our goal
is simply to make certain that no one ever gets into
that control center again."
 
"Well, so you say," Skander replied skeptically.
"But the fact remains that, for now, you're our only
hope of getting out of here and getting away from
the bugs."
 
"Remember that!" The Rel said. "I am your only
protection. And—oh, yes, for some additional meas-
ure of protection, I would suggest that Czillian Vardia
change its name for the entire expedition, and that you
both remember to use that different name. I will make
certain that our companion does not know your iden-
tity, either."
 
"But why?" Vardia asked, particularly puzzled
now. "Who is this companion."
 
"A greatly changed and mentally preconditioned
Datham Hain, the fat man of your party," The Rel
told her. "It would be better if it did not know that
one of our party knows everything about its past ac-
tivities. Although a conditioned slave, deep down Hain
is still Hain. I suggest you remember what it did to
others before, what kind of person it is."
 
"Oh," was all she could manage. She thought for a
moment. "Then I'll call myself Chon, which is a
common name in Czill, and easy to remember and
respond to."
 
"Very good," The Rel replied. "Remember it. We
will leave as soon as possible. In the meantime, may
I remind you of several facts. First, let me point out,
Dr. Skander, that there is little water in this land.
These people can move on the ground at close to ten
kilometers per hour, up to twice that in the air; and
they have nasty stingers. As for you, Czillian, move
out of the sunlight and you'll root. You know that.
That lamp is all that keeps you awake. The light here
is not intense enough on its own to keep you awake."
And with that it glided out the door.
184
 
Skander beat her fist on the hard ground, and Vardia
stayed still, but the message had been received and
understood.
 
There was no escape.
 
Murithel—One Hour from Dawn
 
WUJU HAD SOME TROUBLE WITH THE UNEVEN, ROCKY
 
ground, but they had managed to advance more than
forty kilometers into the hex without meeting any of
its dominant life form.
 
There was a nutter of wings and Cousin Bat landed
just ahead of them. "There's a fairly good cave with
rock cover a little farther up," the dark one whis-
pered. "It's a good place to make camp. There's a
small tribe of Mumies over on the other side of those
trees, there, but they look like a hunting party, likely
to stay on the plains and river basin."
 
Brazil and WuJu looked where the bat pointed, but
could see nothing but pitch darkness.
 
Cousin Bat led the way up to the cave. It was al-
ready getting light when they approached it, and they
lost no time at all in getting in. It was a good loca-
tion, high up on the cliff atop some ancient rock slide.
They could see for kilometers but, thanks to the shape
of the rocks and boulders around the cave, could not
be seen from the plain below. It was damp and had
a small family of tiny, toadlike reptiles living there,
but these were quickly chased. It wasn't all that deep
a cave, but it would hide the three of them.
 
"I'll take the first watch," Brazil said. "Wuju's
dead tired now, and you, Bat, have been flying around
half the night. All I've been doing is riding."
 
They agreed, and he assured them he would call
Wuju when he was too tired to carry on.
 
Brazil took a comfortable perch near the cave
mouth and watched the sun rise.
 
185
 
Still light-headed over this air, he thought. It was
obviously quite different in composition from what he
was used to, although he had been through worse get-
ting to Dillia from his own ill-fated Hex 41. Much
richer in oxygen, lower in nitrogen, he decided. Well,
the other two had gotten used to it and he would, too,
in time.
 
The air was cool and crisp but not uncomfortable.
Probably eighteen degrees Celsius, he thought, with
high humidity. The threatened rainstorm still looked
threatening, but hadn't materialized yet.
 
The sun was well over the distant mountains when
he saw his first Murnies. There they were—a small
bunch, less than a dozen, running with spears after a
deerlike creature. They were over two meters high, he
guessed, although it was hard to figure at a distance.
They were almost rectangular, a uniform light green
in color, very thin—incredibly so, for he almost lost
ones that turned sideways. They were kind of lumpy,
looking at the distance something like light-green
painted bushes. Two arms, two legs—but they melted
into a solid when one stood straight and still.
 
He was amazed that he could see some features
from this far away. Their big yellow eyes must be
larger than dinner plates, he thought, and those mouths
—huge, they seemed to go completely across the
body, exposing a reddish color when they were opened
wide. And they had teeth—even from here he could
see they were pointed daggers of white of a size to fit
those mouths.
 
They were sloppy hunters, but eventually they
cornered the brownish deer-thing, surrounded it, and
speared it to death.
 
Don't they ever. throw the spears? he wondered.
Maybe those thin, wide arms couldn't get enough
strength or balance.
 
As soon as the creature fell, they pounced upon it,
ripping pieces of it and shoving it into their mouths,
fighting each other to get extra bites. Those hands
must have pretty good claws to tear like that, he
thought.
 
In just a few minutes, they had finished off the en"
 
186
 
tire deer-thing, which must have weighed at least 150
kilos, he guessed. They even ate the bones. When they
finally picked up their spears and went off down the
plains, there was no sign of the prey they had eaten
except a tom-up patch of dirt and grass.
 
Seven days, he thought. At the rate we're going,
seven days in their country. And that's if everything
goes right. And there's bound to be lots more of them,
a lot thicker group.
 
No problem alone, of course. Even easier with
Cousin Bat, whoever he worked for.
 
Why the hell did I allow her to come along?
Why had he?
 
That act of courage in taking off her pressure hel-
met in Zone? Was that what he liked in her, deep
down?
 
Pity, maybe. Certainly that had motivated him at
the start.
 
Thinking back, he kept remembering how she had
clung to him in Zone, looked to him for support, de-
fying Hain even that close to the end.
 
What was love, anyway? he mused. She said it was
caring, caring more about someone else than about
yourself.
 
He leaned forward and thought a minute. Did he
really, deep down, care if the Mumies got the bat?
He realized he wouldn't shed a tear for the creature.
Just one more m a long list of dead associations.
Was he going to Czill because Vardia was kidnapped?
No, he decided, luck of the draw, really. He was go-
ing to Czill because it was the only lead he had to
Skander, and that project was—well, wasn't that car-
ing?
 
What's it to me if Skander takes over and remolds
the universe in his own crazy image? He had met a
lot of nice people, happy people, old friends and new
acquaintances, in his long life and here on the Well
World. He cared about them, somehow, even though
he knew deep down that, in a pinch, they probably
wouldn't do the same for him. Maybe it's for that un-
known one who would, he thought. Nathan Brazil,
ever the optimist.
 
Had anybody ever cared?
 
187
 
He thought back, idly watching a much larger
group of Murnies chasing a fair-sized herd of the
deer-things. How many times had he been married,
legally or socially? Twenty times? Thirty? Fifty?
More?
 
More, he thought wonderingly. About every cen-
tury. Some had been nice lookers, some real dogs.
Two of them had even been men. Had any of them
really cared about him?
 
Not one, he thought bitterly. Not one, deep down in
their selfish little hearts. Lovers, hell. The only
friends who hadn't betrayed him in some manner or
the other were those who hadn't had the chance.
 
Would he really care if the Murnies ate him?
 
Just tired, the centaur had said. Tired of running,
tired of jumping at every little noise,
 
I'm tired, too, he thought. Tired of running no-
where, tired of that tiny belief, often foresworn, that
somewhere, somewhere, was someone who would
care.
 
If all that were true, why did he care about the
Murnies? Why did he feel fear?
 
The wild ports, the happy drugs, the whores and
dives, the endless hours alone on the bridge.
 
Why have I lived so long? he asked himself. Not
aging wasn't enough. Most people didn't die of old age,
anyway. Something else got them first.
 
Not him.
 
He had always survived. Banged up, bleeding,
nearly dead thousands of times, and yet something in
him would not let him die.
 
He remembered the Flying Dutchman suddenly,
sailing the world's oceans with a ghost crew, alone
but for one short leave every fifty years, doomed until
a beautiful woman would love him so much that she
would give up her life for him-
 
Who commands the Dutchman? he asked the winds.
 
Who curses him to his fate?
 
It's psychology, he thought. The Dutchman, Di-
ogenes—I'm all these people. It's why I'm different.
 
All those millions over the centuries who killed
themselves when nobody cared. Not me, I'm cursed.
I can't accept the universality of shallow self-interest.
 
188
 
That fellow from—what was the name of that
country? England. Yes, England. Orwell. Wrote a
book that said that a totalitarian society sustains itself
by the basic selfishness of everybody. When the chips
were down, his hero and heroine betrayed each other.
 
Everybody thought he was talking of the fears of a
future totalitarian state, Brazil thought bitterly. He
wasn't. He was talking about the people around him,
in his own enlightened society.
 
You were too good for this dirty little world, he
had said, but he had stayed. Why? In failure?
 
Whose failure? he wondered, suddenly puzzled. He
almost had the answer, but it slipped away.
 
There was movement in back of him and he
jumped and jerked around.
 
Wuju came up to him slowly. He looked at her cu-
riously, as if he had never seen her before- A choco-
late brown girl with pointy ears welded to the working
half of a brown Shetland pony. And yet it worked, he
thought. Centaurs always looked somehow noble and
beautiful-
 
"You should have called one of us," she said softly.
"The sun's almost straight up. I thought you were
asleep."
 
"No," he replied lazily. "Just thinking." He turned
back to gaze over the valley, now seemingly swarm-
ing with Murnies and deer-things.
 
"About what?" she asked casually, starting to mas-
sage his neck and shoulders.
 
"Things I don't like to think about," he replied
cryptically- "Things I hid away in little corners of my
mind so they wouldn't bother me, although, like all
ghosts, they haunt me even when I don't know it."
 
She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. "I do
love you, Nathan," she whispered.
 
He got up and walked toward the back of the cave,
patting her gently on her equine rump as he did so.
There was a puzzled half-smile on his face, and he
said, as he stretched out near Cousin Bat, in a voice
so low it was really to himself, "Do you, Wu]u? Do
you, really?"
 
189
 
The Barony of Azkfru,
Akkafian Empire
 
THE BARON WAS, IF ANYTHING, MORE MAJESTIC THAN
 
before, and Datham Hain was at her lowest ebb, at
the brink of suicide from weeks now in the dung pits.
 
"You have your name back, now. Mar Hain," the
baron pronounced in that godlike tone he had.
 
That was a small gesture, yet to Hain it was as
momentous as being crowned supreme ruler of the
galaxy, for it restored a measure of her self-respect.
It also bound the Entry all the more to the baron,
from whom all blessings flowed.
 
"I have now a task for you, of the utmost diffi-
culty," the baron told her. "It will require loyalty and
devotion, as well as all of your intelligence and cun-
ning. If you fail me, you are lost forever; if you suc-
ceed, you shall sit beside me in an honored place as
chief concubine of, not your baron, but at the very
least the emperor, perhaps not only of this empire."
 
"You have but to instruct this humble slave and I
will obey though there be no reward and the cost be
my life," Hain groveled.
 
I'll bet, the baron thought sarcastically. Once more
he regretted having to trust such a one as this on so
important a mission. Blast that Northerner! Yet, The
Diviner had so far been a hundred percent correct on
everything, and he dared not go against the creature,
at least not until the final moments.
 
"Listen well, Mar Hain," the baron said carefully.
"Soon you wiil meet three aliens. You will have a
translation device implanted so that you can follow all
conversations. Also, two of them are Entries, and
may be able to communicate in the nontranslatable
tongue of your old life—so it is better if you feign
both ignorance and stupidity whenever possible.
 
190
 
"You will be going on a great journey together.
Now, here is what you are to do. . .."
 
"Those filthy bugs!" Vardia, now calling herself
Chon, exclaimed as they set her down on a road with
the others and flew off, making irritating buzzing noises
as they did so.
 
"Let's have no racial slurs," Hain said sternly.
"They think even less of you, and they are my peo-
ple."
 
"Come on, you two, cut it out!" Skander snapped.
Unable to walk, they had built a saddle which left the
mermaid perched only mildly comfortable atop Hain's
back- "We have a long and probably difficult journey
ahead of us. Our lives may depend on each other, and
I don't want all this carping!"
 
"Quite so," The Rel agreed. "Please remember,
you two, that although you were kidnapped, we all
have a common goal. Save all disputes for the time
we reach our goal, not during the journey."
 
They were at the imperial border, manned by bored
sentries. The change in the landscape was tre-
mendous. The arid, hilly, pinkish-gray land of the
Akkafians ended abruptly as if there were some phys-
ical barrier, perfectly straight, stretching from hori-
zon to horizon.
 
"All of you put on your respirators," The Rel in-
structed, needing none for itself. They still didn't
know if it breathed. Hain's was bulky, the great insect
looking as if she were wearing some sort of giant,
distorted earmuffs behind her eyes. Vardia's hung on
a strap around her neck and was attached to her lower
legs by two cables ending in needles which were in-
serted in her skin. Skander's was a simple mask over
mouth and nose, with tubes leading to a tank also on
Hain's back. Vardia's alone contained not an oxygen
mixture but pure carbon dioxide. There was a mech-
anism by which the waste contents in her canister
could be exchanged with those of Skander and Hain.
 
The hex they faced was bleak enough; the sky
showed not the various shades of blue common to
much of the world, but an almost irritatingly bright
yellow.
 
191
 
"Sound will travel, but slowly and with great dis-
tortion," The Rel told them. "The atmosphere has
enough trace elements to allow us to get by with such
simple devices, but that is mostly due to seepage—the
other hexes surrounding it naturally leak a little. We
will be able to refresh our tanks from supplies along
the way, but under no circumstances remove your
masks! There are elements all about which will not
harm your exteriors but will, nonetheless, cause phys-
ical problems or even death if taken in great quanti-
ties in the lungs for any period of time."
 
Vardia looked out over as much of the landscape as
the glare permitted her to see. A very jagged, burnt-
orange landscape, filled with canyons and strange,
eroded arches and pillars. What erodes them? she
wondered idly. And what sort of creatures could live
in such a hostile place? Carbon-based life? All the
South was supposed to be, yet there could be nothing
carbon-based about anything able to stand such a
place.
 
"Ham," The Rel instructed, "remember to keep
your beak tightly shut at all times. You don't want to
swallow the stuff. And, Skander, keep that blanket
tightly on your lower parts and you'll get and retain
enough moisture to keep you from drying up. The
respirator's been designed that way. All set? Then,
any last-second questions?"
 
"Yes, I have a couple," Vardia said nervously.
"What sort of creatures will we meet, and how will
we possibly cross this place and survive?"
 
"The creatures are basically autonomatons, think-
ing machines," The Rel replied. "This is a high-
technological hex; more so, in fact, than the one
we've been in. The only reason they coexist is that
the Akkafians couldn't exist here for very long, nor
is there anything of use to them in The Nation, while
the people of this hex would break down in an at-
mosphere more conducive to your form of life- Come!
We've wasted enough time! You'll see how we sur-
vive as we go along."
 
With that The Diviner and The Rel floated quickly
across the border. Vardia, a helpless feeling inside
 
192
 
her, followed; and Hain and Skander brought up the
rear.
 
Skander and Vardia both had the same impression:
 
as if they were suddenly in an environment of kero-
sene. The odor permeated their bodies and pene-
trated their breathing. The atmosphere also felt heavy,
almost liquid; and, while invisible, it rippled against
their bodies like a liquid, even though it was plainly a
gas. Moreover, it burned slightly, like a strong alcohol.
It took them awhile to get used to it.
 
The Rel paced them at close to Vardia's maximum
stride; Hain followed at the same pace, between
eight and ten kilometers per hour. In less than an
hour they came upon a paved road, although the
paving stone looked like a single long ribbon of
smoothly polished jade. And, as with most roads and
trails in the various hexes, this one contained traffic.
 
The first thought they all had was that no two deni-
zens of The Nation were alike. There were tall ones,
thick ones, thin ones, short ones, even long ones.
They moved on wheels, treads, two, four, six, and
eight legs, and they had every imaginable type of
appendage and some not very imaginable as to pur-
pose. Although all obviously machines of dull-silver
metal, all looked as if they had been fashioned in a
single stroke. No bolts, joints, or any other such were
visible; they bent and flexed the metal like skin, and
in any way they wanted.
 
Vardia understood and marveled at this.
 
Each one was made for a single purpose, to fulfill
a single need of the society. It was built to order to do
a job, and this it did where and when needed. It was,
she thought, the most practical of all the societies she
had seen, the perfection of social order and utilitari-
anism—a blend of the best of the Comworlds' con-
cepts with the lack of physical dependencies of the
Czillians.
 
She only wished she understood what the people
of The Nation were doing.
 
There were structures, certainly, more and more of
them as they went on. Some were recognizable as
buildings, although as varied and oddly shaped as
the inhabitants of this strange land. Other structures
 
193
 
seemed to be skeletal, or spires, twisted shapes of
metal, and even apparently girders of some sort ar-
ranged in certain deliberate but baffling ways. Func-
tionally built workmen rushed to and fro. Some were
building, of course, but many seemed to be digging
holes and filling them up again, while others carried
piles of sand from one point and dumped them to
form new piles of sand elsewhere- None of it made
sense.
 
They continued to follow The Diviner and The Rel.
They went on through this landscape for hours with-
out stopping and without any of the creatures taking
the slightest notice of them. More than once, in fact,
both Ham and Vardia had had to move out of the
way quickly to avoid being run over by some creature
or by the creature's load.
 
They came upon a building that seemed to be
made of the same stuff as the creatures themselves,
but was shaped something like a large barn. The
Diviner and The Rel surprised them by turning in at
the building's walkway. It waited until they were all at
the rather large sliding doorway, then glided up to a
very large button, then back, up again, and back
again.
 
"Do you wish me to push it?" Vardia asked. The
response sounded like garbled nonsense to her own
ears. The Rel jumped up and down, and The Di-
viner's lights blinked more agitatedly, and so Vardia
pushed the button. The door slid aside with entirely
the wrong sounds, and the strange creature that led
them glided inside. They followed and found them-
selves in a very large but barren chamber. Suddenly
the door slid shut behind them, and they were in total
darkness, illuminated only by the oddly nonillunu-
nating blinks of The Diviner.
 
They had gotten so used to the strange sensations
produced by the atmosphere of the place that the
gradual absence of them was almost as harsh as
their original exposure to them.
 
There were whirring, clicking, and whooshing noises
all around them, going on for what seemed to be sev-
eral minutes. Then, finally, an inner door slid open to
reveal another large barren chamber, this one lit by
 
194
 
some kind of indirect lamps in the ceiling. They went
in.
 
"You may remove your breathing apparatuses
now," The Rel told them clearly. "Skander, will you
pull Mar Hain's up and off? Thank you. Now, Hain,
can you gently—gently—remove the two tubes from
Citizen Chon's legs? Yes, that's right."
 
They all breathed in fresh air. It was stuffy, weak,
and slightly uncomfortable to Vardia; to the others,
it was exhilarating.
 
"You'll be all right in a little while, Citizen Chon,"
The Rel assured her. "The atmosphere is mostly pure
oxygen, with just a trace of carbon dioxide. This will
be added, both from our companions and artificially,
in a little while."
 
There was another hissing sound, and one of the
metallic creatures came out of a side door that had
been almost invisible in the back wall. It was human-
oid, about the same height as Vardia's 150 centi-
meters, and was featureless except for a triangular
screen on the head.
 
"I trust all is satisfactory?" it said, in a voice pleas-
antly and unexpectedly filled with human tonality.
It sounded, in fact, like an eager, middle-aged hotel
clerk, far more human than The Ret's monotone.
 
"The green one, there, the Czillian, is a plant, not
an animal," The Rel told the creature. "It requires
carbon dioxide of at least point five percent. Will you
raise the level? It is in much discomfort."
 
"Oh, I am so very, very sorry," the robot replied
so sincerely that they almost believed it. "The matter
is being adjusted."
 
Just like that Vardia could sense a difference, grow-
ing with every minute. She found it much easier to
breathe, and the feeling that she was going to black
out evaporated. Obviously these things were all linked
together. The Czillian marveled at their efficiency,
quietly envying their unity.
 

"What environments do you require?" the creature
asked.
 
"Types Twelve, Thirty-one, One Twenty-six, and
Thirteen Forty," The Rel told it. "Adjoining, with
private intercom, please."
 
195
 
"It is being prepared," the robot assured them,
and bowed slightly.
 
"What sort of a place is this?" Skander asked
sharply.
 
The robot reared back, and Vardia swore that its
featureless face had a shocked expression to match
the tone of the reply.
 
"Why, this is a first-class transient hotel, of
course. What else?"
 
One at a time they were taken to their rooms by
small wheeled robots with place for luggage and the
like. They put all their gear in storage, except for the
air tanks, which were ordered cleaned and refilled,
with particular attention to Vardia's getting the right
gas.
 
Strong hands lifted Skander gently out of the sad-
dle and onto the back of one of the carts. The scientist
found herself traveling at high speed down a lighted
tunnel, and deposited next to a room with no apparent
exterior markings. It opened automatically, and the
cart glided inside and stopped.
 
Skander was amazed. It was a swimming pool,
with a dry slope going gently down into blue water
which became deeper and deeper as it went toward
the back of the room—the pool was perhaps fifteen
meters long by about ten wide. In the water, clearly
visible, were several small fish of the kind the Umiau
liked the most, and clumps of the blue-green seaweed
that was the other staple of their diet.
 
Skander rolled off and happily plunged into the
water. It was only about four meters deep at its deep-
est point, but it felt wonderful.
 
The little cart left, the door closing behind it. It
returned for Hain, who was too large for it. Another
cart appeared in seconds, and the two, working in
concert, took Hain down the same tunnel to the next
door, which was furnished in the wgrt fur of the best
nobles and was stocked with a nice supply of the
juicy white worms.
 
Next, Vardia was taken to a room that had a rich
black soil and good artificial sunlight. The room even
had a chain dangling from its center, labeled, in
 
196
 
Czillian, Pull for darkness. All guests awakened in
eight hours after darkness pulled or twelve hours after
occupancy. There was a small pool of clear water in
the corner, and even a small desk with paper and pen.
 
She guessed from her own surroundings what the
others' must be like, and only wished she couid see
The Diviner and The Rel's room. That would almost
certainly tell more about the mysterious creatures
than anything seen so far.
 
There was a mild crackling sound in their rooms,
and then The Rel's odd, toneless voice came to the
other three.
 
"Please enjoy this night at the baron's expense," it
said. "Tomorrow I shall arrange transportation for us
which will take us to the border. We shall not have
such pleasant and easy accommodations after this,
so enjoy it. After tomorrow, things get tough."
 
Vardia took a long drink and then sank her roots
into the rich soil that felt incredible, indescribable.
With a feeling of total well-being, she turned off the
 
lights.
 
Skander was the last to sleep, since the Umiau had
been cooped up in the saddle harness and was enjoy-
ing the freedom of the waters. At last she, too,
crawled up the bank and pressed the light switch on
 
the wall-
Each of them slept soundly (except possibly for
The Diviner and The Rel, who didn't seem to need
it—the others weren't sure), and all were awakened
not only by the automatic turning on of the lights but
by the voice of The Re).
 
The creature conveyed emotion for the first time,
not by tone but by the sharp, fast, excited way it
spoke. "Something is terribly wrong!" it told them.
"We are being detained for some technicality! We
cannot leave today!"
 
"Do you mean," Skander's voice came to all of
them in a tone of almost total disbelief, "that we're
 
under arrest?"
 
"It would seem so," replied The Rel. "I cannot
understand it."
 
197
 
Murkhel— Somewhere in
the Interior
 
"WE'RE IN SOME KIND OF TROUBLE," NATHAN BRAZIL
 
said half under his breath.
 
For three days now they had moved along the
rocky mountain ledges, mostly under cover of dark-
ness guided by Cousin Bat's exceptional night vision
and inbred sonar. They had passed hundreds, per-
haps thousands of the bloodthirsty Mumies, often
coming close to their villages in the dark, quietly
working around their dulled campfires.
 
They had been exceptionally lucky, and they knew
 
it. But now they had run out of mountains.
 
The mountains—hills, really—ended abruptly in a
jagged cliff, stretching off at an angle away from the
direction they had to go. Ahead, toward the east, flat,
 
unbroken prairie spread out to the horizon.
 
The land was still dry this time of year, yet yellow
grasses topped with pinkish blossoms carpeted the
prairie. Also covering the plains were herds of thou-
sands, perhaps tens of thousands, of the antelope
 
that were the Murnies' staple diet.
 
Murnie camps also dotted the plains, in small
groups of three or four skin tents, never more than
seven groups in a bunch, arranged in a circle.
 
Even as Brazil looked at the scene, appreciating
their position, something, some wrongness ahead of
 
him, nagged at his mind.
 
"How the hell are we ever going to get through
them?" Wuju asked nervously. "We can't fight them
 
all, even in the dark."
"Well, let's camp here for the day," Cousin Bat
 
suggested, "and tonight I'll take a trip across and see
how far we really have to go to reach cover. Maybe
you'll think of something by the time I get back."
198
 
They agreed it was the only thing they could do, so
they carved out a niche in the rocky ledge and tried
to sleep, first Brazil on guard, then Bat, and finally
Wuju. The sequence was almost a routine by now.
 
Nathan Brazil was dreaming more of his strange
dreams when he felt hands gently shaking him. "Na-
than!" Wuju whispered urgently. "Wake upi It's al-
most dark!"
 
He got up and tried to shake the sleep, from his
eyes. He was dizzy and upset from the small amount
of food he had allowed himself from the dwindling
supply in the packs. The deprivations were taking
their toll on him. Wuju had it almost as bad, since
there was precious little grass on the trail for one of
her bulk. Yet she had never complained.
 
They all smelled like concentrated sweat and feces,
and Brazil wondered idly if Murnies had good
smellers. With no baths for three days and only
leaves for toilet paper, he was certain that, in reverse
circumstances, he could smell his party five kilometers
upwind.
 
Cousin Bat was already waiting for the sun to sink
completely behind them. Brazil went up to him
quietly.
 
"You ready. Bat?" he asked the night creature.
 
"Not bad," came the reply, "The wind's wrong. If
that plain's too broad I might have to come down at
least once. I don't like that."
 
Brazil nodded. "Well, I want you to land if possi-
ble, or at least skim close enough to get me a handful
of those weeds."
 
"Got something in mind?" the other asked.
 
"Maybe," he replied. "If we're lucky—and if we
don't have to run to the border."
 
"I'll see what I can do," the bat replied dryly.
"We've got to clear this bunch in one sweep, you
know. Once committed, we'll have no place to
hide."
 
Brazil looked at the creature strangely. "You know,
I can't quite figure you out," he said.
 
"What's to figure?" Bat replied. "It's my neck, too,
you know."
 
199
 
"Why not just fly over and away? You might not
make it all the way in a stretch, but you could pick
your own places. Why stick with us?"
 
The bat gave that ratty smile, exposing those triple
rows of sharply pointed little teeth.
 
"To tell you the truth, I thought about it a number
of times, particularly in the last few days. It's ex-
tremely tempting—all the more so now—but I can't
do it."
 
"Why not?" pumped Brazil, puzzled.
The bat thought for a minute. "Let's just say that,
once before, I was in a position to help some people
I knew were in danger. I don't want more people on
my conscience."
 
"We all have our crosses to bear," Brazil said in an
understanding tone. "Myself more than most."
 
"It boils down to more than just conscience,
Brazil," responded Cousin Bat eainestly. "I've known
some other men. They, like me, wanted power,
wealth, fame—all the reasons for striving. They'd lie,
cheat, steal, torture, even kill for those. I want these
things, too, Brazil, but what more right do I have to
them than they? Perhaps, though I don't know for sure,
the fact that they would abandon you and I would not
makes me superior to them. I'd like to think so."
 
And with that, as the last rays of the sun disap-
peared behind the rocks to the west, Cousin Bat took
off into the dark.
 
A few seconds later, WUJU sidled up behind Brazil.
"What a strange man," she said wonderingly.
 
He gave a mirthless chuckle. "Bat, you mean? He
let his guard down more there than I'd expected. It's
the most personal thing we've gotten in all these days.
But, no, strange is not the correct word for him. Un-
usual, perhaps, even uncommon. If he was telling the
complete truth there, he's also a good friend, a partic-
ularly nasty enemy—and, quite possibly, one of the
most potentially dangerous men I've yet met on this
planet."
 
She didn't understand what he was talking about
but didn't pursue it, either. Something much more im-
portant was on her mind.
 
"Nathan," she asked softly, "are we going to die?"
 
200
 
"I hope not," he replied lightly, trying to break
the mood. "With luck—"
 
"The truth, Nathan!" she interrupted. "What are our
chances?"
 
"Not good," he responded truthfully. "But I've been
in spots as bad or worse in my long life. I survive,
Wuju. I—" His voice broke off abruptly, and he
averted his eyes from hers. She understood, and there
were small tears in her eyes.
 
"But the people around you don't," she finished.
"That's it, isn't it? That's your cross. How many
times have you been a lone survivor?"
 
He looked out into the darkness for a minute. Then,
without turning, he said, "I can't count that high,
Wuju."
 
Cousin Bat returned in a little over an hour. Brazil
and Wuju were doing something Just inside the shelter,
and he was curious.
 
They looked up from their work as he approached,
and Brazil asked the simple but all-important ques-
tion: "Well?"
 
"Five kilometers, give or take," the bat replied
evenly. "Before you get any farther there's a steep
drop to a river valley, mud sides with slow, shallow
water. It's barely flowing."
 
Brazil seemed to brighten at the news, particularly
of the river's speed and shallowness. "Can we get a
straight run, more or less?" he asked.
 
The bat nodded. "Once we get down, I'll position
you and point you in the right direction. I'll stay over
you once you get started to keep you on the right
track."
 
"Good! Good!" Brazil enthused. "Now, what about
the antelope?"
 
"Tens of thousands of them," the other replied.
"Together in big groups. Nothing too near us, though."
 
"Excellent! Excellent!" Brazil seemed to get more
excited with every word. "And now the clincher—did
you get some of that grass?"
 
Cousin Bat turned and walked back to where he
had landed, picking up a clump of straw with one
 
201
 
foot. Holding it, he hobbled back to them and dropped
the grass at Brazil's feet.
 
The man picked it up expectantly, feeling it, even
biting it. It was somewhat brittle, and gave a slight
snap when it was bent too far.
 
"Just out of curiosity, what are you doing?" the bat
asked.
 
Brazil reached down into a pouch and removed a
small handful of the tiny sticks inside.
 
"Safety matches," he explained. "Haven't you no-
ticed it, or thought about it, you two? Haven't you
seen out there on the plain?"
 
They both looked at him with blank expressions.
"I haven't seen anything except antelope, Murnies,
and grass," said Wuju, trying to think.
 
"No! No!" Brazil responded, shaking Ms head
animatedly. "Not what you see! What you don't see!
Look out there into the darkness! Tell me what you
see."
 
"Nothing but pitch darkness," Wuju said.
 
"Nothing but sleeping antelope, Mumies, and
grass," Bat said.
 
"Exactly!" Brazil said excitedly. "But what you
don't see, anywhere out there, is something we've seen
in every Mumie camp we've passed up to this point."
 
They still didn't see it, and he continued after a
pause. "Look, why do the Murnies build campfires?
Not to cook their food—they eat it raw, even live. It's
because they think this is cold! And to protect them-
selves from the dog packs at night, of course. It
must be very important to them or we wouldn't have
seen the campfires so consistently. But there are no
fires out there on the plains! No dots of light, no
sparks of any kind! And the riverbed's wide but slow
and shallow is it flowing. You see what it means?"
 
"I think I do," Wuju replied hesitantly. "It's the dry
season. Out there on the grasslands, the danger of a
brushfire exceeds their fears of the dogs or their desire
for warmth."
 
"It must be like a tinderbox out there," Brazil
pointed out. "If they are afraid of any fire at all, it
must be so dry that anything will set it off. If the
wind's right, we can make things so hot for them down
 
202
 
there that the least thing they'll be concerned about is
us."
 
"Wind's about as right as you can get," the bat said
quietly.
 
"Okay, then," Brazil responded. He removed all
his clothes, and jumped, stark naked, up on Wuju's
back, his back against hers. He pulled the shin around
his chest just under his armpits. "Take the ends on
both sides, Wuju, and tie them tight around you. Nol
Pull it tight, damn it! As tight as you can! Yes, that's
better." Next the stretchy pants were pulled around
his waist and tied in front of her. It was several min-
utes before he was satisfied that he was solidly at-
tached to her, riding backward. Tied just in front of
him were the packs, the two pouches full of safety
matches within easy reach. Then he applied the rest
of the Slongomian cooking fat to as much of his ex-
posed parts as he could. It was a sloppy job, but it
would do in the dark.
 
Cousin Bat nodded approvingly. The two men
looked at each other wordlessly, and the bat turned
and started down the rocky ledge. Wuju followed,
Brazil cursing to himself at his inability to see any-
thing ahead of them, thinking he forgot something,
and feeling with every step that he was slipping off
even though the knots remained secure.
 
"Stop!" he yelled suddenly, and everyone froze.
"Your hair, Wuju! Tie it down. Use the scabbard—
you have to hold the sword anyway. I don't want to
set it on fire or have it blowing in my face."
 
She did what he asked silently, draping her hair
forward and over her left breast so it wouldn't in-
terfere with the sword in her right hand. Now Brazil
was roped in three ways, and he felt as if he were cut
in pieces. Which was just the way he wanted it.
 
They had gone over the plan many times, but he
was still nervous. Wuju could sprint at more than
thirty-five kilometers per hour, but that was just for
short distances. She would have to go all out for over
five kilometers, then down into a ditch, and keep run-
ning as long as she could.
 
203
 
Cousin Bat took off and circled for what was only
a minute but seemed to be an hour. Finally they
heard him come up behind them. "Now!" the flying
creature ordered. "Go!"
 
Wuju took off across the plains at full speed-
Brazil watched the grasses disappear behind her
and held onto the pack for dear life. He was sitting
on a bony place and being bounced around for alt he
was worth. Although it was a clear night and he had
excellent night vision, Brazil already could not see the
rocky hills they had left.
 
Come on, Wuju! he thought tensely to himself.
Keep going!
 
"Turn slightly right." Bat's voice came from some-
where above, and she did as instructed. "Too much!"
She heard the bat's voice, probably Just two or three
meters above her head: "That's it! Now straight!"
 
Brazil panicked as he felt the upper bindings loosen,
and he grabbed ali the harder on the pack sides.
And still she roared ahead at top speed! He could
hear her take sobbing breaths and feel her horselike
half inhale and exhale mightily, but still they went on.
 
We're going to make it! he thought excitedly. If I
can only hold on to this goddamn pack for a few
more minutes, we'll be through them before they re-
alize what happened!
 
Suddenly the knots from the top two bands broke,
sending the elastic clothing into the night and propel-
ling him forward, headfirst, into the pack.
 
"Nathan!" he heard her call breathlessly at the
break and jerk.
 
"I'm all right!" he called back. "Keep going!"
Suddenly there were sounds around them, grunts,
groans, and yells.
 
"Nathan!" she screamed. "They're ahead of us!"
"Run right at them at top speed!" he yelled. "Slash
with your sword!" He grabbed at the matches, struck
several against the hard leather straps. They flared,
but immediately went out because of the wind caused
by her rapid movement.
 
Suddenly she was heading into them, and they were
roaring and clawing at her. She knocked the first sev-
eral down and found, to her surprise, that the sword
 
204
 
seemed to slice into them like butter. Once, twice
more, she slashed at them, and they screamed in deep
agony and clutched at wounds.
 
And then she was through theml
 
"Any ahead?" Brazil yelled.
 
"Not yet," came Bat's voice. "Keep going!"
 
"There's plenty behind us!" Nathan called. "Slow
down to a gallop so I can get at least one match lit!"
 
Wuju slowed and he tried again. They stayed lit in
his hands, but went out before they hit the ground.
 
"Brazil!" Bat's voice called urgently. "A whole
bunch of them! Coming up fast to your right!"
 
Suddenly a group of six or seven came at them out
of the grasses. Nathan felt a searing pain in his right
leg. One Murnie jumped and hit Wuju's backside,
tearing a deep gash in her Just in front of the pack.
She screamed, stopped, and reared, slashing out at
them with her sword.
 
Brazil hung on somehow, and tore off one of the
pouches of matches with strength that surprised him.
He struck one and threw it into the pouch. The
matches caught with a whoomph and he threw the
pack out onto the grass.
 
Nothing for a minute, and she bolted for the
Mumies at an apparent opening. They had formed a
hunting circle and their spears were ready.
 
They expected the charge, but their traditional ways
didn't allow for their quarry to have a sword, and
the formation broke.
 
Suddenly the whole world caught fire.
 
The suddenness and volatility was what stunned
them all.
 
My god! Brazil thought suddenly. It's as if the stuff
were made of cellulose!
 
He could see Cousin Bat, saw the creature come
down on a Mumie and kick with those powerful,
handlike feet rolled up as fists- The giant green savage
went down and didn't move.
 
The whole world suddenly became bright. Ahead
she saw the stream valley, like a crack in the land.
 
The Mumies started running and screaming. The
 
205
 
antelope panicked and ran in all directions, trampling
many Murnies underfoot to get away.
 
She jumped into the ravine, and the momentum
and steep sides caused her to lose her balance. She
went sprawling down the hill. Brazil felt himself sud-
denly free as he was flung away onto the bank. He
was stunned for a minute, then he picked himself up
and looked around. There was a glow still from the
fire above, but down in the valley there was a still,
near-absolute darkness.
 
Feeling numb and dizzy, he ran down the valley in
the direction Cousin Bat had said the river flowed.
He looked around for Wuju but couldn't see her any-
where.
 
"Wuju!" he screamed hoarsely. "Wu]u!" But his
voice was no match for the riot of noise above him,
the cries of burning animals and panicked Murnies,
many of whom were plunging over the bank into the
valley.
 
He ran down the muddy shore and into the river
and followed it. The rocky bottom cut his feet. But he
was oblivious to pain, running like a scarecrow, mind-
lessly, aimlessly down the river.
 
Soon the glow and the sounds were far behind him,
but still he pressed on. Suddenly he tripped and fell
facedown in the water. He continued, crawling for-
ward, then somehow picked himself up and started
again.
 
The fetid odor of swamp mud was all around him
and all over him, yet he continued. Until, quite
abruptly, everything caught up to him and he col-
lapsed, unconscious before he hit the water, stones,
and mud.
 
206
 
The Nation—a First-class Hotel
 
THEY HAD NOT, AS IT HAPPENED, BEEN ARRES1ED.
 
They had been quarantined. The way the robot man-
ager explained it, an analysis of the particles found
in their waste gases had revealed two of them to have
certain microscopic life forms that could cause corro-
sion problems in The Nation. They were, therefore,
being held until their laboratories could check out the
organisms, develop some sort of serum, and introduce
it to them so they could safely get across the country
without causing difficulties.
 
For Ham this was her first real vacation since enter-
ing this crazy world, and she lazed, relaxed, and
seemed in no hurry to go on.
 
The Diviner and The Rel accepted the situation in-
dignantly but with resignation; it kept pretty much to
itself.
 
Since their hosts had evacuated the wing in which
the four were staying, they were allowed to visit one
another. Vardia was the only mobile person who cared
to do so; she started going to Skander's room regularly.
 
The Umiau welcomed the company, but refused to
talk about her theories on the Well World or to discuss
the object of their journey for fear that other ears were
listening.
 
"Why do we have to go through with this?" Vardia
asked the scholar one day.
 
The Umiau raised her eyebrows in surprise. "We're
still prisoners, you know," she pointed out.
 
"But we could tell the management," the Czillian
suggested. "After all, kidnapping is a crime."
 
"It is, indeed," the mermaid agreed, "but that is
also unheard of cross-hex. The fact is, these people
don't care if we're prisoners, victims, or monsters. It
just isn't their concern. I*ve tried."
 
207
 
"Then we must escape once we're back on the
road," she persisted. "I've already seen a map—it's in
a desk in my room. The next hex borders the ocean."
 
"That won't work," Skander replied firmly. "First of
all, we have no idea as to the powers of this North-
erner, and I don't want to test them. Secondly, Hain
can fly and walk faster than you, and either one of
us is ]ust a few good mouthfuls for her. No, put that
out of your mind. Besides, we'll not be ill-served in
this. In the end, I have the ultimate control over us
all, "because they can't do a thing without the knowl-
edge I possess. They are taking me where I want to
go and could not get myself. No, I think we'll go along
with them—until midnight at the Well of Souls," she
added with a devious chuckle.
 
"That's about how long we'll be kept here," Vardia
said grumpily.
 
The Umiau reclined lazily in the shallow end of the
pool. "Nothing we can do about this. Meantime, why
not tell me something about yourself? You know all
about me, really."
 
"] really don't have much of a history before com-
ing here," she responded modestly. "I was a courier—
wiped clean after every mission."
 
The mermaid clucked sympathetically. "But surely,"
she urged, "you know about your world—the world of
your birth, that is. For instance, were you born or
hatched? Were you male or female? What?"
 
"I was produced by cloning in Birth Factory Twelve
on Nueva Albion," she said. "All reproduction is by
cloning, using the cellular tissues of the top people in
history of each occupational group. Thus, all Diplos
on or of Nueva Albion were cloned from the Sainted
Vardia, who was the go-between in the revolution sev-
eral centuries ago. She kept contact between the
Liberation Front on Coriolanus and the Holy Revolu-
tionaries in reactionary Nueva Albion. Thus, I carried
her genes, her resemblance, and her job. My number,
Twelve Sixty-one, said I was the sixty-first Vardia
clone from Birth Factory Twelve."
 
Skander felt a sourness growing in her stomach. So
that's what mankind has come to, she thought. Almost
 
208
 
two-thirds of mankind reduced to clones, numbers—
less human than the mechs of this absurd Nation.
 
"Then you were a woman," the Umiau said con-
versationally, not betraying her darker inner thoughts.
 
"Not really," she replied. "Cloning negates the need
for sexes, and sexes represent sexism which promotes
inequality. Depending on the clone model, develop-
ment is chemically and surgically arrested. All glands,
hormone production, and the like are removed,
changed, or neutralized permanently, in my case on
my eleventh birthday. We are also given hysterecto-
mies, and males are castrated, so that it is impossible
to tell male or female after the turning age. Every few
years we were supposed to get a complete treatment
that kept the aging processes arrested and freshened the
body, so that one couldn't tell a fifty-year-old from a
fifteen-year-old.'*
 
Outwardly the Umiau remained impassive, but in-
ternally Skander was so depressed that she felt nau-
seated.
 
Ye gods! the archaeologist swore to herself. A small,
carefully bred cadre of supermen and super-women
ruling a world of eunuch children raised to unques-
tioning obedience! I was right to have killed them!
Monsters like that—in control of the Well! Unthink-
able!
 
They should all be killed, she knew, hatred welling
up inside of her. The masters who were the most mon-
strous of spawn, and the masses of poor impersonal
blobs of children—billions of them, probably. Best to
put them out of their misery, she thought sadly. They
weren't really people anyway.
 
Suddenly her thoughts turned to Varnett. Same
idea, Skander thought. Although the boy hadn't come
from a world as far gone as Nueva Albion, it would
go that way in time. Names disappear on one world,
sex on another, then all get together to form a uni-
verse of tiny, mindless, sexless, nameless organic ro-
bots, programmed and totally obedient—but so, so
happy.
 
Vamett—brilliant, a truly great mind, yet childish,
immature, in thousands of ways as programmed as his
 
209
 
cousins whom he despised. What sort of a world, what
sort of a universe, would Varnett create?
 
The Markovians had understood, she reflected.
They knew.
 
I won't betray them! she swore intensely. I won't let
anyone wreck the great dream! I will get there first!
Then they'll see! I'll destroy them alll
 
Murithel— Somewhere in
the Interior
 
COUSIN BAT CIRCLED AROUND FEELING HELPLESS.
 
Maybe I can pick him up, he thought, looking at
Brazil's battered and bleeding body in the mud. He's
not a very big fellow, and I've moved some pretty
heavy rocks with these legs.
 
He was about to give it a try when a group of
Mumies came running up the valley. They got to
Brazil's unconscious body before Bat could do any-
thing at all, and the night creature thought, It's all
over. They'll chomp him into pieces for a late snack
 
now.
 
But they didn't. Four of the savages stayed with the
body, while two others made for the top of the valley
and the plains above. Fascinated, Bat stayed with
them, balancing on the air currents.
 
The two returned a few minutes later with a litter
made with tough branches for poles and, apparently,
woven grass for the stretcher. Carefully they placed
Brazil on the litter. One Mumie picked up the front,
the other took the rear. They climbed the bank effort-
lessly, and Bat followed them, still invisible in the
dark.
 
Darkness had returned to the plain as well. Bat was
amazed to see hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
Mumies beating a large, smoldering area about a
thousand meters from the valley where they had
 
210
 
plunged- It was a well-coordinated, well-rehearsed fire
brigade, with the bulk of the Mumies beating out the
last sparks with skin blankets, while an apparently
endless chain of the creatures ran a bucket brigade
from the creek all the way to the fire scene.
 
These are savages? Bat asked himself wonderingly.
The teamwork and skillful handling of the fire he could
not reconcile in his mind with the toothy carnivores
who chased live prey with primitive spears and at-
tacked them fiercely with spear and claw.
 
Brazil's unmoving form was hauled into a small
camp away from the fire scene. A particularly huge
Mumie, his light green skin laced with dark brown,
examined the man and started barking orders. Even
though Bat's translator would—should—pick up what
the big one was saying, he dared not get close enough
to hear.
 
The big Murnie got a bucket of water and started
to wash Brazil's wounds with a gentleness that sur-
prised the bat. Others brought a large hide case and
a number of leaves. The big one opened the laces on
the case, and from its interior pulled out varicolored
jars of what looked like mud and more leaves, some
apparently kept soaked in some solution in jars.
 
Slowly, methodically, the big one administered the
muds to Brazil's open wounds, and used the leaves to
form a compress for the man's head.
 
He's a doctor! Cousin Bat realized suddenly.
They're treating him!
 
Bat felt better, almost relaxed enough to leave, but
he did not.
 
Those wounds are tremendous, he noted. The man's
lost huge amounts of blood, and probably has multiple
breaks, concussion, and shock. Even if the medicine
man knew the art of transfusion, there is none to give
the blood.
 
Brazil will be dead within hours, no matter what
magic this creature can work. Bat realized sadly. But
what can I do? And, if they somehow cure him—what
then? Prisoner? Pet? Plaything? Slave?
 
The Murnie medicine man gestured, and a smaller
tribesman came into camp leading a huge stag ante-
 
211
 
lope. It was the largest such animal Bat had ever seen,
light brown with a white stripe running from the back
of the head to the stubby tail, a large set of eerie-
looking antlers atop that head. The stag was docile,
too much so to be normal. Bat knew. It was drugged
or something. He saw with amazement that the deer-
like animal wore a collar of carefully twisted skin,
from which a small stone dangled.
 
Someone owns that animal, Bat reflected. Do these
savages of the plain breed their food?
 
Into camp from different directions came five more
Mumies, looking like the witch doctor—really large
ones, with that curious brown discoloration, more pro-
nounced on some than others.
 
Six, thought the bat. Of course it would be six.
Primitives went in for mystic numbers, and if any
number had power here that one certainly did.
 
They put the stag so that it faced Brazil, and all
six moved close. Three of them placed their right
hands on the unflinching stag, and took the right hands
of the other three in their left. The other three all
placed their left hands on Brazil's body.
 
Bat stayed aloft as long as he could, but finally de-
cided he had to land. He was Just coming out of the
fight, and the exhilaration and extra pep that had
flowed through him had waned. Reluctantly, he made
for the valley and flew along until he found a place
with no Mumies in the immediate vicinity. He landed,
breathing hard, thinking of what he could do.
 
In a few minutes he had his wind back, and de-
cided on a plan that the odds said were ridiculous.
 
He had to try.
 
No more running, he told himself. If I can do it, I'll
doit.
 
He took off and flew back to the camp, seeing that
he was in luck. The stag was staked to a post in the
ground, apparently asleep, away from Brazil, who was
covered with the mud compounds and leafy stuff, still
in the open.
 
Brazil weighed around fifty kilos, he guessed. The
litter? Five more? Ten? I can't do it, he thought sud-
denly, fear shooting through him. That much weight,
for all that distance!
 
212
 
Suddenly he thought of the Dillian girl. He had lost
track of her while following Brazil, but he couldn't take
the time now. Nothing he could do in her case regard-
less, he knew. But she had run all out, all that distance
on the ground, never stopping, cut and speared—way
beyond her limits, while hungry and weak.
 
You've been eating well, Bat told himself sternly.
You're as big and strong and healthy as you'll ever
be. If she can do it ...
 
Without another thought he swooped down to
Brazil, and took one side of the litter, folding it over
so he held both branches in his feet with Brazil
wrapped in the middle. He took a quick glance around.
So far so good. Now—could he take off, no ledge, no
running start, with this load?
 
He started beating his great wings furiously, aided
by a timely gust of wind that rustled the grass across
the plain. He rose, and beat all the more furiously.
Too low! he thought nervously. Got to get height!
 
The furious flapping brought Murnies running from
their tents, including the big one.
 
"No! No! Come back!" the medicine man screamed,
but the wind picked up and Bat was on his way, over
the stream and down along its course, the unconscious
Brazil hanging from the folded litter. Cousin Bat did
not believe in gods or prayers, yet he prayed as he
struggled to keep up speed, height, and balance.
Prayed he would make it to Czill and to modern med-
icine without killing Brazil, himself, or both.
 
With shock and dismay the medicine man watched
Bat fly into the darkness.
 
"Ogenon!" he called in a deep, rough voice,
 
"Yes, Your Holiness?" a smaller, weaker voice re-
plied.
 
"You saw?"
 
"The body of the honored warrior has been taken
by the one who files," Ogenon responded in a tone
that seemed to wonder why such a stupid question
had been asked.
 
"The flying one is ignorant of us and our ways, or
he would not have done this," the medicine man said
as much to himself as to his aide. "He flew east, so
 
213
 
he's taking the body to Czill. I'll need a strong runner
to get to the border. Now, don't look at me like that!
I know how foul the air is over there, but this has to
be done. The Czillians must realize when they see the
warrior's body and hear the winged one's story what
has happened, but, if the body survives—not likely—
they will not know of the survival of the essence. Go!"
 
Ogenon found a warrior willing to make the trip in
short order, and the medicine man instructed him what
to say and to whom, impressing on the runner the need
for speed. "Do the message in relays," the old one said.
"Just make sure it is continuous and that it is not
garbled."
 
Once the instructions were given and the runner was
off into the darkness, the large Mumie turned again to
his aide, who was looking extremely bleary-eyed and
was yawning repeatedly.
 
"Get awake, boy'*' snapped the elder. "Now, locate
the six-limbed creature and tell me where it is."
 
"That's simple, Your Holiness," Ogenon responded
sleepily. "The six-limbed one is under treatment at
the Circle of Nine. I saw it being dragged there."
 
"Good," the old one replied. "Now, you'll have to
go to the Base Camp and bring an elder to me, Elder
Grondel by name."
 
"But that's—" Ogeaon started to protest, yawning
again.
 
"I know how far it is!" the big one roared. "You
can make it there and back before dawn!"
 
"But suppose the Revered Elder won't come," the
aide wailed, trying to get out of the assignment and to
get back to sleep.
 
"He'll come," the medicine man replied confidently.
"Just describe to him the three alien creatures we've
had here this night, and tell him particularly of the
honored warrior and of what has happened. He'll beat
you here, I'll wager, even though he's eighty years old!
Now, off with you! Now!"
 
Ogenon went, grumbling about how everybody
kicked him around and he always had to do every-
thing.
 
Once out of sight, the elder couldn't hold back his
own yawns anymore, yet he didn't return to his tent
 
214
 
and mat but sat down in the, for him, very chilly night
air-
All he could do now was wait.
 
Wuju relived the nightmare run for hours, then,
suddenly, woke up.
 
I must still be dreaming, she thought. Everything
was fuzzy and she was feeling quite high. She couldn't
believe what she saw.
 
She was in a Murme camp, in the earliest light of
dawn, and there were horribly loud and grotesque
snores all around her. Sitting in front of her, arms
around its knees, was the biggest Murnie she had ever
seen—taller than she, and she stood over two meters.
It was also oddly colored, on the whole a deeper
brown than she, laced only here and there with spots
of the light green that was the usual color of these
strange creatures.
 
From a distance they had looked like walking rec-
tangular bushes. But here, up close, she saw that they
had a rough skin that folded and sagged, like partially
melted plastic, all over their body. They looked like a
large trunk of a body with no head, she thought. The
eyes, huge as dinner plates, were located where the
breasts should be, and perhaps thirty centimeters be-
low them was that enormous mouth, a huge slit that
seemed almost to cleave the trunk in two. There was
no sign of hair, genitals, or, for that matter, a nose and
ears.
 
The drug or whatever it was seemed to be wearing
off more and more. This isn't a dream! she thought
suddenly, as fear ran through her. She tried to move,
but found her legs were all roped to stakes deep in
the ground, and her hands were tied behind her. She
struggled in panic to pull free, and the sound woke
up the big brown Murnie. Its huge eyes opened, deep
yellow with perfectly round, black irises that reflected
the light almost like a cat's.
 
"Do not struggle," the creature said to her. The
words were mushy, as if they were uttered in the midst
of a roar, but they were understandable. It was speak-
ing a language it knew but its mouth was not suited
to its use^
 
215
 
"I said do not struggle!" the Mumie repeated, get-
ting up and stretching in a very human fashion. "You
are quite safe. No one will harm you. Can you un-
derstand me? Nod if you can."
 
Wuju nodded fearfully, panic still all over her face.
"All right, now listen well. It is difficult for me to
speak this tongue, and I must concentrate carefuly to
get the words out. You can understand me, but i can-
not understand you, I don't think. Say something."
"What—what is all this?" she almost screamed.
The Murnie scratched bis behind with his huge,
wide hand. The arms were almost to the ground when
drooping by his side. "I thought so. I could not under-
stand a word. You have no translator. You must con-
centrate hard, like me. Think, then answer. What lan-
guage am I using?"
 
She thought for a second, then suddenly realized the
 
truth. "Confederacy!" she exclaimed, amazed. "You
 
are an Entry!"
 
"All right, I got Confederacy but nothing else. That
 
is because all Entries continue to think in their origi-
nal tongue. What they say is automatically transformed
in the neural passages to the language of the native
hex. You can understand me, therefore you can speak
it as I do if you think hard, make your mouth form
the word you think. Take it slowly, one word at a
time. Tell me your name and the name of your com-
panions. Then try a simple phrase, one word at a
 
time."
 
Wuju concentrated, the fear and panic evaporating.
 
Once this one had been one of her own kind! A po-
tential friend she would need most of all here. As she
started to speak she saw what he meant, and adjusted.
 
"I-ahm-Wuju," she managed, and it almost sounded
right. Her mouth and tongue wanted to make a dif-
ferent set of words. "Moy frandiz ahar Nathan Brazil
 
ind Cooseen Baht."
 
"Nathan Brazil!" the big Mumie exclaimed excit-
edly, suddenly very wide awake. The rest of what he
said was unintelligible.
 
My god! she thought. Does everybody on this crazy
 
planet know Nathan?
 
The Murnie suddenly frowned, and scratched the
 
216
 
side of his head thoughtfully. "But the other was an
old-culture man by description," he mused, suddenly
looking at her again with those huge yellow eyes. "You
mean he still looked like his old self?" She nodded,
and his great mouth opened in surprise. "I wonder
why he wasn't changed in the Well?"
 
"Whahr est Nathan?" she managed.
 
"Well, that's really the problem," the Mumie an-
swered. "You see, he's sort of in two places at once."
 
He was a former freighter pilot like Brazil, the na-
tive told her, on the line for over two hundred years,
facing his fourth rejuve and with all his family and
friends dead, his world so changed he couldn't go
home. He had decided to commit suicide, to end the
loneliness, when he got a funny distress signal in the
middle of nowhere. He had veered to investigate,
when suddenly his ship had seemed to cease to exist
around him, and he had fallen into the Zone Well
and wound up a Murnie.
 
"They are good people," he told her. "Just very dif-
ferent. They can use nothing not found in nature or
made by hand. No machines at all. They are bisexual,
like us—although an alien couldn't tell who was who.
Strong families, communal, with a strong folk art and
music—herdsmen who breed the antelope we eat.
Very hostile to strangers, though—they would have
killed you last night."
 
"Den woi om I ailoif?" she managed.
 
"You're alive," he replied, "because you killed
about two dozen warriors, directly that is, plus the fire
and the like."
 
She didn't understand, and said so.
 
"The Murnie nation accepts death naturally," he
explained. "We don't fear it, nor dwell on it. We live
for each day. It's far more enjoyable that way. What
are respected most and valued most are honor and
courage. You all displayed that last night! It took raw
courage to run the plain, and great honor to keep go-
ing until you dropped rather than give in. If you had
surrendered, they would still have killed you. But they
found both you and Brazil, badly wounded, uncon-
»cious in different parts of the stream bed. It would
 
217
 
have been cowardly and dishonorable to have killed
you. You had gained respect—so they dragged each
of you to the camp nearest where you were found,
and your injuries were tended to. Our medicine is
quite advanced—this is a rough hex."
 
"Nathan!" she exclaimed, "1st hay arriot?"
"He was banged up much worse than you," the
Mumie replied gravely. "You're going to hurt for a
while when the herbal anesthetic wears off, but you
have nothing more than four or five deep scratches on
your back and a lot of bruises. We have treated them,
but they will ache." He paused for a second. "But
Brazil, he was much worse. I don't know how he kept
going. It's not possible- He should be dead, or, at best,
totally paralyzed, yet he walked almost a kilometer
down that streambed before collapsing. What an in-
credible will he must have! The Murnies will sing sto-
ries of him and tell of his greatness for centuries' In
addition to the hundreds of minor bone breaks, the
enormous amount of blood he lost from gaping
wounds, and a badly lacerated leg, he had a broken
back and neck. He got a kilometer with a broken back
and neckl"
 
She thought of poor Nathan, twisted and bleeding,
paralyzed and comatose. The thought made her sick,
and it was several minutes and several attempts be-
fore she could concentrate on speaking Confederacy
again. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she couldn't
stop crying for several minutes. The fierce-looking
Murnie stood there feeling helpless and sympathetic.
 
Finally she managed, "1st—hay ist stuli aliff?"
 
"He is still alive," the Mumie replied gravely. "Sort
of."
 
"Hay ist oncun—uncrunchus?"
 
"Unconscious, yes," the Murnie replied. "I said, re-
member, that this was a rough hex that prized honor
and courage, and had a lot of knowledge and wisdom
within its limits. Because Murithel is totally nontech-
nological, the inhabitants have turned, aside from
herbal compounds and muds, to the powers of the
mind. Some of these doctors—and they are doctors—
have enormous mental powers. I don't understand the
 
218
 
powers, and I doubt if they do. These people study
and concentrate over half their lives to develop the
powers. By the time they're strong enough to be use-
ful, the wise men—Holy Ones we call them—are eld-
erly, sometimes with only a few years to live and to
teach the next generation." He paused again, and
started pacing nervously, trying to think of how to say
it.
 
"When Brazil was brought in so battered and close
to death,*' he said carefully, "he was already, because
of his tremendous courage, the most legendary char-
acter ever to be here. The Holy One who examined
him did what he could, but saw that death was prob-
able no matter what. He summoned five others—six is
a magic number here, for obvious reasons—and they
performed a Transference of Honor. It has only been
done three or four times since I've been here—it
shortens the life spans of the Holy Ones by a year or
more. They reserve it for the greatest of honor and
courage." He stopped again, his tone changing. "Look,
I can see you don't understand. It is difficult to explain
such things when I don't understand it, either.
Umm. . . . Are you a follower of any religion?"
 
The idea of religion was extremely funny to her, but
she answered gently, "No."
 
"Few of us are—or were, in my day, and I'm sure
it's worse now. But here, against these hills and on
these plains, you learn that you are ignorant of almost
everything. Call it mechanical, if you will, a part of
the Markovian brian's powers, like our own transfor-
mations and this world itself, but accept it: that which
is us, our memories, our personality, whatever, can be
not only transformed but transferred. Now I—stop
looking at me like that! I am not insane. I've seen if"
 
"Arrh sou stelling moi daht Nathan ist naow e
Mumie?" she asked, unwilling to believe but unwill-
ing to disbelieve, either. Too much had already hap-
pened to her on this crazy world.
 
"Not a Mumie," he replied evenly. "That would in-
volve superimposing his—well, they call it his 'essence'
—on somebody else. No, when someone's so respected
that he rates a Transference of Honor, he is trans-
ferred to the best thoroughbred breeding stag or doe.
 
219
 
Don't look so shocked—they are of such high quality
that they are instantly recognized. No one would eat
them, or even bother them.
 
"If, then, the body can be successfully brought back
to health—which is rare or the Holy Ones would never
do the Transference in the first place—he is switched
back. If not, he is revered, cared for, and has a happy
and peaceful life on the plains."
 
"Nathan est un ahntlupe?" she gasped. It was be-
coming easier to talk, although her pronunciation was
still terrible.
 
"A beautiful pure stag," the Mumie acknowledged.
"I've seen him. He's still drugged. I didn't want him
coming out of that state until you and I were both
there to explain it to him."
 
"1st der—ist der unny chants dot hes boody wall
liff?" she asked.
 
"Will his body live?" the Murnie repeated. "I'm sure
I don't know. I honestly doubt it, but I would have
said that the Transference of Honor was more likely
than going a kilometer with a game leg, a broken back,
and busted neck. The outcome will depend on how
much damage he receives beyond what's already
done."
 
Then he told her of Cousin Bat's rescue. "He obvi-
ously could not consider us civilized or Brazil anything
more than the victim of primitive medicine. Would
you? So he plucked Brazil's body up and is even now
taking it to Czill where they have a modern hospital.
If the body survives the trip—and from what was told
me I doubt if it survived the night, let alone the trip
—the Czillians will know what happened. One of our
people is getting the news to them sometime today
just in case. They can sustain the body's functions in-
definitely if it's still alive, though an empty vessel.
Their computers know of the Transference of Honor.
If they can heal the body, it can be returned here for
retransference, but that is not something to pin your
hopes on.
 
"I said I experienced three Transferences in my
eighty years. Of them all, none of the bodies lasted
the night."
 
220
 
Nathan Brazil awoke feeling strange. Everything
looked strange, too.
 
He was on the Mumie plain, he could see that—
and it was daylight.
 
So I've survived again, he thought.
 
Things looked crazy, though, as if they were seen
through a fish-eye camera lens—his field of vision was
a little larger than he was used to, but it was a round
picture vastly distorted. Things around the periphery
looked close up; but as the view went toward the cen-
ter of the field of view, everything seemed to move
away as if he were looking down a tunnel. The pic-
ture was incredibly clear and detailed, but the distor-
tion as things around the field of view bent toward the
fixed center made it difficult to judge distances. And
the whole world was brown—an incredible number of
shades of brown and white.
 
Brazil turned his head and looked around. The dis-
tortion and color blindness stayed constant.
 
And he felt funny, crazy, sort of.
 
He thought back. He remembered the mad dash,
the fire, falling off Wuju—then everything was dark.
 
This is crazy, he thought.
 
His hearing was incredibly acute. He heard every-
thing crystal-clear, even voices and movements far
away. It took him several minutes to sort out the chat-
ter, finally assigning about eighty percent of it to things
he could see.
 
There were Murnies moving around, and they all
seemed to be light brown to him, although he remem-
bered them as green. Suddenly he heard footsteps near
him, and he turned to see a huge Murnie that was all
very deep brown coming toward him.
 
I must be drugged, he told himself. These are after-
effects of some drug they gave me.
 
The big Murnie ambled up to him.
 
I must be standing upright on a rack or something,
he thought. I'm as tall as he is, and he's at least two
meters, judging by his size, large compared to the run-
of-the-Mumie crowd around.
 
Two grossly distorted Mumie hands took his head,
lowered it slightly, so the creature was looking right
into Brazil's eyes.
 
221
 
The "Mumie grunted, and said, in Confederacy,
"Ah! Awake, I see! Don't try to move yet—I want to
let you down easy before that. No! Don't try to talk!
You can't, so don't bother."
 
The creature walked a few steps in front of him
and sat down tiredly on the grass.
 
"I haven't slept in over a day and a half," the
Mumie said with a sigh. "It feels good just to relax."
He shifted to a more comfortable position, and con-
sidered where to begin.
 
"Look, Nate," he began, "first things first. You
know I'm an Entry, and I've been told I'm not the
first one who knew you that you've run into here. It
kinda figures. Well, if your mind can go back ninety
years, you might remember Shel Yvomda. Do you? If
so, shake your head."
 
Brazil thought. It was an odd name, he should re-
member it—but there were so many people, so many
names. He tried to shrug, found he couldn't, and so
moved his head slowly from side to side.
 
"Oh, well, it doesn't matter. They call me the Elder
Grondel now, Elder because I've lived longer than
fifty years here and that makes for respect. Grondel is
their name—means The Polite Eater, because I con-
tinue to be civilized. I'm one of two people in Murithel
who can still speak Confederacy. We would have lost
it, except we ran into each other and practice for old
times' sake. Well, enough of that. I guess I'd better
tell you what happened. You aren't gonna like this,
Nate."
 
Brazil was stunned, but he accepted the situation
and understood why they had done it and why they
had thought it necessary. He even felt a deep affection
for Cousin Bat in spite of the fact that he had fouled
up the works.
 
As they sat there, the last of the drug wore off, and
he suddenly found himself free to move.
 
He looked as far down as possible first, and thought,
crazily, This is what Wuju must have seen when she
first appeared in Dillia. Long, short-furred legs, much
more graceful than hers, with dark hooves.
 
222
 
He turned his head and saw his reflection against
the tent nearby.
 
He was a magnificent animal, he thought with no
trace of humor. And the antlers! So that's why his
head felt so funny!
 
He tried to move forward, and felt a tug. The
Mumie laughed, and unfastened him from the stake.
 
He walked around on four legs for the first time,
slowly, just around in circles.
 
So this is what it feels like to be changed, he
thought. Strange, but not uncomfortable.
 
"There are some hitches, Nate," Grondel said. "It's
not like a transformation. The body you have is that
of a great animal, but not a dominant species. You've
got no hands, tentacles, or any other thing except your
snout to pick things up with, and you've got no voice.
These antelope are totally silent, no equipment to
make a noise. And your only defenses are your speed
 
—which is considerable, by the way, cruising at fifteen
or more kilometers per hour, sprints up to sixty—and
a tremendous kick with the rear legs. And the antlers
 
—those are permanent; they don't shed and won't
grow unless broken off."
 
Brazil stopped walking and thought for a while.
Arms he could do without if necessary, and the rest—
but not being able to talk bothered him.
 
Suddenly he stopped and stared at himself. All the
time he had been thinking, he had been automatically
leaning over and munching grass!
 
He looked back at Grondel, who just was watching
him curiously.
 
"I think I can guess what you just realized," the
Mumie said at last. "You just started munching grass
without thinking. Right?"
 
Brazil nodded, feeling stranger than before.
 
"Remember—you, all of that inner self that's you
 
—was transferred, but it was superimposed on the re-
markably dull antelope brain and nervous system. Su-
perimposed, Nate—not exchanged. Unless you directly
countermand it, the deer's going to continue acting like
a deer, in every way. That's automatic, and instinctive.
You're not man into deer, you're man plus deer."
Brazil considered it. There would be some prob-
 
223
 
lems, then, particularly since he was a brooder, given
to introspection. What did a deer do? Ate, slept,
copulated. Hmmn-i. . . . The last would cause prob-
lems.
 
There were, as Grondel had said, many hitches.
 
How do I fit inside this head? he wondered. All of
my memories—more, perhaps, than any other man.
Weren't memories chemical? He could see how the
chemical chains could at least be duplicated, the brain-
wave pattern adjusted—but how did this tiny brain
 
have room for it all?
 
"Nate!" He heard a call, and looked up. Grondel
 
was running toward him from whatever distance this
fish-eye vision couldn't tell him. He would get used to
 
it, he thought.
 
He had moved. As he brooded, he had wandered
 
out of the camp and over almost to the herd! He
turned and ran back to the camp, surprised at the ease
and speed with which he ran, but he slowed when he
realized that the distorted vision would take some get-
ting used to. He almost ran the Murnie down.
He started to apologize, but nothing came out.
The Murnie sympathized. "I don't know the an-
swer, Nate. But get used to it before doing anything
rash. Your body's either dead or it'll be even better
the longer you give it in Czill. Heyl Just thought of
something. Come over here to this dirt patch!"
He followed the Murnie curiously.
"Look!" Grondel said excitedly, and made a line in
the dirt with his foot. "Now you do it!"
 
Brazil understood. It was slow and didn't look all
that good, but after a little practice he managed to
trace the letters in the dirt with his hoof.
"WHERE is WUJU?" he traced.
"She's here, Nate. Want to see her?"
Brazil thought for a second, then wrote, very large,
 
"NO."
 
The Murnie rubbed out the old letters so it was
again a virgin slate. "Why not?" he asked.
 
"DOES SHE KNOW ABOUT ME?" Brazil WTOte.
 
"Yes. I—I told her last night. Shouldn't I have?"
Brazil was seething; a thousand things raced through
his mind, none of them logical.
224
 
"DON'T WANT," he had traced when he heard Wuju's
 
voice.
 
"Nathan?" she called more than asked. "Is that
really you in there?"
 
He looked up and turned. She was standing there,
looking awed, shaking her head back and forth in dis-
belief.
 
"It's him," Grondel assured her. "See? We've been
communicating. He can write here in the dirt."
 
She looked down at the marks and shook her head
sadly. "I—I never learned how to read," she said,
 
ashamedly.
 
The Murnie grunted. "Too bad," he said. "Would
have simplified things." He turned back to Brazil.
"Look, Nate, I know you well enough to know that
you'll head off for Czill as soon as you're confident of
making the trip. I know how you feel, but you need
her. We can't go, wouldn't if we could. And some-
body's got to know you're you, to keep you from stray-
ing, and to do your talking for you. You need her,
 
Nate."
 
Brazil looked at them both and thought for a min-
ute, trying to understand his own feelings. Shame?
 
Fear?
 
No,dependence, he thought.
 
I've never been dependent on anyone, but now I
need somebody. For the first time in my long life, I
need somebody.
 
He was dependent on Wuju, almost as much as she
had been dependent on him in the early stages of their
relationship.
 
He tried to think up logical reasons for that not be-
ing the case, to rationalize his feelings, but he could
 
not.
 
He traced in the dirt, "BUT I'M NOW BIGGER THAN
 
you ARE."
 
Grondel laughed and read it to her. She laughed,
 
too.
Then he wrote: "TELL HER ABOUT DEER PART."
 
Grondel understood, and explained how Brazil was
really two beings—one man, one animal—and how
he had already lapsed into deer while thinking.
 
She understood. When still, such as during the night,
 
225
 
he would have to be staked like a common deer to
keep him from wandering away. And he couldn't even
drive his own stake!
 
Dependence. It grated on him as nothing ever had,
but it had the feel of inevitability.
 
He hoped fervently that his body was still alive.
 
Grondel had finally collapsed in sleep and was snor-
ing loudly in a nearby tent,
 
Brazil and WuJu were alone for the first time, he
suffering the indignity of being staked so he couldn't
wander off.
 
They had worked most of the day on his getting
used to the body, adjusting to the vision and color
blindness, the supersensitive senses of hearing and
smell. The speed in his sprint amazed him and Wuju
both. As fast as she had seemed when he was human,
she now seemed terribly slow, ponderous, and ex-
hausted while he was still feeling great. He also dis-
covered that his hind-leg kick could shatter a small
tree.
 
A few things were simplified, of course. No packs
needed now, he could eat what she ate. No drag on
speed—he could run as fast as Cousin Bat could fly,
maybe faster for short periods.
 
If only he coutd talk! Make some sort of sound!
 
Wuju looked at him admiringly. "You know, you're
really beautiful, Nathan. I hope they have mirrors in
Czill." She still talked mildly distorted, but Grondel
had been forcing her to use the old language so much
during the past day and a half that it was becoming
easier, like a second language.
 
She came and stood beside him, pressing her equine
body against his sleek, supermuscled antelope body.
She started to rub him, actually pet him gently.
 
His mind rebelled, though he didn't try to pull away
or stop her.
 
I'm getting excited as hell' he thought, surprised.
And, from the feel of it, there was a lot of him to
get excited.
 
His first impulse was to stop her, but instead he
moved his head over and started nuzzling her neck
 
226
 
with his muzzle. She leaned forward, so his antlers
wouldn't get in the way.
 
Is it the animal, or do I want to do this? a comer
of his mind asked, but the thought slipped away as
irrelevant, as was the thought that they were still two
very, very different species.
 
He stroked her equine back with the bottom of his
snout and got to the bony hind end. She sighed and
slipped off the leash that was attached to his hind leg.
They continued.
 
This was a crazy, insane way to have sex, but the
deer in him showed him how.
 
Wuju finally had what she wanted from Nathan
Brazil.
 
Brazil awoke feeling really fine, the best in many
long years. He glanced over at Wuju, still asleep, al-
though the sun had been up for an hour.
 
Isn't it funny, he thought. The transformation, the
commitment, the crisis, and the way those people had
served me have all come together to do what nothing
else had.
 
He remembered.
 
He remembered it all, all the way back.
 
He understood, finally, what he had been doing be-
fore, what he was doing now, why he survived.
 
He considered the vessel he wore. Not of his own
choosing, of course, but it was serviceable if he could
just get a voice.
 
How great a change to know it all! His mind was
absolutely clear, certain, now that everything was laid
out before him. He was in total control now, he knew.
 
Funny, he thought, that this doesn't change any-
thing. Knowledge, memory, wisdom aside, he was the
culmination of ail of the experiences in his incredibly
long life.
 
Nathan Brazil. He rolled the name around in his
mind. He still liked it. Out of the—what?—thousand
or more names he had had, it had the most comforta-
ble and enigmatic ring.
 
He let his mind go out across the land. Yes, defi-
nitely some sort of breakdown. Not major, but messy.
 
227
 
Time dulls all mechanisms, and the infinite complexity
of the master equation was bound to have flaws. One
can represent infinity mathematically but not as some-
thing real, something you can see and understand.
 
And yet, he thought, I'm still Nathan Brazil, still
the same person I was, and I'm here in Murithel in
the body of a great stag and I've still got to ge^ to the
Well before Skander or Vamett or anyone else does.
 
Czill. If what he had heard was right, they had
computers there. A high-technology hex, then. They
could give him a voice—and news.
 
Grondel emerged from a tent and came over to him.
He strained at the rope on his left hind leg, and the
Mumie understood and freed him. He went immedi-
ately to the big patch of bare dirt that was his writing
pad. Grondel followed, grumping that he hadn't had
anything to eat yet, but Brazil was adamant and anx-
ious.
 
"What's on your mind, Nate?" he asked.
 
"HOW FAR HERE TO CZILL CENTER" Brazil traced.
 
"Already, huh?" Grondel muttered. "Somehow I
knew it. Well, about a hundred and fifty kilometers,
maybe a little more, to the border, then about the
same into the Czillian capital. I'm not sure, because
I've never left this hex. We don't get along well with
our neighbors, which is fine with us."
 
"MUST GO," he scratched. "IN CONTROL OF SELF
 
NOW. IMPORTANT."
 
"Ummm. . . . Thought you weren't going there
across Murithel for a vacation. All right, then, if I
can't dissuade you. What about the girl?"
 
"SHE COMES TOO," he scratched. "WILL WORK OUT
 
EASY CODE FOR BASIC STUFF, STOP, GO, EAT, SLEEP,
ETC."
 
And that was the way they worked it out, Brazil
thinking of as many basic concepts as he could and
using a right leg, left leg, stomping code for them.
Twelve concepts were the most he could work on short
notice without fear that she would mix them up. He
also had to assure them several times that he would
not wander away or stray again. She accepted it, but
seemed dubious.
 
They ate their fill of the grasses. Grondel would
 
228
 
ride WuJu with them to the border. Though Nathan
was safe as a branded, purebred stag, she was not. A
Mumie accompanying them would ease her passage.
 
They followed the stream, passing first the spot
where his body had lain, the mud and bottom still
disturbed from the action. They made exceptionally
good time, and Brazil enjoyed the experience of being
able to move quickly and effortlessly, so powerful that
the mud couldn't trap him, nor could the brisk pace
tire him. He just wasn't built for riding, though; and
WuJu had to carry Grondel, which slowed her more
than usual. It didn't matter.
 
They made the border shortly after dark on the
second day. On the morning of the third, after
Grondel had refreshed Wuju on the stomp code, they
bade him good-bye and crossed into Czilt. The air was
extremely heavy with an almost oppressive humidity,
the kind that wets you with a fine, invisible mist as
you move through it. The air was also oppressive with
carbon dioxide, which seemed to make up one or more
percent of the atmosphere, although oxygen was so far
above their previous norms that it made them feel a
little light-headed. Were it not for the great humidity,
Brazil thought, this would be a hell of a place for
fires. As it was, he would be surprised if a match
would bum.
 
They ran into Czillians soon enough, strange-looking
creatures that reminded him of smooth-skinned cac-
tuses with two trunks and carved pumpkin heads.
Neither he nor Wuju had a translator now, so com-
munication was impossible, but at the first village cen-
ter they reached, they managed a primitive sort of
contact.
 
The place looked like a great, transparent geodesic
dome, and was one of the hundred or more subsidiary
research villages outside the Center. The Czillians
were surprised to see a Diltian—they knew what Wuju
was, but as far as any could remember none of her
race had ever reached Czill before. They regarded
Brazil as a curiosity, an obvious animal.
 
About the only thing WuJu could get across to them
were their names. She finally gave up in frustration
and they continued on the well-maintained road. The
 
229
 
Czillians sent the names and the information of their
passage on to the Center, where it was much better
understood.
 
Brazil paid a lot of attention to WUJ'U, and their
lovemaking continued nightly. She was happy now and
didn't even wonder how Brazil, who led, was picking
the right direction at every junction as if he had been
there before. In her mind the only question that mat-
tered was about his human body. She felt a little
guilty, but she hoped the body would not be there or
would be dead.
 
She had him now, and she didn't want to lose him.
 
Late in the morning of the second day, they came
to what was obviously the main highway of the hex,
and followed it. It was another day and a half before
they got to the Center, though, since it was not in the
center of the hex as Grondel had thought, but was
situated along the ocean coast.
 
They arrived Just as darkness was falling, and Brazil
stomped that they would sleep first. No use going in
when there was only minimum staff, he thought.
 
As he made love to her that night, part of her mind
was haunted. The rest of Mm is inside that building,
she thought, and it upset her. This might be their last
night.
 
Cousin Bat woke them up in the wee predawn
 
hours.
 
"Brazil! Wujui Wake up!" he shouted excitedly, and
they both stirred. Wuju saw who it was and greeted
him warmly, all her past suspicions forgotten.
 
Bat turned to Brazil unbelievingly. "Is that really
you in there, Brazil?"
 
Brazil nodded his antlered head affirmatively.
 
"He can't talk, Cousin Bat," Wuju explained- "No
vocal cords of any kind. I think that upsets him more
than anything else."
 
The bat grew serious. "I'm sorry," he said softly to
Brazil. "I didn't know." He snorted. "Big hero, pluck-
ing the injured man from the Jaws of certain death.
All I did was make a mess of it."
 
"But you are a hero!" Wuju consoled him. "That
was an incredibly brave and wonderful thing." Well,
 
230
 
there was no avoiding it. The question had to be
asked.
 
*'Did he—is his body still alive?" she asked softly.
"Yes, it is, somehow," Bat replied seriously. "But
—well, it's a miracle that it's alive at all, and there's
no medical reason for it. It's pretty battered and bro-
ken, Wuju. These doctors are good here—unbelieva-
ble, in fact. But the only thing that body will ever be
good for is cloning. If Brazil were returned to it, he'd
be a living vegetable."
 
They both looked at Brazil expectantly, but the stag
gave no indication whatsoever of emotion.
 
Wuju tried to remain normal, but the fact that a
great deal of tension had suddenly drained from her
was obvious in the lighter, more casual tone she used.
"Then he's to stay a deer?"
 
"Looks that way," Bat responded slowly. "At least
they told me that the injuries were already too severe
for me to have caused the final damage. They can't
understand how he survived the Murnie blows that
broke his neck and spinal column in two places. No-
body ever survived damage like that. It's as good as
blowing your brains out or getting stabbed through the
heart."
 
They talked on until dawn, when the still landscape
suddenly came alive with awakening Czillians. Bat led
them into the Center, and took them to the medical
wing, on the river side.
 
The Czillians were fascinated by Brazil and insisted
on checking him with electroencephalographs and all
sorts of other equipment. He was impatient but sub-
mitted to the tests with growing confidence. If they
were this far advanced, perhaps they could give him
a voice.
 
They took Nathan down to a lower level after a
while and showed him his body. Wuju came along, but
one quick glance was all she needed and she rushed
from the room.
 
They had him floating in a tank, attached to hun-
dreds of instruments and life-sustaining devices. The
monitors showed autonomic muscle action, but no
cranial activity whatsoever. The body itself had been
repaired as much as possible, but it looked as if it had
 
231
 
been through a meat grinder. Right leg almost torn
off, now sewn back securely but lifeless in the extreme.
The giant, clawed hand that had ripped the leg had
 
also castrated him.
 
Brazil had seen enough. He turned and left the
room, climbing the stairs back to the clinic carefully.
They were not built to take something his size and
weight, and the turns were difficult. He didn't fit in
the elevators, which were designed for Umiau in
 
wheelchairs.
 
Having a 250-plus-kilo giant stag walk into your
office can be unsettling, but the Czillian doctor tried
not to let it faze it. The doctor heard from Bat, who
had heard it from Wuju, that Brazil could write. Since
soft dirt was one thing that was very plentiful in Czill,
it had obtained what appeared to be a large sandbox
filled with dry, powdery gray sand from the ocean
 
shore.
 
"What do you want us to do?" the doctor asked.
"CAN YOU BUILD ME VOICE BOX," Brazil scratched.
 
The doctor thought a minute. "Perhaps we can, in
a way. You might know that the translator devices,
which we import, sealed, from another hex far away,
work by being implanted and attached to neural pas-
sages between the brain and the vocal equipment—
whatever it is—of the creature. You had one in your
old body. We now have nothing to attach the trans-
lator to in your case, and putting anything in there
would interfere with eating or breathing. But if we
could attach a small plastic diaphragm and match the
electrical impulses from your brain to wires leading to
it, we might have an external voice box. Not great, of
course, but you could be understood—with full trans-
lator function. I'll tell the labs. It's a simple operation,
and if they can come up with anything, we might be
able to do it tomorrow or the next day."
 
"SOONER THE BETTER," he scratched, and started
 
to leave to find Bat and Wuju.
 
"Just a minute," the doctor called. "As long as
you're here, alone with me, I'd like to take up some-
thing you might not know."
 
Brazil stopped, turned back to it, and waited ex-
pectantly.
 
232
 
"Our tests show you to be—physically—about four
and a half years old. The records show that the aver-
age life span of the Murthiel antelope is between eight
and twelve years, so you can expect to age much more
rapidly. You have four to eight more years to live, no
more. But that is at least that many years longer than
you would have lived without the transfer." It
stopped, looking for a reaction. The stag cocked his
head in a gesture that was unmistakably the equiva-
lent of a shrug. He walked back to the sandbox.
 
"THANKS ANYWAY," he scratched. "NOT RELEVANT,"
he added cryptically, and left.
 
The doctor stared after him, puzzled. It knew that
everyone said Brazil might be the oldest person ever
to live, and certainly he had shown incredible, super-
human life and stamina. Maybe he wants to die, it
mused. Or maybe he doesn't think he can, even now.
 
The operation was a simple one, performed with a
local anesthetic. The only problem the surgeon had
was in isolating the correct neural signals in an animal
brain so undesigned for speech of any kind. The com-
puters were fed all the neural information and some
samples of him attempting speech. They finally iso-
lated the needed signals in under an hour. The only
remaining concern was for the drilling in the antlers,
but when they found that the bony growths had no
nerves to convey pain, it simplified everything. They
used a small Umiau transistor radio—which meant it
was rugged and totally waterproof. Connections were
made inside the antler base, and the tiny radio, only
about sixty square centimeters, was screwed into the
antler base. A little cosmetic surgery and plastic made
everything but the speaker grille blend into the antler
complex.
 
"Now say something," the surgeon urged. "Do it as
if you were going to speak."
 
"How's this?" he asked. "Can you hear and under-
stand me?"
 
"Excellent!" the surgeon said enthusiastically, nib-
bing its tentacles in glee. "A landmark! There's even
a suggestion of tone and emphasis!"
 
Brazil was delighted, even though the voice was
 
233
 
ever so slightly delayed from the thought, something he
would have to get used to. His new voice sounded
crazy to his ears, and did not have the internal reso-
nance that came with vocal cords.
 
It would do.
 
"You'll have a pretty big headache after the anes-
thetic wears off," the surgeon warned. "Even though
there are no pain centers in the antlers, we did have
to get into the skull for the little wire contacts."
 
"That won't bother me," Brazil assured them. "I
can will pain away."
 
He went out and found the bat and WuJu waiting
anxiously in the outer office.
 
"How do you like my new voice?" he asked them.
 
"Thin, weak, and tinny, very mechanical-sounding,"
Bat replied.
 
"It doesn't sound like you at all, Nathan," Wuju
said. "It sounds like a tiny pocket radio, one that a
computer was using. Even so, there's some of you in
it—the way you pause, the way you pronounce
things."
 
"Now I can get to work," Brazil's strange new voice
said. "I'll have to talk to the Czillian head of the
Skander project, somebody high up in the Umiau, and
I'll need an atlas. In the meantime, Wuju, you get
yourself a translator. It's really a simple operation for
you. I don't want to be caught in the middle of no-
where with you unable to talk to anybody again."
 
"I'll go with you," said the bat. "I know the place
fairly well now. You know, it's weird, that voice. Not
just the tiny sound from such a big character. It
doesn't seem to come from anywhere in particular. I'll
have a time getting used to it."
 
"The only part that's important is your calling me
a big character," Brazil responded dryly. "You don't
know what it's like to go through life being smaller
than everybody else and suddenly wind up the largest
person in a whole country." Brazil felt good; he was
in command again.
 
They walked out, and Wuju was left alone, inter-
nally a mass of bewildering emotion. This wasn't turn-
ing out the way she had thought at all. He seemed so
cold, so distant, so different—it wasn't Nathan! Not
 
234
 
the voice, she thought. It was something in the voice,
a manner, a coldness, a crispness that she had never
felt before.
 
"Get a translator" he had told her, then walked out
to business without so much as a good-bye and good
luck.
 
"I want to go down to the old body one last time,**
Brazil said to the bat, and they made their way down
the stairs to the basement room.
 
Bat, too, had noticed a change in his manner, and
it disturbed him. He wondered whether the transfor-
mation had altered or changed Brazil's mind. Some
forms of insanity and personality disorders are organic,
he thought. Suppose the deer brain isn't giving the
right stuff in the right amounts? Suppose it's only par-
tially him?
 
They walked into the room where his body was
floating, still alive according to all the screens and
dials. Brazil stood by the tank. Just looking at the
body, for quite some time. Bat didn't interrupt, trying
to imagine what he would be thinking in the same
circumstances.
 
Finally Brazil said, almost nostalgic in tone, "It was
a good vessel. It served me for a long, long time. Well,
that's that. A new one's as easy as repair this time.
Let it go."
 
As he uttered the last word, all the meters fell to
zero and the screens all showed a cessation of life.
 
As if on command, the body had died.
 
Brazil turned and walked out without another word,
leaving Bat more confused than ever.
 
"There's no question that Skander solved the rid-
dle," the Czillian project chief, whose name was
Manito, told Brazil and Cousin Bat. "Unfortunately,
he kept the really key findings to himself and was
very careful to wipe the computer when he was
through. The only stuff we have is what was in when
he and Vardia were kidnapped."
 
"What was the major thrust of his research?" Brazil
asked-
 
"He was obsessed with our collection of folklore
 
235
 
and legends. Worked mostly with those, and keying in
the common phrase: Until midnight at the Well of
Souls."
 
Brazil nodded. "That's safe enough," he replied.
"But you say he dropped that line of inquiry when
he returned?"
 
"Shortly after," the Czillian replied. "He said it was
the wrong direction and started researching the Equa-
torial Barrier."
 
Brazil sighed. "That's bad. That means he's proba-
bly figured the whole thing out."
 
"You talk as if you know the answer, too," the
project chief commented. "I don't see how. I have all
the raw data Skander did and I can't make sense of
it."
 
"That's because you have a puzzle with millions of
pieces, but no concept of the size and shape of the
puzzle even to start putting things together," Brazil
told her—he insisted on thinking of all life forms that
could do the act of reproducing, growing a new being,
as she- "Skander, after all, had the basic equation.
There's no way you can get that here."
 
"I can't understand why you let him use you so,**
Bat put in. "You—both races—gave him a hundred
percent protection, cooperation, and access to all the
tools he needed without getting anything in return."
 
The Czillian shook her head sadly. "We thought we
were in control. After ail, he was a Umiau. He
couidn't exist outside his own ocean because he
couldn't travel beyond it. And there was, after all, the
other—the one who disappeared. He was a mathema-
tician. Whose data banks was he consulting? Was he
brilliant enough not to need them? We couldn't afford
not to back Skander!"
 
"Any idea where they are?" Brazil asked.
"Oh, yes, we know where they are—fat lot of good
it does us. They are currently being held captive in a
nation of robots called, simply enough, The Nation.
We received word that they were there, and, since we
have a few informational trades with The Nation, we
pulled in all our lOU's to hold them there as long as
possible."
 
236
 
Brazil was suddenly excited. "Are they still there?
Can we get them out?"
 
"Yes, they're still there," Manito replied, "but not
for long. There's been hell to pay from the Akkafians.
Their ambassador, a Baron Azkfru, has threatened to
bomb as much of The Nation as he can—and he can
do a good deal of damage if that's all he's out for.
That's the line. They'll be released today."
 
"Who's in the party?" Bat asked. "If it's weak
enough we might be able to do something yet."
 
"We've thought of that already," the Czillian re-
sponded. "Nothing that wouldn't get our person killed
along with the rest. Aside from Vardia and Skander,
there's an Akkafian—they are huge insects with great
speed, the ability to fly, and nasty stingers, and they
eat live prey—named Mar Hain, and a weird North-
erner we know little about called The Diviner and
The Rel. If they're one or two I can't find out."
 
"Hain!" Brazil exclaimed. "Of course, it would be.
That son of a bitch would be in the middle of any-
thing dirty."
 
"You know this Hain?" Bat asked curiously.
 
Brazil nodded. "The gang's all here, it looks like."
He turned to Manito suddenly. "Did you bring the at-
las I asked for?"
 
"I did," the Czillian replied, and lifted a huge book
onto a table. Brazil walked over to it and flipped it
open with his nose, then started turning pages with
his broad tongue- Finally he found the Southern
Hemisphere map and studied it intently. "Damned nui-
sance," he said. "Antelope don't need very good vi-
sion."
 
"I can help," the Czillian said, and walked toward
the stag. "It is in Czillian, anyway, which you can't
read."
 
Brazil shook his head idly from side to side. "It's
all right. I see where we are now, and where they
are. We're about even—two hexes up on this side to
the Ghlmon Hex at the northern tip of the ocean.
They've gotten two up the eastern side of the same
ocean to pretty much the same spot."
 
"How can you possibly know that?" the Czillian
 
237
 
blurted out, stunned. "Have you been here before? I
thought—"
 
"No,*' Brazil replied. "Not here." He nipped a few
more pages, studying a close-up map of a particular
hex. Then he flipped again, studied another, then to
yet another. All in all, he carefully examined five
hexes. Suddenly he looked up at the confused Czillian.
 
"Can you get me in touch with some Umiau big
shot?" he asked. "They owe us something for Skander.
They've got Slelcron, which is a nontech hex and so
is fine from our point of view, and Ekh'l, which could
be anything at all these days- We've got Ivrom, which
I don't like at all, but there's no way around it, and
Alissll, which will make Murithel look like a picnic.
We can contend with Ivrom, I hope, but if we went
through the Umiau hex, on a boat of some kind, we
could avoid the nasty one and maybe even gain some
time on the others. If they stick near the coast—and
I think they will, because those are the best roads by
far—we might just beat them there and intercept them
here," he pointed with his nose to the map, "at the
northern tip of the bay here, in Ghlmon."
 
"Just out of curiosity," Bat said, "you said that the
Umiau were warned the first time about a kidnap try
on Skander. Now, you said you heard they were in
The Nation. Who told you those things?"
 
"Why, we don't know!" the Czillian answered.
"They came as, well, tips, passed in common printer-
machine type in our respective languages, to our am-
bassadors at Zone."
 
"Yes," Bat persisted, "but who sent them? Is there
a third set of players in the race?"
 
"I was hoping you could tell me that," Brazil said
flatly.
 
Bat's eyes widened. "Me? All right, I admit I knew
who you were back in Dillia, and that I joined you on
purpose. But I don't represent anyone except myself,
and the interests of my people. We got word the same
way the Czillians and Umiau did, at Zone. Said where
you'd be, approximately when, and that you were go-
ing after Skander and Vamett. We couldn't find who
sent it, but it was decided that we had a stake in the
outcome. I was elected, because I've done more trav-
 
238
 
eling than most of my people. But—me? The third
party? No, Brazil, I admit only to not being truthful
with you. Surely by now you know that I'm on your
side—all the way."
 
"That's too bad," Brazil replied. "I would very
much like to know our mysterious helper, and how he
gets his information."
 
"Well, he seems to be on our side," Bat said opti-
mistically.
 
"Nobody's on any side but his own," Brazil snapped
back. "Not you, not me, not anybody. We're going to
have a tough enough time just dealing with the
Skander party. I don't want to reach the goal of this
chase and have our helpful third party finish off the
survivors."
 
"Then you propose to give chase?" the Czillian
asked stupidly.
 
"Of course! That's what all this is about. One last
question—can you tell me the last major problem
Skander fed to the computer?"
 
"Why, yes, I think so," the Czillian replied nerv-
ously. She rummaged through some papers, coming up
with two. "He asked two, in fact. One was the number
of Entries into hexes bordering the Equatorial Zone,
both sides.'*
 
"And the answer?"
 
"Why, none on record. Most curious. They're not
true hexes anyway, you know. Since the Equatorial
Barrier splits them neatly in half, they are two adjoin-
ing half-hexes, each side—therefore, twice as wide as
a normal hex and half the distance north and south,
with fiat equatorial borders."
 
"What was the second question?" Brazil asked im-
patiently.
 
"Oh, ah, whether the number six had any special
relation to the Equatorial Zone hexes in geography,
biology, or the like."
 
"And the answer?"
 
"Still in the computer when the unfortunate, ah, in-
cident occurred. We did, of course, get the answer,
even though it was on a printout which the kidnap-
pers apparently took with them. The material was still
in storage, and so we got another copy."
239
 
"What did it say?" Brazil asked in an irritated tone.
 
"Oh, ah, that six of the double half-hexes, so to
speak, were split by a very deep inlet all the way up
to the zone barrier, evenly spaced around the planet
so that, if you drew a line from zone to zone through
each of the inlets, you'd split the planet into abso-
lutely equal sixths."
 
"Son of a bitchi" Brazil swore. "He's got the whole
answer! Nothing will ever surprise me again!"
 
At that moment another Czillian entered the room
and looked at the bat and the stag confusedly. Finally
she picked the bat and said, shyly, "Captain Brazil?"
 
"Not me," Bat replied casually, and pointed a bony
wing at the stag. "Him."
 
She turned and looked at the creature that was so
obviously an animal. "I don't believe it!" she said the
way everyone did. Finally she decided she might be-
lieve it and went over to the great Murithel antelope,
and repeated, "Captain Brazil?"
 
"Yes?" he answered pleasantly, curious in the ex-
treme. Captain Brazil?
 
"Oh," she responded softly, "I—I realize I've
changed a great deal, but nothing like you. Wow!"
 
"Well, who are—urn, that is, who were you?" he
asked, intrigued.
 
"Why, I'm Vardia, Captain," she replied.
 
"But Vardia was kidnapped by the bugs!" Bat ex-
claimed.
 
"I know," she replied. "That's what's really upset
me."
 
A Road in the Nation
 
"QUARANTINE, HELL!" SKANDER GRUMBLED, STRAPPED
 
in again atop Main's back, irritated by the yellowish
atmosphere and the discomfort of the breathing ap-
paratus. Her voice was so muffled by the mask that
none could understand a word.
 
240
 
"Stop grumbling, Skander," The Rel responded.
"You waste air and can't be understood by anybody
but me anyway. You are quite right, though—we've
been stalled."
 
Vardia, whose head and vocal mechanism were not
related in any way to her respiratory system, asked,
"Who could be responsible? Who knew we were here,
would be staying at that particular hotel? Perhaps our
people have tracked you down." There was hope in
her voice.
 
"Don't get yourself that excited, Czillian," The Rel
replied. "As you can see, the delaying action slowed
us but did not stop or deter us—nor did it liberate
you. No, this smells of darker stuff. Of the one who
planted the hidden listening device in the baron's of-
fice at Zone and prevented our escapade weeks ear-
ner."
 
This was the first Vardia had heard of that incident,
and it made her think back to the many things that
had happened to her. That distress signal where one
could not have been operating. The vanishing of the
two shuttlecraft on Dalgonia, and the disappearance
of their lifeboat. The opening of the Well Gate only
after they were all securely in it. Captain Brazil's firm
belief that he was being suckered by someone.
 
That strange snakeman, Ortega. Over seven hun-
dred chances, and Brazil is met by the only person at
Zone who knew him. Coincidence?
 
She suddenly felt furious, thinking of all of it in
detail. Someone was using her—using all of them—
moving them like pieces in a game.
 
What about the hex assignments? Skander to a
place where she had all the tools at her disposal, cor-
rupting a peaceful people in the process. She to the
hex next door, assigned—actually assigned.9—to work
with Skander and kidnapped with her. By whom?
Someone working for that bastard Datham Ham!
 
And Captain Brazil! She had gotten the word when
Brazil had entered Zone, looking exactly the same as
he had before. Why didn't the Gate change him? And
that pathetic little addict—dumped into a hex almost
perfect for getting back to being human without pres-
 
241
 
sures. Brazil had been hung up on her, she recalled.
Probably they were together now.
 
Why? she wondered. Sex? That was something the
animals did, she told herself. She had never under-
stood it, or why people liked it; and if her own twin-
ning was any indication, it was a most unpleasant
experience. Why was a distinguished, high-ranking
person of such a responsible position as Captain Brazil
willing to jeopardize his career and his life for the
sake of some wasted girl he never knew—didn't know,
in fact, even through Zone? Even if he had saved her,
she wouldn't have contributed anything. She was prac-
tically an animal then. More sense to get her to a
Death Factory where her remains would help fertilize
a field.
 
Perhaps this was why the Corn philosophy was de-
veloping and spreading, she thought. It was rational,
planned. Like being a plant, or one of these robots.
Even Hain's dirty crew couldn't stop the march of such
perfection of order, she felt sure. The sane hexes here
proved it.
 
"We will have better service, and a shorter stay, at
other hotels," The Rel informed them, breaking
Vardia's reverie. "I think we will be out of this place
where we are so unpopular in two days. Slelcron will
be no faster but easier. No one communicates with the
Slelcron. We will be ignored but unimpeded. As for
Ekh'l—well, I have no information there, but I feel
confident that, no matter what happens, we will not
be beaten."
 
"You seem pretty sure of yourself," Vardia com-
mented. "More prophecy from The Diviner?"
 
"Logic," The Rel replied. "We were impeded for
someone's purpose. Why? To what end? So they can
beat us to the equator? I doubt it. It would be easier
to kill us than detain us so. No, they will have to come
out to us at the equator. They want to be there when
we arrive because they know who and where we are,
but not what Dr. Skander knows—how to get to the
Well. They want in with us—indeed, they may be
allies, since they will assuredly take steps to see that
no one else beats us to the goal. And make no mistake
 
242
 
about it, there is another expedition. The Diviner has
said that we will not enter until all the recent Entries
combine. That is fine—as long as we are in charge."
"We will be," Hain suddenly said,
 
Near the Ivrom Border in
the Umiau Nation
 
THEY PRESENTED A SIGHT UNPRECEDENTED ON THE
 
Well World: a broad raft of logs, pulled along by ten
Umiau wearing harnesses. On the raft were a Dillian
centaur, a giant stag, a two-meter-tall bat, and a Czil-
lian, plus a well-depleted bale of hay and a box of dirt.
 
"Why can't the Umiau just take us all the way up?"
Vardia asked Brazil.
 
The stag turned his head. "I still can't get used to
the idea that you are in two places at once, so to
speak," he said through his radio speaker. The splash-
ing and sound of the wind on the water made it hard
to hear his little box if you weren't positioned just
right.
 
"I have a hard time thinking that the little captain I
came here with is a huge deer," she replied. "Now
answer the question."
 
"Too dangerous," he told her. "We're going as far
up as possible, but you eventually start getting some
nasty currents, whirlpools, and other stuff. They don't
get along too well with the inhabitants, either. The
Umiau would make out, but those nasty fish with the
twenty rows of teeth would chew up this raft and us
before we could be properly introduced. No, we'll take
our chances with a hundred and sixty kilometers of
Ivrom."
 
"What is Ivrom, Nathan?" Wuju asked. She had
gotten the translator, and overcome most of her reser-
vations. He treated her gently, and said only the right
things, and she had eased up. There was still that
 
243
 
something different about him, that indefinable some-
thing they ali sensed but couldn't put their fingers on.
 
Wuju had talked it out with Cousin Bat. "How
would you feel," Bat had asked her, "if you'd awak-
ened not a Dillian but a regular horse? And looked
down at your own dead body? Would you still be the
same?"
 
She had accepted that explanation, but Bat didn't
believe it himself. What had changed in Brazil was
the added air of total command, of absolute confidence
and certainty. And he had as much as admitted he
knew the answer to the total puzzle. He could get in
to the control center, control the world—or more.
 
Bat was more encouraged now, really. So much the
better. The man with the answers had no hands,
couldn't even open a door by himself. Let him get in,
Bat thought smugly. Let him show how to work things.
 
"Nathan!" Wuju said louder. "What is Ivrom? You
haven't told us!"
 
"Because I don't know, love," he replied casually.
"Lots of forest, rolling hills, plenty of animals, most
familiar. The atlas said there were horses and deer
there. It's a nontechnological hex, so it's the sword-
and-spear bit again, probably. The intelligent life form
is some kind of insect, I think, but nobody's sure.
Those active volcanoes to our left—that's AlisstI, and
it's a formidable barrier. The people there are thick-
skinned reptiles who live in temperatures close to boil-
ing and eat sulfur. Probably nice folks, but nobody
drops in."
 
She looked over at the range of volcanic mountains.
Most were spouting steam, and one had a spectacular
lava fountain along a side fissure. She shivered, al-
though it wasn't cold.
 
"This is the way to travel if you can!" Brazil said
with enthusiasm, taking a deep breath of the salty air.
"Fantastic! I used to sail oceans like this on big ships,
back in the days of Old Earth. There was a romance
to the sea, and those who sailed it. Not like the one-
man space freighters with their computers and phony
pictures of winking dots."
 
"How soon will we land?" Wuju asked him, a bit
 
244
 
ill at the rolling and tossing he liked so much. She was
happy to see him obviously enjoying himself, talking
like his old self again, but if it was at the cost of this
kind of upset stomach, she would take land.
 
"Well, they've gone exceptionally fast," he replied.
"Strong devils, and amazing in their element. I'll have
to remember that strength. Wouldn't do to underesti-
mate our Dr. Skander."
 
"Yes, but how long?" she insisted.
 
"Tomorrow morning," he replied. "Then it'll be no
more than a day or so to Ghlmon—we won't have to
cross the whole hex of Ivrom, just one facet—and an-
other day to the top of the bay in Ghlmon."
 
"Do you really think we'll meet them—the others,
that is—up there?" Vardia asked. "I'm most anxious
to free my other self—my sister—from those crea-
tures."
 
"We'll meet them," Brazil assured her, "if we beat
them—and we certainly should at this rate. I know
where they have to go. When they get there, we'll be
ready for them,"
 
"Will I be able to scout this Ivrom tonight?" Cousin
Bat called out to him. "I'm sick and tired of fish."
 
"I'm counting on you. Bat," Brazil replied laughing.
"Eat up and tell us what's what."
 
"No more midnight rescues from the jaws of death,
though," Bat replied in the same light vein.
 
"You never know. Bat," Brazil replied more seri-
ously. "Maybe this time I'll rescue you."
 
The Umiau had been remarkably uninformed about
Ivrom, which wasn't as strange on the face of it as it
would seem. The Umiau were water creatures, and
their need was for technological items they could not
manufacture. An alliance with the Czillians was nat-
ural; their other neighbors they at least knew from
watery experience, even if they didn't get along too
well with all of them, and AlisstI was too hot to han-
dle. Ivrom, named from the old maps and not by the
inhabitants, was peaceful forests and meadows, no
major rivers, although it had hundreds of tiny creeks
and streams. It was a nontechnological hex, so it
wasn't easy to get to, even harder to move around in,
 
245
 
and probably not worth the trouble. Of course, the
major problem was that no one who had ever set out
for Ivrom—to study, for contact, or to go through it
—had ever been seen or heard from again. For<that
reason the party stopped on a reef, over a submerged
shoal in deep water, and anchored for the night even
though there would still have been time when they
arrived to have made camp on or near the beach.
 
It did look inviting, too. The air was sweet and
fresh, about twenty degrees Celsius, surprisingly com-
fortable humidity for a shore area because of the in-
land breeze, a few light, fluffy clouds but nothing that
looked threatening, and a deep blue sky.
 
The shoreline revealed a virgin sandy beach, flat
and yellow and stretching down the coast. The break-
ers and some obvious storms had forced driftwood
onto the shore, where it had built up near the begin-
ning of the forest. It was a very dense forest, rather
dark from the thickness of the underbrush and giant
evergreens, but nothing looked suspicious or sinister.
As twilight deepened, they could make out an occa-
sional small deer and a number of other animals much
like muskrats, marmots, and other woodland creatures.
 
It reminded Brazil of a number of really pleasant
places on Old Earth before they were paved over.
Even the animals and birds, now flocking to roosts in
the tall trees, seemed very Earthlike—far more than
even the most familiar hexes he had been through.
 
He wished he could recall more about the place,
but be couldn't. Nobody could keep track of every-
thing, he thought, even though the mind behind Ivrom
had obviously paid a great deal of attention to a Type
41 habitat.
 
Insects, his mind kept telling him. But that was the
kind of fact that you heard once or twice rather than
recalled from personal experience, and it registered
but was not something you had paid attention to at
the time. Everything has changed so much it probably
wouldn't matter anyway, he thought. Evolution and
natural processes like  erosion  and  deposition,
diastrophism and the other forces operated in accord-
ance with the logic of each hex, so things were con-
 
246
 
stantly changing on the Well World as they were
everywhere in the universe.
 
Darkness totally obscured the shoreline for all but
Cousin Bat, who reported that he couldn't see any-
thing they hadn't seen by day.
 
"Well, maybe something," Bat corrected. "I can't
be sure at this distance, though. Looks like tiny, little,
blinking lights, on and off, on and off, all over the
forest—moving around, too, but slowly."
 
Lightning bugs, Brazil thought. Was he the only per-
son from their little comer of the galaxy who could
remember lightning bugs?
 
"Well, go on in, then," Brazil told the bat after a
while, "but be careful. Looks peaceful, but the place
has a really spooky reputation, and except for the fact
that my mind keeps insisting that the life form there
is insects, I can't think of anything else to tell you.
Just watch out for insects, no matter how small or in-
significant—they might be somebody we'd rather
make friends with."
 
"All right," Bat responded calmly. "Insects are a
normal part of my diet, but I won't touch them if I
can help it. Just a quick survey, then I'll be back."
 
They agreed and Bat took off into the darkness.
 
When the sun came up the next morning. Cousin
Bat still had not returned.
 
Just over the Nation—Slelcron
Border—Morning
 
THE REL STOPPED JUST AHEAD AS THE AIR SUDDENLY
 
cleared and they walked into bright sunshine.
 
"You may all remove your breathing apparatuses
and discard them," it told them. "The air is now quite
safe for all of you."
 
Skander reached up and took off her mask, but
stowed it in the pack case. "I'll keep mine, and I
 
247
 
think you others should, too," the Umiau cautioned. "I
have no idea what the interior is like, but it's possible
we may need the couple hours of air left in these
tanks. If the mechanism is self-operating, it ma^ not
exist in any atmosphere."
 
"I am well aware of that, Doctor," The Rel re-
plied. "I, too, can not exist in a vacuum—The Diviner
requires argon and neon, and I require xenon and
krypton, which, thankfully, have been present in the
quantities we need in all of the hexes so far. We had
weeks to prepare for this expedition, you know, and I
fully expected us ultimately to have to face a vacuum
—in which those little respirators will do us no good
whatsoever. The packs contain compressed pressure
suits designed for each of us."
 
"Then why didn't we use them in that hellhole we
just went through?" Hain grumbled, outraged. "That
stuff burned!"
 
"That was a hex of sharp edges and abrasives where
the suits might have suffered premature damage," The
Rel replied. "It was a discomfort, no more. I thought
it best not to take any risks with pressurized equip-
ment until we have to."
 
Hain grumbled and cursed, and Skander wasn't much
better—she was drying out rapidly and itched terribly.
Only Vardia was now perfectly comfortable—the sun
was very strong, the sky was blue and cloudless, and
she even somehow sensed the richness of the soil.
 
"What is this place, anyway?" Skander asked. "Any
chance of a shady stream where I can wet down?"
 
"You'll survive," The Rel responded. "We will al-
leviate your discomfort as soon as we can. Yes, there
are almost certainly streams, lakes, and ponds here.
When I find one shallow enough and slow enough that
it will not be your avenue away from us, you will get
your wish."
 
The place was thinly forested, but had tremendous
growth of bushes and vines, and giant flowers—millions
of flowers, as far as the eye could see, rising on stalks
from one to three meters high, bright orange centers
surrounded by eighteen perfectly shaped white petals.
Huge buzzing insects went from flower to flower,
but the actions were individualistic, not as they would
 
248
 
move in a swarm. Each was about fifty centimeters
long, give or take, and very furry; and though their
basic color was black, they had stripes of orange and
yellow on their hind sections-
 
"How beautiful," Vardia said.
 
"Damned noisy, if you ask me," Skander yelled,
noting the tremendous hum the insects' wings made as
they moved.
 
"Are the insects the life form?" Hain asked. The
Rel had to move back close to the huge beetle to be
heard.
 
"No," the Northerner replied. "As I understand it,
it is some sort of symbiosis. The flowers are. Their
seeds are buried by the insects, and if all goes well
the braincase develops out of the seed. Then it sprouts
the stalk and finally forms a flower."
 
"Then maybe I can eat a few of the buzzing bas-
tards," Hain said eagerly.
 
"No!" The Rel replied quickly. "Not yet! The flow-
ers drop seeds, so they do not reproduce by pollination.
The bees bury the seeds, but little else—yet they are
obviously gaining their food from the center of the
flowers. See how one lands there, and sticks its probos-
cis into the orange center? If the flowers feed them,
they must do something for the flower."
 
"They can't uproot," Vardia said sympathetically.
"What's the use of having a brain if you can't see,
hear, feel, or move? What kind of a dominant species
 
is that?"
 
The ultimate Comworld, Skander thought sarcasti-
cally, but said aloud, "I think that's what the insects
do. If you keep watching one long enough, it goes to
one other flower, then returns to the original. It might
go to dozens of flowers, but it returns between trips to
a particular one."
 
Vardia noticed a slight lump in the grass just ahead
of them. Curiously she went over to it and carefully
smoothed the dirt away.
 
"Look!" she called excitedly, and they all came to
see. "It's a seed! And see! An egg of some kind at-
tached to the outside! Each insect attaches an egg to
each seed before burying it! It's grown attached! See
 
249
 
where the seed case is growing over the egg, secreting
 
that film?"
Skander almost fell out of her saddle peering over
 
Hain's hard shell to see, but the glance she got told
 
the story.
 
"Of course!" the scientist exclaimed. "Amazing!**
"What?" they all asked at once.
 
"That's how they communicate—how they get
 
around, don't you see? The insect's like a robot with a
 
programmable brain. They grow up together—I'll bet
the insect hatches fully formed and instinctively able
to fly when the flower opens. Whatever it sees, hears,
touches, it communicates to the flower when it re-
turns. I'll bet after a while they can send the creatures
with messages, talk to each other. And every time the
insect gets to another flower, the old hands give in-
formation for it to take back. The creatures live, but
they live their lives secondhand, by recording, as it
were."
 
"Sounds logical," The Rel admitted. "Hain, I would
suggest you eat anything but those flowers and the
black, striped insects. You could get huge numbers of
them, we all could, but if we upset them we could
face a programmed army of millions of the things. I
want to be peaceful."
 
"All right," Hain agreed grumpily. "But if there's
nothing else to eat, the hell with them."
 
At that moment one of the huge insects flew right
into their midst and started carefully but quickly re-
burying the exposed seed and egg. Satisfied, it flew off
to a nearby flower and buried its head in the flower's
center. They watched it carefully, both for intent and
out of curiosity. Finally it seemed satisfied and
backed out, flying over to them and hovering menac-
ingly in front of them, darting from one to the other.
They stayed still, but Main's antennae radiated, "If
that thing makes one wrong move, I'll eat it regard-
less."
 
Finally the creature got to Vardia, flew all around
her, then suddenly jumped on her head, and before she
could make a move it pushed its sharp, mosquito-like
proboscis into the top of her head just under the leafy
 
250
 
growth. They were all too stunned to move for several
seconds. Suddenly Hain said, "I'll zap it."
 
"No!" Skander shouted violently. "You might leave
that thing in her. Wait a minute and let's see what
happens."
 
Vardia had no pain centers but she did have sensi-
tive nerves, and they felt the thing enter and probe un-
til it touched a particular set of nerves, the ones that
sent messages to and from her head and brains.
 
Quite suddenly everything went dark, and a strange
voice much like her own thoughts, only stronger, asked,
"Who and what are you and what are you doing here?"
 
She could think of nothing but answering. The alien
thought was so powerful it was hypnotizing. It was
more demand than question.
 
"We are just passing through your hex on our way
to the equator."
 
She felt the proboscis withdraw, and the lights came
on again. She was in control and saw the thing heading
away at high speed.
 
"Va— Chon," Skander corrected. "What happened?*'
 
"It ... it spoke to me. It asked who we were, and
I said we were just people going through the hex to-
ward the equator. Man! It's strong! I have the strangest
feeling that I would have to answer anything it asked
—and do whatever it said."
 
The Rel drifted over and lifted itself up so it could
examine her head with whatever it used for sensory
equipment. As it drifted just a few centimeters from
her up to her head, she felt a strange tingling. Ob-
viously it did not float—something supported it.
 
The Diviner and The Rel seemed satisfied and
floated back down. "No sign of a wound of any kind,"
the creature said. "Amazing. One of the flowers got
curious, and since you were the only member of the
vegetable kingdom around, it picked you. Stay still and
let it happen again. Assure them we'll do no harm and
get through as quickly as possible. Tell them we're fol-
lowing the coast and will take care."
 
"I don't think I can tell them anything they don't
ask," Vardia responded weakly. "Oh, oh, here it
comes again!"
 
The creature did not have to probe the second time;
 
251
 
it went straight to the proper nerve endings. "READ-
OUT!" came the command, and suddenly she felt her-
self being drained, as if that which was her very
essence was being sucked up into a bottle thorough a
straw. The process took several minutes.
 
"Look!" Skander cried. "My god! She's rooted! Un-
moving in bright daylight! What did that thing do to
her?"
 
The insect moved back into the mass of flowers.
 
"We can't do anything but wait," The Rel cautioned.
"We don't know the rules here. At least those insects
seem to be dominant only on the plants. Take it easy
and let things run their course."
 
Ham and The Rel both moved toward her, where she
stood rooted and motionless. Ham pressed against her
skin, and got no response, nor any from the blank eyes.
 
"Are we going to have to camp here?" Hain asked
at last in a disgusted tone. "Why not just leave her?"
 
"Patience, Hain," The Rel warned. "We can't afford
to proceed until this drama plays itself out, even if it
takes hours. We have only a little more than two hun-
dred kilometers in this hex but we want to survive it"
 
They waited, and it took hours.
 
Vardia felt suspended in limbo, unable to see, hear,
feel, or do anything else. Yet it wasn't like being
asleep—she knew that she existed, just not where.
 
Suddenly she felt that sucking feeling again, and sud-
denly she was aware of someone else. She couldn't un-
derstand how she knew, but something else was there,
all right. Suddenly that force of thought she had felt
when the insect had first penetrated her head was all
around her.
 
"I MELD WHAT IS YOURS TO ME AND WHAT IS ME TO
 
YOU," the voice that was pure thought said, and it was
so.
 
There was an explosion in her mind, and she clung
desperately to control, to her own personality, even as
she felt it being eroded away, mixed into a much larger
and more powerful, yet alien, set of thoughts, memo-
ries, pictures, ideas.
 
Why do you resist? asked a voice that might have
been her own thoughts or someone else's. Submit. This
 
252
 
is what you have always wanted. Perfect union in uni-
formity. Submit.
 
The logic was unassailable. She submitted.
 
"It's coming back!" Skander yelled, and the other
two followed the path of the insect to Vardia's head
and watched it bury its sharp proboscis as before. This
time it stayed an abnormally long time—perhaps three
or four times longer than it had the last trip. Finally it
finished and withdrew, buzzing off back to its home
flower. They watched as her body came back to life,
the eyes moving, looking about. She uprooted, and
moved her tentacles around, shook her legs.
 
"Chon! Are you all right?" Skander called out, con-
cerned.
 
"We are fine, Dr. Skander," replied Vardia in a
voice that was hers yet strangely different. "We may
proceed now, without any problems."
 
The Diviner's little flashing lights became extremely
agitated. The Rel said, "The Diviner says that you are
not the one of our party. Who or what are you? The
equation has been altered."
 
"We are Chon. We are everything that ever was
Chon. The one you call Chon has been melded. It is
no longer one but all. Soon, as even now it happens,
all will be Chon and Chon will be all."
 
"You're that damned flower!" Hain said accusingly.
"You swapped minds with the Czillian somehow!"
 
"No swap, as you call it, was involved," it told
them. "And we are not that damned flower as you
said, but all the flowers. The Recorders transfer and
transmit as you surmised, but the process may be and
usually is total at first sprout, or how else should we
get our information, our intellect? A new bloom is a
blank, an empty slate. We merge."
 
"And you merged with the Czillian?" The Rel said
more than asked. "You have all of its memories, plus
all that was you?"
 
"That is correct," the creature affirmed. "And,
since we have all of the Czillian experience within us,
we are aware of your mission, its reason, and goal,
and we are now a part of it. You have no choice, nor
do we, since we cannot meld with you."
253
 
Skander shivered. Well, Vardia got her wish at last,
the mermaid thought. And we've got problems.
 
"Suppose we refuse?" Skander shot at the new crea-
ture. "One gulp from Ham here and you're gone."
 
The creature in Vardia's body stepped boldly m front
of Hain and looked at the big insect's huge eyes.
 
"Do you want to eat me, Hain?" it asked evenly.
 
Hain started to fiick her sticky tongue, but something
stopped her. Suddenly she didn't want to eat the
Czillian, not at all- She liked the Czillian. It was a
good creature, a creature that had the interest of the
baron at heart. It was the best friend she had, the
most loyal.
 
"I—I don't understand," Ham said in a perplexed
tone. "Why should I want to eat it? It's my friend, my
ally. I couldn't hurt it, never, or the pretty flowers and
insects, either."
 
"It's got some kind of mental power!" Skander
screamed, and tried to free herself from the saddle in
panic. Suddenly Hain spread out, lowering her shell to
the ground, legs extended outward.
 
Skander was free of the harness and looked around
for a place to leap. Her darting eyes met the lime
disks of the Czillian, and suddenly all panic fled. She
couldn't remember why she was afraid m the first
place, not of the Czillian, anyway.
 
The thing came right up to the mermaid, so close
they could touch. A Czillian tentacle stroked the
Umiau's hair, and the mermaid smiled and relaxed,
content.
 
"I love you," Skander said m a sexy voice. "I'll do
anything for you."
 
"Of course you will," the SIelcronian replied gently.
"We'll go to the Well together, won't we, my love?
And you'll show me everything?"
 
The Umiau nodded in ecstasy.
 
The SIelcronian turned to The Diviner and The Rel,
who stood there a few meters away, viewing the scene
dispassionately.
 
"What are you going to do with me?" The Rel
asked in the closest it could come to sarcasm. "Look
me in the eye?"
 
For the first time the creature was hesitant, looking
 
254
 
uncertain, puzzled, less confident. It reached out its
mind to the Northern creature, and found nothing it
could contact, understand, relate to. It was as if the
creature was no longer there.
 
"If we cannot control you, you are at least irrele-
vant to us," Vardia's voice said evenly. The Diviner
and The Rel didn't move.
 
"I said the equation had changed," The Rel said
slowly. "I didn't say which way. The Diviner is al-
ways right, it seems. Until this moment I had no idea
whatsoever how we were to control Skander once in
the Well, or why the addition of the Czillian tipped
things more in our favor. It's clear now."
 
The Rel paused for a moment. "We have been in
charge of this project from its inception," The Rel
continued. "We have used a judicious set of circum-
stances and The Diviner's amazing skills to make our
own situation. We lead. Now we lead without worry."
 
"What power do you possess to command us?*'
scoffed the new Vardia. "We are at this moment sum-
moning the largest of our Recorders to crush you.
You are no longer necessary.*'
 
"I have no power at all, save speech and move-
ment," The Rel admitted as eight huge insects
hummed thunderously into view over the flowery fields.
"The Diviner has the power," The Rel added, and as
it spoke the flashing lights of The Diviner grew in in-
tensity and frequency. Suddenly visible bolts shot out
from the blinking creature and struck the eight Re-
corders at the speed of light.
 
The Recorders' outlines flashed an electrical white.
There was a tiny roll of thunder as each of the crea-
tures vanished, caused by air rushing in to take the
place where it had been. It sounded like eight distant
cannon shots.
 
"Hmmm . . ." The Rel said in its flat tone, "that's
a new one. The Diviner is full of surprises. Shall we
go? I should not like to spend more than two nights
in your charming land."
 
The SIelcronian mind in Vardia's body was stag-
gered and crushed. Something seemed to deflate in-
side, and the confident glow in its eyes was replaced
by respect mixed with something new to its experi-
 
255
 
ence—fear. "We—we didn't know you had such
powers," it almost gasped.
 
"A trifle, really," The Rel replied. "Well? Do you
want to join us or not? I hope you will—it's so much
simpler than what The Diviner would have to do to
get Skander's cooperation, and I'm certain that, in
the interest of your people, both of them, you'd
rather we made it before anyone else."
 
The stunned creature turned to Skander and said,
shakily, "Get back into your harness. We must go."
 
"Yes, my darling,'* Skander replied happily, and
did so.
 
"Your lead, Northerner," the SIelcronian said.
 
"As always," The Rel replied confidently. "Do you
know anything about Ekh'l?"
 
The Beach at Ivrom—Morning
 
"LOOKS PEACEFUL ENOUGH," VARDIA COMMENTED AS
 
they unloaded the raft onto the beach. "Very pleas-
ant, really."
 
"Reminds me of the Dillian valley area, upvalley
in particular," Wuju added, as they strapped the
bulky saddlebags around her.
 
"Something in here doesn't like people, though,"
Brazil reminded them. "This hex has no embassy at
Zone, and expeditions into it have always vanished,
as Bat did last night. We have only this one facet
of the hex to travel, but that's still over one hundred
kilometers, so I think we'll stick to the beach as
long as possible."
 
"What about Bat, then?" Wuju asked in a con-
cerned voice. "We can't just abandon him, after all
he's done for us."
 
"I don't like doing so any more than you do,
Wuju," Brazil replied seriously, "but, this is a big hex.
 
256
 
He can fly at a good speed and over obstacles, and
by now he could be just about anywhere. We might
as well be looking for a particular blade of grass.
As much as I'd like to help him, I just can't take the
risk that wbatever*s here will get one or all of us."
 
"Well, I don't like it," Wuju said adamantly, but
there was no assailing his logic on any grounds ex-
cept emotion. "We survived the Murnies," she re-
minded him. "How much worse can it be here?"
 
"Much," he replied gravely. "I survived Murithel
by luck, as did you—and we knew who the enemy
was and the problems. This is even more chancy,
because we don't know what's here. We've got to
leave Bat to the Fates. It's Bat or all of us." And that
settled that.
 
With Bat gone, Brazil regretted more and more
his lack of arms or other appendages that could hold
and use things. Although this was a nontechnological
hex, several good and somewhat nasty items would
be usable, and these were given to Wuju and Vardia.
The centaur was given two automatic, gunpowder-
powered projectile pistols, worn strapped to gunbelts
worn in an X—and carrying extra ammunition clips—
across her chest. Vardia had two pistols of a differ-
ent kind. They squirted gas kept under pressure in
attached plastic bottles- When the trigger was pulled
hard, a flint would ignite the gas, which could be
liberated at a controlled rate. The flamethrower was
good for about ten meters, and needn't be very di-
rectional to be effective. Wuju, of course, had never
fired a pistol and had no luck with the little practice
gotten in in the ocean. But these were still effective
short-range weapons, psychologically if nothing else,
and they made a lot of noise going off.
 
"We stick to the beach," Brazil reminded them.
"If we're lucky, we'll be able to get the whole way
without going into the forest."
 
As satisfied as they could be, they thanked the
Umiau who had pulled them this far, and the mer-
maids left.
 
Brazil said "Lets go," in a voice more filled with
tension than excitement.
 
The sand and huge quantities of driftwood slowed
 
257
 
their progress, and they found on several occasions
that they had to walk into the shallows to get around
some points, but the journey went well.         ,
 
They made good time. By sundown, Brazil esti-
mated that they had traveled more than halfway.
Since his vision was extremely poor after nightfall,
and Vardia was better off rooting, they stopped for
what they all hoped would be their only night in
the mysterious hex.
 
The sandy soil was not particularly good for the
Czillian, but she managed to find a hard, steady
place near the beginning of the woods and was set
for the night. He and Wuju relaxed nearby as the
surf crashed on hidden rocks just beyond the shore-
line, then gently ran up with a sizzling sound onto
the beach.
 
Something was bothering Wuju and she brought it
up. "Nathan," she said, "if this is a nontechnological
hex like Murithel, how come your voice works? It's
still basically a radio."
 
The idea had never occurred to Brazil and he
thought about it. "I can't say," he replied carefully,
"but on all the maps and the like this is nontech,
and the general logic of the hex layout dictates the
same thing. It can't work, though, unless it's a by-
product of the translator. They work everywhere."
 
"The translator!" she said sharply. "Feels like a
lump in the back of my throat. Where do they
come from, Nathan?"
 
"From the North," he told her. "From a totally
crystalline hex that grows them as we grow flowers.
It's slow work, and they don't let many of them go."
 
"But how does it work?" she persisted. "It's not a
machine."
 
"No, not a machine in the sense we think of ma-
chines," he replied. "I don't think anyone knows
how it works. It was, if I remember right, created
in the same way as most great inventions—sheer
accident. The best guess is that its vibrations cause
some kind of link with the Markovian brain of the
planet."
 
She shivered a little, and Brazil rubbed close to
258
 
her, thinking the dropping temperature was the cause.
"Want a coat?" he asked.
 
She shook her head negatively. "No, I was thinking
of the brain. It makes me nervous—all that power,
the power to create and maintain all those rules
for all those hexes, work the translators, even change
people into other things. I don't think I like the idea
at all. Think of a race that could build such a thing!
It scares me."
 
Brazil rubbed her humanoid back with his head,
slowly. "Don't worry about such things," he said
softly. "That race is long gone."
 
She was not distracted. "I wonder," she said in a
distant tone. "What if they were still around, still
fooling around. That would mean we were all toys,
playthings—all of us. With the power and knowledge
to create all this, they would be so far above us that
we wouldn't even know." She shook him off and
turned to face him. "Nathan, what if we were just
playthings for them?"
 
He stared hard into her eyes. "We're not," he re-
sponded softly. "The Markovians are gone—long dead
and gone. Their ghosts are brains like the one
that runs this planet—just gigantic computers, pro-
grammed and automatically self-maintained. The rest
of their ghosts are the people, Wuju. Haven't you
understood that from what you've learned by this
trip?"
 
"I don't understand," she said blankly. "What do
you mean the people are the Markovian ghosts?"
 
" 'Until midnight at the Well of Souls,' " he recited.
"It's the one phrase common to all fifteen hundred
and sixty hexes. Think of it! Lots of us are related,
of course, and many people here are variations of
animals in other hexes. I figured out the solution to
that part of the puzzle when I came out of the Gate
the same as I went in—and found myself in a hex
of what we always thought of as 'human.' Next door
were one-and-a-half-meter-tall beavers—intelligent,
civilized, highly intellectual, but they were basically
the same as the little animal beavers of Dillia. Most
of the wildlife we've seen in the hexes that come close
to the type of worlds our old race could settle are
 
259
 
related to the ones we had back there. There's a re-
lationship for all of them.
 
"These hexes represent home worlds, Wujy," he
said seriously. "Here is where the Markovians built the
test places. Here is where their technicians set up
biospheres to prove the mathematics for the worlds
they would create. Here's where our own galaxy, at
least, perhaps all of them, was engineered ecologi-
cally."
 
She shivered again. "You mean that all these peo-
ple were created to see if the systems worked? Like
an art class for gods? And if it was good enough, the
Markovians created a planet somewhere that would be
all like this?"
 
"Partly right," he replied. "But the creatures weren't
created out of the energy of the universe like the
physical stuff. If so, they'd be the gods you said. But
that's not why the world was built. They were a
tired race," he continued. "What do you do after you
can do it all, know it all, control it all? For a while
you delight in being a race of gods—but, eventually,
you tire of it. Boredom sets in, and you must be
stagnant when you have no place else to go, nothing
else to discover, to reach." He paused, as the breaking
waves seemed to punctuate his story, then continued
in the same dreamy tone.
 
"So their artisans were assigned to create the hexes
of the Well World. The ones that proved out were
accepted, and the full home world was then made
and properly placed mathematically in the universe.
That's the reason for so much overlap—some artisans
were more gifted than others, and they stole and
modified each other's ideas. When they proved out,
the Markovians came to the Well through the gates,
not forced but voluntarily, and they passed through
the mechanism for assignment. They built up the
hexes, struggled, and did what none else could do as
Markovians—they died in the struggle."
 
"Then they settled the home worlds?" she gasped.
"They gave up being gods to suffer pain and to strug-
gle and die?"
 
"No," he replied. "They settled on the Well World-
When a project was filled, it was broken down and
 
260
 
a new one started. What we have here today is only
the youngest worlds, the youngest races, the last.
The Markovians all strugg!ed here, and died here. Not
only all matter, but time itself, is a mathematical
construct they had learned and overcome. After many
generations, the hexes became self-sufficient communi-
ties if they worked. The Markovians, changed, bore
children that bred true. It was these descendants,
the Markovian seed, who went to the Well through
the local gates to what we now call Zone, that huge
Well we entered by. On the sixth day of the sixth
month of each six years they went, and the Well took
them, in a single sweep like a clock around the
Well, one sweep in the middle of the night. It
took them, classified them, and transported them to
the home world of their races."
 
"But surely," she objected, "the worlds had their
own creatures. There is evolution—"
 
"They didn't go physically," he told her evenly.
"Only their substance, what the Mumies called their
'essence,' went. At the proper time they entered the
vessels which had evolved to the point of the Well.
That's why the translator calls it the Well of Souls,
Wuju."
 
"Then we are the Markovian children," she
breathed. "They were the seeds of our race."
 
"That's it," he acknowledged. "They did it as a
project, an experiment. They did it not to kill their
race, but to save it and to save themselves. There's
a legend that Old Earth was created in seven days.
It's entirely possible—the Markovians controlled time
as they controlled all things, and while they had to
develop the worlds mathematically, to form them
and create them according to natural law, they could
do millions of years work rather quickly, to slide
in their project people at the exact moment when
the dominant life form—or life forms—would logi-
cally develop."
 
"And these people here—are they all Entries and
the descendants of Entries?" she asked.
 
"There weren't supposed to be any," he told her.
"Entries, that is. But the Markovians inhabited their
own old universe, you know. Their old planets were
 
261
 
still around. Some of the brains survived—a good
number if we blundered into even one of them in
our little bit of space. They were quasi-organic, built
to be integral with the planet they served, and they
proved almost impossible to turn off. The last Marko-
vian couldn't shut his down and still get through, so
they were left open, to be closed when time did to the
old worlds what it does to all things left unmain-
tained."
 
"Then there are millions of those gates still open,"
she speculated. "People could fall in all the time."
 
"No," he replied. "The gates only open when some-
one wants them to be open. It doesn't have to be a
mystical key—although the boy Varoett, back on
Dalgonia, caused it to open by locking into his mind
the mathematical relationships he observed. It doesn't
happen randomly, though. Vamett was the exception.
The key is mathematical, but anyone near one
doesn't have to know the key to operate the Gate."
 
"What's the key, then?" she asked, puzzled.
 
"Spacers—thousands of them have been through
the Well, not just from our sector but from all over.
I've met a number. It's a lonely, antisocial job, Wuju,
and because of the Fitzgerald Contraction and rejuve,
it is a long one. All those people who came here
through gates got signals on the emergency band
that lured them to the gates. Whether they admit it
or not, they all had one thing in common."
 
"What was that?" she asked, fascinated.
 
"They all wanted to or had decided to die," he
replied evenly, no trace of emotion in his voice. "Or,
they'd rather die than live on. They were looking
for fantasy worlds to cure their problems.
 
"Just like the Markovians."
 
She was silent for a while. Suddenly she asked,
"How do you know all this, Nathan? The people here
don't, those children of the Markovians who didn't
leave."
 
"You got that, did you?" he responded admiringly.
"Yes, when the last were changed, they sealed the
Well. Those who didn't want to go, lost their nerve,
or were happy here—they stayed, with only a mem-
ory, perhaps even regret once it was done, for they
 
262
 
kept the phrase *until midnight at the Well of Souls'
alive as the symbol of forever. How do I know all
this? I'm brilliant, that's why. And so is Skander—
that's why we're going where we have to go."
 
She accepted his explanation, not noticing the
evasion. "But if everything is sealed, why bother?"
she asked. "Skander can't do any harm, can he?"
 
"Deep beneath our feet is a great machine," he told
her seriously. "The Markovian brain is so ptwerful
that it created and maintained the home worlds as it
maintains this one; the brain keeps the equations
that sustain all unnaturally created matter, that can
undo the fabric of time, space, and matter as it
created them. Skander wants to change those equa-
tions. Not just our lives but our very existence is at
stake."
 
She looked at him for a long time, then turned
idly, staring into the forest, lost in her thoughts.
 
Suddenly she said, "Look, Nathan! The flying lights
are out! And I can hear something!"
 
He turned and looked into the forest. They were
insects of some kind, he thought, glowing as they
flitted through the forest. The light, he saw, was con-
stant—the blinking that had been apparent from shore
was an illusion, caused by their passage behind the
dense foliage. The darkness was too complete for his
deer vision to get any detail, but the floating, gliding
lights were clear. There was something very familiar
about them, he thought. I've never been here, yet
I've seen this before.
 
"Listen!" Wuju whispered. "Hear it?"
 
Brazil's fine-trained ears had already picked it up
even over the crashing of the waves.
 
It was music, haunting, strange, even eerie music,
music that seemed to penetrate their very bodies.
 
"It's so strange," Wuju said softly. "So beautiful."
 
The Faerie! he thought suddenly. Of course there'd
be Faerie! He cursed himself for not thinking of it
before. This close to the equator there was bound to
be magic, he realized. Some of those authoritarian
sons of bitches had snuck onto Old Earth and it had
been hell getting rid of them. He looked anxiously
-261
 
at WuJu. She had a dreamy look on her face, and her
upper torso was swaying in time to the music.   <
"Wuju!" he said sharply. "Come on! Snap out of
 
it!"
 
She pushed him away and started forward, toward
the woods. He rushed up and tried to block her way,
but she wouldn't be deterred. He opened his mouth
and tried to grab her arm, but it wouldn't hold.
 
"Wuju!" he called after her. "Don't go in! Don't
desert us!"
 
Suddenly a dark shape swooped down from the sky
at him. He ducked by lowering his forelegs and
started running. It swooped again, and he cursed the
poor vision that kept him from taking full advantage
of his reflexes.
 
He heard maniacal laughter above him, and the
mad thing swooped again, brushing him this time.
 
They're forcing me into the forest! he realized. Ev-
ery time he moved in any direction but in the crea-
ture's, laughing and gibbering, it would swoop in and
block his way.
 
"Cousin Bat! Don't do it! It's Nathan Brazil!" he
called to the dark shape, knowing the effort was fu-
tile, that the bat was under a Faerie spell.
 
Brazil was in the woods now, where Bat couldn't
follow by flying. He saw the creature standing there,
outlined in the starlight glare on the ocean, looking
up and down the beach.
 
He looked around, and barely made out a large
form heading away about eight meters farther in.
 
It's useless, he realized- The music's got her and
Bat's got me.
 
I've faced them down before, he thought, and won.
Maybe again, because they don't know that. No choice
here, though. If I don't follow they'll send some
other creatures after me.
 
He could barely see despite the light from the flit-
ting bugs that grew thicker and thicker as he
entered the forest, but he smelled Wuju's scent and
followed it.
 
After what must have been twenty minutes, he
emerged into a clearing in the woods.
A toadstool ring, he thought grimly.
 
264
 
Under a particularly huge tree was a wide ring
composed of huge brown toadstools. The music came
from here, made by the thousands of insects that
swarmed in the center of the ring. Wuju was in the
ring, too, almost covered by the creatures, so thick
now that they lit up the place like a lamp. She was
dancing and swaying to the eerie music of their
wings, as were a number of other creatures, of vary-
ing shapes and sizes.
 
The music grew in intensity and volume as more
and more of the creatures of light came to the ring.
Sitting in the hollow of the great tree, still and ob-
serving, was a glowing insect much, much larger than
the others—perhaps close to a meter. It had the oval
shape of a beetle, and a light, ribbed underside that
was highly flexible. Two long, jointed hind legs were
held in front of it in a bent but relaxed position, and
two forelegs, longer and with sharp-toothed ridges,
that seemed to be leading the insect orchestra, waving
in perfect time. It sat like this, underside exposed,
leaning against the tree, a face on a telescoping neck
down on the chest, watching things. The face was
strange, not insect-like at all, nor was the position of
the sitter nor the fact that it had only four limbs. It
appeared to have a tiny, scruffy moustache, topped by a
perfectly round and black nose, and two almost hu-
man eyes that reflected the glare of the proceedings
with an evil and ancient leer.
 
There was a sudden darkness above, and Cousin
Bat landed in the middle of the circle, bowed to the
large onlooker, and joined the dance. The strange
eyes of the lead bug darted around the circle, then
over to Brazil, whose form was just barely visible still
hidden by the forest.
 
Suddenly the leader's forelegs went into a V shape,
and the music stopped, everyone staying perfectly
still; even the bugs seemed frozen in midflight.
 
The lead bug, who Brazil knew was the Swarm
Queen, spoke to Cousin Bat, and Brazil found it
interesting that the translator carried it as the voice
of an incredibly tiny and ancient old woman.
 
265
 
So are the legends of witches born, he thought
 
sardonically.
 
"You have brought only two! I charged you to
bring all three!" the Swarm Queen accused Bat.
 
Bat bowed, his voice flat and mechanical. "The
other is a plant. Highness. It is rooted for the night,
asleep beyond any recall except the morning sun."
 
"That is unacceptable," the Swarm Queen snapped.
"We have dealt with this problem before. Wait!" She
turned to Brazil, and he felt the piercing eyes fall
on him.
 
"Deer! Come into the circle!" the Swarm Queen
ordered, and Brazil felt himself moving slowly, halt-
ingly, toward the circle despite no order on his part.
He felt the energy grow to almost overpowering pro-
portions as he crossed the toadstool ring.
 
"The ring binds you all! Bound be ye till my re-
turn, or till morning, till midnight at the Well of
Souls," she intoned, then flipped over on her stom-
ach, supported by all four legs. The back had long,
integral wings and seemed to glow with the same stuff
as her underside, although Brazil knew that was
mostly reflection.
 
"You will show me," she said to the bat, and Bat
immediately took off, the Swarm Queen following
with a tinkling sound that was like a single note in the
eerie Faerie symphony.
 
Brazil tried to recross the circle of toadstools, found
he couldn't. He idly kicked at one, but it proved to
be more rock than toadstool, and his hoof met with
a clacking sound but nothing else.
 
He looked at the inhabitants of the circle. All, like
Wuju, were frozen, like statues, although he could
see that they were breathing. There was a monoto-
nous, yet pleasant, hum from the Faerie, marking
place.
 
Many of the other creatures were vaguely hu-
manoid; all were small, a few monkey-like, but all
were distorted, hellish versions of their former selves.
 
Brazil remembered the encounters on Old Earth.
Since the Faerie created their own press to suit them-
selves, they had a pretty good reputation in folklore
 
266
 
and superstition. He had never discovered how they
had managed to get in. Oh, some representatives of
many other races had—some as volunteers to teach
the people, some because their home worlds had
closed before they personally had reached maturity
and Old Earth had the room and a compatible
biosphere.
 
He wondered idly if those primitive peasants who
told such wonderful stories of the Faerie would still
like them if they knew that these folk doubled as the
basis for witches and many evil spirits. Once created
by some Markovian mind, they could not be wiped
out; they had to run their course and survive or fail
as the rules said.
 
They had done too well. They worked their magic
and dominated their own hex, using the collective
mental powers of the swarm directed and guided by
the Swarm Queen who was mother to them all, and
tried to spread out. They managed to interfere in
thirteen other Southern hexes where the mathematics
did not forbid their enormous powers, before the
Markovians finally moved to limit them to their own
hex.
 
Here they were in their own element, and supreme.
How many thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands,
of swarms existed in this hex? Brazil wondered. I beat
them outside of their own element once, but can I do
it here?
 
About an hour passed, with Brazil, the only mov-
ing thing in the ring, getting more and more nervous;
 
yet he held onto a streak of optimism deep inside. If
they couldn't succeed with Vardia before daybreak,
these nocturnal creatures would go back to their tree
burrows. Swarm Queen included. How long to dawn?
he wondered.
 
A sudden thought came to him, and he started
carefully to draw a pentagram around the circle. He
tried to be casual, so it didn't look as if he were doing
much of anything; but his hoof managed to make the
mark in the grassy meadow. This was a long shot, he
knew, but it might stall the Swarm Queen until morn-
ing.
 
He was about halfway around when brush crackled
 
267
 
and he saw Vardia walk onto the knoll and into the
circle, the Swarm Queen resting on her sun leaf.
There was a shadow above, and Bat landed back in
the circle. As soon as Vardia was across the toadstool
ring, the Swarm Queen flew back over to her seat
under the tree and resumed that casual and unnatural
sitting position.
 
Too late, he thought, and stopped the pentagram.
I'll have to accept the spell and break it-           ''
 
The Swarm Queen looked thoughtful for a few
minutes. Then, quickly, she looked at the circle. "Be
free within the circle," she said almost casually in that
tiny, old-woman's voice.
 
Bat staggered a few seconds, then caught himself
and looked around, surprised. He saw the others and
looked amazed,
 
"Brazil! Vardia! Wuju! How'd you get here?" he
asked in a puzzled tone.
 
Wuju looked around strangely at the assemblage.
She saw Brazil and went over to him. "Nathan!" she
said fearfully- "What's happening?"
 
Vardia looked around and barely whispered, "What
a strange dream."
 
Bat whirled, spied the Swarm Queen, and started
to walk toward her. He got to the circle, and suddenly
couldn't make his feet move. He napped his wings
for a takeoff, but didn't go off the ground.
 
"What the hell is this?" Bat asked strangely. "Last
I remember I was flying near the shoreline when I
heard this strange music—and now I wake up here!"
 
"These creatures seem to—" Wuju began, but the
Swarm Queen suddenly snapped, "Stand mute!" and
the Dillian's voice died in midsentence.
 
The Swarm Queen glanced up at the barely visible
sky.
 
"There's a storm coming," she said more to herself
than to anyone. "It will not be over until after dawn.
Therefore, the simplest thing should be the best." She
looked up at the buzzing swarm, then flipped over
and walked into the circle. Brazil could feel the power
building up. The Swarm Queen flipped afpin lightly,
and sat on the side of a toadstool, inside the ring,
forelegs behind her to steady her.
 
268
 
"What shall we do with the interlopers?" she asked
the swarm.
 
"Make them fit," came a collective answer from
the swarm.
 
"Make them fit," the Swarm Queen echoed. "And
how can we make them fit when we have so little
time?"
 
"Transform them, transform them," suggested the
swarm,
 
The Swarm Queen's gaze fell on Wuju, who al-
most withered at the look and clung to Brazil.
 
"You wish him?" the Swarm Queen asked acidly.
"You shall have him!" Her eyes burned like coa!, rind
the humming of the swarm intensified to an almost
unbearable intensity.
 
Where Wuju had been, there was suddenly a doe,
slightly smaller and sleeker than Brazil's stag. The
doe looked around at the lights, confused, and then
leaned down and munched a little grass, oblivious to
the proceedings.
 
The Swarm Queen turned to Vardia. "Plant, you
want so much to act the animal, so shall you be!"
 
The buzzing increased again, and where Vardia
had stood was another doe, identical to the one that
had been Wuju.
 
"It's easier to use something local, that you know,"
the Swarm Queen remarked to no one in particular.
"I have to hurry." She turned her gaze on Cousin
Bat.
 
"You like them, be like them!" she ordered, and
Bat, too, turned into a doe identical in every way to
the other two.
 
Now she turned to Brazil. "Stags should not think,"
she said. "It is unnatural. Here is your harem, stag.
Dominate them, rule them, but as what you are, not
what you pretend to be!"
 
The swarm increased again, and Brazil's mind went
blank, dull, unthinking.
 
"And finally," pronounced the Swarm Queen, "so
that so complex a spell, done so hurriedly, does not
break, I bequeath to the four the fear and terror of
all but their own kind, and of ail things which disturb
the beasts. They are free of the circle."
 
269
 
Brazil suddenly bolted into the dark, the other
three following quickly behind.
 
There was the rumble of thunder, the flash of light-
ning.
 
"The circle is broken," intoned the Swarm Queen.
 
"We go to shelter," responded the swarm as it dis-
persed. The other creatures came alive, some gib-
bering insanely, others howling, as the lightning and
thunder increased.                              ''
 
The Swarm Queen flipped and walked quickly over
to her tree and into the base.
 
"Sloppy job," she muttered to herself. "I bate to
rush."
 
The rain started to fall.
 
Even though it was a sloppy spell, it took Brazil
almost a full day and night to break it. The flaw was
a simple one: at no time during the encounter had
the Swarm Queen heard him talk, and it just hadn't
occurred to her that he could. The input-output de-
vice on the translator continued to operate, although
it did little good for the rest of the night in the storm
and throughout the next day, when the nocturnal
Faerie were asleep.
 
When the creatures emerged at nightfall, though,
they talked. The conversations were myriad, complex,
and involved actions and concepts alien to his expe-
rience, but they did form words and sentences which
the transceiver mounted in his antlers delivered to his
brain. These words, although mostly nonsense, gave a
continual input that banged at his mind, stimulated
it, gave it something to grab onto. Slowly self-
awareness returned, concepts formed, forced their way
through the spell's barrier.
 
That spark inside of him that had always ensured
his preservation would not let him lapse or quit. Con-
cepts battered at his brain, forcing word pictures in
his mind, building constructs which burst into his con-
sciousness.
 
It was like a war against an invisible barrier, some-
thing inside him attacking, always beating at the
blocks that had been placed.
 
Suddenly, he was through. Memories crowded
 
270
 
back, and with them came reason. He felt exhausted
—he was totally worn out from the struggle, yet he
knew that precious time had been wasted, and more
roadblocks raised.
 
He looked around in the dark. It was very hard to
see anything except the flitting shapes of the Faerie,
but he knew that he must be deep inside the hex.
He looked around. Asleep nearby were the three
transformed members of the expedition, absolutely
identical even to scent. The Swarm Queen had been
in a hurry and had used but a single model.
 
Realizing there was little that could be done until
shortly before dawn, lest he give himself away to some
curious Faerie by acting undeer-like, he relaxed and
waited for the sky to lighten.
 
With daylight came safety, and the freedom to
move. He spent over an hour trying to make some
kind of contact with the three does, but their stares
were blank, their actions totally natural. The spell
could not be broken from without as far as they were
concerned.
 
For a while he considered abandoning them; they
would follow him to the border, of course, but would
be unable to cross it. The stakes certainly warranted
it; logic dictated it.
 
But he knew he couldn't do it. Not without a good
try.
 
He started off, wishing he could trace the wild,
crazy route they had used to get where they were- He
decided that the best thing to do would be to head
due east; no matter what, that would bring him to the
ocean sooner or later, and from there he could get
his bearings.
 
He moved with the swiftness that only a deer could
have in the forest, and the three followed him loyally,
almost slavishly- Pan of the spell, he guessed. The
Swarm Queen had bound Wuju to him, and then
duplicated her transformation precisely on the other
two, which simplified things a great deal.
 
He made the ocean before nightfall, but had no
way of telling if he were north or south of the Faerie
 
271
 
colony he sought. He decided that he had ac-
complished enough for one day, and that the next day
would tell the story.
 
He awoke later than intended, the sunlight already
glaring down on the ocean, causing diamond-like
facets to cover the surface,
 
Which way? he wondered. Am I north or south of
our last position?
 
He finally decided to go north; at worst, this ^ould
take him to the Ghlmon border and where he had to
go. If he didn't run into the place he was looking for,
he would have to abandon them for a while and re-
turn later to straighten the matter out. About an
hour up the beach he came upon the packs, still sit-
ting in the sand where they had camped the first
night. They were wet and sand-blown, but still intact.
 
As the does romped in the surf or sniffed at the
strange-smelling things in the sand, he worked fever-
ishly, cursing his lack of hands. It took ten minutes to
open a pack, and several more to work one of the
flame guns that Vardia had carried out of the pack.
The next task was somehow to pick it up.
 
He finally managed a grip of sorts with his mouth. It
was awkward, and he dropped it many times as he
went back into the forest, but each time he patiently
turned it just right and handled it again.
 
It seemed like hours getting the flame pistol through
that forest, but at last he came upon the clearing of
ominously familiar character: the toadstool ring and
the great tree. It was too well etched in his memory to
be simply a similar place of some other swarm, and his
deer's nose confirmed the proper scents.
 
Carefully he searched for a large, uneven rock, and
with great difficulty rolled it to within a meter of the
hollow area that was the Swarm Queen's throne, at the
base of the big tree. He managed to prop the flame
gun sideways against the rock, so that it was mostly
upright and pointed at the hollow.
 
Satisfied, he went and got sticks from the forest and
built a crude pentagram around the pistol and rock.
Next he positioned himself so his forelegs were on ei-
ther side of the pistol, the left one serving as a back-
 
272
 
stop for the grip area which also contained the gas, the
right one just to the right of the trigger.
 
He nodded to himself in satisfaction, and briefly
checked the sun and the location of his three does, all
of whom were idly grazing nearby. About two hours
to sundown, he thought. Just about right.
 
He brought his right foreleg to bear on the trigger.
The pistol jiggled but remained in the right general di-
rection. There was a hiss of escaping gas, but no
flame. He released it, realizing that the flint igniter
mechanism would require a hard and quick Jerk on the
trigger.
 
He knew that, if he did that, he might lose control
of the gun, even have it suddenly jump up and bum
him. He sighed and made up his mind. Tensely, he
planted his left foreleg against the gun butt and his
right just touching the large, unguarded trigger made
for Czillian tentacles.
 
Suddenly, in one sudden motion, he pulled against
the trigger hard with his right leg. It jumped a little,
but stayed firm.
 
And remained unignited.
 
Steeling himself, he tried again. Once more it failed
to ignite, because he had flinched and not pushed the
trigger straight back. He wondered idly if he could
succeed, given his physical limitations. If not, he would
just have to abandon his companions.
 
He tried one more time, using extra force. The
pistol ignited, but the thing almost jerked out of his
precarious hold. Carefully, without releasing the trig-
ger, he gingerly managed to point the thing back in the
general direction of the tree. Just to the left of the tree
the area was smoldering, some of it still afire.
 
Now the jet of flame focused on the tree hollow, and
he could see the bark smolder and catch, the fire al-
most enveloping the tree like something liquid and liv-
ing. Smoke billowed up, the scent disturbing to his
nostrils. Birds screeched, and forest animals ran for
cover in panic.
 
Suddenly he heard what he had been waiting for:
 
a tiny, weak voice coughing.
 
The Swarm Queen had more than one exit avail-
 
273
 
able, and she crawled dizzily out of the top of the tree
trunk, near the point where the four main branches
went off. She was blind, sick, and groping feebly, start-
ing to make her way up the side of one of the
branches.
 
"Swarm Queen!" he called, not letting up on the
flame. "Shall I burn you or will you meet my condi-
tions under pain of reversal?"
 
"Who are you that dares do this to me?" she'man-
aged, coughing and groaning in fear and misery as
she maintained her dignity.
 
"He who was wronged by you, and he who drove
your ancestors off distant planets!" he replied boldly,
but idly and somewhat fearfully wondering how much
more of a charge the pistol had. "Do you yield under
pain of reversal?"
 
The large bug hadn't made it up the branch, almost
overcome by the smoke and feeling the flames. Brazil
was suddenly afraid she would fall into the fire before
she yielded.
 
"I—I yield!" she called. "Turn off your cursed fire!"
 
"Say the whole thing!" he demanded.
 
"I yield under pain of reversal, dammitall!" she
screamed nervously.
 
At that moment the charge ran out of the gun and it
sputtered and died. Brazil let go, and looked at it
strangely. A few seconds longer, he thought, and I'd
have lost.
 
"Get me down before I burn!" screamed the Swarm
Queen, who was still very much in danger. The flames
continued to smolder in the tree and around the trunk,
although without the added fire they were slowly turn-
ing to glowing red against the charred and blackened
side.
 
"Jump straight ahead and fly to the ground," he told
her. "You know the distance."
 
She could have done so before, of course, but the
heat and fire always induced panic in these creatures.
 
She landed shakily and sat, trembling, for several
minutes. Finally she regained her composure and
peered up at him with those old and evil semihuman
 
274
 
eyes, squinting. She was not totally blind in the light,
but her vision was quite poor.
 
"You're the deer!" she gasped in amazement. "How
did you break the spell? How do you talk at all?"
 
"Your spells cannot hold me for long," he told her.
"That which inhabits this simple vessel is your supe-
rior. But it does bind my companions, and it is for their
sake that I charge you."
 
"You have three charges only!" she spat, looking at
the still smoking, blackened tree. "Consider them care-
fully, lest I kill you for what you have done to my
home and my honor!"
 
"Honor be damned," Brazil replied disgustedly. "If
you had any, there would have been no need to invoke
a reversal. Remember that well. Should you default
on the charges, it is I who will be Swarm Queen and
you who will be a deer!"
 
"State the charges, alien,'* she responded in a bitter
tone. "They will be honored."
 
Brazil thought carefully.
 
"One," he said. "My three companions and I shall
cross the border into Ghlmon, traversing the distance
from here to there without spell or any form of inter-
ference that would cause danger or delay."
 
The Swarm Queen's eyebrows rose, and she said,
"Done."
 
"Two: the spells shall be removed from my three
companions, and they shall regain all mental faculties,
all memory, and shall be restored to their original
forms."
 
"Done," the Swarm Queen agreed. "And the third?'*
 
"You shall cast a spell to be effective when we cross
the Ghlmon border that will erase all memories, ef-
fects, and signs of us four having been here, including
those from your own mind."
 
"A pleasure," she said. "So shall it be when dark-
ness falls."
 
"Until midnight at the Well of Souls," he responded.
 
And she was stuck. Should any of the conditions
cease to function or be unfulfilled, the original spell
would bounce back at her.
 
Nightfall came in about two hours. There were still
275
 
some wisps of smoke from the tree, but little else to
show the struggle. When the swarm emerged from its
thousands of holes in the surrounding trees, it found the
queen disturbed, but they sensed that a battle had
been fought and that she had lost. Since their power
could only be focused through her, they had to go
along.
 
The three does had scattered during the fire, but all
had timidly returned by dusk and were herde4 into the
toadstool circle without much difficulty.
 
The Swarm Queen's eyes burned with hatred, but
she followed orders. As the swarm gathered in the cir-
cle and hummed its strange music, she pronounced the
first charge, for their safe conduct, then turned to the
second.
 
"The three within the circle shall be restored in mind
and body to their original selves!" she pronounced, and
as she said it, it was so.
 
Brazil gasped, cursing himself for a fool in remem-
bering the literalness of charges.
 
In the circle stood Vardia, not as a Czillian, but as
she had looked those first days on his ship—human,
about twelve years old, thirty or so kilos, with shaven
head.
 
Next to her, looking even more confused, was not
the Dillian Wuju but Wu Julee, obviously a healthy
and unaddicted one, but about forty-five kilos, long
black hair, and decent-sized but saggy breasts.
 
And there was a stranger there. He was a boy, about
Vardia's apparent physical age, with short hair and pre-
pubescent genitals, about 150 centimeters tall, mus-
cled, and fairly well proportioned.
 
"Well, Master Varnett," Brazil said, bemused. "Out
of the woodwork early, I guess."
 
276
 
Ekh*l
 
THE DIVINER AND THE REL AND THE SLELCRONIAN
 
in Vardia's body surveyed the towering, snow-capped
mountains ahead of them.
 
The mountains, majestic and all-encompassing, ran
right to the sea. A small beach was visible, composed
of blackish sand. Out into the water they could see sea
stacks, the remnants of long-extinct volcanic activity.
The sky was a leaden gray, and the air was terribly
cold off the ocean.
 
"Clouds will be moving in soon," Hain remarked be-
hind them. "Rain or snow likely all along the beach.
We'd better get started."
 
"Can we make it without going into the mountains?"
the Slelcronian asked apprehensively. "What if we run
out of beach?"
 
"Friend Hain, here, can cling to the sheer walls if
necessary," The Rel replied confidently, "and she can
ferry us around that way. No, this looks like rough,
slow going but one of the easiest steps. The border with
Yrankhs is just a few meters beyond the waterline, so
we're not likely to meet the denizens of Ekh'l—a kind
of flying ape, I believe. The Yrankhs are not ones we'd
like to meet—flesh-eaters all—but they are water-
breathers and not likely to bother us unless we decide
to swim."
 
"The fog's coming in," Skander noted. "We'd better
get going."
 
"Agreed," responded The Rel, and they started
down to the beach.
 
It was easy going, relatively speaking. The beach
did disappear for several miles at one point or an-
other, but although it ate up a lot of time, there was
no problem in Hain ferrying them across one by one.
 
277
 
After almost three days, including delays from both
terrain and a cold, bitter rain that stopped them for
several hours, they were about three-quarters of the
way to the Ghlmon border. The only living things they
had encountered were seabirds in the millions, crying
out in rage at the intruders. Once or twice they thought
they caught sight of something huge flying about the
mountamtops on great white wings, but the creatures
never came close and no one was sure.
 
At a particularly long break in the beach, which
took Hain over an hour to negotiate each way, the only
incident of the slow passage occurred.
 
Hain set off first with the Slelcronian and the sup-
plies, leaving The Diviner and The Rel alone with
Skander on the beach.
 
Skander sat munching some dried fish, apparently
unconcerned about the pace or the rough portage
ahead. Then, satisfied that Hain was out of sight and
hearing along the rocky cliff, the Umiau looked up at
The Rel. It was hard to tell the front from the back
of the creature even if she knew the Northerner had
a front or back.
 
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she started edging
down toward the nearby ocean breakers.
 
Less than five meters from the water. The Rel no-
ticed, and started coming toward Skander at a sur-
prisingly fast speed. "Stop!** the creature called. "Or
we shall stop you!"
 
Skander hesitated a fateful moment, then made a
break for the beckoning waves.
 
The Diviner's glowing, winking lights became ex-
tremely intense, and something shot out from the
globe, striking with a loud crash just in front of the
mermaid. Skander rolled but did not stop.
 
Another bolt shot out, striking Skander in the back,
and she gave a cry then went limp, the water actually
touching her outstretched arm. The body was motion-
less, eyes staring, but the sharp rise and fall of the
chest showed that she lived.
 
The Rel glided up to the creature and halted next
to the body.
 
"I wondered just how long that mind of yours would
be controlled by that silly hypnotism,*' it said in its
 
278
 
even, toneless voice. "But you forgot the Slelcronian
lesson. Don't worry—you will be able to move soon.
A fraction more voltage and your heart would have
stopped, though. The only reason that you live is that
we need you. The same for the others—Hain for trans-
portation, the Slelcronian because its powers might be
useful in a pinch. Now, you'll be coming around
shortly. But remember this! If you escape you are of
no use to me. If we must choose between losing you
and killing you, you are most surely dead. Now, you
may move—the correct way. And shall we say nothing
of this to our companions, eh?"
 
Skander surrendered, as movement returned. She
still felt numb, but not merely of body. The Rel con-
tinued in control, and she had no doubt that she was
 
trapped.
 
Hain returned in a little over two hours, and, after
a short rest, was able to handle the two of them.
 
"We're almost there," the great insect told them.
"You can see the damned place from the last stretch
of beach. It looks like a piece of hell itself."
 
Hain was right. Ghlmon looked like a place one
would run from, not to. The shoreline curved off to
the northwest, and the land of Ghlmon started
abruptly, the last of the Ekh'l mountains just slightly
inching into the new hex. It was a land of blowing
sand, dunes ranging in all directions right down to the
sea. Outside of the ocean, there was no sign of water,
vegetation, or any break in the oranges and purples of
 
the swirling sand.
 
"You really would have to be crazy to go there
willingly, wouldn't you?" Hain said slowly, more to
herself than to the others.
 
"No water at all," Skander sighed.
 
"No soil, nothing but sand," the Slelcronian added
 
unhappily.
 
"The first truly pleasant place we've seen in the
 
South," said The Rel.
 
Sander turned to The Rel. "Well, 0 leader, how do
we proceed?" she asked sarcastically.
 
"We keep to the coast," the Northerner responded
casually. "Hain can continue to catch fish. The Slel-
cronian. will have to go without vitamins for a day or
 
279
 
two, but it will get plenty of sun. Better water in that
stream back there," The Rel told the plant creature.
 
While the Slelcronian did so, Skander asked, "What
about you, Rel? Or don't you eat?"
 
"Of course we eat," The Rel replied. "Silicon. What
else?"
 
In a few minutes, they crossed the border.
 
The wind was close to forty kilometers per hour,
the temperature around forty degrees Celsius. It was
like going from midwinter into the worst day of
summer, and the swirling sand bit deeply into all of
them.
 
They were still within sight of the Ekh'l mountains
when they had to stop for the day. Skander collapsed
on the hot sand and shook her head exhaustedly.
"What kind of creatures could possibly live in this
hell?" she mused.
 
Almost as if to answer the question, a tiny head
popped out of the sand near them. Suddenly, it
leaped out of the sand, revealing a small, two-
legged dinosaur, about a meter high, with short,
stubby arms terminating in tiny but very human
hands. It had a very long tail which seemed to
balance it.
 
It was a darker green than the Czillian, but this
was broken by what appeared to be a tiny, rust-
colored vest and jacket. The creature came up to
them and stopped. Its flat head and raised eyes set
on each side of a spade-shaped mouth surveyed them
with quick, darting motions. Suddenly it leaned back
on its tail in a relaxed posture.
 
"I say, old fellows," it said suddenly in a casual
tenor that seemed to come from deep inside its
throat—suggesting a translator in use—"Are you the
good guys or the bad guys?"
 
280
 
Ivrom
 
"THIS TURNING YOU ALL BACK INTO WHAT WE THINK
 
of as human has some definite drawbacks," Nathan
Brazil, still a giant stag, complained as they walked
up the beach. The packs were on him, since none of
the other three could now manage the heavy load.
 
"You think you have problems," Wu Julee re-
sponded. "We're all stark naked and none of the
clothing in the packs fits anymore."
 
"Not to mention feeling hunger, and pain, and
cold again," Vardia put in. "I had forgotten these
sensations, and I don't like them. I was happier as a
Czillian."
 
"But how is it possible?" Wuju asked. "I mean,
how could things done by the Markovian brain be so
undone?"
 
"Why not ask Vamett?" Brazil suggested. "He's
the brain that got this mess started, anyway."
 
"You all are yelling about trivialities," Vamett
sulked. "I could fly. And before I set out to catch
you, Brazil, I experienced sex. For the first time, I
experienced sex. Now I'm back in this retarded body
again."
 
"Not that retarded," Brazil responded. "You were
arrested chemically, but that's all out of your body
now. Just as the sponge is out of Wuju. You should
mature normally, in a couple of years, depending on
your genes and your diet. Good looking, too, if I re-
member rightly, since you're based on lan Vamett. I
remember him as one hell of a womanizer—particu-
larly for a mathematician."
 
"You knew lan Vamett?" the boy gasped. "But—
he's been dead some six hundred years!"
 
"I know," said Nathan Brazil wistfully. "He got
 
281
 
caught up in the great experiment on Mavrishnu.
What a waste. You know it was a waste, Vamett—I
saw your Zone interviews.*'
 
"There has always been trouble with Vametts on
Mavrishnu," the duplicate of the great mathemati-
cian, made from cells of the long-dead original's
frozen body, said with a gleam in his eye. "They
tried three or four early on, but I'm the first one in
more than a century. They needed him again, at least,
his potential. I wasn't the first to interrupt Skander at
his real work and inquiries—a lot of skillful agents
put everything together. They were. raising me for a
different, more local set of problems, but I was al-
ready proving to be, I think, too much of a problem.
They set me up on Dalgonia to see if I could crack
Skander's work, figuring that whether I did or didn't
they could get me when I returned.'*
 
The group continued talking as they walked down
the beach, unhampered—as the charge to the Faerie
required—by any obstructions,
 
"How much do you know, Vamett? About all this,
that is," Brazil asked.
 
"When I saw the cellular sample of the Dalgonian
brain in the computer storage, I recognized the math-
ematical relationship of the sequence and order of the
energy pulses," the boy remembered. "It took about
three hours to get the sequence, and one or two more
to nail it down with the camp's computers. I only had
to look at the thing to see that the energy waveforms
represented there bore no resemblance to anything
we knew, and the matter-to-energy-to-matter process
within the cells was easily observed. I combined what
I saw with what we theorized must be the reason the
Markovians had no artifacts. The planetary brain
created anything you wanted, stored anything you
wanted, on demand, perhaps even by thought- That
gave me what was going on in that relationship, al-
though I still haven't any idea how it's done."
 
Vardia was impressed. "You mean it was like the
spells on us here—they Just wished for something and
it was there?"
 
"That's how the magic works here," Vamett af-
firmed. "The only way such a concept is possible is
 
282
 
if, in fact, nothing is real. All of us, these woods, the
ocean, the planet—even that sun-—are mereiy con-
structs. There is nothing in the universe but a single
energy field; everything else is taking that energy,
transmuting it into matter or different forms of energy,
and holding it stable. That's reality—the stabilized,
transmuted primal energy. But the mathematical
constructs that are so stabilized are in constant ten-
sion, like a coiled spring. The energy would revert to
its natural state if not kept in check. These creatures
—the Faerie—have some control over that checking
process. Not enough to make any huge changes, but
enough to change the equation slightly, to vary reality.
That's magic."
 
"I don't understand what you're saying too well,"
Wuju put in, "but I think I get the basic idea. You're
saying that the Markovians were gods and could do or
have anything they wished for, just like that."
 
"That's about it," Vamett admitted. "The gods
were real, and they created all of us—or, at least,
the conditions under which we could develop."
 
"But that would be the ultimate achievement of
intelligence!" Vardia protested. "If that were true,
why did they die out?"
 
Wuju smiled knowingly and looked to Nathan
Brazil, once the only human, now the only nonhu-
man in the party, who was being uncharacteristically
 
silent.
 
"I heard someone say why they died," Wuju re-
plied. "That someone said that when they reached
the ultimate, it became dull and boring. Then they
created new worlds, new life forms here and there—
and all went off as those new forms to start from the
beginning again."
 
"What a horrible idea," Vardia said disgustedly.
"If that were true, it means that even perfection is
imperfect, and that when our own people finally
reach this godhood, they'll find it wanting and die out
by suicide, maybe leaving a new set of primitives to
do the same thing all over again. It reduces all the
revolutions, the struggles, the pain, the great dreams
 
283
 
—everything—to nonsense! It means that life is point-
less!"
 
"Not pointless," Brazil put in suddenly. "It just
means that grand schemes are pointless. It means that
you don't make your own life pointless or useless—
most people do, you know. It wouldn't make any
difference if ninety-nine percent of the people of the
human race—or any other—lived or not. Except in
sheer numbers their lives are dull, vegetative, and
nonproductive. They never dream, never read and
share the thoughts of others, never truly experience
the fulfilling equation of love—which is not merely to
love others, but to be loved as well. That is the ulti-
mate point of life, Vardia. The Markovians never
found it. Look at this world, our own worlds—all re-
flecting the Markovian reality, which was based on
the ultimate materialist Utopia. They were like the
man with incredible riches, perhaps a planet of his
own designed to his own tastes, and every material
thing you can imagine producible at the snap of his
fingers, who, nonetheless, is found dead one morn-
ing, having cut his own throat. All his dreams have
been fulfilled, but now he is there, on top, alone. And
to get where he was, be had to purge himself of what
was truly of value. He killed his humanity, his spirit-
uality. Oh, he could love—and buy what he loved.
But he couldn't buy that love he craved, only service.
 
"Like the Markovians, when he got where he'd
wanted to be all his life, he found he didn't really
have anything at all."
 
"I reject that theory," Vardia said strongly. "The
rich man would commit suicide because of the guilt
that he had all that he had while others starved, not
out of some craving for love. That word is meaning-
less."
 
"When love is meaningless, or abstract, or mis-
understood, then is that person or race also meaning-
less," Brazil responded. "Back in the days of Old
Earth one group had a saying, 'What shall it profit a
man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his
own soul?' Nobody listened then, either. Funny—
haven't thought of that group in years. They said
God was love, and postulated a heaven of communal
 
284
 
love, and a hell for those who could not love. Later on
that got crudded up with other stuff until the ideas
were gone and only the artifacts were left. Like the
Markovians, they paid more attention to things than
to ideas—and, like the Markovians, they died for it."
 
"But surely the Markovian civilization was heaven,"
Vardia said.
 
"It was hell," Brazil responded flatly. "You see, the
Markovians got everything their ancestors had ever
dreamed of, and they knew it wasn't enough. They
knew that something attainable was missing. They
searched, poked, queried, did everything to try and
find why the people were miserable, but since every-
thing they had or knew was a construct of themselves,
they couldn't find it. They decided, finally, to go back
and repeat the experiment, little realizing that it, too,
was doomed to failure—for the experiment, our own
universe, was made in a variety of shapes and forms,
but it was still in their own image. They didn't even
bother to make a clean start—they used themselves
as the prototypes for all the races they'd create, and
they used the same universe—the one they'd lived in,
rose in, and failed in. That's why their artifacts are
still around—the two artifacts they had—their cities
and their control brains."
 
Vamett let out a gasp. "Suddenly I think I see
what you mean. This Well World we're on, if you're
right, not only provided the trial-lab runs for the new
races and their environments, and the way of chang-
ing everything to match—it was also the control!"
 
"Right," Brazil affirmed grimly. "Here everything
was  laboratory-standard,  lab-created,  monitored,
and maintained by automatic equipment to keep it
that way. Not all of them—just a representative
sample, the last races to be created, since they were
the easiest to maintain."
 
"But our race here destroyed itself," Varnett pro-
tested. "I heard about it. Does that mean we're out of
it? That the best we can do is destroy ourselves, de-
stroy others, or, perhaps, reach the Markovian level
and wind up committing suicide anyway? Is there no
hope?"
 
"There's hope," Brazil replied evenly, "And de-
 
285
 
spair, too. That religion of Old Earth I told you about?
Well, those who believed in it had the idea that their
God sent his son, a perfect human being filled with
nothing but goodness and love, to us humans. Son-
of-God question aside, there really was such a person
born—I watched him try to teach a bunch of people
to reject material things and concentrate on love."
 
"What happened to him?" Wuju asked, fascinated.
 
"His followers rejected him because he 'wouldn't
rule the world, or lead a political revolution. Others
capitalized on his rhetoric for political ends. Finally
he upset the established political system too much,
and they killed him. The religion, like those founded
by other men of our race in other times, was politi-
cized within fifty years. Oh, there were some devoted
followers—and of others like this man, too. But they
were never in control of their religion, and became
lost or isolated in the increased institutionalizing of
the faiths- Same thing happened to an older man,
born centuries earlier and thousands of miles away.
He didn't die violently, but his followers substituted
things for ideas and used the quest for love and per-
fection as a social and political brake to justify the
miseries of mankind. No, the religious prophets who
made it were the ones who thought in Markovian
terms, in political terms—the founder of the Corn, for
example, saw conditions of material deprivation that
made him sick. He dreamed of a civilization like that
of the Markovians, and set the Corn on its way. He
succeeded the best, because he appealed to that
which everyone can understand—the quest for ma-
terial Utopia. Well, he can have it."
 
"Now, hold on, Brazil!" Varnett protested. "You
say you were there when all these people were
around. That must have been thousands of years
ago. Just how old are you, anyway?"
 
"I'll answer that when we get to the Well," Brazil
responded. "I'll answer all questions then, not before.
If we don't get to the Well before Skander and who-
ever's with him, it won't make any difference, any-
way."
 
"Then they could supplant the Markovians, change
the equations?" Vamett asked, aghast. "I at one time
 
286
 
thought I could, too, but logic showed me how wrong
I was. My people—my former people, those of the
night—agreed with me. It was only when word came
that Skander might make a run for it that they de-
cided to send me to head him off. That's why I joined
up with you, Brazil—you said you were going to do
the same thing back in Zone. Our mysterious infor-
mant told us to link up with you if we could, and I
did."
 
"Now how could—" Brazil started, then suddenly
was silent for a moment, thinking. Suddenly the voice
box between his antlers gave off a wry chuckle. "Of
course! What an idiot I've been! I'll bet that son of a
bitch has bugged every embassy in Zone! I'd forgotten
just what kind of a devious mind he had!"
 
"What are you talking about?" Wuju asked, an-
noyed.
 
"The third player—and a formidable one. The
one who warned Skander against kidnap, got Varnett
to link up with me. He knew all along where Varnett,
here, and Skander were. He just wanted to be there
for the payoff, as usual. I was his insurance policy, in
case anything went wrong—and it did. Skander was
kidnapped, and out of control or immediate surveil-
lance. At least he has managed to delay one or
another party on the way to the Well so that we're
supposed to get there at about the same time—where
he'll have a reception party waiting for us. He warned
Skander so I'd have time to get to Czill, about even
with them on the other side of the ocean. When we
were trapped with the Murnies, he pulled strings to get
the Czillians to put pressure on The Nation to bottle
them up until we were even again! I don't wonder that
he might have some influence with the Faerie—maybe
the Skander party somehow got bogged down, too!"
 
"Who the hell are you talking about, Nathan?"
Wuju persisted.
 
"Look!" Brazil said. "There's Ghlmon, the last hex
before the equator! See the burned-out reddish sand?
It goes across two hexes in width, a half-hex tall."
 
"Who?" Wuju persisted.
 
"Well," Brazil replied hesitantly, "unless I am
 
287
 
wildly mistaken, somewhere out in that sunburned
desert we'll meet up with him."
 
"Are we going to cross the border today?" Vamett
asked, looking at the sun, barely above the horizon.
 
"Might as well," Brazil responded. "It's going to be
pretty tough on all of us there, so we'd better get
used to it. The heat's going to be terrible, I think,
and my fur coat's going to be murder, while your
naked skins will be roasted. So we'd better push on
into the night as much as we can, following the shore-
line as we have. Days may be unworkable there."
 
Wuju had an infuriated look on her face, but Brazil
speeded up, forcing them into a jog to keep up, and
within a few minutes they crossed the border.
 
The heat hit them like a giant blanket, and it was
humid, too, this close to the ocean. Within minutes of
crossing the border, they had slowed to almost a
crawl, the three humans perspiring profusely, Brazil
panting wildly, tongue hanging out of bis mouth.
Finally, they had to stop and rest. Dusk brought only
slight relief.
 
Wuju looked again at Brazil with that Fd-like-to-
kilt-you expression. Hot, winded, the sand burning her
feet and, when she sat down, her rear, she remained
undeterred.
 
"Who, Nathan?" she persisted, gasping for breath.
 
Brazil's stag body looked as uncomfortable as any-
one's, but that mechanical voice of his said evenly,
"The one person who could know for certain that I
would go after Skander, and that I would get to you
in Dillia before going anywhere, was the only person
who could tell Vamett where to find me and why. He
was a pirate in the old days. You couldn't trust him
with anything if he could make a shekel going against
you, yet you could trust him with your life if there
were no profit in it. That's what I forgot—the stakes
are high here; there's a bigger profit potential than
anyone could think of. He told me I could get help
from everyone of all races, but trust none—in-
cluding him, as it turned out. Although he figured I
wouldn't think of him as an opponent since we'd
 
288
 
been good friends and I owed him. He was almost
right."
 
Understanding hit her at last, and she brightened.
"Ortega!" she exclaimed. "Your friend we met when
we first entered Zone!"
 
"The six-armed walrus-snake?" Vardia put in.
"He's behind all this?"
 
"Not all this," came a voice behind them—a
clipped, casual male voice that carried both dignity
and authority. "But he still is happy everything has
turned out right."
 
They all whirled. In the near-darkness, it was hard
for any of them to see properly, but the creature
looked for all the world like a meter-tall dinosaur,
dark green skin and flat head, standing upright on
large hind legs, while holding a curved pipe in a
stubby hand. He also appeared to be wearing an
old-fashioned formal jacket.
 
The creature puffed on the pipe, the coals glowing
in the dark.
 
"I say," it said pleasantly, "do you mind if I finish
my pipe before we travel? Terrible waste otherwise,
y'know."
 
West Ghlmon
 
THE FOUR OF THEM LOOKED CURIOUSLY AT THE
 
strange creature. Brazil could only think that he should
have been in Alice in Wonderland. The others took
the appearance of the new arrival more calmly, having
grown used to strange creatures and strange ways by
this time.
 
"You were sent by Serge Ortega?" Brazil asked
evenly.
 
The creature took its pipe out of its mouth and as-
sumed an insulted expression. "Sir, I am the Duke of
Orgondo. This is Ghlmon. The Ulik have no authority
 
289
 
here. They are merely our neighbors. We were ap-
proached only a few days ago by Mr. Ortega about this
matter, and we are, of course, much concerned. The
Ulik interest is—well, frankly, closer to ours. We know
them and understand them. We've gotten along for
thousands of years with them. With their help we
managed to survive when the environment here changed
and the soil turned to sand. But all of you—Mr. Or-
tega included—are here at our sufferance, and we will
brook no intrusions into sovereignty."
 
"What's he saying?" Vardia asked, and the others
added their confusion- For the first time, Brazil realized
that now they could understand only people with trans-
lators and those speaking Confederacy. Their own
translators had gone along with their former bodies.
 
"Pardon me. Your Grace," Brazil said politely. "I
will have to translate, for, I fear, my companions have
no translators."
 
The lizard looked at the three humans. "Hmmm....
Most curious. I had been told to expect a Dillian,
Czillian, and a Creit. We heard that you would be an
antelope, and that so far is the only correct informa-
tion. You are Mr. Brazil, are you not?"
 
"I am," Brazil replied. "The male is Mr. Vamett,
the female with breasts is Wuju, and the undeveloped
female is Vardia. We did, after all, have to come
through Ivrom. That, in itself, is an accomplishment, I
should think—to have come through unaltered would
have been a miracle."
 
"Quite," nodded the Ghlmonese. "But we had no
doubt you would come through, although there's been
hell to pay for the three days you disappeared. We
figured you'd been bewitched, and started moving some
diplomatic mountains to find who had you."
 
"Then that bewitching stuff wasn't part of Ortega's
tricks?" Brazil responded. "He seemed awfully confi-
dent we'd get through."
 
"Oh, no, he figured that you would get stuck," the
duke replied casually- "But we of Ghlmon are more
adept at the arts than those filthy savages in Ivrom.
It was only a matter of finding you. We already had
the other party, so nothing was disturbed no matter
how long it took."
 
290
 
"So what's the next move now?" Brazil asked calmly.
 
"Oh, you'll be my guests for the night, of course,"
the duke said warmly. "Tomorrow, we'll get you on a
sandshark express and take you to the capital at Ood-
likm, where you will link up with Ortega and the other
party. From that point it will be Ortega's show, al-
though we'll be watching."
 
Brazil nodded. "This game is getting so crowded
you need a scorecard." He provided a running transla-
tion of the conversation so that the others could follow
what was going on. Finally the creature's pipe went
out, and it tapped the bowl and shook out the last re-
mains of whatever it had been smoking. It smelled like
gunpowder.
 
"Places have been prepared for you," the duke told
them. "Ready to go? It's not far."
 
"Do we have a choice?" Brazil retorted.
 
The little dinosaur got that hurt look again, "Of
course! You may go back across the border, or jump in
the ocean. But, if you plan to stay in Ghlmon, you will
do what we wish."
 
"Fair enough," the stag replied. "Lead on."
 
They followed the little dinosaur along the beach in
silence for a little over a kilometer. There, by the side
of the sea, a huge tent of canvas or something very
similar had been erected. A flag was flying from the
tent's center mast. Several Ghlmonese stood around
nearby, and tried not to look bored to death.
 
Two by the tent flap snapped to attention as the
duke approached, and he nodded approvingly. "Every-
thing ready?" he asked.
 
"The table is set. Your Grace," one replied, "Every-
thing should be suitable."
 
The duke nodded and the sentry held back the flap
so he could enter and kept it open for the others to
pass through.
 
Inside, the place looked like something out of a
medieval textbook. The floor was covered with thick
carpeting like a handwoven mosaic. Actually made
up of hundreds of small rugs, it looked like a colorful
series of lumps.
 
In the center was a long, low wooden table with
strange-smelling dishes on it. There were no chairs, but
 
291
 
the human members of the party were quickly provided
with rolls of blankets or rugs that propped them up
enough to make things comfortable.
 
"Simple, but it will have to do," the duke said, al-
most apologetically. "You will find the food compatible
 
—Ambassador Ortega was most helpful here. We
didn't expect you in these forms, of course, but there
should be no problem. Pity you couldn't be entertained
in the castle, but that is impossible, I fear."
 
"Where is your castle?" Brazil asked. "I haven't
seen any structures but this one."
 
"Down below, of course," the duke replied. "Ghlmon
wasn't always like this. It changed, very slowly, over
thousands of years. As the climate became progressively
drier, we realized that we couldn't fight the sand, so
we learned to live beneath it. Air pumps, constantly
manned by skilled workmen, keep the air coming in
from vents to the surface—which crews keep clear.
Sort of like living under the ocean in domes, as I
have heard is done elsewhere- The desert's our ocean
 
—more than you think. We can swim in it, albeit
slowly, and follow guide wires from one spot to an-
other, coming up here only to travel long distances."
 
Brazil translated, and Vardia asked, "But where
does the food come from? Surely nothing grows here."
 
"We are basically carnivores," the duke explained
after the translation of the question. "Lots of creatures
exist in the sand, and many are domesticated. Water
is easy—the original streams still exist, only they now
run underground, along the bedrock. The vegetable
dishes here are for your benefit. We always keep some
growing in greenhouses down under for guests."
 
They ate, continuing the conversation. Brazil, not
knowing how much the Ghlmonese were actually in on
the expedition, carefully avoided any information in
that direction, and it was neither asked for nor brought
up by his host.
 
After eating, the duke bade them farewell. "There's
a good deal of straw over there for padding if you can't
sleep on the rug," he told them. "I know you're tired
and won't disturb you. You have a long journey start-
ing tomorrow."
 
Vardia and Vamett found soft places near the side
 
292
 
of the tent and were asleep in minutes. Wuju tried to
join them, but lay there awake for what seemed like
hours. Her insomnia upset her—she was tired, ach-
ing, and uncomfortable, yet she couldn't sleep.
 
The torches had been extinguished, but she could
make out Brazil's large form in the gloom near the
entrance. Painfully, she got up and walked over to him.
 
He wasn't asleep either, she saw- His head turned
as she approached. "What's the matter?" he asked.
 
"I—I dunno," she replied hesitantly. "Can't sleep.
You?"
 
"Just thinking," he said, an odd, almost sad tone in
his electronic voice.
 
"About what?"
 
"This world. This expedition. Us—not just the two
of us, all of us. It's ending, Wuju. No beginnings any-
more, just endings."
 
She looked at him strangely in the darkness, not
comprehending his meaning. Unable to pursue it, she
changed the subject.
 
"What's going to happen to us, Nathan?" she asked.
 
"Nothing. Everything. Depends on who you are,"
he replied cryptically. "You'll see what I mean. You've
had a particularly rough time, Wuju. But you're a sur-
vivor. Tough. You deserve to enjoy life a little." He
shifted uncomfortably, then continued.
 
"Just out of curiosity, if you had a choice, if you
could return to our sector of the universe as anything
or anybody you wanted to be, what would you choose?"
 
She thought for a minute. "I've never considered go-
ing back," she replied in a soft, puzzled tone,
 
"But if you could, and you could be who and where
you wanted—like the genie with the three wishes—
what would you choose?"
 
She chuckled mirthlessly. "You know, when I was a
farmer, I had no dreams. We were taught to be satis-
fied with everything. But when they made me a whore
in the Party House, we'd sometimes sit and talk about
that. They kept the males and females separate—we
never saw any males except Party locals and favored
workers. We were programmed to be supersexy and
give them a hell of a time. I'm sure the male jocks
were equally fantastic for the female bigwigs. They shot
 
293
 
us full of hormones, thought we couldn't think of any-
thing but sex—and, it's true, we craved it, constantly,
so much so that during slack times we were in bed
with each other.
 
"But the Party people," she continued, "they knew
things, went places. Some of them liked to talk about it,
and we got to know a lot about the outside world.
We'd dream about getting out into it, out perhaps to
other worlds, new experiences." She paused for a mo-
ment, then continued in that dreamy, yet thoughtful,
somewhat wistful tone.
 
"Three wishes, you said. All right, if we're playing
the game, I'd like to be rich, live as long as I wanted,
and be young all that time, and fantastically good-
looking, too. Not on a Comworld, of course—but that's
four, isn't it?"
 
"Go on," he urged. "Never mind the three. Any-
thing else?"
 
"I'd like to have you under those same conditions,"
she replied.
 
He laughed, genuinely pleased and flattered. "But,"
he said, serious again, "suppose I wasn't there? Sup-
pose you were out on your own?"
 
"I don't even want to think about that."
"Come on," he prodded. "It's only a game."
Her head went up, and she thought some more. "If
you weren't there, I think I'd like to be a man."
 
If Brazil had had a human face, it would have risen
in surprise. "A man? Why?"
 
She shrugged, looking slightly embarrassed. "I don't
know, really. Remember I said young and good-looking.
Men are bigger, stronger, they don't get raped, don't
get pregnant. I'd like to have children, maybe, but—
well, I don't think any man could turn me on except
you, Nathan. Back in the Party House—those men
who came. I was like a machine to them, a sex ma-
chine. The other girls—they were real people, my
family. They cared. That's why the Party gave me to
Hain, Nathan—I'd gotten to the point where I couldn't
turn on to men at all, only women. They felt, they
cared, they weren't—well, weren't threatening. All of
the men I met were—except you. Can you understand
that?"
 
294
 
"I think I can," he responded slowly. "It's natural,
considering your background. On the other hand, there
are many worlds where homosexuality is accepted, and
you can get children by anything from cloning to ar-
tificial insemination. And, of course, men have just as
many problems and hang-ups as women. The grass
isn't greener, just different."
 
"That might be the fun of it," she replied. "After
all, it's something I've never been—like I'd never
been a centaur before, and you'd never been a stag. I
know what it's like to be a woman—and I don't par-
ticularly care for it. Besides, we're only playing."
 
"I guess we are," he responded. "Since we are,
would you rather go back to being a Dillian than what
you are now? You can, you know—just go back to
Zone through the local Gate and back through again.
You'll be readjusted to the original equation. That's the
most common way of breaking spells around here, you
know. That's the way I'd have handled things if I'd
had the time back in Ivrom rather than risking that
facedown with the Swarm Queen."
 
"I—I'm not sure I could go back to Dillia," she
said softly. "Oh, I loved being that big and strong,
loved the country and those wonderful people—but
I didn't fit. That's what was driving me crazy in the
end. Jol was a wonderful person, but it was Dal I
was attracted to. And that doesn't go over in Dillia
socially—and, if it did, it's impractical."
 
He nodded. "That's really what you meant when
you told me long ago about how people should love
people no matter what their form or looks. But what
about me? Suppose I turned into something really
monstrous, so alien that it bore almost no resemblance
to what you knew?"
 
She laughed. "You mean like the bat or a Czillian
or maybe a mermaid?"
 
"No, those are familiar- I mean a real monstrosity."
 
"As long as you were still you inside, I don't think
anything would change," she replied seriously. "Why
do you talk like that, anyway? Do you expect to turn
into a monster?"
 
"Anything's possible on this world," he reminded
her. "We've seen only a fraction of what can happen—
 
295
 
you've seen only six hexes, six out of fifteen hundred
and sixty. You've met representatives of three or four
more. There's a lot that is stranger." His voice turned
grim. "We have to meet the new Datham Ham shortly,
you know. He's a giant female bug—a monster if
ever there was one."
 
"Now his outside matches his foul inside," she
snapped bitterly. "Monsters aren't racial, they're in the
mind. He's been a monster all his life."
 
He nodded. "Look, trust me on this- Ham will get
what he deserves—so will everybody. Once inside the
Well, we'll all be what we once were, and then will
come the reckoning."
 
"Even you?" she asked. "Or will you stay a deer?"
 
"No, not a deer," he replied mysteriously, then
changed the subject. "Well, maybe it's better over. Two
more days and that'll be it."
 
She opened her mouth to prod, then closed it again.
Finally, she asked, "Nathan, is that why you've lived
so long? Are you a Markovian? Vamett thinks you
are."
 
He sighed. "No, not a Markovian—exactly. But
they might as well continue to think I am. I may have
to use that belief to keep everything from blowing
apart too soon."
 
She looked stunned. "You mean all this time you've
been dropping hints that you were one of the original
builders, and it was all a bluff?"
 
He shook his head slowly. "Not a bluff, no. But I'm
very old, Wuju—older than anyone could imagine. So
old that I couldn't live with my own memories. I
blocked them out, and, until arriving here on the Well
World, I was mercifully, blissfully ignorant. No mind
in history can function long with this much storage in-
put. The shock of the fight and transformation in
Murithel brought the past back, but there's so much.'
It's next to impossible to sort it all out, get a handle
on it all. But these memories still give me the edge—
I know things the rest of you don't. I'm not necessarily
smarter or wiser than you, but I do have all that ex-
perience, all that accumulated knowledge of thousands
of lifetimes. That gives me the advantage."
29fi
 
"But they all think you're going to work the Well
for them," she pointed out. "Everything you've said
indicates that you know how."
 
"That's why Serge kept us alive," he explained.
"That's why we've been coddled and prodded. I have
no doubt that the little voice box on top my antlers
has an extra circuit monitored by Serge. He's prob-
ably listening right now. I don't care anymore. That's
why he could help us, know where we were and what
happened to us. That's why we're going to meet him;
 
that's how all this was prepared in advance. Just in
case he can't use me, he'll use Skander, or Varnett—
he thinks."
 
"I can see why he'd be concerned with you three,"
she replied, "but why the rest of us? Why me, for
example?"
 
If Brazil could have smiled, he would have. "You
don't know Serge—the old Serge. I'd been so lulled
by that talk about a wife and kids I'd forgotten how
little this world changes the real you, deep down. Hain
 
—well, Hain is useful to keep Skander in check as
well as for transportation. I don't know who else is
along, but be sure they're there only because Serge
has some use for them or he hasn't been able to
figure out how to dispose of them properly."
 
"But why me?" she repeated.
 
"They must have some tame nasties on the Corn-
worlds," he replied sardonically. "You're a hostage,
Wuju. You're his handle on me."
 
She looked uncertain. "Nathan? What if it really
came down to that? Would you do what he asked for
me?"
 
"It won't come to that," he assured her. "Believe me,
it won't. Vamett has already figured out why, although
he's forgotten in his youthful excitement."
 
"Then what will you do?"
 
"I will lead them all to the Well—Skander can do
that anyway, so could Varnett. I intend to show them
everything they want. But they will leam that this
treasure hunt is full of thorns when they discover what
the price really is. I'll bet you that, once in the control
 
• room of their dreams, they will think the price is too
high."
 
297
 
She shook her head in wonder. "I don't understand
any of this."
 
"You will," he replied cryptically, "at midnight at
the Well of Souls."
 
The trip was uncomfortable and bumpy. They
traveled on a huge wooden sled with runners. Pulling
them swiftly were eight huge beasts they could not
fully see—sandsharks, the Ghlmonese called them.
Only huge gray backs and huge, razor-sharp fins were
visible as they pulled their heavy load and were kept
in check by a Ghlmonese driver with reins for each of
the huge creatures.
 
The sandsharks were giant mammals who lived in
the sand as fish lived in water. They breathed air—
a single huge nostril opened whenever their great backs
broke the surface—and moved at eight to ten kilo-
meters per hour.
 
By the end of the day the travelers were all sore
and bruised, but more than halfway there. They spread
rugs out on the sand, and ate food heated by the fiery
breath of their driver. There was no problem sleeping
that evening, despite the hot air, blowing wind, and
strange surroundings.
 
The next day was a repeat of the first. They passed
several other sleds carrying Ghlmonese, and occasion-
ally saw individuals riding in huge saddles on the backs
of sandsharks. Once in a while they would see a cluster
of what appeared to be huge chimneys with crews
keeping the openings from being blocked by sand. Far
below, they knew, there were towns, perhaps large
cities.
 
Finally, near dusk of the second day, structures ap-
peared ahead of them, growing rapidly larger as they
approached. These proved to be a network of towers
and spires made of small rocks, reaching fifty or
more meters in the air, like the tops of some medieval
fortress.
 
They slowed, and came to a halt near two towers
with a wide gate between. A number of Ghlmonese
stood around; others were busy going to or from un-
known places.
 
An officious-looking dinosaur, in ornate red livery,
 
298
 
came up to them. "You are the alien party from Or-
gondo?" he asked gruffly.
 
"They are," their driver replied. "All yours and wel-
come. I have to see to my sharks. They've had a tough
journey."
 
"Which of you is Mr. Brazil?" the official inquired.
 
"I am," Brazil replied.
 
The official looked surprised, since Brazil was,
after all, still a giant stag, but he recovered quickly.
"Come with me, then. The rest of you will be taken to
temporary quarters." He motioned to some other
Ghlmonese, also in the red livery, and they came up
to escort the party. Although the smallest of the hu-
mans was a head taller than any of the guards, no one
felt like arguing.
 
"Go with them," Brazil instructed his group.
"There'll be no problems. I'll join you as soon as I
can."
 
They had no choice, and walked to the tower nearest
them. Brazil turned to the official. "What now?" he
asked.
 
"Ambassador Ortega and the other alien party are
camped out near the base of The Avenue," the official
replied. "I am to take you to them."
 
"Lead on," Brazil urged, unconcern in his voice.
 
The Avenue proved to be a broad trench, thirty or
more meters across, that was just beyond the towers
and spires. It was also more than fifteen meters below
ground level, but, despite only the most rudimentary
stone buffers, the sand didn't seem to blow into the
obviously artificial culvert, but over and past it.
 
Broad stone stairs led down to the flat, almost shiny
surface below. Brazil had some trouble negotiating the
stairs, but finally made it. The buildings of Oodlikm
seemed to line The Avenue on both sides, like
medieval castles used to be built into the sides of steep
river valleys back on Old Earth. There were many
stairways and hundreds of doors, windows, and even
ports for defense along both sides of The Avenue wall.
As for the valley itself, its level, jewellike surface
seemed to stretch to the ocean on Brazil's right, and
off to the horizon on his left.
 
Brazil's hooves clacked on the shiny surface. He
 
299
 
towered over countless stalls selling all sorts of things
and over the crowds which gaped at him and made
way as he passed. He and his escort walked toward the
ocean, past the last shops, and finally to what was
obviously a more official, less commercial section,
across which had been hastily erected a barricade with
a heavy wooden gate and armed guards.
 
The official approached the gate, showed a pass he
produced from his coat pocket. After the guards in-
spected his pass carefully, the gates opened and they
passed through. Inside were more guards—huge num-
bers, in fact. In the center of The Avenue were an
Akkafian, a Czillian, a Umiau in what looked like a
square bathtub, and—something else.
 
Brazil studied The Diviner and The Rel, and the
last pieces fit into place. The role of the Northerner
had been unclear to him from the start, and he knew
nothing of the creature's hex, physically or culturally.
He was certain that the thing was at the heart of much
of the mischief that had been worked, though.
 
Darkness had fallen, and the stars started showing
through. Small gaslights had been lit, giving the entire
scene an eerie glow.
 
"Remain with the others," the official instructed him.
"I will get Ambassador Ortega."
 
Brazil went over to the alien creatures, ignoring all
except the Umiau.
 
"So you're Elkinos Skander," he said flatly.
 
The mermaid gave a puzzled look. "So? And who or
what are you?"
 
"Nathan Brazil," be replied crisply. "That name
means little to you? Perhaps it will be better to say that
I am here to avenge seven murders."
 
The Umiau opened her mouth in surprise. "Seven
—what the hell do you mean?"
 
Brazil's independent eyes showed Skander on the
right, and the interest of the other three on the left.
The others were all watching the two tensely.
 
"I was the captain of the freighter who found the
bodies on Dalgonia. Seven bodies, charred, left on a
barren world. None of them ever did you harm, nor
was there any reason for their deaths."
 
"I didn't kill them," Skander responded in a surly
 
300
 
tone. "Vamett killed them. But, what of it? Would you
have preferred to open this world to the Corns?"
 
"So that was it," Brazil said sadly. "The seven died
because you feared that their governments would get
control. Skander, you know who killed them, and /
know who killed them, but even beyond that is the fact
that they needn't have died even for so dubious a rea-
son. The Gate would not have opened for them."
 
"Of course it would!" Skander snapped. "It opened
when Vamett and I found the mathematical key to the
computer. And it was still open for you and your party
to fall through!"
 
Brazil shook his head slowly. "No, Skander. It
opened only because the two of you wanted it to open.
That's the key, you know. Even though you didn't
know that the Gate didn't lead to the Dalgonian brain,
but to here, you knew that some sort of Gate must
exist and you wanted desperately to find it. You had
already decided to kill Vamett and the others before
you found it. Vamett knew it. He had a desire to find
the Gate, and the fear of death to fix it. That's what
opened it up, not your mathematical discoveries. It
hadn't opened since the Markovians, and it wouldn't
have opened again unless the conditions were right."
 
"Then how did you fall through?" Skander retorted.
"Why did it open for you?"
 
"It didn't," Brazil replied evenly. "Although I should
have known it was there."
 
"But it did open for us, Brazil," Hain put in.
"Not for you, Hain, or for me, or for Vardia, either,"
Brazil told them. "But, within our party, there was one
person who had lost all hope, who wanted to die, to
escape fate's lot. The brain, sensitized to such things,
picked this up and lured us to Dalgonia with the false
emergency signal. We went up to where the shuttles
left by Skander and Vamett were still parked, walked
out onto the Gate floor, and, when Wu Julee was well
within the field, the Gate triggered—sending all of us
here."
 
"I remember you, now!" Skander exclaimed. "Var-
dia told me about you while we were imprisoned in
The Nation! She told me how the ships seemed to
vanish. When I heard all that, I assumed you had en-
 
301
 
gineered the whole thing, that you were a Markovian.
The evidence fitted. Besides, it stands to reason that
you don't leave a control group like those on the Well
World without someone to monitor the control."
 
"The fact that it was the girl and not Brazil who
triggered the Gate doesn't necessarily invalidate your
conclusions, Doctor," came a smooth, husky voice be-
hind them. They turned to see the huge form of Serge
Ortega, all five meters of snake and two meters of his
thick, six-armed body.
 
"Serge, I should have known better," Brazil said
good-humoredly.
 
All six arms of the Ulik shrugged. "I have a pretty
good racket here, Nate. I told you I was happy, and I
am. I have most of the embassies at both zones bugged,
and the conversations recorded. I find out what*s hap-
pening, who's doing what to whom, and if there's
anything of interest to me and to my people I act
on it."
 
Brazil nodded, and would have smiled if the stag
body allowed it. "It was no accident that you were the
one who met us, was it? You already knew I was
there."
 
"Of course," Onega replied. "Small cameras in-
stalled in two or three points around the Well go on
whenever someone comes through. If they're old-
human I get there first. Nobody cares much, since the
Zone Gate randomly assigns them to other hexes."
 
"You didn't meet me when I came through," Skander
pointed out.
 
Ortega shrugged again. "Can't live in the damned
office. Bad luck, though, since I then lost sight of you
for a long time. These others were already in and as-
signed before I managed to track Vamett down, al-
though the Umiau are so lousy at secrecy your cover
was blown about a month after you came."
 
"You've been following me since Czill, haven't you,
Serge?" Brazil asked. "How did you manage it?"
 
"Child's play," the Ulik replied. "Czill has a high
technological level but no natural resources, and some
problems in handling hot metal anyway. We supply
parts for their machines—we and many others—
only ours have slight modifications. A resonator for the
 
302
 
translator, for example, takes only one almost in-
visible extra circuit to broadcast—if you know the
right frequency. The range isn't fantastic, but I knew
where you were, and in most instances mutual back-
scratching, past lOU's, and the like were all that was
needed. I think I know what you are, Nate, and I
think you know you should play the game my way."
 
"Or you'll kill the others?"
 
The snakeman looked hurt, but it was exaggerated.
"Why, Nate! Did I say any such thing? But, regardless,
I have Skander. here, and, if all else fails, Vamett. I'd
prefer you, Nate. I don't think you're any different
from the Nathan Brazil I've known all these decades.
I'm willing to bet that that personality of yours isn't
a phony front or a construct, but the real you, no
matter what your parents were. You know me better
than anybody, so you know my actions and what I'll
do in any case. Will you lead the party in?"
 
Brazil looked at his old acquaintance for a moment.
"Why everybody. Serge? Why not just you and me?"
he asked.
 
"Ah, come on, Nate! What do you take me for?
You know how to get in; I don't. You know what's in
there—I don't. With the others I get an expert check
on your actions and descriptions, and a little insurance
from their own self-interest. The Northerner, here—
it's working for a group so different from any of us I
can't figure out anything about them. Nonetheless, like
Hain, here, and the plant, they're all looking out for
their own interests. So are your people, really. Nobody's
going to let anybody else get the upper hand. You'll
all even be armed—armed with pistols that can kill
any of you, but can't kill roe. I've taken immunity
shots from Hain's stinger, so that's no threat, and I am
so much physically stronger than any of you that I'll
be happy to take you on. Nate knows how quick I can
 
move.
 
Brazil sighed. "Always figuring the angles, aren't
you. Serge? So tell me, if this was your game all along,
why did we have to fight and walk so far? Why not
just get us all together and bring us to this point?"
 
"I hadn't the slightest idea where you were going,"
replied Ortega honestly. "After all, Skander was still
 
303
 
looking, Vamett had given up, and nobody else
knew. So I just let the expeditions lead me here. When
it became clear where both expeditions were headed, I
arranged to slow things down until I could get here
ahead of you. Easier than you think—Zone Gate to
Ulik, then over. Hell, man, I've been to that Equatorial
Zone hundreds of times. There's no way in that any-
body's ever found, and a lot have tried over the years.**
 
"But we now know that the entrance is at the end
of The Avenue," The Rel said suddenly. "And, from
Skander, I perceive that the time of entry is midnight"
 
"Right on both counts," Brazil admitted. "However,
that knowledge alone won't get you in You need the
desire to get to the Well center, specifically, and a
basic equation to tell the Well you know what you're
doing."
 
"The Vamett relationship," Skander said. "The
open-ended equation of the Markovian brain slides.
That's it, isn't it?"
 
"Sure,** Brazil acknowledged. "After all, it wasn*t
supposed to keep any Markovians out. The conditions
of this world are such that the relationship is simply
indecipherable. It's only one in a million that the
two of you discovered it, and almost one in infinity that
you'd get to where you could use it. You could never
have used it on Dalgonia since it requires an answer
for completion, an addition. It's sort of 'What is your
wish?' and you have to give that wish in mathematically
correct form. In this case, though, the simple comple-
tion is done by the brain if you ask the question—
the reverse."
 
"But if he is a Markovian, why could he not just
contact the brain and save himself all the problems
he's had here?" the Slelcronian asked.
 
Brazil turned to the plant person, a puzzled tone in
his voice. "I thought you were Vardia—but that tone
just doesn't sound like her."
 
"Vardia merged with a Slelcronian,'* The Rel ex-
plained, telling of the flower creatures and their strange
ways. "It is possessed of a good deal of wisdom and
some fairly efficient mental powers, but your friend is
such a tiny part of the whole that the Czillian is es-
sentially dead," The Rel concluded.
 
304
 
"I see," Brazil said slowly. "Well, there were too
many Vardias here anyway. Ours is the original—
back to human, again." He turned to Serge again. "So
are Wuju and Vamett."
 
"Vamett?" Skander sat up suddenly, spilling water.
"Vamett is with you?"
 
"Yes, and no tricks, Skander," Ortega warned. "If
you try anything on Varnett I'll personally attend to
you," He turned back to Brazil. "That goes for you,
too, Nate."
 
"There will be no problems. Serge," Brazil assured
him tiredly. "I'll take you all inside the Well, and I
will show you what you want—what you all want. I'll
even answer any questions you want, clear up any
uncertainties."
 
"That suits us," Ortega responded, but there was a
note of caution in his voice.
 
The Avenue—at the Equator
 
THE JOURNEY UP THE AVENUE HAD BEEN WITHOUT
 
event, and none had tested Ortega's defenses. They
were all going where they wanted to go, and, as the
Ulik had said, each one had his own selfish interests
at heart. All during the journey Brazil had been talk-
ative and friendly, yet there was a sadness deep within
him they could all feel, although he tried to laugh it
off. The four members of Brazil's party kept to them-
selves. Hain kept looking at Wuju strangely, but bided
her time, and Skander seemed resigned to Varnett's
existence in the party.
 
And now, in the afternoon's waning sun, they stood
at the Equatorial Barrier itself, imposing and seemingly
impenetrable.
 
It was like a wall, partially translucent, that rose
up until it merged with the deep blue, cloudless sky.
The barrier itself didn't look thick, and felt smooth and
 
305
 
glassy to the touch, yet it had withstood attempts by
many races on both sides to make as much as a mark
on it. It went off to each side of them from horizon
to horizon, like a giant, nonrefiecting glass w3ll.
 
The Avenue seemed to merge into it, and there
was no sign of any small crack, fissure, or even junc-
ture of the odd paving of The Avenue with the sur-
face of the barrier. They seemed to become one.
 
Brazil went up to the wall, then turned to face them.
They waited expectantly.
 
"We can't enter until midnight, so we might as well
be comfortable," he told them.
 
"Do you mean twenty-four hundred?" the real Var-
dia asked.
 
"No, of course not," Brazil replied. "For one thing,
the Well World's days are about twenty-eight and a
quarter standard hours, as you know, so the time
twenty-four hundred has no meaning here. Midnight
means exactly that—the middle of the night. Since
a total day is exactly twenty-eight point three three four
standard hours, and since the axis is exactly vertical,
that means the light period is fourteen point one six
seven hours, and so is the darkness. Midnight, then,
comes seven point zero eight three five hours after
sunset. The figures were determined by physical neces-
sity when building the place. They just came out that
way. Believe me, Markovian clocks were quite differ-
ent from ours, and the time could be precisely deter-
mined."
 
"Yes, but how will we determine it?" The Rel
asked. "There are a couple of timepieces here, but
they are by no means that exact."
 
"No need," Brazil assured the Northerner. "Hain, fly
up to the surface there and watch the sun. When it
vanishes to the west, then tell us immediately. Be con-
servative—err on the side of sunlight. We'll check
watches for seven hours from that point. After that,
we can simply wait to open the wall. We'll have only
about two minutes, so it's important that everyone goes
as soon as the wall opens. The ones who don't will be
left out here."
 
"What about the atmosphere inside?" Skander asked.
"We have only a few pressure suits here."
 
306
 
"No problem there, either," Brazil responded. "All
of us are compatible with the oxygen-nitrogen-carbon
mix that's common, in one sense or another, with the
sectors on both sides of The Avenue. There will be a
compromise adjustment, but while the mixture might
make a few of us temporarily light-headed, it shoudn't
pose any problem. This system will automatically fol-
low us, section by section, as we go down. The only
problem we might have, and it's minor, is some strongly
differing gravitational pulls due to the lines of force
flowing from here. None will be a real problem, just
uncomfortable occasionally."
 
His explanation seemed to satisfy them, and they
sat down or otherwise relaxed, waiting for the proper
time.
 
"Are you really—really me?" Vardia hesitantly
asked the Slelcronian, who was awake only because
of a small, lamplike gadget fastened over the headleaf.
 
The Slelcronian paused and thought carefully. "We
are you, and we are more than you," it replied. "All
your memories and experiences are here, along with
the millions of the Slelcronians. You are a part of us,
and we are a part of you. Through the Recorder, you
are a part of the total synthesis, not just the isolated
portion in this body."
 
"Whafs it like?" she asked.
 
"It is the ultimate stage to which any can aspire,**
the creature told her. "No individuality, no personality
to corrupt. No Jealousy, greed, anger, envy, or those
other things that cause misery. All alike, all identical,
all in communion. As plants we require nothing save
water and sunlight, and carbon dioxide to breathe.
When another is needed, we make a seed and mate it
to the Recorders; it grows, and immediately after
bloom becomes as we. The Recorders do not think,
and get their food from our bodies."
 
"But—what do you do?" she asked curiously. "What
is the purpose to your life?"
 
"Universal happiness in a stable order," the Slel-
cronian replied unhesitatingly. "Long have we yearned
to spread the synthesis. Now, through this body and
your experience, we can return to Czill and multiply.
 
307
 
We shall work with the devices of Czill to create a
synthesis of animal with plant. We shall expand, even-
tually, to the Well World, and, with the aid of the
Well, to the comers of the universe. All shall become
one with the synthesis, all shall enjoy perfect equality
and happiness."
 
She thought a minute. "And what if you can't do it
with the animals?"
 
"We will," the Slelcronian replied confidently. "But,
should it not be so, then the superior shall eliminate
the inferior, as it is in the laws of nature since the be-
ginning of time."
 
This isn't me, she thought. This can't be me. Or—
or is it? Is this not what my society strives for? Is this
not why we clone, why genetic engineering is eventu-
ally planned to make everyone identical, sexless,
equally provided for in every way?
 
A sudden question struck her, and she asked, "And
what will you do once you have accomplished this all-
encompassing synthesis? What then?"
 
"Then there will be perfection and harmony and
happiness," replied the Slelcronian as if reciting a
litany. "Heaven will be ours and it will be forever.
Why do you ask such a question? Are we not you?
Did you not in fact accept the offered synthesis?"
 
The question disturbed her, for she had no answer.
What had changed? How had the paths of Vardia I
and II differed so radically in the last few weeks that
such a question would even occur to her?
 
She turned away, and her eyes fell on Wu Julee
and Nathan Brazil. They had some sort of symbiotic
relationship, she thought- It was observable, no matter
what form they had been in. When he could have
clearly escaped the Ivrom spell, he had risked himself
to free her.
 
She sat down, the chill of the night making the hard-
ness of The Avenue feel like an ice cube on her bare
behind.
 
What had she seen that her sister had not? Emo-
tion? Love? Some different sort of relationship? Kind-
ness? What?
 
What had her sister seen? A nation of great bugs all
out to do each other in and lord it over the others.
 
308
 
Hain. Skander. That weird Northern creature. A world
of machines. They represented something far different
from Nathan Brazil, Wuju—and Varnett, with guilt
over seven dead people he probably couldn't have
saved anyway. Guilt over doing the right and proper
thing? Impossible! Yet—she remembered him com-
ing in in the early morning, carrying Brazil's battered
and broken body. Exhausted, weak, half-crazed from
the burden, yet unwilling to sleep or eat until Brazil
had been tended to. Standing over that body, only
technically alive, and weeping.
 
Why?
 
She thought again of the Slelcronian and its dreams.
The perfect society. Heaven. Forever.
 
The Markovians had it, had the ultimate in material
existence.
 
And they had deliberately wrecked it for death,
misery, pain, and struggle on countless worlds in count-
less forms.
 
What was perfection, anyway? What did the Marko-
vians lack that gave the lie to the grand dream?
 
They forgot how to love, Brazil had said. But what
was love?
 
Have we already forgotten it?
 
The thought upset her, and she couldn't explain why.
For the first time in her life, she felt alienated, alone,
outside, left out.
 
Cheated.
 
And she had no idea what was missing.
 
For the first time, and perhaps the first of any being
on the Well World, she knew what it must have been
like to be a Markovian.
 
Was this, then, what Nathan Brazil felt? Was this
why he felt he was cursed? Did he live all those mil-
lennia searching for the missing factor in the Marko-
vian dream, hoping that someone would discover it?
 
But, no, she concluded. He knew what it was. He
had tried to explain it.
 
Suddenly she shivered, but not from the chill. She
had never thought, never brooded like this before, never
faced the chill of reality before.
 
Oh, nonexistent, uncaring gods! she thought bit-
 
309
 
teriy. What a curse more horrible than anything imag-
inable.
 
Suppose Nathan Brazil had what was missing, deep
inside—and no one else did?
 
"Hello, Vardia," said a voice behind her. She turned
with a start, and saw Wuju standing there. "You've
been sitting there looking strange for the longest time."
 
She smiled weakly, but said nothing.
 
Wuju smiled and sat down beside her. "Yikes! This
pavement's cold!"
 
"If you just sit you don't notice it," Vardia told her.
 
"Everyone's so somber and serious now," Wuju
noted. "Even me."
 
Vardia looked at her strangely. "It's the mission—
the end of the mission. In there is anything you want.
Just wish for it. And all of us are going in. I don't
know about anyone else, but I just discovered I don't
know what to wish for."
 
"I wish we weren't going," Wuju said grimly. "If I
had one wish, it'd be that this never had to end. Here
—this journey, Nathan, all of you. It's been the hap-
piest time of my life. I'm afraid that nothing will be
the same after we're in there. Nothing."
 
Vardia took her hand and patted it. Now why did I
do that? she wondered, but she continued doing it.
 
"I don't know what's going to happen,*' Vardia said
calmly. "I only know that I must change. I have
changed. Now I must understand how and why."
 
"I don't like this at all," Wuju responded in that
same tone of foreboding. "I don't like the idea of things
being changed by a whim. No one should have that
kind of power—least of all these sorts. I don't like
being a figment, an afterthought. I'm scared to death.
I told Nathan, but he Just shook his head and went
away. I don't understand that, either. I can face death,
now—and evil, too. But I can't face the fear of what's
in there. Not alone."
 
"You're not alone," Vardia said with a gentleness
that surprised her.
 
Wuju looked over at Brazil, standing facing the wall,
unmoving, stoic, alone. She started to tremble.
 
"I can't face it alone!" she wailed weakly.
 
310
 
"You're not alone," Vardia repeated, squeezing her
hand tighter.
 
Elkinos Skander watched the two women with in-
terest. So the robots have retained a little humanity
after all, he thought with satisfaction. But it's buried so
deep within them that it took the Well World to bring
any of it out.
 
And for what?
 
Things weren't working out quite the way he had
planned at all, but except for the Slelcronian and, per-
haps, that Northerner, it was all right, particularly if
the robots like Vardia could feel.
 
Surely they wouldn't object to his requests of the
 
Well.
 
He looked over at Ham, motionless in the darkness.
 
"Ham? You awake?" Skander asked softly.
 
"Yes. Who could sleep now?" came the bug's re-
sponse.
 
"Ham, tell me. What do you expect to get in there?
What do you want of the Well?"
 
Ham was silent for a moment. "Power," she replied
at last "I would make the Baron Azkfru emperor of
the Well World, this galaxy, perhaps the universe.
But, with this mob, I'll settle for his being emperor for
the longest of time in Akkafan, with such other power
left to future effort. My Lord, the baron, can do any-
thing except fight this machine."
 
Skander raised his mermaid's eyebrows in surprise.
"But what do you get out of it?"
 
"I shall be the baron's queen," Hain replied ex-
citedly. "I shall be at his throne, second only to him in
power. I shall bear the broods that will rule for eternity,
the product of Azkfru and myself! The workers, even
the nobles, shall defer to me and my wishes, and envy
me, and my subjects will sing my praises!" Hain paused,
carried away by her own vision.
 
"I was born in a run-down shack in a hole called
Gorind on Aphrodite," she continued. "I was unwanted,
sickly. My mother beat me, finally cast me out into the
mud and dust when she saw I'd never be a miner. I
was nine. I went into the city, living off the garbage,
stealing to make do, sleeping in cold back doorways. I
 
311
 
grew up grubbing, but in the shadow of the rich, the
mineowners, the shippers from whom I stole. One
day, when I was fifteen or so, I raped and killed a
girl. She struggled, called me names—tried to scratch
me, like my mother. They caught me, and I was about
to be psyched into a good programmed worker when
this man came to see me in my cell. He said he had
need of people like me. If I agreed to serve him and
his bosses, he would get me out."
 
"And you accepted, of course," Skander put in.
 
"Oh, yes. I went into a new world. I found that the
rich whom I'd envied dreamed of greater riches, and
that power came not from obeying the law but from
not getting caught. I rose in the organization. I ate
well, grew fat, ordered people around. I have—had
—my own estate on a private world of the bosses.
Staffed all by women, young women, held to me by
sponge. Many were slaves; others I had reduced to
animals. They roam naked in the forest on the estate,
living in trees, eating the swill I put out for them like
barnyard animals."
 
Skander had an eerie feeling in his stomach, yet he
followed Ham's statements with morbid fascination.
"But that's gone now," Skander said as calmly as he
could manage.
 
"Not gone," Ham replied, agitated. "I will be
mother now."
 
There was nothing Skander could say. Pity was for
what Hain was or could have been, not what the
creature was now.
 
"What do you want out of all this, Skander?" Hain
asked suddenly. "Why all this trouble, all this effort?
What do you want to do?"
 
"I want to restore humanity to itself," Skander re-
plied fiercely. "I want to get rid of the genetic engi-
neers, the philosophers of political sameness on the
Comworlds. I want to turn us around, Hain! I want to
make people human again, even if I have to destroy
civilization to save mankind. We're becoming a race of
robots, Hain. We wipe out the robots or we abdicate
the universe to other races. The Markovians died of
stagnation, Hain, and so will we unless ifs stopped!"
 
Hain had never liked fanatics, saviors, and Vision-
312
 
aries, but there was nothing else to do but talk. "Tell
me, Skander. Would you go back? If you could, I
mean. Suppose you get your wish. Would you go back
 
or stay here?"
 
"I think I could end my days here if I got what I
want," Skander replied honestly. "I like this place—
the diversity, the challenges. I haven't had time to en-
joy being Umiau. But, then, I'd like to see what our
little race would be if my plan were fulfilled. I don't
know, Hain. Would you go back?"
 
"Only as the Queen Mother of the Akkafians," Hain
responded without hesitation. "At the side of my be-
loved Lord Azkfru. Only to rule would I return, Skan-
der. For nothing less."
 
Ortega slithered over to them. He had small pistols
in his hands, and he put one next to Skander and the
other in front of Hain.
 
"Pistols for all," he said lightly. "Nice little energy
jobs. They will work in there, like in any high-tech hex.
They'll work on everybody except me. A dandy little
circuit prevents that."
 
Skander reached over, picked up the pistol, felt it.
Suddenly the Umiau scientist looked into Ortega's
wide brown eyes.
 
"You expect us to kill each other, don't you?" he
said softly. "You. expect all hell to break out after we
get to the Well and learn how it operates. And then
you'll finish off the winner."
 
Ortega shrugged, and smiled. "Up to you," he replied
calmly. "You can compromise with me, or with each
other, or do as you say and shoot. But I will be in at
the payoff no matter what." He slithered away to dis-
tribute guns to the others, chuckling softly.
 
"That bastard," Hain commented. "He hasn't seen
what The Diviner and The Rel can do, has he? Won-
der what sort of defense he has for that?"
 
"I think he knows," Skander responded. "That's one
slick pirate there. He's counting on us to take care of
the Northerner. And, damn his eyes, we have to! We
have to, or that blinking little son of a bitch will zap
all of us!"
 
"Just be thankful that snake did get transported to
 
313
 
the Well World," Ham said flatly. "Otherwise, he'd be
running the whole damned galaxy by now."
 
Vamett came over to Brazil, who was still standing
facing the Equatorial Barrier. "Brazil?" he said softly.
"You awake?"
 
Nathan Brazil turned slowly, looking at Vamett.
 
"Oh, yes, I'm awake," Brazil told him. "I was Just
thinking. I've enjoyed this escapade, you know. En-
joyed it a great deal. Now it's over, ended. And it ends
like all the other episodes in my life. So I have to pick
up and keep on once again."
 
Varnett was puzzled. "I don't understand you at all,
Brazil. You're in the pilot's seat. You alone know
what's in there—you do know, don't you? You have a
girl who loves you, and a future. What's eating you?"
 
Brazil shook his head slowly.
 
"I have DO future, Varnett," he replied. "This part
of the great play is over. I already know the ending,
and I don't like it. I'm trapped, Varnett. Cursed. This
diversion helped, but not much, because it brought back
too much pain and longing as well. And as for Wuju
—she doesn't love me, Vamett. She has a deep need
to be loved. She loves a symbol, something that Nathan
Brazil did to and for her, something in the way he
reacted to her. But she wants of me what I can't give
her. She wants her dream of normality." He shifted,
stretching his legs out in front of him. He continued to
face not the others, but the barrier.
 
"I'm not normal, Vamett," he said sadly. "I can
give her what she wants, needs, deserves. I can do it
for all of you. But I can't participate, you see. That's
the curse."
 
"Sounds like grandiose self-pity to me," Vamett
said derisively. "Why not take what you want if you
can do all that?"
 
Brazil sighed. "You'll know soon enough. I want
you just to remember this, Vamett. I want you to keep
it in your head throughout all that happens. Inside, I'm
no different from the rest of you."
 
"What would you want, if you could have anything
at all?" Vamett asked him, still bewildered.
 
314
 
Brazil looked at the other seriously, sadly. There
was agony and torment within him.
 
"I want to die, boy. I want to die—and I can't.
Not ever. Not at all. And I want death so very much."
 
Varnett shook his head uncomprehendingly. "I can't
figure you, Brazil. I just can't figure you."
 
"What do you want, Vamett?" Brazil asked sharply,
changing tone. "What would you wish for yourself?"
 
"I've thought a lot about that," the other replied.
"I'm only fifteen years old, Brazil. Just fifteen. My
world has always been dehumanized people and cold
mathematics, I'm the oldest fifteen of my race, now,
though. I think, perhaps, I'd like to enjoy life, enjoy a
hitman life—and somehow make my contribution to
progress. To stop this headlong rush of the human race
into a Markovian hell and try to build the society they
hoped would evolve from their tens of thousands of
cultures and races. There's a greatness here in the
Markovian Well, a potential unrealized, perhaps, but
great nonetheless. I'd like to see it reached, to com-
plete the equation the Markovians couldn't."
 
"So would I, boy," Brazil replied earnestly. "For
only then could I die."
 
"Seven hours!" Ortega's voice broke through the
stillness. "It's almost time!" His voice cracked with
 
excitement
 
Brazil turned slowly to face them. They were all
 
scrambling to be near the barrier.
 
"Don't worry," he assured them. "It'll open for me.
A light will go on. When that light comes on, walk
into the barrier. When you do, it'll be as nothing. Only
/ will change, but be ready for it. And understand
something else—I will lead. I have no weapons, but
the Well will give me a form unfamiliar to you- Don't
be upset by it, and don't get trigger-happy with each
other. Once we're all inside, I'll take you down to the
Well of Souls, and I'll explain everything along the
way. Don't do anything hasty, because I'm the only
one who can get you down with certainty, and I'll not
forgive any breaches. Clear?"
 
"Big talk, Nate," Ortega said confidently, but there
was an unease in his manner. "But we'll go along if
you do."
 
315
 
"I gave you my word. Serge," Brazil said. 'Til keep
 
it."
 
"Look!" the Slelcronian cried. "The light's gone on!"
 
In back of Brazil a section of the floor correspond-
ing to The Avenue was lit into the Equatorial Barrier.
 
"Let's go," Brazil said calmly, and turned and
stepped into the barrier. The others, tension on their
faces, followed him-
 
Suddenly Skander cried out, "I was right! I was
right all along!" and pointed ahead. The others looked
in the indicated direction.
 
There were several gasps.
 
Wuju stifled a small scream.
 
The Well had changed Nathan Brazil, just as he
had warned.
 
Midnight at the Well of Souls
 
THE CREATURE STOOD AT THE END OF THE AVENUE,
 
where it passed through a meter-high barrier and
stopped.
 
It looked like a great human heart, two and a half
meters tall, pink and purple, with countless blood ves-
sels running through it, both reddish and bluish in
color. At the irregular top was a ring of cilia, colored
an off-white, waving about—thousands of them, like
tiny snakes, each about fifty centimeters long. From
the midsection of the pulpy, undulating mass came six
evenly spaced tentacles, each broad and powerful-
looking, covered with thousands of tiny suckers. The
tentacles were a sickly blue, the suckers a grainy yel-
low. An ichor of some sort seemed to ooze from the
central mass, although it was thick and seemed to be
reabsorbed by the skin as fast as produced, creating
an irregular, filmy coating.
 
And it stank—the odor of foul carrion after days in
 
316
 
the sun. It stung their nostrils, making them slightly
sick.
 
Skander began babbling excitedly, then turned to
them. "See, Vamett?" he said. "See what I told you?
Six evenly spaced tentacles, about three meters tall!
That's a Markovian!" All traces of animosity were
gone; this was the professor lecturing his student, in
pride at the vindication of his theories.
 
"So you really was a Markovian, Nate," Ortega said
wonderingly. "Well, I'll be damned."
 
"Nathan''* Wuju called out. "Is that—that thing
really you?"
 
"It is," Brazil's voice came, but not as speech. It
formed in each of their brains, in their own languages.
Even The Diviner received it directly, rather than
through The Rel.
 
Skander was like a child with a new toy. "Of course!
Of course!" he chortled. "Telepathy, naturally. Prob-
ably the rest, too."
 
"This is a Markovian body," Brazil's voice came to
them, "but I am not a Markovian. The Well knows me,
though, and, since all lived as new races outside, it
was only natural that we be converted to the Marko-
vian form when entering the Well. It saved design
problems."
 
Wuju stepped out ahead of them, drawing close to
the creature.
 
"Wu Julee!" Hain shouted insanely. "You are
mine!" The long, sticky tongue darted out to her,
wrapped itself around her. She screamed. Ortega spun
quickly toward the bug, pistols in two hands.
 
"Now, now, none of that, Hain1" he cautioned care-
fully. "Let the girl go." He pointed the pistols at the
Akkafian's eyes.
 
Hain hesitated a second, deciding what to do. Finally
the tongue uncoiled from Wu Julee, and she dropped
about thirty centimeters to the floor, landing hard.
Raw, nasty-looking welts, like those made by rope
burn, showed on her skin.
 
The creature that was Nathan Brazil walked over
on its six tentacles, until it loomed over her. One ten-
tacle reached out, gently touched her wound. The smell
 
317
 
was overwhelming. She shrank from the probe, fear on
her face.
 
The heartlike mass tilted a little on its axis.
 
"Form doesn't matter," it mocked her voice. "It's
what's inside that counts." Then it said in Brazil's old
voice: "What if I were a monster, Wuju? What then?"
 
Wuju broke into sobs. "Please, Nathan! Please don't
hurt mel" she pleaded. "No more, pleasel I—I just
can't!"
 
"Does it hurt?" he asked gently, and she managed
to nod affirmatively, wiping the tears from her eyes.
 
"Then trust me some more, Wuju," Brazil's voice
came again, still gentle. "No matter what Shut your
eyes. I'll make the hurt go away."
 
She buried her head in her hands, still crying.
 
The Markovian reached out with a tentacle, and
rubbed lightly against the angry-looking welt on her
back and sides. She cringed, but otherwise stayed still.
The thing felt clammy and horrid, yet they all
watched as the tentacle, lightly drawn across the
wound, caused the wound to vanish.
 
As the pain vanished, she relaxed.
 
"Lie flat on your back, Wuju," Brazil instructed,
and she did, eyes still shut. The same treatment was
given to her chest and sides, and there was suddenly
no sign of any welt or wound.
 
Brazil withdrew a couple of meters from her. There
was no evident front or back to him, nor any apparent
eyes, nose, or mouth. Although the pulpy mass in the
center was pulsating and slightly irregular, it had no
clear-cut directionality.
 
"Hey, that's fantastic, Nate!" Ortega exclaimed.
 
"Shall we go to the Well?" Brazil asked them. "It is
time to finish this drama."
 
"I'm not sure I like this at all," Ham commented
hesitantly.
 
"Too late to back out now, you asshole," Skander
snapped. "You didn't get where you were without guts.
Play it out."
 
"If you'll follow me," Brazil said, "and get on the
walkway here; we can talk as we ride, and probably
panic the border hexes at the same time."
 
They all stepped onto the walkway on the other side
 
318
 
of the meter-tall barrier. The Avenue's strange light
went out, and another light went on on both sides of
the walkway, illuminating about half a kilometer to
their left.
 
"The lights will come on where we are, and go out
where we aren't." Brazil explained. "It's automatic.
Slelcronian, you'll find the light adequate for you de-
spite its apparent lack of intensity. You can get rid of
that heat lamp. Just throw it over the barrier there. It
will be disposed of by the automatic machinery in
about fourteen hours." The Markovian's tentacle near
the forward part of the walkway struck the side sharply,
and the walkway started to move.
 
"You are now on the walkway to the Well Access
Gate," he explained. "When the Markovians built this
world, it was necessary, of course, for the technicians
to get in and out. They were full shifts—one full rota-
tion on, one off. Every day from dozens to thousands
of Markovian technicians would ride this walkway to
the control center and to other critical areas inside the
planet. In those days, of course. The Avenue would
stay open as long as necessary. It was shortened to the
small interval in the last days before the last Marko-
vian went native for good, to allow the border hexes
some development and to keep out those who had sec-
ond thoughts. At the end, only the three dozen project
coordinators came, and then irregularly, just to check
on things. As any technician was finally cleared out of
the Well, the key to The Avenue doors was removed
from his mind, so he could not get back in if he wanted
to."
 
They moved on in eerie silence, lighted sections sud-
denly popping on in front of them, out in back of
them, as they traveled. The walkway itself seemed to
glow radiantly; no light source was visible.
 
"Some of you know the story of this place already,"
Brazil continued. "The race you call the Markovians
rose as did all other species, developed, and finally
discovered the primal energy nature of the universe—
that there was nothing but this primal energy, extend-
ing outward in all directions, and that all constructs
within it, we included, are established by rules and
laws of nature that are not fixed Just because they are
 
319
 
there, but are instead imposed. Nothing equals any-
thing, really; the equal sign is strictly for the imposed
structure of the universe. Rather, everything is relative
to everything else."
 
"But once the Markovians discovered the mathe-
matical constructs governing stability, why didn't they
change them?" Skander asked. "Why keep the rules?"
 
"They didn't dare try to tackle the master equations,
those governing physical properties and natural laws,"
Brazil replied. "They could alter things a little, but
common sense should tell you that in order to change
the master equation you first have to eliminate the
old one. If you do that, what happens to you and the
rest of the universe? They didn't dare—so they im-
posed new, smaller equations on localized areas of the
preexisting universe."
 
"Not gods, then," Vardia said quietly. "Demigods."
 
"People," Brazil responded. "Not gods at all. People.
Oh, I know that this form I've got is quite different
than you'd think, but it's no more monstrous or un-
usual than some of the creatures of this world, and less
than some. The many billions of beings who wore
bodies like this were a proud race of ordinary people
with one finger on the controls. They argued, they de-
bated, strove, built, discovered—just like all of us.
Were their physical forms closer to the ones we're
familiar with, you would possibly even like them. Re-
member, they achieved godhood not by natural proc-
esses, but by technological advancement. It was as if
one of our races, in present form, suddenly discovered
the key to wish fulfillment. Would we be ready for it?
I wonder."
 
"Why did they die, Brazil?" Skander asked. "Why
did they commit suicide?"
 
"Because they were not ready," Brazil replied sadly.
"They had conquered all material want, all disease,
even death itself. But they had not conquered then-
selves. They reveled in hedonism, each an island unto
itself. Anything they wanted, they just had to wish for.
 
"And they found that wasn't enough. Something was
missing. Utopia wasn't fulfillment, it was stagnation.
And that was the curse—knowing that the ultimate
was attainable, but not knowing what it was or how to
 
320
 
attain it. They studied the problem and came up with
no solutions. Finally, the best amplified Markovian
minds concluded that, somewhere in their development,
they'd lost something—the true fulfillment of the
dream. The social equation did not balance, because
it lacked some basic component. One plus two plus
three equals six, but if you don't have the plus two in
there, it can't possibly reach more than four.
 
"Finally, they came to the conclusion that they were
at a dead end, and would stagnate in an eternal orgy
of hedonism unless something was done. The solution
seemed simple: start over, try to regain the missing
factor, or rediscover it, by starting from the beginning
again. They used a variety of races and conditions to
restart, none Markovian, on the idea that any repetition
of the Markovian cycle would only end up the same.'*
 
"And so they built this world," Vamett put in.
 
"Yes, they built this world. A giant Markovian
brain, placed around a young but planetless sun. The
brain is the planet, of course, everything but the crust.
Gravity was no problem, nor was atmosphere. They
created an outer shell, about a hundred kilometers
above the surface. The hexagons are all compartments,
their elements held in all directions by fields of force."
 
"So it was built to convert the Markovians to new
forms?" Skander asked.
 
"Double duty, really," Brazil told them. "The finest
artisans of the Markovian race were called in. They
made proposals for biospheres, trying to outdo one
another in creativity. The ones that looked workable
were built, and volunteers went through the Zone Gate
and became the newly designed creatures in the newly
designed environments- Several generations were
needed for even a moderate test—the Markovians
didn't mind. A thousand years was nothing to them.
You see, they could build, pioneer-style, but they were
still Markovians. A lot of generations bom in the biome
and of the new race were needed to establish a culture
and show how things would go. Their numbers were
kept relatively stable, and the fields of force were much
more rigid then than now. They had to live in their
hex, without any real contact with other hexes. They
had to build their own worlds."
 
321
 
They were riding down now, at a deceptively steep
angle. Down into the bowels of the planet itself.
 
"But why didn't the first generation establish a
high civilization?" Varnett asked. "After all, they were
just like us, changed outside only."
 
"You overestimate people from a highly technologi-
cal culture. We take things for granted. We know how
to turn on a light, but not why the light comes on.
None of us could build most of our artifacts, and most
civilized races become dependent on them. Suddenly
dumped in a virgin wilderness, as they all were, they
had no stores, no factories, no access to anything they
didn't make themselves out of what was available. A
great many died from hardship alone. The tough ones,
the survivors, they built their own societies, and their
children's societies. They worked with purpose—if the
test failed, then they died out. If they succeeded—
well, there was the promise that the successful ones
would someday go to the Well of Souls at midnight,
and there be taken to a new world, to found a new
civilization, to grow, develop, perhaps become the
progenitors of a future race of gods who would be ful-
filled. Each hoped to be the ones whose descendants
would make it."
 
"And you were here when that happened," Wuju
said nervously.
 
"I was," he acknowledged. "I assisted the creator
of Hex Forty-one—One Eighty-seven, the hundred and
eighty-seventh and last race developed in that hex. I
didn't create it, simply monitored and helped out. We
stole ideas from each other all the time, of course.
Dominant species in one hex might be a modified pat-
tern of animals in another. Our own race was a direct
steal from some large apes in another hex. The de-
signer liked them so much that not only did the domi-
nant race turn out to be apes, but they were almost
endlessly varied as animals."
 
"Hold on, Brazil," Skander said. "These others
might not know much about things, but I'm an archae-
ologist. Old Earth developed over a few billion years,
slowly evolving."
 
"Not exactly," Brazil replied. "First of afl, time was
altered in each case. The time frame for the develop-
 
322
 
ment of our sector was speeded up. The original de-
sign produced the life we expected, but it developed
differently—as giant reptiles, eventually. When it was
clear that it wouldn't do to have our people coexist
with them, a slight change in the axial tilt caused the
dinosaurs to die out, but it placed different stresses on
other organisms. Minor mammals developed, and to
these, over a period of time, we added ours to replace
the ones logically developing in the evolutionary scale.
When conditions seemed suitable for us, when apelike
creatures survived, we began the exodus. Soon the
temperate zones had their first intelligent life. Again,
with all the resources but nothing else- They did well,
astonishingly so, but the long-term effects of the axial
tilt produced diastrophism and a great ice age within a
few centuries. Our present, slow climb has been the
product of the extremely primitive survivors of those
disasters. So, in fact, has it been with all your home
worlds."
 
"Is there a world, then, or a network of worlds of
the Akkafians?" Hain asked.
 
"There was," Brazil replied. "Perhaps there is. Per-
haps it's larger and greater and more advanced than
ours. The same with the Umiau, the Czill, the Slelcron-
ians, the Dillians, and others. When we get to the
Well itself, I'll be able to tell you at least which ones
are still functioning, although not how, or if they've
changed, or what. I would think that some of the older
ones would be well advanced by now. My memory says
there were probably close to a million races created
and scattered about; I'll be curious to see how many
are still around."
 
They had been going down for some time. Now they
were deep below the surface, how deep they couldn't
say. Suddenly a great hexagon outlined in light ap"
peared just under them.
 
"The Well Access Gate," Brazil told them. "One of
six. It can take you to lots of places within the Well,
but it'll take you to the central control area and moni-
toring stations if you have no other instructions- When
we get to it, just step on it. I won't trigger it until
everyone is aboard. In case somebody else does, by
 
323
 
accident, just wait for the light to come back on and
step on again. It'll work."
 
They did as instructed, and when all were on the
Gate, all light suddenly winked out. There followed
a twisting, unsettling feeling like falling. Then, sud-
denly, there was light all over.
 
They stood in a huge chamber, perhaps a kilometer
in diameter. It was semicircular, the ceiling curving
up over them almost the same distance as it was across.
Corridors, hundreds of them, led off in all directions.
The Gate was in the center of the dome, and Brazil
quickly stepped off, followed by the others, who looked
around in awe and anticipation.
 
The texture of the place was strange. It seemed to
be made up of tiny hexagonal shapes of polished white
mica, reflecting the light and glittering like millions of
jewels.
 
After they stepped off the Gate, Brazil stopped and
pointed a tentacle back over it.
 
Suspended by force fields, about midway between
the Gate and the apex of the dome, was a huge model
of the Well World, turning slowly. It had a terminator,
and darkness on half of its face, and seemed to be
made of the same mica-like compound as the great
hall. But the hexagons on the model were much larger,
and there were solid areas at the poles, and a black
band around its middle. The sphere seemed to be cov-
ered by a thin transparent shell composed of segments
which exactly conformed to the hexagons below.
 
"That's what the Well World looks like from space,"
Brazil told them. "It's an exact model, fifteen hundred
sixty hexagons, the Zones—everything. Note the slight
differences in reflected light from each hex. That's
Markovian writing—and they are numbers. This is
more than a model, really. It's a separate Markovian
brain, containing the master equation for stabilizing all
of the new worlds. It energizes the Well, and permits
the big brain around us to do its job."
 
"Where are the controls, Nate?" Ortega prodded.
 
"Each biome—that is, planetary biome—has its own
set of controls," Brazil told him. "This place is honey-
combed with them. Each hex on the Well World is
controlled as a complement to the actual world. Most
 
324
 
controls, of course, do not have corresponding
hexes. What we're left with today are the last few
hexes created and some of the failures—not neces-
sarily the ones that died out, but the ones that didn't
work out. The Faerie, for example. Some of them
snuck into the last batch of transits, and several of the
others who were leftovers from closed and filled proj-
ects, some Dillians, some Umiau, and the like, who
wanted to get out of the Well World and thought they
could help, came, too. Not many, and they were dis-
rupted by civilization's rises and falls, and became
the objects of superstition, fear, hatred. None survived
the distance on Old Earth, but we didn't get many to
begin with, and reproduction was slow. But, come,
let's go to a control center."
 
He walked toward one of the corridors on his six
tentacles, and they followed hesitantly. All of them
held their pistols tightly, at the ready.
 
They walked for what seemed an endless time down
one of the corridors, passing closed hexagonal doors
along the way. Finally Brazil stopped in front of one,
and it opened, much as the lens of a camera opens.
He walked in, and they followed quickly, anxious not
to lose sight of him even for a moment.
 
The room lit up as they approached. It was made of
the same stuff as the great hall and the corridors. There
were, however, walls of obvious controls, switches,
levers, buttons, and the like, and what looked like a
large black screen directly ahead of them. None of
the instruments held any sort of clue as to what they
were, or had anything familiar about them.
 
"Well, here it is, and it's still active," Brazil an-
nounced. "Let me see," he murmured, and went over
to a panel. Their faces showed sudden tension and
fear, and all of the pistols were raised, trained on
him. The Diviner's blinking lights started going very,
very fast.
 
"Don't touch nothin', Nate!" Ortega warned.
 
"Just checking something here," Brazil responded,
unconcerned. "Yes, I see. In this room is the preset for
a civilization that has now expanded. It's interstellar,
but not pangalactic. Population a little over one and a
quarter trillion."
 
325
 
"If it's a high-tech civilization, then it is not ours,"
the Slelcronian said with some relief.
 
"Not necessarily," Brazil replied. "The tech levels
here on the Well World were not imposed on the
outside at all. They were dictated by the problems you
might find in your own world. A high-tech world had
abundant and easily accessible resources, a low-tech
much less so. Since the home world had to develop
logically and mathematically according to the master
rules of nature, some worlds were better endowed than
others. By making the trial hex here a low-tech, no-
tech, or the like, we simply were compensating for the
degree of difficulty in establishing technological civili-
zation on the home world, not preventing it. We made
them develop alternatives, to live without technology
so they'd be better prepared on their home worlds.
Some did extremely well. Most of the magic you find
here is not Well magic, but actual mental powers
developed by the hexes to compensate for low-tech
status. What they could use here, they could use
there."
 
"The Diviner says you are truthful," The Rel com-
mented, one of the first things the Northerner had said
since they set out. "The Diviner states that you were
responsible for its prophecy that we would be here."
 
"In a way, yes," Brazil replied. "When I went
through the Zone Gate, the Markovian brain recognized
me as a native of Hex Forty-one and sent me there.
However, in its analysis, it also found what I, myself,
didn't know—that I had an original Markovian brain-
wave pattern. It then assumed that I was here to give
it further instructions or to do work. When it con-
cluded this. The Diviner, extremely sensitive to such
things, picked up the message, however garbled." He
paused, and that central mass tilted toward them a lit-
tle.
 
"And now," he said, sadness in his voice, "here we
are, in the control center, and you've all got fear on
your faces and your guns trained on me." Even you,
Wu Julee, he thought, immeasurable sadness coarsing
through him. Even you
 
"I tried to give mankind rules for living which would
avert a second disaster like the first, would keep it from
 
326
 
self-destruction. Nobody listened. Nobody changed.
Type Forty-one was badly flawed—and it beat the
odds anyway, this time. It made its way to the stars,
and that was an outlet for its aggression, although,
even there, even now. its component parts are looking
at ways to dominate one another, kill one another,
rule one another. And the drive for domination is there
even in the nonhumans, you. Northerner, and you,
Slelcronian. Look at you all now. Look at yourselves!
Look at each other! Do you see it? Can you feel it?
Fear, greed, horror, ambition burning within you, con-
suming you! The only reason you haven't killed one
another by now is your common fear of me. How dare
you condemn a Ham, a Skander—a society? How dare
you?
 
"How many of you are thinking of the people these
controls represent? Do you fear for them? Do you care
about them? You don't want to save them, better
their lives. That fear is inside you, fear for your own
selves! The basic flaw in the set-up equation, that
burning, basic selfishness. None of you cares for any
but yourself! Look at you! Look at what monsters
you've all become!'*
 
Their hearts pounded, nerve ends frayed. The Di-
viner and The Rel were the first to respond.
 
"What about yourself, Nathan Brazil?" The Rel
chimed- "Isn't the flaw in us simply a reflection of the
flaws in yourself, in your own people, the Markovians,
who could not give us what we lack because they did
not themselves possess it?"
 
Brazil's reply was calm, in contrast to his previous
outburst.
 
"The Markovians wanted to live in this universe, not
run it. They had already done that. Destiny was a
random factor they believed necessary to the survival
of us all. That's why they closed down the Well None
of us would be here except for a freak set of circum-
stances."
 
"Where are the controls, Nate?" Ortega asked.
"We'll find them ourselves," Ham snapped. "Vamett
cracked the big code, he should be able to crack this
one, too."
 
Brazil's voice held deep sorrow. "Pride is a weak-
y>n
 
ness of all things Markovian, and you're a reflection
of it. Now, if you'll ease up and allow me one touch
on the panel in back, I'll show you the controls. I'll tell
you how to operate them. Let's see what happens then."
 
Ortega nodded, pistols at the ready. Brazil reached
out with a tentacle and touched a small panel behind
him,
 
The large black screen went on—but it wasn't ex-
actly a screen. It was a great tunnel, an oval stretching
back as far as the eye could see. And it was covered
with countless tiny black spots, trillions of them at the
best guess. And between all the various black spots
shot frantic electrical bolts in a frenzy of activity, tril-
lions of blinking hairline arcs jumping from one little
black area to another.
 
"There's your controls," Brazil said disgustedly. "To
change the ratios, all you have to do is alter the current
flow between any two or more control spots."
 
He looked at them, and there was the deepest fear
and horror on their faces. They're afraid of me, he
thought. All of them are in mortal fear of me! Oh, my
God! Wuju who loved me, Vamett who risked his life
for me, Vardia who trusted me—all afraid. I haven't
harmed them. I haven't even threatened them. I
couldn't if I wanted to. How can they ever understand
our common source, our common bond? he thought in
anguish. We love, we hate, we laugh, we cry, live—
that I am no different from themselves, only older.
 
But they did not understand, he realized. I am
God to the primitives, the civilized man of great power
at a point where knowledge is power, surrounded by
the savages.
 
That's why I'm alone, he understood. That's why
I'm always alone. They fear what they can't under-
stand or control.
 
"One control panel," he said softly. "One only.
What are a few trillion lives? There is their past,
their present, their potential future. All yours. Maybe
their equation is the basis for one or more of you in
this room. Maybe not. It's somebody's. Maybe it's
yours. Okay, anybody, who wants to touch the first
and second control spots, change the flow? Step right
up! Now's your chance to play God!"
 
328
 
 
 
 
Vamett walked carefully over to the opening, breath-
ing hard, sweat pouring from his body.
 
"Go on," Brazil urged. "Do your stuff! You might
cancel out somebody, maybe a few trillion somebodies.
You'll certainly alter someone's equation in some way,
make two and two equal three in somebody's corner.
Maybe none of us will be here. Maybe none of us will
ever have been here. Go on! Who cares about all
those people, anyway?'*
 
Vamett stood there, mouth open, looking like a very
frightened fifteen-year-old boy, nothing more. "I—I
can't," be almost sobbed.
 
"How about you, Skander? This is where you
wanted to be. And you, Hain?" His voice rose to a
high, excited pitch. "Diviner? Can you divine this one?
Vardia? Serge? Wuju? Slelcronian? Any of you?"
 
"In the name of God, Brazil!" Skander screamed.
"Stop it! You know we don't dare do anything as long
as we don't understand the panel's operation!"
 
"He's bluffingi" Ham snarled. "I'll take the chance."
 
"No!" Wuju screamed, and swung her gun around
on the great bug. "You can't!"
 
"I'll even show you how." Brazil said calmly, and
took a step.
 
"Nate! Stay away from there!" Ortega warned. "You
can be killed, you know!"
 
Brazil stopped, and the pulsating mass bent toward
Ortega slightly. "No, Serge, I can't. That's the problem,
you see. I told you I wasn't a Markovian, but none of
you listened. I came here because you might damage
the panel, do harm to some race of people I might not
even know. I knew you couldn't use this place, but all
of you are quite mad now, and one or more of you
might destroy, might take the chance, as Hain just
showed. But none of you, in your madness, has thought
to ask the real question, the one unanswered question
in the puzzle. Who stabilized the Markovian equa-
tion, the basic one for the universe?"
 
There was a pumping sound, like that of a great
heart, its thump, thump, thump permeating them. Their
own hearts seemed to have stopped, all frozen in an
eerie tableau. Only the thumping seemed real.
 
329
 
**I was formed out of the random primal energy of
the cosmos," Brazil's voice came to them. "After
countless billions of years I achieved self-awareness.
I was the universe, and everything in it In the aeons I
started experimenting, playing with the random forces
around me. I formed matter and other types of energy.
I created time, and space. But soon I tired of even
those toys. I formed the galaxies, the stars, and planets.
An idea, and they were, as congealed primal energy
exploded and flung transmuted material outward from
its center,
 
"I watched things grow, and form, according to the
rules I set up. And yet, I tired of these, also. So I
created the Markovians and watched them develop ac-
cording to my plan. Yet, even then, the solution was
not satisfactory, for they knew and feared me, and
their equation was too perfect. I knew their total de-
velopmental line. So I changed it. I placed a random
factor in the Markovian equation and then withdrew
from direct contact.
 
"They grew, they developed, they evolved, they
changed. They forgot me and spread outward on
their own. But since they were spiritually reflections of
myseif, they contained my loneliness. I couldn't join
with them as I was, for they would hold me in awe
and fear. They, on the other hand, had forgotten me,
and as they rose materially they died spiritually. They
failed to grow to my equal, to end my loneliness.
Their pride would not admit such a being as myself
to fellowship, nor could their own fear and selfishness
allow fellowship even with each other.
 
"So I decided to become one of them. I fashioned a
Markovian shell, and entered it. I knew the flesh, its
joys and its pains. I tried to teach them what was
wrong, to tell them to face their inner fears, to rid
themselves of the disease, to look not to a material
heaven but within themselves for the answers. They
ignored me.
 
"And yet the potential was there. It is still there.
Wuju's response to kindness and caring. Varnett's self-
sacrifice. Vardia's need for others. Other examples
abound, not just about us, but about all our people.
The one who sacrifices his life to save others. The com-
 
330
 
passion there, sometimes almost buried by the over-
lying depravity. It peers through—isolated, perhaps,
but it is there. And as long as it is there, I shall con-
tinue. I shall work and hope for the day when some
race seizes that spark and builds on it, for only then
will I no longer be alone."
 
They said nothing for several seconds. Then, quietly,
Ortega responded, "I'm not sure I believe all this. I've
been a Catholic all my life, but somehow God to me
has never been a little spunky Jew named Nathan
Brazil. But, assuming what you say is true—which I
don't necessarily accept—why haven't you scrapped
everything and started again? And why continue to
live our grubby little lives?"
 
"As long as that spark is present, I'll let things
run, Serge," Brazil replied. "That random factor I
talked about. Only when it's gone will I go, give up,
maybe try again—maybe, finally die. I'd like to die,
Serge—but if I do I take everything with me. Not
just you, everybody and everything, for I stabilize the
universal equation. And you are all my children, and
I care. I can't do it as long as that spark remains, for
as long as it remains you are not only the worst, but
the best of me."
 
The thump, thump, thump continued, the only sound
in the room.
 
"I don't think you're God, Nate," Ortega replied
evenly. "I think you're crazy. Anybody would be, liv-
ing this long. I think you're a Markovian throwback,
crazy after a billion years of being cut off from your
own kind. If you was God, why don't you just wave
your tentacles or something and get what you want?
Why all this journey, and pain, and torment?"
 
"Varnett?" Brazil called. "You want to explain it
mathematically?"
 
"I'm not sure I don't agree with Ortega," Vamett
replied carefully. "Not that it makes much difference
from a practical point of view. However, I see what
you're driving at. It's the same dilemma we face at
that control board, there.
 
"Let's say we let Skander do what he wants, abolish
the Comworlds," the boy continued. "Let's say Brazil,
 
331 .
 
here, shows him exactly how to do it, just what to press
and in what sequence and in what order. But the Corn
concept and the Comworlds developed according to
the normal human flow of social evolution, right or
wrong. They are caused by countless past historical
events, conditions, ideas. You can't just banish them;
 
you've got to change the equation so that they never
developed. You have to change the whole human equa-
tion, all the past events that led to their formation.
The new line you created would be a completely dif-
ferent construct, things as they would be without any
of the crucial points that created the Corns. Maybe it
was an outlet Maybe, bad as it was, it was the only
outlet. Maybe man would have destroyed himself if
just one of those factors wasn't there. Maybe what
we'd have is something worse.**
 
"Exactly," Brazil agreed. "For anything major you
have to change the past, the whole structure. Nothing
just vanishes. Nothing just appears. We are the sum
of our past, good as well as bad."
 
"So what do we do?" wailed Skander. "What can
we do?"
 
"A few things can be done," Brazil replied calmly.
"You—most of you—sought power. Well, this is
power!" With that the Markovian moved toward the
control panel.
 
"My God! He's going in there!" Skander screamed.
"Shoot, you fools!" The Umiau fired its pistol at the
Markovian. In a second, the others followed, pouring
a concentrated energy pulse into the mass sufficient to
disintegrate a building.
 
The Markovian creature stopped, but seemed to ab-
sorb the energy. They poured it into him, all of them*
even Wuju, with great accuracy.
 
He was still there.
 
The Diviner's lights blinked rapidly, and searing
bolts shot out, striking the Markovian body. There was
a glow, surrounding the creature in stark outline, and
then it faded.
 
Brazil was still there.
 
They stopped firing.
 
"I told you you couldn't hurt me," Brazil said.
"None of you can hurt me."
 
332
 
"Bullshit!" Ortega spat. "Your body was torn to rib-
bons in Murithel! Why wasn't this one?"
 
"Of course! Of course!" Skander exclaimed excitedly.
"This body is a direct construct of the Markovian brain,
you fools! The brain won't allow it to be harmed, since
it's really part of the brain itself!"
 
"Quite so," Brazil responded. "Nor, in fact, do I
have to go in there at all. I can instruct the brain from
right here. I've been able to do that since we first
entered the Well itself. I merely wanted to give you a
demonstration."
 
"It would seem that we are at your mercy, Marko-
vian," The Rel said. "What is your intention?"
 
*'I can affect things for anyplace from here," Brazil
told them. "I merely feed the data into the brain
through this control room, and that's that. It's true
there's a control room for each type, but they are all-
purpose, in case of problems, overcrowding when we
built the place, and so on. Any control room can be
switched to any pattern."
 
"But you said—" Ortega started to protest.
 
"In the words of Serge Ortega," Brazil replied, a
hint of amusement in his voice, "I lied."
 
Wuju broke from them and ran up to him, and
prostrated herself in front of him, trembling. "Please!
Please don't hurt us," she pleaded.
 
There was infinite compassion in his voice. "I'm not
going to hurt you, Wuju. I'm the same Nathan Brazil
you knew from the start of this mess. I haven't changed,
except physically. I've done nothing to you, nothing
to deserve this. You know I wouldn't hurt you. I
couldn't." The tone changed to one not of bitterness,
but of deep hurt and agony, mixed with the loneliness
of unimaginable lifetimes. "/ didn't shoot at you,
Wuju," it said.
 
She started crying; deep, uncontrollable sobs
wracked her. "Oh, my god, Nathan! I'm so sorry! I
failed you! Instead of trust, I gave you fear! Oh, god!
I'm so ashamed! I just want to die!" she wailed.
 
Vardia came over to her, tried to comfort her. She
pushed the girl away.
 
"I hope you're satisfied!" Vardia spat at him. "I hope
 
333
 
you're pleased with yourself! Do anything you want to
me for saying this, but don't torture her anymore!"
 
Brazil sighed. "No one can torture someone like
that," he replied gently. "Like me, you can only tor-
ture yourself. Welcome to the broader human race,
Vardia. You showed compassion, disregard for your-
self, concern for another. That would have been un-
thinkable in the old Vardia. If none of you can still
understand, I intend to do something for you, not to
you. For the most part, anyway." He angled to address
all of them.
 
"You're not perfect, none of you. Perfection is the
object of the experiment, not the component Don't
torture yourself, run away from your fears. Face theml
Stand up to theml Fight them with goodness, mercy,
charity, compassion! Lick theml"
 
"We are the sum of our ancestral and actual past,"
The Rel reminded him. "What you ask may indeed
be possible, but the well of fate has accented our flaws.
Is it reasonable to expect us to live by such rules,
when we find it difficult even to comprehend them?"
 
"You can only try," Brazil told it. "There is a great-
ness in that, too."
 
The thump, thump, thump continued.
 
"What is that noise?" Onega asked, ever the practi-
cal man.
 
"The Well circuits are open to the brain," Brazil
replied. "It's awaiting instructions."
 
"And what will those instructions be?" Vamett
asked nervously.
 
"I must make some repairs and adjustments to the
brain," Brazil explained. "A few slight things, so that
no one can accidentally discover the keying equation
again. I'm not sure I'd like to go through this exercise
again—and, if I did, there's no guarantee that some
new person might not take that chance, damage the
structure, do irreparable harm to trillions who never
had a chance. But, just in case, the Well Access Gate
will be reset to respond only to me. Also more of an
insurance factor has to be added, to summon me if
things go wrong."
 
Skander gave an amazed chuckle. "That's all?" he
said, relieved.
 
334
 
"It is most satisfactory to me," The Rel pronounced.
"We were concerned only that nothing be disturbed.
For a short while there, we lost sight of that—but we
are back in control of ourselves again."
 
"Very minor adjustments are possible without dis-
turbing anything," Brazil told them. "I can't do any-
thing grandiose without upsetting a few things. I will,
however, do some minor adjustments. For one thing, I
am going to make sure that nothing like the Ambreza
gas that reduced Type Forty-one humans on this world
to apes will pass again, and I'm going to slap some
local controls on technological growth and develop-
ment, so that such an adjustment won't be necessary
again, not here.
 
"And, because I can't bear to see them like that, I'm
going to introduce a compound to the Type Forty-
one atmosphere that will break the gas molecules down
into harmless substances, while at the same time I'm
going to make it a nontechnological hex absolutely. I
don't know what they'll come up with, but I'll bet it's
better than their current lot."
 
"What about us?" Hain asked.
 
"I will not change what you are inside," Brazil told
them. "If I do that, you will not have lived at all. To
do anything otherwise would be to invite paradox, and
that might mess up everything. Thus, I have to deal
with you as you are."
 
Brazil seemed to think for a moment, then said, in a
voice that sounded as if it came from thunder, "Elkinos
Skander! You wanted to save the human race, but, m
the process, you became inhuman yourself. When the
end justifies any means, you are no better, perhaps
worse, than those you despise. There are seven bodies
back on Dalgonia. Seven human beings who died
trusting you, helping you, who were victims of your
own lust for power. I can't forget them. And, if I alter
the time line, bring them back, then all this didn't
happen. I pity you, Skander, for what you are, for what
you could have become. My instructions to the brain
are justice as a product of the past."
 
Skander yelled, "It wasn't me! It was Vamett! I
wanted to save the worlds! I wanted—"
 
And suddenly Skander wasn't there anymore.
 
335
 
"Where did it go?" The Rel asked.
 
*To a world suited for him as he is, in a form
suited to justice," Brazil responded. "He might be
happy there, he might find justice. Let him go to his
fate."
 
Brazil paused a moment, then that huge voice came
back. "Datham Ham!" it called. "You are the product
of a horrible life. Born in contagion, you spread it."
 
"I never had a chance except the way I took!" Hain
shouted defiantly. "You know that!"
 
"Most products of a bad environment turn out
worse," Brazil admitted. "And yet, some of the greatest
human beings came out of such miserable lots and
conquered them. You didn't, yet you had the intelli-
gence and potential to do so. Today, you stand as a
contagion. I pity you, Hain, and because I pity you I
will give you a localized wish."
 
Hain grew slightly larger, her black color turning to
white. She saw it in the fur on her forelegs.
 
"You turned me noble!" she exclaimed, pleased and
relieved.
 
"You're the most beautiful breeder in the kingdom of
the Akkafians," Brazil said. "When I return you to the
palace, you won't be recognized. You'll be at the start
of a breeding cycle. The Baron Azkfru will see you
and go mad with desire. You will be his brood queen,
and bear his royal young. That is your new destiny,
Hain. Satisfied?"
 
"It is all that I could hope for," Hain replied, and
vanished.
 
Wuju looked at Brazil, a furious expression on her
face. "You gave that son of a bitch that? How could
you reward that—that monster?"
 
"Hain gets the wish, but it's not a reward, Wuju,"
Brazil replied. "You see, they withheld from their new-
comer one fact of Akkafian life. Most Marklings are
sterile, and they do the work. A few are raised as
breeders. A breeder hatches a hundred or more young
—but they hatch inside the mother's body and eat their
way out, using the breeder's body for their food."
 
Wuju started to say something, then formed a sim-
ple, "Ooooh," as the horror of Ham's destiny hit her.
 
336
 
"Slelcronian!" Brazil pronounced. '*You present me
with a problem. I don't like your little civilization per-
sonally, and I don't like you much, either. I've adjusted
things slightly, so the Recorders now only work with
Slelcronians, not with any sentient plant. But you, per-
sonally—you're a problem. You're too dangerous to
be let loose in the technology of Czill; you know too
much. At the same time, you know too much of what
is here to go back to Slelcron. It occurs to me, how-
ever, that you've really not altered the expedition in any
significant way. If you had not taken over Vardia,
nothing would have changed. Therefore, you didn't—
and, in fact, couldn't."
 
Nothing seemed to change, but there was a differ-
ence in the Czillian body.
 
"So what are you going to do with me and my sister?"
Vardia the Czillian asked. As far as everyone in the
room was concerned, except for Brazil, the SIelcroman
takeover had never happened. Slelcron was merely the
funny place of the flowers and the giant bees, and their
passage had been uneventful. Even so, the human
Vardia had found her sister the Czillian as cold as the
Slelcronian had been. She had gone through the same
mental anguish as she had before and felt alienated
from her sister.
 
Everything was as it had been before.
"Vardia, you are your old self, and no longer your
sister," Brazil pointed out. "I think you'd be happiest
returning to Czill, to the Center. You've much to con-
tribute, to tell this story the way it happened. They
won't be able to make use of what you say to get in,
but it may cause the thinkers there to consider what
projects are really worthwhile. Go!"
She vanished.
 
Now only Brazil, The Diviner and The Rel, Vamett,
Wu Julee, Ortega, and the original Vardia were left.
 
"Diviner and Rel," Brazil said, "your race intrigues
me. Bisexual, two totally different forms which mate
into one organism, one of which has the power and the
other the sensory input and output. You're a good peo-
ple, with a lot of potential. Perhaps you can carry the
message and reach that plateau."
 
"You're sending us back, then?" The Rel asked.
 
"No," Brazil replied. "Not to the hex. Your race is
on the verge of expanding outward in its sector. It is
near the turning point where questions of goals are
asked. I'm sending you to your own people on their
world with the message I gave you here. The Diviner's
gift will distinguish you. Perhaps you can turn your
people, perhaps not. It's up to you. Go!"
 
The Diviner and The Rel vanished.
 
"Vamett," Brazil said, and the boy jerked as if he
was shot.
 
"What's in that little bag of tricks for me, Brazil?"
he asked with false bravado.
 
"There are degrees of Comworids, some better than
others," Brazil noted- "Yours isn't too far gone yet.
Even Vardia's can change. The worst of the lot is
Dedalus. It went the genetic engineering route, you
know. Everyone looks alike, talks alike, thinks alike.
They kept males and females, sort of, but the engineers
thought of even that. The people are hermaphroditic
—small male genitals atop a vagina below. They breed
once, in an exchange, then lose all sexual desires and
prowess. Each has one child, which is, of course, identi-
cal to the parents, turned over to and raised by the
state. It's a grotesque anthill, but it may represent the
 
future.
 
"They don't even have names there. Obedience and
contentment are engineered into them. Yet, the Central
Committee retains power. This small group retains its
sexual abilities, and the members are slightly different.
The population is programmed to obey any one of
those leaders unquestionably. The Committee was a
perfect target, and they're controlled by the sponge
syndicate. That sort of genetic engineering is, I fear,
what the spongers have in mind for everyone eventu-
ally—with themselves on top.
 
"I give you the chance to change things. As the
Mumies did with me, I do to you. You will be the
Chairman of the Central Committee of Paradise, for-
merly called Dedalus. You'll be the new Chairman. The
old one just kicked the bucket, and you're now un-
frozen to take command. If you meant what you told
me, you can kick the spongers out of their most secure
planethold and restore that planet to individual mitia-
 
338
 
rive. The revolution will be easy—the people will
obey unquestionably. Your example and efforts could
dissuade others from taking the Dedalus course. It's up
to you. You're in charge."
 
"What happens to the new Chairman's mind?" Var-
nett asked. "And my body?"
 
"Even swap," Brazil told him. "The new boy will
wake up a bat over in your old hex. He'll make out.
He's born to command."
 
"Not that madhouse," Vamett chuckled. "Okay, I
accept."
 
"Very good," Brazil told mm. "But, I leave you this
out. Should you ever want, any Markovian Gate will
open for you—to bring you back here, for good. You'll
be in a new body, so nobody knows what you would
wind up as. You'd be here until you died, but you
have that option."
 
Vamett nodded soberly. "Okay. I think I under-
stand," he said, and vanished.
 
"Serge Ortega," Brazil sighed. "What in hell am I
going to do with an old rascal like you?"
 
"Oh. hell, Nate, what's the difference?" Ortega re-
sponded, and he meant it. "This time you won."
 
"Are you really happy here, Serge? Or was that just
part of the act?"
 
"I'm happy," the snakeman replied. "Hell, Nate, I
was so damned bored back in the old place I was
ready to kill myself. It's gotten too damned civilized,
and I was too old to go frontier. I got here, and I've
had a ball for eighty years. Even though I lost this
round, it's been great fun. I wouldn't have missed it for
the world."
 
Brazil chuckled. "Okay, Serge."
 
Ortega vanished.
 
"Where did you send him?" Vardia aeked hesitantly.
 
"Eighty's about the average life span for a Ulik,"
Brazil replied. "Serge didn't start as an egg, so he's a
very old man. He has a year, five, maybe ten. I
wouldn't put tt past him to beat the system, but why
the hell not? Let him go back to living and having
 
f     1»                                                             DO
 
fun.
 
"And so that leaves us," Wuju said quietly.
There was a sudden flicker in the image of the
 
339
 
Markovian, then a sparkling graininess. The shape
twirled, changed, and suddenly standing there in front
of them was the old, human Nathan Brazil, in the
colorful clothes he had first worn on the ship a life-
time ago.
 
"Oh, my god!" Wuju breathed, looking as if she
were seeing a ghost.
 
"The God act's over," he said, sounding relieved.
"You should see who you're really dealing with."
 
"Nathan?" Wuju said hesitantly, starting forward.
He put up his hand and stopped her, sighing,
 
"No, Wuju. It couldn't work. Not now. Not after
all this. It wouldn't work anyway. Both of you deserve
much better than life's given you. There are others like
you, you know—people who never had the chance
to grow, as you did. They can use a little kindness, and
a lot of caring. You know the horrors of the sponge,
Wuju, and the abuse to which some human beings sub-
ject others. And you, Vardia, know the lies that
underlie the Corn philosophy. I've talked to both of
you, observed you both carefully. I've fed all this
information plus as much data as could be obtained
from a readout by the brain while you were in this
room. The brain responded with recommendations on
what would be best for you. If we're wrong—the brain
and I—after a trial of what I'm going to do, then you
both have the same option that is open to Vamett.
Just get near a Markovian Gate—you don't have to
jump into it. Just get passage on a ship going near a
Markovian world. If you want, the Gate will pluck you
out without disturbing the ship, passengers, or crew.
You'll somehow mysteriously vanish. And you'll wind
up in Zone again. Like Varnett, you will have to take
potluck with the Zone Gate again. Once here, again,
there will be no returning.
 
"But try it my way for a while. And remember
what I said about your own contributions. Two people
can change a world, if they wish."
 
"But what—" Wuju started to ask, but was cut off
in midsentence.
 
The two bodies didn't vanish, they just collapsed,
like a suit of clothes with the owner gone. They lay
there in a heap on the floor.
 
340
 
Brazil went over and carefully rearranged them so
they looked as if they were sleeping.
 
"Well, now what, Brazil?" he asked himself, his voice
echoing in the empty hall.
 
You go back, and you wait, his mind told him.
 
What about the bodies? he wondered. Somehow he
couldn't just vaporize them. Though their owners were
gone, they lived on as empty vegetables.
 
But there was nothing else to do, of course. They
were just memories for him now, one a strange mixture
of love and anguish. He was prolonging the inevitable.
 
There was a crackle, and the bodies were gone,
back to primal energy.
 
"Oh. the hell with it," said Nathan Brazil, and he,
too, vanished.
 
The control room was empty. The Markovian brain
noted the fact and then dutifully turned off the lights.
 
On "Earth," a Planet Circling
a Star Near the Outermost Edge
of the Galaxy Andromeda
 
ONE MOMENT ELKINOS SKANDER HAD BEEN PERCHED
 
atop Hain's back, looking at the control room and those
in it. Then, suddenly, he wasn't.
 
He looked around. Things looked funny and dis-
torted. He was color-blind except for a sepia tone that
lent itself to everything.
 
He looked around, confused. I've gone through an-
other change, he realized. My last one.
 
A rather pleasant-looking place, he thought, once
he got used to the distorted vision. Forests over there,
some high mountains, odd-looking grass, and strange
sort of trees, but that was to be expected.
 
There were a lot of animals around, mostly grazing.
They look a lot like deer, he noted, surprised. A few
differences, but they would not look out of place on a
pastoral human world.
 
341
 
He looked down at himself, and saw the shadow of
his head on the grass.
 
I'm one of them, he suddenly realized with a
shock. I'm a deer. No antlers like those big males over
there, so I must be a doe.
 
A deer? he thought quizzically.
 
Why a deer?
 
He was still meditating on this, when suddenly the
grass seemed to explode with yells and strange shapes;
 
great, rectangular bodies with their facial features in
their chest, and big, big teeth.
 
He watched as the Mumies singled out a large doe
not far from him and surrounded it. Suddenly they
speared it several times, and it went down in wordless
agony and lay twitching on the ground, blood running,
but still alive.
 
The Muraies pounced on it, tearing at it, eating it
alive.
 
To be eaten alive! he thought, stunned, and suddenly
blind panic overtook him. He started running, running
away from the scene.
 
Up ahead another band of Mumies leaped out of
nowhere and cornered another deer, started to devour
it.
 
They're all over! he realized. This is their world! I'm
just food to them!
 
He ran narrowly avoiding entrapment several times.
There were thousands of them here, and they all were
hungry.
 
And even as he ran in exhausted, dizzy circles, he
knew that even if he avoided them today he would have
to avoid them tomorrow, and the day after, and the day
after, and wherever he ran on this planet there would
be more of them.
 
Sooner or later they'll get me! he thought in panic.
By god! I'll not be eaten alive! I'll cheat Brazil of his
revenge!
 
He reached the highlands by carefully pulling him-
self together.
 
Now that he had decided on a course of action, he
 
felt calm.
 
There! Up ahead! his mind said joyfully. He stopped
and looked over the edge of the cliff.
 
342
 
Over a kilometer straight down to the rocks, he
saw with satisfaction. He ran. back a long ways, then
turned toward the cliff. With strong resolve, he ran with
all his might toward the cliff and hurled himself over it
 
He saw the rocks coming up to me&t him, but felt
only the slight shock of pain.
 
Skander awoke. The very fact that he awoke was a
shock, and he looked around,
 
He was back on that plain at the edge of the forest
His shadow told him.
 
He was a deer again.
 
No! his mind screamed in horror. /'// cheat the bas-
tard yet! Somehow I'll cheat him!
 
But there were a lot of deer and a lot of Mumies on
that world, and Skander still had six more times to die.
 
Paradise, Once Called Dedalus,
a Planet Near Sirius
 
VARNETT GROANED, THEN OPENED HIS EYES. HE FELT
 
cold. He looked around him and saw a number of peo-
ple peering at him anxiously.
 
They all looked exactly alike. They didn't even look
particularly male or female. Slight breasts and nipples,
but nothing really female. Their bodies were lithe and
muscular, sort of a blend of masculine and feminine.
 
All of them had small male genitals where they
should be, but, from his vantage point, he could see a
small cavity beneath them.
 
None of them had any body hair.
 
K you did it upside down and the other was right
side up, he thought, you could give and receive at the
same time.
 
"Are you all right?" one asked in a voice that
sounded like a man's voice but with a feminine lilt
 
343
 
"Do you feel all right?" another asked in the identi-
cal voice.
 
"I—I think so," he replied hesitantly, and sat up.
"A little dizzy, that's all."
 
"That will pass," the other said. "How's your mem-
ory?"
 
"Shaky," he replied carefully. "I'm going to need a
refresher."
 
"Easily done," the other replied.
 
He started to ask them their names, then suddenly
remembered. They didn't use names on his planet
 
His planet! His!
 
"I'd like to get right to work," he told them.
 
"Of course," another replied, and they led him from
the sterile-looking infirmary down an equally sterile
corridor. He followed them, got into an elevator, and
they rode up to the top floor.
 
The top floor, it seemed, was an office complex.
Workers were everywhere, filing things, typing things,
using computer terminals.
 
Everybody else was slightly smaller than he was, he
realized. Not much, but in a world where everyone
was absolutely identical such a slight difference was as
noticeable as if Cousin Bat had entered the room.
 
His office was huge and well-appointed. White wall-
to-wall carpeting, so thick and soft his bare feet prac-
tically bounced off it. There was a huge desk, and great
high-backed chair. No other furnishings,, he noted, al-
though their lack made the place look barren.
 
"Bring me a summary of the status of the major
areas of the planet," he ordered. "And then leave me
for a while to study them."
 
They bowed slightly, and left. He looked out the
glass window that was the wall in back of his desk.
 
A complex of identical buildings stretched out before
him. Broad, tree-lined streets, some small parkland,
and lots of identical-looking shapes walking about on
various business.
 
The sky was an off-blue, not the deepness of his na-
tive world, but it was attractive. There were some
fleecy clouds in the sky, and, off in the distance, he
saw signs of cultivated land. It looked like a rich,
peaceful, and productive place, he thought. Of course,
 
344
 
weather and topography would cause changes in the
life-styles planet-wide, but he wagered those differ-
ences were minimal.
 
The aides returned with sheaves of folders bulging
with papers. He acknowledged them curtly, and
ordered them out
 
There were no mirrors, but the lighting reflected
him in the glass windows.
 
He looked just like them, only about fifty millimeters
taller and proportionately slightly larger.
 
He felt his male genitals. They had the same feel as
the ones he had had as Cousin Bat, he thought.
 
He reached a little lower, and found the small vagi-
nal cavity.
 
He spread some papers around to make it look as if
he had been studying them. He would, in time, of
course, but not now.
 
He saw a small intercom on the desk and buzzed it,
taking a seat in the big chair. At the far end of the
room a clerk almost beat the track records entering,
coming up to the desk and standing at full attention.
 
"I have found indications," he told the clerk seri-
ously, "that several members of the Presidium may be
ill. I want a team of rural doctors—based, as far as
possible, away from here—to be brought to my of-
fice as soon as possible. I want that done exactly and
at once. How long before they can get here?"
 
"If you want them from as far away from govern-
ment centers as possible, ten hours," the clerk replied
crisply.
 
"All right, then," he nodded. "As soon as they ar-
rive they are to see me—and no one else. No one is
even to know that they have been sent for. I mean ab-
solutely no one, not even the rest of the office."
 
"I shall attend to it personally. Chairman," re-
sponded the clerk, and turned to leave. So much for
the spongies, he thought.
 
"Clerk!" he called suddenly, and the other halted
and turned.
 
"Chairman?"
 
"How do I arrange to have sex?"
 
The clerk looked surprised and bemused. "Whenever
 
345  -
 
the Chairman wishes, of course. It is a great honor for
any citizen."
 
"I want the best specimen here in five minutesi"
he ordered.
 
"Yes, Chairman,'* responded the clerk knowingly.
and left.
 
His eyes sparkled, and he rubbed his hands to-
gather gleefully, thinking about what was to come.
 
Suddenly Nathan Brazil's visage arose from the cor-
ners of his mind.
 
He said he'd give me my chance, he thought seri-
ously. And I'll make good on it. This world will be
changed!
 
The door opened, and another inhabitant of Para-
dise entered.
 
"Yes?" he snapped.
 
"I was told to report to you by the clerk," the new-
comer said.
 
He smiled. The world would be changed, yes—
but not right away, he thought. Not until I've had much
more fun.
 
"Come on over here," he said lightly. "You're about
to be honored."
 
On the Frontier—
Harvlch's World
 
HE GROANED, AND OPENED HIS EYES. AN OLDER MAN
 
in overalls and checkered shirt, smelly and with a
 
three-days* growth of beard, was bending over him,
 
looking anxious.
"Kally? You hear me, boy? Say somethin'!** the old
 
man urged, shouting at him.
 
He groaned. "God! I feel lousy!" he managed.
The old man smiled. "Good! Good!'* he enthused.
 
"I was afeared we'd lost you, there. That was quite a
 
crack on the nog you took!"
 
346
 
Kally felt the left side of his head. There was a knot
under the hair, and some dried blood. It hurt—
throbbed, really.
 
"Try to stand up," the old man urged, and gave
hum a hand. He took it, and managed to stand shakily.
 
"How do ya feel, boy?" the old man asked.
 
"My head hurts," he complained. "Otherwise—
well, weak but okay."
 
"Told ya ya shoulda got a good gal ta help with the
farm," the old man scolded. "Ifn I hadn'ta happened
along you'd be dead now."
 
The man looked around, puzzled. It was a farm, he
saw. Some chickens about, a ramshackle barn with a
couple of cows, and an old log shack. It looked like
corn growing in the fields.
 
"Somethin' wrong, Kally?" the old man asked.
 
"I—uh, who are you?" he asked hesitantly. "And
where am I?"
 
The old man looked concerned. "That bump on the
noggin's scrambled your brains, boy. Better get into
town and see a doctor on it."
 
"Maybe you're right," the other agreed. "But I still
don't know who you are, where I am—or who I
am."
 
"Must be magnesia or somethin'," the old man said,
concerned. "I'll be damned. Heard about it, but never
seed it afore. Hell, boy, you're Kally Tonge, and since
your pa died last winter you've run this farm here
alone. You was borned here on Harvich," he explained,
pronouncing it Harrige, "and you damned near died
here." He pointed to the ground.
 
He looked and saw an irrigation pump with com-
pressor. Obviously he had been tightening the top hold-
ing nut with the big wrench and had kicked the thing
into start. The wrench had whirled around and
caught him on the head.
 
He looked at it strangely, knowing what it must
mean.
 
"Will you be all right?" the old man asked concern-
edly. "I got to run down the road or the old ladyll
throw a fit, but if ya want I can send somebody back
to take ya inta the doc's."
 
347
 
"I'll see him," Kally replied. "But let me get cleaned
up first. How—how far is it into town?"
 
"Christ, Kally! Ya even talk a little funny!" the old
man exclaimed. "But Depot's a kilometer and a half
down the road there." He pointed in the right direction.
 
Kally Tonge nodded. "I'll go in. K you get a head
injury, it's best to walk. Just check back in a little
while, just in case. I'll be all right"
 
"Well, okay," the old man responded dubiously.
"But if I don't hear ya got in town, I'm comin' lookin',"
he warned, then walked back to the road.
 
He's riding a horse! Kally thought wonderingly.
And the road's dirt!
 
He turned and went into the shack.
 
It was more modern than he would have guessed,
although small. A big bed with natural fur blankets in
one comer, a sink, a gas stove—bottled gas under-
neath, he noted—and the water was probably from a
water tank near the barn. A big fireplace, and a crude
indoor shower.
 
There was a small refrigerator, too, running off what
would have been a tractor battery if he had had a
tractor.
 
He noted the toilet in one comer, and went over to
it. Above it hung a cracked mirror, some scissors, and
toiletries.
 
He looked at himself in the mirror.
 
His was a strong, muscular, handsome face in a
rugged sort of way. The hair was long and tied off in
a ponytail almost a meter long, and he had a full but
neatly trimmed beard and mustache. The hair was
brown, but the beard was reddish.
 
He turned his head, saw that the knot was almost
invisible in the hair. Brushing it back revealed an ugly
wound.
 
He died in that accident, he thought Kally Tonge
died of that wound. And I filled the empty vessel.
 
He stripped and took the mirror off its nail hanger,
looking at himself. He saw a nigged, muscular body,
well toned and used to work. There were calluses on
the hands, worn in from hard farm labor.
 
The wound did hurt, and while he was certain it
wouldn't be serious now, it would be better to go into
 
348
 
town. It would also help to explain his mental lapses.
 
He put on a thick wool shirt and work pants, and
some well-worn leather boots, and went back outside.
 
The place was interesting, really. It looked like
something out of ancient history, yet had indoor
plumbing, electricity, albeit crude, and several other
signs of civilization. In the midst of this primitive-
ness, he noticed with amusement that he wore a fancy
wristwatch.
 
It was not cold, but there was a chill in the wind
that made bim glad he had picked the thicker shirt.
They were short on rain here, he noted; the dirt road
was rutted and dug up, yet dry and caked.
 
He walked briskly down the road toward the town,
looking at the scenery. Small farms were the rule, and
many looked far more modem than his. There wasn't
much traffic, but occasional people passed on horse-
back or in buckboards, giving him the impression that
modem vehicles were either in short supply or banned.
 
And yet, despite the lack of recent rain, the land was
good. The tilled soil was black and mineral-rich, and
where small compressors pumped water from wells or
nearby creeks into irrigation ditches, the land bloomed.
 
He came upon the town much faster than he had
anticipated. He didn't feel the least bit tired or uncom-
fortable, and he had walked with a speed that as-
tonished him. The town itself was a study in contrasts.
Log buildings, some as tall as five stories, mixed with
modem, prefabricated structures. The street wasn't
paved, but it went for several blocks, with a block or
two on either side of the business district composed of
houses, mostly large and comfortable. There was street
lighting, and some of the businesses had electric signs,
so there was a power plant somewhere, and, from the
look of things, running water and indoor plumbing.
 
He studied some of the women, most of whom were
dressed in garb much like his own, sometimes with
small cowboy hats or straw broad-brimmed hats on
their heads. There weren't nearly as many women as
men, he noted, and those that were here looked tough,
muscular, and mannish.
 
The town was small enough so that he spotted
the doctor's office with no difficulty and headed for it.
 
349
 
The doctor was concerned. He had quite a modem
facility, with a minor surgery and some of the latest
machines and probes. Clearly medical care was well
into the modem era here. The X-rays showed a severe
concussion and fracture. The doctor marveled that he
was alive at all, as he placed medication and a small
bandage on the wound after sewing seven stitches.
 
"Get somebody to stay with you the next few days,
or look in on you regularly," the doctor advised. "Your
loss of memory's probably only temporary, and not
that uncommon in these cases. But a lot of damage
was done. The brain was bruised, and I want someone
to see that you don't have a clot in there."
 
He thanked the doctor, assuring him that he would
take care of himself and be watched and checked.
 
"Settle the bill at the end of the month," the doctor
told him.
 
This puzzled him for a minute. The bill? Money?
He had never used it himself, and, back on the street,
he pulled out a thin leather wallet, which looked like
the survivor of a war, and opened it.
 
Funny-looking pieces of paper, about a dozen of
them. They had very realistic pictures, almost three-
dimensional, on them, the fronts showing the same man
three times, the others two other men and a woman.
The backs showed a remarkably realistic set of farm
scenes. He wished he could read the bills. He would
have to find out what each, one was and remember the
pictures.
 
A three-story log building's lights went on in the
coming twilight, and he saw from the symbol on the
sign that it was a bar and something else. He didn't
recognize the other symbol, and couldn't read the
words. Curious, he walked over to it.
 
There was a rumbling of thunder in the distance.
 
She awoke, feeling nauseated, and threw up.
The bile spilled on the cheap rug, and in it, as she
 
gagged uncontrollably, she could see bits and pieces
 
and even whole pills of some kind.
 
The spasms lasted several minutes, until it seemed
 
there was nothing else to give. Feeling weak and ex-
 
350
 
hausted, she lay back on the bed until the room
steadied. The stench of the bile permeated her.
 
Slowly, she looked around- A tiny room, with noth-
ing but a bed much too large for it and a wicker chair.
There was barely fifty centimeters' clearance on either
side of it.
 
The walls and ceiling seemed to be made of logs,
but the construction was so solid it might as well have
been rock. It was dark in the room, and she looked
for a light. Spying a string hanging above her, she
pulled it, and a weak, naked light bulb suspended from
the ceiling flicked on. The glare hurt her eyes.
 
She raised her head slightly and looked down at her
body. Something was definitely different.
 
Two extremely large but perfectly formed breasts
met her eye, and her skin seemed creamy smooth,
dark-complexioned but unpigmented.
 
Her gaze slid down a little more, and she saw that
the rest of her body matched the breasts—curving
in all the right places, definitely.
 
She felt—strange. Tingly all over, but particularly
in the areas of her breasts and crotch.
 
She was nude from the waist up, but hanging on
sultry hips was a pantslike garment of fine-woven
black lace, to which hundreds of tiny sequins of
various colors were attached.
 
She felt her face, and found that she had some sort
of hairdo. There were also long, plastic earrings hang-
ing from pierced ears.
 
She looked around in the gloom, found a small cos-
metics case with a mirror in it, and looked at her face.
 
It is a beautiful face, she thought, and she was not
being vain. Maybe the most beautiful face I've ever
seen. Cosmetics had been carefully applied to bring out
just the right highlights, but the face was so perfect
that they seemed almost intrusive on its beauty.
 
But whose face was it? she wondered.
 
She noticed a box next to the cosmetics case on the
floor, and picked it up idly. It was a pillbox—open,
and empty. There was a universal caution symbol on it,
but she couldn't read the writing. She didn't need to.
 
This girl, whoever and whatever she was, had killed
herself. She had taken all those pills and overdosed.
She had died here, in this room, moments before—
 
351
 
alone. And the moment that girl had died, she had
been somehow inserted into the body, and the physical
processes righted.
 
She stared again at that beautiful face in the nun-or.
What would make someone who looked like this
and experienced such feelings as she now did commit
suicide? So very young, she thought—perhaps no more
than sixteen or seventeen. And so very beautiful.
 
She tried to get up, but felt suddenly light-headed
and strange. She flopped back down on the bed and
stared up at the light bulb, which, for some reason,
had become fascinating.
 
She found herself gently caressing her own body,
and it felt fantastic, like tingling jolts of pleasure at
each nerve juncture.
 
It's the pills, a corner of her mind told her. You
didn't get all of them out of your system.
 
The door opened suddenly, and a man looked in.
He was dressed in white work clothes, like kitchen
help. He was balding and fiftyish, but he had a tough,
hard look to him. "Okay, Nova, time to—M he
began, then stopped and looked at her, the empty box,
and the bile and vomited-up pills on the floor and the
side of her bed.
 
"Oh, shit!" he snarled angrily, and exploded. "You
went for the happy pills again, didn't you? I warned
you, dammiti I wondered why a sexy high-top like
you would work this jerkwater! They tossed you out of
the others!" He stopped, bis tone going from fury to
disgust.
 
"You're no good to anybody, not even yourself,"
he snapped. "I told you if you did this again, I'd toss
you in the street. Come on! You hear me?" he started
yelling. "You're going out and now! Come on, get upl"
 
She heard him, but the words didn't register. He
looked and sounded somehow funny, and she laughed
and pointed to him, giggling stupidly.
 
He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her up.
"Jesus!'* he exclaimed. "You're a hell of a piece. Too
bad your insides don't match your outsides. Come
on!"
 
He pulled her out into the hall and dragged her
down a flight of wooden stairs. She felt as if she were
 
352
 
floating, and made flying motions with her free arm
and motor sounds with her voice.
 
A few other young women peered out from second-
floor rooms. None of 'em pretty as me, she thought
smugly.
 
"Stop that giggling!" the man commanded, but it
sounded so funny she giggled more.
 
The downstairs was a bar, some sawdust on the
floor, a few round tables, and a small service bar to
one side. It was dimly lit, and empty.
 
"Oh, hell," he said, almost sadly, reaching into a
cash drawer behind the bar. "You ain't even earned
your keep here, and you bumed your clothes on the
last flyer. Here—fifty reals," he continued, stuffing
a few bills in the lace panty. "When you come to out
in the street or the woods or the sheriff's office, buy
some clothes and a ticket out. I've had it!"
 
He picked her up as if she weighed nothing, and,
opening the door with one hand, tossed her rudely into
the darkening street. The chilly air and the hard landing
brought her down a bit, and she looked around, feeling
lost and alone.
 
She suddenly didn*t want to be seen. Although there
were few people about, there were some nearby who
would see her in a few moments. She saw a dark alley-
way between the bar and a store and crawled into it.
It was very dark and cold, and smelled a little of old
garbage. But at least she was concealed.
 
Suddenly the streetlights popped on, and deepened
the shadows in which she sat confused. The shock
of where she was and her situation broke through into
her conscious mind. She was still high, and her body
still tingled, particularly when rubbed. She still wanted
to rub it, but she was aware of her circumstances.
 
I'm alone in a crazy place I don't know, practically
nude and with the temperature dropping fast, she
thought miserably. How much worse can things get?
 
As if in answer, there was a rumbling and a series
of static discharges, and the temperature dropped even
more.
 
Tears welled up in her eyes, and she started crying
at the helplessness of her position. She had never been
more miserable in her life.
 
353
 
A man was crossing the street, walking toward the
bar. He stopped suddenly. Lightning flashed, illuminat-
ing her for a brief moment. He looked puzzled, and
came toward the alley. She was folded up* arms around
her knees, head down against them. She rocked as she
 
cried.
He saw her and stared in disbelief. Now what the
 
hell? he thought.
He reached out and touched her bare shoulder, and
 
she started, looked up at him, saw the concern on his
 
face.
 
"What's the matter, little lady?" he asked gently.
She looked up with anguished face and started to
 
speak, but couldn't.
 
She was, even in this state, the most beautiful thing
 
he had ever seen.
 
"Nothing's that bad," he tried to soothe her. ''Where
 
do you live? I'll take you home. You're not hurt, are
 
you?"
 
She shook her head negatively, and coughed a little.
 
''N0, no." she managed. "Don't have a home. Thrown
 
out."
He squatted next to her. The lightning and thunder
 
continued, but the rain held off still.
 
"Come on with me, then,'* he said in that same soft
tone. "I've got a place just down the road. Nobody
there but me. You can stay until you decide what to
 
do"
Her head shook in confusion. She didn*t know what
 
to do. Could she trust him? Dare she take this oppor-
tunity?
 
A strange, distant voice whispered in her brain. It
said, "Can you feel it? Fear, greed, horror, ambition,
burning within you, consuming you! . . . Perfection is
the object of the experiment, not the component. . . .
Don't torture yourself, run away from your fears. Face
them! Stand up to them! Fight them with goodness,
mercy, charity, compassion. . . ."
 
And trust? she wondered suddenly. Oh, hell! What
have I got to lose if I go? What do I have if I don't?
 
"I'll go," she said softly. He helped her up, gently,
carefully, and brushed the dirt off her. He's very big,
she realized. I only come up to his neck.
354
 
"Come on," he urged, and took her hand.
 
She hesitated. "I don't want—want to go out there
looking like this," she said nervously.
 
"There's nothing wrong with the way you look," he
replied in a tone that had nothing if not sincerity.
"Nothing at all. Besides, the storm's about to break, I
think. Most folks will stay inside."
 
Again she looked uncertain. "What about us?" she
asked. "Won't we get wet?"
 
"There's shelter along the way," he said casually.
"Besides, a little water won't hurt."
 
She let him lead her down the deserted street of the
town, and out into the countryside. The storm continued
to be visual and audible, but not as yet wet. The
landscape seemed eerie, illuminated in the flashes.
 
The temperature had dropped from about fifteen
degrees Celsius to around eight degrees due to the
storm. She shivered.
 
He looked at her, concerned, feeling the tremors in
her hand.
 
"Want my shirt?" he asked.
 
"But then you'll be cold," she protested.
 
"I like cold weather," he responded, taking off his
shirt. His broad, muscled, hairy chest reactivated
those funny feelings in her again. Carefully he draped
the shirt around her. It fit her like a circus tent, but it
felt warm and good.
 
She didn't know what to say, and something, some
impulse, caused her to lean into him and put her arm
around his bare chest. He responded by putting his
arm around her, and they resumed walking.
 
Somehow it felt good, canning, and her anxieties
seemed to flee. She looked up at him. "What's your
name?" she asked in a tone of voice she didn't quite
comprehend, but was connected, somehow, in its
throaty softness to those strange feelings.
 
"W——" he started to say, then said, instead,
"Kally Tonge. I have a farm not much farther dowa
the road.**
 
She noticed the bandage on the side of his head.
"You're injured."
 
"It's nothing—now," he replied, and chuckled. "As
a matter of fact, you're just what the doctor ordered
 
355
 
—literally. He said somebody should be with me
through the night."
 
"Does it hurt much?" she asked.
 
"Not now," he replied. "Medicine's pretty advanced
here, although as you know the place is rather primitive
overall."
 
"I really don't know much about this world," she
replied truthfully. "I'm not from here."
 
"I could have guessed that," he said lightly. "Where
do you come from?"
 
"I don't think you've ever heard of it," she replied.
"From nowhere now, really."
 
"What's your name?" he asked.
 
She started to say "Nova," the name the man had
called her, but instead she said, "Vardia."
 
He stopped and looked at her strangely. "That's a
Corn name, isn't it?" he asked. "You're not from any
Comworld!"
 
"Sort of," she replied enigmatically, "but I've
changed a lot."
 
"On the Well World?" he asked sharply.
 
She gasped, a small sound of surprise escaping her
lips. "You—you're one of the people from the Well!"
she exclaimed. "You woke up in that body, as I did!
That head wound killed Kally Tonge and you took
over, as I did!"
 
"Twice when I needed someone you comforted me,
even defended me," he said.
 
"Wuju!" she exclaimed, and an amazed smile
spread over her face. She looked him over critically.
"My, how you've changed!"
 
"No more than you," he replied, shaking his head
wonderingly. "Wow!"
 
"But—but, why a man?" she asked.
 
His face grew serious. "I'll tell you sometime. But,
good old Nathan! He sure came through!"
 
The storm broke, then, and the rain started coming
down heavily.
 
They were both soaked through in seconds, and her
fancy hairdo collapsed. He laughed, and she laughed,
and he picked her up and started running in the mud.
Just ahead he saw his shack, outlined in the lightning
flashes, but he misjudged the turn to his walk with his
 
356
 
burden. They both tumbled into the road, splashing
around and covered with thick black mud.
 
"You all right?" he shouted over the torrent.
 
"I'm drowning in mudi" she called back, and they
both got up, laughing at each other.
 
"The barn's closer!" he shouted. "See it over there?
Run for it!"
 
He started off, and she followed, the rain getting
heavier and heavier. He reached the door way ahead
of her, and slid it aside on its rollers. She reached it,
and they both fell in. The place had an eerie, hol-
low sound, the rain beating on the sheet-metal roof
and wood sides of the barn. It was dark, and smelled
like the barn it was. A few cows mooed nervously in
their stalls.
 
"Wooj?" she called.
 
"Here," he said, near her, and she turned.
 
"Might as well sit it out here," he told her. "There's
a pile of hay over there, and it's a thousand meters to

the shack. Might as well not go through the deluge
twice."
 
"Okay," she replied, exhausted, and plopped into
the hay. The rain continued to beat a percussion sym-
phony on the bam.
 
He plopped beside her. She was fussing with her
lace pants.
 
"The mud's all caked in them, and the sequins are
scratching me," she said. "Might as well get them off,
for all the good they'll do as clothing anyway, even if
they are all I've got in the world."
 
She did, and they lay for a while side by side.. He
put his arm around her and fondled her breast.
 
"That feels good," she whispered. "Is—is that what
I've been feeling? I thought it was still the pills. Is
this what you felt with Brazil?"
 
"I'll be damned!" he said to himself. "I always won-
dered what an erection felt like to a man!" He
turned and looked at her. "I'll show you what it's
really like, if you want," he said softly.
 
"I—I think that's what he wanted," she replied.
 
"Is it what you want?" he asked seriously.
 
"I think I do," she whispered, and realized that it
was what she wanted. "But I don't even know how."
 
"Leave that to an expert," he replied. "Although
 
357
 
I'm not used to this end of things.'* He put both arms
around her, kissed her and fondled her.
 
And he kicked off his pants, and showed her the
other side of being a woman, while discovering him-
self what it was to be a man.
 
The rain was over. It had been over for a couple of
hours, but they just lay there, content in the nearness
 
of each other.
 
The door was still half-open, and Vardia, still dazed
 
and dreamy from her first sexual experience, saw the
clouds roll back and the stars appear. "We'll get
you some clothes in the morning," he said at last.
"Then well tour the farm. This rain should do every-
thing good. I was born on a farm, you know, but not
 
my own farm."
 
"People—non-Corn people—they do that every
 
day?" she asked.
 
He chuckled. "Twice if they're homy enough. Ex-
cept for a couple of days each month."

 
"You—you've done it both ways," she said. "Is it
 
different?"
 
"The feeling's definitely different, but it's the same
 
charge,'* he replied. "An important part, male or
female, is that you do it when you want with someone
 
you want."
 
"Is that love?" she asked. "Is that what -Brazil was
 
talking about?"
 
"Not the sex," he replied. "Thafs just a—a com-
ponent, as he would say. Without the object—with-
out love, without feeling for the other person, without
 
caring, it's not pleasant at all."
 
"That's why you're a man now," she said. "All the
other times—they were the wrong kind, weren't they?"
 
"Yes," he replied distantly, and looked out at the
stars- She clenched his hand tightly in hers.
 
"Do you think he was really God?" Vardia asked
 
quietly.
 
"I don't know," he replied with a sigh. "What if he
 
wasn't? When he was in the Well he had the power.
He gave me my farm, a good, healthy young body, a
new chance. And," he added softly, "he sent you."
 
358
 
She nodded. "I've never lived like this," she said.
"Is it all as wonderful as tonight?"
 
"No," he replied seriously. "There's a lot of hard
work, and pain, and heartache—but, if it all comes
together, it can be beautiful."
 
"We'll try it here," she said resolutely. "And when
the fun is gone, if ever, or when we're old and gray.
we'll take off for a Markovian world, and go back and
do it again. That's a good future."
 
"I think it is," he responded. "It's more than most
people ever get."
 
"This world," she said. "It must never become like
the others, like the Corn. We must make sure of that."
 
At that moment there was a glow far beyond the
horizon, and suddenly a bright arrow streaked upward
in the dark sky and vanished. A few seconds later, a
distant, roaring sound came to them.
 
*'Poor Nathan," he said sadly. "He can do it for
everyone but himself."
 
"I wonder where he is now?" she mused.
 
"I don't know what form he's in," he replied, "but
I think I know where he is and what he's doing, and
thinking, and feeling."
 
They continued to gaze at the stars.
 
Aboard the Freighter Stehekm
 
NATHAN BRAZIL LAY IN THE COMMAND CHAIR ON THE
 
bridge and gazed distantly at the fake starfield pro-
jected in the two window screens. He glanced over
to the table atop the ancient computer.
 
That same pornographic novel was there, spread
open to where he had last been reading it. He couldn't
remember it at all, but, he reflected, it didn't matter.
They were all alike anyway, and there was plenty of
time to read it again.
 
359
 
He sighed and picked up the cargo manifest, idly
flipping it open.
 
Cargo of grain, bound for Coriolanus, it read. No
passengers.
 
No passengers.
 
They were elsewhere now—the rotten ones in
their own private hells, the good ones—and the po-
tentially good—with their chances. He wondered
whether their dreams were as sweet as they had imag-
ined. Would they forget the lessons of the Well, or try
for change?
 
In the end, of course, it didn't really matter.
 
Except to them.
 
He closed the manifest and threw it across the con-
trol room. It banged against the wall and landed as-
kew on the floor. He sighed a long, sad sigh, a sigh
for ages past and the ages yet to be.
 
The memories would fade, but the ache would re-
main.
 
For, whatever becomes of the others or of this little
corner of the universe, he thought, I'm still Nathan
Brazil, fifteen days out, bound for Coriolanus with a
load of grain.
 
Still waiting.
 
Still caring.
 
Still alone.
 
360