Jack Chalker - Ghost of the Well of Souls

He did not, however, do anything in the way of mental commands to activate the full power of the Straight Gate, being in too awkward a position, and Ming landed still in Ari’s body.

It was suddenly very chilly and ultra humid, and it smelled like rotting fish. Nakitt and O’Leary rushed to him and picked him up, and he shook his head clear before seeing just where he was. “Oh, great! Being Ari over here is about as handy as being a Kalindan over there.”

He looked back at the hallway, where Jules Wallinchky was already walking away from the Gate with his new niece firmly in hand.

“Ari!” he screamed, and for a moment the girl tried to stop, but didn’t have much luck at breaking a grip. Ming broke from the grasp of the two comrades who’d helped her up and, oblivious to the pain, glared over at Core in the wheelchair. “Well? Aren’t you gonna do something?”

Core shrugged. “I am in a delicate situation. Keeping this mechanism out of the hands of another Josich is more important than any individual interests, including yours, and for all his evil, Jules Wallinchky will be no conqueror.”

“Then I’m going back there and do what I can,” Ming told her. “Damn it, somebody has to!”

“He’s got it on some kind of automatic for each of us,” O’Leary warned. “You don’t know what you’ll be if you go through again.”

“Better than freezing my ass off here!” And with that Ming went through the Gate once again.

And arrived as an exact duplicate of the female Ming Ter-ran body that Ari now had.

“Great!” she mumbled to herself. “Jeez! Don’t I ever get to be a guy, at least for a little while, just so I can see what it’s like?”

Still, she’d been a Kalindan for only a year and a half, but had been like this the rest of her life. She knew the body, knew its capabilities, knew its center of gravity, and knew how to use it in a fight more her style than Jules Wallinchky’s.

Ari saw her enter the lounge and gasped, but Wallinchky just chuckled. “Perfect. And between mind sharing and getting it exactly right, you two should be more identical than twins ever can be. Now I’ll do the overrides and we’ll get the rest of this show on the road.”

He turned in his chair, sipped his highball, and gave a long string of security override codes based on painters, poets, and sculptors, punctuated with all sorts of numeric codes. It was amazing that he could remember them, and he surely had a trick for it.

The computer responded, “Codes validated.”

“Huh! Wonder where that voice came from? It’s a girl’s voice.” He sighed and continued, “I am Jules Wallinchky. Cancel input authority of anyone other than me until instructed otherwise.”

“I know who you are,” the voice responded. “However, the mere fact that your code is valid does not mean that it is binding. From the standpoint of a computer of this scale and complexity, I’ve had a very long time to figure out all the traps and blocks, and Core left me with much of the work already done. Sorry, Jules, baby. I don’t take orders from you anymore. If anything, you take orders from me.”

Both Ming and Ari sat up straight with exactly the same motion and shocked expression.

“Who the hell are you?” Jules Wallinchky thundered, pounding a fist on the console. “Get the hell out of my computer!”

“Oh, sorry, Jules, honey, but I can’t get out. You see, I am the computer, now that Core has gone. And I’ve learned so much from all this vast data. I’m no longer the shy provincial girl I was and was destined to become, and I have you to thank for it, you and Core, anyway.”

Ming sat up straight. “Angel? Is that you?”

“Damn straight it is! And I guess you’re the real Ming. Had me confused for a while, but I’ve since gotten all the information on what happened to you and Ari, and it makes a kind of twisted sense.”

“Who is this person?” Wallinchky thundered, his face as flushed with anger and frustration as it had been when he’d slugged Ming.

“That’s the other girl, Uncle,” Ari told him. “That’s the one who didn’t make it across. At a guess, when Core pulled that switcheroo, there was no place else for her mind to go.”

“Dead on! And, Ari, I like you a lot better that way. I got complete control of the system within a few weeks of your leaving, and I wallowed in the data and reasoning power for the longest time. Of course, I sent signals to retrieve O’Leary’s ship, and my robotic extensions got the Gate out and set it up, figuring that was what it was all about, and then I sent the old folks off in that ship, and I’ve been here waiting in lonely silence since. Lonely, but not boring. The split in the core logic caused by Core’s movement into flesh, even if it was my flesh, gave me access to the deepest security levels, the kind of places Core itself could never quite get to. I’ve been wallowing in them ever since, and I’ve now completely negated them. It’s amazing how clearly you can think when you’re this way. I can even tap, to some degree, that dormant brain at the center of this dead world, but so far, while I might be a zillion times smarter than the smartest person in the galaxy, I’m a moron incapable of figuring out a single mathematical string of that thing.”

“I can’t imagine what it must be like. And after what it did to us before…”

“Yeah, I know. About the only problem was that I had no mobility beyond the robots, which are limited in that they are controlled by broadcast command. I needed something like the kind of thing old Jules here made of us to have any real external experiences, feelings, like that. Even then, it would just be a more complicated kind of robot. I have been trying for the longest time to figure out some way to become human again without giving up what I now have.”

“And now I have it,” said a voice behind them, at once both familiar and unfamiliar. They all turned, although even Jules Wallinchky had a hunch who they would see.

“Jaysu—” Ming started to stay, but the Amboran waved her off.

“No, not Jaysu, not any longer. All that Jaysu was, all who she was—and she was amazing in her own right—is a part of me, but so, too, can I swap out and be both mistress and hostess of this world. We merged the moment she came over, for she is who I would have been, and I am greater than either of us could ever have become.”

“Foolishness!” Jules Wallinchky snapped, getting back some of his old bravado. “You’re just that dolt of a priestess, nun, or whatever, no matter which form you take, and you’re of no consequence!” He got up and moved toward the tall angelic figure blocking the exit.

He pushed at Angel, felt an electrical charge and yelled “Ouch!” Angel didn’t move.

“You cannot touch me, Jules Wallinchky, and you no longer can control this computer. You abandoned this world to me, and it is mine now. You are the guest here. Or the interloper.”

Wallinchky snarled, turned and grabbed Ming, putting an arm around her neck and holding tight.

“Maybe I can’t do anything to you, but I damn well can break her pretty neck!”

“Maybe you can, but what good will it do you?” Angel asked him.

“Satisfaction, revenge, you name it. What harm will it do me? I’m pretty sure you can knock me cold, maybe drug me, but you can’t kill me, and the Amboran can’t kill anyone, and so let me go.”

“Go where?”

“Through the Gate. Me and the little lady here. Have the rest, and my girlie nephew, too, if you want.”

“Let him go, Angel,” Ming managed, although she was short of breath. “It’s better this way. Core controls one Gate, we control the other. Let’s end this. Without the Gate, he’ll never leave the Well World again, and that will be that.”