03. Gods at the Well of Souls (43 page)

"What are you so sore about? If I hadn't done that, look at what would have  happened!" 

"You didn't trust me!" 

Nathan Brazil chuckled. "Hey, kid, you only had your learner's card. Still do,  in fact, considering how this turned out." 

"But-but-what about the Kraang? He's still out there! And he's still connected  to the Well!" 

"Yeah, he is, I guess," Brazil sighed. "Only even he knew a con when he heard  one, and he still fell for it once I realized what his weak spot was. And he'd  told me-told us all-just what that one weakness was. He really was a god. He'd  almost always been a god, or at least a god, junior grade. Man! Anything you  wanted-the energy-to-matter transformers made it for you just like you imagined  it! Anything you wanted to be, to experience, to use, to own, to look at. There  it was. That's how I conned 'em during the Great Transmigration. I became Nathan  Brazil, or a reasonable facsimile thereof anyway, in Glathriel, which was a kind  of pet project of mine, anyway. I conned 'em into thinking I'd gone the whole  way, that I'd become a Glathrielian. The way I worked it, I showed up as just  another guy, even to the Well. The only thing was, the Well had special  instructions and links to me. I conned 'em. Designed it right into the program." "But the Kraang-" 

"Is not designed into the program that way," Brazil told her. 

"Wait a minute," Lori put in, feeling an immense weight slowly lifting from him.  "If he's not designed in like you or Mavra, then ..." 

"You got it!" Nathan Brazil responded lightly. "There's hope for you yet, Lori." "Well, I don't get it!" Gus said, "and I don't see nobody else gettin' it,  neither." 

But Mavra Chang suddenly did, and she started laughing, and the laughter grew so  loud and long that it echoed through the great hall and woke up the baby again. "Mind letting us in on this, since you woke up the kid?" Gus called to her. She got control of herself. "Let me see if I got this right. When he left, he  rode the hyperspace nets as he said, whatever the hell they are, and he came out  someplace, just as he always did when he was back in ancient times. But all  those worlds are dead now. They've been dead for billions of years. So he's  going to come out on a lonely, barren, incredibly ancient world of the  Markovians, and he's going to see only artifacts and death. He's probably doing  that right now. And then .. ." She started to laugh again and tried to fight it.  "And then he'll have no choice but to move on! He'll probably have big, big  plans, but to do them he'll have to use the gate that's there! And when he does  ..." 

Lori suddenly saw it. "He'll wind up back here!" he finished, openmouthed. "But  in Zone. North or south, just like we did. And the only way he can get out is to  use the Zone Gate, and that will process him just as it was designed to do so  many years ago!" 

"Wait a minute!" Gus put in. "Are you tellin' me that the only place that  egomaniacal bastard can go is right back here? And that when he comes through,  his only choice will be to be transformed into one of the races here, just like  ml So he'll be as mortal, as ordinary as we are?" 

"Unless he figures it out, sitting there on that world," Brazil replied. "He  might. Probably will, in fact. He was never a dummy, even back then. But then,  so what? What's his choice? To live like he did before, with everything at his  beck and call, but alone, on a deserted world, not comatose but fully awake,  looking at the skies all the time and not being able to do a damned thing about  it. Totally, completely, thoroughly alone." 

"Until somebody conies along in a spaceship," Mavra said worriedly. "He's waited  this long. He can wait." 

"It's a pretty big universe," Nathan Brazil pointed out. "But we can check and  see just where he wound up. And maybe, before we leave, we'll kind of nudge the  probabilities of his ever being found a little more toward the infinite.  Besides, even if he got off that world by conventional means, he'd be off the  net, out of the loop. He wouldn't dare ever go through a Well Gate. His data  links will only be as good as his proximity to one of the ancient worlds, so  what will he be? Not a god. At best a very smart freak. I think we can deal with  the Kraang. The one absolute guarantee we now have is that at worst he can never  be more than a local menace. He can't get back in here, and he can't get back on  the net. He's back to reality, just the way he was before he took himself out of  the loop. All the old rules apply again." 

"Maybe you're right. I hope so," Mavra said. 

"And now we can go on to lighter fare," Brazil told her. 

"You mean taking care of this bunch?" 

"No, no, something far more of a puzzle than that." 

"Huh? What?" 

"Why'd you walk out on me in Babylon?" he asked. 

Control Room 27, 

Well of Souls 

"I WANT YOU ALL TO COME DOWN WITH ME TO MY CONTROL room," Nathan Brazil told  them. "Just follow me. It's not a long journey, not after the one you all have  taken." 

Nobody objected. Nobody was in a position to object much to anything, having  seen what one creature like Brazil could do. 

"Do you really want to know?" Mavra asked him as they crossed the great hall. "Huh?" 

"Do you really want to know why I left you in Babylon, or were you just being  your usual self?" 

"Yes. Of course I want to know." 

"You can read it from the data stream." 

"Not really. And that's only the facts, not what's inside you." She thought about how to explain it. "Nathan, you really were comfortable there.  And in all the other civilizations and cultures we passed through and lived in." "Well, a few were new to me, but mostly, I'd been there before," he admitted. "No, that's not what I mean. You were in your element there. I'm not just  talking about it being primitive, I'm talking about the fact that in spite of it  all, you succeeded. You talked to tons of people, you ate and drank and sang  songs with them, you had no trouble worming your way into their societies and  getting what jobs you wanted. You'd already been captain of two trading vessels,  one in the Red Sea and the other in the Mediterranean, before we ever reached  Babylon." 

"Well, it takes some practice to-" 

"No. You're not connecting in spite of that super brain of yours at the moment.  Don't you see? While you were off with the boys drinking and carousing and  telling tall tales, which is where I wanted to be and what I wanted to be doing,  I was stuck back in wherever we were living. Or I was stuck with the other  women-most of whom were ignorant, dull, and had never been out of the confines  of their native cities or towns-doing the only stuff women were allowed to do. I  didn't fit with them; it's not my style at all. The roles were so stratified  that there was just no way to break out, really do something, interact with the  interesting people, who were almost always men because the men got to do the  interesting things. After a while I just couldn't take it. There was a lot to  see and do even in that ancient world, but I wasn't allowed to do it, and your  secondhand recountings only made it worse. Women were property in those  societies; even at our levels they were expected to stay home and be protected  and do womanly things. Break the rules, try something outside of those roles,  and you got stoned, burned at the stake, or raped. You've never been a woman in  those times. You can't imagine what it's like." 

"I've been a woman for part of this trip, even pregnant, and while it's  different, I can't say as I can see the problem." 

"You experienced some of the physical aspects but not the social. Nathan, the  only man of Terry's race that you interacted with was, well, you. In fact, it's  much more liberating to be a woman here, particularly if you're not in your own  home hex. To all the other races you're just another funny foreign creature.  They may have hang-ups about their own men or women, but they don't apply that  to other races. You never once had to face the simplest challenge for a woman  back on Earth, walking down a dark street at night in a strange city alone. I  can't describe it. I can do the same thing here, just like this, and it's  totally different. Both Julian and Lori understand what I mean, even if Lori  kind of forgot it in a power trip that I find totally understandable. Even  Campos had a taste of it, for all she learned from it. In my own era I lived  with elements of it, but I had more freedom, more opportunity; I could become a  spaceship pilot, go where I wanted, and be one of the group singing the songs  and telling the stories. On Earth I felt shut out-and there was no relief in  sight! It wasn't any one thing, it was a lot of things. I walked into hell when  I walked out on you, but it was no worse than the hell I was stuck in. That's  why, when I finally did get away, I didn't come back. I couldn't take that role  again. I couldn't live my life through your experiences." 

Brazil was silent for a bit, thinking over what she'd said and sifting it in his  mind. "In primitive societies I don't see a way around it, really. With their  lives so very short, they built their societies to ensure propagation. 'Women  and children first' was the old rule, and women were noncombatants because each  woman could bear a child only once every nine months while one man could  impregnate one woman a day. It's ironic, really, that much of this evolved more  than anything else out of the basic social realization that men were expendable.  Even conquering armies would slay all the men but carry the women off. There  were exceptions, of course-there always are. But we can't be the exceptions in  any of those societies; sooner or later somebody will notice that everybody else  is aging, growing old, and we aren't. The exceptions-Hypatia, Cleopatra, Joan of  Arc-they get written up in history books." 

"Yeah, and most of them die violent deaths at young ages, anyway," she noted. "I  looked for the Amazons in Greece but never really linked up with them. I think  I'd have been a little small for their lot, anyway. The only place I did find  any peace and equality was on a little island off the coast of southern Greece  that was an all-woman society, but it turned out to be a lot more boring and  more a matriarchy than I figured. Besides, I didn't 'look' right to them. I was  accepted as a guest, but I couldn't stay, not with these features. I began to  wonder, though, whether you had to have an all-female army or an all-female  society to just get some sense of freedom." 

"And when you found it, however basic, in the Amazon rain forests, you just  stayed. Yeah, I can understand the situation, but it's not quite the good and  easy life being a man, either. Still, you should have come out and taken a look  once in a while. Things changed, dramatically. Not all the way, but a lot  better, even in my namesake Brazil and more to the north in America and in  Europe." 

"I found that out with Lori and Julian. A woman astronomer and professor, a guy  who flew in spaceships ... It was so damned slow, and then everything seemed to  happen in a hurry. But by that time I was so isolated, so set, and had been  doing it for so long, I barely remembered any other life. And all I saw there  was women's pain, and heard stories of more of it, and I had no desire to move." "Urn, excuse me," the colonel interrupted. "I hate to intrude, but just where  are we going? And why?" 

"Just come down the moving ramp here and follow," Brazil said in an irritated  tone. "We're going down to the control room so we can decide just what the hell  to do with all of you." 

Campos crossed herself. 

The moving walkway went down into the bowels of the planet. Every once in a  while it would take them right through a hexagonal portal of deepest black, as  if going into a tunnel, only there was no tunnel there. They quickly became  aware that every time they did that, they moved a tremendous distance in a very  short time. 

Finally they reached Brazil's destination, going through a bizarre workshop  whose size was on a scale that dwarfed their imaginations. Everything was  massive, was apparently working, and looked as if it had been built two days  earlier and cleaned just before they arrived. 

There were openings all around in a massive hexagonal shaft, not just on their  level but going up and down as far as they dared look. The openings were marked  because they were not hexagons but great semicircles, and inside each was  darkness-darkness but not inactivity, as countless small bits of energy flew and  routed and shot around almost as if they were tiny galaxies in accelerated  motion. They went in between two such openings and down a short corridor and  found themselves in a room that bore no resemblance to any they'd seen before.  The wall was filled with tiny triangular shapes, each with a unique code on it  in some kind of luminescent dots. In the center were two very strange looking  pedestals, and as Brazil glided to one and crawled into it, it was suddenly  obvious that these were in fact chairs for the race that had worked here. Mavra, still human, pulled herself up on the other one and sat cross-legged on  it, looking at the others. They in turn all stood looking back at them, both  fearful and nervous. 

"You'll pardon me if I have to remain in this form," Nathan Brazil said to them.  "I need to do that to interact with and control the machinery with any  precision. I think we ought to conclude our business as quickly as possible now,  and we'll start with the easy ones. Tony? Anne Marie? You got what I promised  you back in the hills west of Rio that night. You got yourselves involved early  with the wrong folks, but you also stuck with Julian and saw the consequences  through. I can only ask you what you want to do now." 

Tony and Anne Marie both frowned. "Just what exactly do you mean, Captain?" Tony  asked.