The Return of Nathan Brazil

by Jack L. Chalker

  Yua was just looking more and more dazed. Marquoz noted her confusion and said, reassuringly, "He's a computer, my dear. We are, essentially, inside of him right now," He grinned. "Of course, since I saw the tapes of the destruction of New Pompeii, I find this all rather surprising."

  Mavra Chang nodded. "You know the story about Trelig, then?"

  He nodded. "Most people do, now. Some historians have made quite a reputation on it." Briefly he told her of Tortoi Kai's research and the reason for the breaking of the security seals.

  Mavra shook her head at the story of the Dreel and the Zinder Nullifiers. "We knew that a weapon had been used against an external enemy—we've picked up a lot of broadcasts and plugged into a lot of computer banks in the few days we've been back. We're filling in the rest of the pieces now, hopefully, with your aid."

  "Glad to be of service," Marquoz responded pleasantly. "But, tell me, where did you and all those other people come from?"

  "Obie feigned his own death, of course," Mavra explained. "The same explosions that freed him from Ben Yulin's control gave him total self-control. He is independent of anyone. When the others left, I decided to stay."

  "Decided to die, you mean," Obie's voice came to them. "She had been deformed by the Well and had no future in the Com except as a freak, so she stayed behind, letting the others think her dead, knowing that the Com would blow me up before it would chance me going amok. I got us out, then we formed a partnership. The others—seventy-one at last count—are from various races that we've picked up in our travels. Outcasts with our sense of purpose, you might say."

  "They looked pretty human to me," Yua put in.

  Mavra smiled. "Remember that Obie said I was deformed? He fixed it. Made me as I was before—keeps me young and in perfect condition. Any of us can assume any form Obie knows or can imagine, with any powers or abilities we think we need."

  Marquoz let that pass for the moment. "And to what do we owe the pleasure of this visit?" he asked. "And why are we here?"

  "Mostly luck, as to why it's specifically you," Mavra replied. "Good luck from what I've seen of you so far. You see, when Obie felt that disruption in space-time, we first checked on the Well World to see if the master computer was damaged."

  Yua gasped. "You have visited the Holy Well of Souls?"

  "Holy or not, I've spent entirely too much time on that crazy world."

  "And was the Well damaged?" Marquoz was trying to get her back on the subject.

  She nodded. "Obie?"

  "The Well Computer was damaged by the unrestricted and improperly shielded Nullifiers used," the computer told them. "It's not a great or gaping wound now, but the rip in the fabric of space-time is growing. As it grows, the damage becomes more severe, since it's the hole, not the Well, that is the natural state of things. The Well's doing a fine job of inhibiting the spread but cannot damp it out."

  "When we traced the problem," Mavra continued, "we wound up here and quickly were able to establish the reason for it, although we couldn't get too close. Obie experiences real pain this close to the fault. That's why we've moved a bit farther out for now."

  "But that doesn't explain us," Yua pointed out.

  Mavra nodded quickly. "I'm coming to that. Well, I put down at a frontier world to get a feel for the place—the Com has really changed since my day—and the first thing that happens is some robed people ask me if I'm Nathan Brazil. Well, before too long I've been briefed on the Fellowship of the Well and on its leaders, the Olympians. I had no problem recognizing who the Olympians must be, although I was tremendously surprised. I hadn't expected them to be able to reproduce, particularly not true to type."

  "Two males were born of the First Mothers," Yua put in. "From that beginning we have built our race."

  Mavra nodded, then continued. "So, anyway, I figure that I have to know more about this Fellowship and fast because we need them."

  "You see," Obie's voice came to them, "the rent in space-time is expanding at a great rate. If unchecked, it will swallow the entire Com in a hundred and fifty years, although it probably will have destroyed all life in about a hundred around here. The tear will continue after that—growing faster and faster. There is no way I can fix it; not only is it beyond my powers, but as it widens it is creating ripples throughout reality as we know it. That is, well, think of all reality, all space-time, as a bedsheet. Put a tear in the middle and start pulling from all sides. Not only does the gap widen, but waves are sent through the blanket. Space, time, reality itself is distorted, becoming less stable. Right now you barely notice the instabilities, but they'll get worse, much worse, before the end."

  "So, you see, there's only one thing we can do," Mavra continued. "We have to find Nathan Brazil. He should have been called to the Well World to repair this damage as soon as it developed, but he has not. Either the mechanism's been damaged or, for some reason, he refuses to go. As far as we know he's the only one in the Universe who can fix the Well Computer. Either we find him, or our home ceases to exist. It's that simple."

  Marquoz thought it over. For his part, he had no reason to believe this newcomer, but with all this advanced science about and at her command he had no reason to doubt her, either. Still, there were questions.

  "I return to my original question," he said suspiciously. "Why is it that we three are here? Why not a Presidium member, or the Council President, or someone equally distinguished?"

  Mavra Chang smiled. "It was partly luck, your role, that is. I was after Yua."

  The Priestess grew more interested but remained silent.

  "The thing we know the least about," Mavra explained, "is the history of the group after Obie and I left. That meant finding a real live Olympian, and there are few of those around. We debated going directly to Olympus, but I had no desire to walk in there cold. The rally had been well publicized, and Obie has been monitoring all communications channels. The reports emphasized that an Olympian High Priestess would address the crowd. So we staked out the dressing room where she'd be relaxing after the show—no sense in causing panic—and were prepared"—she smiled sweetly at Yua—"to put the snatch on her. But she came in all huffed up about being stood up by a Com representative, and in listening to her tirade I figured that they were asking you for help in finding Brazil. I decided that we'd wait for you and that was that."

  Marquoz nodded. It made sense. The only reason for their meeting was the fact that so few Olympians ever left their home planet; coincidence was diminished to mere chance.

  "I want to know more about you," he told Mavra, acting as if he were in charge. "I want to know just who you are and what you meant by being Brazil's great-granddaughter."

  "That interests me, as well," Yua added.

  Mavra sat back, relaxed, and looked at them. "I was once a professional, for hire. A freighter captain who did odd jobs on the side. Councillor Alaina hired me to attend Trelig's meeting. I did, and we all got zapped back to the Well World. I was more than twelve years getting out of there. As to being Brazil's great-granddaughter, it's mostly a matter of how you look at it. I was the grandchild of people who Brazil returned to the Com from the Well World; he gave them new lives in new bodies. When my parents' home world fell to totalitarian forces, Brazil got me out—my grandparents, having grown old, had by then returned to the Well World—and placed me with a freighter captain. Surgery altered me to resemble the captain." She saw Yua's eyes open at that, guessed her thoughts, and added, "I was only a small child at the time and that's the only time I ever saw him." She turned her gaze back to Marquoz.

  "Well, back on the Well World I again met my grandparents, in new forms, and they were among the people who survived our battle with Ben Yulin. He changed the bunch into his dream women—the tails were an afterthought, part of his sense of humor—including my grandparents. They became the founders of Olympus, your First Mothers, I'll bet."

  Yua was a bit unsettled by the casual way in which her faith and the revered First Mothers were bein
g discussed, but said nothing. Gypsy, for his part, had finished his meal and was now working on parts of Yua's and Mavra's with total unconcern.

  Marquoz sat silently for a moment, thinking. Her story hung together, of course, and he would be the last to say that the Zinder Nullifiers hadn't botched everything up. The hole was definitely growing and they were all powerless to stop it.

  "Tell me, Yua," he said carefully, considering his words, "with a minimum of service and religion and all that, just how you know that god is Nathan Brazil."

  The Olympian looked a bit surprised at suddenly being center stage. "Why, two of the First Mothers, blessed be they, said so. They said they had been with Nathan Brazil on the planet of the Well and that He had not only told them He was God but shown them by His works."

  "Ah, my grandparents." Mavra nodded. "It figures."

  The Chugach turned to the small woman, who seemed with each moment to be less a captor. "What about it?"

  She shrugged. "Obie would be better at this than me. He has their memories up to the last leaving and mine better than I can remember. What about it, Obie?"

  The computer did not answer, but they heard the whine of the little dish overhead. Marquoz started to shout and to jump from the table and platform, but it was too late. The violet beam caught them all.

  They were in a strange place, a place unlike any they had ever seen before. There were walls of obvious controls, switches, levers, buttons, and what looked like a large screen before them. No, not a screen, they saw, but a tunnel long and dark, a great oval stretching back as far as the eye could see or perspective would allow. As they looked closer they could see that the blackness was caused by trillions of tiny jet-black dots, like buttons, so close together against the gray-black of the mounting surface that they looked to be the walls. Between the black spots electrical bolts shot in a frenzy of activity, trillions of blinking hair-fine arcs jumping from one little black dot to another apparently at random, although they knew, somehow, that it was planned.

  They were not alone in the chamber. Three were human: a young, neutered woman from one of the insect-like commune worlds, another young woman, fully developed but looking weak and thin, and a young boy also from one of the clone and genetic-engineering factories. With them were what appeared to be a mermaid riding atop a great creature like some gigantic alien cockroach, a green plant-creature with a head like a curved pumpkin and spindly vinelike limbs, a huge creature that looked like a six-armed human torso and walruslike, mustachioed face set atop a coiled snake-like body—and the thing that made the others all seem somehow kin.

  It was pulpy, and somewhat shapeless, a giant beating and pulsating heart supported by six long, powerful tentacles. It seemed to have no eyes, ears, or any other sensory organs.

  "The alien creature is a Markovian," they heard Obie's voice explain. "That is Nathan Brazil in his true form. You are inside the Well of Souls, in a control room for one of the races, probably ours, as the two women—Vardia and Wu Julee, two of Yua's First Mothers and, not incidentally, Mavra's grandparents-to-be—remembered it."

  They were aware now that the scene, three-dimensional and lifelike, was in fact a tableau, frozen in place. Now Obie selected his starting point and the scene went into playback. For the first time they saw that the six-armed walrus-snake, among others, was pointing a weapon at the creature Obie called Nathan Brazil.

  "Nate! Stay away from there!" the snake-man warned menacingly. "You can be killed, you know!"

  The pulsating mass bent slightly toward the snake creature. "No, Serge, I can't. That's the problem, you see. I told you I wasn't a Markovian but none of you listened. I came here because you might damage the panel, do harm to some race of people I might not even be aware of. I knew you couldn't use this place but all of you are quite mad now, and one or more of you might destroy, might take the chance. But none of you, in your madness, has thought to ask the real question, the one unanswered question in the puzzle. Who stabilized the Markovion equation, the basic one for the Universe?"

  There was a sudden, stunned silence except for an eerie thump, thump, thump like the beating of a great heart. Finally Brazil spoke again.

  "I was formed out of the random primal energy of the cosmos. After countless billions of years I achieved self-awareness. I was the Universe, and everything in it. Over the eons I started experimenting, playing with the random forces around me. I formed matter and other types of energy. I created time and space. But soon I tired of even these toys. I formed the galaxies, the stars, and planets. An idea, and they were.

  "I watched things grow, and form, according to the rules I set up. And yet, I tired of these, also. So 1 created the Markovians and watched them develop according to my plan. Yet, even then, the solution was not satisfactory, for they knew and feared me, and their equation was too perfect. I knew their total developmental line, so I changed it. I placed a random factor in the Markovian equation and then withdrew from direct contact.

  "They grew, they developed, they evolved, they changed. They forgot me and spread outward on their own. But since they were spiritual reflections of myself, they contained my loneliness. I couldn't join with them as I was, for they would hold me in awe and fear. They, on the other hand, had forgotten me, and as they rose spiritually they died materially. They failed to grow to be my equals, to end my loneliness. Their pride would not admit such a being as myself to fellowship nor could their own fear and selfishness allow fellowship even with each other.

  "So I decided to become one of them. I fashioned a Markovian shell, and entered it."

  The scene froze again, and Obie's voice returned to them. "A replay of the last time, over a thousand years ago, that the Well of Souls was entered and alterations made. Although the reality of what you have witnessed may be slightly different, since it was constructed from memories, I did have two accounts to work from so it is reasonably accurate."

  They found themselves back on the platform again and the little dish was already returning to its rest position. Gypsy noted that Obie had taken the opportunity to clear the table.

  "Hey! Computer! We could make a fortune if we could build that sort of thing for theaters," the dark con man called out hopefully. He was ignored.

  Yua looked incredibly smug. "The final proof!" she breathed. "You see now that we are correct. You see now the problem and the urgency. Let us find Nathan Brazil so that we may worship Him and beseech His favors."

  Marquaz was a little more cyncal. "Obie? Did everybody buy that story of his?"

  "Not Ortega—the Ulik, or six-armed snake you saw; nor the twin Vardia, the plant-creature, a Czillian, who agreed with Ortega that Brazil was a mad Markovian throwback who simply did not join the great experiment and was, perhaps, the operations manager of the Well Computer—the chief mechanic, if you will—left to see that all worked properly. Much of the Well World still thinks of him so."

  "What do you think?" the Chugach pressed.

  "That there was a First Creator, possibly the way he stated, is consistent with what we know of the dynamics of our Universe," the computer responded. "There is a great deal of inconsistency in Nathan Brazil's character. Some of it suggests that his story is true, some that he is far less than what he says. Ortega is an Entry. He was originally a Com freighter captain, who, like Brazil, was transformed into a member of the race you saw. Ortega knew Brazil personally and professionally, and even after this demonstration did not believe. I prefer, like Ortega and the Czillians, to reserve judgment. Ortega was a self-confessed liar, thief, and scoundrel; he characterized Brazil the same way.

  "I would suggest, however, that it does not matter at all whether or not we believe Brazil is god. That is totally irrelevant, something we may never know. The only thing we know for sure is that he knows how to work the great machine called the Well of Souls. As such, he is the one and only entity known to us who might repair it. Since he set the Well to call him if there was any problem, we must assume it has done so—in fact, I have m
onitored the call. Hence, we must assume that, if Brazil is still alive, he has chosen not to answer the distress call. Why? In the earlier incident he had lost most of his memory. This or something equally debilitating could have happened to him now, in which case it is even more imperative that we find him. The last time he was in the Well he set it to open for no one but himself."

  Marquoz sighed. "That's it, then. Let's do it."

  The High Priestess looked surprised at this sudden and simple acquiescence, but was very pleased.

  "We'll need a lot of help," Mavra Chang noted. "He'll have buried himself very well. Even if we manage to dig him up, he might catch on and rebury himself even deeper—if, indeed, his disappearance is deliberate and not a sign of something more ominous. We can't use the government—he's obviously got a lot of influence there. That means the Fellowship."

  Yua was ecstatic. "Of course we will channel all our resources into the search. I will convey—"

  "I will convey!" Mavra snapped, cutting her off. "I think I had better see just who and what we'll be partners with myself."

  "But you can not go to Olympus!" Yua protested. "It is forbidden—and you could not survive there, anyway. You haven't the physical adaptability for it!"

  Mavra smiled. "I will. Marquoz, will you and Gypsy please get off the platform and stand about where we did when we were served dinner?"

  "With pleasure!" Gypsy responded and moved well away; Marquoz, too, was not eager to subject himself to the computer's scrutiny any more than necessary.

  Mavra seemed satisfied. "Obie, you know what to do."

  "Right, Mavra," the computer answered pleasantly. The dish swung out. Yua got up and started to say something, perhaps to protest, but it was too late. The forms, the table, the chairs were all bathed in the violet glow, and disappeared. The platform was bare.

  "Now what . . . ?" Gypsy mused aloud, but Marquoz held up a small green hand.

  And they were. Two forms, minus the furniture, rematerialized.

  Two Yuas, absolutely identical, stood there. Two High Priestesses.