The Return of Nathan Brazil

“You are the Enemy!” she persisted, but now she . felt fear.

He smiled. “I am the Friend,” he responded. “Look at me, Nikki. Tell me what I am.”

“You’re dead!” she shrieked. “Dead! Dead! Dead!” There was a rumble and the dim lights in the chamber went out completely except for a glow that emanated not from the machines in the walls but from the man himself. He, too, underwent a transformation. Suddenly he was very tall, caped, and hooded, and inside the black garments his form could be seen, a ghostly, ghastly form.

A skeleton. A skeleton looking at her, peering deep through the walls and the machines with eyeless sockets into the reinforced cell where her brain and nervous system were imbedded in a semiorganic substance that nurtured her.

A skeleton with a cigarette gripped between flesh-less jaws.

“You are death!” she screamed. “Away with you! Away! I am beyond death!”

“I am rest,” he replied. “I have come for you, Nikki.”

“No!” she screamed, panicked to the core of her soul. “No! Away, I say! No!”

Computers struggled to correct the imbalances, restore normalcy, but deep inside the ancient brain something welled up, beyond control, and vessels burst. Dials flickered, reflected the struggle briefly, then zeroed.

Terrified Olympian technicians, summoned by the alarms, knew even then that the Holy Mother was dead. Still they made for the elevators, tried to reach the chambers. Eventually somebody remembered the emergency bypass system and activated it. Elevators rose to the Temple levels and quickly filled with High Priestesses. Back down they rode, nervous, unsure of themselves, and then burst through the doors into the Holy Mother’s chamber.

No one was there. No one. And yet, on the floor in the center of the oval room were the crushed remains of a still-smouldering cigarette.

Nautilus—Underside

Mavra Chang’s suspicions about gypsy’s unwillingness to meet with Nathan Brazil proved unfounded. The strange, dark man returned within half a day after her return from Meouit, though he would say not a word about what he had been doing in space except to note that he “felt a need to be alone for a little while.” Somehow he seemed much different; he still talked like an old con man and was outwardly unchanged, but there was something deep down, something that anyone who’d known him any length of time sensed but couldn’t pin down. Until now there had been a touch of the child in Gypsy; he wasn’t feared for his talents and was generally liked because of this puckish humor. All that seemed gone now; only the mannerisms and act remained.

They were all gathered in the control room waiting, for what they weren’t quite sure. It had been Obie’s show from the start and Obie was still very much in charge. He was telling as little as he could get away with. If he had questioned Gypsy about the strange trip, he hadn’t told anyone his results.

Brazil hadn’t remembered Gypsy but when reminded of a few incidents that had occurred many years earlier—neither could remember just how many—he vaguely recalled the strange man.

And now here they were, at Obie’s bidding. Brazil, Gypsy, Marquoz, centauroid Mavra Chang, and, interestingly, Yua.

“Prepare for drop,” Obie warned. Mavra always wondered why the computer bothered; there wasn’t anything you could do to prepare for it. There was the blackness, the drawn-out sensation of falling, and then back to normal once again.

Obie had asked them to gather in the control room to monitor televisor screens of the big dish, the giant Zinder radiator that was a large part of the lower surface of the planetoid.

They were seeing a world mostly blue-green and white but with patches of red, yellow, and other colors. Yua recognized it at once and gasped. “That’s Olympus!” she exclaimed.

The image of the planet shifted a bit, first this way and then that as Obie oriented the huge antenna so that the planet was in the center of the screen. He matched orbital velocity with the planet’s rotation so that he stayed in the same position relative to it.

“We need the Olympians,” Obie’s voice told them. “They can be brought into line with a minimum of alteration. I propose to do so at this time. I have rarely used the big dish except to drop to various locations by reversing the field; however, time is pressing and I must use it now. I also selected Olympus because I know the pattern of its inhabitants without further study. After all, I designed the race. I—” He broke off in midsentence, pausing for almost a minute and a half. What the hell was going on? They wondered.

“Sorry,” Obie’s voice returned. “I just intercepted a mass of messages from Olympus. The only real problem I had has apparently been removed without me. Nikki Zinder is dead.”

Yua gasped. “The Holy Mother? But that’s impossible!”

“No, not really,” the computer responded. “Brain cells wear out, malfunction, and die even in the best of setups—and this was the best, believe me. A massive stroke, it appears. No signs of foul play—the techs say she just blew a gasket for some reason—except they found a cigarette on the floor of her chamber. Extraordinary!”

Gypsy sat back and lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply.

“No sign of forced entry, no way for anybody to get in and out,” the computer continued. Their medical people have fed the medical monitor data through and I’ve analyzed It. Amazing. I would swear she was frightened to death!”

Mavra Chang sighed. “Poor Nikki. I feel so sorry for her. She never had a chance at a real life.”

To her surprise, Nathan Brazil spoke. “She’s better off now. Life’s a tragedy anyway.” He seemed genuinely sorry.

She turned and looked at him. Now, divested of his makeup, he looked quite ordinary. A small man, almost tiny, with fine-chiseled features and black hair and eyes. Though he was not handsome, except for his diminutive size and build there was something classic about him, like a Greek statue in the old records.

“You’re supposed to be god,” she muttered. “Is there an afterlife where she might find happiness?”

To her surprise he answered. “Truthfully, I don’t know, since I can’t escape this one,” he said quietly. “The math allows for the possibility of such a thing, but—who knows? The evidence is ambiguous. It doesn’t matter, anyway—even that would be wiped out when this sector goes.”

Thatwas depressing, so nobody pursued it.

“You won’t see much on the screens,” Obie told them. “I am reprogramming the Olympians. Nathan Brazil has been found and is in command, and he has new tasks for them to perform. They will follow his orders—they will do whatever we tell them, gladly. You others are taking on the role of saints. They’ll worship you as they would him.”

“You know, this has possibilities,” Brazil murmured. “A whole planetful of superwomen who’ll do anything I tell ’em to. The hell with porn.”

All of a sudden they heard a tremendous hum; vibration filled the great shaft outside and shook the walls of the control room. Only the image of the planet on the screen remained steady. The great power of Gil Zinder’s full creation was being employed.

And then a great shudder was felt all over the Nautilus. The planetoid started to move. The vibration was so great that they were aware of the movement only because the planet on the screen appeared to revolve slowly. It seemed to be bathed in a glow. The vibration continued for some minutes, until Obie had completely circled Olympus, then slowly died.

“It’s done,” Obie announced. “We have willing workers now—millions of them.”

“There seems to be something vaguely immoral in all this,” Brazil commented sourly. “One zap and instant racial slavery.” He looked genuinely disturbed. “If I’d realized the full power of this thing, I’d have gone to that party at Trelig’s.”

Mavra gave him a dark look. “Now’s a fine time to find it out,” she snapped.

“Is it true?” Yua asked wonderingly. “Am I now a goddess among my people?”