03. Gods at the Well of Souls (44 page)

"Just what I said. Would you like to return to Dillia? 

Would you rather go to where the Dillian project wound up? A world still a bit  primitive but civilizing fast, much like our old one in that regard, in which  your present kind are the dominant species? Or would you rather be someone,  something else? Tony a man again, perhaps?" 

"Oh, dear. This is for real and forever, isn't it?" Anne Marie responded. "I-I'm  afraid I don't know what to say. I'm quite satisfied the way I am. I'm young,  healthy, and attractive, and other than being young before, the other two are  still very new to me. I hardly feel like second-guessing your computer." "I have but one regret," Tony told them. "I regret that in this form I cannot  fly again. I did love it, you know. But this is not a bad form, and it has a  great deal to recommend it. I never did put much stock in what people looked  like on the outside, anyway. Anne Marie is my dearest friend, but I would never  even have met her had not misfortune sat so heavily on us both. As opposites, we  would of course marry, and our course would be fixed, and that perhaps would be  a shame. We would never know our potential or be able to become individuals. I  think this machine is perhaps wiser than we. I would never have dreamed of this  solution, but it is the one that is right for both of us. As for the Dillian  world, it would be fascinating but not, I think, as fascinating as the endless  variety right here." She took Anne Marie's hand and squeezed it, and the other  smiled knowingly. 

"Let's go home, dear," Anne Marie said softly, and she meant to Dillia. She took  the baby and gave it to Gus, who 

looked most uncomfortable with it, and after he did what he could to support the  child, he looked back to complain to Anne Marie that maybe he wasn't the right  one for this job. 

But the two centaurs suddenly weren't there anymore. 

"And now we have you, Colonel," Nathan Brazil said with a stern tone creeping  into his voice. "You have a very 

warped view of honor and duty, I think. Anne Marie compared you to Talleyrand. I  met Talleyrand once, and I checked to make sure I still had my purse when I  left. Still, everything he did, beyond ensuring his own survival, was because he  believed that he was doing his best to serve his country and its people. In a  sense he was a pragmatic anarchist. He knew that his nation was going to have a  government, and he firmly believed that no matter what that government was, it  wasn't the one France truly needed. He was trying to save what he could through  it all, and he did a reasonable job, considering the obstacles. But you're no  Talleyrand, Colonel. You never cared about your country or your people. You  climbed up from virtually the bottom, and then you forgot what it was like to be  there. You didn't just sell your service to get out. you sold your soul. You  never even thought of the people you hauled in during the dictatorship as real  people. And you sold your services and honor on the side to some petty drug  lords of a neighboring nation whose product infected your own people as badly as  those to the north. Then you got here, and what did you do? The Leeming accorded  you rank beyond anything a newcomer deserved, and you sold it again-to the same  damned types of people! And then you rationalized every single bit of it. You're  amazing, Colonel. You're the only man I know who sold his soul twice to the same  bidders." 

"You are unfair! I never betrayed my country! Never!" 

Brazil gave a big sigh. 'That's the tragedy, Colonel. You can't even understand  what you did. 'I didn't gas the Jews! I just followed Himmler's orders!' My, I  heard that one enough! No, Colonel, you didn't betray anybody. And all those  homicidal fanatics in Peru got a lot of their money because you arranged transit  to Venezuela for their goods. And then those goods went all over the planet and  poisoned thousands, tens of thousands. But you didn't do it. Like those death  squads you allowed to go through Rio and Sao Paulo and the other cities of  Brazil, killing off all those poor children-children. Colonel!-because they were  bad for business. Just tidying up. Doing your duty for God and country, going to  confession once a week to be absolved of all your sins. Take the Eucharist on  Sunday with a clear conscience." 

"Do not lecture me! You! The mighty immortal! How can you know what it is like  to have to fight and starve and claw your way to anything before you die? You  know you will survive, ageless, through the generations!" 

"Oh, I've seen death, Colonel," Brazil told him. "Death is a very old friend. I  admit he's never come for me, although I had a little glimpse of him when I  thought I might not make it here. I've seen death clearer than almost anyone.  It's all around me. Always! I see it take everyone, the rich and poor, young and  old, innocent and guilty alike. Sometimes I have to run from it. I have to make  myself hard in order to stand the view. But I hate it. I hate it more than I  hate anything else. Maybe I can't understand what made you this way, not really,  but I can understand that for everyone in your position when you began, most did  not make the choices you did. No, Colonel, I reject your thesis." The colonel drew himself up and became the semblance of the man he'd been,  impressive and ramrod straight. "Then we can never resolve this. I am your  prisoner. I die with dignity, like a soldier! I will not crawl or beg!" "I'm not going to kill you, Colonel," Nathan Brazil told him. "I'm not going to  kill anybody here, not even Campos, who deserves it more than anybody. I'm going  to give you an opportunity you never gave any of your victims. I'm going to give  you one last chance to get your soul back." 

The colonel vanished. 

Campos was increasingly nervous. "Where did he go?" she demanded to know. "What  did you do with him?" 

"I sent him back." 

"Back! Back where?" 

"Home. To Brazil. In a little while he'll wake up and discover where he is.  He'll find that a few things have left him. The knowledge that comes from  education, reading, writing, a wide vocabulary, other languages, that sort of  thing, but he will know. He will know even though where he will wake up is in a  corrugated box in a garbage dump on the outskirts of Sao Paulo. He'll be a child  again, but this time an orphan dressed in rags, along with all the other such  people who try to survive day to day on the garbage of the well-to-do whose  homes they can see way off in the hills and in the downtown high-rises. The  original child died of exposure and malnutrition the instant he went into the  body. He won't die, though. Not right off. Not if he moves fast enough and hides  well enough. It's lower than he's ever been. It's about as low as you can be.  And I've given him an added little factor, an added degree of difficulty, so he  can have a real appreciation of those he never saw in life except as victims.  The child I chose from far too many available to me is a nine-year-old girl." "You bastard!" Campos cried. "And what will you do to me? The same sort of  miserable thing? Well, go ahead! No matter what you do to me, I shall always be  a Campos! Not even being a female duck could stop me! You better kill me or I  will rise from whatever depths you plunge me into! And unless you wish to bathe  your own hands, or whatever they are, in innocent blood, remember that there is  still a Campos here!" 

"No there's not," Brazil responded. "The baby's father is Carlos Antonio Quail,  a sergeant in the Brazilian Air Force, and the union wasn't even forced." Before  Campos's expression had even fallen at this, Brazil added, "And I just love  challenges!" And with that. Juana Campos vanished as well. 

Mavra looked at him. "Well?" 

"Well what?" 

"What did you do to the SOB? I think he was right, by the way. I didn't kill him  when I had the chance, and look at the horrors he caused here. I was never  really positive before, but now I know that there really are some people so  totally evil that you just can't teach them." 

"Who said anything about teaching? Maybe I'm wrong, but he gave me a challenge  and I accepted. I sure wouldn't put her in a box in Sao Paulo. In ten years  she'd probably have the most vicious girl gang in that city. Still, let's see." "You're not going to tell me?" 

"Later. We have other business before we can get to our business." "At least-the kid really isn't his?" 

"No. That's how Terry diverted attention from the meteor while you and the  others got through. It was your own plan, remember." 

"Urn, yeah. I'm not feeling so great about that now. Still, I'm glad to know it  hasn't got any trace of the Campos bloodline." 

"Yeah, what're you gonna do with this kid?" Gus asked them. "I'm getting real  nervous just trying to hold him right, and he's pissed all over me once  already!" 

"Patience, Gus, we'll get to you," Brazil said lightly to the Dahir, and then  turned his attention more to Mavra. "Well? You're the one who made the promises  to Lori and Julian." 

She shrugged and looked at the Erdomese, who both felt that they were present at  the Last Judgment. "I promised you two anything you wanted if I got here. Well,  I'm here." 

"Yeah, but I don't know what to ask for," Lori responded. "I'll tell you what I  would want, or at least I think I do, but I can't say how. I put a lot of time  and effort into my field because I loved it. Maybe I was trying to prove  something to myself, maybe I was trying to excel as a woman in a man's field,  all that, but the bottom line was that there were a lot of places I could have  done that. When I got here, I enjoyed being a man in a man's society for once,  but it was a society I didn't want to live in. I could look at the stars, more  than I'd ever known, through Erdom's bright, clear skies, but I couldn't study  them. I couldn't work in physics at all. The most I could be, under optimum  conditions, was muscle. A strong arm with a sword. I wanted more than that. I  had more than that back home. I like this form, its strength, its power, the  absence of the kind of fear Mavra told you about, but what good is it if it's  all you are or can ever be? The only thing of real value I got out of Erdom was  Julian." 

Julian gave him a humorless smile. "And that's what I am, even to you. A 'thing'  of value," she noted. "I can't blame you any, really. When we came through that  hex, that matriarchy, where the women ruled supreme and the men were no more  than objects, there was no real difference. I'm still not even sure if I think  like a woman, really, or like a guy who was forced to take what he dished out. I  know that most women can't see the serious problems that men have in  society-their lack of freedom-and part of that is that they don't want to. When  you're down, you resent the ones that are higher up. When you're a higher-up,  you forget what it was like to be down. And neither side can ever really come  together. Me, I've got the impossible problem. I finally came to terms with this  shape and form and sex. I like it. I like the way I look, the way I feel, and  I've found I can do things many of the men couldn't. But I don't want to go back  to being a piece of property, a 'thing of value,' without a voice, without  rights, without even the freedom to think serious thoughts. I was a scientist,  too, you know. I kept faith because I needed Lori, and he needed me, but, let's  face it, I don't need Lori anymore." Lori seemed shocked at the statement Julian  made and shook his head sadly. He didn't understand this at all. Mavra shook her head sadly at Julian. "You're wrong. You're still wrong. You've  been through all this, more experiences and more damned personalities than most  folks could ever imagine, and you haven't really learned a thing. A person alone who needs nobody else isn't a whole person at all. Even the plant  creatures here interact. And I don't know anybody, except maybe Nathan and  myself, who needs somebody more than you do. In a sense, the Kraang was right  about you. What don't you like about Julian Beard? That he was self-centered,  egotistical, that he saw everybody else as kind of props in his life? I got that  much from you the moment you stepped in here, but he wasn't a bad man, just vain  and selfish to the core. The Well took that away from you, and in a vain and  selfish fit you decided death was better than not being the center of the  universe. Lori rescued you from that, but he didn't make you the center of the  universe, either. Within the limits of that atrocious society he tried to make  you a partner, but you couldn't stand it in the end. You couldn't survive that  way, or at least you didn't want to, and you couldn't survive any other way. You  were so desperate to break free that you let those butchers mess with your mind  even though you had a pretty good idea that they'd mutilated Lori and me. You  were relieved when you found Lori as a horse. That put you in the center again,  the one controlling him. Even then you needed his guts to get here." Mavra sighed and looked over and up at Nathan's pulsating bulk. "Well? You got  the big brain right now. What do you think?" 

"I think that while we're going to have to correct Erdom a bit, these two just  don't belong in a nontech environment," Brazil commented. "On the other hand, a  kind of compromise that you sort of suggested with your comments and a few  things said elsewhere here present a possibility." 

"That I suggested?" Mavra came back, puzzled. 

"Yeah. It's going to take some really major work here, though. Let me see. Gus?  You've been the most solid one through this whole mess. If there's anyone I'd  want with me in a nasty situation, it would be you. You've also got more moral  sense than the rest of the bunch put together." 

"Nice to hear," Gus told him. "But it don't count for much, does it? I'm a big,  fat lizard holdin" Terry's baby, but all that time I thought I was stickin' by  her, it turned out to be you." 

"No, you're wrong, Gus," Brazil told him almost tenderly. "She was there. I had  to hide myself so thoroughly that not a trace of my true self emerged.  Occasionally I had to switch back and forth between that damned rehab tank in  Agon and her body. She knew, Gus. She was there all along."