07. Ghost of the Well of Souls (17 page)

They almost met disaster right off. There was a
sudden movement from below almost before they could get behind a crate and freeze. A large, dark, menacing shape arose so close to them they could almost touch it. It was, strangely, a familiar sort of figure, even though it had a leathery soft, spiral shell-like body and lots of tentacles, each apparently designed to do a particular job. More distinctive was the eye, which was on a muscle-driven version of a lazy Susan, able to pop out of the soft shell and pivot in any direction, or come far enough out so that, if both eyes were so situated, it would have three-dimensional vision instead of multiple vision.

What the hell? That's a damned Ghoman!
Ari exclaimed.

Ming thought a moment.
No, it's a Chalidang. I'd bet anything on that.

But
—
But they're the
same!
They 're absolutely the same!

Maybe. I never was close enough to a Ghoman to be able to tell. I admit, though, that all creatures with ten tentacles, a soft spiral shell, and a unique eye like that look alike to me. So Gamins and Chalidangers look the same, maybe
are
the same. So what?

So the only thing Josich changed was its sex, which is something we've been familiar with here, too. Hmph!

She understood what he meant. Why did Josich get to remain pretty much the same creature while they were translated into such a different race and biome? It didn't seem fair. In fact, it didn't seem like the system here at all.

You know
—
I
never thought of this, but if Josich had come in as a male, then he'd have been a dead shellfish. They already
had
an Emperor, and the bloodline was pretty firmly established. But as a female, as essentially a courtesan and vamp, as a she, Josich was able to worm her way right into the social structure. A social structure that's probably not too far off the Ghoman style, either, judging from what we've been told. Jeez. It's almost as if the bastard somehow managed to
plan
it this way!

It was a sobering thought, and if it contained even a gram of truth, it was unsettling. How come the Well did things fairly randomly for everybody else but basically cooked to order for the Ghoman monarch?

What do you think? Could we take one that size in a fight?
she wondered.

Sure. Just give us a fully charged and operable laser rifle and it's no sweat. Hand-to-tentacle, though, I think we're outnumbered ten to two."

The creature was above them, perhaps five levels up, and they feared for a moment that it would go all the way and find the cut, but it was after something else entirely, and they couldn't see what it was.

You notice how cold to the touch some of these are?
Ari asked her.
It's like they have refrigeration units or something.
But that was impossible, not in a semitech hex. Or was it?

Now that Ari pointed it out, they
did
all seem cold to the touch, yet the water temperature wasn't that bad, at least to a Kalindan.

They both suddenly realized that this was quite unusual in and of itself. Yabbo was a warm water hex, and Kalinda's water was quite cold. This was more Kalindan temperature than Yabbo, yet there was filtered water allowed to enter and leave the dome in an automatic manner, as with the Kalindan consulate down the street.

These supercooled crates were the ice in the giant glass bubble.

But how could you maintain it in this kind of hex?

Has to be some kind of chemical doing it, perhaps a chemical bath,
Ming guessed.
They want to keep something frozen yet in a place you'd never expect it to be.

Well, I surely don't think it's fresh veggies, and if it's Ghoman food, then where's the army to eat it?

There was no longer any question about it. They had to somehow see the contents of at least one of these containers.

There seemed to be half a dozen people inside what they were now thinking of as the warehouse, at least half of them Chalidang. This was unsettling because they had not seen any Chalidangers in Yabbo before, even in their long stakeouts, nor did the nasty creatures maintain any official presence within the hex. Conversation amongst the warehouse crew didn't help; they were simply not close enough for the translator to accurately pick up and translate the sounds into coherent phrases, although the occasional word drifted up to them, some of which raised as many questions as they answered.

For one thing, at least one of them either was an army general, or else they spoke a lot about generals. The latter seemed unlikely, but what would a high-ranking officer of such a faraway force be doing here? They were much too valuable to risk in some simple clandestine spy operation. Generals either fought battles or remained in headquarters plotting strategies. They didn't show up in the middle of nowhere with no force at all.

The other familiar word that shot out from the usual banalities was "Kincaid." It was only said once, and never repeated, so they weren't sure they had heard it right, that it wasn't just a coincidental combination of sounds, but it seemed more likely to be what they thought.

One thing was clear: Core had been wrong to ignore this place. Something big was being set up here, something very nasty.

When the dark, tentacled shape again descended, passed them, and rejoined the others below, they rose a bit and went over for a closer examination of the crates. There was enough light from the lower areas bleeding up to allow for some vision, but for the life of them, neither could figure out how the things were fastened together. It seemed they'd been cast in a single, seamless, solid form. But even with the cold, they did get a different sense as they passed over them, a sensation they had almost missed because of that very chill and because it was simply too pervasive.

Whatever was inside was emitting an electromagnetic field very similar to a bottom-feeding fish that might take flight by burying itself in the sand. But these cases would hold some very large fish.

Ming had an awful thought.
Ari, about how big would you say that Chalidanger was?

He thought a moment.
Maybe two meters, not counting the mostly retractable tentacles. Why?

And how big would you say each of these crates is?

He saw where she was going with this.
Oh, no! You're not suggesting that each of these contains a Chalidang soldier?

Well, it fits. And I know of some races back in the universe that can be put into deep cryogenic sleep for an almost indefinite period with no harm.

Yeah, but that's using the highest of high-tech devices to maintain and monitor them, and even then, only certain races could do it and not be killed or at least brain damaged. You're suggesting we have a ton of Chalidang's finest here packed in little more than dry ice.

I wish we knew more about the Ghomas, damn it! I mean, suppose they
could
use that highest of high-tech to create these devices and seal in the quick frozen soldiers, then ship them here. If the freezing could be maintained on a chemical basis, and if they could be awakened by a chemical additive or antidote, well, it might make sense.

Let's get real here for a minute,
he objected.
You're suggesting that Chalidang freeze-dried a small army and then is
mailing
it bit by bit to this storage depot?

Hey, they launched an invasion army with full naval support before, and it telegraphed their every move and they got their tails whipped. Think about it. Your best soldiers, your highest trained, all thawed out and suddenly appearing in a hex near you.

Ari thought about it. If true, it was diabolically clever and very much up to Josich's reputation, yet he couldn't buy it.
I mean, how many crates are here, stacked one on top of the other? A few thousand at best. Not enough to defeat a professional army of defense, even one like ours.

He was right about that, she had to admit.
So, not an army of conquest. Clandestine? Sabotage? Or maybe less a conquering army than an army of occupation?
Now
that
was even more unsettling.

So, if you're right, they've got a pretty good force here, they're running out of room
—
so this must be pretty close to the max—and they've thawed out a general and two aides. That suggests that whatever they're going to do, they're going to do it pretty damned soon.

Cobo—Night

THERE WAS A CERTAIN PEACE TO THE OPEN OCEAN AT NIGHT.

Jaysu didn't like the big ship, even though it was designed for comfort and convenience. She hadn't been taught to appreciate such things; they were a sign of laziness and decadence, an attempt to make heaven out of the here and now without any real sense that there was something higher or greater.

Out here, on the open deck at night, she could appreciate what was really important.

Normally hazy, the sky was for some reason crystal clear over the Cobo deeps this night, and on the Well World, the clear night skies were taken for granted by most of the people. Not by her;
never
by her.

The spectacular sight of millions of stars forming a vast pattern in the sky was good enough, but the swirls of gases and clouds of interstellar material made a clear night a wondrous sight of the heavens.

She had mentioned this at dinner, and one of the passengers—an officious fellow who looked like an orange, vaguely humanoid fish, but was actually a creature of some desert hex—started going on about being in the midst of a globular cluster and adjacent to spectacular twin nebulae that caused such a lit and crowded sky, and on and on and on without any sense of the poetry of the gods inside him. She hadn't any idea what a globular cluster might be, let alone nebulae, but she could see the handiwork of powers greater than she just by looking up, and that work was of great beauty.

She
did
understand, and accept, that each of those was a sun like the one that rose every day, and that around some of those far-off suns there might well be planets, and perhaps even planets with highly developed life-forms, but that was an easier part of her cosmology than reducing beauty to chemical compounds.

She had long gotten her sea legs, as the crew called it, and no longer even thought of the motion of the ship. Fliers would more easily adapt, she knew, because balance was all-important to them, but she still would have preferred to be up there than down here.

She'd thought she lost the wonder of flight when she'd accepted her calling to the priesthood; to have it back and not use it seemed somehow sacrilegious, even though she knew it was just her own impatience.

Carefully using the stretched rope lines for safety's sake, she managed to easily walk around the great vessel and up and down its stairs and decks. It was difficult to think that it had somehow been built, and by the hands and perhaps tentacles and claws of many races working as shipwrights.

The boat—no, it was a
ship,
as one of the crew had explained, since it had a solid superstructure and was stabilized by ballast, whatever that meant—was surprisingly uninhabited for something so huge. Oh, there were cabins capable of holding hundreds of people from a vast number of races, but most were unoccupied. That was not the standard for some routes, it was said, but for this particular run the demand for passengers was always low, while the cargo, which was still the main reason for such a ship's existence, was packed as solidly as it could be. This was because all of the great ocean ships followed one of a very few standardized designs, all of which allowed for some passenger transits and services to match. It was just that where this ship was going, few wanted to travel, and fewer were welcome to travel to them.

She could understand that. Nobody traveled to Ambora, nor would they be welcome if they did, and she had seen at least one Pyron, and the thought of a whole nation of those giant snake creatures wasn't exactly the kind of place most people would be anxious to pay money to visit. There wasn't a whole lot of tourism on the Well World anyway; travel tended to be for business, although a ship like this could and sometimes was used by large groups for local functions and recreational use.

So, hundreds of cabins but only a few dozen passengers. It made the great ship seem somehow empty, and, at night, a little creepy. That was another good reason why she liked being outside during this period. So long as there was access to the skies, she felt she could cope with almost anything, even though the great map in the lounge showed them to be far from land, headed for a long stretch where anything solid would be most likely beyond her flying range. It was not a good thought, nor a secure one.

She walked down to the main deck and forward to the bow area. It was the least congested in terms of ropes and masts and the like, although it was littered with all sorts of things on the deck itself, including small cranes and winches and stuff she couldn't imagine the use for. With the swift forward motion of the ship, even with the roll and rising and falling motion of the bow, it would be easy to take off into the night sky.

The noise of the ship slicing through the great waters masked other sounds, if any existed, save the rattle of things around her caused by the ship's movement and vibration from the big engines.

In spite of the clear night, the sea was hardly gentle; the stiff winds had created a choppy sea, and though the main deck was quite a bit higher than the water, there were points where the bow seemed to dip. There was then an odd shifting feeling, and it seemed the waves would break over the bow and onto the deck. They never quite seemed to make it, but she involuntarily reached out to take hold of the safety guide rope and began to wonder if she shouldn't go inside after all.