Jack Chalker - Midnight at the Well of Souls

“No,” he replied seriously. “There’s a lot of hard work, and pain, and heartache—but, if it all comes together, it can be beautiful.”

“We’ll try it here,” she said resolutely. “And when the fun is gone, if ever, or when we’re old and gray, we’ll take off for a Markovian world, and go back and do it again. That’s a good future.”

“I think it is,” he responded. “It’s more than most people ever get.”

“This world,” she said. “It must never become like the others, like the Com. We must make sure of that.”

At that moment there was a glow far beyond the horizon, and suddenly a bright arrow streaked upward in the dark sky and vanished. A few seconds later, a distant, roaring sound came to them.

“Poor Nathan,” he said sadly. “He can do it for everyone but himself.”

“I wonder where he is now?” she mused.

“I don’t know what form he’s in,” he replied, “but I think I know where he is and what he’s doing, and thinking, and feeling.”

They continued to gaze at the stars.

Nathan Brazil lay in the command chair on the bridge and gazed distantly at the fake starfield projected in the two window screens. He glanced over to the table atop the ancient computer.

That same pornographic novel was there, spread open to where he had last been reading it. He couldn’t remember it at all, but, he reflected, it didn’t matter. They were all alike anyway, and there was plenty of time to read it again.

He sighed and picked up the cargo manifest, idly flipping it open.

Cargo of grain, bound for Coriolanus, it read. No passengers.

No passengers.

They were elsewhere now—the rotten ones in their own private hells, the good ones—and the potentially good—with their chances. He wondered whether their dreams were as sweet as they had imagined. Would they forget the lessons of the Well, or try for change?

In the end, of course, it didn’t really matter.

Except to them.

He closed the manifest and threw it across the control room. It banged against the wall and landed askew on the floor. He sighed a long, sad sigh, a sigh for ages past and the ages yet to be.

The memories would fade, but the ache would remain.

For, whatever becomes of the others or of this little corner of the universe, he thought, I’m still Nathan Brazil, fifteen days out, bound for Coriolanus with a load of grain.

Still waiting.

Still caring.

Still alone.