Ghost of the Well of Souls

blockade would do it, would it not?”

“Easier said than done, a blockade,” Shamish told her. “Still, it wouldn’t take a lot of disruption of trade to cause real rumbles here, it’s true. It’s another reason why I think we’re going where we want to go. Chalidang can shake them, but Pyron is much, much closer. They were leaning more toward the Chalidang Alliance, until Ochoa anyway, because they’re kind of soulmates of those squid. Winning that battle has tipped things back our way. My sense is that they’re playing a balancing game, ready to tip to whoever seems likely to win. If they take us through, then they do something for them, and when a winner emerges, they pop up and say they were with you all along.”

She shook her head in wonder. “All this cynicism, dishonesty, double dealing. And for what? To preserve what we saw of places like this? It makes no sense!”

“That’s right,” O’Leary agreed. “It makes no sense. It doesn’t make any greater sense in the rest of the galaxy, or maybe in the rest of the universe, for that matter. It’s the way things work. It’s why folks like you have respect and the jobs you do, really. People are always looking for sense, and religion provides both sense and a feeling of comfort.”

“But you do not believe in the divine.” She said it as a statement, not a question.

“I have seen too much. Like I said down below, I believe in evil, in the opposite of your ‘divine,’ so to speak. I’ve seen it everywhere. I’ve not seen much of the good side, though.”

“You must have had a sad upbringing yourself,” she said.

He sighed. “My parents were both god-fearing sorts, but even though I was raised in my father’s faith, they were quite different in their religious backgrounds. So different, in fact, that they were killed by the followers of one side for intermarrying and seeming to be happy and successful in spite of it. They were ordered to take sides. But they were both sides, you see, and they had settled their own religious war in the best of ways. So they were killed.”

“How horrible! How old were you when this happened?”

“Old enough to track down the ringleaders and dispatch them the way they had my parents. And then I left my home and never returned, cursing it forever, and I finished my schooling on a world that had few of my kind there, and then I became a cop. It was only after that that I really saw what true evil could be. Spare me the prayers and the sermons—I had enough of nuns and priests in my youth. If there’s salvation, I’m too old for it. But there might still be a measure of justice. In a sense, I’ve pursued some very evil people all the way to this world. Two of us have, in fact, the other far more twisted inside than me. But if we can get them, we’ll get them.”

Shocked at what he said, she did not continue the conversation, yet she couldn’t help but reflect how little difference there was, deep down, between the policeman and the coldblooded criminals he hunted, almost as if you could have found him on the other side with just one slight added twist of fate. Was it, perhaps, the same for his quarry? Was the evil he fought as fanatic? Was he, in effect, hunting his darker self?

It was too weighty a question for these circumstances, but precisely the kind of moral questions she found most fascinating in study and meditation.

“We’re slowing down,” Shamish commented, and the other two immediately felt this as well.

“A scheduled stop, perhaps?” O’Leary wondered. “Or have we arrived at our destination, whatever that is?”

“It better be the freight yards at Borol,” Shamish replied. “If it isn’t, then we are betrayed.”

The train glided to a smooth stop, barely jerking the car at all.

“Magnetic levitation train,” Shamish told them. “No friction. When you stop, you just turn off the power and the thing’s a brick.”

The car was solid enough that outside sounds didn’t penetrate, so they had no way of knowing just who or what might be out there. It made them all nervous, and Jaysu closed her eyes and tried to project her senses outside and around the car now that it was stopped.

“Lots of people running about, apparently all Alkazarians,” she said. “No—wait. Not all. There are— others out there. At least three, maybe more. They are in back of us, concerned with another car.”

She suddenly had both their absolute attention.

“You can sense that?” O’Leary asked, amazed.

“I can see it, but the vision is very different,” she responded. “I cannot, for example, tell you anything physically about them, only that they are not natives and they are quite agitated, in some great hurry. They are, I believe, offloading some very large crates from one of the boxcars.”

“At least they can get the door unlocked,” Shamish mumbled.

“They’re done with their heavy lifting. There are five of them, or so it seems. The natives are ignoring them completely. Now they are talking among themselves. I cannot hear at this distance, nor would the translations come through anyway, so I have no idea what they are saying, only that it seems they are splitting into two groups. Three of them are going off with whatever goods they unloaded. Two more are— I believe they are headed this way! They are cold, businesslike but cold, and a bit nervous. One stops a native, says something, perhaps passes something to it, and the natives are now all walking away from us. I do not like this.”

O’Leary looked over at Shamish. “I think our Alkazarians just took sides.” He looked around. “Any chance of smashing those lights out?”

“Maybe, but what good does that do us? They control the exit, remember, and these little bastards refused to let us have any weapons.”

“You wish the lights to be out?” she asked them.

“Well, it would help when they open that door to have it dark in here. Dark and quiet,” O’Leary told her. “That way they can’t be positive we’re here, not without taking a chance.”

She looked up at the far light and it went out. Her head whipped around, birdlike, and the other light went out.

“Well I’ll be…” Har Shamish breathed.

“You are full of surprises, aren’t you?” O’Leary added.

Even to myself, she thought, surprised. Until that moment she had no idea she could do that, either.

“Can you break the bomb if they toss one in here?” Shamish asked her. “And maybe their weapons as well?”

“I will not permit their weapons to fire. Beyond that I can do nothing. I can act only in defense.”

“That should be enough,” hissed Genghis O’Leary. “To the side with the door. Make sure you can’t be seen by the light from outside when they open it!”

There was a series of rapid clicks across from them, which helped her orient where the door was and move as instructed.

It was just in time. The door opened and slid back, and light flooded into the center of the car, but revealed nothing.

The pair outside stood there waiting a few moments, as if unsure what to do. Then one said, through a translator, “All right. Very clever, very impressive. Now you will either come out or we will close the door and scramble the combination. We can have this car put on a siding for the next six months if need be.”

Liars, she thought, but didn’t say it. Even without her empathic senses, sheer logic said they were issuing empty threats. If they could have done that, they would have, and not subjected themselves to any risk or potential international incident. It would just be an “unfortunate accident.” That also implied that not all the Alkazarians here were corrupt, only a few officials.

They waited a short while longer, then one of them said, “Okay, close it back up.”

At that point Jaysu decided this wasn’t a game worth playing. Thankful for the light from outside, she walked over and actually framed her form in the car doorway.

They were new sorts of creatures for her, like giant bipedal bugs with shiny chocolate-brown exoskeletons, feelers, and, as incongruously as the Alkazarians, some sort of uniform. Both also had nasty-looking rifles in their hands, and they were both pointed directly at her.

“Come down and tell your associates to come out as well,” the creature on the left instructed.

“I will come down, but I believe that if you wish the others, you will have to go up there and get them,” she told the pair. With that she began walking straight toward them.

“Halt! That is far enough!” the one on the right snapped, rifle up and primed.