“Why didn’t you step in then?” Ortega wanted to know. “Tell them what they were doing wrong?”
Zinder shrugged. “What could I do? By the time I knew what they were working on it was too late. Even then I was really blocked. Suppose I had suddenly showed up and said, ‘Hi! I’m Gil Zinder! I know you think I’ve been dead a thousand years, but I was only fooling.’ Who would have believed me or paid attention to me? I’d never have gotten through the bureaucracy. It’s much easier to make a bureaucracy not notice you than to notice and take you seriously. I left them the keys to godhood, to the universe, and they took it and destroyed themselves with it. And me—look at what it’s cost me! Nikki… Obie… All that was dear to me.”
Marquoz still couldn’t quite believe all this. “So you killed Nikki Zinder? Your own daughter? Did Obie know?”
“He knew,” Zinder assured him. “Although I didn’t realize that until I was inside him myself and we could talk. We talked it out at great length, a sort of mutual catharsis. He would have had to do it if I hadn’t, and that was the one thing he simply could not do. He could not harm Nikki. I even tried to talk him out of trying to integrate with Brazil, but to no avail.”
“Brazil,” the Hakazit muttered. “Why did Brazil do that to Obie?”
“Short him out, you mean? For much the same reason that I lose my powers when he turns it off. You see, we have a mathematical matrix here, a set of relationships that says, ‘I am the universe and I am this way, according to these laws.’ That’s the original universe, the Markovian, or naturally formed one. It’s quite small, really, compared with ours. The whole thing was barely the size of a small galaxy. Now, the Markovians did it over themselves. They had a second creation, you might say, which, since it originated from the same point as their own for safety’s sake, destroyed their planets and incorporated that old universe into ours. And since ours was a much larger explosion, it expanded with ours as well, which is why you find more Markovian worlds out there than around here. But they’re the old, dead, original universe. Ours is superimposed on it—they didn’t dare wipe theirs out or they’d wipe themselves out as well. This is the matrix imposed by the Well, the mathematical formulae of the Markovian computers, and that is what I came to decipher. With it I can adjust the superimposed mathematical building blocks just a tiny bit to suit myself. Obie could do no more than I, but he could do it over a planetary area. The individual Markovians, I believe, could do it even better, since it was matched to their brains specifically. But it is the Well that maintains this mathematically superimposed set. When Brazil turns it off, that set of mathematics will cease to exist. And, when he repairs it and turns it back on, he’ll have to instruct it to build a new mathematical model. A new one. It’ll be very much like the original, but it will differ in many specifics. It can’t be as far-reaching, for example, since he’ll have only 1,560 races here to work with. It’ll also be formed from the power of his mind, and that will color it ever so slightly. It will be slightly different. Very slightly, perhaps one digit in a billion-place equation, but it will be different. He can’t help it. Obie is part of the old math. So is the universe we knew—the Com, the stars and planets, the races out there.”
“I think I understand you,” Ortega put in. “Obie was built to cope with this superimposed set of rules, or math, or whatever you want to call it. So is everything we know—except the Well World, which is on a separate, model computer not affected. And Brazil is from the old math, the Markovian math, and Obie simply couldn’t cope with him because he was slightly, ever so slightly, off, and that blew Obie’s circuits.”
Zinder nodded. “A tiny difference, but vital. He just couldn’t cope with that difference. The same reason why Brazil can’t really change his appearance once he sets it in the Well. He’s not a part of the math of the known universe; he reverts always to form. We can’t even kill him. There is always a way out provided by circumstance, which is another way of saying that the Well looks out for him. Only inside the Well can he die, since the Well was partly designed to change Markovians to the new mathematics.”
“Do you think he’ll kill himself?” Ortega asked. “I think I understand him now, a little. I’ve lived too long and I’m ready to go, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Now I can, and it’s a blessing and a relief. You can’t believe the lack of a burden I feel. You can live too long, Doctor. Particularly when you can’t change.”
Zinder considered the question. “Will he kill himself? He’s said so, many times. He’s said that that’s the only thing he wants to do. I think that’s what Mavra Chang is there for—to receive the passing of the torch. She will go inside and be taught the workings of the Well, and it’ll be matched to her. Once that happens and he checks her out on it, well, then he can die with a clear conscience. Somebody will be left to guard the truth, and instead of the Wandering Jew the new humans will have the mysterious, immortal woman.”
“What a horrible fate,” Ortega sighed.
“But it’s of her own free will,” Zinder pointed out. “When she tells him to turn off the machine, she takes full responsibility for the consequences, all of them. When she emerges, she’ll be the only being anywhere left based on the present, rather than the new mathematics. She won’t be able to be killed, or changed, and she’ll be like that until she can turn it over to some wiser future race, if it ever arises, that again discovers the Well equations and does something with them other than destroy itself. If they do destroy themselves, some billions of years, perhaps, from now, she’ll have the job of starting it all over again and maybe passing the torch herself at that point.”
They thought about it, thought about the loneliness, the aimless wandering, without change, without end, the Well not even permitting madness. For a while she would enjoy it, of course, as Brazil must have, as Ortega had in his more limited yet no less oppressive self-exile. But, eventually, she would reach that point when she had lived too long, and she would know. “I don’t think she realizes the devil’s bargain she’s making,” he said sadly.
Zinder shrugged. “Does anyone? And can we go back and do it all again? Can I undo the damage to the universe? To the Well? No, I think not. Not any more than you can take back any of your crucial decisions.” He paused. “I better go now. Yua must be told —and I want to be back by dawn.”
Serge Ortega put out his hand and Zinder took it. “Until dawn, then, Gilgram Zinder. We shall meet, together, down there at the canal, eh?”
“At the canal,” the other man agreed. “But not Doctor Gilgram Zinder, no, not now. Most of him died in Oolakash about nine hundred years ago. What little of him survived that event died with Nikki on Olympus and the rest with Obie on Nautilus. I’m just Gypsy, Ortega. That’s the way I want it to be, and so that’s who I am. I can be whoever and whatever I want.”
“Wait! One more thing!” the Ulik almost shouted. “How will we know if we held long enough? Can you tell me that?”
Gypsy laughed. “If I’m here, you’ll know for sure and in a very sudden and messy manner. If not—well, if you can last until night, and if it’s clear and you’re in position to see a little bit of the sky, you’ll see the stars go out.”
“But that’s impossible!” Ortega protested. “Even if the universe goes out, it would be thousands of years before we’d know!”