The Return of Nathan Brazil

Souls.”

There was no response. He sat back, sighed, switched off the transmitter although he left the receiver on, and lifted off. In the airless void they hadn’t heard or noticed his slow departure, but he wanted to remove any possibilities of second thoughts now that they were so close. Alone, with a day’s air or less and no food, they had little choice but to walk into the hole no matter what.

They were at the edge now. He knew it even though he was too far up to see them clearly. Just their breathing and their noise—or sudden lack of it—told him.

“Well? Who’s first?” he heard Mavra ask, nervousness creeping into her voice. Up until this time the plan had just been theoretical; now this one act was one of irrevocable and possibly fatal commitment.

“I’ll go,” Gypsy’s voice responded. Brazil heard some shuffling, then the strange man’s voice say, “Not too bad. It’s not a hole at all. Still solid. I guess—”

And that was it for Gypsy. Brazil knew that on the ground he had simply winked out. He could hear from the slight decrease in static that the man was no longer anywhere nearby.

“We’ve followed each other over fifty worlds,” Marquoz said dryly. “Here goes.”

“Yua? Shall we go together?” Mavra asked.

The Olympian swallowed hard. “Yes, I—I’d like that,” she responded. “I—oh! It sort of tingles, doesn’t it?”

“No different from Obie, I don’t think,” Mavra replied.

“It’s—it’s so dark…”

They were all gone now.

Brazil sighed, lit a cigarette, and punched in the codes to return to his main ship and from there to the Nautilus. It’s done, he thought. It’s started. Damn! I wish I could know what’s going on at the other end!

South Zone

“Mavra? Help me up, will you? I feel a little dizzy,” Yua muttered.

Mavra knelt down on her forelegs and reached out, helping the Olympian to her feet.

“That was a decidedly uncomfortable ride,” Marquoz grumbled. He looked a little unsteady himself.

Mavra looked around, suddenly puzzled. “Where’s Gypsy?”

The other two suddenly realized that they were only three and peered around. The chamber was huge; they stood on a flat, smooth, glassy black surface of unknown composition. The slab was six-sided, but so large was the hall it was difficult to tell. Illumination was from a massive six-sided panel on the ceiling. A rail concealing what appeared to be a walkway circled the chamber, and steps led to gaps in the rail.

“We might as well get going,” Mavra said, making for the nearest steps, which appeared to be made of stone. The walkway was a series of moving belts, they saw—but still now.

“You’ve been here before. How do we start the walkway?” Marquoz asked Mavra.

She chuckled. “I was never here. Here is where everybody else arrived who wasn’t born here. I arrived by ship. I crashed. The only time I was ever in Zone was a brief stay as a prisoner in an embassy. I’m afraid this experience is as new to me as it is to you. Just remember, though I’ve been on this planet before, I haven’t been through the Well. I’m as raw as the rest of you about what to expect.”

Suddenly they heard a whirring sound from far off in the chamber and felt a vibration through the rail. “Looks like our welcoming committee is coming,” Mavra remarked.

Marquoz looked back out at the glassy floor. “But where is Gypsy? I know he came here. He went first.”

Mavra sighed. “I don’t know. There’s been something eerie about him since the moment I met him. He’s your friend. I can’t think of any reason why he wouldn’t be here no matter who or what he was, though.”

Marquoz shrugged. “I’ve known him for years yet I don’t really know him at all. Perhaps what we all saw was some sort of disguise. Perhaps he was a noncarbon-based lifeform that fooled us into seeing him as a man and he’s in North Zone. Who knows? Obie did, I think. I think it’s best not to mention him at all right now, though. There may be more afoot than we know.”

Mavra nodded. “I agree—but I don’t like it. I don’t like puzzles at all.”

Suddenly Marquoz pointed.

Approaching them was a huge creature. It had a deep-brown torso shaped like a man’s, but plated. Six arms, extended from the sides of the torso four of them rotating on ball joints, yet terminating in fingered hands. All six looked hard and muscular. The head was ovoid and had no ears. Deep, black human eyes flanked a flat nose below which grew a massive white moustache. Below, the torso ended in long, serpentine coils.

The creature approached them without fear—which was natural, since he was obviously master here. He slapped the wall sharply as he drew within a few meters of them and the walkway stopped. Bushy white eyebrows rose.

“A human, sort of, a Dillian and a Ghlmonese? What is this?” He seemed genuinely perplexed. “Do you understand what I am saying?”

Mavra nodded. “Ah—yes, perfectly,” she said, only partly feigning nervousness. She had never met such a creature as this before on or off the Well. “We are from the Com.”

Amazement spread all over the creature’s face. “The Com! And not one of you true human! Oh, my! How things must have changed since I was last there!”

Yua gasped. ” You were once in the Com?”

He smiled a very human smile beneath his bushy moustache. “Oh, yes. Once I was human like you—well, I didn’t have a tail like that, and I was a man, and women sure didn’t look as good as you—but you know what I mean.” The voice was deep, thick, and rich but had no trace of an accent. Only Mavra understood immediately that a translator, a small surgical implant made by a Northern race, was really doing the talking. She would need one soon; they all would. She’d had one, once.

“The Com has many races now,” she told the creature. “All living in peace. That is, with each other. Together we just fought a war with a no-compromise nonhuman race.”

The creature was still wondering at it all. “Multiracial cooperation in the Com! Who’d have thought it! You mean the brotherhood boys were right all along about improving the human race?” It was more a question directed at himself than one to them but Marquoz answered anyway.

“If you mean their petty little social philosophies, no,” he told the alien. “That’s mostly breaking down now. And having spent the last several years in the human worlds I can tell you that I was tolerated more than embraced.”

The six-limbed creature shrugged all his limbs. “So? In my day it would have been war and intolerance all around. Death and destruction.” He grew a little more serious. “But you said there’d been a war? Is that why you’re here?”

Mavra jumped in quickly. “I don’t know why we’re here—and I’m not sure where ‘here’ is. No, it wasn’t the war, though. We won that. We won it, but tore a hole in space-time to do it. It is eating the Com now. You might say we were refugees, although how we wound up here I don’t know. We set down on an old world to take a vote on just where to go and the lights went out. We woke up here.”

The creature nodded. The explanation was about what he expected to hear—which is why the cover story had been invented in the first place.

The creature slithered back, allowing room for all of them on his section of belt. “You can take off the spacesuits, by the way. The Well pressurizes before it brings you through so right now it’s set to be comfortable for you. Or keep ’em on until we get to my office, as you will.”

He slapped the wall with his lower left hand, swiveled without really turning, so he was facing the other way, and the belt whirred to life.

“What are your names?” the creature called back to them as they traveled.