The Deep Dark Well (12 page)

Then the words of the
robot penetrated and she looked in shock at the creature.

"Don't tell me
you're going to shave and scour me?" she asked, her mouth hanging open,
images of tridee views of prisoners dancing in her head.

"Nothing so
drastic, mistress," said the robot.  "Merely an antiseptic shower and
a body scan.  Now, if you would please, the master is waiting."

Pandi walked in front
of the robot off of the car, her sharp eyes scanning the area for anything that
she might be able to help her to gain her freedom.  All that met her eyes were
more of the empty benches, planters with flowers growing in them, and some
centipede like maintenance robots that were watering and pruning the rampant
growth in the boxes. What might have been a row of com links or computer
terminals were lined against the far wall.  The temperature was absolutely
perfect, she thought, not too warm or cold, but just right on her bare skin. 
Then she wondered whether the people who used to live here went unclothed as a
common practice.  Maybe her own nudity would have passed unnoticed on this,
this whatever.  At least the robots didn't wear clothes, though their lack of
facial features and no noticeable secondary and primary sex characteristics
rendered them beyond the need of clothes in any type of moral system.

"This way,
mistress," said the robot, leading the way to a wide door that led into a
large, red walled cylinder.  Pandi followed the machine obediently, the
flanking robots leaving her no choice.  The red floor of the conveyance was
cushioned and warm, and an outstretched hand proved the walls to be made of the
same, silky smooth material.  She turned quickly as she sensed the door closing
behind her, and to her wonder it seemed as if nothing occupied the doorway, the
room beyond shifting as the lift moved without a sense of motion.  Cautiously
reaching out with her hand, she soon found that something that seemed to be
made of solid matter did indeed occupy the doorway, protecting them from a fall
out of the quickly moving lift.

Then the lift was
through the ceiling and traversing the thick plate of matter that was the floor
of the gate room above.  And then there were again wonders to behold, as the
enormous hall of wormholes spread before her.

"How many?"
she asked, staring at the hall of gates, four tiers of wormholes, lifts and
stairs, a concourse that must have once swarmed with travelers on their way to
thousands of destinations among the stars.

"There are one
thousand, two hundred wormhole gates in each hall," answered the robot.

"And how many
halls?"

"Exactly one
hundred thousand."

"But that means
there are millions of gates," she said incredulously.

"Exactly twelve
million gates in total," said the robot as the hall disappeared below and
the lift entered another thick section of decking.  "Plus the few gates in
hidden areas of the
Donut
."

"Twelve million
gates," she said in a strained voice, "all leading to different
planets, different stars."

"No more than half
the gates were ever in operation," said the robot, "before the
fall."

"What do you mean,
the fall?" she asked, looking the robot in the face, for the hundredth
time wondering what had happened to all the people who should have thronged
this structure.

"The master will
answer your questions," said the robot as the doors were flung silently
open.  A long hall was laid before them, seeming to go on endlessly, blue doors
set in red walls giving scale to the scene.

"And the, the
Master
,
is in this direction I assume," she said.

"After a quick
stop in the cleansing rooms, of course," answered the robot.

"Of course,"
she replied.  "Lead on, McDuff."

"I thought you had
named me Robbie,” said Robbie, "but I am programmed to reply to whatever
one of the race deigns to call me."

The perfect slave race
, she thought, as she
followed the robot down the hall.  Not capable of revolt, it would seem, not
programmed to yearn for freedom, like a true human.

*    *    *

Watcher waited for the
arrival of the visitor, impatient in the way of a creature that had been
engineered for nearly infinite patience, who had waited what seemed like an
infinite time for someone to grace his presence.  Or was it a nearly infinite
time of fear for his existence, that those that created him might come back to
end his biological immortality. 
Surely they wouldn't have resorted to this
kind of ploy
, he thought as he had watched the woman shower under the
antiseptic jets of warm fluid.  Not to have gone to all the trouble to
duplicate the archaic spacesuit.  Not to have trained the woman to pretend to
be what she was, or to send something back through the wormhole gate to destroy
the ship that had traveled back so far through subspace, along the inverse
arrow of time.

Once again he checked
the multiple scans that had been performed on her body while she washed
herself.  No implants of any kind.  Genetic structure of an unaltered human, a
kind that hadn't existed for tens of millennium at the very least.  No nanites
in her blood stream or organs.  If she was a plant of some kind, then they had
gone to great lengths to make her the way she was.  Maybe she was some kind of
undercover operative from one of the many powers that were again rising among
the surrounding stars.  Or maybe she was even sent by
Him
, the one he
feared the most in all the universe.

But she was so
beautiful, in her natural, unaltered human state, and he was so lonely for the
physical touch of a fellow being, even if she could not hope to connect with
him on an intellectual level.

The door opened, and in
she strode, graceful as one of the many cats aboard the
Donut
. 
Yes
,
he thought, just like the orange fur ball he held on his lap, stroking it as it
purred contentedly.  His final test, the beast was remarkably responsive to the
feelings of Watcher, and could be counted on knowing whether someone was a
friend or foe.

He watched her
expressions as she walked in, not shyly in nakedness, but as if she was the
master here.  Her intense blue eyes were deep as pools of water in the
zoological sections, her hair as red as the energy fields that protected the
open gates.  Smile lines on her face, around her eyes and mouth, a sign that
she was not a youth, from the times when people still aged before their
hundredth year.

"Welcome," he
said, in the long lost dialect that the computer had taught him while he waited
for her to arrive.  "Welcome, and be at rest."

*    *    *

Pandi didn't believe
she had ever seen such a creature, or even dreamed of such.  Not that he was
all that different in overall appearance from most men she had seen.  Tall, at
least two meters from what she could judge with him seated in a large,
overstuffed chair.  His body was muscular like a football player she had dated
in college, a linebacker that one.  And all the muscles seemed to flex and
relax in the proper places just like any other human.  His white complexion was
unmarred and perfect in contrast to the skin of some unknown carnivore that
covered the chair.  Human stock at least.

Then the differences
came to fore, especially when viewing his head.  Strong chin, topped by almost
razor thin lips, thin nose with large flaring nostrils.  Cranial capacity much
larger than any human she had ever seen, high forehead and bald rounded dome. 
Pointed ears on the side of his head, with thick, drooping lobes.  Some kind of
unknown organs, small and button like, between eyes and ears. No eyebrows, in
fact no hair of any kind on his body.  A pleasant scent seemed to rise from
him, exciting and attracting her even more.  Her eyes met his, round, pink orbs
that seemed to look right into her soul, sparkling with an intelligence beyond
her comprehension.

Not ugly
, she thought. 
Actually very handsome in an exotic sort of manner.  Her thoughts turned to
what sex with this man might offer, especially since he seemed to be the only
eligible partner on this,
Donut
, or whatever they called it.  Her eyes
flicked uncontrollably to his groin, and a great smile broke out on her face as
she noticed the fat, orange cat that the man stroked with one delicate, six
fingered hand.

"That is a
beautiful kitty, if I have ever seen one," she said looking up into his
fascinating eyes, remembering with surprise the accented speech he had greeted
her with.  Alabaman through and through.  Not that he was ever likely to have
seen the Yellowhammer State.

"You like cats,
then?" Said the perfectly accented voice, the gentle hand eliciting a deep
purr from the furry creature in his lap.  Pandi felt a thrill course through
her body at the sensual sight of man pleasuring animal, wondering how those
delicate looking human but not quite human hands would feel on her own skin. 
That thought brought up another feeling, guilt to the bottom of her sluttish
soul, as she remembered that her lover had died just hours ago.  Or was it
thousands of years ago?  Whatever it had been in reality, it had still been
only a couple of hours as far as her perceptions went, and already she was
contemplating jumping into bed with a man she hadn't even dreamed existed those
few hours ago.

*    *    *

Watcher noticed how her
face dropped, wondering if he had said or done something that had disturbed her
in some manner.  His empathetic sense read the emotions flowing through her
brain.  Excitement and exhilaration, mixed with sorrow and fear.  And why
wouldn't she be sorrowful and afraid.  Lost to the world she knew, in a place
that she really did not understand.

"I would like to be
your friend," he said, wondering if the presence of the robots might have
been too much for her, wanting to make her comfortable.

"R1," he said
and another of the robots stepped into the room.  It was the Prime Robot, the
machine he thought of as his major domo.  "All of the robots are to please
leave and go to the maintenance center, and await my instructions."

The robot started to
protest, but he stopped it with a quickly raised hand.  "I will be fine. 
I feel this woman is no threat to me."

*    *    *

Pandi heard the
high-pitched burst of communication from the superman before her.  His hand
moved in a blur and he fired another quick burst in an unknown language, and
the robots turned and walked out of the room, the door closing behind them.

"How long?"
she heard her voice ask, feeling detached from even the movement of her own
vocal cords.

"That depends on
what year you are from," said the superman. 

"2087," she
replied in a hollow voice, her mind finally realizing that she would never see
her family again.  Her father, her mother, her sister, would never know that
anything had happened to her beyond her being listed as missing and presumed
dead.  Never to visit her brother's grave.

"The twenty-first
century," said Watcher with wonder in his voice.  "The true
beginnings of the race’s expansion into space.  The frontier."

"How long?"
she said again.

"By the Julian
calendar of old Earth it is the year 48136," he said in a gentle tone,
watching her closely.

"48136," she
said in a hushed voice.

"46,049 years, to
be exact," he continued.

"Forty-six
thousand and forty-nine years," she said.  "Maybe I need to sit
down."

Watcher pushed the cat
aside despite its protesting meow, moving to her side and grasping an elbow,
moving her into the chair he had just vacated.  She let herself go limp in the
most relaxing chair she had ever had the pleasure to sit, so relaxing that she
felt like she could let it all go.  Emotions long bottled up got the best of
her, the sadness and grief of losing everything she knew in the chasms of time
she had traversed.  Never to return.  She had never faced a situation from
which even the possibility of return was excluded.  Until she had entered the
shimmering tunnel.

"I wish I had
never jetted into that damned tunnel," she sobbed.  "I should have
gone ahead and died in my own time."

Hot tears streamed down
her freckled cheeks, as she watched the naked form of the superman walk
gracefully across the soft floor, hands reaching to a wooden cabinet and
lifting a glass carafe from the top shelf.  He poured some of a golden,
sparkling fluid into a fine crystal goblet.  Turning on his heel, he brought
the glass to her and placed it in her hand.

"What, what is
this?" she asked through her sobs.

"Drink it,"
he said calmly in the accent of home.  "It will make you feel much
better."

"Can't make me
feel worse," she agreed, lifting the goblet with the intent of chugging
the liquid.  But when the first taste of the sparkling fluid hit her taste
buds, she slowed and savored the flavor.  As if the elfin wines of Tolkien had
found expression in the future.  Deliciously sweet, but not sugary.  A warm
feeling spread through her throat and into her chest and stomach, carrying a
golden glow of well being with it.  Her spirits lifted as the sparkling wine
spread through her system.