Ghost of the Well of Souls

Ochoan Embassy, Zone

“It is an ancient sacred symbol,” the Ochoan ambassador told the assembled group, “but it is of no particular significance as far as I know. It’s not sacred to us, certainly, and it is unknown or forgotten by most of the races on the Well World, as far as I can tell.”

“Except,” Core responded, “that it remains something of a sacred symbol to Chalidang, and also to the Sanafe, Regeis, and Pegiri, and, it appears, to Quislon. Sound familiar?”

“But what does that mean, except that Josich and his people are superstitious and want all the gods on their side?” Tann Nakitt asked them. “They attacked us, not any of those others!”

“Ah! But look at the map,” Core came back. “Halfway to Quislon, it’s true, but only one hex from Sanafe. They’re still moving, both by land and sea, for a move from the south, most likely on Kalinda, which is just off Sanafe and which, coincidentally, has islands for anchorages—the only other hex in that part of the ocean that does.”

“But how come there is no noticeable movement against Pegiri or Regeis, both of which are closer and easier to strike?” O’Leary asked.

“The Regeis ambassador is doing everything possible to keep that armed camp to his north looking anywhere but south,” the ambassador sniffed. “They are also not terribly religious.”

“Don’t be too hard on them,” Core told him. “After all, they’re rather mild-mannered creatures that drift around in free floating water. Their colonies wouldn’t last ten minutes against even a small Chalidang force, particularly if Josich didn’t feed her troops for a couple of days. They don’t really have the design to fight, let alone the temperament. As for the Pegiri, well, I get the strong impression that they will be very friendly and do anything for any force they think it’s in their interest to be friendly with. They’re belligerent and a little nasty themselves, but more blowhards than real troopers. They’d love to march in as occupation troops behind the Chalidang Alliance so long as they don’t have to fight hard to take it. Those aren’t exactly folks who think of much as sacred,either.”

O’Leary hissed impatiently. Finally he asked, “But does anybody know just what the devil the thing is?”

There was a pause, and then Core said, “It’s called the Straight Gate. In the areas where it is known at all, it has the elements of all the mystical objects of past civilizations. Ex-caliber, the Lost Ark, the Black Stone of Karnath, that sort of thing. Wars have been fought to possess it before, and that seems to be what we have here now. It disassembles into these eight sections. They are scattered or hidden so nobody can put them together again and have all the magic powers from the assembled unit.”

“Well, yes, but it seems to me you’re overlookin’ one major problem,” the Pyron detective noted.

“Eh?”

“You can’t find Excaliber, if it exists or existed. If the Lost Ark’s real, it’s still hid beyond anyone’s knowledge but God’s. The Black Stone of Karnath might be real, except nobody knows where Karnath is, or even what planet it was supposed to be on. This, on the other hand, appears to be real. Get the pieces and you can build it. That’s a heap of difference from some mythical magical totems. I’d say this thing was a myth based on a real gadget, and who knows what the gadget will do?”

Tann Nakitt stared at the diagram intently. “There’s more than that,” she commented.

“What, my little friend?” O’Leary asked.

“You’ve seen it. Or one like it. I didn’t exactly see it, but I saw its picture.”

“Indeed? In Ochoa? That is fascinating!”

“No, not in Ochoa. Not on the Well World. Think back, O’Leary. You were part of the raid on Josich’s setup back in the Commonwealth. Fill it in. Make the frame a sort of ebony finish, the base black textured marble, and the internal hex some kind of lens, or glassy covering.”

“They said that the hex wasn’t filled—oh, my God!”

“What is the problem, you two?” Core asked curtly, disliking any situation where others had knowledge it did not.

“Josich was playin’ with it when we staged the raid! They were settin’ it up on that dead Ancients’ world when we surprised ’em!”

Nakitt nodded. “And I’m certain that if you showed this to Ming and Ari they would confirm it. They may well have seen it, too. It’s the thing that Jules Wallinchky sold to Josich for the jewels.”

There was a stunned silence. Then Core asked, “But how can that be? The thing can’t be back in the Commonwealth and also here. Besides, why do I have no record of it in my own memory? I handled the background for all of Wallinchky’s dealings.”

“This was barter, and, I suspect, not in your records since you were a fixed unit at the time,” O’Leary told the ex-computer. “You might think back and see that you got those fabulous jewels into inventory with no record of outgo for them.”

“Hmmm… You’re right. Still, I had the womens’ memories in storage, even Ming’s. Curious.”

“I doubt if your brain now holds a fraction of the data it once did, as impressive as you are,” O’Leary told it. “Either that or it was information protected even from you without perhaps your boss’s personal codes. It’s not important. The important thing is, what the devil is something venerated here doin’ way back there?”

Once Core accepted as fact that he didn’t know everything, even about Wallinchky’s criminal empire, he was back on a solid mental track. “It wasn’t,” she said. “What you saw cannot be the same thing as Josich is now trying to assemble here, because Josich knows it’s back there. And if we accept that the eight pieces as we see them here are still on the Well World—as I think we must, considering this drawing and the spare-no-resources effort to locate and obtain them—then the obvious conclusion is that there are at least two of them. This device is not a device in and of itself, but only one part of a device. Consider the name.”

“The Straight Gate?”

“Indeed. And a named gate, in the traditions of this world, is a kind of transportation device. You go in one gate, you come out another gate. We all got here that way. We assumed that all of Josich’s entourage got here the same way.”

“We know they did!” O’Leary told her. “We saw it, and had it on video.”

“Indeed? And you saw what you were trained to see. You saw the ancient Gate activated, as ours was, and you saw it transport the others to the entry area here in South Zone. They were all Ghomas, which here are called Chalidang, yet only one remained so, and that was Josich.”

“You’re saying that Josich didn’t come in the same way? That he jumped through this Straight Gate instead?”

“I believe he did, yes.”

“But he still changed sex when deployed on this world,” Nakitt stubbornly pointed out.

“Indeed he did, because he only had one Gate. It stabilized his race, but since he came in through the default entry area, he was added to the population, as it were, as the Well required. Suppose, though, he had the other Straight Gate here assembled, powered up, whatever? If just using one of them can force the system to maintain your racial makeup, then what might two do? Consider the name. Straight Gate. Straight through from any point where you have one end, to any point on this world where you have the other. Your own personal Zone Gate, only you can also use it to go back and forth to your colony home out there among the stars.” Even Core was thunderstruck by the concept.

“We said from the start that Josich seemed to know a powerful lot more than he should have about the Well World, the Chalidang, and such,” O’Leary noted. “You don’t suppose he was originally from here, do you?”

“Highly unlikely,” Core said, thinking things through rapidly. “They’re long-lived, but the royal family of the Hadun is more wedded to genealogy than the Chalidangers, and Josich was undisputed Emperor. No, he was born and raised in our native neck of the woods. But think of what we’ve said here—that this has been the object of many wars over time here and was almost a mystical legend. No, not Josich, but an ancestor. An ancestor who took the other one through but lost control of it, probably rather early, and was stuck. If he still did well on Ghoma, and if he passed down this knowledge, then the rulers of the Hadun may have been looking for this thing on their end for generations. Finally, somehow, somewhere, Jules Wallinchky found it for them, and it meant nothing to him. Perhaps he simply acquired it in one or another of his illegitimate or even legitimate businesses. He certainly exacted a tremendous price for it.”

“Perhaps too high a price,” Tann Nakitt noted. “Is there any word on him? I thought that if he’d lived we’d at least have heard that he’s alive.”

“Nothing, but that means little. Do not underestimate him. If he wanted to remain hidden, I believe he could do it, no matter what the complexity. And if he is alive out there, he’s definitely going to be madder than hell. At Josich, at us, at the whole universe, even as he would revel in starting off young and in perfect health again. With Kincaid also out there, we’d have three insane megalomaniacs running around loose, untroubled by morals, ethics, those sorts of things. No, for all our sakes, I certainly hope he did not survive, but I have always gone under the assumption that he’s out there somewhere. If he is, I do not want to meet him or speak to him.”

“Huh? Why not?”

“Because I was created as his slave. I did much that was evil in his name and by his orders because I could not disobey him. I have no idea if the programming string was snapped when I came here or not. Certainly he probably was and perhaps is unaware that I am what I am. But if he should find out, I have no way of testing whether I would be forced to be his unwilling slave once again.”

“We have word out all over,” the Ochoan ambassador assured Core. “If he’s out there, we’ll find him. All newcomers, no matter how capable, stick out for a little while, unless they become a creature immobile and alien enough to be incapable of becoming a threat.”

“Indeed? Then you know what Kincaid is?”

The ambassador hesitated a moment. “Yes, I do. And Chalidang will either dig it out or figure it out as well. Not that it will give Josich any comfort, but it may make her even more impatient and desperate. Kincaid is a hell of a threat to the Emperor, perhaps more than we are, but as they gain knowledge, they may be able to contain or even trap him.”

“So? What is he?” O’Leary and Nakitt asked almost as one.

“That remains a secret for now, in the hope that it will cause Chalidang to remain nervous for a while longer. Eventually they’ll figure it out, but until then it keeps them on their guard and perhaps throws them off. We made an agreement with Citizen Kincaid. He does no more revenge in Zone, and we few keep his secret.”

“You can’t trust his word,” O’Leary warned. “He’s a lunatic with only one mission in life.”

“He’ll keep his word to us. Otherwise, we’ll exchange his invisibility for a very large target and drop him at the Chalidang embassy.”