Jack Chalker - Ghost of the Well of Souls

She put down the empty glass and walked back out into the hall. It was odd. She’d gotten so familiar with this place during her slavelike captivity that she knew it backward and forward, yet it didn’t seem quite right somehow. Oh, it was the same place, taken care of by the cleaning and maintenance systems, but there was something odd about it. Like a feeling of being watched. Almost like Core had never left.

She slowly walked back up to the Straight Gate, which looked precisely the same as the one she’d come through, and she could see Josich there, framed in the hex.

“Well?” Josich demanded.

“There is nothing to report. So far there is no sign of life, but also no sign of a breach of security. We can’t access the computers, though. The system won’t believe that I’m Ari or that Ari is me. That’s what you get for buying too good a security system.”

“There are overrides, but only from inside,” Wallinchky’s voice came to her. They all sounded odd, almost mechanical, unlike what she’d been used to. She realized then that the translator hadn’t come with them; she was speaking the old Confederacy speech and their translators were changing it and then translating back. Without a translator of your own, the voices did not convey nearly the nuances and emotions as when both speakers had them.

“You want to give me one? Or Ari? At least we can ask the computer what’s going on.”

“Give them one!” Josich snapped, but it wasn’t Wallinchky who answered, it was Core.

“Tell the system Emergency Priority Override Matthew Mark Moses Mohammed Stoke Da Vinci Rembrandt Rodin. Can you remember all that?”

“I’ll try.” She repeated it several times, making mistakes, but finally got it. She always had a knack for memory, even if it made no sense at all.

She ran back into the computer room, sat down at the console and repeated the entire string before she could screw it up. Even so, it took three tries before the computer announced, “Accepted. Instructions?”

“Computer, identify me as Ari Martinez y Palavri, record new voice print to match hand and eye.”

“Accepted. Instructions?”

“Cross-link identity and accept female other as Ming Dawn Palavri y Martinez. Accept either as valid.”

“Accepted. Instructions?”

“Computer, are there any Terrans or other races resident on this world or inside this compound at this time?”

“Six remaining staff members were extricated by escape capsule eleven months ago. Since then no others inside compound. A landing was made on the far side, but no attempt was made to breech the compound.”

“Computer, then who brought the device sitting in the hall inside the airlock to where it now sits?”

“Robotic staff.”

“From the ship docked at the airlock?”

“There is no ship docked at the airlock.”

“What!” Then, suddenly, she remembered. O’Leary had left the compound! He’d landed somewhere else and came upon them that way. But if O’Leary’s ship was down outside, on the surface somewhere, then…

She had a strange feeling about this all of a sudden.

Ari came back and looked in. “I went back to the Gate, but they said you’d gotten a code and come back here. There’s nobody here. Period. Uncle Jules had an escape pod even I didn’t know about, and the others took it. Whether they’re frozen stuff someplace or in custody or whatever, who knows?”

“I authorized both of us, but I don’t like this. At least we can access it if need be. That might give us an edge. I’d say let’s go report and tell them it’s all clear.”

There wasn’t much they could do, as usual. Dismantling the Gate on this side, assuming they could do it with Josich operating things, would only trap them there awaiting Josich and the rest, who would still be able to get there the hard way from the home world of the Ghoma, as much of a wreck as that world was now. And Jules, in a custom environment suit, could still bring the codes to access the place from space.

They still found it tempting, because it would probably take them years to get here, but there was something creepy about the place that hadn’t been there before, even when its creepy lord and master had been in charge.

“Codes need to be sent,” Josich said with irritation. “Our people must get through and dock. Once we have possession of both ends, we can come and go where we please and as anything whatsoever that we please. This time, though, we will remain on this side of the direct link, and thus control it. Wallinchky, you will have to set up things on the other side. We will need at least a limited water environment, like this embassy, on that side as well.”

“Are you kidding, Your Majesty? That would take a huge matter conversion! Not to mention preparing the tank and so on. It’s a barren asteroid.”

“Nevertheless, you can do it. Your equipment is capable of it. Must I send your former computer brains here back to do it for you?”

Core sat up straight. “No! You can kill me and be done with it, but I will not return to that machine!”

“Very well, then. You can advise us on what the computer there is capable of, and remain useful, or we can simply do away with you at this point. Choose!”

“It can be done. It will take a while, but it can be done. Easier if it’s done from that side, but it’s possible.”

“All right, Jules, then that is your task. Would you like to go home?”

“I am at Your Majesty’s command,” Wallinchky responded.

“Take the angel, the cop, and the traitor with you,” she commanded. “I do not wish to watch my back.”

Tann Nakitt looked up at her sharply. “I am no traitor! I had nothing to do with this! I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time! And I have no desire to go back there to that life.”

“Oh, yes. You’ve become a happy little whore.”

“You should know how that goes.”

A tentacle slapped the Ochoan so hard that it flung the little creature against the wall and almost knocked her cold.

“Go! All three of you! General, you and Core will remain with us here. And tell the guards to send in suitable food for the three of us!”

“At once, Majesty,” the General responded.

The Amboran stared at the hex and its scene and frowned. “I don’t—”

“Go ahead. You are of no use to me, but you are an unknown quantity even among your own people. For now, I would prefer you over there.”

Jaysu stepped up, uncertain, leaned down and stepped through, her wings clearing the boundaries.

Stepping out on the other side, she had not changed a bit, to her great relief.

Genghis O’Leary was next, and as he passed through the portal he heard that weird voice in his head say, Form reset, Type Two-two-one. And he fell out onto the carpeted floor of the redoubt, but no longer a Pyron. Instead, he was now a Kalindan, fish tail and dorsal and all, and laboring for air.

“That’s to keep you from getting into any mischief,” Josich told him. “You’ll find spending half your time in a bath and moving around dragging that body by your hands and arms will keep things even.”

Josich went over, picked up the still dizzy Nakitt from the floor, and shoved her through the opening.

Nakitt arrived as a Jerminin soldier, essentially a sexless bipedal antlike creature.

And finally there was Jules Wallinchky. “Why didn’t you change the angel?” he asked. “She’s dangerous.”

“But she’s fascinating, and as ignorant and empty-minded as any we have known. We could build an air-breather religion around such as her. It would make recruiting much easier. Now go. You have things to do, messages to send.”