They were silent. Understanding dawned on all, one by one, except for Yua, who looked a little confused. “You need the Well World to reseed them,” Mavra almost whispered.
He nodded. “They know that, too. Better than we. To them it’ll be a choice of their own survival or everybody else’s. They’re no different from anybody else. They’d rather survive and let the Universe go hang. But even if we figure a way around that—and there’s a way, but not a sure one—there’s the basic fear. Once I’m inside the Well they know I can make any changes I want, changes not only in the Universe but to the Well World itself. They’ll be nervous. Even though I didn’t do anything the last time, they don’t know that I won’t this time. They don’t understand me or the machine, and what people don’t understand they fear. Balance it out. You’re a practical, logical leader. Would you take a chance on letting me get into the Well when by preventing me you could be sure of business as usual? I think not.”
“But you’re immortal,” Mavra noted. “They should know that. They couldn’t hold you forever.”
“They don’t have to, but they would be prepared to,” he told them. “Remember what they did to you. They could do that to me. Turn me into an animal or some kind of vegetable. Keep me sedated in a cell with no way out. Oh, I might eventually break free but it’d take years—hundreds, thousands maybe. Too late to do our project any good. No, there was enough skulduggery last time, when they didn’t know who I was, just knew we were going to get into the Well. It’ll be hell this time.”
“You mean that there will be no one to help us?” Yua gasped. “Everyone will be against us?”
He shook his head. “Some will help because they understand the problem or will trust us. Some will violently oppose us. The rest will stay on the sidelines but join those against us if we appear to be succeeding. The average being, of course, will be the most frightened of all. Now, obviously, this means an even longer run to an Avenue since I can hardly go in a straight line—and it means I’ll need lots of muscle to get through.”
Even Yua understood his meaning. “The Fellowship.”
He nodded. “Exactly. If we require allies and fighters every step of the way, then we will have to make sure we have them where we need them. That’ll be the Olympian holy crusade—with you four helping and, I hope, leading. But for these allies we will give up the element of surprise. Zone is going to see a veritable horde of people trooping through the Well and they’re going to find out the story. They’ll be laying for me, you can bet on it. The best thing we can do is keep them harried and off-balance. The Well tends to distribute newcomers evenly—Entries, they’re called—around the hemisphere in which they enter. We’ll all enter in the south since we’re carbon-based. That means seven hundred and eighty hexes filled with sentient races—plants, animal variations, water creatures, insect creatures, and creatures that are none or all of the above. Although there are wide variations based on the size of the people and the capabilities of the hex, we can assume about a million whatevers in each hex. That’s seven hundred and eighty million people, more or less, in the south.” He gave a smug look to Yua. “Now, how many Olympians are there?”
Her mouth formed an oval shape. “Over a billion,” she breathed.
He nodded. “And if we add just the committed Fellowship, those we can trust to do the job? None of this conditioned crap—they have to really believe it, since the Well will remove any artificial restraints.”
She shrugged. “Another million, perhaps more.”
“Okay, now add to that certain others whom I will invite and allow. I think we can put one and a half billion people on the Well World. That’s a lot more than it can handle on a long-term basis, but I don’t think it’ll give us any short-term problems. If all get through we’ll outnumber the natives almost two to one—and the survivors will be the prototype souls for the reseeding. We’ll give them part of the bargain—a chance at building their own Paradise.”
Gypsy, who so far had made no sound, said quietly, “The natives aren’t stupid, I wouldn’t think.”
Brazil’s eyebrows rose. “Huh?”
“Well, suppose you were a Well World potentate and you got the story and were suddenly knee-deep in fanatical converts. I don’t know what you’d do, but if these folks are as nasty and scared as you say, I’d set up my own army or whatever in Zone, wherever they come in—and I’d kill ’em as fast as they came through.”
Brazil leaned back, lit a cigarette, and considered his point. “I guess I’m just getting soft. That never occurred to me. Of course you’re right. But there’s little we can do about it. The thing in our favor is that the only people they’ll trust less than us are each other. It’ll take a while for them to catch on, longer to get together and decide on a logical course of action, and they’ll need a majority of Zone races to break the rules and keep an armed force there. That’ll take some time. They’ll probably be inundated with Entries before they take effective action, and it might be too late to stop us. Still, we have to face facts. The nastiest of them will start pogroms, killing all Entries as soon as they appear in their own lands. Don’t need a vote for that.” He sighed. “I didn’t say this enterprise would be easy. We could well fail. The only thing I can say is that we either call the whole thing off now, or we try for it now. You’re the council for this operation. On your heads will be most of the responsibility for the operation. What do you say? Yua?”
“Do it,” she responded instantly.
“Gypsy?”
“I’d rather die fighting than be wiped out of existence by some crazy crack in space.”
“Marquoz?”
“This is beginning to look interesting, a true challenge,” the little dragon responded. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Mavra?”
She sighed. “Let’s get it over with. At least I won’t have to finish life as a Rhone.”
“All right, then. You four will go in first. Obie indicated that he had some way of influencing the Well’s choice, so I can assume that all four of you will somehow be placed to do me and yourselves maximum good. I don’t know whether he’ll be a hundred percent successful in this but I expect you to be rallying your Entry armies around you by the time I get there. After giving you sufficient time to become adapted to your new forms and environments, I’ll start sending in the hordes. The hue and cry will be enormous and immediate. There’ll be a new body in every back yard. You’ll know when. Time your actions properly—don’t move too soon or the locals will be on to you before you have sufficient strength to tell them where to go. Then, and only then, rise up, announce yourself, rally the newcomers around you. Later Entries will carry a more sophisticated timetable. That’s what I’m going to use my nonhuman friends for. More likely even after they’ve begun to shoot all the Amazonian women they see, they’ll let others pass. Rally and move to consolidate your forces as quickly as possible. Move on Ambreza, which is where everybody knows I’ll appear.”
“But Ambreza is the hex of the big beavers,” Mavra objected. “I remember that much.”
“But you forget that they had a war with the humans that the humans lost and they swapped hexes,” Brazil responded. “So as a human I’ll show up in modern-day Ambreza.”
“Sounds a little odd to me,” Gypsy remarked. “Seems to me that as we sweep down we’ll tell everybody when and where you’re coming.”