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Nate!
Maybe even more. Hard to say, but we have a lot of folk dropping through whose
knowledge of the universe doesn't match anything we humans know. And that's
the weirdest thing a hell of a lot of them are close to human-1*
"In what way do you mean that. Serge?" Brazil asked. "Us-human or you-human?"
Ortega laughed. "Both. Humanoid would perhaps be a better term. Well, first
let me show you what you're in for, and I'll add the rest as I go along."
The snakeman dimmed the lights, and a map show-
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ing two hemispheres flicked on the screen. It looked like a standard planetary
map, but the two circles were filled with hexagons from pole to pole.
"The Markovians," Ortega began, "who were nutty over the number six, built
this world. We don't know why or how, but we do know what. Each of their
worlds had at least one gate of the kind that trans-
ported you here. You are now at the South Polar Zone, which doesn't show
accurately here for obvious rea-
sons. All carbon-based life comes here, and all of the hexes north of us to
that thick equatorial line are carbon-based or could live in a carbon-based
environ-
ment. The Mechs of Hex Three Sixty-seven, for ex-
ample, aren't carbon-based, but you could live in their hex."
"So the North Polar Zone takes care of the biologi-
cally exotic, then?" Hain asked.
Ortega nodded. "Yes, there are the true aliens, be-
ings with which we have literally nothing in common.
Their hexes run down to the equator on the north hemisphere."
"Is that black band at the equator just a map di-
viding line or is it something else?" Vardia asked curiously.
"No, that's not just on the map," Ortega told her, "and you were sharp to
notice it. It is well, the best
I can describe it is that it's a sheer wall, opaque and several kilometers
high. You can't really see it until you're at it, outside the border of the
last hex by a hair. You can't get past it, and you can't fly over it or
anything. It's just, well, there. We have some theories about it, of course,
the best one being that it's the ex-
posed part of the Markovian brain that is, it seems, of the entire core of
this planet- The old name for it seems to be the Well of Souls so it probably
is just that. There's an old adage around here: 'Until mid-
night at the Well of Souls,' which you'll probably hear.
It's just an old ritual saying now, although it may have had some real meaning
in the distant past of prehis-
tory. Hell, if that's the Well of Souls, then it's always midnight somewhere!"
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"What do the hexagons represent?" Hain asked.
"Well, there are fifteen hundred and sixty of them
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on the planet," Ortega replied. "Nobody knows the reason for that, either, but
at least the figure only has one six in it. Each hex is identical in size each
one of the six sides is just a shade under three hundred fifty-five
kilometers, and they're a shade under six hundred fifteen kilometers across.
Needless to say they didn't use our form of measurements when they built the
place, and we don't know what system they had, but that'll give you an idea in
our terms."
"But what's in the hexes?" Brazil prodded.
"Well, you could call them nations with borders,"
Ortega replied, "but that would be understating things.
Each is a self-contained biosphere for a particular life form and for
associated lower life forms. They are all maintained by the Markovian brain,
and each is also maintained at a given technological level. The social level
is left to whatever the inhabitants can de-
velop or want to have, so you have everything from monarchies to dictatorships
to anarchies out there."
"What do you mean technological level?" Brazil asked him. "Do you mean that
there are places where there are machines and places where there are not?"
"Well, yes, that, of course," Ortega affirmed.
"But, well, you can only get to the level of technology your resources allow
within the hex. Anything beyond it just won't work, like Hain's pistol
yesterday."
"It seems to me that you would have been popu-
lated to death here," Brazil commented. "After all, .1
assume all creatures reproduce here and then the
Markovian brains keep shuttling people here as well."
"That just doesn't happen," Ortega replied. "For one thing, as I said, people
can die here and do.
Some hexes have very cheap life, some species live a comparatively short time.
Reproductive rates are in accordance with this death rate. If populations seem
to be rising too high, and natural factors like catas-
trophes, which can happen here, or wars, which also can happen, although they
are not terribly common and usually localized don't reduce the numbers, .well,
most of the next batch is simply born sexually normal in every way yet
sterile, with just a very small num-
ber able to keep the breed going. When attrition takes its toll, the species
goes back to being born fertile.
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Actually the population's pretty stable in each hex
from a low of about twenty thousand to a high of over a million.
"As for Entries like you well, the Markovians were extensive, as I said, but
many of their old brains are dead and some of the gateways are closed for-
ever for one reason or another. Others are so well disguised that a
one-in-a-trillion blunder uke mine is needed to find the entrance. We get no
more than a hundred or so newcomers a year, all told. We have a trip alarm
when the Well is activated and some of us take turns on a daily basis
answering the alarms.
Sheer luck I ran into you, but I take a lot of turns.
Some of the folks here don't really like newcomers and don't treat them right,
so I take their duty and they owe me."
"There are representatives of all the Southern
Hemisphere races here, then?" Vardia asked.
The snakeman nodded. "Most of them. Zone's really a sort of embassy station.
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Distances are huge, travel is long here, and so here at Zone representatives
of all of us can meet and talk over mutual problems. The
Gate which we'll get to presently will zip me back home in an instant,
although, curse it, it won't zip anybody back and forth except from here to
his own hex. Oh, yes, there's a special chamber for Northern-
ers here and one for us up at the North Zone just in case we have to
talk which is seldom. They occa-
sionally have something we are short of, or our scientists and theirs want to
compare notes, or some-
such. But they are so different from us that that's rare."
Brazil wore a strangely fixed expression as he said, "Serge, you've spelled
out the world as much as you can, but you've omitted one fact I think I can
guess
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