Oh, nonexistent, uncaring gods! she thought bitterly. What a curse more horrible than anything imaginable.
Suppose Nathan Brazil had what was missing, deep inside—and no one else did?
“Hello, Vardia,” said a voice behind her. She turned with a start, and saw Wuju standing there. “You’ve been sitting there looking strange for the longest time.”
She smiled weakly, but said nothing.
Wuju smiled and sat down beside her. “Yikes! This pavement’s cold!”
“If you just sit you don’t notice it,” Vardia told her.
“Everyone’s so somber and serious now,” Wuju noted. “Even me.”
Vardia looked at her strangely. “It’s the mission—the end of the mission. In there is anything you want. Just wish for it. And all of us are going in. I don’t know about anyone else, but I just discovered I don’t know what to wish for.”
“I wish we weren’t going,” Wuju said grimly. “If I had one wish, it’d be that this never had to end. Here—this journey, Nathan, all of you. It’s been the happiest time of my life. I’m afraid that nothing will be the same after we’re in there. Nothing.”
Vardia took her hand and patted it. Now why did I do that? she wondered, but she continued doing it.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Vardia said calmly. “I only know that I must change. I
“I don’t like this at all,” Wuju responded in that same tone of foreboding. “I don’t like the idea of things being changed by a whim. No one should have that kind of power—least of all these sorts. I don’t like being a figment, an afterthought. I’m scared to death. I told Nathan, but he just shook his head and went away. I don’t understand that, either. I can face death, now—and evil, too. But I can’t face the fear of what’s in there. Not alone.”
“You’re not alone,” Vardia said with a gentleness that surprised her.
Wuju looked over at Brazil, standing facing the wall, unmoving, stoic, alone. She started to tremble.
“I can’t face it alone!” she wailed weakly.
“You’re not alone,” Vardia repeated, squeezing her hand tighter.
Elkinos Skander watched the two women with interest. So the robots have retained a little humanity after all, he thought with satisfaction. But it’s buried so deep within them that it took the Well World to bring any of it out.
And for what?
Things weren’t working out quite the way he had planned at all, but except for the Slelcronian and, perhaps, that Northerner, it was all right, particularly if the robots like Vardia could feel.
Surely they wouldn’t object to his requests of the Well.
He looked over at Hain, motionless in the darkness.
“Hain? You awake?” Skander asked softly.
“Yes. Who could sleep now?” came the bug’s response.
“Hain, tell me. What do you expect to get in there? What do you want of the Well?”
Hain was silent for a moment. “Power,” she replied at last. “I would make the Baron Azkfru emperor of the Well World, this galaxy, perhaps the universe. But, with this mob, I’ll settle for his being emperor for the longest of time in Akkafan, with such other power left to future effort. My Lord, the baron, can do anything except fight this machine.”
Skander raised his mermaid’s eyebrows in surprise. “But what do
“I shall be the baron’s queen,” Hain replied excitedly. “I shall be at his throne, second only to him in power. I shall bear the broods that will rule for eternity, the product of Azkfru and myself! The workers, even the nobles, shall defer to me and my wishes, and envy me, and my subjects will sing my praises!” Hain paused, carried away by her own vision.
“I was born in a run-down shack in a hole called Gorind on Aphrodite,” she continued. “I was unwanted, sickly. My mother beat me, finally cast me out into the mud and dust when she saw I’d never be a miner. I was nine. I went into the city, living off the garbage, stealing to make do, sleeping in cold back doorways. I grew up grubbing, but in the shadow of the rich, the mineowners, the shippers from whom I stole. One day, when I was fifteen or so, I raped and killed a girl. She struggled, called me names—tried to scratch me, like my mother. They caught me, and I was about to be psyched into a good programmed worker when this man came to see me in my cell. He said he had need of people like me. If I agreed to serve him and his bosses, he would get me out.”
“And you accepted, of course,” Skander put in.
“Oh, yes. I went into a new world. I found that the rich whom I’d envied dreamed of greater riches, and that power came not from obeying the law but from not getting caught. I rose in the organization. I ate well, grew fat, ordered people around. I have—had—my own estate on a private world of the bosses. Staffed all by women, young women, held to me by sponge. Many were slaves; others I had reduced to animals. They roam naked in the forest on the estate, living in trees, eating the swill I put out for them like barnyard animals.”
Skander had an eerie feeling in his stomach, yet he followed Hain’s statement with morbid fascination. “But that’s gone now,” Skander said as calmly as he could manage.
“Not gone,” Hain replied, agitated. “I will be mother now.”
There was nothing Skander could say. Pity was for what Hain was or could have been, not what the creature was now.
“What do you want out of all this, Skander?” Hain asked suddenly. “Why all this trouble, all this effort? What do you want to do?”
“I want to restore humanity to itself,” Skander replied fiercely. “I want to get rid of the genetic engineers, the philosophers of political sameness on the Comworlds. I want to turn us around, Hain! I want to make people human again, even if I have to destroy civilization to save mankind. We’re becoming a race of robots, Hain. We wipe out the robots or we abdicate the universe to other races. The Markovians died of stagnation, Hain, and so will we unless it’s stopped!”
Hain had never liked fanatics, saviors, and visionaries, but there was nothing else to do but talk. “Tell me, Skander. Would you go back? If you could, I mean. Suppose you get your wish. Would you go back or stay here?”
“I think I could end my days here if I got what I want,” Skander replied honestly. “I like this place—the diversity, the challenges. I haven’t had time to enjoy being Umiau. But, then, I’d like to see what our little race would be if my plan were fulfilled. I don’t know, Hain. Would
“Only as the Queen Mother of the Akkafians,” Hain responded without hesitation. “At the side of my beloved Lord Azkfru. Only to rule would I return, Skander. For nothing less.”
Ortega slithered over to them. He had small pistols in his hands, and he put one next to Skander and the other in front of Hain.
“Pistols for all,” he said lightly. “Nice little energy jobs. They will work in there, like in any high-tech hex. They’ll work on everybody except me. A dandy little circuit prevents that.”
Skander reached over, picked up the pistol, felt it. Suddenly the Umiau scientist looked into Ortega’s wide brown eyes.
“You expect us to kill each other, don’t you?” he said softly. “You expect all hell to break out after we get to the Well and learn how it operates. And then you’ll finish off the winner.”
Ortega shrugged, and smiled. “Up to you,” he replied calmly. “You can compromise with me, or with each other, or do as you say and shoot. But I will be in at the payoff no matter what.” He slithered away to distribute guns to the others, chuckling softly.
“That bastard,” Hain commented. “He hasn’t seen what The Diviner and The Rel can do, has he? Wonder what sort of defense he has for that?”
“I think he knows,” Skander responded. “That’s one slick pirate there. He’s counting on us to take care of the Northerner. And, damn his eyes, we have to! We have to, or that blinking little son of a bitch will zap all of us!”
