Jack Chalker - Ghost of the Well of Souls

“No, sir. It almost has to be some northern race distorted somewhat in the southern biospheres. There are some races who can do that sort of thing among those in the South, but they don’t look like that, and a couple that come close to that appearance but have no abilities to hide or extrude. In fact, none are water breathers.”

“Idiot!” Mochida snapped. “The appearance was obviously distorted, probably by some sort of disrupter shield. As to the North—even if we assume that for some reason we don’t already know all of them as well as we know ourselves— at least in terms of the computer database, it’s never happened. No carbon-based life pattern has ever been recast here as a northerner. No, he is playing some sort of trick on us, and we will have to find out what he is doing and counter it quickly. I want him in pieces! Pieces! I don’t want any of the Empress’s old family or associates, let alone Her Majesty, losing any sleep over this, understand?”

The others waved their tentacles in a manner approximating a Chalidang nod, but it seemed perfunctory and Mochida felt it.

“Perhaps I do not make myself clear,” he added. “For every victim from this point on, one of you will die—a random choice. I want this bastard and I want him now!”

That put the fear of the gods into them! Not that they fully understood what fear was. Too many failures, and it would be Colonel General Mochida who would have to explain failure directly to the Empress.

“Enough of this,” Mochida said abruptly, shifting gears. “We need to know how many pieces of our puzzle remain to be located.”

This was something they felt more comfortable discussing.

“There are eight pieces, General. Three are already in our possession,” one of the commanders told him. “Two more are probably attainable without military action. The two that are going to prove difficult are to the east—one in very secure circumstances in the eastern ocean, the other an object of apparent religious veneration on the far eastern continent. The last piece, I fear, we still have not located.”

“We must find it! If we can secure it and the others, then the rewards and power that await us will be as wondrous as the punishment for failure will be terrible. All the others were from here and to the east; I see no reason why the last piece should not be within the same region. There must be records, something, damn it! It was less than three hundred years ago that it was disassembled and scattered! All the others had some kind of record, some kind of trail.”

“But most believe that the Straight Gate is only a legend!” one general protested. “It is difficult even to get taken seriously. Of necessity we must keep everyone outside our inner circles believing that it is a mere childish fable. If the others should ever get the idea that it is for real, then a coalition far greater than the one we now face would be turned against us, just as it was in the days of Jaz Hadun!”

“Subtlety is not the strong point of our race,” Mochida admitted. “Still, treachery is, and that takes a great deal of talent and care. Let us concentrate on getting the other pieces as we search for this one. Do we at least know what it looks like?”

“Thanks to the drawings of the Empress of the other side, we have a reasonable idea,” one of the staff officers replied. “There are only two sections—the religious relic and the highly secured piece—that we do not at least have a description of. That means it must be one of these two pieces, since the others are accounted for.”

A tentacle swept over a hidden sensor. The top of a highly polished table, which was apparently made from gleaming coral, suddenly lit up. Another tap on a hidden control panel, and a design appeared as if etched into the table. It was actually a projection, but it looked real.

The design of the full Straight Gate was exotic, even though the interior was in the unsurprising shape of a hexagon with slightly rounded points. Around it was an ornate frame seemingly carved from some sort of ivory. It sat straight upright on a magnificent stylized carved base. There was no power supply; it didn’t need one. The remote needed only to be on a world where once the Ancient Ones had lived and which still had an active Well Gate. It drew its power from that, while the one on the Well World side could draw its power from any Zone Gate. The controls themselves, like those in the viewing table, were hidden and obscure. Only one who knew where they were and what they did, and who could operate them as a Chalidanger might, could use them properly.

The colonel at the viewer controls tapped out another code, and the drawing of the Gate changed, reflecting the eight segments that composed it.

“They were afraid to destroy it because of the potential problems for power leakage and disruption,” the colonel commented. “They had no knowledge of how it worked and had no one who could tell them. Jaz Hadun had taken everyone, including the designers, with him, and he’d left no known operator’s manual, as it were. They broke it up into the eight segments from which it had been built—feeling safe enough to do that—and gave one segment to each of the eight in their alliance to safeguard both from us and from each other. To discourage others from trying to build something similar, they agreed that it would be referred to only as a mythical device, a legend, one that went with their victory but wasn’t a part of the reality. If Jaz Hadun was not dead or in some sort of eternal limbo, then they felt this would prevent him and his party from ever returning, save through the Well Gate, where they could be dealt with. You can see how it broke down in the Empress’s sketch here.”

It was straightforward. The eight segments were assembled by some sort of magnetic system into the whole, but were easily twisted apart when the power was off.

Two segments were outlined—one a piece from the lower left side of the hexagonal opening’s border, the other the top part of the base. “These are the two that are missing or are unaccounted for. What is not reflected here is the size of the thing. It’s not huge, but the eight of us could probably swim through it at once, in a two-four-two formation.”

That would make the upper base roughly four to five meters across its long side, and the missing side segment would be about a meter and a half, perhaps two.

Mochida’s beak clicked like a telegraph, a nervous habit when he was in deep thought. Finally he said, “I very much hope that our missing segment is part of the base. It will be much easier to recognize it than that side framing, which could be virtually anywhere and in anything. That makes finding out our secured segment that much more important.”

“Well, yes, sir,” the subordinate responded nervously, “but isn’t that what the previous campaign was all about? Sanafe is a nontech hex in the middle of nowhere. Without Ochoa as a base, how can we hope to get in there with sufficient force and resources to find, or force them to find, what we require?”

“Well, if at first you do not succeed, try a different plan,” Mochida told them. “The planning department has decided that if we can not use Ochoa, we must try a different route. Their Highnesses are quite keen on shifting to an alternate target for several obvious reasons, the least of which is the two small islands. You all know that we have a deep score to settle with Kalinda.”

“Yes, but high-tech defense against a high-tech attack is risky. They need only hold. That is an ancient lesson learned long ago on the Well World.”

“Yes, it is more complex, which is why Ochoa was the preferred route,” Mochida admitted. “Still, it is possible. If the air-breather allies can establish themselves in Bludarch, Kalinda is a far easier target. We are already working with some allies there. Their government is weak and corrupt, their society fat, lazy, complacent. With an adequate supply base and simple chain, and the understanding that this time they will not be dealing with the limited Quacksans or lock-step Jirminins, but with the best soldiers of Chalidang—I believe it is a very attainable goal.”