Ghost of the Well of Souls

Ming, Ari decided, had acclimated to this new world and life far better than he had, and he had mixed feelings about it. He didn’t want to acclimate much more than he had, but, stuck in the same body with her, he wasn’t in a position to go off on his own. He sensed that Ming wanted to be a little adventurous with these amorous males armed not just with male libidos, but government decrees as well—to justify their lust—but, hell, neither he nor she were even sure how the Kalindans made out with each other. It sure wasn’t touchy-feely, not with this skin.

Nothing had made the differences between them more pronounced than their individual reactions to accepting themselves as members of this new society. Even as they seemed to share each other’s thoughts and became more knowledgeable about one another than any two people probably had ever been, their personalities still clashed, keeping them distinct. In fact, both suspected that they clung desperately to vestiges of individualism in a last battle to remain themselves.

Neither of them wanted a merger; they both preferred a partnership. But deep down they both understood that the merger was inevitable; either they did it, or they would grow to hate rather than love one another, and in the end go mad.

And yet, both their personalities were too strong to accept it as an inevitability, and so they fought against it.

Damn Core! The computer had stolen their other body, and divorced another mind from its rightful body as well. An individual was the sum total of memories and experiences of its lifetime plus the physiological factors. That angelic girl had the physical, but had been shorn of her memories and experiences; they had the memories and experiences of two, but lacked separate physical containers. All because the computer wanted desperately to become a real live boy…

This experience was giving Ari a newfound sense of ethics. He’d never dreamed that he had such a thing or could acquire it. Perhaps he was getting it from Ming, he thought. He didn’t like it; it was an uncomfortable fit, all the more so for being unavoidable once you had it. It might explain the otherwise incomprehensible gulf between most cops and most crooks. They both were in the same sort of business, but for the same risks, one paid a hell of a lot better than the other.

Ming sensed Ari’s turmoil, and to some extent shared it, yet she knew he had to work it out for himself or it would mean nothing in the end.

It’s not easy to figure out who the good guys are, is it? she commented. I know the problem. And even if they’re on your side, some of the amoral middle aren’t that hot, either. The only thing you can do is decide on who’s absolutely evil. At least you can go after them with some sense of feeling.

Which brought them back to the mystery of the black dome.

There was traffic in and out, that was for sure. Not just non-Yabban creatures, but also large crates of varying shapes and sizes. The races managing the operations seemed innocuous enough, but they all definitely had some home relationship with Chalidang. No Chalidangers or their allies had made any sort of appearance in the diplomatic compound, but there was little doubt that they were behind whatever was in that dome, and that, with a combination of diplomatic immunity and large scale bribery, the Yabbans didn’t care what they were doing there.

You couldn’t get much of anything out of the Yabbans themselves. They seemed pleasant and ordinary enough, but she and Ari got the impression that the translator conveyed an inaccurate picture of what they said and meant, not only because the Yabbans’ actions often didn’t quite mesh with the words, but also because their lives were simply so, well, alien. Kalindans might well look very different than Terrans and live in a biosphere where up and down had little meaning, but they were still closer, socially and culturally, to Terrans than the Yabbans were.

We can’t put this off any longer, you know, Ming pointed out to him after a week in the compound.

I know. The decrees and all that. I think we have to move on, and quickly, he agreed, hoping she meant before any assignations, not after.

But not until we get a look inside that black dome, she replied.

There was no night or day down there; Yabbo was shallow enough that some sunlight penetrated, but not enough to give more than a sense of the passage of time now and then. Like most undersea realms where one had some eyesight, Yabbo depended on chemical-based illumination, and some biochemical illumination as well, and didn’t need the great light from above.

That meant, like most underwater civilizations, there was less sense of night and day, work time and rest time, than there was a continuous existence divided into shifts. That was fine for Yabbans, and no problem in everyday life to the foreigners who lived and worked there, either, but it was difficult for Ming and Ari to figure out the best time to sneak into the black dome.

And yet they found that communiques passed between Core and them via the Zone Gate courier system yielded little curiosity on the part of the Zone types to find out. It was more an attitude of, well, what could they possibly be doing in the dome that would be a threat inside a hex where the only way you could store electricity for later use was to be born an eel?

Core seemed more interested lately in getting them over to a different hex, one not very far away and, from the alliance’s vantage point, more valuable. The nation of Sanafe was the object of a lot of attention lately, it seemed, for it was rumored to have a piece of the legendary Straight Gate, and that they would not be willing to part with it. If rumors were true, the attack on Ochoa and the subversion of Kalinda and its neighbors was geared to an operation that would indeed wrest this precious object from Sanafe. For its part, Sanafe wasn’t talking at all but had made it clear they would accept any protection they could get.

Sanafe next, but first that dome…

They had been near it many times, trying to scout out a way in, to chart the schedule of guards, but so far they’d not found an entry that made them confident of success. They kept trying to think of a way as the pressures on them to do their duty to Kalinda, and bear children, mounted to almost unbearable levels.

Core had not been any help in easing that sort of pressure, either. “Go ahead,” the former computer had written. “It should be a fascinating new experience.”

If it was all that fascinating, then Core should try it and not insist that they do it, Ari thought. It wasn’t bearing a little one that worried him nearly so much as what kind of commitment came after it. Neither of them had ever considered, let alone wanted, kids, but neither was ready to walk away from their own kid and coldly toss it to the fates.

The dome is pretty much like the others, including this one, Ming noted. There has to be a weakness somewhere.

Ari stared at the transparent Kalindan consular dome and suddenly thought of something. It was no bell jar; it was, rather, a geodesic type of dome composed of triangular struts supporting the overall shell to equalize the pressure.

Yeah, so? she prompted. What’s the difference how it’s made?

The difference, my dear, is in that equalization of pressure by use of the geodesic principle, he responded, thinking. It means that if the black dome is similarly constituted, we can drill a damned hole big enough to crawl through into one of the segments without compromising the overall structure. I wonder how thick these things are?

She saw what he meant. Yeah! Be kind of obvious, though, won’t it? I mean, we can’t use laser cutters and the like in this hex.

Might not need it, he told her. Let’s pay a visit now to a construction site. Good old Kalinda, building for Yabbo’s future, right? I wonder what they use to cut and shape things that don’t fit like they should and where they should?

There wasn’t much problem finding what was needed: a tiny gas-powered torch that could cut through almost anything, and some industrial-strength suction cups used to keep things from falling in when you cut through them. The small torch was dangerous, but Ari felt comfortable with it. It was close to some tools his uncle’s shadier associates had used now and then to get to pretty baubles the boss wanted but the owners had