Varnett came over to Brazil, who was still standing facing the Equatorial Barrier. “Brazil?” he said softly. “You awake?”
Nathan Brazil turned slowly, looking at Varnett.
“Oh, yes, I’m awake,” Brazil told him. “I was just thinking. I’ve enjoyed this escapade, you know. Enjoyed it a great deal. Now it’s over, ended. And it ends like all the other episodes in my life. So I have to pick up and keep on once again.”
Varnett looked puzzled. “I don’t understand you at all, Brazil. You’re in the pilot’s seat. You alone know what’s in there—you do know, don’t you? You have a girl who loves you, and a future. What’s eating you?”
Brazil shook his head slowly.
“I have no future, Varnett,” he replied. “This part of the great play is over. I already know the ending, and I don’t like it. I’m trapped, Varnett. Cursed. This diversion helped, but not much, because it brought back too much pain and longing as well. And as for Wuju—she doesn’t love me , Varnett. She has a deep need to be loved. She loves a symbol, something that Nathan Brazil did to and for her, something in the way he reacted to her. But she wants of me what I can’t give her. She wants her dream of normality.” He shifted, stretching his legs out in front of him. He continued to face not the others, but the barrier.
“I’m not normal, Varnett,” he said sadly. “I can give her what she wants, needs, deserves. I can do it for all of you. But I can’t participate, you see. That’s the curse.”
“Sounds like grandiose self-pity to me,” Varnett said derisively. “Why not take what you want if you can do all that?”
Brazil sighed. “You’ll know soon enough. I want you just to remember this, Varnett. I want you to keep it in your head throughout all that happens. Inside, I’m no different from the rest of you.”
“What would you want, if you could have anything at all?” Varnett asked him, still bewildered.
Brazil looked at the other seriously, sadly. There was agony and torment within him.
“I want to die, boy. I want to die—and I can’t. Not ever. Not at all. And I want death so very much.”
Varnett shook his head uncomprehendingly. “I can’t figure you, Brazil. I just can’t figure you.”
“What do you want, Varnett?” Brazil asked sharply, changing tone. “What would you wish for yourself?”
“I’ve thought a lot about that,” the other replied. “I’m only fifteen years old, Brazil. Just fifteen. My world has always been dehumanized people and cold mathematics. I’m the oldest fifteen of my race, now, though. I think, perhaps, I’d like to enjoy life, enjoy a human life—and somehow make my contribution to progress. To stop this headlong rush of the human race into a Markovian hell and try to build the society they hoped would evolve from their tens of thousands of cultures and races. There’s a greatness here in the Markovian Well, a potential unrealized, perhaps, but great nonetheless. I’d like to see it reached, to complete the equation the Markovians couldn’t.”
“So would I, boy,” Brazil replied earnestly. “For only then could I die.”
“Seven hours!” Ortega’s voice broke through the stillness. “It’s almost time!” His voice cracked with excitement.
Brazil turned slowly to face them. They were all scrambling to be near the barrier.
“Don’t worry,” he assured them. “It’ll open for me. A light will go on. When that light comes on, walk into the barrier. When you do, it’ll be as nothing. Only I will change, but be ready for it. And understand something else— I will lead. I have no weapons, but the Well will give me a form unfamiliar to you. Don’t be upset by it, and don’t get trigger-happy with each other. Once we’re all inside, I’ll take you down to the Well of Souls, and I’ll explain everything along the way. Don’t do anything hasty, because I’m the only one who can get you down with certainty, and I’ll not forgive any breaches. Clear?”
“Big talk, Nate,” Ortega said confidently, but there was an unease in his manner. “But we’ll go along if you do.”
“I gave you my word, Serge,” Brazil said. “I’ll keep it.”
“Look!” the Slelcronian cried. “The light’s gone on!”
In back of Brazil a section of the floor corresponding to The Avenue was lit into the Equatorial Barrier.
“Let’s go,” Brazil said calmly, and turned and stepped into the barrier. The others, tension on their faces, followed him.
Suddenly Skander cried out, “I was right! I was right all along!” and pointed ahead. The others looked in the indicated direction.
There were several gasps.
Wuju stifled a small scream.
The Well had changed Nathan Brazil, just as he had warned.
MIDNIGHT AT THE WELL OF SOULS
The creature stood at the end of The Avenue, where it passed through a meter-high barrier and stopped.
It looked like a great human heart, two and a half meters tall, pink and purple, with countless blood vessels running through it, both reddish and bluish in color. At the irregular top was a ring of cilia, colored an off-white, waving about—thousands of them, like tiny snakes, each about fifty centimeters long. From the midsection of the pulpy, undulating mass came six evenly spaced tentacles, each broad and powerful-looking, covered with thousands of tiny suckers. The tentacles were a sickly blue, the suckers a grainy yellow. An ichor of some sort seemed to ooze from the central mass, although it was thick and seemed to be reabsorbed by the skin as fast as produced, creating an irregular, filmy coating.
And it stank—the odor of foul carrion after days in the sun. It stung their nostrils, making them slightly sick.
Skander began babbling excitedly, then turned to them. “See, Varnett?” he said. “See what I told you? Six evenly spaced tentacles, about three meters tall! That’s a Markovian!” All traces of animosity were gone; this was the professor lecturing his student, in pride at the vindication of his theories.
“So you really was a Markovian, Nate,” Ortega said wonderingly. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“Nathan!” Wuju called out. “Is that—that thing really you?”
“It is,” Brazil’s voice came, but not as speech. It formed in each of their brains, in their own languages. Even The Diviner received it directly, rather than through The Rel.
Skander was like a child with a new toy. “Of course! Of course!” he chortled. “Telepathy, naturally. Probably the rest, too.”
“This is a Markovian body,” Brazil’s voice came to them, “but I am not a Markovian. The Well knows me, though, and, since all lived as new races outside, it was only natural that we be converted to the Markovian form when entering the Well. It saved design problems.”
Wuju stepped out ahead of them, drawing close to the creature.
“Wu Julee!” Hain shouted insanely. “You are mine!” The long, sticky tongue darted out to her, wrapped itself around her. She screamed. Ortega spun quickly toward the bug, pistols in two hands.
“Now, now, none of that, Hain!” he cautioned carefully. “Let the girl go.” He pointed the pistols at the Akkafian’s eyes.
Hain hesitated a second, deciding what to do. Finally the tongue uncoiled from Wu Julee, and she dropped about thirty centimeters to the floor, landing hard. Raw, nasty-looking welts, like those made by rope burn, showed on her skin.
The creature that was Nathan Brazil walked over on its six tentacles, until it loomed over her. One tentacle reached out, gently touched her wound. The smell was overwhelming. She shrank from the probe, fear on her face.