01. Midnight At the Well of Souls Read Free Page A

record!
    "It's only a preliminary finding," the professor managed at last. "I was waiting until I had something really startling to report."
    "But this is startling!" the boy exclaimed excitedly. "But you have been too close to the problem and to your own disciplines to crack it. Look, your fields are archaeology and biology, aren't they?"
    "They are," Skander acknowledged, wondering where this conversation was leading. "I was an exobiologist for years and became an archaeologist when I started doing all my work on the Markovian brains."
    "Yes, yes, but you're still a generalist. My world, as you know, raises specialists in every field from the point at which the brain is formed. You know my field."
    "Mathematics," Skander replied. "If I recall, all mathematicians on your world are named Varnett after an ancient mathematical genius."
    "Right," the boy replied, still in an excited tone. "As I was developing in the Birth Factory, they imprinted all the world's mathematical knowledge directly. It was there continuously as I grew. By the time my brain was totally developed at age seven, I knew all the mathematics, applied and theoretical, that we know. Everything is ultimately mathematical, and so I see everything in a mathematical way. I was sent here by my world because I had become fascinated by the alien mathematical symmetry in the slides and specimens of the Markovian brain. But all was for nothing, because I had no knowledge of the energy matrix linking the cellular components."
    "And now?" Skander prodded, fascinated and excited in spite of himself.
    "Why, it's gibberish. It defies all mathematical logic. It says that there are no absolutes in mathematics! None! Every time I tried to force the pattern into known mathematical concepts, it kept saying that two plus two equals four isn't a constant but a relative proposition!"
    Skander realized that the boy was trying to make things baby-simple to him, but he still couldn't grasp what he was saying. "What does all that mean?" he asked in a puzzled and confused tone.
    Varnett was becoming carried away with himself. "It means that all matter and energy are in some kind of mathematical proportion. That nothing is actually real, nothing actually anything at all. If you discard the equal sign and substitute 'is proportional to' and, if it is true, you can alter or change anything. None of us, this room, this planet, the whole galaxy, the whole universe—none of it is a constant! If you could alter the equation for anything only slightly, change the proportions, anything could be made anything else, anything could be changed to anything else!" He stopped, seeing from the expression on Skander's face that the older man was still lost.
    "I'll give a really simple, basic example," Varnett said, calmed considerably from his earlier outburst. "First, realize this if you can: there is a finite amount of energy in the universe, and that is the only constant. The amount is infinite by our standards, but that is true if this is true. Do you follow me?"
    Skander nodded. "So you're saying that there is nothing but pure energy?"
    "More or less," Varnett agreed. "All matter, and constrained energy, like stars, is created out of this energy flux. It is held there in that state—you, me, the room, the planet we're on—by a mathematical balance. Something—some quantity—is placed in proportion to some other quantity, and that forms us. And keeps us stable. If I knew the formula for Elkinos Skander, or Varnett Mathematics Two Sixty-one, I could alter, or even abolish, our existence. Even things like time and distance, the best constants, could be altered or abolished. If I knew your formula I could, given one condition, not only change you into, say, a chair, but alter all events so that you would have always been a chair!"
    "What's the condition?" Skander asked nervously, hesitantly, afraid of the answer.
    "Why, you'd need a device to translate that formula into reality. And a way to have it