The Deep Dark Well (32 page)

As he stepped from the
office complex a group of Hustedean shaped robots stepped through dozens of doors
into the lobby, their weapons leveled at Watcher’s units.  His robots pointed
their weapons back at the others.  Watcher knew that his robots would be gunned
down quickly in an uneven firefight.

“We mean you no harm,”
said one of the robots.  “The mistress wishes for us to escort you to her. 
Your own robots will of course wait here.”

“What if I don’t want
to go?”

“You are free to go
back from whence you came,” said the robot.  “We will insure that you leave,
before coding the gate to not allow your return.”

She’s learning fast
, thought Watcher,
nodding in approval.

“OK.  I’ll come
along.”  He sent a thought through his computer link, ordering his own minions
to come and get him if he didn’t send a signal at regular intervals.  Then he
followed the lead robots, as a couple of dozen of the remainder fell in around
him.  The rest maintained their positions, making sure that Watcher’s robots
didn’t try to follow.

Chapter 16

It takes a thousand
years to build an Empire, only to watch it fall overnight.  Such is the sorrow
that is thankfully unknown to the builders of Empire.

Treatise on the First
Galactic Empire

Pandi watched the
replay of the memory banks once again, fascination with the macabre gluing her
eyes to the display.  The robots rampaged through the Hustedean part of the
station, smaller versions of the combat models she had fought earlier.  The
defending robots didn’t have a chance, as the warrior bots destroyed them in
droves, before turning their weapons on the screaming, fleeing beings they
encountered.  Hustedeans fell everywhere in crumpled bleeding clumps.  The
robots went for head shots of any they had dropped, making sure.  Making sure
that nothing lived.

Soldiers entered the
scene, Hustedeans and humans dressed in the same kind of battle armor she had
taken from the armory, carrying assault rifles, grenade launchers and heavier
weapons.  A firefight ensued, sentients and robots blasting away at each
other.  The sentients took a toll, actually winning on a number for number
basis.  But more of the robots appeared, thousands more.  Pandi knew this scene
was being repeated all over the station.  Millions were dying every minute,
billions per hour.  A slaughter, and the defenders of the humans were beginning
to lose ground.

Again the scene
switched, to one of the great wormhole gate corridors.  Robots and humans
battled back and forth across the corridor, filling the floor with bodies and
piles of broken robots.  Humans and other aliens came through the gates,
orienting themselves for a moment as they made room for the next arrivals, and
then wading into the melee.  The holo advanced time, indicating that over an
hour had gone by.  The piles of bodies covered the floors, benches and
planters.  But no more reinforcements were coming through the gates, and the
robots were still massing in the corridor.

They started lining up
in front of the gates, jumping through in groups.  Assaulting the worlds and
stations those gates were linked to.  It seemed like endless numbers marched
through.  Enough to topple the Galactic civilization.

Again the holo
advanced.  Service robots worked through the station, picking up bodies and the
remains of robots.  Many of the bodies were thrown into disposal chutes, to end
up in the organic reconstruction tanks of the station.  Others were tossed out
airlocks, to fall into orbits around the black hole, eventually to enter the
event horizon and disappear from the universe.  Still others were tossed into
the wormhole gates.

As if they never
existed
,
she thought.  And the robots came back through some of the wormhole gates. 
Some were deactivated, others left open, as the legions of robots walked to
storage rooms and huge armories, shutting themselves down until called again by
their master.

The view switched up to
one of the large screens along the upper edge of the wormhole corridor.  To a
face expanded on that screen, laughing maniacally at the destruction it had
witnessed.  Vengeance, aptly named as he looked at the death and chaos he had
wrought.  His eyes seemed to look into hers, almost as if he were looking
across the millennium to one he knew would eventually come to unravel his
secret.  The holo switched off, as the information from the computer continued
to flood into her mind.

One being
, she thought,
had
been responsible for toppling the entire civilization
.  One paranoid being,
more concerned about himself than the trillions of sentients he had destroyed
outright, or the trillions of others who had died when the basis of their
culture, their survival, had perished.

“Where was Watcher
during all of this?” she asked.

“The being known as
Watcher was not available at this time,” said the computer.  “Whereabouts
unknown.”

Whereabouts unknown? 
His whereabouts were always unknown.  From this beginning, only one of them seemed
to occupy the station at any one time.  But her research had shown that Watcher
couldn’t possibly be a multiple personality.  At least in any way she could
comprehend. 

“Show me information on
mind uploading and the process of augmenting memory through it,” she ordered. 
The first tendrils of information were just entering her mind when she was
interrupted.

“Watcher is in the
vestibule outside,” said one of her robots, part of her interior guard.  “Do
you wish to see him now?”

“OK,” she said as she shut
down the link.  “Go ahead and send him in.”

A couple of robots
preceded Watcher into the room.  Pandi looked him over thoroughly.  His scent
drifted to her, raising desire.  But she had already decided the scent could be
faked. His eyes made her decision.  Not the cruel eyes of the being she had
seen on the holo.  Not the cruel eyes of his
brother
.  She felt her
emotions sweep over her at the proximity of her only friend in this nightmare
future.

Pandi flew into his
arms, hugging him tightly as tears came to her eyes.

“I’m so happy to see
you,” she said, looking up into his eyes.  “I’m sorry about the security, but I
had to make sure this wasn’t a trick of your
brother
.”

“He has been the bane
of my existence,” said Watcher, stroking her hair.  “For as long as I can
remember.”

“He’s been the bane of
trillions,” she replied, her own hands going to his smooth face. 
How could
he be so good
, she thought,
while his brother was so evil?  What did the
scientists do to Vengeance, to make him so different from Watcher?  And why
wasn’t Vengeance mentioned in the Watcher files?  Was he so secret that even
his existence was covered up, until he became all too real to Galactic
civilization
?

“What have you found
out about him?”

“Only that he was
responsible for the fall of the civilization that created this marvelous
station.”

“Vengeance?” said
Watcher.  “How?”

“What do you really
know of this creature?” asked Pandi.  “Besides being your exact physical
duplicate?”

“I didn’t even know he
existed,” said Watcher, releasing her and walking across the room, his hands
stroking his temples.  “Until I woke up and found the station deserted.”

“And you had these
blackouts before the station, was deserted?”

“Yes,” said the Watcher,
turning to look at her face.  His lips were tight, eyes half closed.  “But
nothing was ever mentioned of a brother, or a clone.  I didn’t find out about
him until much later, years after the station was emptied.”

“Does your head hurt?”
asked Pandi, concerned for the health of her friend.  For such a perfect
specimen, engineered to such strong tolerances, he seemed to have his problems
with health.

“It always hurts when I
think about my
brother
.  It’s as if the very idea of him sickens me. 
Like I have been conditioned to avoid thinking of our link.”

“There may be something
to that,” said Pandi.  “How did you find out about him?”

“I searched the station
for years, both physically and through the computer, trying to find out just
what had happened to everybody.  And I was created to be emotionally healthy. 
At least that is what I was told by the scientists who worked with me.”

“That seems to jive
with the records I have seen so far.  At least the first couple of versions of
you were not emotionally stable.  And they also had problems with your memory
system.”

“I was lonely,” he
continued, tears starting to bead up in his eyes.  “I was conditioned to want
the company of sentient beings.  I was able to make do with the computer, most
of the time, but no matter how well it was programmed it could not take the place
of a living companion.”

“And you searched for
years?” she said, trying to direct him back to the subject at hand.

“Yes, and never found
any trace of the other inhabitants.  But things did change.  Orders of mine
were countermanded, and when I asked the computer what had happened it could
not, or would not, tell me.  And the duration of the black outs increased.  I
thought I was going mad, until I learned of his existence.”

“And how did you learn,
of his, existence?”

“He left a message. 
Running over and over again on a screen that he had programmed in a place I was
sure to visit.  The facility in which I was created.

“He told me who he was,
my brother, though not as weak as I.  He also told me that he had minions,
living beings to help him.  Many had been sent to other worlds, but would come
back from time to time through the gates.”

“And you believed him,”
said Pandi, shaking her head in sorrow.  “You rigged the security system to
alert you whenever someone came through one of the still active gates, so you
could destroy them before they became a threat.  And enforced your own exile.”

“That is correct,” he
said, tears running down his cheeks.  “I didn’t want to kill, but the paranoia
he had implanted in my mind took hold, and I felt threatened by all intruders.”

“While he killed those
who came through when he was awake.”

Pandi walked to the far
wall as she sorted her thoughts.  Her mind alerted the robots to be ready.  She
wasn’t sure what was going to happen in the near future, but it was not likely
to be pleasant.

“Why did you allow me
to live?” she said, turning back to face him, noting the locations of her
bodyguards.  “Why me after all the thousands you must have killed?  It couldn’t
have been love at first sight.  Not when I was wrapped up in that coffin of a space
suit.”

“You came through the
gate from the past,” he answered, his eyes pleading with her.  “The ship that
had continued through subspace, on the backward track of time for thousands of
years.  I didn’t think he would have sent an agent to that dead end.  For what
purpose?

“And besides,” he said,
his hands reaching toward her, “I was so lonely.  And I did fall in love with
you, after I had seen you.  After I had seen the way you handled yourself
against the security forces I did not control.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t
just loneliness,” she said, backing away from him.  “I was the first safe woman
you had seen.  Or at least you had convinced yourself of it.  And your lonely
mind wanted someone to love.”

“No,” he said, shaking
his head.  “That was not it at all.  At least not after the first day.  After I
learned to know you.  To spend time with you.”

And I was his first
love
,
she thought. 
For all of his intellect, his long life, with all of his
superior abilities, he was still an adolescent at heart.  Looking for love, the
only sane being on this entire huge artifact.

“Why are the two of you
not allowed to interact?” she asked, embarrassed for him helping her to change
the subject.  “Why must you go into a black out for him to appear?  And why is
he never around when you are?”

“I wish I could tell
you,” he groaned, his hands reaching for his head as he sank to his knees.  “I
wish I knew myself.  Why does it hurt so much to think about this?”

“It always hurts when
you think about the connection between you and Vengeance?”

“But not this much,” he
said through clenched teeth.  “It feels like my brain is being torn apart. 
Stop it,” he screamed.  The robots began to move toward him, before Pandi waved
them back.  Guilt at letting this happen to him warred with the necessity of
it.  She had to know.  He had to know.  And it only seemed that by forcing the
issue could she ever know for sure.

“You and Vengeance are
never on the station at the same time,” she continued, as if she were ignoring
his pain.  “One of you is either off the station or is unconscious while the
other roams, awake and alert.  Your paths never cross.  What synchronizes these
events?”