“I am Tourifreet, a Rhone,” Mavra told him. “The human is Yua, an Olympian, and the Chugach is Marquoz.”
“Pleased to meet you,” the creature responded amiably. “It’s been a long, long time since anybody from my old stamping grounds has been through here. People fall into those holes all the time, like I did—maybe a hundred a year, give or take. But no humans in the last century or two. Been a while. I, by the way, am Serge Ortega.”
Mavra’s head snapped up and there was a sudden, odd gleam in her eyes. Ortega, his back to her, saw nothing. “Easy, girl,” Marquoz whispered.
Ortega! She thought. After all this time! After all this… Ortega, still alive, still in charge. The man who imprisoned her so many years ago, coldly, cruelly, for so very long.
The one man for whom she still felt a smouldering hatred.
And here he was, leading them calmly into the depths of Zone, back to her. How easy to plunge a knife in that broad, leathery back—if only she had a knife. To kill this man who treated people as playthings, and had been doing so for over a thousand years.
They left the big chamber now and headed down an oval tunnel, a large corridor whose junctions were curved and smooth. It seemed to be made of some heavy, grainy stone that had been painted a dull yellow.
They passed chambers as their tunnel twisted and turned; it wasn’t a single corridor but a labyrinth. Each chamber, Ortega told them, contained a mini-biosphere for one of the Well World’s fifteen hundred and sixty races. The ones in this section were the embassies of the seven hundred and eighty Southerners.
When they reached his office and began to relax, Ortega sent for food and drink. He told them what they already knew, about the Well World and its foundings, about the hexes, zones, and gates. They listened as if they had never heard any of it before, asking all the right questions; but it was Ortega’s political map of the Well World that held their interest. Brazil had done a rough one from memory and it had been all they had; now they could see the true complexity of the Well World and the enormity of their task. In particular, they saw, for the first time, the vast oceans of the Well World and the topography of the landscape. Mavra located the areas she’d been in, and spotted Glathriel, which, Ortega explained needlessly, was where the human race now resided in tribal primitivism.
That hex held a different interest for them, for next to it was Ambreza, the original home of humanity and the point at which Nathan Brazil must emerge once he arrived. That was their initial goal.
Mavra knew the place well. Glathriel had been her prison so many years before, and she doubted the Ambreza had let it change much. Her eyes drifted northward, to Lata and Agitar and other exotic names from the Wars of the Well, and to Olborn, where she’d been half-turned into a beast, and to cold, mountainous Gedemondas, whose strange inhabitants had destroyed the rocket engines for which the war had been fought. They had also predicted her future. She wondered what the Gedemondas were predicting now.
Ortega replaced the map, seemingly oblivious to their real interests. “Enough politics,” he told them. “After you arrive at your home hexes you will have opportunities for more relaxed studies.”
Yua could hardly contain her fright at those words, but it only lent verisimilitude to her staged question. “What—what do you mean, our home hexes?”
Ortega smiled. “From here, you will shortly be taken to another gate. It is the Well Gate. It removes you from the Universe you have always known and makes you a part of the Well. Once inside, the Well analyzes you according to criteria we’ve never been able to understand and chooses a form for you. You will wake up, as if from a sleep, as one of the seven hundred and eighty Southern races—just as I did, long ago. The Well helps in that it makes you comfortable with your new form and conditions, so you won’t feel totally alien, but it does not toy with your memories—you will still be you and you’ll remember all that has been. From that point you’re on your own. Don’t fight it. Whatever you wake up as you will be for the rest of your natural lives.”
It was a sobering thought. The rest of their lives as something—else. Something alien. To some it might have had a romantic ring, but to these comrades who were not on the Well World out of desperation but on a mission, the words had a particularly forbidding sound.
But Ortega wasn’t through with them quite yet. He pumped them about conditions in the Com. They were pretty honest about it—they told him of the Dreel, and the Zinder Nullifiers, and the widening hole in space. They did not tell him about Obie or about Nathan Brazil. It was Ortega who brought up the latter’s name.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” he consoled them. “The Well will repair it. If it didn’t there’s a surviving Markovian around to make the repairs and he’d have been here by now if it were necessary.”
“How do you know he hasn’t?” Marquoz asked pointedly.
Ortega smiled. “I know him. He’s human—looks like a skinny little runt, goes by the name of Nathan Brazil. If he’d passed through here I’d have heard of it.” He scratched under his chin with his upper right arm and stared at them. “You know, it’s funny. I been looking at you two women and feeling I know you—or should know you. Funny, isn’t it? It isn’t possible, of course.”
Mavra coughed slightly. “No, hardly.”
He shrugged. “I guess in your case,” he decided, looking at Yua, “one or two of your fellow Olympians musta come through a long time ago. There’s been so many and it’s so long…” He seemed to be wandering, then looked back at Mavra, “And you—seems even further back. Damn if I can think why, though. You just look a little like somebody I used to know, way back—ah, well. No matter. Ready for the Well?”
“No,” Marquoz told him. “But what choice do I have other than to move in with you or the—what was it?— Ghlmonese ambassador?”
Ortega laughed. “All right, then. Come along.” The door opened and he slithered out. They followed as close as they dared, trying not to come too close to his lower coils.
They entered a normal room, a rectangle except for the rounded corners, barren of furniture. The door closed behind them.
Walls, floor, ceiling were of the same grainy yellowish material as the corridors except the far wall, which was another dose of total darkness.
“The Well Gate,” he told them. “You have no choice at all now. The door behind me will not open from the inside. The only way out is through the gate—and the Well.”
That was a lie, and Mavra knew it. Still, she could see that it would be useful in his line of work.
They had shed their spacesuits in Ortega’s office and were all naked now. Marquoz had salvaged his cigar case and he and Mavra puffed on the last of them. Both wondered idly if they’d ever do it again.
Mavra looked at Ortega. She still hated the man, but he seemed less an ogre in person than as an untouchable she’d never even seen. He’d been quite pleasant with them, even a little charming, and that in itself was unsettling. Brazil had called him a total scoundrel yet liked him all the same, and they’d had long debates on whether to trust the snake-man with the advance secret. And after all these years, he was still here, still in charge, never leaving Zone, never getting a day older thanks to Well magic and a liberal dose of blackmail—Mavra knew he’d had just about every embassy in Zone—and possibly a lot more places—bugged.
“Who first?” she asked the others, feeling as if it were a replay of the scene back on that dead Markovian world. Then Gypsy had stepped forward and vanished—Gypsy, who had vanished utterly, it seemed.
Whatever you wake up as you will be for the rest of your natural lives.
The sentence haunted them all.
“Oh, the hell with it.” Marquoz mumbled and stepped on the butt of his cigar. “I’m out of cigars, anyway.” He walked up to the black wall and through. It swallowed him utterly.
Yua turned and looked at Mavra, and there was fear in her eyes. Not for the first time Mavra wondered why Obie had chosen this one from those he could have selected for this mission. Only Obie knew, and Obie was far, far away.
“We’ll meet again,” the Olympian said quietly to her, taking and squeezing her hand. Then, unhesitatingly, she turned and walked the route Marquoz had walked, stepping boldly into the engulfing blackness.
“And then there was one,” said Serge Ortega behind her.
She smiled to herself. He was so cocksure, so rock steady. She took a step toward the darkness, then stopped, her mind, unbidding making the choice Brazil had left to her.
“Wait a minute, Ortega,” she said coolly, and turning to face him. “I am going to need your help.”
He was taken aback. “Huh?”
