“How about you, Skander? This is where you wanted to be. And you, Hain?” His voice rose to a high, excited pitch. “Diviner? Can you divine this one? Vardia? Serge? Wuju? Slelcronian? Any of you?”
“In the name of God, Brazil!” Skander screamed. “Stop it! You know we don’t dare do anything as long as we don’t understand the panel’s operation!”
“He’s bluffing!” Hain snarled. “I’ll take the chance.”
“No!” Wuju screamed, and swung her gun around on the great bug. “You can’t!”
“I’ll even show you how,” Brazil said calmly, and took a step.
“Nate! Stay away from there!” Ortega warned. “You can be killed, you know!”
Brazil stopped, and the pulsating mass bent toward Ortega slightly. “No, Serge, I can’t. That’s the problem, you see. I told you I wasn’t a Markovian, but none of you listened. I came here because you might damage the panel, do harm to some race of people I might not even know. I knew you couldn’t use this place, but all of you are quite mad now, and one or more of you might destroy, might take the chance, as Hain just showed. But none of you, in your madness, has thought to ask the real question, the one unanswered question in the puzzle. Who stabilized the Markovian equation, the basic one for the universe?”
There was a pumping sound, like that of a great heart, its thump, thump, thump permeating them. Their own hearts seemed to have stopped, all frozen in an eerie tableau. Only the thumping seemed real.
“I was formed out of the random primal energy of the cosmos,” Brazil’s voice came to them. “After countless billions of years I achieved self-awareness. I was the universe, and everything in it. In the aeons I started experimenting, playing with the random forces around me. I formed matter and other types of energy. I created time, and space. But soon I tired of even those toys. I formed the galaxies, the stars, and planets. An idea, and they were, as congealed primal energy exploded and flung transmuted material outward from its center.
“I watched things grow, and form, according to the rules I set up. And yet, I tired of these, also. So I created the Markovians and watched them develop according to my plan. Yet, even then, the solution was not satisfactory, for they knew and feared me, and their equation was too perfect. I knew their total developmental line. So I changed it. I placed a random factor in the Markovian equation and then withdrew from direct contact.
“They grew, they developed, they evolved, they changed. They forgot me and spread outward on their own. But since they were spiritually reflections of myself, they contained my loneliness. I couldn’t join with them as I was, for they would hold me in awe and fear. They, on the other hand, had forgotten me, and as they rose materially they died spiritually. They failed to grow to my equal, to end my loneliness. Their pride would not admit such a being as myself to fellowship, nor could their own fear and selfishness allow fellowship even with each other.
“So I decided to become one of them. I fashioned a Markovian shell, and entered it. I knew the flesh, its joys and its pains. I tried to teach them what was wrong, to tell them to face their inner fears, to rid themselves of the disease, to look not to a material heaven but within themselves for the answers. They ignored me.
“And yet the potential was there. It is still there. Wuju’s response to kindness and caring. Varnett’s self-sacrifice. Vardia’s need for others. Other examples abound, not just about us, but about all our people. The one who sacrifices his life to save others. The compassion there, sometimes almost buried by the overlying depravity. It peers through—isolated, perhaps, but it is there. And as long as it is there, I shall continue. I shall work and hope for the day when some race seizes that spark and builds on it, for only then will I no longer be alone.”
They said nothing for several seconds. Then, quietly, Ortega responded, “I’m not sure I believe all this. I’ve been a Catholic all my life, but somehow God to me has never been a little spunky Jew named Nathan Brazil. But, assuming what you say is true—which I don’t necessarily accept—why haven’t you scrapped everything and started again? And why continue to live our grubby little lives?”
“As long as that spark is present, I’ll let things run, Serge,” Brazil replied. “That random factor I talked about. Only when it’s gone will I go, give up, maybe try again—maybe, finally die. I’d like to die, Serge—but if I do I take everything with me. Not just you, everybody and everything, for I stabilize the universal equation. And you are all my children, and I care. I can’t do it as long as that spark remains, for as long as it remains you are not only the worst, but the best of me.”
The thump, thump, thump continued, the only sound in the room.
“I don’t think you’re God, Nate,” Ortega replied evenly. “I think you’re crazy. Anybody would be, living this long. I think you’re a Markovian throwback, crazy after a billion years of being cut off from your own kind. If you was God, why don’t you just wave your tentacles or something and get what you want? Why all this journey, and pain, and torment?”
“Varnett?” Brazil called. “You want to explain it mathematically?”
“I’m not sure I don’t agree with Ortega,” Varnett replied carefully. “Not that it makes much difference from a practical point of view. However, I see what you’re driving at. It’s the same dilemma we face at that control board, there.
“Let’s say we let Skander do what he wants, abolish the Comworlds,” the boy continued. “Let’s say Brazil, here, shows him exactly how to do it, just what to press and in what sequence and in what order. But the Com concept and the Comworlds developed according to the normal human flow of social evolution, right or wrong. They are caused by countless past historical events, conditions, ideas. You can’t just banish them; you’ve got to change the equation so that they never developed. You have to change the whole human equation, all the past events that led to their formation. The new line you created would be a completely different construct, things as they would be without any of the crucial points that created the Coms. Maybe it was an outlet. Maybe, bad as it was, it was the only outlet. Maybe man would have destroyed himself if just one of those factors wasn’t there. Maybe what we’d have is something worse.”
“Exactly,” Brazil agreed. “For anything major you have to change the past, the whole structure. Nothing just vanishes. Nothing just appears. We are the sum of our past, good as well as bad.”
“So what do we do?” wailed Skander. “What can we do?”
“A few things can be done,” Brazil replied calmly. “You—most of you—sought power. Well, this is power!” With that the Markovian moved toward the control panel.
“My God! He’s going in there!” Skander screamed. “Shoot, you fools!” The Umiau fired its pistol at the Markovian. In a second, the others followed, pouring a concentrated energy pulse into the mass sufficient to disintegrate a building.
The Markovian creature stopped, but seemed to absorb the energy. They poured it into him, all of them, even Wuju, with great accuracy.
He was still there.
The Diviner’s lights blinked rapidly, and searing bolts shot out, striking the Markovian body. There was a glow, surrounding the creature in stark outline, and then it faded.
Brazil was still there.
They stopped firing.
“I told you you couldn’t hurt me,” Brazil said. “None of you can hurt me.”
“Bullshit!” Ortega spat. “Your body was torn to ribbons in Murithel! Why wasn’t this one?”