“But that would doom Brazil,” the Czillian pointed out.

The sickly grin widened. “Not if Nathan Brazil was already here, ahead of them all. We’d waste so much time hunting for him, we’d never look for him in Ambreza until it was too late. Want to bet?”

“Do you have any proof of this?” the Czillian asked skeptically.

“It’s the old shell game,” the snake-man continued, partially ignoring the question. “You take three shells, put a pebble under one, then shuffle them in such a way that you misdirect the sucker. He thinks he sees the shell with the pebble move to the right, but that’s illusion. The pebble’s stayed in the middle. That’s what happened this time. First the pebble—Brazil— slipped in, then we were left staring at the shuffling of empty shells.”

“But do you have any proof?” the Czillian persisted.

Bushy eyebrows rose. “Proof? Of course. Once I realized that I’d been had, it was simple.” Ortega reached across his U-shaped desk and his lower right hand pushed a combination of buttons on a small control panel. A screen on the far wall flickered to life, showing a still of the great Well Gate chamber through which entered all who fell into the teleportation gates of the long-dead Markovians. Cameras had been set up in there for as long as any could remember so that no one would enter without being seen and given his introduction and orientation to the Well World.

Images flickered across the screen; strange shapes from twenty or more different worlds, their only commonality their carbon-based structure. Non-carbon-based life automatically went to the North Zone.

“We’re going backward,” Ortega told his associate. “Backward from the point at which Chang and her friends came through.”