The Deep Dark Well Read online

  "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.

  "That's, wonderful," said Pandi, looking up at the smiling face of the superman, wiping her tears away with her other hand.

  "The merest of the pleasures that await you on my home," said the smiling Watcher, his eyes traveling hungrily over the naked body of the woman. Pandi felt herself flush under the glance, and she flushed an even deeper red as her eyes focused on his hairless groin and the magnificent symbol of manhood that there dwelt. Again the scent of him grasped at her brain, feeding the desire that already raged there. Pheromones, she thought. He exuded the scent meant to drive women wild. Then the thought left her mind as she allowed the desire to build.

  "You are fortunate to be alive, in any time," he continued, his smile drawing her back to his face.

  "But," he continued, his hand reaching for and grasping her free hand, lifting her from the chair to lead her to a pleasant embrace of bare skin, the embrace turning into a dance as soul uplifting music came from nowhere to bathe the air.

  "And I am very fortunate," he said with a whisper in her ear, "that you are alive in my time."

  * * *

  "I am so very delighted of your arrival, my dear," said Watcher as he gazed again on the naked body of the woman, covered in the sweat of their lovemaking. It is amazing the effect of the real thing, he thought, as his eyes crossed the thick bush of red hair between her legs. Even though the surrogate robots were technically her superior in physical sensation and artistic endeavor, the thought of a real sentient female impaled on his manhood brought a definite thrill of anticipated pleasure. And the pleasure she had groaned into his mouth as he kissed her had not been the feigned and programmed act of a robot, but again the real thing.

  Pandi again gasped another breath into her straining lungs, the wonderful fatigue of good sex infusing her every muscle. And good sex had led to emotional release such as she had never needed before. She had hoped he would be a great lover, and he had been better than her expectations. What else should she expect from a superman? If he had been bred or engineered or whatever to be a superior being, why wouldn't they have made sure he was better than human in every way? Then the thought crossed her mind that she was assuming a lot. What if he was just an average dude in this time period, even the nerdiest of nerds?

  That thought brought the curiosity back to the front of her mind. Here she was, by all the signs she had seen so far, in some wonderful future, on some wonderful station. Why not enjoy it and learn as much about it as she could.

  "What is this place in which you live, lover?" she asked the superman. "And why did Robbie call it the Donut?"

  "Robbie?" he asked with a smile. "Oh yes, the leader of those I sent to fetch you." He closed his eyes for a second as if concentrating on some deeper matter. Then his eyes opened as he smiled. "A reference to a movie robot, if the computer is correct. Forbidden Planet."

  "You accessed your computer's memory?" she said with a frown. He had not sub-vocalized through some kind of mic, she was sure. Unless he was much more adept at it than any human she had known before. "How in the world did you do that without talking to it or punching in a keyboard? Telepathy?"

  Again he closed his eyes and concentrated on contact with the computer, in the pleasure of the moment not for an instant worrying that he might be in danger.

  "Telepathy as your people thought of it does not exist in any known species," he said with a grin. "No brain produces enough of a current nor is any mind sensitive enough to pick up the electrical processes of a mind at any distance, though organic radio transmission has been documented in several alien races. And quantum entanglement in one."

  "Then, what?" she asked.

  "A nanite implant," he replied, "manufactured in place in my mind by nanorobots. It allows two way communication between various centers of my mind and the computer."

  "Amazing," she said, her mind searching through the implications of such a link.

  "Something not much removed from your own time, I'm afraid," he replied. "Even if it has been refined over the millennia. Your own scientists had such on the designing CAD."

  "OK," she said, "I'll buy that. Now what about this place? What is it?"

  A hologram sprung into existence in the air before the bed, a thin ribbon of shining substance encircling, something. A bright red light arced around the distortion at the center of the ribbon, as stars shimmered in the same distortion. Arced bands of blinding light, a dozen of them, connected the ribbon with the distortion.

  “I’ve seen this before,” said Pandi.

  “A view from space of the Donut," said the Watcher. "Over nine million kilometers in circumference. It used to be the center of the Galactic Empire, and the commerce of countless worlds passed through its thousands of portals."

  "And it gets its power from the black hole in the center," she said. "That's what that distortion is?
How massive is it?"

  "Your curiosity amazes me," he said with a chuckle. "As well as your intelligence. The station is in orbit around a two thousand stellar mass black hole. The bands of power you see are electron/positron arcs generated by the gravitational swirl of the singularity through magnetic field lines generated by the Donut."

  "And the station is called the Donut?" she asked. "Like a pastry with a hole in the center?"

  "Of course," he replied with another show of strong white teeth, strong as diamond he had told her earlier, coated with an integrated layer of the super hard carbon material. "But in this case a ribbon of civilization with a hole in the center. A very massive hole indeed."

  "But what happened to all of the people?" she asked with a pouting frown. "A thing this size must have been home to billions at least, as well as a thriving transit center."

  "More like tens of billions," he replied, his eyes flitting over her face. "A great disaster overcame the Empire, and the people fled to their home worlds."

  "What kind of disaster?"

  "We," he said with a catch in his throat, "will talk of it later."

  "Of course, lover," she said in a gentle voice, her arms reaching to enfold his head and lower it to her breasts. "Of course, we won’t talk about anything painful right now, either of us."

  "I have been so lonely, Pandora Latham," he said sobbing, his hot tears bathing her tender skin. "I have waited for millennia for someone like you to come through one of the portals."

  "You don't have to be lonely any more, my Watcher," she said in a low voice. But she wondered just the same. Some of what he said didn't ring true, and Pandi wasn't sure what it was. What had kept this lonely being from going through some of the portals on his own, if loneliness was a prime motivation? What had kept him so frightened that he had not dared to go through what to him would have been no stranger than an aerial transport on old Earth?

  Then she again lost herself in the moment, as his face reached up to hers, and his lips again pasted themselves to hers, and delicate six fingered hands again stroked her hungry flesh.

  Chapter 7

  1. The Lord God is good, as is all that was created by him and follows his word. No harm shall be offered to his creation.

  2. The Lord Satan is evil, as is all that was created by him and follows his word. No succor hall be offered to his creation.

  3. Thou shall not lie, by omission or commission, to the servants of the Lord, or hinder them in any way in the performance of their holy tasks.

  4. Thou shall follow the dictates of the Elders, and their appointed servants. There is only right in obedience to appointed superiors.

  5. Those who offer succor to the servants of evil, or aid them in any manner, ally themselves with evil, and shall be afforded the same treatment as those born to evil.

  The Five Commandments of the Nation of Humanity

  The bridge of the Orca buzzed with activity, a double watch on duty since entering the inner part of the Supersystem. Com systems and passive sensors were swamped with information, and the computer had a backlog of information to work on.

  Admiral Miklas Gerasi couldn’t believe the amount of traffic coming over the systems. Dozens of planets radiated like beacons in the sky. Cradles of technical civilizations, though none as advanced as the Nation of Humanity, or the object toward which they boosted. Other planets put out feeble signals at most. Probably inhabited by primitives, with spies from the technical civilizations among them.

  The nav holo gave a good overview of the status of civilization, planets highlighted by amount of transmitted energy, the dots of ships here and there. Most of the traffic came from the two star systems in far orbit about each other, numbers four and five out from the black hole. Currently the slightly larger G2 was closest in, while the K0 was the farther partner in the dance.

  “Most of the signals seem to originate from primitive first generation space faring planets,” said the technology officer, his face looking out from the com screen set in the bank of such on the admiral's C and C display. “At most they possess chemical fueled rockets, and first generation fission and fusion warheads.”

  “What about those from the double system?” asked the admiral, looking at what had to be the flares of fusion drives on another screen. Flares from two bodies of ships pointed at one another across the distance, as their respective fleets decelerated toward each other.

  “They seem to use at least second generation fusion systems,” said the tech officer, “with possible antimatter priming.”

  Pinpoints of painfully bright light appeared near one of the fleets, followed soon by answering points near the other.

  “Are those nuclear warheads?” asked the admiral. “The fleets war on each other?”

  “Yes sir. Speculation is that the two systems each harbor their own nation, and the two war on each other between the stars.”

  A war of attrition, thought the admiral. It would be nearly impossible to sneak up on your enemy, across the openness of space. They would see your drive flares, or detect your radiation, as soon as you left your home base. If the lessons of history at home were of any import, the two powers would have a hard time striking at each other’s industry, and the systems themselves were sure to be heavily fortified. Not that it would do them much good against ships like the Orca.

  Another pinpoint of light on the screen, this with a little different quality than the last.

  “What was that?” he called into the commo screen. “That wasn’t a nuke.”

  “No sir,” agreed the tech officer. “Analysis of radiation pattern indicates a high incidence of gamma radiation.”

  “MAM,” said the admiral, wondering what other surprises the two warring powers might have in hand. Antimatter was expensive to manufacture, and the use of it in warheads bespoke an immense industrial capacity. But maybe not up to Nation of Humanity standards.

  “It might be a good idea to visit one of those systems,” said the captain from behind him, “when we are finished with our other business.”

  Yes, thought the admiral. If the Nation jumped in on the side of one power, and helped to defeat the other, they would have allies in the Supersystem. And that immense industrial capacity, if upgraded to current tech, could be of great benefit to whoever established themselves first in the region.

  “It would be nice if one of the powers was nonhuman,” said the admiral. “Then we would know which side to jump in on. It may complicate matters some if they both turn out to be human.”

  “Not too much complication,” said the captain. “Might I suggest we come in on the side that seems the most powerful at the time. The winner should be too grateful to have the war ended in their favor to care that they would have won in the long run without our interference.”

  “I like your thinking, captain. And then, by the time we have established a military presence in their system, it will be too late to protest.”

  Yes, thought the admiral. If he could take the Donut, and have access to the energy stores legend told of, he could turn on the enemy squadron behind him. And after establishing themselves with a home port, they would be equal to anything their misguided enemy could throw at them in this region of space.

  * * *

  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.”