05. Twilight at the Well of Souls - The Legacy of Nathan Brazil (25 page)

"I find it refreshing," Marquoz countered. "I kind of like the variety here. Different creatures, different social systems, ways of life. It's a microcosm, yes, but unique, too. You seem to assume that insularity is necessarily bad."

"That's right, son," Asam put in. "After all, this little war is the first in a thousand years, the third in history, and one of the other two was also caused by outsiders coming in. It's really not a bad place at all."

"But you haven't been outside" Brazil noted. "You haven't been anywhere
but
the Well. Tell me. Asam, haven't you ever looked up at that glorious starfield there and wished you could go out there and visit it? Fly from star to star, world to world?"

Asam's expression was thoughtful. Finally he said, "Well, I've been too much of a realist to do much dreaming like that, I'm afraid. Hell, I've still got most of this world to see, and I've seen more of it than most anybody alive. Out there—what do you have? A lot of emptiness and a lot of worlds, like this one, each with one race on it. Big, empty, and everybody always fighting everybody whenever they meet. Nope, I think I like it here."

Brazil looked at Mavra. "You've been both places," he noted. "Last time you were here you did damn near everything to get away. Have you changed your mind?"

She thought it over. "I don't know," she said honestly. "I really don't. Asam has shown me another kind of life, one possible here. And I'm in a form that makes sense here, one that leaves me free, not the crippled beast I was back then." She paused a moment, looking both thoughtful and sad. "But, then, it really doesn't matter, does it? I mean, it's going to be a long, long time before there's space travel in the universe again, isn't there? Unless you like rubbing sticks together and huddling in caves, this will soon be the only game in town.'"

He stared at her. "Maybe," he answered cautiously. "Maybe not. All is relative when you deal with the Well of Souls. And what you say is only true for
this
universe, anyway."

"It's the only universe we've got," she shot back.

He shook his head. "Uh uh. It's only
a
universe, not
the
universe. The energy to start this one came from another. There has to be a complement. Physics requires it. At the center of every black hole, for example, is a singularity. What happens at that point? Does it ever come out? Energy and matter don't cease to exist—they can neither be created nor destroyed. That's the law. Only changed. All that glop has to be
somewhere
—it comes out in the other universe. A white hole. It's the way things work. Just because the Well looks like magic, don't make the mistake of assuming it
is
magic. It's not. It's just simply a technology higher than you can currently comprehend."

Marquoz stared at him. "This doesn't sound like the man I knew, who played the flute for pennies in dives around the fringes of the Com. It doesn't sound like you at all." He looked at Brazil with some suspicion. "Are you really Gypsy?"

He sighed and sat back, seemingly arguing inwardly with himself. Finally he said, so softly it was difficult to hear him, "If I'm not Gypsy, then who or what am I?"

Mavra looked at him in sudden horror. "You're
not
Gypsy!" she gasped. "You really
are
Brazil!" She shook her head in disgust. "All our talks about me, about Brazil . . . How you must have been laughing at me. You son of a bitch!" She whirled around and trotted briskly out of the tent.

The rest were silent for a while, mostly from being unable to think of anything to say. Finally, Marquoz broke the impasse.

"You
are
Brazil, aren't you? That's why you've been avoiding me so much."

He nodded. "Yeah, why not? Cat's out of the bag now. What difference does it make?"

"Quite a lot, if Mavra's reaction means anything'," Asam noted.

He sighed. "Mavra has a problem. She feels deprived, deserted, abandoned at an early age, unloved. That craving for love, for a father, I suppose, turned into bitter hatred of me. Why not? I was the closest to a father figure she ever had. Growing up the way she did, alone, that bitterness formed a shell around her that seldom cracks. If you feel the lack of something, you convince yourself you're better off without it. You take a fierce pride in your aloneness, your loneliness. You turn a liability into a self-perceived asset. That's what she's done. And she's been hurt every time she let that shell drop, even slightly."

"If she needs love, I can give her that," Asam said sincerely.

"It might not be enough," he warned. "She's had so much hurt when she
did
become attached to somebody that she's afraid to do it again. She may be more hung up than you can handle, Asam. Still, I'll give her her own choice. Inside the Well, I can do a lot of things. If she wants to remain here, with you, she can. Her choice."

Marquoz shuffled uncomfortably at all this talk of Mavra. He decided it was better to change the subject to more immediate problems.

"All right, Brazil. Suppose you explain what the hell you're doing here instead of Gypsy—and what we're doing here, too. How the hell do you expect to get in the Well like this?"

Brazil shrugged. "Don't blame me for all this," he responded defensively. "Remember, I didn't even want to be here in the first place. It's that damned computer that came up with everything, right from the start. I got tracked down and hauled to Obie kicking and screaming all the way. It was the computer that convinced the bunch of you to take this course of action, and the computer that charted the course. I'll admit it's a damned crazy machine—Mavra's influence, I suspect. But it
is
a computer, and once all the facts it had were fed into it, it decided that I
must
repair the Well and it decided on this scheme based on all the data it had fed into it."

"Including you," Marquoz noted.

He nodded sourly. "Yeah, that, too. Did him precious little good, though. Did him in, maybe—almost me, too. Well, anyway, Obie was once hooked into the Well, so he knows how it works—how it's programmed, anyway, which is more than
I
do. He decided to run the entire population of Olympus through the big dish to meet his specifications and some others, too, ourselves included.
We
got the treatment—somehow, Obie reconstructed you and Mavra and Yua, for example, to come out as certain specific creatures when put through the Well. Also the rest of the
Nautilus
crew, most of whom were sent ahead here to make the initial preparations. We had to buy the ships, scout the terrain, that sort of thing. The key to the plan turned out to be Gypsy, who, among other things, could somehow make himself into the spitting image of anybody he wanted."

"Who—or what—
is
Gypsy, Brazil?" Marquoz wanted to know. "I thought
I
picked
him
up on a backwater, even though there were always a lot of odd things about him."

Brazil slowly shook his head. "I know, I know. But, to tell you the absolute truth, I haven't the
slightest
idea as to the answer. I'd love to know myself. I think Obie knew, but he didn't tell anyone. At least Gypsy's on our side and is a key to the plan. His power, if that's the best word for it, is the ability to somehow use the Well powers by sheer force of will. I've figured out that much, anyway. Like a little Obie, he can tap the whole thing, but only in regards to himself. He can't zap you or me other places or alter our appearances."

"Like a little Markovian, you mean," Asam put in. "Sounds to me like he's just exactly what they had in mind."

Brazil considered that. "In a way, I guess you're right. He can do just about what any average Markovian could have done, and if he had a full Markovian brain around to tap, to use as an amplifier for that, he could probably do whatever they did."

"He has the whole damned Well of Souls," Marquoz pointed out.

Brazil shook his head. "Uh uh. That isn't the way it works. It's a different kind of machine, run in a different way and for a different purpose."

"Mavra figured, when we learned that it wasn't you that dropped her off on that Markovian planet, that Obie had made a double of Gypsy while Gypsy played you," Asam told him.

"Wouldn't work," he replied. "Oh, Obie could make a construct that looked like Gypsy, but not one that would hold up among friends and associates for any length of time. No, I suspect that when you saw Gypsy you were seeing what Gypsy wanted you to see and hear. I think he has that much power. And when he reached the Markovian planet he had enough reserve force from its own computer brain to maintain the illusion even after he left."

"You're supposed to be a Markovian," Asam noted. "Couldn't you spot another one? If there's one, why not two?"

He shook his head. "No, I don't think that's the answer. It's possible, but highly unlikely. Somehow I have the gut feeling that the answer to Gypsy's mystery is right in front of us, simple, logical, obvious, but we can't see it. It really doesn't matter, except that it'll drive me crazy someday. The fact is that he can do what he can do and Obie used that."

Marquoz looked at the small man strangely. "If Gypsy can do those things, why can't you?"

"Because I'm not a Markovian and I don't have the slightest idea how the system works," he replied quickly. "That doesn't mean I can't fix the problem— I know which buttons to push, so to speak. Except for that I'm really not much different from either of you. I can't see the Markovian energy, can't feel anything special, nor can I use the power. I have power only inside the machine—and, even there, I'm the computer
operator,
not a
designer.
There's a big difference."

"Sounds like you're runnin' yourself down, son," Asam commented. "A whole lot of people have fought and died for you."

"Or something," he responded glumly. "No, there's nothing particularly special about me, Asam. I couldn't even accept responsibility in Mavra's case. I palmed off this inconvenient child on others. She's really got a case against me, I guess."

"Not feelin' a little guilt on that, are you?" the centaur prodded.

Brazil chuckled. "No, Asam, not really. The truth is, if I let guilt get to me, I'd be truly insane. Maybe I am, anyway, but I just can't feel much anymore. I have simply been alive too long.
Much
too long."

"Bitter?" Marquoz asked him.

"Not bitter. Just tired. Very, very tired, Marquoz. You can't believe what it's like to live day after day, year after year, century after century, for uncounted centuries. I'm a foolish, foolish man, Marquoz. I did this to myself. I chose it, freely, without turning a hair or doubting a second. But nobody,
nobody
can imagine how horribly lonely it is. Lonely and dull. Races don't mature overnight; they do it over thousands of years. And you wait, and you watch everybody you cared about grow old and turn to dust, and mankind goes forward maybe a millimeter or less every century or two. Finally you decide you want out, decide you can't take it any more—and you can't get out. You're trapped, absolutely."

"Gypsy told us you might kill yourself once you fixed the Well," Asam said uneasily. "Sounds like he wasn't far off the mark."

Brazil smiled bitterly. "It all depends, Asam. That's the only place I
can
do it, but I can't unless there's somebody to take over the watch, assume the responsibility."

The Dillian suddenly reached down and gripped Brazil tightly in iron fists. "Not Mavra! You won't do that to Mavra!" he growled.

Brazil reached up and peeled the angry centaur's hands from his shoulder. "
I
won't do that to anyone, Asam," he said gently. "I couldn't do it. All I can do is offer choices. That's all anybody in this life gets— choices. I'm the only one in the whole damned universe with no choices, really, at all."

There wasn't much to say to that, so Marquoz brought him back to the original subject. "Well, so what's the plot of this crazy business?"

Brazil looked up at Asam and rubbed his shoulder a little. "Look, Colonel, got one of your cigars? I've been going crazy with these damned cheap bastard cigarettes trying to convince you I was Gypsy."

Asam went over to his pack, rummaged around, found two, threw one to him and stuck the other in his mouth. Marquoz watched them light up mournfully, wanting nothing more than to join them and no longer having the suction in his mouth to manage it.

"I'll just sniff yours," he moped.

Settled down again, Brazil continued the story, explaining things up to this point. "Now, two nights hence, Gypsy's going to deliberately expose himself as me," he told them. "That'll lead them to the correct conclusion that the one they know about is the real one. And I'll still be here—sort of."

Marquoz nodded. "I think I see. Gypsy will use those powers of his to come here instantly. Brazil will make his usual appearances—only you'll be gone. They'll think they have the correct one and they'll move in for the kill."

He nodded. "And I'll have a day's head start. I plan to leave tomorrow night. A few of those Agitarian Entries we picked up a few days ago aren't what they seem. They're
Nautilus
crew and they've got a couple of those pegasus—pegasi? Eh, who cares? Anyway, I'm about the same size as one of them and they can carry double, anyway. We'll form half the team. A couple of Eflik will take Mavra with us on a conveyance designed for that purpose. Don't look alarmed, Asam, we tried it and it's perfectly safe and the Eflik are more than able to handle the weight if we don't fly more than a couple of hours at a time."

"It's not that I'm thinkin' of," the centaur said darkly.

Brazil sighed. "I
told
you I wouldn't force anything on anybody. Don't look at me like that. I'm not going to do a damned thing. It's up to Mavra all the way. It's her show, really."

"She'd better change the act, then," said a voice behind them. They all whirled around, startled.

Standing there, looking very much his old self, was Gypsy.