Jack Chalker - Ghost of the Well of Souls

There were higher if more conventional mountains in the ranges to the north and to the west, but this was the sort of freak of nature that started religions in places. His briefings said it was called simply the Center, and that somewhere at its base was the Quislon Zone Gate going right into it. Now that’s one to give a shaman power!

Somewhere here, too, was a sacred relic, something these creatures venerated as much or more than the pyramids and the Center. Nobody knew why they thought it was sacred, but it always translated that way, with awe and veneration attached.

How did one disguised in the shape of a past enemy gain information about such a venerated object? He wasn’t sure. He only knew that agents of the Chalidang had been sparing no expense on research in Zone and elsewhere to find things that appeared to resemble what the old records said was the Quislon sacred object. He had to find out just what this meant before the forces so recently defeated could regroup and move on it.

There wasn’t much else to do. Guessing that the three major finishes of pyramids represented specific classes or castes, and that, from the elaborateness of the side designs, smooth outranked rough or steep, he chose the largest tall, smooth, ornate pyramid he could find closest to the sacred mountain. He circled around, using all his senses, spreading his wings for the first time to use everything in his arsenal. After a few minutes he sensed a thermal difference between the rest of the pyramid and the outside air at ground level. There were other such spots all over the place, which probably were vents of some sort, but this one was different. This one, he was positive, had to be a door.

It was shaped like a hexagon.

There seemed nothing else to do. Moving up to it, Genghis O’Leary extended one of his long, thin arms and knocked as hard as he could.

He felt a little foolish doing so; the surface of the pyramid looked and felt like any of the other pieces of polished rock used to sheath the exterior, although it was well off center. The only reason he thought it might be a disguised door was the thermal pattern. Even if it was, who could hear a knock like this on that kind of rock? He was pretty good at crushing, but those old jackhammer fists were history, left with wherever his old body might be, if it was at all.

He could hear, though, that they knew he was out here. Most likely they had some sort of system that had kept him under observation ever since he entered this place, waiting to see what he was going to do. He counted on it, in fact.

There was a pause, as he’d also expected. More rustling went under him and up and into the pyramid’s base. The stone seemed to jiggle, then it moved. In an elaborate groove system. It was pulled in and slid into a carved notch in the much thicker stone to his right. There was a sudden blast of warm air, and a Quislonian emerged from the apparent darkness beyond.

It stood about a meter high on all six legs. Its color was an unremarkable pinkish-gray, its skin or possibly soft exoskele-ton had a smooth and slightly wet look to it. Its head was on a retractable neck that appeared to be able to turn most of the way around and rise from a notch in the body—elevating the head another thirty or so centimeters or leaving it facing forward as an extension of the body. It was no beauty: there were four horns, two long, two short, atop an oval mouth that seemed to have wriggling worms where teeth might be, constantly in motion and dripping some kind of wet ooze. O’Leary wasn’t at all certain whether two of the soft horns were eyes and two ears. In the end, except for the sake of politeness, it didn’t really matter.

“What brings you here, Pyron?” the creature asked.

He saw nothing extra move, nor heard much in the way of background sounds save a kind of modulated hum, so he wasn’t sure just how these things spoke, either. If they were group minds, it probably didn’t matter anyway.

“I’m sorry to intrude, but you leave your embassy empty at Zone, giving us no choice but to enter your land to speak with you,” he responded, trying to seem calm and natural. He had the sense and sounds of thousands of these things lurking all around him, not just in the pyramids but also just beneath his feet. They were certainly burrowers and tunnelers. Although he’d had these sensations to one degree or another during the two days traveling here, the danger to him never seemed as acute as it did now. He hadn’t felt this nervous since the night he’d arrested the Commonwealth Security Minister in his own office.

“We have no need for much contact with the outside, and when we do, we initiate it,” the creature responded.

“You are aware of the war just fought to the west of here?”

“We are. It is none of our concern.”

He took a deep breath. “I’m afraid it is. We have been monitoring the communications of the Chalidang Alliance. While much of it is in codes we can’t decipher, we have been able to deduce patterns in their communications that correspond to activities by their agents elsewhere. Recently, a good deal of interest has been shown in Quislon.”

“Deduced, you say. Nothing more?”

“We are good at our jobs, and some of the finest minds on this world are working on this, aided by the most capable computing devices. Even with some subterfuge to confuse us, we feel confident that they are looking very closely at—at a minimum—Quislon, Sanafe, Pegiri, and Regeis. Do you or anyone in your own authorities know why those four radically different hexes would be of interest to Chalidang? Two land, two sea, none close, none the slightest bit related to one another; the only connection we can find is the not very remarkable fact that none are high-tech hexes.”

The Quislonian froze for several seconds, as if thinking or, perhaps, discussing this with others through some kind of link. It startled O’Leary by suddenly extruding two rather hard and mean-looking arms from inside its wriggling mouth. At the end of each of the arms was a series of tiny suckers on softer tissue that extended from the harder mandibles. The Pyron watched in surprise as the creature seemed to begin spitting into the two small tentacles. As it did so, it upchucked a gummy substance which the mandibles furiously shaped and manipulated in a way too fast and too complex to see. Still, between the two softer “fingers,” or whatever they were, there quickly grew, well…

A rock. No, not a rock. A slate. A slate as smooth and as polished as the sides of this particular pyramid. And on the slate, with sounds like glass cutters at work, the thing was drawing.

It was finished in just a few minutes, but held it carefully. The slate was drying out fast, but still seemed fragile and a bit wet. The Quislonian turned it around.

The drawing, as precise as any blueprint or engineering drawing O’Leary had ever seen, was of a structure that resembled an old-fashioned mirror or faceless clock, or an award one’s superiors gave in lieu of a bonus—an antique, ornate-looking frame sitting atop a neo-Victorian rectangular base. About the only thing that seemed to relate it to the Well World was that the center part was hexagonal.

“Have any of your people seen this?” the Quislonian asked.

“I do not believe so,” he told the creature honestly. “What is it?”

“It is the most sacred relic of all that has remained in this world,” the creature replied. “You take this drawing back to your people working in Zone and tell them that this is the link. If they do not know it and cannot find it in the records, then all is lost anyway as far as you doing anything with or about it. The Chalidangers know. They say that it is theirs, but it is not. They say that one of their own created it, but that is not true. It was never supposed to exist here in the first place. Note the scoring on it.”