05. Twilight at the Well of Souls - The Legacy of Nathan Brazil (40 page)

Brazil idly flicked a control. The time rate slowed. By the end of the day it was down to a very small length of time, relatively speaking: barely a few million years an hour.

On the second day he singled out the target worlds and started adjusting the processes by which life would form. The proper conditions were established for life, and on the third day, slowing time even more, he energized those elements, not merely on the planets he was going to use but on all those other worlds as well, worlds which, formed naturally, were good havens for life of one form or another but for which he had no people.

Time slowed more on the fourth day. The amino acids, the crystalline structures, the building blocks of lifeforms North and South on the Well World formed; the carbon-based in the sea while plants now ruled the land, what there was of it.

On the fifth day he slowed the rate still more, with Mavra's assistance, and activated secondary lifeform programming. Animal life appeared, first in the sea, then on the land, all in its proper evolutionary order, all stemming from the single, inevitable first cause.

And they looked at the millions of worlds and saw that they had done it right. It was working—not 100 percent, but more than enough for their needs. They spent most of the time doing this checking, using the Well computer itself to match worlds to lifeforms. A very few couldn't be exactly matched, and that bothered them, Brazil in particular.

"The Gedemondans," he remarked. "That explains the Gedemondans. Once you lay down the physical laws, you have to live by them, obey 'em implicitly. Last time, for some reason, the Gedemondans couldn't be properly matched to a world that formed in this mess. Won't be that problem with them this time, though. I've kept my word on that. They have a world that looks damned near tailor-made. We may have some problems with a few of the others, but we'll do the best we can."

Complex animal life was developing now, the ancestral prototypes of the dominant races of those worlds, flowing logically out of how Brazil and the Well programming had combined those first acids in the initial process, based on the world's material and resources, as well as the biological and climatologic conditions they had to work under. But the Well was very good at predicting how a world would develop, and it made no mistakes. The prototypical new sentient races weren't
exactly
like their counterparts on the Well World, but, overall, they were remarkably close. Natural selection was taking its toll along the main line of dominance, too, leading to the one minor branch that provided what was necessary for sentience, for dominance.

Brazil checked out the Well World. Most hexes had complied with the demands placed on them, but there were a few too disorganized or too primitive to comply, and Brazil now took steps to include them indiscriminately. When their time came, any who fell short of the minimums would find their populations halved by Well fiat.

Some of the Markovians, so long ago—Mavra was now beginning to realize just
how
long ago—had been reluctant, too.

Both of them were prepared by midnight on the fifth day. It was time, they knew, time to insert what was needed to complete the exercise, as Brazil called it.

Every few seconds, between midnight and midnight, another racial group was activated, sent through the Well Gate, out to their predestined planets. Physically, they would never arrive. They would inhabit the bodies prepared for them through billions of years of evolution. These included the millions saved from oblivion by Brazil's actions with the Markovian Gates, who would now be able to carry on their own races, rebuild and grow or die as they themselves decided by their actions.

Because there were still temporal differentials between the Well World and the universe, they were spread at different points, and some would reproduce, grow old, and die, and be thousands, perhaps millions of years different from other races placed on their worlds only minutes later, Well World time.

But for those occasional ones of races not destined for those planets who, accidentally but unavoidably, went along for the ride, there was only an instantaneous trip. But they were incongruities on a primitive world not meant for or designed for them. Most died out quickly, or became half-whispered legends among the generations that followed, but a few would hold on, manage somehow to survive, at least for a time.

At the end of the sixth day, when midnight came, the barriers to the Well Gate were removed, the Zone Gates shifted back to their normal patterns, all was as it was before.

And across the Well World there was heaved a collective sigh of relief.

Temporally, too, they were back on track. Six days had passed for them, almost fourteen for the new universe now being maintained by a repaired, repro-grammed, and revitalized Well.

Nathan Brazil sighed and settled back on his tentacles. Mavra made some final checks and then did the same. It was over.

"Until some new damn fool decides to play around with the Markovian mathematics, anyway," Brazil commented sourly. He reached out to her. "What are your plans now?"

"I need a rest, and I want to think about it," she replied.

And so on the seventh day they did nothing at all.

"Decided yet?" he asked her early in the morning of the next day.

"Yeah. I think so, anyway. Maybe it's a mistake, I don't know. But I have to play along with you, I suppose. Your way, for now. What about you?"

"Oh, this is the fun part, the interesting part," he told her. "Going down there and watching how they develop. It's only after they get there that it starts driving you crazy."

She laughed. "I think it's going to be fascinating,"

"Okay," he told her. "Let's get going, then. It's pre-civilization time in the new world, but by the time we get through all this, it'll be the dawn of so-called civilization. Ugh. You decided pretty much what you're going to be?"

She nodded. "Pretty much the same, I think," she told him. "Matched a little closer to our exit-point culture, of course, but pretty much the same. You?"

"I'm afraid I proved to myself the last time that I couldn't be anybody but what I always was. No matter what, I always seem to come out the same, more or less."

He flickered; the grand Markovian brilliance vanished. Nathan Brazil stood there, much as he had before. There was a slight difference in his color, and his beard was fuller, but it was still undeniably Nathan Brazil.

And, oddly, some of the brilliance still showed through to her Markovian senses the more she stared at him.

She flickered, then stood there, beside him. She was dark, lean, lithe, and yet somehow exotic.

"Still the same old girl, huh?" he cracked. "Not even curious about being a man? Men have it much easier in primitive societies, you know."

She grinned, went over and kissed him, then held up her fingernails. Flexing the muscles slightly, tiny beads of some liquid oozed out from underneath the sharp points. "I can take care of myself," she told him.

He smiled warmly at her and put his arm around her, drawing her close to him. "I just bet you can," he replied sincerely.

Naughkaland, Earth

THEY WALKED DOWN THE BEACH TOGETHER, THE MAN and the woman, naked and unashamed. Occasionally the woman, slightly smaller than he, would reach down and pick up a shell or pretty colored rock, then laugh and toss it into the ocean. It was a beautiful, brilliant warm day, the kind of day you always wished for.

"It's better than the last one," the man remarked in a tongue totally alien to this bright new world. "Warmer, lusher, richer. I think things might be different, maybe better, this time out."

She laughed, a pleasant, playful laugh. "Always the optimist. Ever the optimist." She threw her arms around him, kissing him long and passionately.

He stood there a moment, looking down into her face and her large, dark eyes. "In time, you may grow to hate me," he warned.

"Or you, me," she shot back, a playful pout on her face. "But not now. Not today. Not with the sun and the sea and the birds calling and a warm wind blowing! Definitely not now!"

The couple continued up the beach, holding hands and letting the warm ocean water wash over their feet.

She stopped, pointed down at the still wet sand. "Look!" she said, wonderingly.

"It's just a sand crab," he told her.

She turned on him, slightly angry. "Are you going to be this grumpy over the next ten thousand years?" she asked irritably.

He laughed. "Hell, no. I'll get worse. But never all the way down, honey. Never all the way down. Because, as short as I am, you made yourself shorter and lighter than I am."

He grinned, and she grinned, and be took her hand and they continued on down the beach.

It
was
a good day, he told himself, and a good place to be alive, if alive he had to be. But he was still Nathan Brazil, forty billion years out, bound for nowhere with a cargo hold empty of anything at all, even clothes on his back.

Still waiting.

Still caring.

But no longer alone.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JACK L. CHALKER was born in Norfolk, Virginia, on December 17, 1944, but was raised and has spent most of his life in Baltimore, Maryland. He learned to read almost from the moment of entering school, and by working odd jobs had amassed a large book collection by the time he was in junior high school, a collection now too large for containment in his quarters. Science fiction, history, and geography all fascinated him early on, interests that continue.

Chalker joined the Washington Science Fiction Association in 1958 and began publishing an amateur SF journal,
Mirage,
in 1960. After high school he decided to be a trial lawyer, but money problems and the lack of a firm caused him to switch to teaching. He holds bachelor degrees in history and English, and an M.L.A. from the Johns Hopkins University. He taught history and geography in the Baltimore public schools between 1966 and 1978, and now makes his living as a freelance writer. Additionally, out of the amateur journals he founded a publishing house, The Mirage Press, Ltd., devoted to nonfiction and bibliographic works on science fiction and fantasy. This company has produced more than twenty books in the last nine years. His hobbies include esoteric audio, travel, working on science-fiction convention committees, and guest lecturing on SF to institutions such as the Smithsonian. He is an active conservationist and National Parks supporter, and he has an intensive love of ferryboats, with the avowed goal of riding every ferry in the world. In fact, in 1978, he was married to Eva Whitley on an ancient ferryboat in midriver. They live in the Catoctin Mountain region of western Maryland.