07. Ghost of the Well of Souls (45 page)

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
know
Tann 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 through 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."