Ghost of the Well of Souls wos-7

by Jack L. Chalker

  “Like he kept his word to Josich.”

  Kincaid gave a wry chuckle. “Yes, that is a point, isn’t it?” He looked back over at the dead Josich. “You know, it’s funny. My whole life, my whole being, waking, sleeping, dreaming, has been for this moment. And now that it’s past, it seems like nothing at all.”

  “Well, at least I believe you did more than avenge yourself here. I think you may have prevented crimes more heinous than those that drove you to this.”

  “Perhaps. I would like to think so.”

  “You can complete the task if you will disassemble that Gate and give me at least some of the pieces. It can’t be destroyed, but I think I can buy another thousand years, since with the other one, Wallinchky can only get back here.”

  “I understand your position but I cannot do it.”

  “What! Why not? Think, man! This in Wallinchky’s hands could make another Josich probable!”

  “I gave my word and he gave his. And both of us have kept ours. I cannot betray him like that. I won’t help him, and in fact I will gladly take care of General Mochida on the way out, but the Gate stays up.”

  The door opened then, and Mochida was there, carrying something in a box. He started to say, “Your Majesty—” suddenly saw Kincaid and the dead Empress, and with a speed that absolutely astounded Core, he dropped the box and shot backward to the balcony. When Kincaid came out, Mochida pulled a hidden pistol and fired point-blank at him. Kincaid moved with the same speed he had in the conference room. The shot went wide and hissed, melting a piece of wall just to the right of the door.

  “Shit!” Mochida swore. Pivoting an eye, he saw the water entrance below, and leaped off the balcony and down to it. It was shallow and he hurt himself going in against the ramp, but he managed to get below while Kincaid was still moving toward him.

  “Oh, well,” Kincaid sighed. “He wasn’t that important anyway.”

  Core made it out the door in time to see Kincaid walk normally down the ramp and to the water’s edge, then take on a more aquatic shape and glide into the water himself.

  The Kalindan punched a communicator. “This is Deputy Ambassador Core. Diplomatic immunity has been reextended to the upper embassy and it is now again a part of Kalinda and under Kalindan control. Please inform and remove all guards from foreign nations and get some people up here to clean up the mess. If they make any arguments, tell them that their Empress is dead, and part of the cause was Chalidang smuggling illegal weapons into our embassy in violation of our truce agreement. Then seal this place off!”

  She then dragged herself back inside and tried to make it to the chair, to at least have some decent mobility. The Gate was still on, and she had to decide what to do with it next.

  She was so deep in thought that she didn’t notice that she was no longer alone in the room.

  “Quite satisfactory, I think,” said Jules Wallinchky. “I barely got myself propped up so I could watch the whole thing. Everybody but poor O’Leary was off chasing after the bird girl, who’s wandering around someplace. It was easy. O’Leary’s still trying to figure out how to move and breathe in that body with those pitiful protolungs of yours. Close go, not the way I figured it exactly, but it’ll do.”

  Jules Wallinchky was a very young-looking man, but he was a man, and a Terran to boot. He had been a handsome fellow in his youth, even better looking than his nephew.

  “You operated the thing. You didn’t just come through it, you operated it.” Core was impressed in spite of herself.

  “Yes, but I can’t take much credit. It’s pretty easy to do. That’s the pity of it, I guess. Now, what am I gonna do with you, Core? You’ll dismantle this thing and hide it if I let you go, but I can’t move it or do much else with it without the consent of the embassy. At least I don’t want to conquer the Well World, and I think my underground approach to power in the Confederacy is a far better one than slogging it out in wars. Still, this thing has incredible possibilities. I mean, look at me! I’m a kid again, but with all my knowledge and experience. Real immortality, that’s what this represents. Halfway to the Makers, huh? And for those select ones that are chosen. And that’s just for starters. Any environment, any planet, even any security system—hell, you can practically do designer people with this thing. The possibilities are endless.”

  “And turning your enemies or even your captives into real toys as well?” Core responded. “Not just brain-scrambled and reprogrammed girls, but a herd of breeding centaurs, mermaids in the pool, any fantasy your heart desires.”

  “You got it. You’re becoming more human all the time. But I give you my word, no conquests of distant solar systems, no genocide. All I need is a way to assemble the device when I need it. With the one I got, I can get here when and if, but then the thing will have to be assembled and coordinated, like now.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “Well, see this? It’s not made for me, it’s too big, too unwieldy, and I don’t know the language on the controls. But I still bet that this thing, which I took off Her Majesty, here, will blow you the hell away. And when they come, they’ll find me, as a Kalindan, who’ll be no stranger to them than you. You’ve been pretty much of a hermit here anyway. I’ll be able to make deals. Hell, half the Kalindan government is corrupt, and the only reason the other half isn’t is because it hasn’t had an offer yet.”

  “I could say yes and then double-cross you.”

  “Sure, but I’ll come back, and I can send other folks back as well. You know we’d get you, and if I have to assemble all this all over again, well, so be it.” He paused. “Look at it this way. As dumb as I feel arguing with my ex-computer, the fact is, you will oversee any actions we take with these things. Nothing can happen without your say so, or at least without you being there and knowing about it. If I don’t keep my word, then you have outs as well.”

  Core thought it over. “All right, but you must send back the others. Any who wish to come, anyway. Put them back. They belong here now, if they want.”

  “Fair enough. Then we have a deal?”

  “If it will keep you off the Well World, yes, we have a deal.”

  “I’ll be back with the others as quickly as I can round them up.”

  He threw the gun or whatever it was over onto Josich’s body, then stepped up on the base, through the hex and into his compound.

  O’Leary hadn’t gone far and was more than interested in going back rather than remaining as he was.

  “You want to be a Pyron again, old boy?” Wallinchky asked him. “Or something else? You name it, you got it. For old times’ sake, but under the agreement that you go find a life, don’t queer my deals, and start fresh. Do I have your word on this?”

  “You bastard. You always win, don’t you?” “I always have, Genny, old boy. It’s all in having fun.” He pushed the Kalindan form up to the edge of the hex gate and then had to catch his breath. “You guys are heavy! Okay, let me be in contact with the base. Now… go!”

  A Pyron emerged back in the conference room, picked himself up and glared back at the screen. “Damn his eyes! There can’t be another lifetime for the likes of Jules Wallinchky! God would not permit it.”

  “Another case for atheism,” Core grumped. “Where are the others?”

  “They’ll be back. I knowTann Nakitt will jump at the chance. The others… who knows? Can’t see much future for an angel over there.”

  “Everything normal? On that side, I mean?” “I dunno. There’s this funny feelin’, maybe it’s just cop sense, but just lying there gaspin’ for breath, I swear it felt like somethin’ was wrong. And we never did find out how that Gate got where it did. I swear it’s like it was put there by some agency we don’t know yet as a kind of trap. Call it a hunch, or maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t think all this is over quite yet.”

  Wallinchky Compound, Grabant 4

  “Jaysu! Where are you?”

  Ari, Ming, and Tann Nakitt in its new and unwanted incarnation wandered th
rough the various corridors and galleries and compounds looking for the strange angelic creature with the shining white wings.

  At one point, having separated, Ming found himself with Nakitt and stopped. “What are you doing here with us?” he asked the creature. “This is not your affair.”

  “I feel compelled to assist. It is very strange, this new form. It is compelled to serve those with whom it is with.”

  “I’d be back there yelling and screaming to get back to where I wanted to be.”

  “But that is just it. I can no longer think in those terms nor act in any other manner. I am but an adjunct to the whole. I feel no anger, no ambition, no love, no hate. I feel only the obligation to serve the whole.”

  Ming stopped and said, “That does it! Come on! You’re going back with me! I don’t care what the hell is doing what to whom, this is simply not right.” Still, it was easy to see why a vengeful Josich had chosen the antlike Jerminin form for Nakitt. It was too uncomfortably close to the sort of slave Jules Wallinchky had once made of Angel and Ming themselves.

  He was surprised to see no gathering in front of the Gate, and instead only a single strange Terran man who looked something like, well, him at that moment. With an uneasy start he realized that it must be another incarnation of Jules Wallinchky.

  “Ah, nephew! Very good! Let’s get Nakitt back where it now belongs. I don’t think it ever belonged anyplace before, and it certainly doesn’t deserve that.”

  Quickly, Wallinchky filled him in on what had happened. Ming listened, realizing that the old crook had either had a mental lapse or hadn’t heard about Josich’s body switch trick. Well, if he was going to be Ari for a while, so be it.

  “Tann Nakitt, your duty is to return to the Well World, and now, through the Gate,” Ming told the creature. “We will take care of the rest.”

  Wallinchky went up to the far side of the Gate and waited while Nakitt obediently went through on the front side. Immediately, the Ochoan form she’d accepted was back, and so was the old Tann Nakitt.

  Ming walked around to the side of the gate and shook his head. “I wonder how it works?” he mused. On the far side you could see the same entry, just like a window, into the same conference room but from the reverse point of view.

  “Core could probably tell us, couldn’t you, Core?”

  “I have no idea. The physics is beyond anything I can comprehend,” the Kalindan said from the other side. “It is one thing to almost grasp the bizarre physics of the Well energy strings that allow a near instantaneous matter transmission from the old Well Gates to the Well World, but this, an open, live channel, defies understanding. It is as if it punches a hole directly through. As if, somehow, both Gates are not where we perceive them to be, but standing just outside, like a single entity, so that the Gates are in two places at once. It is unnerving to see it work, but it is not totally surprising. We are talking about a product of an ancient race that could build all this and who were, in a very real sense, the gods who created the races of the universe. Creatures who controlled that sort of power by sheer force of will. What is such a thing as this to them? Only a proof that even they needed machines now and then.”

  Wallinchky, never a technological genius, laughed. “Yeah, see? Whatever it said. The important thing is to always know how to work something and be the guy with the controls. The folks who understand it, you can hire.” He grinned at the one he thought was his nephew. “Find the angel yet?”

  “No. Ar—Ming’s still out there looking. I’ll go back and join her now that I know things are all right here. With your permission, of course.”

  “Yeah, sure. I’ve still got a little business to discuss with the other side here, and then I’m gonna go into the lounge and find out what’s what in this place.”

  Ming left him there, thinking that maybe the new young Wallinchky was setting up his own little godhood. No matter what happened, that could not be permitted.

  He found Ari just coming from the med lab. “Nothing. Nothing at all. This is getting spooky. Where’s Nakitt?”

  “Sent back.” Again the story of what took place was told.

  “Uncle Jules always wins. It’s incredible. He might as well be a god. He’s already infallible.”

  “Not quite. He thinks I’m you. Say—where’s your room in relation to here?”

  “I doubt if a lot of the clothes would even fit!”

  “I wasn’t thinking of anything elaborate. Maybe just a robe.”

  “Down there. Third doorway on the left. Probably still has my old pants there someplace.”

  It wasn’t pants that Ming was looking for, but what might still be there. He went in, searched the room in a methodical fashion, tried searching the memory overlays left by Ari’s own sharing of minds, and found that Ari’s habit was to put his gun in a small holster just inside the main closet. Yes! There it was! A small needier, just exactly what was required for this job.

  Putting on a robe, he slipped the needier into the pocket and walked back out. Ari was standing there, staring at him.

  “You going to kill him?” Ari asked softly. “Many have tried, and this is the spider in his own web.”

  “I don’t think your needier would do it, but it might knock him out. Then we push him through the Gate and dismantle this end. Core will dismantle the other side, and he’ll be long dead of old age before it works again.”

  “Interesting plan. Do you think you can get away with it? That’s my body you’re risking, you know.”

  “He’s still stark naked. Here, I’ll bring him a robe, too. Are you gonna give me away?”

  Ari took a deep breath. “No, I don’t think so. But I’ll believe that this works when I see it.” She looked up at Ming in his body and sighed. “You know, I never realized just how short you were. This takes some getting used to.”

  “Tall doesn’t, at least if you don’t hit your head,” Ming responded.

  Ming realized the spot he was putting Ari in. First, they were lovers in a way that probably no one else, not even telepaths, could ever be. So connected that, even now, separated in body and mind in a practical sense, they were more connected than identical twins. Worse, he had Ari’s body. Anything happened, it would be this body that suffered.

  Wallinchky saw them coming. “What’s the matter? You get cold or something? It can’t be shyness. Not after you shared a body with her all those months.”

  Ming walked steadily on, Ari following nervously. “I brought you a robe yourself, if you want one.”

  “Don’t matter much here. I hope you’re not thinking of becoming the new heir to the Wallinchky fortune, though, ’cause if there’s a gun or something like that inside one of your pockets or in your hand, you’ll find it won’t work here. They’re all processed through a computer locking mechanism when they come in so nothing like that will fire.”

  Ming’s heart sank as Ari’s ghost memories reinforced this as true. He handed the spare robe to Jules.

  Wallinchky grinned. “You know, I couldn’t figure out if your slightly different way of talking and your full hip walk was an artifact from that unusual dual existence you two led or if I’d missed something. Having Kincaid covering half my body was distracting to say the least. Then I recalled Josich saying something. You’re not my nephew, are you? It seems I have a niece now? How charming.”

  “You’re right, Uncle, as usual,” Ari told him. “You want to use that gizmo to switch us?”

  Wallinchky smiled. “Well, actually, no, at least not now. I do believe we’re going to have to adjust the mister, here, but I think I like you like that, Ari. You’re not only much easier to look at, but you also would have one hell of a time establishing an inheritance.”

  Ming sighed. “Here we go again,” he muttered.

  Wallinchky reached over and removed the needier from the robe, then pulled the rest of the robe off of Ming. “Sorry. I’m going to let you walk back to the Well World. You will arrive a solitary Kalindan, no double mind. I’ll
even make it a male now that the problem with Kalinda is taken care of. Stay there, or come right back here. Your choice. But we are going to close down this conduit soon, so it’s up to you.”

  “Why should I climb back? You yourself said that the gun wouldn’t fire. And even if you had security programmed to exempt you, I bet it doesn’t recognize you as valid at the moment. You’re too young, your voice will be wrong.”

  Wallinchky’s face went red. He pointed the needier and pulled the trigger.

  It wouldn’t fire.

  “Oh, the hell with it,” he grumbled. He walked up to Ming and, without warning, standing nose-to-nose, his fist came around with lightning speed and knocked Ming down. Ari was so upset that she jumped on her uncle, but he laughed and pushed her off so hard that she landed, rolling, almost five meters away.

  Ming started to get up, but Wallinchky struck him again hard, and then expertly lifted the almost equally built man using his back and shoulders and propped him halfway in and halfway out of the device. Then with a firm bare foot, he pushed Ming back into the Kalindan conference room.

  He did not, however, do anything in the way of mental commands to activate the full power of the Straight Gate, being in too awkward a position, and Ming landed still in Ari’s body.

  It was suddenly very chilly and ultra humid, and it smelled like rotting fish. Nakitt and O’Leary rushed to him and picked him up, and he shook his head clear before seeing just where he was. “Oh, great! Being Ari over here is about as handy as being a Kalindan over there.”

  He looked back at the hallway, where Jules Wallinchky was already walking away from the Gate with his new niece firmly in hand.

  “Ari!” he screamed, and for a moment the girl tried to stop, but didn’t have much luck at breaking a grip. Ming broke from the grasp of the two comrades who’d helped her up and, oblivious to the pain, glared over at Core in the wheelchair. “Well? Aren’t you gonna do something?”

  Core shrugged. “I am in a delicate situation. Keeping this mechanism out of the hands of another Josich is more important than any individual interests, including yours, and for all his evil, Jules Wallinchky will be no conqueror.”