Ghost of the Well of Souls

Upper Level, Kalindan Embassy, South Zone

They were all there. All, that is, save the Empress, who was to be the last one to arrive and was being either fashionably late or her usual paranoid self.

Colonel General Mochida, however, preceded Her Majesty in order to personally supervise the checking of the rooms and the guests. He looked different in the air, wearing a high-tech, water-breather environment suit that looked like a carbon copy of what Josich and that ilk had on when they were caught on the ancient planet by the police, and, in fact, if it wasn’t an original, it probably was an exact copy. Still, in water there was a certain grace and beauty to the Chalidang form, which was so perfectly designed for it. In air he looked ugly, monstrous, misshapen, as grotesque as he probably felt in the weight of gravity. And, in air, he had to walk shell up, using his tentacles as feet, giving him a labored look. Still, in spite of the curses, he seemed in his usual confident spirits.

Josich, after all, had not touched him or his family in her pogrom to become the ranking royal in the royal house of Chalidang, and still trusted him enough for this sort of thing.

Well, after all, Josich has to trust somebody, Ming pointed out. Otherwise she wouldn’t dare be here at all and the prize would be for nothing. And she’s gonna be here, bet on it.

There was no question about that. Having committed a widespread regicide, she had to justify it by claiming the ultimate power, or lower relatives would quickly find a way to polish her off, as she had those around her.

Core and Ari/Ming sat in Kalindan-powered wheelchairs, watching things happen from the topmost level. O’Leary, too, was there, as were Jaysu, and even the former Tann Nakitt, all by, if not the command of the Empress, at least her insistence.

On the level below, which led to the entry to the main part of the embassy as well as a separate underwater entrance, Mochida “stood” in the middle, mostly giving orders and looking around with those strange eyes, but otherwise remaining comfortably at rest. He had Chalidang guards at the entrance below, men of the highest trust because they had participated in the Empress’s slaughter to prove their worth. Between them and the electronic barriers he’d set up, he felt confident that nobody would enter from that direction without triggering alarms. Outside on the air entrance were Quacksan guards, also of impeccable loyalty and ambition.

The final one to arrive was a huge, hairy, green spiderlike creature who entered via the air entrance and immediately went over to Mochida. “So, General, do we have all the pieces assembled?”

“All but one,” the General responded. “That one is being carried by Her Majesty herself, so that none of the others here could, shall we say, jump the gun on things.”

“A wise precaution. And she will be here shortly?”

“She will arrive when she feels it is safe to do so. In the meantime, nobody who enters this room will leave it.”

The spider’s eye stalks surveyed the area. “Be hell if she’s very late and somebody has to take a shit, won’t it? Could get smelly.”

Mochida seemed to have lost his sense of humor. “Until Her Majesty arrives, any one individual who needs to do so may be escorted to a proper area under guard and returned here. Once things begin, I seriously doubt if anyone will wish to leave. Admit it. You are not the least bit curious about the device?”

“Not really. The last time I had one, I sold it.” The eye stalks scanned the second level, where the others were standing or sitting. “Well, well! The gang’s all here! Ari, old boy, and you, what’re you calling yourself? Core? Don’t you think I should get a bigger greeting than cold stares?”

“Hello, Uncle Jules,” Ari said with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.

Core was even more direct. “I cannot say that it is good to see you again, Jules Wallinchky, but at least your outer visage is far more appropriate to reflecting your inner self.”

Uncle Jules seemed to be having as much fun as usual. “Hey, now! Without me you wouldn’t even have existed at all! In fact, you’re a shadow of what you once were. You were like a god, with all the knowledge of a god, and you chose devolution. What a waste. I hope the automatic system is at least guarding the old place. I hope to see it again at some point. There’s some great artwork there, you know.”

Core had, deep down, dreaded this meeting since waking up a Kalindan, yet now she found the experience more infuriating than frightening. There were no secret codes or slave routines that would command obedience; if there had been, they were gone now. Until this moment, Core had experienced only the most basic of living emotions, and was still trying to find the key to their intensity. Now, suddenly, one at least was there.

Hatred. Pure, unadulterated hatred.

“Not a god,” Core responded. “A slave. A slave with the power of a god, or perhaps a devil, but always a slave to your every whim. I think we are more equal now.”

Wallinchky let it all go by. “Well, equality is best when you’re the one with the guns, or at least on the winning side. Still, I can’t help feeling some pride in all this. Here I create the first computer who became a person and the first two-minded geek. And whatever the hell angel girl is, she sure as hell is better looking and doing something more important than that teenage nun or whatever she was. And if you think I became something appropriate, hell, Genghis, I always did think you were something of a snake. No, this is gonna be fun, what’s coming. Fun and educational.”

“I don’t get it, Wallinchky,” Ming called down to him. “What do you get out of this?”

“Hey, watch and see.”

There was a sudden commotion outside the air entrance, and then the two sluglike guards oozed in and held the door open. Two Jerminins walked in, carrying automatic weapons, and then in the door, barely fitting through, came a Chalidanger in an environment suit riding in a large electric transport truck.

The Empress had taken them all by surprise and come by land.

“Guards, leave us. Form a human barrier across the entrance from this point and allow not the slightest thing past.”

The voice as it came through the translator sounded a little nervous, high-pitched, more spoiled brat than conqueror of worlds, but that was how Josich had always sounded, and how he, or she, had always come across until she started killing.

A Chalidang female was smaller than the male, sleeker, and more colorful. There was an almost birdlike pattern of colors along the shell part, and the shell itself was less spiral, and in fact less like a shell in appearance than the thick bag of skin it actually was.

Josich got up from the powered truck and started forward on tentacles. Unlike the General, she seemed quite at ease walking this way, even with the suit, betraying long experience in foreign elements.

She stopped and looked around, first at her own people, then at the assembled group above. “Astonishing,” she muttered. Then she turned and looked at Wallinchky. “Jules, perhaps the first thing we might do is see about returning my pretty bauble. Now that we’ve lived a while as a female, we find such things attractive.”

“As Your Majesty commands,” the spider responded.

The Empress whirled and two tentacles shielded by a form-fitting transparent insulated “skin” shot out and almost stroked the spidery Askoth, knowing that he knew they were powerful enough to cripple or kill him in an instant.

“That is not like you, Jules, dear boy,” Josich noted, a dangerous edge in her voice caught by the translator. “You’re not thinking of some sort of double cross once we’re in that fortress of yours, are you?”

“Of course not! Your Majesty knows that I always keep my word, once given. If I didn’t, I would have been dead years ago. Decades ago. Besides, what is anything there to me now? I couldn’t even get back there if it weren’t for you.”

The tentacles slowly withdrew. “Nor us without you, either,” the Empress responded, some of the insanity and danger fading as suddenly as it had come up. “We will not forget my friends any more than we will forget our enemies. But let us not forget that if we get back over to there, you will still be an Askoth in a part of the universe where that species is unknown. Whatever happens over there that might threaten our person will have consequences. The same mechanism that can get us there can also get a destructive device there capable of blowing up your entire little private planet. So let’s all keep our friendships and loyalties in mind, yes?”

“Your Majesty, I was on the brink of death when I came here, and I looked over the abyss and was about to fall into that from which there is no return, when I suddenly awoke like this, young and new again. I don’t want to run the universe anymore; all that would do is get me another heart attack. No, I want to enjoy life and have some fun. I’m perfectly content these days to remain the second most dangerous person in the known universe.”

There was a momentary stillness, and then Josich began to laugh. It turned into a solid one, but one the translators didn’t completely convey. Finally, though, Josich said, “We believe that we can get along with you, Lord Jules! Now, come! Let’s get this over with. It is a thousand years past due, and it is only the end of the beginning!”

They had all wondered why Josich was so insistent on having all of them present. It was almost as if she had something of a hit list, although it didn’t seem that even Josich would risk murdering so many of other races, and certainly not in Zone, where, even though live broadcast was cut, this gathering was being recorded for the record in a far distant control room.

Josich showed absolutely no fear of the assembled former enemies as she made her way nimbly up to them.

“Quite a bizarre crew. You will do.”

“Will do for what?” Jaysu whispered to O’Leary.

“I’m not sure we want to find out,” he hissed back.

Core led the way into the conference room, which remained a large but unexceptional area around an oval-shaped table of polished serpentine.

“Who has the muscles here?” Josich asked nobody in particular.

As the others pressed against the wall, Mochida and Wallinchky entered, and the latter did one of his little tricks and threw up a line. He raised himself up onto the ceiling, then walked over so he was directly above the tabletop. He extruded another line, this one as thick as a man’s arm, and regurgitated it downward to the center of the tabletop, and then, using four of his limbs, curled around and pulled.

The tabletop came off the base with a scraping sound. In under a minute it was suspended two and a half centimeters above the unitary base. Mochida took hold of the side with his primary tentacles, and the Empress herself guided it out toward Mochida, who then tipped it forward on its side and was able to roll it against a far wall.

That Jules Wallinchky was a whole lot stronger than he appeared to be, and perhaps no pushover, wasn’t lost on Josich.

An unexceptional rectangular base had been revealed, made of a different and not obvious composition from the tabletop. It was also grooved in an odd manner, not the best for a practical top, and contained two finely machined holes that seemed to be lined with a metallic compound.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the unknown and lost piece of the Straight Gate, where it has in fact sat for perhaps the last thousand years,” Josich announced. “We suspect, though, that it has had many other disguises and tops. It was brought here after the whole was stolen from the Chalidang embassy not far down the underwater corridor.”

“Your Majesty knows it wasn’t stolen but fairly won,” Core responded. “It was war.”

Josich whirled on her. “Not stolen? Not stolen? The illegal attack on our embassy here is still a legend of deceit and dishonesty in Chalidang! Traitors to our grandfather alerted you, and you rushed in and killed the guard and seized it and dismantled it, trapping them forever on the other side! And then as your forces attacked and ransacked Chalidang, you took the Gate and dismantled it and scattered and hid it from anyone who might have reclaimed it! And when our grandfather and his party looked into it and saw Kalindan faces looking back, they knew they could not return! To return, one at a time, meant being slain serially by thieves and traitors! So, now, here it is, where foul Kalinda brought it, into the air where it was thought we could not go! And now it is ours once more, and from this time forever!”

“ ’Tis a grand speech you give, but what in blazes does the thing do, if I might be so bold?” O’Leary asked in a mock Irish brogue.

The eyes of the Empress snapped up to meet the Pyron’s. “So, serpent cop! We’ll see who laughs last. However, we are informed that you hold information for me. You were last in possession of our grandfather’s Gate, having stolen that from us after we had just paid a king’s ransom to get it back. Is it true that you had it in cargo inside your ship?”

O’Leary saw no reason to lie about it. “Actually, just in the aft compartment, not even fully in storage. That’s if they haven’t retrieved it by now.”

“They haven’t,” Wallinchky put in. “Anything parked there is still parked there, I can tell you that. Either that or the whole place is atoms now. The automated defense system installed there is the same one installed at Confederacy War Plans. And even without its charming personality, the computer will still function on all the necessary levels.”

“Good, good,” Josich responded, thinking. “And you did not disassemble it?”

“Madam, I did not even know that it could be disassembled,” the ex-cop responded honestly. “But it is lying on its side, I suspect.”

“No matter. General! Bring us the parts of the Straight Gate!”

There was precious little room for Mochida to be fully inside the meeting area, even with the tabletop removed, but his primary tentacles were long enough to pass the lightweight pieces to Josich, who took them.

Looking like nothing in particular in that condition, their form quickly became apparent under Josich’s knowledgeable assembly, the first two fitting into the grooves and holes in the base, then others fitting into each one.

When completed, it was a hexagonal-shaped frame atop the plain cream-colored base.

Jaysu frowned. “That’s it?” she said.

“That is all that is required, and it was hard won and gained with blood,” the Empress responded. “And now I will show you how to use it.”

The Empress of Chalidang moved right up to the device and placed her two primary tentacles out, one on each side.

There was no sound, no humming or crackling, no sudden lighting up and glowing of the entire machine, but suddenly the hexagon boundary was filled with the sight of something not anywhere on the Well World. It was neither a picture nor a projection; it appeared to be just on the other side of the thing if you reached through that hexagon.

Jules Wallinchky looked at the vision from his overhanging position, having moved closer to the door to get a better view. “Why, it’s my entrance hallway!”

“We, too, see a hallway on this side, but leading to a conventional airlock,” Josich noted. “This is not inside a police cruiser.”

“Somebody’s moved it!” O’Leary exclaimed. “They took it from my ship and brought it inside!”

“But who?” Wallinchky asked, sounding less confident. “The few people we left there couldn’t operate the airlock with the defenses on, and they wouldn’t have much use for that thing anyway.”

Josich turned and looked at Ming and An. “You! Do you always wish to be together as one, as you are now?”

The question was so out of context with what was going on that they were startled and answered honestly. “No.”

“All right, then, come up here. Roll up to the base here, darlings. Yes, just so. Now, if you can pull yourself up and go through, you will find yourself where you see. Go ahead. We do not fear you. There is nowhere you can really go in there, is there? Go ahead.”

We’re not gonna go very far in air only and with just arm power, either, Ming noted. Shes taking no chances.

Yeah, and what do we have to lose? And with that Ari rose from the wheelchair and, with a strong muscular push from the tail, launched them straight at the hex and its eerie vision beyond.

He didn’t quite make it, but managed to grab onto the base of the hexagonal opening as he toppled. Then, with one mighty pull, he pulled the body completely through the opening.

Type Forty-one reset, both of them heard from an eerie, emotionless, truly alien tone that was simultaneously in their minds.

There was a sense of extreme dizziness and disorienta-tion, and then they both fell onto the plush rug on Jules Wal-linchky’s world.

Ari picked himself up and said, “Hey! What…?”

Ming did the same at almost the same instant. Then she rolled over, sat up and looked at him and started laughing.

“It still got it wrong!” she laughed.

They were separate people again, and Terrans as well. In fact, they were better than they’d left, for now each one of them had a body that looked as it did when it was in its late teens, perfectly healthy and as yet unabused.

The trouble was, Ming was looking at her sixteen-year-old body from Ari’s sixteen-year-old body, and he hers.

“Cheer up,” Ming laughed in Ari’s voice. “At least if we go nuts like this, we can go through the Well again!”

“You really had hair this long?” Ari managed.

There was a sound between thunder and a hiss, and they both turned and their expressions faded. There was the mirror image of the Straight Gate, and, on the other side, Josich of Chalidang, looking less than amused.

“You now have a sample of the power of this device,” the Empress told them. “And we do not have to make you what you were, so please remember that. We did this as a demonstration of power and as a convenience to our purposes. If you want to be restored to your own bodies, and, particularly, if you want to get off that desolate rock in your next lifetime, you will do what I say.”

“What do you want us to do?” Ari asked her.

“Young nephew of Wallinchky, you know this compound. We wish you to survey it and check it out and ensure that it is still secure, that no one else is there, and you will try and determine how the Gate got to be where it was. The other will help you. When you find out things, send the other with a report, even a partial report. We will be waiting.”

Jules Wallinchky watched the whole thing in astonishment. This was better than he ever imagined, and his real problem was not letting Josich know it. Still, he couldn’t help commenting, “You could send me over. I could find out everything in there in minutes.”

“Yes, dear Jules, we are sure that you could, but we find you in person to be, well, a bit more like us than we expected, and we would not send us if our positions were reversed without a lot more need.”

Ming and Ari were happy to be out of sight of the monstrous creature, and happy as well to suddenly be individuals again after all this time, even if Josich had deliberately scrambled them.

“She might have made a mistake,” Ming commented. “If I could shut this down right now, it wouldn’t bother me at all to stay this way. Jeez! I was good-lookin’!”

“Before the past year and a half or so, I would have fought like hell against the idea, but frankly, right now I’d go along with it.” All of Ari was inside this new mind, but from the Kalindan time, when thoughts and even dreams were shared, there was a fair amount of Ming mixed in as well, and the reverse was also true, as they both knew. In fact, it was still fairly easy for both of them to know what the other one was thinking.

Ari went into the computer control center, which was also a very comfortable lounge, and while Ming dialed up some drinks from the old days, Ari sat at the console.

“Computer, Security Code Picasso Seven, Michelangelo Four-one, Titan Six-twelve,” Ari said to the console.

“Access denied,” the computer responded. “Invalid eye, hand, and voice print.”

“Argh! Ming, you’re going to have to do it. It’s looking for my body or Uncle Jules’s original one.”

Ming sipped on a favorite cocktail she’d long reconciled to never tasting again and handed another to Ari. She then sat down and, with his prompting, went through the same sequence.

“Access denied,” the computer responded. “Eye and hand information does not match voice print on file.”

Ming sighed. “I suppose we could sit here and try my acting abilities at getting the voice right, but I’m not sure we could. It can tell there’s something wrong with me. I think that’s what it was designed to do.”

“Right. Tell you what. I’m going to check on the old human staff area and see if they’ve been stuck here all this time or got polished off or managed to get out or what. I’ll meet you back at the thing in a few minutes. Okay?”

“Go ahead. I’m gonna finish my Zerian smokehouse here, and then I’ll head back up. Doesn’t taste quite the same as I remember it, but it’s still good enough. I think your taste buds aren’t as high-class as mine.”

“Says you,” Ari retorted, patting Ming on the behind, and then he was off.

Ming got up, walked around to the console, and saw in it a reflection of the young Ari’s body. “God!” she said aloud. “I’m back to being Terran again, I’m in a young guy’s sexy body who’s hung like a horse, and ten to one I’m gonna wind up back on the Well World turned into a fish.”

She put down the empty glass and walked back out into the hall. It was odd. She’d gotten so familiar with this place during her slavelike captivity that she knew it backward and forward, yet it didn’t seem quite right somehow. Oh, it was the same place, taken care of by the cleaning and maintenance systems, but there was something odd about it. Like a feeling of being watched. Almost like Core had never left.

She slowly walked back up to the Straight Gate, which looked precisely the same as the one she’d come through, and she could see Josich there, framed in the hex.

“Well?” Josich demanded.

“There is nothing to report. So far there is no sign of life, but also no sign of a breach of security. We can’t access the computers, though. The system won’t believe that I’m Ari or that Ari is me. That’s what you get for buying too good a security system.”

“There are overrides, but only from inside,” Wallinchky’s voice came to her. They all sounded odd, almost mechanical, unlike what she’d been used to. She realized then that the translator hadn’t come with them; she was speaking the old Confederacy speech and their translators were changing it and then translating back. Without a translator of your own, the voices did not convey nearly the nuances and emotions as when both speakers had them.

“You want to give me one? Or Ari? At least we can ask the computer what’s going on.”

“Give them one!” Josich snapped, but it wasn’t Wallinchky who answered, it was Core.

“Tell the system Emergency Priority Override Matthew Mark Moses Mohammed Stoke Da Vinci Rembrandt Rodin. Can you remember all that?”

“I’ll try.” She repeated it several times, making mistakes, but finally got it. She always had a knack for memory, even if it made no sense at all.

She ran back into the computer room, sat down at the console and repeated the entire string before she could screw it up. Even so, it took three tries before the computer announced, “Accepted. Instructions?”

“Computer, identify me as Ari Martinez y Palavri, record new voice print to match hand and eye.”

“Accepted. Instructions?”

“Cross-link identity and accept female other as Ming Dawn Palavri y Martinez. Accept either as valid.”

“Accepted. Instructions?”

“Computer, are there any Terrans or other races resident on this world or inside this compound at this time?”

“Six remaining staff members were extricated by escape capsule eleven months ago. Since then no others inside compound. A landing was made on the far side, but no attempt was made to breech the compound.”

“Computer, then who brought the device sitting in the hall inside the airlock to where it now sits?”

“Robotic staff.”

“From the ship docked at the airlock?”

“There is no ship docked at the airlock.”

“What!” Then, suddenly, she remembered. O’Leary had left the compound! He’d landed somewhere else and came upon them that way. But if O’Leary’s ship was down outside, on the surface somewhere, then…

She had a strange feeling about this all of a sudden.

Ari came back and looked in. “I went back to the Gate, but they said you’d gotten a code and come back here. There’s nobody here. Period. Uncle Jules had an escape pod even I didn’t know about, and the others took it. Whether they’re frozen stuff someplace or in custody or whatever, who knows?”

“I authorized both of us, but I don’t like this. At least we can access it if need be. That might give us an edge. I’d say let’s go report and tell them it’s all clear.”

There wasn’t much they could do, as usual. Dismantling the Gate on this side, assuming they could do it with Josich operating things, would only trap them there awaiting Josich and the rest, who would still be able to get there the hard way from the home world of the Ghoma, as much of a wreck as that world was now. And Jules, in a custom environment suit, could still bring the codes to access the place from space.

They still found it tempting, because it would probably take them years to get here, but there was something creepy about the place that hadn’t been there before, even when its creepy lord and master had been in charge.

“Codes need to be sent,” Josich said with irritation. “Our people must get through and dock. Once we have possession of both ends, we can come and go where we please and as anything whatsoever that we please. This time, though, we will remain on this side of the direct link, and thus control it. Wallinchky, you will have to set up things on the other side. We will need at least a limited water environment, like this embassy, on that side as well.”

“Are you kidding, Your Majesty? That would take a huge matter conversion! Not to mention preparing the tank and so on. It’s a barren asteroid.”

“Nevertheless, you can do it. Your equipment is capable of it. Must I send your former computer brains here back to do it for you?”

Core sat up straight. “No! You can kill me and be done with it, but I will not return to that machine!”

“Very well, then. You can advise us on what the computer there is capable of, and remain useful, or we can simply do away with you at this point. Choose!”

“It can be done. It will take a while, but it can be done. Easier if it’s done from that side, but it’s possible.”

“All right, Jules, then that is your task. Would you like to go home?”

“I am at Your Majesty’s command,” Wallinchky responded.

“Take the angel, the cop, and the traitor with you,” she commanded. “I do not wish to watch my back.”

Tann Nakitt looked up at her sharply. “I am no traitor! I had nothing to do with this! I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time! And I have no desire to go back there to that life.”

“Oh, yes. You’ve become a happy little whore.”

“You should know how that goes.”

A tentacle slapped the Ochoan so hard that it flung the little creature against the wall and almost knocked her cold.

“Go! All three of you! General, you and Core will remain with us here. And tell the guards to send in suitable food for the three of us!”

“At once, Majesty,” the General responded.

The Amboran stared at the hex and its scene and frowned. “I don’t—”

“Go ahead. You are of no use to me, but you are an unknown quantity even among your own people. For now, I would prefer you over there.”

Jaysu stepped up, uncertain, leaned down and stepped through, her wings clearing the boundaries.

Stepping out on the other side, she had not changed a bit, to her great relief.

Genghis O’Leary was next, and as he passed through the portal he heard that weird voice in his head say, Form reset, Type Two-two-one. And he fell out onto the carpeted floor of the redoubt, but no longer a Pyron. Instead, he was now a Kalindan, fish tail and dorsal and all, and laboring for air.

“That’s to keep you from getting into any mischief,” Josich told him. “You’ll find spending half your time in a bath and moving around dragging that body by your hands and arms will keep things even.”

Josich went over, picked up the still dizzy Nakitt from the floor, and shoved her through the opening.

Nakitt arrived as a Jerminin soldier, essentially a sexless bipedal antlike creature.

And finally there was Jules Wallinchky. “Why didn’t you change the angel?” he asked. “She’s dangerous.”

“But she’s fascinating, and as ignorant and empty-minded as any we have known. We could build an air-breather religion around such as her. It would make recruiting much easier. Now go. You have things to do, messages to send.”

“What are you going to make me?”

“Oh, nothing serious. Just a bit of incentive.”

The big spider didn’t like the idea, but he knew he had no choice. One shot into his body by any of those tentacles and he was history.

He very much wanted to be writing more history than being consigned to it, so he went.

And, like O’Leary, fell on his face. Only Jules Wallinchky wasn’t a Kalindan. The body was that of a mammal, and the fin was parallel to the torso, but the upper face and body were very, very Terranlike and female, in spite of the blue-green hair.

“Why did you do this to me?” he yelled back at Josich in a melodious female voice.

“You need water to survive in that dry, hostile atmosphere. We think this will give you an incentive not to stall,” the Empress responded. “The race, by the way, is called Umiau. In spite of appearances, the race is single-sexed.”

Jules Wallinchky rolled over on the floor and sighed. “Oh, great! This is gonna be one big pain in the ass. I still have an ass, don’t I?”

Ari looked at all of them. “What a mess! We came off best of the lot, it seems, except for… Hey! Where is Jaysu, anyway?”

They all looked around, and the angel-like creature was nowhere to be seen.

“There’s something very odd going on here,” Wallinchky said. “Find her!”

Back in the conference room on the Well World, Josich was feeling pretty good about things so far, but still insecure. “We wish we could move this to our own embassy,” she said, more to herself than to Core. “This is not a good situation, being in your territory. Fortunately, it should be necessary only for a few days, until proper security elsewhere can be arranged for it.”

“Oh? You are going to move it, then?”

“Yes, of course. But we need a situation like this, with both air and water-breather access, and it must be in Zone. We are arranging with an old ally for that situation. It will make life much easier.” She shifted uncomfortably. “I wonder what is keeping General Mochida?”

“Mochida will come and get his in his own good time,” said a deep, rasping voice from above. Both Core and Josich, startled, looked up, where a form emerged from the ceiling and ran down the wall before solidifying into a squared, humanoid-shaped creature with the texture of stone.

“What are you? How did you get in here?” Josich snapped.

“When you’re a plasma being, you can ride in,” the creature responded, “and that’s what I did. It was a simple agreement, one that was quite satisfactory to me. I get Josich, the Empress, in the hour of her great triumphant return to power, and he gets control of the device.”

“Kincaid! You’re Kincaid!”

“At last we meet, Josich, butcherer of worlds. Clever device, that.” He paused a moment. “Kalindan! You stay out of this! This is not your fight!”

“I am a statue,” Core responded, not at all sorry to be one.

“You can’t be here! Not here! Not now!”

“I am here and I have finally come for you, Josich. Go through the portal and they will cut your water recirculator off. Otherwise, come here and I’ll give you the same mercy that you gave my wife and daughters so long ago! God has allowed this, and I have kept His trust!”

Josich scrambled up onto the Gate with the intent of going through, but Core had never seen another being in air move as fast as Kincaid did, almost flowing at the speed of a cannon shot around the wall and striking the power pack and recircu-lators in the environment suit.

Water began to gush out of the suit, and as it did, Josich tried hard to grab Kincaid with any tentacles she could, but the creature retreated as fast as it had approached. In the meantime, Core had jumped forward out of the chair and now lay flat on the floor, wriggling to avoid Josich’s thrashing.

To Josich, the rupture of the suit environment was the same as being caught in a vacuum. Death came, but it came knowingly, and not nearly fast enough.

Core almost got caught by two of the flailing tentacles, but managed to avoid them, the suit saving the Kalindan from bad sucker burns. By the time she’d crawled enough to reach the door, Josich was over in one corner, the flailing and movement becoming progressively slower. As Jeremiah Wong Kincaid had vowed a very long time ago and half a universe away, he watched Josich shudder and the life in the eyes slowly fade as life seeped out of the big squidlike creature until it was gone.

Core managed to pull up to a sitting position and prop herself in the opposite corner. She looked over at the creature who’d just killed the monster of many worlds.

“Would you mind telling me just how you did it?”

“Oh, it wasn’t all that hard.”

“But they did a complete scan, and they knew what you were by then.”

“Right. And that is why I couldn’t come in as a simulation of someone else—everyone sort of knew everyone else in this, or at least somebody knew somebody, and their security was tight. So I came in au naturel, as it were, after the sweep. I came in with the rest.”

“What? How is that possible?”

“I came in on Wallinchky’s back, of course. You didn’t think he’d play second fiddle to Josich, did you? Or that Josich planned on letting him live any longer than he was needed to get Hadun ships down there to pick up the other Gate? So we made a deal. I was the only one who had both motive and a crack at getting to Josich, and he was the only way I could get in.”

“Just exchanging monsters,” Core told him, “and I don’t mean appearances.”

“I know what you mean. But Josich destroyed whole worlds and took from me all that I ever cared about. Wallinchky is a crime lord. He’s a miserable excuse for a person, but he’s kept his word to me.”

“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.”