Ghost of the Well of Souls wos-7

by Jack L. Chalker

  “Oh,” was the only thing either Ming or Ari could think of to say.

  “We must ensure that she regains or at least retains some toehold, however minuscule, in her past humanity. I hope I did not strip all of it from her. If so, it may well be the Well of Souls that must deal with her, lest she become a god. Until and unless I can be certain of which way she will go, it is essential that she at least feel comfortable with us, that our side is the side of the just. Understand?”

  “I think so,” Ari replied, and indeed they both saw the threat. “So, when do we leave, and how do we work out reports and contacts with you and the government?”

  “You will report only to me, and to those whom I can code to work entirely for me. The message traffic will be to and from Zone only. I do not believe that the whole of the government is reliable. Some of it would willingly sell us out to Josich. A good share of the rest would surrender rather than face genocide—and, frankly, if that were the only choice, who could blame them? For now, we—those of us who come from other places, who came here knowing one another—are the third force on the Well World, and we damned well better keep it that way.”

  In fact, Ari and Ming were more than eager to get out of the straitjacket they’d been in since arriving on this strange world. Unable to see and enjoy their new, exotic, combined form, they’d been kept effectively prisoner, and treated like freaks—which, both had to admit, they were, under most definitions.

  The odd thing was how well the master crook’s somewhat bent nephew and the pretty but tough policewoman had gotten along. Of course, the alternative to getting along was committing suicide. Even so, with the truth of each of their backgrounds known to the other, there was a compatibility they would not have expected. Control wasn’t much of a question; each automatically deferred to the other whenever appropriate. An observer could not tell which one was in charge at any given time. And the ability to have a full dialogue with the other at the speed of thought, without eavesdroppers, was often quite useful.

  There was one point of privacy that had driven each of them crazy since they awoke as two different minds in a single body. Neither was ever alone. Ever. Oh, there was a level to which each could withdraw mentally. Nonetheless, the other was always around, always observing. Both felt it, and neither was completely comfortable with it.

  Recently, Ming was disturbed by a new wrinkle, one she didn’t yet feel confident enough to bring up with Ari. She was beginning to dream his dreams; to dream things that were related to his old experience but not to hers. There was also a sense of memory leakage that hadn’t been there at the start. At first it had been hardly noticeable. Now, it was common to be thinking over something when, suddenly, a memory or piece of data popped into her mind from what could only have been his half of the brain. No one had discussed the future with them, but she and Ari had overheard some of the medical and psychological types back in Kalinda when they were still specimens. The near unanimous prediction was that they would begin to merge into one. It was supposed to have been slow, and happen without them really realizing it, but that wasn’t the way things were occurring.

  Ming knew, and she suspected that Ari did, too.

  She didn’t want to be a part of him. To her, it was like dying. What was her would be there, of course, but it wouldn’t really be her anymore, nor him, either. A person was more than the sum of his or her memories.

  Even that poor girl whose physical shell should have contained Angel Kobe’s mind but instead had no personal memories at all, Ming thought, was still more Angel than not. Angel’s body had been newly created from a shell of an old mind whose personality had been erased before it ever got to the Well World. Yet much of what Jaysu the Amboran Priestess was could be recognized as the essence of the original Angel Kobe—from the search for spiritual heights beyond the material world, and the drive to serve, as well as the ironic physical incarnation of the poor girl’s birth name.

  How Angel Kobe would have loved being that person!

  Ming couldn’t help but wonder where those memories, that personality, were now. Most likely nowhere; unlike Angel, Ming never believed in any sort of hereafter or deities.

  Core thinks her memories and personality module are still back in the old computer back on Uncle Jules s gallery world, Ari commented telepathically.

  Ming was startled. You heard me musing?

  Yeah. Sorry. Didn’t know you weren’t doing it for my benefit, or at least without caring if I heard or not.

  How much of my thoughts do you get? she asked him, the worry coming back again.

  Probably exactly as many as you get of mine. It’s gonna happen. Bound to. There’s really only one brain and central nervous system here. You heard ’em.

  For his part, Ari was as insecure as she was, though more resigned. Many times upon awakening from sleep, it took a while before he could remember which one he was. At least once recently he’d awakened thinking he was her. Only when her own consciousness awoke and was clearly Ming did he realize his mistake and suddenly become “Ari” through and through again. Funny, too—her cultural heritage was eastern and mideastern; stoicism and pragmatism were part and parcel of that upbringing. His background was Latin, Greek, and Slavic—emotional, explosive types, expressive and always fighting against the Fates. For all her lack of belief, Ming was more Zen Buddhist deep down than he was Catholic. Yet, he was the accepting one, while she was fighting like hell.

  Of course, “stoic” was a Greek word…

  You want to go see this dump? he asked her.

  Might as well. Besides, if I said “no,” you’d go anyway.

  Might as well see what the budget is, at least for starters, Ari suggested. In a way, this could be like old times.

  No, she responded slowly, sadly. It can never again be like old times.

  Ambora

  Angel Kobe, known as Jaysu, returned to her homeland more upset and confused than ever, both about herself and about the way the world should be.

  So many dead. So much evil. The very existence of it, the depth of it, was upsetting to her. She could feel it, at that extreme, just being in proximity to the representatives, the diplomats and soldiers, who served it back in that Zone place.

  And that gill monster—the Kalindan they called Core— she could hardly bear to be close to the creature. Though it was less evil than an enormous, cold emptiness. It was like flying over a great bottomless pit and working to keep from being sucked into it, then falling, falling, falling forever in the cold and dark. Only in the triangular, leathery winged ones, the Ochoans, had there been a real sense of the soul. But the urge to violence and the sense of vengeance threatened to consume even them.

  It was a strange sensation to look inside others and interpret what she was seeing. She knew that to cure the darkness that ate at the souls of the living was a priestess’s main job, but to see it so starkly, so organically and effortlessly, and in every race—that was something new.

  Their tools were the ancient tools of an ecclesiastical society: counseling, prayer, fasting, penances. None of them could simply reach inside and change what they sensed by an act of conscious will. But she could, and it frightened her. Gods might have such power, but not mortals. Certainly mortals should not, and more certainly not her.

  She had spent much of her time by herself in the volcanic beauty of Ambora’s wild places, praying, reflecting, to reason it out. She hoped for a sign from Heaven that this was something she should use—or something she should fear and avoid.

  The isolation hadn’t helped. It had accelerated the continuing changes going on inside her. Priestesses did not fly; although they had those wonderful white wings, they were decorative. The muscles were inadequate to use them properly, and their bones were thickened, almost solid like the men’s. Her own snow-white wings were enormous, far larger than any priestess’s wings. The feathers had a lushness about them she’d not seen in any others.

  There had been a period after she’d drunk the
potions, faced the Grand High Priestess, and accepted her vocation, that she’d lost strength and her flying ability. She’d begun to feel progressively heavier; but no more.

  Now, standing atop Mount Umajah—its great black, steaming caldera stretched out below her as a demonstration of the power of the gods—she stretched and spread those huge wings. Almost as if on cue, a brisk, cool wind swept across the vast pit below, striking her unexpectedly and causing her to lose her footing. She fell forward into the caldera perhaps a kilometer or more below her. The wings spread, and she flew!

  She flew, not as the warriors flew, with the speed and nimbleness of the huntress; no, not like them. Instead she soared, majestically, rising up almost without effort, the great wings barely beating every few minutes in response to a change.

  This was not supposed to be, but it was the most wonderful thing of all.

  It was a sign. It was the sign she’d been waiting for. The gods would not allow a priestess to soar so close to Heaven if this were some evil being worked!

  Jaysu began a leisurely turn and took a tour of Ambora. When she flew, it wasn’t an ordeal to see much of the country. The wind was with her, and great distances could be covered easily.

  She rose up high, and watched the warriors of many clans swarm and play and hunt below. She did not envy them, but she did take in some of their joy. She also could sense their astonishment when they looked up and saw the strange figure hovering far above them in the highest currents. Curiously, while they were all puzzled at the sight of her, not a single one of them rose to see just who or what she was or how she was able to do this. Some began to do it, then suddenly lost interest.

  She wasn’t sure, but she suspected it was partly because of her. She already knew she had some power over other minds— which was how she’d remained solitary while she figured things out. These were powers only gods were wise enough to have. Why had they given so much of that power to someone like her?

  The others at that meeting at Zone had said she was from where they’d come from, another world or worlds somewhere off in the heavens. Her memories had been left behind, but not her soul. How could that be? The girl they described had been a low-ranking priestess of a church she could not remember or understand. Even those who had told her who and what she’d supposedly been were at a loss to explain who and what she was becoming.

  That was the most frightening idea of all. The idea that it wasn’t over, that something was still changing her at an increasingly rapid pace. Changing into—what? What more could she become? And to what end?

  Still, to discover that she could fly again was the one bit of wonderful news. There was no feeling quite like flying— soaring across the vast landscape, feeling and seeing the wind currents, floating along lazily in thermals that carried her almost like the caressing hands of motherly goddesses. It was so easy, not like walking or running along the ground. Up here, gravity was no enemy.

  She hadn’t realized until this miraculous grand tour how beautiful Ambora was. A peninsular hex, surrounded on four sides by the ocean and on the western two by the continental landmass. Ambora’s high volcanic peaks, sheer cliffs, and dynamic if colorful landscape was in stark contrast to the apparent emptiness of the sea or the dark, gray-shrouded lands of the western region. She had no idea what might live there, nor what they could do. The truth was, she’d had little curiosity about them then or now—particularly after having seen so many of the monstrous races that lurked beyond Ambora when she’d been to that gathering place they called Zone. Slimy, dark things that crawled from the sea, serpentlike things that crawled on their bellies in the dust, leathery flying things that were half lizard and half bird with the worst of each, and all the others—no beauty, no grace. Yes, they had souls of the same sort as the Amborans, but they seemed disinterested in exploring the only part of them worth looking at.

  Flying around the border of Ambora, she could see that it was virtually walled in. The walls weren’t of stone or mud or wood, of course; but to one who could see thermals and sense minor fluctuations in local magnetic fields, they seemed like walls. Cold, rising up to heaven, straighter than anything in nature, dulling vision beyond and shimmering like air above a rushing lava flow. She had no desire to fly through one, even though she instinctively understood that it was possible. What might it be like on the other side? Even in Zone she had felt heavy in one office, light in another, freezing cold and wet in yet another, and nearly boiling in the one next to that. If that kind of variation was to be found there, presumably for the comfort of the other races, then what might it be like just over that boundary? Suddenly too cold, or with the air too thin—or might she drop like a stone when suddenly weighing far more?

  And yet there was a very little trade with those who lived beyond the walls. It was precisely because they were so different that they had things Ambora could use but could not make, and for which they would accept Amboran surplus foods and certain minerals. She thought they were probably desperate for what was natural and pure and true. She could see in one of them, across that eerie border, the lights that had no fire and things moving far too fast for nature. The other was one of the in-betweens, but there was belching smoke rising up from their own coastal area, fouling their air.

  It did not occur to her that those neighbors found a land smelling of sulfides and belching liquid rock and gases from below the earth as unpleasant and obnoxious as she found theirs. She was growing in power, but not in wisdom. It was something Core had understood but she did not. When one sees herself and her kind as the standard of perfection against which all else is measured, it is impossible to have perspective.

  She kept high and to herself during her grand tour, using it as a meditative experience as much as a learning one. She fasted during the whole of it, taking just a small bit of water each evening, and avoided all others until she felt cleansed, renewed, and ready to return.

  She wanted to go home to assume the duties of High Priestess and to minister to and serve the Grand Falcon clan. She was beginning to understand that events were not taking the course she might devoutly wish. If the gods wished her to serve in some different way, she could hardly avoid their will.

  There were other sensations she was getting—in the air, in the ground, in the water. They seemed as coldly powerful as the gill creature, Core, only more pervasive. They were everywhere, and it scared her. Forces she could not understand, pulses…

  Numbers…

  It was as if the whole land, the whole world, was related to numbers. The strings were far too complex for her to follow, and far too pervasive for her to take in, but she was aware that they formed patterns that wound in and out and through every particle of matter and energy.

  The geometry of the gods. It was the universe. It was the rules by which the universe worked. It was what continually stabilized it—and everything within it.

  An impossibly complex series came to her. It did not pass out, but instead went through to the very core of her material being.

  She settled back on the side of a cliff and closed her eyes, trying to see this personal part with senses other than her sight. She gave up trying to decipher the patterns. Instead she tried to follow them mentally back down to the earth below, and through it, to its origin.

  She followed it down, down, through layers of rock and what the rock sat upon, through depths of alien substance that could not be comprehended or sorted, down, down, to a center, a monstrous center, a cold, calculating, horrendous First Source, a Cause with no soul at its center but containing the souls beyond number…

  She screamed in horror and passed out from the shock. It was more than she could handle, more than she could understand. Worst of all, it had sensed she was there. It had recognized just who and what she was, and it hadn’t cared one whit…

  A test of faith, she told herself. It must be a test of faith. I do not want this burden, but I am only a slave, the property of the gods. It is their will that I must accept.

 
Security Ministry, Chalidang

  Barely moving in the deep ocean waters, they stared at the screen.

  Colonel General Sochiz of Cromlin appeared cocky and arrogant as he left his embassy and made his way through crowds toward the Well Gate. He pushed aside anybody who did not yield and ignored the stares. He did not care what anybody thought of him, and his great claws could cut steel rods if he was so inclined.

  Josich would be so proud of him! The way they had looked as he had spoken! The way they had simply melted away as he strode off the platform, through the hall and out. That was fear, fear of power, and it felt most excellent.

  When it was clear who he was, the others along the route gave way. No one, not even those who were larger and looked meaner than he, impeded his triumphal march.

  He turned the corner and saw the utter blackness of the Gate directly ahead, its hexagonal shape unmistakable. He was almost to it when he suddenly realized that for this last, short stretch there was nobody in the corridor.

  He stopped, suspicious. This was the way assassins worked. Well, let them come! Let them see he was not afraid of them!

  A noise caused him to turn to the wall to his right, perhaps five meters in front of the Gate. It had no shape at first, but then took on a humanoid form that seemed to extrude right out of the wall. It looked like nothing he’d seen—almost like a moving idol from some primitive tribe. It was made completely of dull, rough, granitelike stone—a cartoonish, idiotic, and simplified face carved into it. Only the eyes said it was something more—the burning fire-orange eyes in the tranquil water—and the fact that it walked to him.