04. The Return of Nathan Brazil (29 page)

And Brazil's own disciples—Yua of Olympus, Marquoz of Chugach, Gypsy of the Place Between Stars, and Mavra Chang herself, the legend brought back from the dead by the hand of Brazil—would lead and instruct and command in the final battle to come. The Fellowship had a most holy mission, it was now clear, and it was already preparing for it.

After hearing the report, Marquoz marveled at Obie's skill. "It is so much easier to lead a holy crusade backed by divine intervention," he noted.

Mavra Chang just smiled and shrugged. "It's the same old story. You don't get something for nothing, ever. They were offered a Heaven we can't deliver and life beyond the destruction of the Universe which, in exchange for their services, we can perhaps, deliver to some. They're going to fight and die for a lie."

"As usual," Marquoz added.

Their conversation was interrupted by a buzz on Mavra's communicator. She removed it from her belt clip and said, "Yes?"

"I think he's coming out of it," a medic said.

They all rushed to Brazil's suite.

Nathan Brazil had been floating in a nice, dark, quiet place of his own. Thought hadn't been required; it was warm and comfortable and it felt so very good. The quiet place was slipping away now, and memories were flooding his conscious brain. At first he could make no sense of them, and didn't try; still they came, rushing into his mind like soldiers rushing to battle, struggling to assemble themselves into some sort of order.

A small grove of palm trees around a clear blue waterhole; dry, hot country even then, but green, not as it was to become. A slight breeze blew from the southeast, a dry, dreadful, hot caress that carried no relief. Two young women, one rather comely, two small children. The pretty one's? An older man, beard graying and face weatherbeaten and tough. Hard to tell. You didn't talk much or attempt to strike up new acquaintances in these troubled times.

Hoofbeats. Men on horses. Barely a chance to look up. Romans! Only five of them, but nasty types. Looking for trouble. He hid in the bush and lay still. Odd, though, a corner of his mind told him. Sounded like more horses than that. Different directions, perhaps? Were others cowering like him in the bushes?

The Romans have dismounted now. The two young children, both boys, wade naked at the edge of the pool, splashing and playing. The Romans look around at them, at the old man and the two women, critically with an air of complete command. One calls in Latin to the others and points critically to the two small boys. He catches a word, blown to him on the hot wind. "Circumcized." There will be trouble; Antiochus has outlawed the practice for now. One Rome, one set of beliefs, one set of customs. Cultural assimilation, they called it. The world under one and as one.

The old man is defiant. He yells at the centurion, who yells back, then laughs and grabs at the younger woman. The old man is upon him now, screaming and cursing. Two Romans run to assist the centurion, swords drawn, and hack the old man almost to pieces. The women are screaming now. The Romans are around them. The younger one is grabbed and is partially disrobed by two of the Romans. The older woman rushes them with a dagger in her hand, but a blow from the flat of a Roman sword crushes her skull; she falls and is still.

He is still in the bushes and he is angry and ashamed at himself. He has spear and sword and suddenly he finds himself leaping out at the men in a blind rage.

A Roman is slitting the throats of the two young boys; he turns, startled, then looks amazed as a spear is thrust through his armor and into his gut.

The two men now have the woman down; they turn in surprise, but their comrades have already drawn their own weapons and are moving toward him.

He was good, particularly when so angry. He just about tore off the sword arm of the nearest Roman with a strong inside blow, but the other was not to be taken so easily. A good swordsman himself, the Roman forced the man into the arms of the other two Romans who had stopped messing with the girl and come up behind him.

"I'll kill the bastard now!" the swordsman snarled, advancing on the captive.

"No! Hold!" cried one of his captors. "The bitch means something to him, otherwise why would he fight so? Tie him to the tree. Let him watch us, and die before his death!"

"Ai! Let's cut off his limbs and leave him there alive, to bleed to death or live a limbless cripple!" snarled the man whose arm he'd cut to the bone, still lying in agony on the sand. They laughed at that, and bandaged the other as best they could.

And it was done. He was tied to a tree with ropes too strong to break and forced to watch the rape, after which they killed her, not mercifully swift but slowly.

He wept, as much for the way of the world as for these people who had been tortured and slain. He'd known good, brave, fair-minded men of the Legions, men who'd have acted as he had in the face of such barbarism. Not now. Rome was expanding, extending her influence to the edges of the world, and that expansion required men in great numbers, men whose only qualification was that they would kill and delight in killing. When such vicious animals were used to spread "civilization," how long would it be before that madness sped backward to its roots and reached the throne itself?

And they were around him now, facing him as he stood bound to the tree.

"So this is the greatness of mighty Rome," he sneered at them.

They laughed, although he could see in their faces that they were taken aback by such coolness in the face of torture and death.

They drew their swords and leered at him.  One gestured at the carnage. "Those were your people?"

He looked the man squarely in the eyes. "I never saw them before in my life," he told them in flawless Latin.

"Then why did you fight for them?" another asked, confused and a bit unnerved by their captive's total disregard for personal well-being.

"The children of the Lord God of Israel should not be abused by animals spawned in Hell."

"Enough of this! You are a brave man but a foolish one," the centurion told him. "We will kill you and be done with it."

"I really wish you could."

The Roman drew his sword and hesitated a second, looking into his eyes before striking the fatal blow.

Four sharp sounds echoed, followed by a
whap! whap! whap! whap!
The Romans stood for a moment, looking confused, then toppled over, arrows protruding from their backs.

Four men emerged from the bushes nearby. All Hebrews, he saw at once, all holding bows. One was an older man; by their looks the others were his sons. Two of the sons checked the bodies of the slain Hebrews while the third son, with a sword, made certain that the Romans would stay forever on the ground. The old man approached him, drew a small curved knife from his belt, and cut the binding straps. He almost collapsed as the flow of blood, which had been restricted by his bonds, returned fully to his limbs. The old man was strong and caught him, lowering him gently to the ground.

"You've had a terrible ordeal," the older man said kindly in Hebrew.

He nodded. "There were just too many," he responded in the same language.

The old man nodded. "We were just a bit too far off." He sighed. "We heard the screams but arrived too late and approached, perhaps, too cautiously." He looked at the dead Romans. "It is just revenge," he murmured, almost to himself, "but somehow it does not seem adequate." Then back to the freed man: "You have relatives to whom you can be taken?"

He shook his head. "All I had lies there," he muttered. "I am alone in the world once again."

"You are young, and brave, and skilled," the old man told him. "You deserve a new chance. Come! I am of substance. I am Mattathias the son of John, a priest of the sons of Joarib, now of Modin. These are my sons—Joannan Caddis, Simon Thassi, Eleazar Avaran, and Jonathan Apphus on the Roman rolls."

"My name and family are dead with them," he said sorrowfully. "I died with them."

"Then you shall be my son," Mattathias told him. "You shall become the son who was their eldest brother but died so long ago in the wilderness." He turned to his sons, now standing there. "What say you?"

"He is a brave man who has lost much," one said. "And his spirit and his faith are sorely needed in these trying times." The others nodded assent.

"Any warrior as small as you who could penetrate Roman armor has a passion inside and the Lord's annointment," another said.

"It is settled, then," Mattathias said, satisfied. "You are as another son to me and welcome to my tribe and house. And henceforth you shall be known as Judas Maccabeas, my lost son who returns to me in these days of trial."

And they knelt and prayed together that the Lord God of Israel accepted this and it was in fact His will. And when they were finished he looked up at them all and said, "Perhaps with your faith and your patriotism we may bring mighty Antiochus himself to heel!"

Nathan Brazil awoke.

His head felt as if it was bursting; he could only groan, and the medics came with painkillers to aid him. He got his eyes to focus, finally, and tried to sit up. With a low moan, he quickly collapsed back into the bed.

"Well, I see the gang's all here," he muttered.

"How do you feel?" Mavra asked. Her concern was evident.

He managed a low chuckle. "Oh, about like anybody would a day or so after being at the center of an explosion."

"What happened to you in . . . there?" Marquoz asked. "Do you remember any of it?"

Brazil winced, not from pain but from memory. "I wish to God I didn't! You know, Obie wasn't kidding —the human mind is a fantasy land operating to delude itself by assuming whatever point of view is easiest to live with. Can you imagine coming face to face with yourself—your
real
self—with no place to hide? Even Obie doesn't realize the kind of horror he perpetrated on me, the terrible torture he put me through. I don't think he could have done it if he'd known. You realize we—all us nonmachines—are crazy? Absolutely stark-raving mad? No
wonder
the Markovians felt they hadn't reached Utopia—they hadn't. I wonder if this is the sort of thing that happened to them. I mean, linked mentally to their monster computers they must have undergone much of what I just did, been forced to face themselves with no place to run. What a terrible disillusionment it must have been! My God! No
wonder!
It explains everything! The Well, why they performed their great experiment, why they were so willing to commit suicide —and why they failed this time, too. We—all of us— created in their image, yes, but reflections of their darker sides as well. My god!"

"But weren't you there?" Mavra asked. She was bewildered by all Brazil's monologue. "You're a Markovian—aren't you?"

He gave a dry chuckle, then groaned a little as it hurt. "No, not a Markovian. Something . . . else. Don't worry. I can fix their pretty machine." Then, suddenly, he was off on his own again. "My god! No wonder the Well isn't self-aware. They couldn't have
stood
that . . ."

"Obie—is   Obie  dead?"  Mavra  pressed   fearfully.

"I—I don't know. I don't think so. No, I'm sure he's not. But he's—well, he's of no help to us now, maybe not in the foreseeable future. You see, to Obie the whole Universe and everything in it is strictly logical and mathematical. That's what we are to him, strings of numbers, relationships that balance.
I
don't balance.
I'm not a part of any math he understands and he doesn't have the key to understanding my 'formula', driven to assimilate me, and for that he needs the key. But he can't get the key unless he assimilates me. He must solve the problem, and he can't solve the problem until he solves it. He's stuck in a loop. In a way I guess you can say I drove him crazy."

"And what about you?" Marquoz broke in. "He thought you might drive him crazy, yet he threatened to drive you sane. Did he?"

Brazil chuckled again. "The mind is a resilient thing, Marquoz. I'm probably saner than any living being has ever been, possibly saner than the Markovians were after their mind-links to their computers, yet I'm still quite mad and slipping more into madness the more I think. When you face the unthinkable you retreat, you shove it away, back into corners of your mind that you can't reach."

"Unfortunately, I think I understand you," the Chugach responded. "Still, except to you, that bit of metaphysics is of little consequence. The question on the table is, simply, have you changed your attitude on fixing the Well of Souls?"

Nathan Brazil sighed. "A byproduct of the mind-link is that you remember things you never wanted to remember. The worst part is, the more of those memories you dredge up the more you realize how futile it all is. Rome rose to great heights, yet its own methods caused it to decay from within. I wonder if that isn't true of the Markovian experience as well. Will we just do it all over again, even reach this point once again? Is the whole business of life doomed to repeated failure because there is something wrong with the experimenters? I wonder . . ."

"But will you fix the Well?" the little dragon persisted.

Brazil nodded unhappily. "I'll go to the Well, if possible. I'll enter and stand there and analyze the problem. But I won't take the responsibility for murdering so many. I
can't
accept the responsibility any more." He turned slightly on his side, looking at them, and his eyes fixed on Mavra Chang. He pointed to her.

"You
will take the responsibility," he told her. "When I stand inside the Well so will you. I'll ask you to give me the order.
You
will tell me to pull the plug on the Universe."

He sank down and lapsed into unconsciousness, but the instruments informed them that, this time, it was closer to normal sleep.

Nautilus—Topside, Later That Same Day

MAVRA CHANG PACED BACK AND FORTH IN THE LARGE reception chamber, where she had spent most of the afternoon and a good part of the.evening, looking grim and somewhat unhappy.