Ortega gave that evil smile. "Well, as to where you are—you're on the Well World. There's no other name for it, since that's exactly what it is. As to where it is—well, damned if I know. Nobody here has ever been able to leave it. I only know that the night sky is like nothing you ever saw before. I spaced almost two hundred years, and none of the extremely prominent features look familiar. At the very least we're on the other side of the galaxy, or maybe even in another galaxy. As to why you're here, well, you somehow bumbled into a Markovian Gate like me and maybe thousands of others did. And here you are, stuck just like the rest of us. You're here for good, mister. Better get used to it."
"See here!" Hain huffed. "I have power, influence—"
"Means nothing here," Ortega responded coldly.
"My mission!" Vardia protested. "I must perform my duties!"
"No duties, nothin' anymore but you and here," the snakeman said. "Understand this: you are on a world built by the Markovians—yes, I said
built.
The whole thing: lock, stock, and core. As far as we know, the whole damned thing is a Markovian brain in perfect working order, and preprogrammed."
"I figured we were inside Dalgonia," Brazil said. "It felt as if we fell down into something."
"No," replied Ortega, "that was no fall. The Markovians really had godlike powers. Matter transmission was a simple thing for them. Don't ask me how it works, but it does, because we got a local version here. I wouldn't understand it if somebody
did
explain it, anyway."
"But such a thing is impossible!" Hain objected. "It is against the laws of physics!"
Ortega's six limbs shrugged. "Who knows? At one time flying was impossible. Then it was impossible to leave a planet, then impossible to leave a solar system, then impossible for anything to go faster than light. The only thing that makes something impossible is ignorance. Here on the Well World the impossible's a fact of life."
At that moment the food arrived, brought in on a small cart that was obviously some sort of robot. It went up to each in turn, and offered a tray of hot food, which, when removed, revealed an identical tray beneath. Brazil removed the cover and just stared for a minute. Finally, he said, in a tone of absolute awe and reverence: "A
real
steak!" He hesitated a moment and looked over at Ortega. "It
is
real, isn't it?"
"Oh, yes," the snakeman assured him. "It's real enough. The potato and beans, too. Oh, not
quite
a cow, not
quite
a potato, and so forth, but so close you'll never be able to tell the difference. Go ahead, try it!"
Hain was already greedily tearing into his, while Vardia looked at the food, bewildered.
"What's the trouble?" Brazil managed between swallows. "Problems?"
"It's quite safe to eat," Ortega assured her. "There are no microorganisms that will give you any real problems here—not until you go out, anyway. The stuff's biologically compatible."
"No, no—it's—" she stammered. "Well, I have never seen food like it before. How do you . . . ?"
"Just watch me and follow my example," Brazil laughingly replied. "See? You cut it with a knife and fork like this, then—"
They dug into the meal, Vardia getting the hang of it, although she protested several times that she thought the food tasted terrible. But they were all too hungry to protest.
Ortega's eyes fell on Wu Julee, who just sat there staring at the food, not eating at all. "The girl—she is ill?" he asked them.
Brazil suddenly stopped eating and looked at Hain, who had already finished and was just letting out an extremely noisy belch. The captain's face had a grave expression on it, and the fine food suddenly felt like lead in his stomach.
"She's a spongie," Brazil said softly. Hain's eyebrows rose, but he said nothing.
Ortega's face, too, turned serious. "How far gone?" he asked.
"Fairly bad, I'd say," Brazil replied. "Deep mental maybe five years old, voluntary action basically emotive only." Suddenly he whirled in his chair and faced Hain, cold fury in his eyes.
"How about it, Hain?"
he snarled.
"Would you agree?"
Hain's piggish face remained impassive, his tone of voice seemed almost one of relief. "So you found out. I
thought
perhaps I was overdoing the routine at that dinner."
"If we hadn't been trapped on Dalgonia, I'd have had you
and
her down on Arkadrian before you realized what was what," Brazil told him.
Hain's face showed both shock and surprise. Brazil's remarks had gotten to him. Then, suddenly, a thought occurred to him and the old, smug self-confidence returned.
"It would seem, then, that I have fallen not into a terrible situation, but into a most fortunate one by this—er, circumstance," he said calmly. "A pity for the lady, though," he added in mock sympathy.
"Why you son of a bitch!"
Brazil snarled and leaped at the fat man's throat, spilling food everywhere. The big man was a head taller and twice the weight of the attacker, but Brazil's quickness and the sheer hatred in his soul flowed into his arms and hands as they tightened around the other's neck.
Hain thrashed and tried to push the smaller attacker away, but all he managed was to cause both of them to roll onto the floor, the small man still squeezing. Hain's mouth was open, face red, as he gasped for breath. The expression on Brazil's face was almost demonic; nothing would keep him from his goal.
Vardia watched openmouthed, understanding the situation only in the vaguest way and finding Brazil's actions, both recounted and current, incomprehensible. In her private universe, there were no people, only cells composing a whole body. A diseased cell was simply eliminated. So there was no place in her mind for one who caused such a disease.
Wu Julee watched the two grapple impassively, her meal still on her lap.
Suddenly Ortega bounded over his desk and grabbed Brazil with massive arms. The giant creature moved almost too fast for the eye to follow; Vardia was stunned at the speed and surety with which the creature acted.
Brazil fought to get free of the grip, and Ortega's middle arm suddenly came from nowhere and punched the small man hard in the jaw. He went slack, still held aloft in the creature's strong grip.
Freed of his attacker, Hain gasped and choked for air, finally rolling flat on his back and lying there, his huge stomach rising and falling. He felt his neck, where the imprint of Brazil's murderous hands could still be seen.
Ortega began examining the unconscious man. Satisfied that no bones were broken, nor permanent damage done, he grunted and put the man down on the floor. Brazil collapsed in a heap, and the snakeman turned his attention to Hain.
"I thank you, sir," Hain gasped, his hand going involuntarily to his throat. "You have surely saved my life."
"I didn't want to do it, nor would I have done so in normal times," Ortega snapped back acidly. "And if Nate ever catches up to you on the outside, I won't be there to save you—and, if I am, I'll cheerfully join him in tearing you limb from limb.
But I will not allow such a thing here!"
He turned his attention back to Brazil, who was just coming around.
Hain seemed taken aback by the creature's comments, then saw that his pulse pistol had fallen when they had tumbled and now was a foot or so from him on the floor. Slowly, his hand crept toward it.
"No!"
Wu Julee suddenly screamed, but Hain already had the weapon, and was pointing it at both the snakeman and Brazil, who was sitting up, shaking his head and rubbing his jaw. Ortega's back was to Hain, but Brazil suddenly looked up and spotted the gun. Ortega saw him stare and turned to face the fat man.
"Now both of you behave and I won't do anything rash," Hain told them in that same cool, confident tone he always used. "But I am leaving this charming place right now."
"How?" asked Serge Ortega.
The question seemed to bother Hain, who was used to simple answers to simple questions. "The—the way we came in," he said at last.
"The doorway leads to a corridor. The corridor leads to the Well in one direction—and that is strictly one way," Ortega told him. "In the other direction are more rooms like this—seven hundred and eighty of them, in a honeycombed labyrinth. Beyond them are housing and recreation facilities for the types of creatures that use those offices—seven hundred and eighty different types of creatures, Hain. Some of them don't breathe what you do. Some of them won't like you a bit and may just kill you."
"There is a way out," Hain snarled, but there was desperation in his voice. "There must be. I'll find it."
"And then what?" Ortega asked calmly. "You're out in a world that is moderately large. The surface area is best expressed as five point one times ten to the eighth power kilometers
squared.
And you don't even know what the planet looks like, the languages,
anything.
You're a smart man, Hain.
What are the odds?"
Hain seemed confused, hesitant. Suddenly he looked at the pistol in his hand and brightened.
"This
gives me the odds," he said firmly.
"Never play the odds until you know the rules of the game," Ortega warned softly, and advanced slowly toward him.
"I'll shoot!" Hain threatened, his voice an octave higher than usual.
"Go ahead," Ortega invited, his great serpentine body sliding slowly toward the panicked man.
"All right, dammit!" Hain cried, and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Hain pulled the trigger again and again. It clicked, making contact with the solenoid firing pin, but did nothing else.
Ortega suddenly moved with that blinding speed, and the gun seemed to vanish from the fat man's hand.
"No weapon works in this room," Ortega said crisply. Hain sat, a stupefied expression on his face, mouth half open. Possibly for the first time in his life that arrogant self-confidence was gone out of him.
"You all right, Nate?" Ortega shot to the small man, who still sat half-rising, holding his sore jaw.
"Yeah, you son of a bitch," Brazil replied mushily, shaking his head to clear it. "Man! You sure as hell pack a wallop!"
Ortega chuckled. "I was the only man smaller than you once in a bar on Siprianos. I was full of booze and dope, and ready to take on the house, all of whom would have cheerfully slit my throat for the floor show. I just started to pick a fight with the bouncer when you grabbed me and knocked me cold. Took me ten weeks before I realized that you'd saved my neck."
Brazil's jaw dropped in wonder, and the pain hit him as he did so and he groaned. Still, he managed: "You
are
Serge Ortega!" in a tone of bewildered acceptance. "I had totally forgotten that. . . ."
Ortega smiled. "I said I was, Nate."
"But, oh, man, how you've changed," Brazil noted, amazed.
"I told you this world changes people, Nate," Ortega replied. "It'll change you, too. All of you."
"You wouldn't have stopped me from finishing the pig in the old days, Serge."
"I guess I wouldn't have," Ortega chuckled. "And I really wouldn't have now—except that this is Zone. And, if you'll sit over there, across the room from Hain," he said, pointing to a backless couch, and, turning to Hain, continued, "and if
you
will stop all your little, petty games and promise to sit quietly, I'll explain just what the situation is here—the rules and lack of them, and a few other things about your future."
Hain mumbled something unintelligible and went back over to his seat. Brazil, still nursing his sore jaw, silently got up and moved over to the couch. He sank down in the cushions, his head against the back wall, and groaned.
"Still dizzy," he complained. "And I'm getting a hell of a headache."
Ortega smiled and moved back behind his desk.
"You've had worse and you know it," the snakeman reminded the captain. "But, first things first. Want some more food? You spoiled yours."
"You know damned well I won't eat for days," Brazil groaned. "Damn! Why didn't you let me get him?"
"Two reasons, really. First, this is—well, a diplomatic legation, you might say. A murder by one Entry of another would be impossible to explain to my government no matter what. But, more than that, she's not lost, Nate, and that makes your motive even flimsier."
Brazil forgot his aches and pains. "What did you say?"
"I said she's not lost, Nate, and that's right. Just as this detour deprived Hain of justice, it also saved her. Arkadrian was no solution, really. Obviously you felt she was worth saving when you decided to detour—but, just here, she's little more than a vegetable. Obviously Hain was decreasing the dosage as she became more and more accustomed to the pain. He was letting her rot out—but slowly enough to make the trip without problems. May I ask why, Hain?"
"She was from one of the Comworlds. Lived in the usual beehive and helped work on a big People's Farm. I mean the dirt jobs—shoveling shit and the like, as well as painting the buildings, mending fences, and suchlike. IQ genetically manipulated to be low—she's a basic worker, a manual laborer, basically mentally retarded and capable of carrying out simple commands—one at a time—but not of much in the way of original thought and action. She wasn't even good at that work, and they used her as a Party whore. Failed at that, too."
"That is a slander of the Com people!" Vardia protested vehemently. "Each citizen is here to do a particular task that needs doing, and is created for that task. Without people such as she as well as ones like me the whole society would fall apart."
"Would you change jobs with her?" Brazil asked sarcastically.
"Oh, of course not," Vardia responded, oblivious to the tone. "I'm glad I'm not anything but what I am. I would be happy at nothing else. Even so, such citizens are essential to the social fabric."
"And you say my people have gone that route," Ortega said sadly, almost to himself. "But—I would think the really basic menial stuff would be automated. A lot of it was in my time."