03. Gods at the Well of Souls (42 page)

Mavra's head came up. 'This is an unlikely group of prophets to begin your  reign," she noted. 

"Not at all," the Kraang responded. "Why, right now I can see that you are  contemplating either suicide or some futile and fatal heroic gesture to ease  your conscience. The colonel is trying to figure out the best way to ingratiate  himself with me, as always the pragmatist. Campos is a bit torn between her  Catholic upbringing and her lust for power which she finds potentially vast in  my service. The Dillians are aghast but fatalistic. Lori and Gus are curiously  similar in their desires to just be out of all this, although Gus is far more  offended by me than Lori. And Julian-my pretty Julian has been on the verge of  suicide since she got here and is still confused about her purpose, her role,  and how she could possibly fit in anywhere at all. Let me demonstrate how easy  it is." 

Julian was suddenly bathed in an unearthly glow, a radiance that gave her a  nearly supernatural look. Subtly, she was changing, not from being an Erdomese  but into the absolutely ideal image of the Erdomese female, a change so perfect,  so precise, and so beautiful that even those who weren't Erdomese could see it  and even feel it. And upon her face was a look like no other, an expression of  total and abject worship, of complete and utter innocence and joy. She fell down  and prostrated her new self before the Kraang. 

"And you shall henceforth be called Sowacha. which in Erdomese means 'Daughter  of Heaven,' and all who see you and speak with you will know that your name is  of me and my power and that you wield it in my name and with my authority," the  Kraang intoned. "You will seek counsel only of me and return to your land as my  servant and agent. I shall bless and protect you, and you shall be unsullied,  without blemish or sin, and the church, and the land, shall know you as one who  is my own. You shall lead the people in my name, and in my name you shall remake  the land and people as I command." 

"Yes, my lord and master," she responded, never getting up or looking up. "You see?" the Kraang said to the others. "It really is that easy. I do not need  or require your loyalty or your consent. It is merely a matter of reprogramming  your rather simple minds." 

The others were frightened to death by the demonstration, but Mavra Chang was  just consumed by anger. She moved to rise but found she was frozen, stuck where  she was. She couldn't outthink the Kraang; he had the whole damned Well at his  beck and call thanks to her. 

Damn it! The bastard had won! When he finished his ego trip, they'd all march  out of here like Julian, slaves to the Kraang, devoting all their lives and  thoughts and energies to whatever he wanted. And there wasn't a single damned  thing they could do about it! 

Suddenly, out of the darkness, the baby cried. They had all forgotten about  Terry and the child. Even the Kraang for some reason hadn't included her in his  survey of the group. Now, though, all the attention was diverted to the small,  dark girl with the infant. 

She walked steadily out of the shadows, looking expressionlessly at the Kraang.  When she got to Anne Marie, she stopped, looked up at the Dillian, and said,  "Anne Marie, take the baby. I think I've had just about enough of this  egomaniac's bullshit." 

If anything could shock them more than the Kraang and his demonstration of pure  power, it was Terry speaking and speaking so determinedly. 

'Terry?" Gus managed, but even though it was Terry's body and Terry's old voice,  it just didn't sound like Terry. It sounded like . .. like . .. The girl went up to a stunned and frightened Juana Campos, reached in her  pocket, and pulled out the last of Gen Taluud's cigars, biting off the end and  sticking it in her mouth. She didn't strike a match; she just pointed at the  end, and it burst into flame. 

If anybody was more shocked than all the people present, it was the Kraang. "Ahhh ... That's so much better," said the girl after a few puffs on the cigar.  "You can't believe how I missed these. Pure Ambrezan. That Taluud was a scumbag  but he definitely had good taste." 

The Kraang stood there on its tentacles, saying nothing, moving not at all. but  the heartlike pulsations of its body were reaching a fever pitch. "Keep trying, Kraang. If you try hard enough to control me, then you might just  bust something. You're still flesh and blood, you know, renewable or not." The Kraang was suddenly aghast, his enormous triumphal return spoiled by an  anomaly his great brain could not understand, comprehend, or get data on.  Massive quantities of data were going by at the speed of light itself, but the  Kraang was coming up totally empty, as empty as Mavra had been in trying to find  out about the Kraang. 

"You weren't the only one, you know," Terry said, letting some ash fall to the  floor. "I took a different route. I always was a better programmer than you." "YOU! It's-impossible!" 

"Not impossible, just damned hard. I just gave birth to a goddamned baby, for  Christ's sake! Not even Mavra's had to undergo that wonderful experience! It was  hard as hell switching in and out to keep me out of the data stream you were  monitoring. Fortunately, the Well measured the probabilities of Mavra getting  here first and factored in a few extra wrinkles. Those damned Glathrielians  thought they were going to control me with their powers, but all they did was  hand them to me to use. Handed them to me just as the Well figured when I rotted  lazily back there in Ambreza instead of coming immediately to answer its call,  in the person of one very fascinating and exceptional young woman named Theresa  Perez. And it still had to explode a damned volcano under me to get me to do  what I should've done right off! I'm as crazy as you are, Kraang, and just as  much a shirker of responsibility, but I'm here now!" 

Mavra's head came up, and she stared at the girl. "Nathan? Is that really you?" In an absolute instant, without any sense of any time passing between, the girl  was suddenly gone and in her place stood another being, a being slightly smaller  than but otherwise identical to what Mavra had been and what the Kraang was now. And in one tentacle it still held the burning cigar. The tentacle shot over to a  frozen Juana Campos and stuck the cigar in her mouth. "Here," Brazil said. "I  don't like to see cigars that good go to waste." 

The Kraang was appalled at the vision. "It really is you! How-how is it  possible? I had everything, everything factored in! There was no mistake!" "Sure there was. As soon as you bought my line on the life history I gave to Gus  the same way Mavra bought your disinformation about Obie and Brazil," Brazil  responded. "I was just another amateur, just like her, only more experienced.  Isn't that what you said not long ago? A universe recreated by amateurs? Did you  really think I'd leave the Well so unprotected? I never did figure out what  happened to you, but I always figured that if I beat the system, then others  must have, too. In a way I'm glad it was you this time. Mathematicians are so  damned logical." 

Only Gus among them had the nerve to inject himself into a discussion between  two gods. "So what were you?" he asked. 

Brazil chuckled. "Me? I was an artist!” 

"This is more an inconvenience than a defeat," the Kraang told him. "I have full  access to the Well. If I cannot touch or harm you, neither can you do anything  to me! At the moment we are at a standoff. But I know from your own histories  stored here that you cannot exit the Well on your own as you are. I can! You  must remain here, imprisoned in the Well alone, forever, just to retain your  access and retard my project. Every god must have a devil, I suppose. We will  play a game. I will go everywhere, and you will try to stop me from doing  anything you do not like. But you must do it from here! Yourself! I, on the  other hand, will be free to ride the whole of the trans-spacial nets and roam  the stars! I can be anywhere, anything, any time I wish to be. And eternity is a  very long time." 

'Tell me about it," Brazil said sourly. "Still, as much as I hate to spoil your  godhead and coronation or even your lofty dreams, I'm afraid you're going to be  in for a very, very big shock. Still, you want to leave, leave. Go ahead. I  won't even try to stop you. You know where the exit is and how to use it. Go on,  go ahead. Try to be a god. You'll quickly see how boring and silly it gets." The Kraang thought that Brazil was being too smug and overconfident, and he knew  enough not to trust anything the other said or claimed, particularly now. But  try as he might, cross-indexed and fully researched, the Kraang could find  absolutely nothing that Brazil had left as any sort of trap. 

"Lost your nerve, have you, Kraang? Pretty poor performance for a god to lose  his nerve. Of course, you can stick around here. Plenty to do, I suppose. Been  five billion years and then some since we matched wits with some of those games  that are still in the core system. Or do you remember that you used to beat me  all the time when we were setting up but after a while you couldn't beat me ever  again? That's because you never were willing to take risks. You had a grasp of  math that's truly godlike, but you never, ever went against the probabilities.  Even your clever exile trick was done with a keen eye to probabilities, given  the limits placed on you. I cost you this round at the last minute by taking  some risks, but maybe you'll win the next time. It'll relieve the boredom,  anyway." 

The Kraang seethed with anger and frustration, but he had been trying any number  of combinations and at no time could he supersede Brazil's command of the Well.  While they had been talking in normal time, a massive battle of intellects  throughout the computer that took up the entire inner surface of the Well World  had been going on, a battle of such speed and complexity that those who watched  could never have comprehended or described it. 

Mental thrust ... parry ... access denied ... backdoor ... access denied ...  wall off... sector not available ... Even in his enhanced form, the battle  wasn't easy for Brazil nor was the outcome certain. In a sense, both he and the  Kraang were equals here, equals before the Well computer, equals in knowledge,  skill, and the ability to use the vast power and ultra-complex engineering of  the master world, at speeds and on dimensional planes that were far beyond  mortal comprehension. It wasn't one parry, one thrust, one end-around attempt,  but thousands ... millions ... quadrillions all at once, like some vast chess  game at superlight speeds with unlimited pieces. 

Whole lifetimes of mental battle had taken place in the space of one second in  real time. Brazil realized that he'd been far too cocky, far too confident in  his power here. He'd forgotten what it was like to come up against an opponent  of his native race, one fueled by eons of hatred and a lust for power. I've  become too much a man, Brazil thought worriedly. He could not sustain a defense  against the level of sheer emotion that had been stored up in the Kraang for so  very, very long. 

Equal! Equal, damn it! Dead even! Brazil began to see this as an eternal  struggle in which strength of will was paramount and patience everything. There  was no way he could keep this up forever and he knew it; more, there was no  purpose to doing so. There had to be an answer! As it stood, neither he nor the  Kraang could make use of this vast power beyond the automatics that served them  both. Equals ... 

There just had to be an answer! Some way in which they were not equals. Some  way, no matter how minor, in which Brazil had some kind of edge. And in the countless moves and countermoves between two more ticks of the clock,  he had it. It was too obvious; it had been handed him on a platter right at the  start. That was why he'd had to endure so much before he suddenly realized that  it was there. The one thing that separated the two of them. The one thing that  made the Kraang vulnerable. The one thing anyone not so desperate or so close to  the problem would have seen immediately. 

The Kraang eased back to where he'd appeared, which they now saw was a hexagonal  plate embedded in the floor. He moved onto the plate, shimmered, and was gone. Brazil waited there a minute, saying and doing nothing, then relaxed. "Well, I'm  glad he's gone! Yessir, ridin' those hyperspacial nets . .." He seemed in great  spirits, as if enjoying some little private joke. Then he saw Julian, still the  radiant daughter of heaven, although at the moment a wee bit disoriented. She  suddenly lost her radiant glow, although he let her keep that perfect Erdomese  form. It wasn't bad, he thought appreciatively. Maybe the Kraang did have a  little artist in him, after all. 

"Go on back over with the others, Julian. You've just been unconverted," he said  lightly. 

Mavra could not see why he was in such a wonderful mood. "You-you can just let  that monster roam at will out there? After seeing what he can do?" "Oh, come on, Mavra!" Nathan Brazil scolded her. "You know when a con's working  as well as I do. Or at least you used to. I begin to wonder after the one you  fell for yourself. Talk about amateurs! You fell for the worst, most basic, most  obvious con I could think of-and it almost cost us everything. You've got to  know deep down that this was one hell of a lot closer than I let him think it  was." 

"I understood that much," she responded. "And I'm aware that an awful lot more  probably went on between the two of you than we'll ever know. Did you really set  up the Well so that you'd have to be here if any other Markovian managed to  survive?" . 

"Well, not exactly, but I think I'll add that capability now before we leave.  You see, the time when we were in here together so long ago. I added a condition  that so long as I was around, alive and kicking, you couldn't enter the Well  except in my presence. Until we got here, I had no idea that the Kraang was  still around, let alone that he was potentially loose, until you did." "You what!"