The Deep Dark Well Page 8
Inauguration Speech of the Autocrat Farraday, 4161 Standard Galactic Year.
She had no way of judging distances here. The floor below could have been twenty kilometers, or a hundred. The walls? The walls could have been any distance as well, in the crystal clear air, or vacuum, of the gargantuan chamber. Then the walls and floors were forgotten as her eyes locked on the first of the giant machines that occupied the room.
An enormous cylinder, kilometers wide, kilometers tall. Another beside it, and another, stretching into seeming infinity from her vantage. Arcs of energy flashed here and there, blinding to the eye. The chamber flashed by, and another came into view, filled with more of the huge cylinders. Pandi seemed to feel the energy they contained.
“These are the Magnetic Field Generators,” said Robbie, answering her unasked question. “They are used to generate the magnetic fields used in energy production on the station.”
“How many?” she asked, as they flew through that chamber and into another filled with the giant cylinders.
“One hundred generators per chamber,” answered the robot, “in arrays twenty five long by four wide. Each section is composed of three thousand such chambers, for a total of 300,000 units per section.”
“Per section? And on the whole station?”
“There are a total of 3,600,000 magnetic field generators in twelve sections.”
Pandi stared as they moved through yet another chamber, and another. Four hundred kilometers per chamber, and the car was moving through them in less than twenty seconds, still accelerating.
“What's the purpose of this system?” she asked. They were moving too fast now to pick up any of the details on the cylinder. The robot didn’t answer for a moment. If possible it would have looked proper with an expression of concentration on its face.
“Watcher orders that you are to be told about this station and the energy it generates.”
Light sprung from the silver visor of the robot as an image formed in the air in front of Pandi. Schematics of cylinders such as those she saw going past, in clear detail. Even larger than she had thought, the cylinder extended through a floor. Large tubes made connections into the cylinder. Smaller toroids connected to the top and bottom of the cylinder. A kilometers long probe extended from the bottom.
“Each generator works in unison with the others in its section,” said the robot.
The view expanded outward, showing the chamber with the one hundred generators within. It expanded again, to an outside view looking up at the station, an image of the magnetic probes, arranged in a section of five by five, forming a larger rectangle of twenty five generator sections. The view expanded again, to show the how the rectangles were arranged in rows of four along the length of the outside of the station. Out again, to show the thirty sections of fours.
“Three hundred thousand generators per section,” said the robot.
The view expanded again, like a camera moving at incredible speed, tilting to bring the station into a new perspective. A ring appeared, the station, large circumference and ribbon thin in this view. Then she covered her eyes against the glare, as twelve bright beams of curved light, spaced equidistant around the station, appeared between the structure and some spot of darkness in the center.
“Electrons flow along the magnetic field, as the station rotates around the charged black hole in the center, and the black hole rotates as well in the opposite direction.”
“An electrical field generator,” said Pandi, staring in wonder at the display. “This whole huge construct is just a powerful electrical dynamo.”
“Yes,” answered the robot. “Essentially correct.”
“You still use electricity? Even with this kind of advanced technology?”
“You seem surprised,” said the robot. “You expected some other kind of energy source. All that energy consists of is fast moving particles, and electrons are among the heaviest of fast moving particles. So what better source of power?”
“How, how big is this whole station?” she asked. The view gave her no sense of scale. It could be hundreds of thousands of kilometers in circumference for all she could figure.
“The station is fifty kilometers thick, three thousand kilometers wide, and 9,424,777.96 kilometers in circumference along the inner edge.”
“But, that would give this thing a volume of billions of kilometers?” she said, her voice a whisper.
“Approximately 1.4 trillion cubic kilometers.”
Pandi thought about that for a moment. 1.4 trillion cubic kilometers. You could put hundreds of trillions of people in such a space, even accounting for all the machinery she had seen, and all she could imagine.
The hologram faded as the robot sat back in its chair, letting her digest what she had been told.
* * *
The ride seemed to go on forever, chamber after chamber flying by in a blur. Pandi sat in one of the luxurious seats, it having taken the shape of an acceleration couch, though there had been absolutely nothing that she would have characterized as acceleration even during the initial burst of speed that moved the tube train from a standstill to the blurring speed it had now achieved. To whatever destination was planned for her by the robots that surrounded her, and their mysterious master.
"We will soon arrive at the master's quarters," said that worthy in his smooth as silk melodic voice. She had asked him why they were made not quite human looking, and had been told by the machine that their masters had not wanted to mistake robots for living beings, an error that could be made easily enough.
"I wish you'd let me have some clothes," she said, shivering in her nakedness even in the moderate temperature of the tube train car, "before we get to this, master, of yours. He's a man, didn't you say?"
"He is male," answered the robot, "though unlike any other male of his species. And the master wishes to be assured you are harmless before he meets with you."
"Like I could do anything at all to harm the man," she said with a sneer, "with all you big strong boys and girls around."
“Well,” she said, trying to relax and enjoy the rest of the ride. “What the hell is all this power you’re generating here used for?”
“You wish to learn more of the station?” said the robot, leaning forward as its visor became a holographic projector once again. A different cylinder schematic appeared, this looking for the entire world like an enormous capacitor.
“There are four hundred and eighty thousand of these storage and transmission units. They store the energy generated by the magnetic fields. Stored for use in the wormhole gate transport system, or for projection by laser or microwave to outlying installations in this star system.”
The train whizzed through another of what she had been told were the wormhole room stations like the one she had come to the station through, just like the hundred or so she had seen whiz past in the last half hour. How many of the damned things are there on this bitch?, she thought.
"We are almost there," said Robbie. Another station whizzed by in a line of light, and then they were rocketing on through the sparsely lit round tunnel. Without warning the train began to decelerate, noticeable from the increase in time length between lights. Pandi gripped the arms of the chair instinctively, even though her body and mind could detect no change in motion. Another station came into view, the lights seeming to decelerate to meet what her senses told her was a stationary train. And then they were stopped, or the station stopped, and the doors to the train car flung open silently.
"This is our point of departure," said Robbie, standing up and gesturing for Pandi to precede him from the car, as the other robots moved off the car and went about their business. Robbie kept his attention on her, and the woman realized that there would be no escaping the attention of the ever-vigilant machine.
"You will not be harmed," said the robot again in reassurance. "The master assures you that he merely wishes to visit with you, and to converse about your times, which are of great interest to him."
"The master will be happy to have new clothes furnished for your comfort," said Robbie, "after you have been cleansed and proven of no harm to his own health."
Pandi looked at the door that the robot still gestured toward, and then down at her tight, firm body. Still attractive, she thought, with her small, soft breasts, flat stomach, thick thatch of red pubic hair. She wondered how anyone could think she might be a danger, unclothed and weaponless. What they couldn't tell from a mere voyeuristic glance was that Pandi was as dangerous with her open hands as she was with that old pistol she had carried. Thank daddy and his insistence on his beautiful little girl being able to take care of herself. The moves of Tae Kwon Do were still wired into her body, even if they hadn’t proven much use against the robots. But the master was an organic form.
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.