03. Gods at the Well of Souls (45 page)

"Until your comin'-out party. Where is she now?" he asked. 

"In that body, my old body, which has healed with astonishing speed, at least  from the point of view of the medical people there. They're the ones keeping her  sedated for the moment. In fact, they've taken it out of the tank, restrained,  still sedated, and have transported it to the Agonese capital for shipment  through the Zone Gate there. I'm afraid they're in for a nasty shock this time.  That body's linked to me. Everything they've done to it I've known, felt, just  as if I were still in it. I've deliberately kept it alive and healing. When it  comes through the Gate, oh, almost any minute now if my timing's right . .. One of the hexes in the floor of the control room turned black, and a figure was  suddenly there, as if faded in. It was Nathan Brazil's own body, with long,  wildy flowing hair and beard, lying stark naked on the floor. 

The body stirred, sat up, and looked around, a very confused look on its face.  "What? Who ... ?" it asked in his voice, then saw Brazil in his native form and  scrambled backward. 

"Come on, Terry! We didn't go through all that together to be put off by looks,  now, did we?" 

The figure frowned, then got unsteadily to its feet, eyes on the pulsating  creature. "You-you're-him! You are him!" Then, suddenly aware of the beard and  other odd feelings, it said, "Or am I him? This is crazy!" 

"You played around inside me before," Brazil reminded her. "Now we'll have to  keep you there for a little bit. Don't worry, it'll all work out." "Terry?" Gus said hesitantly. "Is that you in there? I mean, if it is, you can  talk!" 

"Yeah, I-what happened to me, anyway? I followed those signs into that swamp,  and then there were these people, and then everything seemed to be all different  all of a sudden. I-I remember all of it, I think, but half of it doesn't make  any sense! Neither does this, for that matter!" 

"I had a tough time figuring out the Glathrielian system," Brazil admitted. "If  we hadn't spent all that time together on the island, I might never have gotten  it to the level where I could manage what I did. When that volcano blew and I  got conked by the tree keeping you from drowning, there was a moment when my  human part and all of you merged inside that head. The only part of me that was  left in your body was this, the part you could never reach. It took a couple of  weeks of healing in that hospital in Agon before my-our-brain began functioning  well enough that I reestablished contact and was able to sort us out. Now that  my old brain, which repairs itself like the rest of the body, is functioning  normally, all that was you can use it. You're back, even if not quite as you  were." 

"I, uh-" Terry reached down and shook his head. "I'll be damned. I always  wondered what it felt like to have one of those." 

Gus cleared his throat, which was a somewhat menacing sound although not  intended that way. "Um, Terry. You remember this?" 

He went over and looked down at the baby and smiled. "Yeah, I do. Whose is it,  anyway? I'm not my own kid's father and mother, am I? That would be too much!" "No, I'm sterile. I have to be," Brazil assured her. "Remember your diversion at  the meteor back in the Amazon?" 

"Oh, him! Damn! Still, he is cute. Let me hold him!" 

"Gladly," Gus responded, handing over the child. "Um-do you remember me, Terry?" "Yeah. You could flip in and out, like, so folks couldn't see you. For a while  you were my only real friend." 

"Terry, that's Gus," Mavra told her. "I'm Alama, and that tall furry creature  with the horn on his head is Lori." 

Terry gasped. "Oh, my God! Gus? Lori?" He laughed, and it wasn't at all like  Brazil's laugh. If one knew both Terry and Nathan, one could see Terry in every  move and hear her in every spoken word. Finally, still gently cradling the baby,  he said, "So we're all kind of scrambled up here, and we're all standing here  before a talking turnip with tentacles and the queen of the Amazons. If I ever  got this story on the air, they'd lock me up in an asylum." 

"Well, that brings up our situation," Brazil said, finding even himself a bit  disconcerted talking to, well, himself. "We have four-actually, now five-people  left here, all of whom have problems. The child was born on the Well World to a  creature who'd been processed. Because of the laws and limits of probability,  the only way I could send you, Terry, and the baby back without making a real  mess of things would be to Earth at a point in time after the gate closed. Nine  months plus a few days, to be exact. As far as reality was concerned, you'd have  spent the whole time as you'd originally planned, in the Amazon jungle with the  People. That's the way the math runs here. Terry alone I could deal with in any  way I pleased, but the baby complicates it beyond belief. From your standpoint,  you wouldn't have made that last jump. Instead, you would have stopped short.  You wouldn't remember anything that's happened here, and you would have spent  nine months with the People and had the baby with them." 

"The baby's a boy, so you'd have to give it up to one of the regular tribes or  leave the People," Mavra pointed out. "I'd leave," Terry said flatly. "I know." Brazil told her. "But you would never go back to civilization. You'd  join one of the tribes there, and both you and the boy would remain with them.  You know that if you ever went back to civilization, you'd be a freak, a  ten-minute story for two or three days on your own old network, and then that  would be that. You'd stay, you'd have many more children, and you'd grow old  watching them grow up as members of the Amazonian tribe." 

"That's not much of a future," Terry noted. "It's a choice. If you stay here,  you'll be racially Glathrielian, but you won't be rewired again. What limited  powers you can use without that, you will retain. Your baby will be safe, too.  I'll see to that. I'm going to keep tinkering with that bunch until I get them  right! But they've got a long way to go even to get beyond the Amazonian stage  themselves." 

"You're saying it's jungle or swamp? My choice? Some choice!" 

"Not necessarily. I'm going to attempt something that is very, very difficult  here. I've never done it before, but there's no reason it can't be done. In  fact, in theory it should be easier than most other things around here because  it's built into the old mechanism. When we started off here, the hex attributes  were symmetrical. High-tech to semitech to nontech in repeating radial patterns.  Over time, as races proved out, we moved them out to the worlds and built new  races that often required different limitations than the previous tenants. Over  time it became a jumbled mess like today. But the mechanism for switching them  around is still there, still accessible. The effect will be so unnoticed in most  places that it'll take some time to discover it's been done. Only one of them  will know right off, and it'll most likely destroy their current civilization.  As far as I'm concerned, it's worth bringing them down a notch. Anyway, they're  clever people. They'll survive." 

Mavra stared at him. "Nathan? What are you going to do?" 

"After we make a few adjustments in the Glathrielian Way, ones that will start  them on a new track, I'm going to upgrade it from nontech to semitech. Since  doing this would cause the Ambrezans to contemplate genocide, I'm going to  downgrade the Ambrezan hex to semi-tech as well. By the time the Glathrielians  rise, the Ambrezans will have reworked their own system to adjust. They're  agriculturally based, anyway; they won't suffer in the long run from this." He  paused a moment. "And I'm going to upgrade Erdom to high-tech." "What!" both Lori and Julian cried at once. 

"The same lovable climate and people-changing that is a lot more complicated-but  with a major difference. And, oh, yes, it seems that there's going to be an  epidemic there soon. It won't bother most people more than a bad cold. But it  won't be curable by partaking of the women's curative milk supply. It's going to  infest the males mostly, with their lack of natural immunities, but it's going  to find itself allergic to testosterone and related substances the males have  naturally. All, of course, except the castrated ones. I'm afraid it's going to  be very fatal to them very quickly." 

"You-you're wiping out the priesthood!" Lori said, mouth agape. "I'm afraid so. They've kept that place in the dark too long. Now, if a couple  of people, one male, one female, maybe married so that they're socially  acceptable, knew this and also knew that high-tech works there now, well, who  would be the only two there who really understand the new technology that will  be brought in? And what is needed? Who will have to be the founders of the first  university of the new electronic age? .If you're sharp enough, and clever  enough, and work together on this, you might just pull it off. You might not,  and things aren't going to change overnight, but they will change. You two want  a challenge?" 

"It-it's more than we could hope for," Lori told him. From minor associate  professor to founder of a new technological civilization. Not bad. "That's what I always went for," Julian told them. "Challenges. It sounds like a  big one. I hope it's not too big." 

"Well, these things seldom work out the way you plan, but sometimes they work.  Give me a week and then check it out. I'll send you a little gizmo when I throw  the switch so you can know it's started." 

Julian winked out, but Lori stayed. "What-where'd she go?" 

"Suspended in transit. I wanted a word with you alone. When she emerges, she's  still going to be that bombshell Kraang made her, but I've removed that stuff  that idiotic pair of butchers did to her head. You saw how he made that attitude  adjustment, too. I don't think Julian can ever completely conquer her own  egocentrism, not on her own. I decided the hell with it and did it for her. It's  nice to be able to shortcut these things. She's going to be just as smart as she  ever was-smarter, I think, than before- but she's going to forget that she ever  was a man. She's going to find us males as inscrutable as every other female.  And the next time she sees you, she's going to realize that she's maddeningly,  passionately, completely in love with you. She won't question it or reflect on  it as any sort of change: she'll realize it's been there all along. You, on the  other hand, I want to remember your life as a woman, what it meant. You won't  ever forget it again. You forgot it once, and it didn't help Julian's mental  health or your own. That race is the most sexually interdependent on this  planet. Use it when you go about re-forming the system." 

Lori stared at him. "Thank you," he said, and vanished. Mavra nodded  approvingly. "Well, you did that pretty well. I hate to put building a new  society in the hands of two physics majors, but what the hell. I guess you work  with what you got." 

"What about us?" Terry asked. "What happens to us?" 

"You have the biggest job of all. Both of you." Brazil told them. "Gus, you  remember what you told Kurdon? Bring in the press? Take all the pictures? Let  everybody see what this filth is all about?" 

"Yeah, I remember." 

"Well, that's your job. Yours and Terry's, and others, from many races, if you  do a decent recruiting job. I'm sending you both-all three of you, actually-to a  place you haven't been. It's called Czill, and the creatures there are walking,  talking plants. No kidding. But they have one great purpose-they've assembled  the most massive, highest-tech library and information resource on this planet.  They're going to know you're coming-their computers will tell them. And they're  going to know just what your job is going to be. The idea will be so fresh, so  new to them that they'll love it. They'll fall all over each other helping you  get it going." 

"Yeah? What ... ?" Gus asked, not really following. 

"An independent news source. Printed where it has to be, broadcast where it can  be. Carried all over with the same speed and efficiency with which the cartel  dealt its poison. You've already got a few stories, including the hex changes  and the cartel. You'll have more right off. A number of very high-ranking  councillors are going to have serious health problems very soon, and some of  their associates back home are going to suddenly find that there's a lot of  evidence in the open on just how corrupt they were. But that won't stop the  evil. It'll flare up again in a different form. It's endemic. If everybody here  is a reflection of his or her creators, well, you've met the Kraang." "You mean a syndicate? A worldwide news organization?" Terry gasped. "And we'd  be running it?" 

"That's right. And training others and sending the scholars from all the races  who come to Czill to study back with the knowledge of what a free press can do.  You two think you're ready for that kind of job?" 

"Are you kidding?" Terry responded. "Jeez! From naked little twerp who couldn't  even talk to Ted Turner!" She turned to her old friend. "And with you right  there, just like old times!" 

"As much as the Dahir's talent for hiding is handy, I don't think being a Dahir  is right for this job, though," Brazil continued. "If you can't go back to  Glathriel, at least for a while, maybe it's better if you were a pair." "You mean I get to be me again?" Gus exclaimed. "Yeah!" 

"Well, not quite. But if you don't like it, go through the Zone Gate in Czill  any time in the next seven days and you'll be pretty much as you were born. If  you don't, then my revisions stick. Okay?" 

"Yeah, well, I guess that's fair enough." 

"Good luck, then. I'm counting on both of you. All of you! Oh-by the way,  Dillia's not that far from Czill. You might check in with our friends there from  time to time." 

"Okay, we will. Hey! Wait!" Terry called. "I'm not gonna be a guy, am I?" "No, you'll be who you want to be. I promise. Farewell."