Shissik then asked to speak to Ming, and quizzed her on earlier conversations and on her background. Finally he asked her, “You are satisfied that you are back to normal and that Ari is Ari?”
“Yes, of course! Why do you ask?”
They were suddenly aware of another presence behind them, and managed to get out of the medic’s examination long enough to turn and gasp.
“Hey! Wait a minute! We haven’t been Kalindan that long, but I’d swear that that’s our body!” Ari exclaimed.
“No, it’s our body,” the other one responded. “You are the Other.”
Ari and Ming looked at Shissik, who nodded. “I’m afraid so. You’re in the young female’s head. The one that didn’t appear to have anything in it. And they seem to have the same information and the same memory and the same dual personalities that you now do.”
“My God! How is that possible? I thought we were a one of a kind Well of Souls processing error!” Ming II responded.
“Apparently something inside the other one connected and caused the entire contents of your brain to be copied as a mirror image to the brain of the other here,” Shissik told them. “It certainly would have been more practical if just one of you had transferred, but it’s done. It will be interesting to discover if there are any variations in the two of you. There seems to be some. They woke up before you did.”
“Then—we’re the copy!” Ming II asked, incredulous. “I don’t feel like a copy!”
“Me neither,” Ari put in.
“We must assume so. The question is, how exact a copy are you two? If something, some routine, was lurking inside the Other waiting for such a contact, where is that ‘something’ now? And what is it?”
“But—But . . .” There was no making sense of this.
“And by the way,” Ari I said to them, “our hunch was right. There’s been a nationwide surge of conversions to female, a regular epidemic of loss of desire and impotence on the part of any male too old to change over. As of two weeks ago, there has not been one single reported case of female to male. In fact, even some well along are reversing. And as all births are gender neutral until puberty, there are no new males from that quarter either.
“My God! That’s what the woman was talking about, then! Slow genocide. They won’t even have to starve us. A nation of females. No more children. And they alone have the cure, I bet. How is this possible! I thought the all-powerful Well of Souls computer was supposed to make this kind of imbalance impossible!”
“We don’t have an explanation, not yet,” Shissik told them. “Not until the meeting next week will we hear the best suppositions about it. There is some feeling, though, that when you all were reprocessed through the Well you somehow—broke it. There is supposedly some sort of fix-it deity or computer repairman or some such that comes and fixes it when it breaks, but if he’s here, there’s no sign of it. It may well be that the Well doesn’t know that anything’s wrong . . .
South Zone
around much of the southern hemisphere, they gathererd up their staffs and runners and went to the centers of their hexes, the movers and shakers, the foreign and defense chiefs, often the political chiefs and their top aides. All else was being coordinated from back in their home capitals, using the Well Gate to get messages and requests for consultations and data back to them as things proceeded.
Both sets of Kalindans were there with the others, notably Mellik, who turned out to be a psychologist working for Interior, basically keeping an eye on them, as well as the Premier, Magnosik; Corrivit the Defense Minister; and Chaskrit, Foreign Minister. All the high officials were there with two aides, making for a larger delegation than was specified. They didn’t care, nor did most of the other races, it appeared. They brought whoever they wanted and stuffed them in someplace.
There was room, of course. Not everybody showed up, including, thankfully, anyone from Chalidang, although with some cheek, there was a small Cromlin delegation. These somewhat colorful lobsterlike creatures had not been directly involved as yet in any conflict, but it turned out that the number three in the delegation was in fact a reprocessed one himself, and had been physically, and remained mentally, Josich the Emperor Hadun’s half brother.
Nakitti thought it was a damned weird conference anyway. More critters than you could imagine, and no auditorium for more than a hundred people who all breathed the same stuff. Basically, it was done on monitors beamed to the reception rooms of the embassies, so there wasn’t a lot of interaction except in the corridors and going to and from the Zone Gate. There was a constant stream of creatures, some not very friendly, in a two-way parade.
For a semitech hex, the Ochoan Embassy was plush and high tech. Even a lot of the nontech hexes enjoyed the luxuries of technological comfort here, which often spoiled those posted here for going back home. For instance, there was a system for ordering or obtaining whatever food and drink you liked; no need to send home. Bring your favorite delicacies, have them zapped by the computerized stations, and within minutes it became part of the database. Then, anytime you wanted it, you just ordered it and there it was, perfectly synthesized and delivered to a food station near you. Better than home, really, because you knew this hadn’t been anywhere else, and thus contained only pure food. Wines? Give the machine a sample, and it would deliver bottles or jars as required. There was little this system couldn’t handle except volume; it wasn’t designed for mobs of people per embassy, and the more orders that came in at once, the slower the system became. For that reason, some of the hall traffic was simply going home for dinner; others were bringing catering, some of which, on the way to being eaten, tried to eat other creatures going by.
Nakitti had no trouble figuring all this out; once you recognized a food that was the equivalent of something you knew, it wasn’t that hard to manage. This explained why she was gaining weight even though her bill pouch was nearly empty, and why some of the things she’d been eating were rather strange to the other Ochoans. It was disappointing to discover that some old favorites were now repulsive to her tastes, but rich, dark chocolate and candy-coated fruit and insects were just fine and went down in incredible quantities.
Although of a royal household, she still was, as usual, the lowest social rank there, so few of the nobles would speak to her directly, or when they did, it was in the tone reserved for the lower classes. But she did have the run of the Ambassador’s suite, currently turned over to her Baron’s use, and by observation had memorized what you keyed in on the entry pads to achieve voice access to the centralized computer database. Hell, as Tann Nakitt, she’d cracked far worse than this one, since this was a utilitarian common access system not designed to keep people out.
What was it they’d said? Your true nature came out even after the Well reprocessed you. Yeah, she thought, look at Josich.
Hmm . . . Yeah, let’s really look at Josich!
The computer screen read off the basics of Chalidang, its technology—which was of a surprisingly high level for an underwater hex with a history of absolute monarchy—and its basic history, which consisted of warlords knocking off each other, sometimes knocking off or being knocked off by their own kids, while a solid and highly efficient computerized civil service kept it all going no matter who was in charge. They’d also waged war before, sometimes on neighboring hexes, sometimes a bit farther afield, but always with limited objectives. They essentially considered all the nearby hexes to be their pantries and supply closets, and they went to them when they wanted or needed something.
Also interesting was that the Chalidangers could not exist for more than very brief periods in air; water had to go through those armored gill cavities or they had real trouble. Of course, even for a bunch of squid-faces, they had pressurized vehicles that provided oxygenated water and allowed them to move on land when necessary; aquariums of a sort, with armor and guns. Wouldn’t mean much in a high-tech environment where laser and beam weapons could burn holes through that and leak you all over the beach, though, so how did they work in semi- and nontech hexes? They seemed to have some way of doing it. Maybe they used some of those many tentacles in some kind of gear arrangement to keep it going, or—springs! Giant wind-up pressure suits? It was laughable, but the more she stared at a photo of one, taken apparently from a great distance and blown up, the more she was certain that, indeed, that was exactly the case. Wild, at least until the thing wound down. They surely had that covered, though. Never underestimate the ability of a sentient race to figure out how to kill things even under the most hostile of conditions.
Looking over the Chalidangers, though, something kept nagging at her . . .
Damned, if they didn’t look and act one hell of a lot like the Hadun! The tentacles, the eyes, those were different, but the basics were the same.
Nakitti accessed the entry recording of the Hadun clan, such as it was. They came in much like she had, but on the underwater side, salt and all. She couldn’t follow their language, of course, but they apparently arrived in the Hadun e-suits they’d been wearing when they got zapped here. They used fairly standard frequencies, and because of the problems involved in broadcasting some of the high frequencies, tended to automatic shift translation to Realm Commercial even between two of the same race. A bit of a volume adjustment and frequency sweep of the recording, and Nakitti was listening to the conversation, or some of it, in a tongue she could understand. It was laced with untrans-latables that were in Hadun alone, and it was partial, but it was still educational.
“.. . Brothers! Are you all all right? ” That was Josich himself!
The others checked in uncertainly.
“. . . wasn ‘t what . . . planned but . . . will do. We . . . hoped for more . . . get processed. Our . . . same blood . . . Quickly brief . . . Attend Us! We . . . the Well . . . Will . . . touch . . . Be of great courage! . . . Be gods! No word . . . Act shocked, confused . . .”
There was more, but it was even more broken up. What caught her eye was something that apparently nobody else had picked up on. Maybe nobody else had tried to find out what was being said here, or nobody cared or understood. Surely she couldn’t have been the only one to have seen it.
Josich the Emperor Hadun had used the term “the Well.” There was also that business about getting processed, and acting shocked and confused. There was absolutely no mistaking the sense of this.
Josich had known precisely where he’d landed, and the system as well.
How? This was a one-way trip. Josich couldn’t possibly know about the Well World, the idea of reprocessing, any of it. Could he?
And yet . . .
The implication was also that the brothers didn’t know. It was almost as if Josich had been here before, somehow, and gotten out. No, that wasn’t quite right. These were his half brothers, which meant they were born to at least the same father or mother as he had been. He was, however, the oldest, which is how he was first in line for the throne back then.
If Josich hadn’t been here, he’d certainly known about it from someone who had. Someone who’d gone into great detail. It didn’t make sense, but there it was. Somehow, not only had he known about this place, he’d known how to get himself reprocessed as something very close to the Hadun, perhaps a distant relative of the common source of the race, and he had managed to do it without triggering the Well’s legendary defenses. Clearly he hadn’t intended to be caught and panicked into the place, and there was the implication that he had planned on an even more controlled entry, but he’d coped just fine.
Not bad for a wormface, Nakitti thought. Not bad for anybody. In fact, if Josich wasn’t such a totally evil son of a bitch, you might say that this kind of genius almost deserved to run the place and regard everybody else as bugs.
By the time the Baron returned from the preliminary meetings on the conference, Nakitti had a lot to tell him, and although it was recounted in an almost admiring tone, it was anything but the best of news.
Amboran Embassy, South Zone
the grand high priestess seemed even more saintly yet powerful in this strange place than back in Ambora.
“Well, child, I see you still have that holy glow about you,” she commented as Jaysu stood and bowed and kissed the older woman’s rings.
“I am embarrassed by it, Grandmother,” she responded humbly. “I do not think I am special compared to all others.”
“Oh, but you are, child! In such a short time of study you have achieved what few in our Holy Order have ever achieved in a lifetime. Your Mother was one of the finest of our sacred calling, yet she never attained it and it drained her. In the end, though, while unable to achieve it herself, she saw that potential in you. Do you remember her last kiss?”
“Yes, Grandmother, but I do not see—”
“No, let me explain. It might have appeared that she gave you something, something that shriveled her in the giving, but that was not what she did. Instead, what she did was take from you.”
“Take? What would she take from me at the moment of her passing?”
“Everything impure still within you. You had far less than most due to your origins, so it was possible. No one else has a low enough quantity, at least in this life, to be able to have it all removed, nor the innocence and total surrender to faith that would be required of them. You did. As you grow and meditate and let it develop, it will become a great power within you, a power that only your purity could wield, and a power one of your purity and innocence can’t wield.”
She was totally confused. “I—I am sorry, Grandmother.
You seem to be saying what cannot possibly be true. That I am without sin or corruption.”
“I believe that was your Mother’s gift to you, yes. Do not strain. You could not sin if you tried. It is best not to think on it too much because you have no way to compare. But I believe you are the only pure one on this entire world, and that the power this represents within you is a power that nothing can withstand. Again, do not search for the power or how to use it. It does not work that way. It will simply— work. You are still evolving to the highest form. I have no idea what it will be like when it is done, but it will be done. It will frighten some people, awe others. I admit to a bit of both myself.”
“Grandmother! I swear to you that you need not ever fear me!”
“That is not the kind of fear I mean. Well, we will see, and so will you. I do wonder, though, if we are not jeopardizing the most wonderful and wondrous thing ever to happen to our race by having you here, threat or no threat.” She sighed. “Well, I suppose we must discover soon enough which is stronger.”
Jaysu still didn’t understand much of what the Grand High Priestess was saying, but she did understand that it was supposed to be something good in a world clearly heading into nastiness, and she was happy for that even if it did seem misplaced.
Standing before the mirror in the old ambassador’s quarters, though, she did see the physical changes. Those couldn’t be denied. The snow-white wings were so much grander than her old ones, but they did not fold as neatly because of that which was an irritation. The hair, too, was billowing white, but her skin was a golden color that was, literally, radiant, and without any sort of blemish. She did not realize and could not think of herself this way, but to others of her race she was the absolute epitome of beauty, grace, and form.
In fact, she looked like a real angel . . .
Jaysu walked out into the main offices and down to the small gathering hall where they’d set up a large screen to show the proceedings from the larger but still very limited auditorium. There were many other Amborans about, mostly High Priestess ranks but even a couple of males who were there as trade and political attaches, and she felt their gaze and saw them shrink back a bit from her. She was sad about that; she wanted to be their friend. (This glow of hers was an off-putting attribute, she thought, not realizing that this wasn’t what was causing the reaction to her.)
The Ambassador was at the front, standing before a podium and staring at the screen. She had a cup of golden wine for her possible thirst, but at the moment was watching what flashed on the screen and making notes on a pad in front of her on the podium.
Jaysu looked over the old one’s shoulder, wishing she could read the notes, not to eavesdrop but to have the ability.
And, almost as soon as the thought came to her, she could! It wasn’t as if the notes assembled themselves into understandable words and phrases, she just knew what was written. She looked up at the screen, and at the scratches beneath the person who was talking, who resembled a large humanoid weed with a giant leaf on its head, and the scratches were gone, replaced with Doctor Varada 237A, Political Science, Czill Center.
She knew after arriving here of the strange little devices called translators that were implanted in a chosen few, including all the ambassadors, but she didn’t think they worked with writing, and she didn’t have one anyway.
But she could understand what was being said. Well, she could hear the words as if they were spoken in Amboran, anyway. The sense of it was something else again, and that didn’t come intuitively, at least not yet.
“. . . Just how Josich was able to integrate so completely and so quickly with just the right warlord at just the right moment we may never know, but we are faced with the fact of it. Since we have had few conquerors in the recorded history of the Well World, we have little to go on in any event, but the others were all apparently home grown, although some reprocessed individuals have become involved in various movements in the past as advisers or even warriors. Never before as a leader and catalyst, though. As to what sort of conqueror we have here, we do not need to extrapolate from Chalidangian history and sociology, nor would it be totally appropriate when dealing with this sort of individual. Fortunately, we’ve had others arrive from the same sector of the same galaxy who had quite specific knowledge of this very Josich and his family. We can, therefore, extrapolate a pattern from a previous attempt to do the same thing on a more, er, interstellar scale.”
Jaysu turned away, marveling at being able to read and understand such things, but finding him both confusing and boring. She knew there was someone of pure evil who was killing and enslaving many somewhere, and that this was a gathering of all the races in the region that might come face-to-face with it at some time, but that was about it, and it was all she wanted to know. Evil was present to test the mortal for worthiness and to allow for mortals to freely choose the correct or the incorrect path to immortality. Warriors fought wars, and priestesses fought on a different plane, against the evil spirits behind it all.
She still wasn’t sure what she was doing here. “Requested,” Grandmother had said, but requested by whom? Nobody in the embassy, that was for sure. Nobody here seemed comfortable around her. She longed to be back in Ambora among her own clan and with her own priestesses. This was an ordeal; until now she’d never realized just how horrible an existence this was, and she had new respect for the Grand High Priestess and the others who lived and worked here all or most of the time. No fresh air, no mountains or sea, no birds and insects and gentle breezes and great storms that freshened the air and watered the soil. This city and its gathering places might be necessary, but it was no way to live.
She wanted to go home!
Kalindan Embassy, South Zone
inspector shissik. was only there for a few hours, space being what it was, but he was fascinated by this mob scene and appreciated the chance to get this one look at a place he’d long heard of but had never before seen.
Psychologist Mellik had summoned him, and he’d wasted no time in answering, although the required passes took a while.
It was like swimming in lava tubes, he decided. Wall-to-wall water-breathing races, none of them familiar, going to and fro along long, dark tubular halls. Fortunately, they had set up internally lit signs with the national symbols, along with small kiosks where you could state your hex and get a detailed map to where its embassy might be. He needed it.
The embassy was a hybrid one, which was very useful when your race had even limited air breathing capacity. Most of the offices and such were underwater at optimal pressure, but signs indicated an upper level that was in air and dry. He didn’t like being in air much; you crawled on your belly or rode in a stupid wheelchair gizmo and you felt like your head was about to blow up and you were always short of breath, but sometimes it was necessary. One of the aides checked his credentials and told him, “You are required up top, Inspector. Psychologist Mellik is already there and is expecting you.”
He followed the arrows and soon felt the pressure cease, then broke the surface. The gills struggled for a moment, then his autonomic reflexes kicked in and he felt like a giant hand squeezed every bit of water out of him and that it all squirted out of the back of his head. Then that area opened again and took in a huge gulp of air and his small lungs inflated rather painfully. The sensation ceased fairly quickly, though, and he made his way to the ramp and railing and pulled himself up onto the dry tile floor. He was breathing okay now, but it never felt right.