The Deep Dark Well (20 page)

I will not be helpless.
  But helpless was what
he would be if he slept.  And if he didn’t sleep the pain would get worse and
worse.  It felt as if his brain were full, and about to burst from the
overload.  That brought a grin to his face, the imagery of his magnificent mind
packed full and unable to handle any more information.  The grin brought a
renewal of the agonizing pain.

“To me, my minions,” he
ordered in a gasp.  They had to take him to safety, before he passed out where
his enemy could find him. 
Why had the creators made me so?
  Why was
sleep even a necessity? 

His last waking thought
was that the robots had gotten to him, as one of them picked him up and started
to carry him from the room, to safety.

*    *    *

Pandi awoke with a
start, aware of something watching her, something cold and soulless.  She kept
her eyes shut, trying to take in her surroundings by hearing alone.  Nothing. 
Not even the birdlings singing in the trees.  She could tell from the
illumination through her eyelids that it was still a simulation of day in the
chamber.  So something had caused the birdlings to become silent, to fly off
and hide.

Her hand loosely held
the pistol grip of the assault rifle.  If she remembered right it was still set
to burst fire, with mini-shape charges loaded.  She shifted her other hand to
the fore grip, ready to fire in an instant.

“She is awake,” said a
robotic voice.  She gauged its location, preparing to move in an instant.

“Then why does she lie
there?” asked another robotic voice.

Pandi sprung into
action, her eyes opening as she swung the barrel of the weapon toward the
voices.  Her first image was of robots, such as those who had been searching
for her.  Her second image was of a burst of mini-shape charges hitting the
chest of the robot on the right, as her finger quickly pulled the trigger.  The
rifle bucked slightly in her hands, the perfect balance and shape keeping the
barrel on target.  Flares of white fire sprung into being as holes appeared in
the chest plate of the machine.  Sparks flew as the robot froze in position,
its systems totally disrupted by major damage to its central core.

“Wait,” yelled the
other robot as it dived for cover, disappearing into the bushes as her next
burst followed it.  She thought she had gotten one round into its shoulder
before it quickly crawled out of sight.

On her feet in an
instant, she threw herself into cover, her eyes scanning the brush for the
first hint of a robot.  Nothing moved, but that didn’t mean much in the thick
foliage.

“Why didn’t you warn
me?” she whispered.

“It did not seem that
you needed warning,” said the computer.

“What do you mean, I
didn’t need warning?  Those were his damned robots out there.  If I hadn’t
woken when I had, they would have had me.”

“Who would have had
you?”

“His robots. 
Vengeance’s robots.”

Pandi tried to keep her
ears and eyes focused on her surroundings.  She checked her rifle once again,
switching the load to mini-grenades, then the selector to single. 
Might as
well see what this thing can do.

She aimed at the brush
the robot had disappeared into and squeezed off a shot.  The rifle phutted
under the slight recoil.  Grenades didn’t need the velocity of armor piercers,
obviously.

Her thoughts were
interrupted by a thick boom and flare of white fire.  Pieces of bush were
thrown in all directions, burning fiercely. 
Better not fire that at
something too close.

“Mistress Pandi,”
yelled a robotic voice.  “We mean you no harm.”

“Go to hell,” she
yelled back, firing a pair of grenades toward the voice.  The double booming of
impact rolled concussion waves across the clearing.  She wondered if she had
hit it.  How would one know if a robot had been damaged in a firefight?  It
probably wouldn’t cry out in pain, or yell for a medic.

“Mistress, please,”
cried a voice from another direction.  “We are not the servants of Vengeance.”

She readied to fire at
the new voice when the computer interrupted her.

“They speak the truth,”
it said.  “They are not the machines of the being called Vengeance.”

“Then, they’re
Watcher’s robots?”

“Yes.  I would not have
allowed Vengeance’s robots to come near you without warning.”

“Pandi,” yelled a
familiar voice from the far brush.  From the sound of it coming from far back
in the forest.  Smart, she thought.  Not giving me a close target.

“So that’s Watcher out
there, yelling my name?”

“Yes.  The being known
as Watcher is one hundred meters to your front.”

“Then where is
Vengeance?”

“The being known as
Vengeance is not available at this time.”

“Which means he is
nowhere near?”

“The being known as
Vengeance…”

“I know,” she said in
exasperation, “is not available at this time.”

“Pandi,” cried the
voice again, a little closer this time.  “Pandi, it’s me, Watcher.  I worried
about you.  I thought
he
might have gotten to you.”

“He did, dammit,” she
cried back.  “Thanks to you disappearing like you did, and leaving me
unprotected.”

“I am sorry.”  The
voice was very close now, no more than a dozen meters inside the forest on the
other side of the clearing.  Definitely within her range.  “I did not mean to
leave you for him to find.  It is a weakness I suffer, that forces me into
slumber at times not of my own choosing.

“I feel stupid, talking
to you while hiding in the bushes.  Will you agree to not destroy me if I come
out where we can talk, face to face?”

“Do not go out there,
master,” said a robotic voice to the rear of Pandi.  “Wait until we have
disarmed her.”

She spun around,
switching the rifle to mini-shapes, pulling the trigger over and over again.

“Do not touch her,”
ordered Watcher.  “If she feels more secure being armed, she can carry arms.”

“Damn right I feel more
secure,” she screamed back.  “You’ll have to kill me, to take these guns from
my cold dead fingers.”

“I’m coming out,”
called Watcher, as Pandi brought her rifle up to cover the figure moving out
into the clearing.  She kept the barrel centered on his body as her eyes looked
him over.

Suspicion raged in her
mind.  He looked the same as Vengeance.  But of course a clone of one would
look exactly like the other, except for the changes brought on by the
differences in environment.  His clothing was different, light colored
over-clothes.  But it would be easy to change clothes. 

He walked closer, a shy
smile on his face.  The barrel of the rifle never wavered, keeping his center
mass in its aim.  He showed no fear, even though she knew she could splatter
him across the clearing before he could react, or his robots could come and
save him.

His eyes drew her
notice, the eyes that were so calm and kind, unlike the hate filled orbs of
Vengeance.  Then his wonderful scent took her attention away from all else.

“It is you,” she said,
the barrel of the rifle dropping to point to the ground.

“You may keep your
weapons,” he said with a smile.  “Is it OK for my servants to come out, without
your destroying any more of them.”

“Of course,” she
replied.  “I’m sorry I destroyed any of them.”

“That’s OK.  They’re
cheap and easy to manufacture.  My servants.  Gather around me.”

A dozen robots stepped
from the brush around the clearing.  Pandi flinched as two stepped from the
brush on either side of her, walking quickly to join their master. 
They
could have taken me anytime.
  Then she noticed one of the gathering robots
was missing an arm, while another had blast scaring on its back plate.  She
felt guilty for a moment, before noticing that the robots didn’t seem to feel
their injuries.

“We need to talk,” said
Watcher, walking to her and extending his hand.  She grasped it as he drew her
along with him.  “You may be able to help me.  There is much about my situation
that confuses me, and an outsider may have the answer.”

There was a lot that
confusion swirling through her mind as well.  But she felt safer than she had
in quite a while.  After all, she was surrounded by the robotic servants of the
being known as Watcher.  And, she thought as her free hand patted her rifle,
she was no longer helpless.

*    *    *

“What kind of dreams do
you have?” asked Pandi, sitting next to Watcher near the edge of the forest.  A
herd of some kind of grazing beasts cropped the reddish grass not more than
fifty yards away. 
They look like single horned deer
, she thought,
or
unicorns
, until one took in the clawed feet that shuffled over the grass. 
Developed with much better weapons than most of the herbivores she was used to.

“I have not had a dream
in thousands of years,” said Watcher, his own gaze following the herbivores. 
“I know I used to have them.  In fact, I was told in my youth that my dreams
were on the whole more vivid than those of normal humans.  Something to do with
my improved memory system.”

“And how has your
memory been since you stopped having them?”

“Overall very good. 
But, there have been some problems.”

“Like black outs?”

“Yes,” he said, his
eyes fixing on the ground.  “Black outs.  Complete and total black outs.  I go
to sleep and do not wake for a day or more, with no memory of what had occurred
through that time.

“I worry that
he
might someday capture me, while I am lost in the depths of black sleep.  And
you know of
his
methods.”

“Damn right I do,” she
replied, her body shuddering at the thought, her touch making sure the rifle
was still at hand.

“He will not get to you
while I am around,” answered Watcher, his eyes looking into hers.

“But you say you are
only around half the time.  You have no control the other half, while Vengeance
is in control of everything.  Except for the damned computer, it seems.”

“That also troubles
me,” he said, his face looking up at the fusion point that substituted for the
sun.  “The computer obeys me, as it should.  I am the last authority on this
station, at least when I am awake.  That is the way it is supposed to be.  But
even I am not able to get some answers from it.  Important answers.”

“Like the whereabouts
of Vengeance, when you are awake?”

“Yes.  He is always
unavailable at this time.  No matter how I ask the question, I am never able to
get any other kind of answer.”

“I received the same
answer,” said Pandi, “when I asked about your whereabouts, while on the run
from Vengeance.”

“But, I was on the
station,” said Watcher.  “I had to be.  I awoke in the same bed in which I fell
asleep.”

“So there’s something
here the computer doesn’t want you to know.  Doesn’t want anyone to know.

“Could you let me have
a go at the computer?” she asked.  “Is there a control center where I could
directly interact with it?”

“Of course,” he
answered.  “There are many such centers aboard the station.  Lack of planned
redundancy was not a flaw of the designers.”

“Whatever happened to
those designers?  And all of the other people who used to live and work here? 
You said civilization fell, but how?  The station seems to be fully
functional.”

“It is,” agreed
Watcher.  “I have no idea how civilization fell.  My memory is blank in that
area.  All I remember is that the station was full of people one day, and the
next, it was empty.”

“And how much time
passed during this blackout?”

“The computer would not
tell me.  Another of its instances of disobedience.  But I calculated from
looking at the orbits of the surrounding stars, that I had been under for at
least a year.”

“And were there any
more of these long term blackouts?”

“None of that
duration.  But at first they were all at least a month in length, interspersed
with periods of regular sleep, during which I dreamed as normal.  But then the
pattern changed, and the blackouts occurred more frequently, and were short
lived.  And my dreaming stopped.”

“And your memory began
to become spotty, even of things you should have remembered.”

Silence reigned for a
moment, as they both stared out over the grasslands.  She knew that Watcher was
plainly as worried about his own behavior as he was about his nemesis.  She
wondered how she would have dealt with what he had gone through.  Probably by
losing her mind.  And how did she know if he were really sane.  It sounded
almost like multiple personality disorder.

“I’ll help,” she said,
putting a hand on his shoulder.  “You must have some kind of neurological
scanners here on the station.”