The inside of the mountain was a honeycomb; labyrinthine passages went off in all directions, and they were quickly and completely lost. But it was warm—comfortable, in fact—inside, the heat coming from a source they never did discover, and there were strange noises of a lot of work being done—but what was going on it was impossible to see.
Finally, they were at their destination. It was a comfortable, large room. There were several big beds there, filled with soft cushions of fabric, and a large fur rug that was perfect for Mavra. There was only one entrance, and two Gedemondans stood there, conspicuous yet as unobtrusive as possible. This was it, then.
They were too tired to talk much, to even move, or worry about what was in store for them. They were sound asleep in minutes.
The next day all awoke feeling better, but with some aches and pains. Gedemondans brought more fruits, a different punch, and even a bale of hay which could be used by both Tael and Doma. Where that came from there was little mystery; it was a ration at one of the trail cabins.
Mavra stretched all four limbs and groaned. “Oh, wow!” she said. “I must have slept solid and unmoving. I’m stiff as a board.”
Renard sympathized. “I’m not feeling too great myself. Overslept, I think. But we’re the better for it.”
The two Lata, who always slept motionless on their stomachs, still had their own complaints, and Tael said she had a stiff neck. Even Doma snorted and flexed her wings, almost knocking Tael in the face.
The Gedemondans had cleared away the breakfast dishes; now only one was in the room, looking at them with a detached expression.
Vistaru looked at him. Her? No way to tell with them. “I wish they’d say something,” she muttered, as much to herself as to the others. “This strong, silent treatment gives me the creeps.”
“Most people talk too much about too little now,” said the Gedemondan, in a nice, cultured voice full of warmth. “We prefer not to unless we really have something to say.”
They all almost jumped out of their skins.
“You can talk!” Hosuru blurted, then covered, “That is, we were wondering…”
The Gedemondan nodded, then looked at Mavra, still on her side on the rug. “So you are Mavra Chang. I’ve wondered what you would look like.”
She was surprised. “You know me? Well, I’m pleased to meet you, too. I’m sorry I can’t give you my hand.”
He shrugged. “We were aware of your problem. As to knowing you, no. We were aware of you. That is different.”
She accepted that. There were lots of ways of getting information on the Well World.
Tael could not be restrained now. “Why haven’t you ever talked to us?” she asked. “I mean, we had the idea that you were some kind of animals or something.”
Her lack of subtly did not perturb the Gedemondan. “It’s not hard to explain. We work hard at our image. It is—necessary.” He sat down on the floor, facing them.
“The best way to explain it is to tell you a little of our own history. You know, all of you, of the Markovians?” That was not the word he used, but he was using a translator and that’s the way it came out.
They nodded. Renard was the most ignorant of them; even Tael had had some schooling. But Renard, at least, knew from his own area of space of the dead ruins of that mysterious civilization.
“The Markovians evolved as all plants and animals evolve, from the primitive to the complex. Most races reach a dead end somewhere along the line, but not them. They reached the heights of material attainment. Anything they wished for was theirs. Like the fabled gods, nothing was beyond them,” the Gedemondan told them. “But it wasn’t enough. When they had it all, they realized that the end of it was stagnancy, which common sense will tell you is the ultimate result of any material utopia.”
They nodded, following him. Renard thought there was some argument against that, and that he’d like to try Utopia first, but he let it pass.
“So they created the Well World, and they transformed themselves into new races, and they placed their children on new worlds of their design. The Well is more than the maintenance computer for this world; it is the single stabilizing force for the finite universe,” the snow-creature continued. “And why did they commit racial suicide to descend back to the primitive once more? Because they felt cheated, somehow. They felt they had missed something, somewhere. And, the tragedy was, they didn’t know what it was. They hoped one of our races could find out. That was the ultimate goal of the project, which still goes on.”
“It seems to me they made a sucker play,” Mavra responded. “Suppose they weren’t missing anything? Suppose that was it?”
The Gedemondan shrugged. “In that case, those warring powers below represent the height of attainment, and when the strongest owns the universe—I’m speaking metaphorically, of course, for they are mere reflections of the races of the universe—we’ll have the Markovians all over.”
“But not Gedemondans?” Vistaru prompted.
He shook his head. “We took a different path. While the rest ran toward materialistic attainment, we decided to accept the challenge of a nontechnological hex for what it was—and not try by ingenuity to make it as technological as we could. What nature provided, we accepted. Hot springs allowed some cultivation in these uniquely lighted caverns, which run through the entire hex. We had food, warmth, shelter and privacy. We turned ourselves not outward, but inward, to the very core of our being, our souls, if you will, and explored what we found there. There were things there no one had ever taken time to dream of. A few Northern hexes are proceeding similarly, but most are not. We feel that this is what the Markovians created us to do, and what so few are doing. We’re looking for what they missed.”
“And have you found it?” Mavra asked, somewhat cynically. Mystics weren’t her style, either.
“After a million years, we are at the point where we perceive that something was indeed missing,” the Gedemondan replied. “What it is will take further study and refinement. Unlike those of your worlds, we are in no hurry.”
“You’ve found power,” Renard pointed out. “That dish of food was just plain disintegrated.”
He chuckled, but there was a certain sadness in it. “Power. Yes, I suppose so. But the true test of awesome power is the ability not to use it,” he said cryptically. He looked over at Mavra Chang and pointed a clawed, furry finger at her.
“No matter what, Mavra Chang, you remember that!”
She looked puzzled. “You think I’m to have great power?” she responded, skeptical and a little derisively.
“First you must descend into Hell,” he warned. “Then, only when hope is gone, will you be lifted up and placed at the pinnacle of attainable power, but whether or not you will be wise enough to know what to do with it or what not to do with it is closed to us.”
“How do you know all this?” Vistaru challenged. “Is this just some mystical mumbling or do you really know the future?”
The Gedemondan chuckled again. “No, we read probabilities. You see, we see —perceive is a better word—the math of the Well of Souls. We feel the energy flow, the ties and bands, in each and every particle of matter and energy. All reality is mathematics; all existence, past, present, and future, is equations.”
“Then you can foretell what’s to happen,” Renard put in. “If you see the math, you can solve the equations.”
The Gedemondan sighed. “What is the square root of minus two?” he asked. “That’s something you can see. Solve it.”