Jack Chalker - The Return of Nathan Brazil

“Once this was a green place,” Brazil noted, sounding almost nostalgic. “The air was sweet, the climate warm and comfortable, and several million people lived in those cities.”

“Markovians, you mean,” Mavra remarked. “Not people.”

He nodded vigorously. “People. Shaped like big leathery hearts with six suckered tentacles and all sorts of yucky attributes, yes, but people all the same. Not too different, deep down, from us, I suspect, considering how similar our wildly varying alien civilizations have developed. We’re their children, remember. Down there they lived and laughed and played and worked and thought just as people have been doing for ages, and down there they worried and decided and left. They left to go to the Well World, to give up their mortality for our kind of existence.”

“You seem pretty certain that we can get there the same way,” Marquoz noted. “There is some sort of transportation system, you said?”

Brazil nodded. “A Well Gate. It’ll open if you want it to open and it’ll take you one place if you really want to go there. The Markovians built their machines too well; the computer that once sustained a civilization in a materialist Utopia is still alive, still waiting for instructions. If somebody orders the Well Gate to open, it will respond and do so—and send you to the Well World. You’ve been well briefed; you remember the facts.”

“Just hard to believe,” the Chugach replied. “I mean, all these computers and nobody’s ever been able to make ’em do anything—and, heaven knows, enough time, trouble, and money’s been spent trying to make them do something. Not even discover the Well Gate, as you call it.”

“People have discovered the Well Gate,” Brazil told him. “People who wanted to find it found it—and it swallowed them, took them to the Well World. Others, well, there are gates all over, even on asteroids where Markovian worlds used to be, that snare the bored, the fantasizers, the would-be suicides—the people who are sick of their own lives and earnestly wish for a new start. The computers see that as a reflection of the Markovian attitudes. That’s how people like Ortega got to the Well World. That’s how Mavra’s grandparents returned not once but twice.”

“Do you think either may still be alive?” Mavra asked him.

He shook his head. “I doubt it very strongly. It’s been too long. Some Well World lifeforms live an awfully long time, but none lives that long.”

“Ortega,” she pointed out.

“A special case,” he replied. “Still, your name should also be known to a lot of the Well World from your part in the wars; if any of your relatives who got through are still alive, I’m pretty sure you’ll have no trouble finding them. They’ll find you.”

He set the boat down on a barren plain. “Far as I go,” he told them. “I can’t just fly into it or past it; it’d probably snatch me, too, and I can’t go just yet. I can hear it screaming for me now, though. So into your pressure suits and out you go.”

They dressed quickly, almost in silence. Tension, already high, was practically visible now. Finally they were all set, all on internal air and power, and Brazil threw the switch that isolated the scout pilot’s cabin from the rest of the ship.

He leaned over and flicked his communications switch. “Mavra, use your own judgment with Ortega. The rest of you—you don’t even know each other.”

“Don’t worry,” Marquoz grumbled. “And don’t keep repeating the obvious so much. If you didn’t trust us with this thing then you shouldn’t have sent us.”

He smiled, knowing what was going on inside all of them. They were saying good-bye to their pasts, their worlds, their Universe. The ones who’d never been on the Well World before were at the biggest disadvantage, but for Mavra, too, it was highly traumatic. He understood that. She loved freedom most of all, and freedom to her was a fast ship crossing the starfields.

Not for the first time did he worry about Obie. Could the computer really influence what they’d become? And had he done the best job in that regard? If they all wound up immobile, or mass-minds, or water-breathers they’d be of precious little help to him when it counted.

He checked his screens. “There. It’s open. See it ahead of you on your right?”

They were out of the ship now, four white-suited figures against the dull-gray rock, walking single-file with Mavra’s Rhone body leading.

They stopped and looked. It was there, on the plain—a huge hole, it seemed, with infinite blackness filling it. If they had been airborne they would have seen its hexagonal shape.

“Just walk into it,” he urged. “And—good luck to all of you. I hope to see you all one midnight at the Well of Souls.”

There was no response. He sat back, sighed, switched off the transmitter although he left the receiver on, and lifted off. In the airless void they hadn’t heard or noticed his slow departure, but he wanted to remove any possibilities of second thoughts now that they were so close. Alone, with a day’s air or less and no food, they had little choice but to walk into the hole no matter what.

They were at the edge now. He knew it even though he was too far up to see them clearly. Just their breathing and their noise—or sudden lack of it—told him.

“Well? Who’s first?” he heard Mavra ask, nervousness creeping into her voice. Up until this time the plan had just been theoretical; now this one act was one of irrevocable and possibly fatal commitment.

“I’ll go,” Gypsy’s voice responded. Brazil heard some shuffling, then the strange man’s voice say, “Not too bad. It’s not a hole at all. Still solid. I guess—”

And that was it for Gypsy. Brazil knew that on the ground he had simply winked out. He could hear from the slight decrease in static that the man was no longer anywhere nearby.

“We’ve followed each other over fifty worlds,” Marquoz said dryly. “Here goes.”

“Yua? Shall we go together?” Mavra asked.

The Olympian swallowed hard. “Yes, I—I’d like that,” she responded. “I—oh! It sort of tingles, doesn’t it?”

“No different from Obie, I don’t think,” Mavra replied.

“It’s—it’s so dark…”

They were all gone now.

Brazil sighed, lit a cigarette, and punched in the codes to return to his main ship and from there to the Nautilus. It’s done, he thought. It’s started. Damn! I wish I could know what’s going on at the other end!

“Mavra? Help me up, will you? I feel a little dizzy,” Yua muttered.

Mavra knelt down on her forelegs and reached out, helping the Olympian to her feet.

“That was a decidedly uncomfortable ride,” Marquoz grumbled. He looked a little unsteady himself.

Mavra looked around, suddenly puzzled. “Where’s Gypsy?”

The other two suddenly realized that they were only three and peered around. The chamber was huge; they stood on a flat, smooth, glassy black surface of unknown composition. The slab was six-sided, but so large was the hall it was difficult to tell. Illumination was from a massive six-sided panel on the ceiling. A rail concealing what appeared to be a walkway circled the chamber, and steps led to gaps in the rail.

“We might as well get going,” Mavra said, making for the nearest steps, which appeared to be made of stone. The walkway was a series of moving belts, they saw—but still now.

“You’ve been here before. How do we start the walkway?” Marquoz asked Mavra.

She chuckled. “I was never here. Here is where everybody else arrived who wasn’t born here. I arrived by ship. I crashed. The only time I was ever in Zone was a brief stay as a prisoner in an embassy. I’m afraid this experience is as new to me as it is to you. Just remember, though I’ve been on this planet before, I haven’t been through the Well. I’m as raw as the rest of you about what to expect.”