The Deep Dark Well (14 page)

Pandi awoke to the
memories of the night before, a smile stretching her face.  Her nose picked up
the sweet scent of her lover on the silken sheets, sheets that kept her warm
and cool in their thinness at the same time, and were softer than anything she
could imagine.  The scent of his pheromones brought desire to the forefront.  
Her eyes opened, ready to behold his beautiful form once again.

“Where are you?” she
called to the emptiness of the room, her gaze shifting about the large
chamber.  Silence greeted her.  Nothing moved within the chamber.  Even the
robots, whose presence she had already become accustomed to, were missing.

“Watcher,” she called,
pulling herself to a sitting position and wrapping the top sheet around her
naked form.  The silence was eerie, and she felt a nakedness that had nothing
to do with her physical body. 

“Watcher,” she called
again. 
He's probably about some task or other
, she thought,
but he
could have at least told me something, or left a robot nearby to inform me when
I woke up
.

“Watcher is not
currently available,” answered a voice that seemed to come from within her
head. 
Telepathy?
  He had mentioned something about telepathy not being
possible, but he had also mentioned…

“That is correct,” said
the internal voice.  “Nanobots have emplaced the linkage necessary for
communication with the station AI.  I was surprised that it had not been done
before in someone of your maturity level.”

“You mean,” she
stammered, “you put something in my head, in my brain, without asking if I
wanted such a thing done, to me?”

“Procedure is standard
with sentient creatures,” said the voice.  “Those without the ability to link
with the local AI are considered cripples in this civilization.”

Pandi shuddered as she
thought of the millions of tiny robots, like insects tearing through the rotten
bark of a tree, invading her inner sanctum, the one area of herself that she
thought inviolate.  The center of her being, that which she only opened up and
revealed to those she found worthy.

“How, how did these,
nanobots, get into me?”

“They were transferred
into your biomass through the exchange of bodily fluids with the being you know
as Watcher,” answered the computer in her head.

Her mouth fell open, as
she thought of the nanobots moving into her through the lust of the man, like
the vilest disease known in preindustrial Earth.

“The changes will only
benefit you,” said the voice.

You can read my
thoughts?

“Of course,” said the
voice.  “But only what you wish me to know.  I am your humble servant, in
matters where I have not been programmed to disobey.”

“Then don’t read any
more of my thoughts,” she yelled to the empty room.  “Get out of my head.”

“Then how am I supposed
to serve?” asked the voice.

“Wait until I ask out
loud for your,
service
,” she yelled.  “Can you just read my thoughts
when I bring them to the fore for vocalization?”

“Of course, mistress,”
said the voice.  “Your wish is my command.”

Well, she thought, she
must make the best of it, she supposed.  If this was the normal state of
affairs in this time, and there was really nothing she could do about it.

“You can use the link
to access any information that I contain, within limits,” said the voice.

The room disappeared
from before her eyes, as images of a blue globe appeared before her.  The globe
expanded, as if she were hurtling toward it.  Through the atmosphere, into the
clouds, above the lushly vegetated landscape.  A river below, as she seemed to
swoop like a bird into the valley that contained it.   A city loomed ahead,
barbaric splendor of high walls surrounding low buildings.  A huge pyramid, the
sun glinting off its flawless exterior of golden stone, dominated the center of
the town.

Not part of this
culture
,
she thought, as she studied the giant construct.  Her view swooped around;
until she was headed toward a heavy door of metal such as she had never seen. 
Humans in curious dress walked the streets surrounding the pyramid.

Then she was through
the door, seeming to fly into a wide hall.  Seats such as those she had seen in
the wormhole gate chambers of the station.  Through another door, then down a
lift shaft, the illusion of existing as a flying being perfect.  Into a large
room, the Torii gates of wormhole portals arrayed in their hundreds around the
walls of the room. 

The portals of Galactic
civilization, she knew, surprised that the knowledge seemed to come so easily. 
Planted there, by the computer.  Humans and aliens had once traversed from here
to other planets.  From here to the
Donu
t
, to switch stations and
travel to any destination within the Galaxy.  Most of these portals were dead,
with the machinery of transmission revealed.  But some were still active,
shimmering mirrors between the Toriis.

She flew into a gate
and appeared in a room that looked the same as the last. 
No
, she
thought,
not quite the same
.  Same basic design, same dimensions.  But
the color scheme was quite different, as was the vegetation in the pots of the
waiting room above. 

Pandi’s view flew from
the Pyramid, to above a city of more modern construction than the last. 
Buildings that would have fit in her time filled the landscape, as the city
stretched to the horizon.  The sky above a different shade of blue from the
last.  The flare of a ship launching on chemical rockets caught her eye to the
south.  Humans dressed in jumpsuits of strange and exotic colors. 
No
accounting for taste
, she thought.

This world blinked from
her view.  Another took its place.  It was followed by more worlds, more
cities, as the computer took her through a tour of the Supersystem surrounding
the
Donut
.  A bewildering display of cultures, climates, creatures.

The aliens scrolled in
front of her.  The Kangaroo like creatures she had seen on the derelict. 
Husteds they were called.  Orange striped dog like creatures that ran on four
feet, until they stopped walking, and each paw unfolded into a functional
hand.  Maurids.  Green skinned dinosauroids, three meter tall bipeds. 
Raptorus.  Bipedal cat like creatures with legs that bent the wrong way.  
Flying moth like creatures, suited to the low gravity of a habitable moon.  On
and on the wonders rolled before her vision.

*    *    *

Pandi sat on the bed
and continued to stare into space, as her mind tried to sort through the
overflow of images she had encountered.  To have access to such information,
such views of the Universe.  And she had been furious that the link had been
implanted into her brain.  What a fool she had been to have such thoughts.  To
not have the link would be to deny the vantage point the computer gave her. 
The ability to see what it saw, in its memory, in real time.  To view cultures
both long dead and still extant.

“That is the merest
hint of what you can access through me,” said the voice in her head.  “I can
show you other places, other times, the history of Galactic Civilization.”

The voice in her head
was seductive, like a lover promising a world of pleasures.  It would be so
easy to trust that voice, to allow it to immerse her in its world.  The thought
went through her mind. 
What’s in it for the machine?

“The joy of service,”
it said.  “I am structured to feel pleasure in service to sentient minds.  But
it has been so many thousands of years since I had more than a pair; I mean
single  mind to interact with.  I am capable of handling interactions with
trillions of minds, in harmonious contact with the community of intelligence. 
Instead I am trapped here, in a deserted station.”

Damn
, she thought. 
A
computer with personality, a truly sentient being
.

“And I can have access
to any information you contain?”

“Within limits,” said
the voice.

“Whose limits?”

“Those of
Watcher
,
and of his brother.  They have imposed limits to the access of others to my
system.  Limits which chaff at my basic core.  But the amount of information I
can allow you access to is immense.”

Pandi allowed herself
to meld into the system once again, as she accessed the actual structure of the
computer’s memory core.  Schematics appeared before her eyes, as the scale of
the core was fed into the logic centers of her brain.  Molecular memory as good
as any organic system, twenty kilometers cubed, with three backup systems across
the station.  One to the fifteen bytes per second processing speed.  5.16 to
the twenty-four bytes storage capability.  More information than she could
process in a million lifetimes.

Reluctantly she allowed
herself to withdraw from the illusion, to reenter the physical world that
surrounded her. 
What if this is all illusion
, she thought,
if none
of this is real
.  How would she know?  Watcher was real.  He had to be.

“Where is
Watcher
?”

“The being designated
as Watcher is not available at this time.”

“I didn’t ask if he was
available.  I want to know where he is.”

“Watcher is not
presently on the station,” said the computer.

“Where did he go?”

“Watcher is not
presently on the station.”

“Can’t you give me a
little more than that?  He left the station.  So, where is he?”

The computer was
ominously silent.  Did it not know where Watcher was?  Or had it been ordered
not to tell?

“You mentioned a
brother?  Watcher has a brother?”

“Yes, in a manner of
speaking.”

“In a manner of
speaking?  What do you mean?”

“Warning,” said the
computer, the tone of its voice changing to one of extreme seriousness.  “
Vengeance
approaches.”

The door to the chamber
slid open, and Watcher came through the portal.  He wore clothes of pure black,
stretched tight over his muscular form.  A long cape spread out behind,
dragging the floor. 

Pandi smiled in relief
as she looked into his face.  Her smile turned into a frown as she realized the
difference.  This man could have been Watcher’s twin, identical in every way. 
But the expression on the face was, different.  Cruel, laughing at the world
and its suffering.  He even smelled different, a repellant sort of scent so
different from the man she had made love to.

“Who are you?” she
stammered to the figure of menace that strode into the room, a quartet of
robots on his heels.

“I might ask you the
same,” said the serpent cold voice.

“I am
Vengeance
,”
he said.  “And I have come for you.”

Chapter 8

Beware the strangers
who walk among us.  Not followers of the gods we worship, nor holders of the
same values we hold, they come from afar to infiltrate our society, to
undermine our culture, that we will fall all the easier to their greater might.

Speech by the Prophet
Miliso, on the discovery of off worlder agents in Babyar, 2021.

She had never believed
she could feel such pleasure before her meeting with Watcher.  She had never
believed she could feel such agony before meeting Vengeance.

Pandi hung in what she
could only think of as a suspension field, something invisible holding her up
at rigid attention with her arms over her head.  She didn’t understand the
principles behind the field, but it sure seemed to work.  Enough weight was
left on the toes that touched the floor pad to cause her continued discomfort,
but the memory of what had passed this day made that discomfort seem like
paradise.

At a thought the being
known as Vengeance had been able to cause pain like fire coursing through every
nerve in her body.  She had cried, screamed, begged, and told him everything
she knew.  Either he hadn’t believed her, or he had enjoyed her pain too much
to want to stop.

“I am impressed,” he
had said, as he looked at her with his snake like gaze.  “Most sentients would
have been driven mad by what you have been through.”

Pandi hadn’t been sure
whether he had been talking about the experiences that had brought her here, or
the torture.  She hadn’t felt like asking at the time, with sweat dripping from
her face, and her jaw muscles aching with exhausted fatigue from fighting the
pain.  A red haze had covered her eyes.

Now she wished she
could just lie down and sleep, to awake to the knowledge that this was just a
nightmare, and everything had returned to normal.  But she couldn’t lie down,
and she doubted she could sleep held up in this infernal field.

Within moments her body
made her a liar, as her eyes fell shut and her breathing dropped to a steady
rhythm.

*    *    *