Jack Chalker - Ghost of the Well of Souls

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 translators didn’t completely convey. Finally, though, Josich said, “We believe that we can get along with you, Lord Jules! Now, come! Let’s get this over with. It is a thousand years past due, and it is only the end of the beginning!”

They had all wondered why Josich was so insistent on having all of them present. It was almost as if she had something of a hit list, although it didn’t seem that even Josich would risk murdering so many of other races, and certainly not in Zone, where, even though live broadcast was cut, this gathering was being recorded for the record in a far distant control room.

Josich showed absolutely no fear of the assembled former enemies as she made her way nimbly up to them.

“Quite a bizarre crew. You will do.”

“Will do for what?” Jaysu whispered to O’Leary.

“I’m not sure we want to find out,” he hissed back.

Core led the way into the conference room, which remained a large but unexceptional area around an oval-shaped table of polished serpentine.

“Who has the muscles here?” Josich asked nobody in particular.

As the others pressed against the wall, Mochida and Wallinchky entered, and the latter did one of his little tricks and threw up a line. He raised himself up onto the ceiling, then walked over so he was directly above the tabletop. He extruded another line, this one as thick as a man’s arm, and regurgitated it downward to the center of the tabletop, and then, using four of his limbs, curled around and pulled.

The tabletop came off the base with a scraping sound. In under a minute it was suspended two and a half centimeters above the unitary base. Mochida took hold of the side with his primary tentacles, and the Empress herself guided it out toward Mochida, who then tipped it forward on its side and was able to roll it against a far wall.

That Jules Wallinchky was a whole lot stronger than he appeared to be, and perhaps no pushover, wasn’t lost on Josich.

An unexceptional rectangular base had been revealed, made of a different and not obvious composition from the tabletop. It was also grooved in an odd manner, not the best for a practical top, and contained two finely machined holes that seemed to be lined with a metallic compound.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the unknown and lost piece of the Straight Gate, where it has in fact sat for perhaps the last thousand years,” Josich announced. “We suspect, though, that it has had many other disguises and tops. It was brought here after the whole was stolen from the Chalidang embassy not far down the underwater corridor.”

“Your Majesty knows it wasn’t stolen but fairly won,” Core responded. “It was war.”

Josich whirled on her. “Not stolen? Not stolen? The illegal attack on our embassy here is still a legend of deceit and dishonesty in Chalidang! Traitors to our grandfather alerted you, and you rushed in and killed the guard and seized it and dismantled it, trapping them forever on the other side! And then as your forces attacked and ransacked Chalidang, you took the Gate and dismantled it and scattered and hid it from anyone who might have reclaimed it! And when our grandfather and his party looked into it and saw Kalindan faces looking back, they knew they could not return! To return, one at a time, meant being slain serially by thieves and traitors! So, now, here it is, where foul Kalinda brought it, into the air where it was thought we could not go! And now it is ours once more, and from this time forever!”

“ ’Tis a grand speech you give, but what in blazes does the thing do, if I might be so bold?” O’Leary asked in a mock Irish brogue.

The eyes of the Empress snapped up to meet the Pyron’s. “So, serpent cop! We’ll see who laughs last. However, we are informed that you hold information for me. You were last in possession of our grandfather’s Gate, having stolen that from us after we had just paid a king’s ransom to get it back. Is it true that you had it in cargo inside your ship?”

O’Leary saw no reason to lie about it. “Actually, just in the aft compartment, not even fully in storage. That’s if they haven’t retrieved it by now.”

“They haven’t,” Wallinchky put in. “Anything parked there is still parked there, I can tell you that. Either that or the whole place is atoms now. The automated defense system installed there is the same one installed at Confederacy War Plans. And even without its charming personality, the computer will still function on all the necessary levels.”

“Good, good,” Josich responded, thinking. “And you did not disassemble it?”

“Madam, I did not even know that it could be disassembled,” the ex-cop responded honestly. “But it is lying on its side, I suspect.”

“No matter. General! Bring us the parts of the Straight Gate!”

There was precious little room for Mochida to be fully inside the meeting area, even with the tabletop removed, but his primary tentacles were long enough to pass the lightweight pieces to Josich, who took them.