Their mounts were mammals, and looked at first glance like classical unicorns, curved horns like conch shells rising out of the center of their horselike heads. But their rear legs were much larger and their hind feet broad and flat, like their rider’s. They could sit erect, looking almost like kangaroos, or use their double-jointed hind legs to lope about on all fours, and on close inspection their snouts were narrower, their heads smaller than a horse’s.
Of their reputed magic powers nothing could be seen, but the menace of it could almost be felt by the passing forces. They were glad to get through there. It had been decided to use a wide river valley in Bache to regroup and reorganize after the march. Now, so close to their goal and to the major opposition forces, all had to be perfect.
It was late afternoon, but the command tents were already up. Brazil left his own little corner of the field and walked to the main tent shared by Asam and Mavra; Marquoz left his own position to join them. This was to be the last staff meeting of the group, although only Brazil, who had called it, was aware of that fact.
They ate quietly, mostly discussing the eerieness of the Dahir and the tiredness they were feeling, forgetting the rwst for a while. Brazil even seemed to become a bit nostalgic.
“You know,” he said, “out there, among the stars, trillions of people are going about their normal daily affairs right now. Even back in the Com, as crazy as things were getting, most people are still going about their daily tasks. It’s kind of weird, all this. I have never felt at home on the Well World; it’s too much of a fantasy land, divorced from reality, from the whole rest of creation, apart and insular.”
“I find it refreshing,” Marquoz countered. “I kind of like the variety here. Different creatures, different social systems, ways of life. It’s a microcosm, yes, but unique, too. You seem to assume that insularity is necessarily bad.”
“That’s right, son,” Asam put in. “After all, this little war is the first in a thousand years, the third in history, and one of the other two was also caused by outsiders coming in. It’s really not a bad place at all.”
“But you haven’t been outside” Brazil noted. “You haven’t been anywhere but the Well. Tell me. Asam, haven’t you ever looked up at that glorious starfield there and wished you could go out there and visit it? Fly from star to star, world to world?”
Asam’s expression was thoughtful. Finally he said, “Well, I’ve been too much of a realist to do much dreaming like that, I’m afraid. Hell, I’ve still got most of this world to see, and I’ve seen more of it than most anybody alive. Out there—what do you have? A lot of emptiness and a lot of worlds, like this one, each with one race on it. Big, empty, and everybody always fighting everybody whenever they meet. Nope, I think I like it here.”
Brazil looked at Mavra. “You’ve been both places,” he noted. “Last time you were here you did damn near everything to get away. Have you changed your mind?”
She thought it over. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I really don’t. Asam has shown me another kind of life, one possible here. And I’m in a form that makes sense here, one that leaves me free, not the crippled beast I was back then.” She paused a moment, looking both thoughtful and sad. “But, then, it really doesn’t matter, does it? I mean, it’s going to be a long, long time before there’s space travel in the universe again, isn’t there? Unless you like rubbing sticks together and huddling in caves, this will soon be the only game in town.’”
He stared at her. “Maybe,” he answered cautiously. “Maybe not. All is relative when you deal with the Well of Souls. And what you say is only true for this universe, anyway.”
“It’s the only universe we’ve got,” she shot back.
He shook his head. “Uh uh. It’s only a universe, not the universe. The energy to start this one came from another. There has to be a complement. Physics requires it. At the center of every black hole, for example, is a singularity. What happens at that point? Does it ever come out? Energy and matter don’t cease to exist—they can neither be created nor destroyed. That’s the law. Only changed. All that glop has to be somewhere—it comes out in the other universe. A white hole. It’s the way things work. Just because the Well looks like magic, don’t make the mistake of assuming it is magic. It’s not. It’s just simply a technology higher than you can currently comprehend.”
Marquoz stared at him. “This doesn’t sound like the man I knew, who played the flute for pennies in dives around the fringes of the Com. It doesn’t sound like you at all.” He looked at Brazil with some suspicion. “Are you really Gypsy?”
He sighed and sat back, seemingly arguing inwardly with himself. Finally he said, so softly it was difficult to hear him, “If I’m not Gypsy, then who or what am I?”
Mavra looked at him in sudden horror. “You’re not Gypsy!” she gasped. “You really are Brazil!” She shook her head in disgust. “All our talks about me, about Brazil… How you must have been laughing at me. You son of a bitch!” She whirled around and trotted briskly out of the tent.
The rest were silent for a while, mostly from being unable to think of anything to say. Finally, Marquoz broke the impasse.
“You are Brazil, aren’t you? That’s why you’ve been avoiding me so much.”
He nodded. “Yeah, why not? Cat’s out of the bag now. What difference does it make?”
“Quite a lot, if Mavra’s reaction means anything’,” Asam noted.
He sighed. “Mavra has a problem. She feels deprived, deserted, abandoned at an early age, unloved. That craving for love, for a father, I suppose, turned into bitter hatred of me. Why not? I was the closest to a father figure she ever had. Growing up the way she did, alone, that bitterness formed a shell around her that seldom cracks. If you feel the lack of something, you convince yourself you’re better off without it. You take a fierce pride in your aloneness, your loneliness. You turn a liability into a self-perceived asset. That’s what she’s done. And she’s been hurt every time she let that shell drop, even slightly.”
“If she needs love, I can give her that,” Asam said sincerely.
“It might not be enough,” he warned. “She’s had so much hurt when she did become attached to somebody that she’s afraid to do it again. She may be more hung up than you can handle, Asam. Still, I’ll give her her own choice. Inside the Well, I can do a lot of things. If she wants to remain here, with you, she can. Her choice.”
Marquoz shuffled uncomfortably at all this talk of Mavra. He decided it was better to change the subject to more immediate problems.
“All right, Brazil. Suppose you explain what the hell you’re doing here instead of Gypsy—and what we’re doing here, too. How the hell do you expect to get in the Well like this?”
Brazil shrugged. “Don’t blame me for all this,” he responded defensively. “Remember, I didn’t even want to be here in the first place. It’s that damned computer that came up with everything, right from the start. I got tracked down and hauled to Obie kicking and screaming all the way. It was the computer that convinced the bunch of you to take this course of action, and the computer that charted the course. I’ll admit it’s a damned crazy machine—Mavra’s influence, I suspect. But it is a computer, and once all the facts it had were fed into it, it decided that I must repair the Well and it decided on this scheme based on all the data it had fed into it.”