Ghost of the Well of Souls

“Most obvious thing in the world when you put all the parts together. And we know that even one of the Straight Gates works because while everyone else in Josich’s crew got normally processed through Zone, the Emperor did not. There is no record that he came through here at all. And he winds up in the same race and in the right hex, only with his sex changed and, apparently, an absolutely irresistible female set of charms for a Chalidang, anyway. Conclusion: the rest came through the Well Gate, but Josich jumped into the also activated Straight Gate. It works. And he arrived in full environment suit. They’ve been manufacturing them for months now. He had everything worked out, even the sex and culture angles.

The only thing he didn’t figure on was your force jumping him so that he was the only one able to use the small but direct route and remain Ghoman. Still, he’s done what he set out to do. I expect his representative here either today or tomorrow. I expect the—’Empress,’ I suppose is the proper term at the moment—here in two to three days if she hasn’t gotten totally paranoid over Kincaid.”

“Here? You mean in Zone?”

“I mean in this very embassy. Quite likely in the room we once used for a meeting upstairs.”

“But why?”

“Genocide, as usual. Josich’s favorite hobby, you know. I had thought that this massive sex change on the part of the Kalindans might be natural, or periodic, but it’s not. It’s an agent, probably genetically engineered, probably subviral in size, that triggers the permanent sex change, a trait that is otherwise a survival skill for the Kalindan race. It is ironic that it is now being used as a weapon.”

“You mean…?”

“She doesn’t want to fight Kalinda. We’re evenly matched on a high-tech level, but we’re defending and she’d be attacking. That’s why all the interest in securing bases around us. Failing that, they went with this solution, and so far we haven’t found a way around it. It is diabolical. We know it’s there but it seems to hide, just out of reach, or mutate ever so slightly just when we think we’ve nailed it.”

“Then there’s no cure yet?”

“Sure, several, but the end result is sterility, so what’s the good in using it? I have every reason to believe that Kalinda was at the heart of the coalition that defeated Chalidang a thousand years ago. Now they have their revenge. But they better have an antidote and prove it to me beyond the shadow of a doubt.”

“Or?”

“Or I will see to it that it will be well beyond Josich’s lifetime, if she lives another three hundred years, before she finds where I hide the last piece.”

* * *

“You could not hide it. I doubt if you could even move it unobtrusively,” the Baron Uchjin of Dalavia, Lord High Ambassador of Chalidang, scoffed in the underwater reception area of the Kalindan embassy.

“I may already have moved it,” Core replied. “You have no way of knowing that because those who work above are subject to deep security implants. It doesn’t matter anyway. I have it, and it is in such a position that even if you had to wait until every last individual Kalindan was dead of old age, Josich herself would be long dead either from internal causes, or because of the vast treasury we could put up for her death— after all, what would we have to lose by doing so?—or would have been assassinated by Jeremiah Wong Kincaid. In fact, I don’t believe the Well World computer could accept genocide. It would make no sense if the organism involved was of alien manufacture. I am not, however, willing to pay the price to find out. The question is, are you willing to meet our demands?”

“Your demands? What can you possibly demand in your position?”

“We are already feverishly working to ensure that the last Kalindan will outlive the last Chalidanger, and we have years to work on it yet, and no quibbles about funding or resources. Still, I think that if Josich does not get the thing together and working very soon, then all of those negative factors begin to come into play. I offer time. An expedited path.”

“Yes? Go on.”

“First, I want the organism involved and all the notes on its development. How it works and how it can be eliminated short of creating sterility. I want the antidote and demonstrations based on samples we make from it showing that it works. Second, I want the Gate to be assembled here, in the presence of everyone who knows about it. I realize the danger to those who do know and are not on your side, but I believe they should be present anyway, as their lives are even more at risk afterward. They will be unarmed, and the two-in-one and myself will be the only Kalindans present. All my staff will be relegated below. Since we will be two levels in air, and all at a disadvantage either in motion or in suits, there should be no particular danger. Our embassies are not far from one another. It should be fairly simple to do.”

“Indeed, but why should we? The first I can understand, but this second—it is outrageous. It is not what we intend to use the device for at all.”

“I know precisely what you intend to use the device for. But before you do, you will require testing, and I believe there is some mutually beneficial activities we can work out. After that, we will not stand in the way if it is moved to any point.”

The Baron considered it. “I am suspicious, seeing no logic in what you propose, but I will convey it to my government anyway. If they accept, you will have to sever this part of the embassy, making it extraterritorial and not a part of Kalinda. Her Majesty will never consent without the presence of her bodyguard, and everyone else in the room must be known.”

Before they were through, and after many back and forths, even more things were demanded by both sides. A sterilization of the airborne room by trusted members of the Chalidang Alliance so that no living creature might be waiting there, masquerading as a wall or door or chair. And, other than the Imperial Guard and loyal security personnel, absolutely nobody in the room who did not arrive there from Josich’s own known universe.

One of those on the list was Jules Wallinchky. Core found that unsettling, but knew it was one reason why Wallinchky was to be there in the first place.

Core looked around and hoped it would hold everybody.

She well understood why Chalidang would give almost anything to get the Gate up, even cave in to unreasonable demands that almost certainly were part of some scheme to thwart her.

Once the Straight Gate was activated, once it was under full Chalidang control, it simply wouldn’t matter anymore.

It took longer than anyone predicted, primarily because of the demands and proofs that the antidote really worked, and that the agent was clearly identified and destroyed. And when a few males were recreated as this process continued, sperm was extracted and in vitro fertilizations were tried to ensure fertility. Still, even as Josich chafed impatiently, waiting for the prize that might well restore and expand her empire even back in her native galaxy, she understood that the method chosen had been selected by her and applied at her direction. Now she had to live with the price of that method, which was waiting for proof.

When word came almost three weeks later that at least some of the eggs had properly fertilized and that the process was beginning to spread among the population, Josich was reportedly almost ready to invade anyway, but she held off. Instead she waited until she received the official notice from Baron Uchjin that the Kalindans were satisfied with their end of things and that a certain date could now be set.

That very evening, at her orders and instigation, the Imperial Guard murdered most of the highest levels of the Royal Family. As it was happening, Josich was killing, and eating, her Emperor.

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