07. Ghost of the Well of Souls (12 page)

From a tree nearby, the spider creature watched them go, then turned and manipulated some small panels on the box in a certain order. The box lid could now be raised upward, revealing the contents inside.

The near perfect precious stones inside would be convertible anywhere on the Well World where there was interhex commerce. It was a fortune. "
Much
easier than stealing these myself," the spider creature commented aloud but to itself.

The rest of the small gang he'd assembled for this very easy job were still around, of course, and they would have to be paid off. He'd use the Pegiri government payoff funds for that. These jerks wouldn't know how valuable the gems in the box were, anyway, and they certainly would never get anywhere near fair market value for them.

The Pegiri looked to him like monkeys with wings and feathers instead of fur. Handy for scouting locales, mapping out approach and getaway routes, that sort of thing. They could fly and he could not. On the other hand, they could not walk up walls nor across ceilings as easily as walking across the floor, as he could, and that skill was much handier for actually stealing things.

One of the Pegiri gang came over to him, jumping from tree to tree but not particularly flying. "Is everything okay?"

"Oh, yes. More than okay," the spider responded.

"Do you think they'll use us again like you said?"

"Oh, I'm
sure
they'll come to me after they see this first piece. Even the Chalidang, who are behind this, would rather gain by stealth than by war."

"Particularly after they just got their asses whipped," the Pegirian noted.

The translator issued a sound that it interpreted as a chuckle. "Yes, nicely put. Josich was never one to understand that battles are fought best with the mind and not with brute force. It is why, in the end, he's always failed."

"I thought Josich was a she, or don't that make no difference to squid?"

"They're not squid, and, yes, it
does
make a difference to them, and you're right, my little friend. It just makes no difference to me at this point."

"That
thing
gonna kill her for you?"

The spider paused. "No. At least not yet. It's going to kill one or more of Josich's friends, allies, and/or former relatives, though."

"Provided they don't find the compartment in that box."

The spider chuckled again. "It won't matter. That—
creature
—is quite versatile, quick, and gutsy. You have no idea what it can do in that incarnation. He did amazingly well in his previous one, in fact. Almost got Josich, or so I'm told."

"And he's gonna get her now?"

"It is what he exists for. And there's a substantial team of cheerleaders back in Zone that would love to see him do it. Still, it will be much more difficult after he makes his next kill. They'll eventually figure out what he is and start taking countermeasures. Even so, I suspect that Josich will sleep most uneasily once it is known. I know
I
would."

"Gimme the creeps, that thing."

The spider smeared mucus on the small box and stuck it on his body almost midway. "And I don't?"

"Should you, boss? Gimme creeps, that is? You gonna try 'n' eat me or something?"

The green spider chuckled again. "No, my friend. I do not eat those who are loyal to
me
and competent as well. Still, we will not need many of your kind to continue this, and we will have to do some local recruiting to turn this into a real going business. Pick a companion from the others, then we'll pay the rest off."

"You mean we're gonna leave Pegiri?"

"Yes. For good, probably, for me. Until you get too rich or develop problems and want to come home and enjoy your money, for you. What do you say?"

"I say we go. But what for you want all that money? What you gonna do with it? After so long it's just keeping score, right?"

"Ah, my friend, that is where your vision fails you. What you want you should be able to buy, period. What you want and cannot buy, you steal, or, even better, have others steal for you. Wealth is meaningless if it just sits. It's what it can buy that is important. Power. As much power as you can stand to have.
That
is what money is good for."

The Pegirian shifted uncomfortably. "Well, maybe. Guess everybody should have a hobby, huh?"

Ambora

THE DREAMS STARTED SOON AFTER SHE HAD BEGUN TO SENSE
the intricate threads and pulsing energies of the Well World. At first they were a torrent of voices, data, scenes, and visions, some wonderful, some so terrible that she awoke screaming from the very sight of them. But as time went on she began to get some selectivity and control over what she was receiving.

The Well, which she continued to think of as some sort of divine creation, albeit a secondary one since it, too, had been created by entities even higher and wiser—a device of the gods, not a god itself—continued to pretty much ignore her. Its job was to maintain the Well World first and foremost, and then to maintain the structures and living creations that had sprung from it and covered so much of the universe; it concerned itself with individuals only when they threatened its basic purpose or if it was somehow damaged and needed attention. Other than that, it was content even if things were not going the way its builders imagined.

There was a question about that, although it was one raised by others of her kind and not herself. It seemed to Jaysu blasphemous to think that she was becoming the superior creation the Well World had been designed to develop and to breed. She certainly acknowledged her power, but she was awed and not a little frightened of it, and in no mood to test it or to use it. Power without the wisdom to use it properly was a very good definition of evil, she thought.

And so she continued to intercept the input and output going from the Well to the universe and back again. Not that she could understand it or follow it, except in those individual dreams and nightmares where occasional coherent thoughts and visions would exist. No organic mind had the speed and capacity to comprehend that vast data stream.

Things were happening to her that were far beyond her understanding, and she could neither stop nor control them. At first it had seemed she'd been anointed by the gods to be elevated to some state that might restore peace to the world, but now she wasn't so sure. She certainly wasn't sure that it was the gods doing this to her; if so, it was a more complex god than she had ever imagined.

The worst thing was, it was so
lonely,
this mysterious process. But how could she even hope to explain to, let alone gain wisdom from, anyone else?

She certainly had to do something, though. She was sure of that. She could feel the reaction of the people,
her
people, upon seeing her, and it was a mixture of fear and awe. She understood that to keep isolated in the higher altitudes and in the remote mountains was to lay herself open to being considered a god herself, and that was the ultimate blasphemy.

There was no other way for her, no other conclusion that any logic could draw that would change things.

She had to leave Ambora. She had to leave it until she completed this process, whatever it was, and gained sufficient wisdom to understand and know what she was to do then.

Strange as it was, the only one she could consult with on this was an alien in Zone.

Spreading her huge snow-white wings, Jaysu flew inland toward the Zone Gate, not expecting to find answers but hoping for something constructive to do.

Core was astonished at the change in her. Jaysu was truly becoming the classical concept of an angel, purer than pure, whiter than white, and with great power to match. In a sense, Core thought, she was the direct opposite of the one she'd come to for help. Core was still struggling with her new limitations, limits in storage, retrieval speed, and overall capabilities imposed by this physical body, not to mention the distractions the body also offered. Considering her former master and employer, though, there was one difference.

Core had been a demon searching for liberation and accepting mortality to gain it. Jaysu had been a mere girl who was now evolving into an angel and looking for God to give her orders.

Still, it was Core, the old Core, who had made this new person by stealing her mind's place, and it was Core to whom she'd come for advice.

Core sat in one of the special wheelchairs used when her kind were topside, a special covering over the lower half of her body allowing for a slow but steady application of water. Drying out wasn't fatal to Kalindans, but it itched like crazy.

"What is it that you want of me?" Core asked the angelic creature.

"I want to know what I am becoming, and why," she answered simply.

"And you think I can tell you?"

"Perhaps not. But I think that if you do not know, then nobody does."

Core sighed. "It is a very complex case, my dear. I can't say for certain, but I have some ideas."

"You know who I am, at least. Or was." It wasn't a question.

The Kalindan shifted uncomfortably in the chair, not from the posture or from being out of the water but from the conversation. She wondered why she was feeling so odd talking to this Amboran girl.

"I know who you
were,
at least in part. A bit of the personality remains. What I don't know is how much you can understand, or will accept. I am not a mystic, nor am I much of a believer in gods and supernatural occurrences. You understand that?"

Jaysu sensed the Kalindan's discomfort but ignored the skepticism. "Who was I?"

"Your name was, rather ironically, Angel. Angel Kobe," Core told her, pronouncing it Ko-bay, as the original had. "They told me that the Well of Souls sometimes exhibited what some people thought of as a sense of humor. You were called 'angel,' and now you are becoming one."

The sound of the name stirred something within her. It sounded familiar, like some comfortable garment she'd always had but had lost and now discovered again. There was also something else, something just
beyond
her that stirred at its sound, but she could not hold on to it long enough to understand anything about it. Best to continue.

"What was I—back there?"

"What you are now. A mystic. Priestess, nun, reverend, minister, whatever. Different religion, different god, but it's rather astonishing how the job remains pretty much the same regardless."

"I had a flock? I was a spiritual adviser?"

"Well, not exactly. You were too young for that, but you were on your way to doing that, yes. You were born and raised into a kind of religious order, and that was what you were to be and, in fact, what you
wished
to be. So, in a sense, what you have here is very much what you would have had if you had never found the Well World, only without wings."

That startled her. She'd never considered that she hadn't been of the same people. "Can you show me what I used to look like?"

Core shrugged. "I can show you roughly what you looked like. At least, I can show you a picture of a young female of the same race." She turned in the chair, and gnarled, webbed hands reached out for a console and pressed a sequence on a control panel. "Type forty-one, female, age approximately sixteen," she ordered. The screen above the console flickered, and then on the screen there was a three-dimensional color picture of a young Terran-type girl, totally naked and unadorned. This was a classification file, not a travelogue.

She studied the photo, fascinated. The girl looked so— bare, so
vulnerable.
No wings, no talons, funny flat feet, hair that could only be decorative considering where it was. She was not impressed.

"That is what I was?"

"Essentially, yes."

"And that is also what you were?"

Core coughed nervously. "No, not exactly. The others that you met here, most of
them
were either males or females of that type, although not all."

"I thought you were a different sort of creature than the others. There is a different sense about you. I sense a deep alienness that goes beyond the various races of this world. If I may ask—just what
were
you?"

Core sighed and turned back around to face her. "If you must know, I was a machine. It will do no good to explain further since it is a far different sort of machine than you know of here. Closer to this computer that I am using, but different. Far worse than this computer, really, because, like it, I had to obey whatever commands were given me, but unlike it, I was self-aware. I could think, I could analyze and make judgments, and that was bad since I had to carry out my orders even if I knew they were evil."

"Were they? Evil, I mean?" She had the distinct sensation that Core didn't have the same sort of value judgments that she had.

"Yes and no," the Kalindan admitted. "I was detached from good and evil. I couldn't move, I couldn't influence much on my own, so I was left to think a lot but not observe behavior. I knew the definitions of right and wrong but had no moral compass, no moral sense."

"And do you now?" the Amboran asked, wondering why she was making uncomfortable the only one she thought could help her. Maybe it was just in her nature to minister, she thought, but then again, maybe it was an attempt to find out if, by befriending or being befriended by this creature, she might not be selling her soul.

It was a question Core had been thinking long and hard on. "In one sense, yes. But I have a lot to learn and still limited experience. There are many things I like about this body, about being truly alive, but there are also things that frustrate and disturb me. I am trying to learn."

It was an honest answer; she could sense that. She understood by now that nobody could lie to her, not really. Oh, they could
tell
lies, but she would always know. Odd how she could read even alien intent with absolute certainty yet be unable to get beyond and into the inner mind and soul of even one of her own people.