Twilight at the Well of Souls

and no way to treat them other than as fertilizer. Should we ship them to you?”

The Ulik thought it over. “Why not? There are a number of hexes with open expanses, even some where the entire surface isn’t used. These would make pretty good camps, which could be managed by very few guards. Mix up the species and they’ll be a mishmash of alien creatures who can’t even talk to one another. How about the ambassador from Kronfushun? Kent Lucas, you there?”

“I’m here,” a voice responded, sounding none too thrilled. Kronfushuns were creatures of extreme Arctic cold, odd, whirling disks that skipped across the frozen ice and could not live in temperatures approaching zero.

“Kent, you’re an Entry from the Com, as I know. You’re best to handle this. Can you put together a committee—Entries at or near our level, if possible— to see to that?”

“I’ll give it a try,” Lucas responded, still sounding none too enthusiastic.

Ortega couldn’t blame him, but nonetheless felt that a recent Com Entry would tend to be far more sympathetic to saving lives, particularly the lives of their old race.

“On the military front, we’ve organized into wet and dry military zones across the whole hemisphere,” he told them. “Mobilization is proceeding fairly well, particularly in the critical areas—the routes away from Glathriel, where we’re sure the enemy will head first. You water hexes and boating cultures are particularly important now. If Brazil tries to run by sea, we really don’t have anything like a navy to stop him, and there’s no time to build one. But if we know he’s on a ship, and where that ship is, we can certainly arrange to sink it without problems, then pick Brazil off the inevitable iceberg that will be conveniently floating by near him, even if it’s in a tropical hex. Things will turn our way shortly, the staff meeting means they’re getting ready to move. When we see where they move, after converging on Ambreza-Glathriel, their logical first move, it’ll be all our way after that.”

“You really believe that?” somebody asked.

“I do,” he responded firmly. “And you’d better, too.”

“He outsmarted us to get here,” somebody else noted. “What makes you think he won’t pull any more fast ones?”

“He very well might,” Ortega admitted. “I have no idea. That’s what we have to watch out for. Remember, though, we’ll have people undercover with their forces as well. Once their plan starts, it’ll become clear what they’re doing.”

It was mostly a pep talk, and after he said his piece he let them rant and rave and worry at each other while he tuned them out. Somehow, he thought grumpily, it doesn’t really seem to matter any more.

He reached down and pulled out a sheet of crumpled paper from a desk drawer, smoothed it out, and read it again. It had been put on his desk not long ago, while he had stepped out to the bathroom. There were no signs that anybody had entered or left the office, but there it had been. He looked at it again and again, as if it were some impossible ghost from the past— which, in a sense, it was. It was written in Com language, in a clear hand, with what looked like a quill or fountain pen.

Dear Serge,

Sorry to have missed you on the way in, but you’ll understand why I didn’t stop to chat. I wanted to get this off to you first to stop all the unnecessary killings of those Nathan Brazil copies. I’m in. You don’t have to do that any more. As you might have been told, I’m not doing this by choice, either. Frankly, the only real appeal all this has is that it promises some fun, a little change from the ordinary—but you’d understand that, wouldn’t you?

I don’t understand you, I’ll admit that. It seems to me that what you want to do to me by force you have done to yourself—put yourself in a velvet prison. That isn’t the old Serge I used to tear up bars on dozens of worlds with. Not even the old S.O.B. who took me for a sucker the last time I was here. If you want out of that prison, then come and join me if you can. Contrary to what you believe, the spell won’t suddenly turn you into a thousand-year-old wizened corpse. You’ll just pick up where you left off. So if you want to be in on the big finish, just come on out at the right time. If you make it into the Well with me, I can even fix your problems. You have my word on it.

You doubted my story about being God when most people swallowed it whole. We’re two of a kind, you and me. We understand each other. But whether I’m God or not, I know how to work these damned machines. That you know, so you know I can make good. Think it over. Even if you’ve changed so much we don’t meet again, well, it’s always a pleasure to match wits with you. But if you go against me this time, I’m going to whip you so bad that that long tail of yours will tie itself into knots of its own accord.

My best, regardless. This is going to be fun, isn’t it? Like old times… And in that spirit, I am, as always,

Nathan Brazil

He held it there, staring at it over and over, then finally reached into his desk again, came out with a box, some matches, and a small ceramic tray. Striking a match, he lit the letter and held it until he had to drop it, flaming brightly, into the tray. Soon it was completely consumed. Only some small bits of ash still with traces of writing remained, and they were easily crushed into powder.

Had he changed, really? he asked himself—and not for the first time, although this situation, and in particular that letter, had made him ask it with more intensity and urgency.

Yes, he decided. He had changed—before the Well World. Decades as a smuggler, pirate, mercenary, you name it, had led him, toward the end of his life, to a feeling of bored malaise. He had decided that he had done everything he could do, conquered every world he was likely to conquer, bedded all the beautiful women he could want. He had done it all, and had a lot of fun doing it, but what was left? So he had taken his ship out, trying to get enough nerve to do himself in but unable to get over his strict Catholic beliefs he had turned his back on when still a young boy but which haunted him in his old age. Suicide, the one crime for which repentance was impossible… Continuing out, out into areas not yet explored or charted, he had found himself wishing that there was some new world, some new experience for him that would give new meaning to his life. Then there had been that odd distress signal, a look at a massive asteroid belt in a huge, sterile system circling a red giant, and, quite suddenly, here he had been on the Well World, the answer to his dream.

Or was it? he now wondered. As a young Ulik he had started again from scratch, learned a new society, new culture, experienced a whole new range of sensuality while accumulating power. But that had been long ago.

Now here he was, once again, at the same point he had been so long ago. There was simply nothing left to do. A velvet prison, Brazil had called it. But there were no Markovian holes to fall through this time, no new Well Worlds to start again.

He thought again of Brazil. If he was as ancient as he claimed to be, he was well over fourteen billion years old. Fourteen billion years. The mind couldn’t really grasp that. He doubted Brazil’s could, really. Never changing, living the same life after a while, life after life. No rebirth, no new experiences. Same form, same old stuff, even limited by the technology of the people with whom he had marooned himself. Entry interrogations—of this new batch, anyway—said that they had tracked him down by research, for even he left records of a sort.

Brazil had hardly been inconspicuous. He seemed to have been involved in every war and movement on Old Earth, always in the headlines, always in the forefront, yet clever enough that, even when his cover occasionally slipped, new legends were spawned. The Flying Dutchman, the Wandering Jew, Gilgamesh.

Brazil was trying to escape terminal boredom and madness, Ortega alone realized. But what the hell do you do when you’ve done it all and there’s nothing left to do? You pilot a freighter between Boredom and Tedium and try and forget who you are, what you are, putting on a kind of mental shutdown.

Brazil said this would be fun. Fun, of all things! And only to Ortega would that make perfect sense.

And that left him with a problem. Should he take on Brazil once again, see if, this time, he was still the master of the dirty trick and underhanded blow, always in control? The temptation was there—it certainly was. It would, as Brazil said, be fun.