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"Well, not exactly, but I think I'll add that capability now before we leave.
You see, the time when we were in here together so long ago. I added a
condition that so long as I was around, alive and kicking, you couldn't enter
the Well except in my presence. Until we got here, I had no idea that the
Kraang was still around, let alone that he was potentially loose, until you
did."
"You what!"
"What are you so sore about? If I hadn't done that, look at what would have
happened!"
"You didn't trust me!"
Nathan Brazil chuckled. "Hey, kid, you only had your learner's card. Still do,
in fact, considering how this turned out."
"But-but-what about the Kraang? He's still out there! And he's still connected
to the Well!"
"Yeah, he is, I guess," Brazil sighed. "Only even he knew a con when he heard
one, and he still fell for it once I realized what his weak spot was. And he'd
told me-told us all-just what that one weakness was. He really was a god. He'd
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almost always been a god, or at least a god, junior grade. Man! Anything you
wanted-the energy-to-matter transformers made it for you just like you
imagined it! Anything you wanted to be, to experience, to use, to own, to
look at. There it was.
That's how I conned 'em during the Great Transmigration. I became Nathan
Brazil, or a reasonable facsimile thereof anyway, in Glathriel, which was a
kind of pet project of mine, anyway. I conned
'em into thinking I'd gone the whole way, that I'd become a Glathrielian. The
way I worked it, I
showed up as just another guy, even to the Well. The only thing was, the Well
had special instructions and links to me. I conned 'em. Designed it right into
the program." "But the Kraang-"
"Is not designed into the program that way," Brazil told her.
"Wait a minute," Lori put in, feeling an immense weight slowly lifting from
him. "If he's not designed in like you or Mavra, then ..."
"You got it!" Nathan Brazil responded lightly. "There's hope for you yet,
Lori." "Well, I don't get it!" Gus said, "and I don't see nobody else gettin'
it, neither."
But Mavra Chang suddenly did, and she started laughing, and the laughter grew
so loud and long that it echoed through the great hall and woke up the baby
again. "Mind letting us in on this, since you woke up the kid?" Gus called to
her. She got control of herself. "Let me see if I got this right. When he
left, he rode the hyperspace nets as he said, whatever the hell they are, and
he came out someplace, just as he always did when he was back in ancient
times. But all those worlds are dead now. They've been dead for billions of
years. So he's going to come out on a lonely, barren, incredibly ancient
world of the Markovians, and he's going to see only artifacts and death. He's
probably doing that right now. And then .. ." She started to laugh again and
tried to fight it. "And then he'll have no choice but to move on! He'll
probably have big, big plans, but to do them he'll have to use the gate that's
there! And when he does ..."
Lori suddenly saw it. "He'll wind up back here!" he finished, openmouthed.
"But in Zone. North or south, just like we did. And the only way he can get
out is to use the Zone Gate, and that will process him just as it was
designed to do so many years ago!"
"Wait a minute!" Gus put in. "Are you tellin' me that the only place that
egomaniacal bastard can go is right back here? And that when he comes through,
his only choice will be to be transformed into one of the races here, just
like ml So he'll be as mortal, as ordinary as we are?"
"Unless he figures it out, sitting there on that world," Brazil replied. "He
might. Probably will, in fact. He was never a dummy, even back then. But then,
so what? What's his choice? To live like he did before, with everything at his
beck and call, but alone, on a deserted world, not comatose but fully awake,
looking at the skies all the time and not being able to do a damned thing
about it. Totally, completely, thoroughly alone."
"Until somebody conies along in a spaceship," Mavra said worriedly. "He's
waited this long. He
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can wait."
"It's a pretty big universe," Nathan Brazil pointed out. "But we can check and
see just where he wound up. And maybe, before we leave, we'll kind of nudge
the probabilities of his ever being found a little more toward the infinite. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]