Quest for the Well of Souls

we couldn’t prove it. Finally, the strain became too much for us. We decided to pack it in. Neither of us could bear to be around and see the world that had so much of our sweat and blood in it turn into another cookie-cutter insect world.”

Renard understood. “What about your daughter, though?”

“We tried for the longest time to convince her to take the family and get out,” the Yaxa told him. “She was stubborn—got it from us, I guess. Thought she could fight them. By the time it was clear she couldn’t, well, it was too late to leave. We barely got out in time ourselves. We didn’t know what to do. Vashura would fight to the death, but there were the grandchildren to think of. So, before finding a Well Gate, we used every bit of pull, contact, IOU, and subterfuge we had to locate Nathan Brazil.”

“And did you?” the Agitar responded, surprised. “He actually returned to our part of the universe?”

Vistaru nodded. “Oh, yes. He promised to get the kids out if it were physically possible and if their parents would allow it. All he managed was Mavra.” That last was spoken with incredible sadness.

“This Brazil—when you found him, almost two centuries later—how did he look?” Yulin asked, genuinely interested.

“Exactly the same,” the Yaxa replied. “Not a hair different, not a sign of aging. I think he’s looked like that since mankind was born.”

“I wonder why he picked us to live among?” Renard mused. “Couldn’t be our superior good looks.”

“As a Markovian he’d helped establish the original Glathriel,” Wooley explained. “As he described it, it wasn’t his project, but he was—well, the manager. He arranged the transfer to Old Earth. But, unlike the others, he never transformed himself totally and irrevocably. He stayed a Markovian.”

Yulin nodded. “A temporary line. When we built Obie, we found out all about that. The whole universe is just stabilized energy fields. How that energy is transformed and manipulated creates the different elements we know—and the Well—or on a smaller scale, Obie—stabilizes them. You can have a permanent change, literally writing an equation to hold the elements so thoroughly together that your creation becomes normal reality and is perceived as such by everyone around you. Using Obie, we changed a woman into a centaur long before we heard of Dillia, and, sure enough, everybody always remembered her as a centaur, there was even a logical reason for it going all the way back to her birth. That’s how the Markovians recreated the universe.”

“Clear as mud,” Renard noted.

Yulin shrugged. “Then, at Trelig’s bidding, we ran the people through Obie and gave them all horse’s tails— it was supposed to be an example. So everybody had to know they shouldn’t have the tails they had. We created a temporary equation, a local one, as it were. Their tails, which were not considered normal, are like Brazil’s humanity. He is a Markovian, and reverts to it when in the Well. I wonder if he’s the only one of them who did that?”

It was a thought, but not one that could be resolved. They didn’t worry about that or dwell on it.

Renard looked at Mavra Chang, “Why the hell did you desert her?” he asked angrily. “Why didn’t you stay around to raise and educate her?”

Wooley and Vistaru felt more than a little guilt on that score, but it was expressed in rather human terms, defensively.

“Why did you desert her in Glathriel and go home to Agitar?” Vistaru countered. “How many visits did you pay her in twenty-two years? After all, I didn’t know about her until Ortega told me just before we left for here—but you owe her your life. Some repayment!”

He started to protest, to justify, but saw her point. “There’s plenty of guilt around for everybody, isn’t there?” he said sheepishly.

“The Yaxa had decided to polish her off,” Wooley told them. “Ortega told me the story about her in order to get my aid. I managed to short-circuit those attempts all along. That’s why it was I who managed to be the one who was finally sent to capture her. I couldn’t trust anyone else not to take the easy way out.” Her shiny yellow-and-black death’s head turned to Vistaru. “As for you, I did not know then. Ortega made a couple of slips a few years ago and I drew the proper conclusions.”

“If I remember, Nathan Brazil set the Well to summon him if anything ever went wrong,” Vistaru pointed out. “Why didn’t it call him when New Pompeii suddenly appeared overhead?”

“I can answer that,” Yulin responded. “You see, to the Well nothing is wrong. The Markovians knew that at some future time one of their races would attain the ability to manipulate the universe as they could. At that time the Well was to transport the young race to it and receive new instructions, a changing of the guard so to speak. As far as the Well’s concerned, it’s just waiting for Obie or his operators to talk to it. Of course, that’s like waiting for a monkey to quote the Koran. The Markovians blew it. We found the secret early, too early, and our artifacts can’t even absorb its data, let alone talk to and order the Well. Obie, with some justification, refuses to try. Suppose it issued an incorrect instruction and wiped out humanity?”

It was a sobering thought. “You say ‘he’ often when talking about this computer of yours,” Wooley noted. “Why?”

Yulin chuckled. “Oh, it’s a person, all right, and it perceives itself as male. Self-aware computers have been around for a thousand years—I’m sure you ran into one or two. But never one like this one. It really is a person, as human as any of us. When you see and hear him, you’ll know what I mean.”

They let it go. Suddenly Renard’s head came up, and his eyes blazed. He stood up and walked back over to the still-unmoving Mavra.

“All right, Mavra Chang,” he told her in that same hard tone he’d used before. “You’ve heard it all now. Make up your mind. The ship will cross the border this evening and be ready in another day or two. Do you want to be on it? Because, by damn, you’ll go through Well processing as you should have twenty-two years ago unless you snap out of it! Make your choice! Make it now! What the hell is wrong with you, anyway?”

Something seemed to penetrate. Slowly her respiration increased, and life began to flow weakly back into her.

“Why did he do it, Renard? Tell me why?” she asked, totally bewildered.

The tone matched his own. “Huh? Why did who do what?”

“Why did Joshi jump in front of that pistol burst? It’s insane. I can’t understand it. I—I wouldn’t deliberately sacrifice my life for anyone, Renard. Why would he?”

So that was it. He looked into her eyes. “Because he loved you, Mavra.”

She shook her equine head. “How can anyone love anyone else that much? I just don’t understand.”

“I’m not sure I do, either,” he told her. “I’m not sure any of us can understand that. Welcome back to the land of selfish hypocrites.” He sighed and smiled. She turned and faced the others. “You two—you are truly my grandparents? The stories—your tales of the Well World, Nathan Brazil. They were all real? The old memories were all real?”

Vistaru nodded. “And Nathan cared, even if we failed,” she said. “Ortega received occasional communications from Brazil in tubes sent from Well Gates. They were meant for us, but, perhaps wisely, the snake-man kept them. He felt it was better if we didn’t know who or what the other was, or what had happened to you and Vashy and the rest. He was a lousy parent and he botched the job of finding the right one, and he knew it. But he never lost sight of you, Mavra.” She looked at the Lata quizzically. “It was Brazil who, when he was unsuccessful in warning Maki Chang on the smuggling setup, made sure they didn’t find you. It was Brazil who got old Gimmy the beggar king to look out for you. It was Brazil who steered Gymball Nysongi to you—supposedly just to check on you, although it developed better. He took the heat off you when Nysongi was killed. And so on and so forth. It’s all in the dispatches in Ortega’s office.”

She was stunned again. Renard sensed something wrong, went to her again. “What’s wrong? I think it’s wonderful—to have someone do that for you, year after year.”

“It’s horrible, grotesque!” she spat back. “Don’t you see? It makes my whole life a lie. I didn’t do everything on my own. I didn’t do anything on my own! I was being helped by an immortal super- Markovian all the way!”

And he did understand, although the others could not. The only thing she had, the only thing that had kept her going, was her enormous self-confidence, her ego, her total belief in her ability to surmount any odds and overcome any obstacles. When ego and self-image are suddenly kicked away, there’s very little left. In Mavra’s case, only a tragic little girl, lonely and alone; an intellient horse, but a dependent