"Oh, no," Vardia protested. "Man's future is with the soil and with nature. Automation produces social decay and only that necessary to the maintenance of equality can be permitted."
"I see," Ortega responded dryly. He was silent for a while, then he turned back to Hain. "But how did you wind up with the girl? And why hook her on sponge?"
"Occasionally we need a—a sample, as it were. An example, really. We almost always use such people—Comworld folk who will not be missed, who are never much more than vegetables anyway. We control most of them, of course. But it's rather tough to get the stuff into their food, or even to get an audience with members of a Presidium, but, once you've done it, you control the entire world—a world of people programmed to be happy at whatever they're doing and conditioned from birth to blind obedience to the Party. Control the queen and you control all the bees in the hive. I had an audience with a Presidium Member on Coriolanus—took three years of hard work to wangle it, I'll assure you. There are hundreds of ways to infect someone once you're face-to-face. By that point, poor Wu Julee would have been in the animalistic state from progressively smaller doses. She would be the threat to show the distinguished Member what my—er, client, would become if not treated."
"Such a thing would not work on
my
world," Vardia stated proudly. "A Presidium Member so infected would simply have you, her, and the Member all at a Death Factory."
Hain laughed. "You people never cease to amaze me," he chuckled. "You
really
think your Presidium members are like you? They're descendants of the early Party that spread out in past, mostly lost, history. They proclaimed equality and said they dreamed of a future Utopia when there would be no government, nothing. What they really wouldn't even admit to themselves was that they loved power—
they
never worked in the fields,
they
never worked at all, except giving orders and trying out plans and novel experiences. And they loved it! And their children's children's children still love it. A planetload of happy, contented, docile slaves that will do anything commanded of them. And when that pain starts, less than an hour after infection, they will do anything to keep alive.
Anything."
"Still mighty risky for you, isn't it?" Ortega pointed out. "What if you're knocked off by an egomaniac despite all?"
Hain shrugged. "There are risks in anything. We lose most of our people as they work themselves up. But all of us are misfits, losers, or people who started at the bottom of society on the worst of worlds. We weren't born to power—we work for it, take risks for it, earn it. And—the survivors get the spoils."
Ortega nodded grimly. "How many—easy, Nate, or I'll clout you again!—how many worlds do you control now?"
Hain shrugged again. "Who knows? I'm not on the Council. Over ten percent—thirty, thirty-five, maybe—and growing. And two new colonies are made for every one we win, so it's an ever-expanding empire. It'll be that someday—an empire." His eyes took on a faraway look, a maniacal glow. "A great empire. Perhaps, eventually, the entire galaxy."
"Ruled by scum," Brazil said sourly.
"By the strongest!" Hain responded. "The cleverest, the survivors! The people who deserve it!"
"I hesitate to let such evil into
this
world," Ortega said, "but we have had as bad and worse here. This world will test you fully, Hain. I think it will ultimately kill you, but that is up to you. Here is where you start. But there's no sponge here, or other addictives. Even if there were, you'd have fifteen hundred and sixty different species to try it on, and some of them are so alien you won't even understand
what
they are, why they do what they do, or whether they do anything. Some will be almost like those back home. But this place is a madhouse, Hain. It's a world created by madness, I think, and it will kill you. We'll see."
They were silent for a while, Ortega's speech having as unsettling an effect on Brazil and Vardia as on Hain. Suddenly, Brazil broke the silence.
"You said she wasn't lost, Serge. Why not?"
"It has to do with this world and what it does to people," the snakeman replied. "I will brief you later. But—not only do you change here, but you also get back what you've lost. You'll return to perfect health, Nate, even get back that memory of yours. You'll even remember things you don't want to remember. And, you'll be prepared—programmed if you like—for whatever and wherever you are. Not in the Comworld sense—what
you
need. This gives you a new start, Nate—but there's no rejuve here. This is a one-shot deal, people—a fresh start.
"But you will die here, sooner or later, the span depending on what you are."
* * *
They slept on cots provided by Ortega. All were dead tired, and Brazil was also still smarting from the knockout punch given him by the great creature that seemed to be the reincarnation of his past friend. Hain slept separately from the rest, under lock and key, in an office the location of which was not told to the fiery little captain.
Ortega woke them all up the next morning. They assumed it was morning, although they hadn't actually been outside and, in fact, had no idea what the outside looked like on this strange yet somehow familiar world. An old-style breakfast of what appeared to be normal hen's eggs, scrambled, sausage, toast, and coffee awaited them, served by the same little cart that had brought the previous night's supper. Brazil noted that the mess from flying food had been carefully cleaned away.
Vardia, of course, had trouble with the breakfast.
Wu Julee seemed no worse than the night before, and in no more pain, if, indeed, she was in pain at all. With a lot of coaxing from Brazil she managed to eat some of the breakfast.
After they had finished and had returned the trays to the little cart, which hummed away on small tires with no apparent guidance, Serge Ortega pressed another button on his little hidden console, causing a screen to drop down at his right.
"Time, unfortunately, is limited here—both for you and, because I have a great many other duties, for me as well. When I got dropped into Zone long ago, I had only a brief orientation before I was thrown out on my ass. I wanted to give you a little bit more, to make it a little easier on you than it was for me."
"Just how long ago
did
you drop here, Citizen Ortega?" Vardia asked.
"Well, hard to say. Well over seventy standard years—they still use the same years, don't they, Nate?" Brazil nodded affirmatively, and Ortega continued.
"It was during a low-colonist period, and I was gunrunning to a placer strike on some asteroids out beyond Sirius. I dumped them fine, avoided all the cops, but ran into some damned conduit out in the middle of deep space, before I could go FTL or anything. I'm told that most—maybe a majority—of the gates are on planets, and maybe this was one, too, at one time. Maybe all those asteroids were once a Markovian planet that broke up for some reason."
"How long has this place—this planet—been here, Serge?" Brazil asked.
"Nobody knows. Longer than people were people, Nate. A coupl'a million years, it appears. Since the oldest folk in the planet's oldest race are only four hundred—and they're at death's door—the ancient history of the place is as shrouded in mystery and mythology as our own. You see, all this involves the Markovians—any of you know about them?"
"Nobody knows much," Brazil replied. "Some sort of super race that ran its planets from brains beneath the surface and died out suddenly."
"That's about it," Ortega acknowledged. "They flourished, scientists here think, between two and five million years ago. And they were galaxy-wide, Nate! Maybe even more. Hard to say, but we have a lot of folk dropping through whose knowledge of the universe doesn't match anything we humans know. And that's the weirdest thing—a hell of a lot of them are close to human."
"In what way do you mean that, Serge?" Brazil asked. "Us-human or you-human?"
Ortega laughed. "Both. Humanoid would perhaps be a better term. Well, first let me show you what you're in for, and I'll add the rest as I go along."
The snakeman dimmed the lights, and a map showing two hemispheres flicked on the screen. It looked like a standard planetary map, but the two circles were filled with hexagons from pole to pole.
"The Markovians," Ortega began, "who were nutty over the number six, built this world. We don't know why or how, but we do know
what.
Each of their worlds had at least one gate of the kind that transported you here. You are now at the South Polar Zone, which doesn't show accurately here for obvious reasons. All carbon-based life comes here, and all of the hexes north of us to that thick equatorial line are carbon-based or could live in a carbon-based environment. The Mechs of Hex Three Sixty-seven, for example, aren't carbon-based, but you could live in their hex."
"So the North Polar Zone takes care of the biologically exotic, then?" Hain asked.
Ortega nodded. "Yes, there are the true aliens, beings with which we have literally nothing in common. Their hexes run down to the equator on the north hemisphere."
"Is that black band at the equator just a map dividing line or is it something else?" Vardia asked curiously.
"No, that's not just on the map," Ortega told her, "and you were sharp to notice it. It is—well, the best I can describe it is that it's a sheer wall, opaque and several kilometers high. You can't really see it until you're at it, outside the border of the last hex by a hair. You can't get past it, and you can't fly over it or anything. It's just, well,
there.
We have some theories about it, of course, the best one being that it's the exposed part of the Markovian brain that is, it seems, of the entire core of this planet. The old name for it seems to be the Well of Souls—so it probably is just that. There's an old adage around here: 'Until midnight at the Well of Souls,' which you'll probably hear. It's just an old ritual saying now, although it may have had some real meaning in the distant past of prehistory. Hell, if that's the Well of Souls, then it's
always
midnight somewhere!"
"What do the hexagons represent?" Hain asked.
"Well, there are fifteen hundred and sixty of them on the planet," Ortega replied. "Nobody knows the reason for that, either, but at least the figure only has one six in it. Each hex is identical in size—each one of the six sides is just a shade under three hundred fifty-five kilometers, and they're a shade under six hundred fifteen kilometers across. Needless to say they didn't use our form of measurements when they built the place, and we don't know what system they had, but that'll give you an idea in our terms."
"But what's
in
the hexes?" Brazil prodded.
"Well, you
could
call them nations with borders," Ortega replied, "but that would be understating things. Each is a self-contained biosphere for a particular life form—and for associated lower life forms. They are all maintained by the Markovian brain, and each is also maintained at a given technological level. The social level is left to whatever the inhabitants can develop or want to have, so you have everything from monarchies to dictatorships to anarchies out there."
"What do you mean technological level?" Brazil asked him. "Do you mean that there are places where there are machines and places where there are not?"
"Well, yes, that, of course," Ortega affirmed. "But, well, you can only get to the level of technology your resources allow within the hex. Anything beyond it just won't work, like Hain's pistol yesterday."
"It seems to me that you would have been populated to death here," Brazil commented. "After all, I assume all creatures reproduce here—and then the Markovian brains keep shuttling people here as well."
"That just doesn't happen," Ortega replied. "For one thing, as I said, people can die here—and do. Some hexes have very cheap life, some species live a comparatively short time. Reproductive rates are in accordance with this death rate. If populations seem to be rising too high, and natural factors—like catastrophes, which
can
happen here, or wars, which also can happen, although they are not terribly common and usually localized—don't reduce the numbers, well, most of the next batch is simply born sexually normal in every way yet sterile, with just a very small number able to keep the breed going. When attrition takes its toll, the species goes back to being born fertile. Actually the population's pretty stable in each hex—from a low of about twenty thousand to a high of over a million.
"As for Entries like you—well, the Markovians were extensive, as I said, but many of their old brains are dead and some of the gateways are closed forever for one reason or another. Others are so well disguised that a one-in-a-trillion blunder like mine is needed to find the entrance. We get no more than a hundred or so newcomers a year, all told. We have a trip alarm when the Well is activated and some of us take turns on a daily basis answering the alarms. Sheer luck I ran into you, but I take a lot of turns. Some of the folks here don't really like newcomers and don't treat them right, so I take their duty and they owe me."
"There are representatives of all the Southern Hemisphere races here, then?" Vardia asked.
The snakeman nodded. "Most of them. Zone's really a sort of embassy station. Distances are huge, travel is long here, and so here at Zone representatives of all of us can meet and talk over mutual problems. The Gate—which we'll get to presently—will zip me back home in an instant, although, curse it, it won't zip anybody back and forth except from here to his own hex. Oh, yes, there's a special chamber for Northerners here and one for us up at the North Zone just in case we have to talk—which is seldom. They occasionally have something we are short of, or our scientists and theirs want to compare notes, or some-such. But they are
so
different from us that that's rare."
Brazil wore a strangely fixed expression as he said, "Serge, you've spelled out the world as much as you can, but you've omitted one fact I think I can guess—how did a little Latin shrimp like you become a six-armed walrus-snake."