05. Twilight at the Well of Souls - The Legacy of Nathan Brazil (2 page)

The Czillian left hurriedly, and the door to the Ulik Embassy at South Zone hissed closed. Serge Ortega leaned back wearily on his massive, coiled serpentine tail and sighed, then turned silent, his six arms folded contemplatively. He rocked back and forth, slowly, as if meditating, although actually he was deep in thought. The silence was absolute.

And then, quite suddenly, it was broken by the sound of someone clearing its throat.

Ortega jumped and whirled, shocked by the sound, then stopped, staring wide-eyed at the intruder, who was lounging quite comfortably on a cotlike couch.

The alien was a Type 41—a human, just as Ortega had once been, but that had been so long ago he had almost forgotten what it was like. Lanky, dark-complected, with a lean, heavily boned triangular face, he was dressed in a plaid work shirt, heavy slacks, and well-worn boots. For a moment Ortega thought it must be Brazil, and a thrill shot through him. But, no, he told himself, Brazil could disguise himself in a number of ways, but he couldn't add fifty or more centimeters, at least not so convincingly. "Who the hell are you, and how did you get in here?" Ortega asked the newcomer.

The man shifted around and put his arms behind his head, looking comfortable and slightly amused by all this. "Just call me Gypsy," he replied lightly. "Everybody does. Mind if I smoke?"

His insolent manner irritated Ortega, but curiosity overwhelmed all other emotions. "No, go ahead."

Gypsy reached in a shirt pocket and removed a long, thin, Com-style cigarette from a pack, then a small silver lighter, and lit up. Curls of blue-gray smoke rose into the air as he puffed to make sure it was lit.

"Thanks," he responded, putting the lighter away and resuming his comfortable posture. "Filthy habit, I admit, but handy. What with the Ambreza monopoly on tobacco here, they're better than gold."

A coldness crept up and down Ortega's spine. "You have to have heard that at a briefing, probably one by Brazil," he guessed. "The humans here don't look much like you. You have just arrived here. I'm surprised they didn't shoot you."

Gypsy chuckled. "They didn't shoot me because I didn't just arrive at all. I've been here for weeks, in fact. As to how I got here, I came through the Zone Gate."

"Now I know you're lying," the Ulik accused. "The Ambreza wouldn't let
any
Type 41 through the Gate right now."

"I didn't use the Ambreza gate," Gypsy responded cooly. "I used . . . ah, shall we say, a different gate. I'd rather not say which one right now."

The chills were back, although Ortega couldn't say why he believed this man. "That's impossible," he retorted. "The Well doesn't work that way."

"I know it doesn't," the newcomer responded, unperturbed. "If you say so."

"Maybe you had better explain yourself," the ambassador said warily.

Gypsy laughed. "No, I don't think so. Not right now, anyway. But I found your conversation with the Czillian fascinating. You took a lot longer to catch on than we'd figured, you know."

That was the most irritating comment so far, mostly because Ortega had to agree with Gypsy. He didn't like being suckered. He liked to be, and usually was, in control.

"Anyway," Gypsy continued, "I'm here to talk to you. Just talk. As an ambassador, you might say, from the newcomers."

"From Brazil, you mean."

"Him, too," Gypsy admitted. "Mostly you got it doped out right now and we want to know what you're gonna do next."

Suspicion creeped into Ortega. "You're not another Markovian, like Brazil?" he suggested. "I kind of figured if there was one, there were more."

Gypsy laughed. "No, not another Markovian. I'm not even as old as you are, Ortega. And Brazil—well, I'm not sure what he is, but I don't think he's a Markovian."

"He claims to be God," Ortega pointed out.

Gypsy laughed again. "Well, maybe he is. I don't know. And you know what? I don't really give a damn. All I know, all
anybody
knows, is that he's the only guy around who knows how to work the Well of Souls. That's all that really matters, isn't it? Not who or what he is, or you are, or I am. But, no, that's wrong. What you are counts a little, I think. That's why I'm here."

Ortega's bushy eyebrows rose. "Why?"

"Why don't you let 'em get in there, Ortega? Make it easy on them. You know he ain't gonna do anything to louse up your little empire here. He doesn't give a damn."

"You know I couldn't, even if I wanted to," the Ulik responded. "I don't run this world, no matter what you may think. Self-interest runs the world here, just like everywhere else. He's trying to get into the Well to switch it off, make repairs. Too many nervous governments here to allow that."

"But the Well World's on a separate machine," Gypsy pointed out. "His turning off the big machine won't really do anything here. They all should know that much, anyway."

Ortega shrugged all six arms. "They only know what I know and they only believe a fraction of that. We have only Brazil's word on that sort of thing. And if we take him at his word, then this new universe he's going to create will need seeds, new Markovian seeds like the last time. This planet was built to provide those seeds. If we take him at his word on how the system works, he'll depopulate the Well World in that reseeding. The Well governments face extinction, Mister Gypsy, or whoever you are. No getting around that!"

"Not if you help," the man came back. "You and I know that the natives are already murdering hordes of newcomers in many hexes. There are proposals simply to kill everything that comes in through the Well Gate. You gotta stop that, Ortega. One way or another. Don't you understand? These newcomers
are
the seeds!"

The Ulik's jaw dropped in amazement. "Of course! That makes sense! I don't know what's wrong with me these days. Senility, I guess. But—just saying so won't make the plan acceptable. They're scared, mister. Scared little people. They won't take chances."

"But you can stall, do what you can. Your influence is still pretty strong here. You know it and I know it. You got blackmail on most of those little men. We need time, Ortega. We need you to help us get that time."

Serge Ortega leaned back and sighed once again. "So what's your plan?"

Gypsy chuckled dryly. "Oh, no. We trust you just about as far as you trust us. One thing at a time. But you know your part—if you'll do it. There's no real cost to you, I promise you. You have Brazil's word on that and you know that's good."

"I'll do what I can," the snake-man responded, apparently sincere.

Gypsy got up, stamped out his cigarette on the shiny floor, and looked around at the large office. "Tell me, Ortega, how do you stand it—being trapped in here all the time, year after year, for so long? I think I'd go nuts and kill myself."

A wan smile came to Ortega's face. "Sometimes I think of that. It's easy, you know, for me. All I have to do is go to the Zone Gate and go home. I'm over two thousand years old, you know. Too old. But the spell that keeps me alive traps me here. You should know that." His voice dropped to a dreamy whisper and he seemed to be gazing at not his visitor or the wall but something beyond the wall, something only he could see. "To feel wind again, and rain, and see the stars one last time. Oh, by God! Do I dream of that!"

"Why not do it, then? At least, do it after this is all over."

The Ulik snorted. "You don't really realize my trap, do you? I'm a Catholic, Gypsy. Not a good one, perhaps, but a Catholic nonetheless. And stepping back there—it would be suicide. I can't bring myself to do it, you see. I just can't kill myself."

Gypsy shook his head in silent wonder. "We make our own hells, don't we?" he murmured, almost too softly to be heard. "We make 'em and we live in 'em. But what kind of hell could be worse than this one?" He looked squarely at Ortega and said, louder, "You'll hear from Brazil himself shortly, and I'll keep in touch." And with that he walked over to the office door, which opened for him, and stepped through. It closed behind him, leaving only the butt on the floor and the smell of stale cigarette smoke as signs he had ever been there.

The Ulik wasted no time. He rammed an intercom button home. "Attention! Apprehend a Type 41 just leaving the Ulik Embassy." He gave Gypsy's dress.

There was silence on the other end for a moment, then the guard outside, working to handle the hordes of incoming people more than as a police force, responded, puzzled, "But, sir, I've been just outside your door the past hour. Nobody's come out. Not a soul since that Czillian, anyway. And definitely no Type 41."

"But that's impossible!" Ortega roared, then switched off and looked over at the floor. The crushed butt, to his great relief, was still there.

The intercom buzzed and he answered it curtly. "Ambassador   Udril   here,"   came   a   translator-colored voice.

"Go ahead," Ortega told the Czillian ambassador. "On that information you wanted on those three Entries. The one, Marquoz, is a Hazakit and is, well, it's hard to believe after only a few weeks . . ."

"Yes?"

"Well, Ambassador, he appears to be the new head of the Hazakit secret police."

Ortega almost choked. "And the others?"

"Well,  the woman,  Yua,  appears  to be enlisting fellow Awbri into some sort of military force with surprising ease. And as for Mavra Chang . . ."

"Well?" Ortega prompted, feeling increasingly out of control.

"She seems to have appeared as a Dillian, enlisted some local help, and, well, vanished."

"Vanished! Where? How?"

"A few days ago she and a small party of Dillians went into the mountains of Gedemondas. Nobody's heard anything from them since."

Hakazit

IT   WAS   A   HARSH   LAND.   THE   PLANET   FOR  WHICH   IT
was a laboratory model must have been something hellish indeed, Marquoz thought. The terrain was a burned, ugly, hard-packed desert with jagged, fierce-looking volcanic outcrops. Occasionally earth tremors would start slides and the very rare but horribly violent storms sometimes turned dry, dusty gullies into deadly torrents which carved great gashes in the landscape.

With almost no water on top, and the ocean to the north salt water only, the people were where the fresh water was—underground, on the bedrock at the water table, in huge caverns carved by millennia of erosion on the basic limestone and marble beneath. There had been predators, too; terrible, fierce beasts with skin like solid rock and endless appetites for Hakazit flesh.

And so, of course, the Hakazit were built for combat and for defense. Like granite itself, their fierce, demonic faces were tough skin over extremely thick bone, their features fixed in a furious and chilling expression, broad mouths opening to reveal massive canines capable of rending the flesh of their wild natural enemies. Their eyes were skull-like sockets that glowed blazing red in the darkness. It was not a traditional method of seeing, not eyes in the sense he had always known them, yet to his brain they served the same way, giving up long range for extreme-depth perception and, perhaps (he could never be sure) altering the color sense quite a bit to emphasize contrasts. Bony plates formed over each socket like horns.

The great, muscular steel-gray body was humanoid, a mass of sinew with arms capable of uprooting medium-sized trees and snapping them in two. The five-fingered hands ended in lethal, steellike talons also designed for ripping and tearing flesh, and the thick legs ended in reptillian feet that could grasp, claw, propel that heavy body over almost any obstacle. Trailing behind was a long tail of the same steely gray ending in two huge, sharp bones like spikes, which could be wielded by the prehensile tail as additional weapons. The body itself was so well armored, so tough and thick, that arrows bounced off its hide, and even a conventional bullet would do only minor damage. Control of the nervous system was absolute and automatic with the Hakazit; pain centers, for example, could be disabled in a localized area at will.

It was, thought the former small dinosaurlike creature, the most formidable living weapon he had ever seen. The males stood over three meters tall with a nine-meter tail; females were smaller and weaker: only two and a half meters, on the average, and just able to crush a large rock in their bare hands.

But now he, as one of them, was being taken down to a great cavern city, a prisoner, it seemed, of the local authorities. The city itself was impressive, a fairyland of colorful lights and moving walkways, scaled to the size of the behemoths who lived there. A high-tech civilization to boot, he noted, amazed. No handicaps, like some of the hexes on the Well World where only technology up to steam was allowed or where nothing that didn't work by mechanical energy was possible. Yes, the world the Markovians had in mind for the Hazakit race had to be one real hell.

Everybody seemed to wear a leather or cloth pullover with some rank or insignia on it. He couldn't interpret them, or the signs, or the codes, but it looked quite stratified, almost as if everybody was in the army. Here was a crisp, disciplined place where everybody seemed to be on some kind of desperate business with no time to dawdle or socialize. No trained eye was necessary to see that some of the creatures were there to keep an eye on the other creatures. One group, in particular, wearing leather jerkins with targetlike designs on them, wore side arms of an unfamiliar sort. Marquoz had no doubt that
those
pistols could penetrate to the vital parts of a Hakazit.

His escort, Commander Zhart, delighted in showing off Harmony City, as it was called. He pointed out the Fountain of Democracy, the People's Congress, the Avenue of Peace and Freedom, and so forth. Marquoz just nodded and looked over the place. It somehow seemed all too familiar to him, an echo of every dictatorship he had ever been in. Coming from a world that didn't even have a central government yet hadn't had a major war in thousands of years, this was something of a contrast. Yet he had spent long years in the "human" Com, where dictatorship was the rule and things didn't appear to be all that different.