Ortega thought for a moment. "No," he replied, "as far as I know it's always accident or blunder. That's why so few come. Now do you see what I mean about God sending you to me?"
"Somebody sure did, anyway," Brazil acknowledged dryly. "I wish I could see those films and learn a lot about them before I tried to find two invisible needles in a planet-sized haystack."
"You can," Ortega assured him. "I have all the material back in my office."
Brazil's mouth was agape. "But you told us there was no way back!"
Ortega shrugged monstrously again. "I lied," he said.
* * *
Several hours later Brazil learned as much as he was going to from the recordings, testimony, and arguments of the Council committees.
"So can you give me any leads on this Skander and Varnett? Where are they now? And what?"
"Newcomers are pretty conspicuous around here, since there are so few of them and they are so obvious," Ortega replied. "And, yet, I can give you nothing on either. The planet seems to have swallowed them up."
"Isn't that unusual?" Brazil asked. "Or, worse, suspicious?"
"I see what you mean. The whole planet saw what you saw and heard what you heard. They could have some natural allies."
"Yeah, that's what I'm most concerned about," Brazil said bluntly. "The odds are that there's a monstrous race going on here, and that this place is the soul of reason compared to what everything we know would become if the wrong side was to win."
"They could both be dead," Ortega suggested hopefully.
Brazil shook his head in a violent negative. "Uh-uh. Not these boys. They're clever and they're nasty. Skander's almost the archetypal mad scientist, and Varnett's even worse—a
renegade,
high-class Com. At least one of them will make it, and he'll have some way to dump his allies afterward."
"You'll have the help of all the hexes who voted to kill them," Ortega pointed out.
"Sure, Serge, and I'll use that when I have to. But this is really a lone-wolf operation and you know it. That Council was politically very slick. They could count. Even a hex voting to kill them knew they wouldn't be killed—so what was the use of their vote? Getting there might take help—but once there, every friend I have on this world will seek godhead, and never mind that I don't know how to talk to the brain. No, Serge, I have to kill
both
of them, absolutely, irrevocably, and as quickly as possible."
"Getting
where
might take help?" Ortega asked, puzzled.
"To the Well of Souls, of course," Brazil replied evenly. "And before midnight."
Now it was Ortega's turn to look stunned. "But that's just an old saying, like I said before—"
"It's the answer, Serge," Brazil asserted strongly. "It's just that nobody has been able to decipher the code and make use of it."
"There is no answer to that. It makes no real sense!"
"Sure it does!" Brazil told him. "It's the answer to a monstrous question, and the key to the most monstrous of threats. I saw Skander's and Varnett's eyes light up when they first heard the phrase, Serge. They seized on it!"
"But what's the question?" Ortega asked bewilderedly.
"That's what I don't know yet," Brazil replied, pointing his finger at the Ulik animatedly. "But
they
thought it was the answer, and
they
both
think
they
can figure it out. If they can, I can.
"Look, Serge,
why
was this world built? No, not the brain; we'll accept that as bringing some sort of stability to the universe. In fact, if they're right, we're all just figments of some dead Markovian's imagination. No,
why all this?
The Well, the hexes, the civilizations? If I can answer
that,
I can answer the bigger question! And I'll find out!" Brazil exclaimed excitedly, half-rising from his chair.
"How can you be so sure?" Ortega responded dubiously.
"Because someone—or something—wants me to!" Brazil continued in the same excited tone. "That's why I was lured here! That's why I'm here at all, Serge! That's what makes even the timing! Even now they've got a ten-week start! You, yourself, said as much back at the Gate!"
Ortega shook his head glumly. "That was just my old Latin soul coming forth, Nate. I've been consorting with Jesuits again—yes, we have several here, from the old missionary days, came in a single ship and are out trying to convert the heathen. But, be reasonable, man! You never would have found Dalgonia were it not for the detour. You wouldn't have detoured except for Wu Julee's presence on your ship, and that could hardly have been planned, let alone your act of mercy."
"I think it
was
planned, Serge," Brazil said evenly. "I think I've been conned all along. I don't know how, or by whom, or for what purpose, but
I've been had!"
"I don't see how," Ortega responded, "but, even if so, how will you ever know?"
"I'll know," Brazil said in a tone that was both firm and somewhat frightening. "I'll know at midnight at the Well of Souls."
* * *
They stood once again at the Gate, this time for the last time.
"It's agreed, then," Ortega said to him. "As soon as you pass through and get oriented, you announce yourself to the local ruler. All of them will have been notified of your coming through, with instructions to render any assistance. But at least one of them is sure to be in league with your enemies, Nate! Are you sure? What if you are swallowed up?"
"I won't be, Serge," Brazil replied calmly. "Chess-players don't sacrifice their queens early in the game."
Ortega gave one last massive shrug. "Believe what you wish—but, be careful, my old friend. If they get you, I shall avenge your death."
Brazil smiled, then looked at the Gate. "Is it best to run at it, walk into it, or what?" he asked.
"Doesn't matter," Ortega told him. "You'll wake up as if coming out of a long sleep, anyway. May you wake up a Ulik!"
Brazil smiled, but kept his thoughts on being a seven-meter, six-armed walrus-snake to himself. He walked over to the gate, then turned for one last look at his transformed old friend.
"I hope I wake up at all, Serge," he said quietly.
"Go with God, you ancient heathen," Ortega said.
"I'll be damned," Brazil muttered, half to himself. "After all these years I might wake up a Gentile." And, with that, he stepped through the Gate.
And in the darkness he dreamed.
* * *
He was on a giant chessboard, that stretched off in all directions. Seven pawns were down on his side—the white side. They looked like scorched and frozen bodies, lying on blackened cots.
Through the mostly faceless field of black pieces, he could see Skander and Varnett, queen and king.
Skander was a queen in royal robes, with a scepter in hand. The queen looked around, but could not spot the king. There was Wu Julee, a pawn, out front, and Vardia, a knight with bright sword flashing.
Ortega, a bishop, glided by quickly, and was struck by a black rook with the face of Datham Hain.
The queen glided quickly, trying not to trip over her long skirts, toward Hain, the scepter ready to strike that ugly, pig face, when suddenly Ortega reappeared and pushed him away.
"The black royal family has escaped, Your Highness!" Ortega's voice shouted. "They are heading for the Well of Souls!"
The queen looked around, but there was no trace of the enemy's major pieces. Anywhere.
"But where is the Well of Souls?" screamed the queen. "I cannot get to the king without knowing!"
A sudden burst of overwhelming, cosmic laughter came from beyond the board. It was giant, hollow, and all embracing. A giant hand gripped the queen and moved it far away to the other side of the board. "Here they are!" the great voice said mockingly.
The queen looked around and screamed in terror. The king with Skander's face was but one square right, and the queen with Varnett's face was one square up.
"Our move!" they both said, and laughed maniacally.
* * *
Brazil awoke.
He got quickly to his feet.
Odd,
he thought curiously.
I'm more wide awake, feeling better, head dearer than I can ever remember.
Quickly he examined his body to see what he was. With a shock he looked up around him, to the shores of a nearby lake. There were animals there, and others of his kind.
"Well I'll be damned!" he said aloud. "Of course! That had to be the answer to the first question! I should have figured it out in Serge's office!"
Sometimes the obvious needed to be belabored.
Considering how primitive the place was, Brazil worriedly set out to see if he could find the Zone Gate.
CZILL—SPRING
(Enter Vardia Diplo 1261, Asleep)
She was never certain why she had finally stepped through the Gate. Perhaps doing so was an acceptance of inevitability, perhaps an obedience to authority that was a part of her conditioning.
There were patterns of color, running in and out, pulsating in a rhythmic, cosmic heartbeat: yellows, greens, reds, blues—all forming kaleidoscopic patterns, a mechanical ringing sound accompanying the pulses in an odd symphonic monotone.
Then, quite suddenly, she awoke.
She was on a lush savanna, tall grasses of green and gold stretching out to low foothills in the distance. Some trees, reminiscent of gum trees, dotted the plain, with odd growths that looked like barren stubs of what once had been taller trees showing in some numbers in the distance.
With a start, she realized that the stubby trees were moving. They moved in a syncopated rhythm that was most strange. The trunks were actually legs, she realized, and it seemed as if they were all moving in great strides, yet were somehow arrested. It was like watching a track meet in slow motion. That was deceptive, though; the slower motion was apparently only an illusion, and as she watched, some of them covered pretty good distances in no time.
They all seem to have something to do or someplace to go, she thought to herself. Purpose means some sort of civilization, and I need to find out where I am and what place this is before I can get my own purpose clear.
She started toward the distant forms.
And suddenly stopped as she caught a glimpse of her own body.
She looked down at herself in wonder.
She was a sort of light green, her skin a smooth, vinelike texture. Her legs were thick and yet long and rubbery, without an apparent joint. The trunk of her body showed no signs of breasts or of a vaginal cavity; and though her feet were flat bases, her arms seemed to be of the same nature as her legs, only thinner, ending as tentacles rather than as hands. Another, shorter tentacle grew out of the main arm about ten centimeters from its tip. A thumb, perhaps?
She found that the rubbery arms worked well either way, being pliant and without apparent joint or bone, and she felt her smooth backside. No rectum, either, she found.
She ran her arm over her face. A wide slit was no doubt the mouth, yet it opened only a tiny fraction. The nose appeared to be a single, fixed, hard hole above the mouth. Growing out of the top of her head was something thin, tough, and about the size of a mortarboard, although of irregular shape.
What have I become? she asked herself, feeling fear bordering on panic.
Slowly she tried to regain control of herself. Taking deep breaths had always helped, but she found she couldn't even do that. She was breathing, all right, she could sense that—but that nostril took in only a very tiny part of the air.
She realized it was primarily a sensitive olfactory organ; she was breathing by involuntary muscle actions through the pores in her smooth, green skin.
After a while her panic seemed to subside, and she considered what to do. The distant shapes were still going about their business, she saw. She seemed to be on a road of some sort.
No matter what, she had to contact those creatures and find out just what was happening. She again started for the figures and found, with some surprise, that she covered the distance—almost a kilometer through the tall grass—in a much shorter time than she would have expected.
It
was
a road, she saw—a dirt track, really, but wide and made up of reddish-brown soil.
The creatures using it paid her no attention whatsoever, but she studied them intently. They were like herself, she knew. Those things she couldn't discover from self-examination were now apparent: two large, round, yellow eyes with black pupils, apparently lidless. She suddenly realized that she hadn't been blinking her own eyes, and could not.
The thing growing out of her head proved to be a single large leaf of irregular shape—no two were alike. The stalk was thick and very short. Its color was a much deeper green than the body and it had an almost waxy texture.
Not knowing how to talk to them, and almost afraid to try, she decided to follow the road. It
must
go someplace, she told herself. It really didn't matter which direction—one was as good as the other.
She walked onto the road and set off toward the low hills to her left. The road really wasn't as crowded as she had thought, but at least a dozen—people?—were on the road ahead of her. She gained on a pair, and as she did she became aware that they were talking. The sounds were musical, yet she discovered that she could almost make out what was being said. As she closed to within three or four meters of the pair, she slowed, aware now that she
could
understand the strange, whispering singsong.
" . . . got into the Bla'ahaliagan spirit-strata stuff, and can't even be talked to these days. If the Blessed Elder doesn't get off that crap pretty soon I'm going to transfer over to cataloging."
"Hmmmm. . . . Dull stuff but I can see your point," the other sympathized. "Crindel got stuck under Elder Mudiul on some esoteric primitive game an Entry dropped on us about three hundred years ago. Seems it has almost infinite patterns after the first few moves, and there was this project to teach it to a computer. Couldn't be done. Weird stuff. Almost went off to the Meditations and rotted, Crindel did."