“Sure, Ben. You want a human Dasheen cow,” Obie cracked. “It is unfortunately within my limits. Is that all?”
“For now,” he told the computer. “Lock and run. Now.”
It took the same eight seconds or so. He stared down in anticipation, and he wasn’t disappointed. She was absolutely the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
Her daughter he made a twin of the new Nikki, except he replaced Nikki’s black flowing hair with auburn, so he could tell them apart at a distance.
He called for them to come to him, and they did, joyfully, almost throwing themselves on him in adoration.
“All right, girls!” he laughed. “First, I think maybe we’ll explore our new bodies. Then you’ll run a few errands for me while I work with Obie on getting us back where we belong.”
“Oh, yes, Ben!” they both sighed in anticipation.
A few hours later he was ready; they had been intensely pleasurable hours, not at all wasted, but now to business.
“Obie?”
“Yes, Ben?”
“Are your external sensors still operable along the main shaft?” Although the computer was blind Topside, it could see the Underside area around the shaft leading to the big dish that still locked on the Well of Souls.
“Operational, Ben.”
He nodded. “Okay. Any life forms Underside?”
“None that I can detect, Ben—although I don’t seem to be able to detect the Yugash too well unless it’s in visual range. My sensors weren’t designed for energy creatures.”
He understood that. “But we’re all immune to its takeover, right?” The computer assured him they were. Yulin continued. “All right, then.” He turned to the two women, unable to overcome his delight at their beauty.
“Girls, you know what to do now.” They nodded in unison. He turned back to Obie. “Defense mode off, Obie. Defense mode will be off automatically on their return unless they are under coercion. Return to defense mode when they clear the door into the control center. Clear?”
“Clear, Ben.”
“And Obie—don’t forget. Not a word of this to anybody.”
“You know I can’t now,” the computer responded grumpily. “Defense mode off.”
The two women walked to the door, it opened, and they passed quickly out. It slid shut behind them.
Yulin returned to Obie. “You’ve been talking to Gil Zinder all along, haven’t you?” he accused.
“Yes, Ben, I cannot tell a lie,” Obie replied. “I thought you’d want to talk to him sooner or later.”
“Maybe not,” he said thoughtfully. “Obie, did the two of you work on the problem of freeing you from the Well?”
“Yes, Ben.”
“Did you solve it?”
“Yes, Ben.”
Aha! So much for problems, they vanished like magic, he thought smugly.
“Procedure?” he asked in anxious anticipation.
As Obie told him, he realized the logic of it and cursed himself for not having seen it himself. The solution was so simple it might have been overlooked for decades—of course, he was still rusty, he reminded himself. But there was a feeling of power in him beyond anything he’d ever known, and the confidence that he not only could do anything, he would do everything.
He would make no mistakes, he assured himself. Everything was to be thought out and carefully considered.
But he had already made one, and he didn’t know it.
Topside
The group was disappointed and gloomy. The products of diverse cultures and backgrounds, veterans of many campaigns—some in more than one form—most had fought, clawed, and schemed to be among those to reach the enigmatic New Pompeii. Six creatures of great potential and no little intellect, all totally impotent to solve their problem.
“We could always go home,” Renard suggested. They looked at him impatiently, a little patronizingly. He shrugged. “It’s an option, that’s all,” he added defensively.
“No, it is not an option,” Wooley responded. “We know what is in there. A big machine. We can even talk to it. A machine that can talk to the Well, tell it what to do. If Yulin wishes to, he can do anything he wants to the Well.”
“Perhaps he will leave it,” the Bozog said hopefully.
Vistaru sighed. “That’s even worse, and you know it. Well, maybe not so much to you or the Ghiskind, but Yulin’s not going to rush off to some strange system or race. He’s going to go home—to his original home. And he’s going to have the big dish to do whatever he wants to with entire planetary populations. The rest of us—Renard, Mavra, Wooley, and myself—came from those people. We can’t let him remake a civilization if we can prevent that, and we must do all in our power to prevent that.”
“Not to mention that Yulin’s a Dasheen,” Mavra pointed out. “Three guesses how women would fare in his new order. But—we have to be committed, I think. I sense that at least in Wooley and Vistaru. Bozog, if you want to take the ship and return, I’ll give you all the programming instructions you need. Renard could take you if he wanted, although your tentacles would do for what little control manipulation would need to be done.”
The Bozog shifted its bulk. “You know that is impossible,” it responded. “We knew it, too, before we took off. There is no return possible with that ship. None of us is capable of another perfect dead-stick landing, not even friend Mavra here, had she tentacles or arms. It was a one-in-ten-thousand shot that they made it originally. The odds are far worse now. No, we can crash into the Well World, but not land, not ever.”
This surprised them. That aspect had never crossed their minds, although it should have. “Then why did you come?” Wooley asked.
“For myself,” the Bozog said slowly, trying to choose its words, “because it was possible. Because it is a feat and experience beyond duplication. To be here, on another world! To see the Well World from afar! This, in itself, is worth a dozen lives.”
Renard shrugged. “What about you, Ghiskind? You could survive a crash, I’ll bet.”
The Yugash flowed into the Bozog. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. But, if so, which of you will be the pilot willing to surrender its own life for mine? No, I, too, knew it was a one-way trip, unless the Obie computer can send us back.”
“I think that’s unlikely,” Mavra put in. “I don’t think any of us will ever see the inside of that control room. He’s too well defended.”
“If only there was some way to destroy it,” Wooley said in frustration. “A bomb, perhaps!”
“Maybe we can crash the ship into the big dish,” the Bozog suggested.
Mavra shook her head. “No, Obie’s pretty firm on that. Defenses are automatic since that was the weak point Trelig had to address. Fly into that beam and you’re gone.” Still, the idea of destroying Obie—which she rebelled against because, despite all, she liked and respected the thing—struck a chord. Schematics and plans flowed again, only this time with purpose.
Destruct. Destruct mechanisms.
The idea wouldn’t gel. A corner of her mind remembered Obie’s comment that, though he couldn’t absorb the Well’s input, he could do a few limited things by concentrating on a single, specific task. Well, Obie was to her what the Well was to Obie. She tried it, concentrating on destruct mechanisms.
And there it was.
Not a single one, but many, all over. Antor Trelig wanted to be certain that no one would ever be able to displace him as master of Obie or New Pompeii.