Quest for the Well of Souls - Jack L. Chalker [128]
"To answer the last first, we're in M-51, orbiting a lonely star, about thirty-five million light-years from anything that thinks. I picked it out of the Well years ago in case I needed a place to go. As for the other . . ." He paused, seemingly hesitant to voice his next thought. Quietly, he said, "Why didn't you go with the others, Mavra? Why did you decide to die? It was your intention all along, wasn't it?"
"Yes. The Well isn't for me. I survived to complete the commission, to make certain that New Pompeii would never be in the hands of such as Trelig or Yulin. So after that, what? All my life I've prided myself on my independence. To return to the Well World is to be made into something random, maybe even a whirling flower or a thinking clam or maybe a Wuckl or an Ecundan. Someone else's choice. And even if it's a good one, your universe is the Well World, your existence confined to an area no bigger than New Pompeii. As for the Com—for a while I'd be a hero, but soon I'd be yesterday's hero. Then I'd be just a freak, a four-legged woman with a tail. Maybe a nice compound for the heroine somewhere, like in Glathriel, or a circus, or some form of luxurious zoo. No freedom, no ship, no stars, no self-determination. What other choice did I have? Even what little I have left, my own life and accomplishments, turns out to be a lie. I don't owe you and you don't owe me, I always believed. But the beggars took me in because they were asked to, and helped me because they were asked to or paid to. The same one who did that sent my husband to me to get me out of the whorehouse."
"But he did care for you," Obie pointed out.
"I think he did—but that's not the point. He would never have been there without Brazil. Even if we met, once, by chance, I'd just have been another bar girl. Now that I've thought it out, I wonder if any of it was for real? How many times did I escape because of outside interference? So many things broke right. So many things always broke right. Little things, big things, but they add up to my life. Even you—you programmed me as your agent for your own ends, and I did exactly what you wanted done, while my grandparents and Brazil's friend Ortega looked after me on the Well World."
"You underrate yourself," Obie scolded. "You did it all yourself. Opportunity is not accomplishment. You did it, by ingenuity, by resourcefulness, by guts. You really are as good as you thought you were, and you have the potential to be much better."
She shook her head. "No. Even if I accept all that, there's Joshi. I liked him, and he was useful to me. He was something I needed. But I'm sure I never would have . . ." Her voice faltered. "Never—do what he did, for him. He gave his life to save mine! Why?"
"Perhaps he loved you," the computer replied kindly. "Love is the most abused word in history. It is, simply, caring more for others than you do for yourself. It's a measure of greatness that flashes rarely in an otherwise pretty sordid universe. This is the quality that the Markovians lost, for godhead is inherently selfish. They lost the capacity to care for others, to give as well as receive, to love others as they would be loved. Their curse was the hollow emptiness left inside them when the ability to love was lost. Such was their tragedy that they could no longer even comprehend it."
She sniffed in derision. "And me? It's not within me, Obie. Others have loved me, I suppose—Brazil, my parents and grandparents, and most especially Joshi—but I never returned it, couldn't return it. I don't know how. I don't even understand you now."
"When Joshi died, you cried," Obie reminded her softly. "Now you are lost and wallowing in self-pity, yet it is within you to grow, to learn it, Mavra Chang."
"Another of those quantitative measurements you make when I run through you?" she retorted.
"It cannot be quantified," Obie replied. "That's why the Markovians couldn't discover it. That's why the Gedemondans will fail as well. They have sealed themselves off from the rest of mankind, in whatever form. All their