03. Quest for the Well of Souls (28 page)

"Clear as mud," Renard noted.

Yulin shrugged. "Then, at Trelig's bidding, we ran the people through Obie and gave them all horse's tails—it was supposed to be an example. So everybody had to
know
they shouldn't have the tails they had. We created a temporary equation, a local one, as it were. Their tails, which were
not
considered normal, are like Brazil's humanity. He is a Markovian, and reverts to it when in the Well. I wonder if he's the only one of them who did that?"

It was a thought, but not one that could be resolved. They didn't worry about that or dwell on it.

Renard looked at Mavra Chang. "Why the hell did you desert her?" he asked angrily. "Why didn't
you
stay around to raise and educate her?"

Wooley and Vistaru felt more than a little guilt on that score, but it was expressed in rather human terms, defensively.

"Why did
you
desert her in Glathriel and go home to Agitar?" Vistaru countered. "How many visits did
you
pay her in twenty-two years? After all, I didn't know about her until Ortega told me just before we left for here—but you owe her your life. Some repayment!"

He started to protest, to justify, but saw her point. "There's plenty of guilt around for everybody, isn't there?" he said sheepishly.

"The Yaxa had decided to polish her off," Wooley told them. "Ortega told me the story about her in order to get my aid. I managed to short-circuit those attempts all along. That's why it was
I
who managed to be the one who was finally sent to capture her. I couldn't trust anyone else not to take the easy way out." Her shiny yellow-and-black death's head turned to Vistaru. "As for you, I did
not
know then. Ortega made a couple of slips a few years ago and I drew the proper conclusions."

"If I remember, Nathan Brazil set the Well to summon him if anything ever went wrong," Vistaru pointed out. "Why didn't it call him when New Pompeii suddenly appeared overhead?"

"I can answer that," Yulin responded. "You see, to the Well nothing is wrong. The Markovians knew that at some future time one of their races would attain the ability to manipulate the universe as they could. At that time the Well was to transport the young race to it and receive new instructions, a changing of the guard so to speak. As far as the Well's concerned, it's just waiting for Obie or his operators to talk to it. Of course, that's like waiting for a monkey to quote the Koran. The Markovians blew it. We found the secret early, too early, and our artifacts can't even absorb its data, let alone talk to and order the Well. Obie, with some justification, refuses to try. Suppose it issued an incorrect instruction and wiped out humanity?"

It was a sobering thought. "You say 'he' often when talking about this computer of yours," Wooley noted. "Why?"

Yulin chuckled. "Oh, it's a person, all right, and it perceives itself as male. Self-aware computers have been around for a thousand years—I'm sure you ran into one or two. But never one like this one. It really is a person, as human as any of us. When you see and hear him, you'll know what I mean."

They let it go. Suddenly Renard's head came up, and his eyes blazed. He stood up and walked back over to the still-unmoving Mavra.

"All right, Mavra Chang," he told her in that same hard tone he'd used before. "You've heard it all now. Make up your mind. The ship will cross the border this evening and be ready in another day or two. Do you want to be on it? Because, by damn, you'll go through Well processing as you should have twenty-two years ago unless you snap out of it! Make your choice! Make it now!
What the hell is wrong with you,
anyway?
"

Something seemed to penetrate. Slowly her respiration increased, and life began to flow weakly back into her.

"Why did he do it, Renard? Tell me why?" she asked, totally bewildered.

The tone matched his own. "Huh? Why did who do what?"

"Why did Joshi jump in front of that pistol burst? It's insane. I can't understand it. I—I wouldn't deliberately sacrifice my life for anyone, Renard. Why would he?"

So that was it. He looked into her eyes. "Because he loved you, Mavra."

She shook her equine head. "How can anyone love anyone else that much? I just don't understand."

"I'm not sure I do, either," he told her. "I'm not sure any of us can understand that. Welcome back to the land of selfish hypocrites." He sighed and smiled.

She turned and faced the others. "You two—you are truly my grandparents? The stories—your tales of the Well World, Nathan Brazil. They were all real? The old memories were all real?"

Vistaru nodded. "And Nathan cared, even if we failed," she said. "Ortega received occasional communications from Brazil in tubes sent from Well Gates. They were meant for us, but, perhaps wisely, the snake-man kept them. He felt it was better if we didn't know who or what the other was, or what had happened to you and Vashy and the rest. He was a lousy parent and he botched the job of finding the right one, and he knew it. But he never lost sight of you, Mavra."

She looked at the Lata quizzically.

"It was Brazil who, when he was unsuccessful in warning Maki Chang on the smuggling setup, made sure they didn't find you. It was Brazil who got old Gimmy the beggar king to look out for you. It was Brazil who steered Gimball Nysongi to you—supposedly just to check on you, although it developed better. He took the heat off you when Nysongi was killed. And so on and so forth. It's all in the dispatches in Ortega's office."

She was stunned again. Renard sensed something wrong, went to her again. "What's wrong? I think it's wonderful—to have someone do that for you, year after year."

"It's horrible, grotesque!" she spat back. "Don't you see? It makes my whole life a lie. I didn't do everything on my own. I didn't do
anything
on my own! I was being helped by an immortal super-Markovian all the way!"

And he
did
understand, although the others could not. The only thing she had, the only thing that had kept her going, was her enormous self-confidence, her ego, her total belief in her ability to surmount any odds and overcome any obstacles. When ego and self-image are suddenly kicked away, there's very little left. In Mavra's case, only a tragic little girl, lonely and alone; an intelligent horse, but a dependent plaything.

"I understand," was all Renard could manage, softly, gently, somewhat sadly. "But you're on your own now, Mavra Chang. You've been on your own since you escaped from Glathriel."

She shook her head and turned away. It wasn't true. Joshi had put the final lie to it. Suddenly she hated him, hated him with a fury that defied reason.

For he'd given his life for her, the ultimate interference.

And now she was just Mavra Chang, a shell inside a shell, all alone, helpless, and dependent. In the dark, forever.

Bozog, the Launch Site Next Day

"Hey! I think I can see it!" Ben Yulin shouted over the suit radio. He was like a little boy, wildly excited and animated.

Less than two kilometers across the plain lay the border with Uchjin, where he'd crashed so many years before. Since that time he'd wondered how, even if anyone got to the North, they could get that ship out. It was enormously heavy, off-balance, and could not be moved by mechanical power because it rested in a nontech hex. In addition, the flowing paint smears that were the Uchjin objected to its being moved.

"The biggest problem was physically moving it," the Bozog told him. "The Uchjin are nocturnal, absolutely powerless in daylight, so that's when we do most of the work. They don't have the mass or means to replace it, so the only problem was protecting the moving party from night attacks. We did this by turning night into day with phosphor gel. It was simply too bright for them."

Yulin nodded. "Like you'd build a campfire in the wilderness to keep the wild beasts away. But how are you moving it?"

"Slowly, of course," the Bozog admitted. "It's been several weeks of work. We actually started when we received word of the breakthrough in north-south travel. It all has to be done by manpower alone—we lifted it with chains, pulleys, and the like onto a huge platform, a feat that took nine days in itself, and since then over twelve thousand Bozog have been pulling it along in shifts. Today, the great project is nearing completion."

Yulin thought about it. "That's a tremendous cost in manpower and matériel," he noted. "Why did you do it?"

"It was a challenge, a great undertaking," the Bozog replied. "It was a feat that Bozog will sing of for generations. A tremendous technical problem that was solved, proof that any problem can be solved if enough thought and energy is expended on it. You might say it was an act of faith."

They began to hear rumbling in the distance, like the sound of millions of horses in stampede, or a violent storm. The huge ship, resting on its left wing and secured by chain and cable, was riding on thousands of giant ball bearings connected by some sort of mounting network. It was slow, but the thing moved, pulled by huge numbers of Bozog.

"It won't be long now until they are close enough to attach cable from the giant winches," the Bozog pointed out. "It can then be pulled into Bozog quickly."

"When do you think you'll be ready to put it on the launch column?" Yulin asked, genuinely awed by the undertaking and the casual way that the creatures seemed to approach it.

"Tonight," the Bozog responded. "Sometime late tonight."

* * *

Mavra Chang had avoided everyone and all the excitement of the arriving ship. She didn't want to talk to anyone, speak to anyone, could feel nothing for the expedition anymore.

The more she thought about her life, the less meaningful it became. Brazil had gotten her off Harvich's World, to Maki. Brazil had shielded her from arrest, arranged for her "independent" career, sent Gimball, watched over her. She thought of the mistakes she had made in robberies: yet, somehow, overlooked alarms failed to go off, or pursuit was accidentally diverted elsewhere. Even on New Pompeii, she realized, Brazil had been replaced, supplanted by Obie.

Obie had given her the plans and schematics for the planetoid. Obie had given her the codewords. Obie had actually used her as his vessel for his own ends. On the Well World she'd always been somebody's pawn. The Lata rescued her from the Teliagin cyclopes on Ortega's orders. Here she'd become an object in Ortega's plans, controlled, moved around, manipulated by circumstance and hypno to do exactly what the snake-man wanted. Protected, too, in the end, by Ortega and by her own grandparents. Even here in Bozog she was controlled by her captors, including her grandfather—and Joshi. During the fight, control of her had passed to the Ghiskind, yet when the mistake was made, and she should have died, Joshi had blocked the shot and died instead.

I'm Mavra Chang, I can do anything, she thought bitterly.

I can die, she reflected. That much I can do on my own.

But not quite yet. Lie or not, one small piece of unfinished business. One small attempt to salvage a tiny shred of her honor and self-respect was left to her . . . on New Pompeii.

"The Yugash is rising!" she heard Vistaru yell behind her. Idly she turned and saw the pale-red specter, still looking not quite right, rise and form its cloak a few centimeters above the floor.

They all watched apprehensively. Clearly their hopes for its demise had not been realized: one of the eerie creatures was still around. They all remembered Wooley's contact with the Torshind, and the horror she found there.

The Yugash looked around at them uncertainly. In its present form it could not talk or even grasp a material object; it needed a vessel. A ghostly appendage pointed to them, then both appendages rose in a very human shrug. They got the message. It wanted to communicate, and needed a volunteer. In its weakened state, it probably couldn't fight for control.

"Get a Bozog," Wooley snapped, and Renard ran from the room. The Yugash seemed content to wait.

Several minutes later Renard returned with not one but two medium-size Bozog. While neither of the creatures had vision as the Southerner's understood it, all sensed that the Yugash was getting a good looking over. Finally, one said, "Yugash! You have my permission to use me as a vessel temporarily, but do not try anything. We are ready to assist in your dissipation if you do."

The hood of the ghostly creature nodded slowly, drifted to, and merged with the Bozog, which twitched slightly.

A minute passed before the Yugash traced the proper nerves and could activate the translator. It didn't even try for any other control.

"It is good to speak with you again," came a voice that was definitely not the Bozog's. "It is good, in fact, to be alive."

"Who—which one—are you?" Vistaru asked hesitantly.

"I am the Ghiskind," responded the Yugash. Several breathed sighs of relief, but Wooley was more cautious.

"Wait a minute," she said sharply. "How do we know that?"

The Ghiskind considered that. Like most creatures it considered itself a distinct individual. It simply hadn't occurred to the Yugash that others might not be able to see the differences.

They commenced a dialogue covering conversations on the trip, conversations with Ortega at which Renard and Vistaru had been hidden but present, details of the equipment and battle in Pugeesh. Finally, the Southerners were satisfied.

"It was an incredible battle," the Ghiskind told them. "Never before had I actually been forced to kill a Yugash. The Torshind was, like all fanatics, exceptionally strong; the final maneuver I used was sheer desperation—the Torshind was winning. I fully expected it to kill us both, and it almost did."

"So the final party is made," Renard said. "Wooley, Vistaru, the Ghiskind, the Bozog, Mavra, Ben Yulin, and me."

Vistaru nodded. "Such a group as no one has ever seen together before. But it's a highly important group symbolically."

They turned to her. "How's that?" Renard asked.

She glanced around at all of them. "Seven members, seven races. The Wars of the Well are over at last."