Ghost of the Well of Souls

the police, and, in fact, if it wasn’t an original, it probably was an exact copy. Still, in water there was a certain grace and beauty to the Chalidang form, which was so perfectly designed for it. In air he looked ugly, monstrous, misshapen, as grotesque as he probably felt in the weight of gravity. And, in air, he had to walk shell up, using his tentacles as feet, giving him a labored look. Still, in spite of the curses, he seemed in his usual confident spirits.

Josich, after all, had not touched him or his family in her pogrom to become the ranking royal in the royal house of Chalidang, and still trusted him enough for this sort of thing.

Well, after all, Josich has to trust somebody, Ming pointed out. Otherwise she wouldn’t dare be here at all and the prize would be for nothing. And she’s gonna be here, bet on it.

There was no question about that. Having committed a widespread regicide, she had to justify it by claiming the ultimate power, or lower relatives would quickly find a way to polish her off, as she had those around her.

Core and Ari/Ming sat in Kalindan-powered wheelchairs, watching things happen from the topmost level. O’Leary, too, was there, as were Jaysu, and even the former Tann Nakitt, all by, if not the command of the Empress, at least her insistence.

On the level below, which led to the entry to the main part of the embassy as well as a separate underwater entrance, Mochida “stood” in the middle, mostly giving orders and looking around with those strange eyes, but otherwise remaining comfortably at rest. He had Chalidang guards at the entrance below, men of the highest trust because they had participated in the Empress’s slaughter to prove their worth. Between them and the electronic barriers he’d set up, he felt confident that nobody would enter from that direction without triggering alarms. Outside on the air entrance were Quacksan guards, also of impeccable loyalty and ambition.

The final one to arrive was a huge, hairy, green spiderlike creature who entered via the air entrance and immediately went over to Mochida. “So, General, do we have all the pieces assembled?”

“All but one,” the General responded. “That one is being carried by Her Majesty herself, so that none of the others here could, shall we say, jump the gun on things.”

“A wise precaution. And she will be here shortly?”

“She will arrive when she feels it is safe to do so. In the meantime, nobody who enters this room will leave it.”

The spider’s eye stalks surveyed the area. “Be hell if she’s very late and somebody has to take a shit, won’t it? Could get smelly.”

Mochida seemed to have lost his sense of humor. “Until Her Majesty arrives, any one individual who needs to do so may be escorted to a proper area under guard and returned here. Once things begin, I seriously doubt if anyone will wish to leave. Admit it. You are not the least bit curious about the device?”

“Not really. The last time I had one, I sold it.” The eye stalks scanned the second level, where the others were standing or sitting. “Well, well! The gang’s all here! Ari, old boy, and you, what’re you calling yourself? Core? Don’t you think I should get a bigger greeting than cold stares?”

“Hello, Uncle Jules,” Ari said with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.

Core was even more direct. “I cannot say that it is good to see you again, Jules Wallinchky, but at least your outer visage is far more appropriate to reflecting your inner self.”

Uncle Jules seemed to be having as much fun as usual. “Hey, now! Without me you wouldn’t even have existed at all! In fact, you’re a shadow of what you once were. You were like a god, with all the knowledge of a god, and you chose devolution. What a waste. I hope the automatic system is at least guarding the old place. I hope to see it again at some point. There’s some great artwork there, you know.”

Core had, deep down, dreaded this meeting since waking up a Kalindan, yet now she found the experience more infuriating than frightening. There were no secret codes or slave routines that would command obedience; if there had been, they were gone now. Until this moment, Core had experienced only the most basic of living emotions, and was still trying to find the key to their intensity. Now, suddenly, one at least was there.

Hatred. Pure, unadulterated hatred.

“Not a god,” Core responded. “A slave. A slave with the power of a god, or perhaps a devil, but always a slave to your every whim. I think we are more equal now.”

Wallinchky let it all go by. “Well, equality is best when you’re the one with the guns, or at least on the winning side. Still, I can’t help feeling some pride in all this. Here I create the first computer who became a person and the first two-minded geek. And whatever the hell angel girl is, she sure as hell is better looking and doing something more important than that teenage nun or whatever she was. And if you think I became something appropriate, hell, Genghis, I always did think you were something of a snake. No, this is gonna be fun, what’s coming. Fun and educational.”

“I don’t get it, Wallinchky,” Ming called down to him. “What do you get out of this?”

“Hey, watch and see.”

There was a sudden commotion outside the air entrance, and then the two sluglike guards oozed in and held the door open. Two Jerminins walked in, carrying automatic weapons, and then in the door, barely fitting through, came a Chalidanger in an environment suit riding in a large electric transport truck.

The Empress had taken them all by surprise and come by land.

“Guards, leave us. Form a human barrier across the entrance from this point and allow not the slightest thing past.”

The voice as it came through the translator sounded a little nervous, high-pitched, more spoiled brat than conqueror of worlds, but that was how Josich had always sounded, and how he, or she, had always come across until she started killing.

A Chalidang female was smaller than the male, sleeker, and more colorful. There was an almost birdlike pattern of colors along the shell part, and the shell itself was less spiral, and in fact less like a shell in appearance than the thick bag of skin it actually was.

Josich got up from the powered truck and started forward on tentacles. Unlike the General, she seemed quite at ease walking this way, even with the suit, betraying long experience in foreign elements.

She stopped and looked around, first at her own people, then at the assembled group above. “Astonishing,” she muttered. Then she turned and looked at Wallinchky. “Jules, perhaps the first thing we might do is see about returning my pretty bauble. Now that we’ve lived a while as a female, we find such things attractive.”

“As Your Majesty commands,” the spider responded.

The Empress whirled and two tentacles shielded by a form-fitting transparent insulated “skin” shot out and almost stroked the spidery Askoth, knowing that he knew they were powerful enough to cripple or kill him in an instant.

“That is not like you, Jules, dear boy,” Josich noted, a dangerous edge in her voice caught by the translator. “You’re not thinking of some sort of double cross once we’re in that fortress of yours, are you?”

“Of course not! Your Majesty knows that I always keep my word, once given. If I didn’t, I would have been dead years ago. Decades ago. Besides, what is anything there to me now? I couldn’t even get back there if it weren’t for you.”

The tentacles slowly withdrew. “Nor us without you, either,” the Empress responded, some of the insanity and danger fading as suddenly as it had come up. “We will not forget my friends any more than we will forget our enemies. But let us not forget that if we get back over to there, you will still be an Askoth in a part of the universe where that species is unknown. Whatever happens over there that might threaten our person will have consequences. The same mechanism that can get us there can also get a destructive device there capable of blowing up your entire little private planet. So let’s all keep our friendships and loyalties in mind, yes?”

“Your Majesty, I was on the brink of death when I came here, and I looked over the abyss and was about to fall into that from which there is no return, when I suddenly awoke like this, young and new again. I don’t want to run the universe anymore; all that would do is get me another heart attack. No, I want to enjoy life and have some fun. I’m perfectly content these days to remain the second most dangerous person in the known universe.”

There was a momentary stillness, and then Josich began to laugh. It turned into a solid one, but one the