To Well And Back (The Deep Dark Well) (3 page)

“That is what Mother
Church commands of us,” said the officer, making the sign of the open hand to
the forehead.  “This planet was meant for man, not for the caricatures of humans
put here by the evil one.”

There was a commotion
on the field.  One of the Hustedeans had fallen to his knees, and a guard was
gesturing and obviously screaming at him, though he could not be heard at this
distance.  The alien kneeled on the open field, head down, trying to get up and
stumbling back.  The human pulled a pistol from a belt holster and waved it
around.  With a shout the man pointed the gun at the head of the creature, and
the pistol bucked silently in the human’s hand as mag pistols were wont to. 
The alien fell to the ground and lay still, except for the twitching of the
kangaroo like tail.

A pair of the aliens
hopped toward the human, who pointed the pistol their way and yelled.  They
ignored his shouts and continued toward him, their body language revealing
their violent intent.  They moved quickly in their hopping motion, faster than
a running man.  The pistol bucked three times in rapid succession, and the
aliens fell from the top of a leap to hit their feet on the ground and crumple over.

“Stupid beasts,”
growled the Colonel, glaring at the scene.  “Sometimes they almost act like
real intelligent creatures, and do what they’re told.  Other times, not.  And
this is the result.”

“So you expect to have
this base ready within the next month?” asked Gerasi, turning away from the
spectacle which left a queasy feeling in his stomach. 
Dammit, they’re just
aliens.  It’s not like they’re real people.  So why does it bother me to see
them relieved of their lives.

“Of course,” said the
Colonel, walking beside him as they came down the hill and started back to the
base.  “We…”

The round took the
Colonel in the face, where the lightly armored uniform he wore provided no
coverage.  The bullet punched into his mouth as the last word was leaving,
smashing teeth and blasting through the roof of his orifice and into the
brain.  One second the energetic officer was taking a step, the next he was
falling forward to the ground, his life gone.  More shots crack by at high
speed, two missing the Admiral by the merest of margins.  And then he was on
the ground, tackled by one of his junior officers, who was pressing the Admiral
down and leveling a pistol at the unseen enemy.

Shots cracked both ways
for a minute, the outgoing volume soon overwhelming the incoming by a wide
margin.  The Marines with the guard detail were firing their auto-rifles, while
a couple with lasers cut through the brush like infinite swords. 

Gerasi thought he was a
brave man, but he hadn’t been trained for ground combat.  His was the first
time he had experienced such.  He cringed on the ground, glad that someone was
shielding his body, glad that others were carrying the fight to the enemy while
he felt like he was about to shit himself.

And then, as quickly as
it had begun, it was over.

“Damned rebels,” cursed
a Marine Lieutenant, standing over the body of the Colonel.

“I thought all the
natives were primitives,” said the Admiral, looking down at the dead body.

“They are,” said the
officer, a scowl on his face.  “Even the few humans out there who live among
the filth.  But they have ambushed some of our patrols and armed themselves.”

“Just wonderful,” said
Gerasi, throwing his hands up in the air.  He looked over at the officer. 
“What would it take to secure this area?”

“Another battalion of
Marines would probably do it, sir,” said the Lieutenant, pursing his lips. 
“But the Colonel thought he could do it with the regiment he had.”

“And we see what the
Colonel’s assumptions brought,” said the Admiral, kicking at the dirt with a
booted foot.  He looked the Lieutenant in the eyes.  “We’ll get you another
battalion, and I want everything within four days march of here either in a
work camp or dead.  Understood?”

“You’ll have to tell
the Exec that, sir,” said the officer with a sheepish grin.

“Oh, I will,
Lieutenant,” said the Admiral, his muscles still trembling a bit and bringing
shame to him.  “I won’t stand for this kind of action within the perimeter of a
base of the Nation of Humanity.”

I will not stand for
this
,
he thought again, boarding his shuttle on the field.  And then his thoughts
were on the naval action he would try to precipitate in this system.  A kind of
fight he was looking forward to.

Chapter Three

The future is something which everyone reaches
at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.   C. S.
Lewis

Pandora Latham arched
her back as Watcher thrust into her, the pure pleasure driving the breath from
her lungs.  She opened her eyes and looked into the blue orbs of her lover,
dilated open from the excitement of their lovemaking.  [I love you,] she
thought over the computer link that was allowing them to share all their
feelings, emotional and physical.

[I love you too,]
thought Watcher, even as his building pleasure came over the link and drowned
her in its intensity.

He is a superman
, she thought in her
guarded thoughts. 
The perfect man.  And all mine.

Pandora Latham had many
lovers in her past.  She had never had a problem getting a man, though she
never had more than one in her life at a time.  She had never shied from sex,
even after her father told her that her lust would someday doom her to Hell, to
burn forever in a lake of fire. 
To hell with that
, she thought as she
concentrated on the feeling of his member pushing into her folds, feeling it from
both sides. 
I’ve found the perfect man, and damn me if I’ll ever let him go
. 
Not even Hell can make me let go
.

And then all time for
rational thought was past as Pandi felt her orgasm breaking over her.  She let
out a cry, while Watcher covered her lips with his, drinking in her moans and
cries, his tongue questing in her mouth.  Her vagina clenched around his
member, and she could feel his orgasm build through the link, then let go, at
the same time she felt him cum inside her.  That set off her second orgasm,
building over the top of the first, and Watcher went into his own additional
spasm.  [Someday I will have your children,] she thought over the link.  They
both knew she was in a fertile period, just as they both knew the nanotech
within her would keep her from getting pregnant at this time.  There was too
much to do at this time to be burdened with a pregnancy, or a child.

And then it was over,
except for the aftershocks that continued through her augmented nerves. 
Looking into Watcher’s face she could tell that he was feeling them too, both
his own and hers.  She kissed him tenderly, happy that he had greeted her when
she arrived and whisked her to the bed.

They lay there for some
minutes, basking in the afterglow, until he slipped out of her and rolled
over.  He rolled back and put his strong arms around her, kissing her on the
forehead, then seeking her lips for a deep kiss.

“What got into you,
lover,” said Pandi in a breathless gasp.

“It’s more like what
got into you,” said Watcher, a smile in his eyes.

“You got into me,” said
Pandi with a laugh.

And I have almost
endless years of youth to enjoy him
, she thought, rubbing her sweaty body against
his.  To her a half millennia might as well have been endless.  It wasn’t
something that she could really imagine.

“Not if you keep
pulling fool stunts like you did on Sapphire V,” said Watcher, his eyes
changing from laughter to an angry glare.

“Listening in on my
thoughts again,” said Pandi, her own eyes narrowing.  “Those were personal
thoughts, not yours to peruse at your convenience, lover.”

“And what got into you
down there,” continued Watcher, ignoring her jab about privacy.  “Taking on an
entire castle of murderous primitives like that.  You’re damned lucky they
didn’t crucify you, or burn you at the stake.”

“They had to come up
with some better warriors to do that job, don’t you think,” said Pandi, a smile
creeping across her face.

“You think this is a
joke,” said Watcher, pushing himself away and turning his back on her.  “People
died because of your actions.  People who did not have to die.”

Pandi put a hand on his
shoulder and stroked his skin.  “I’m sorry.  I know you worry about me.  But I
will not sit here safely on this station while so many others suffer the misery
of feudal rulers, dying of diseases we can cure, and poverty we can stop. 
Surely you can understand that.”

“Because I was the
cause of it, you mean,” cried Watcher, covering his face in his hands.

“No.  No, lover,” said
Pandi, pulling him over onto his back, still marveling at the strength that was
hers.  “No.  That was not your fault.  You didn’t tell that damned murdering
machine to take over your mind and make you a zombie.  So quit blaming
yourself.”

“I wish I could,” said
Watcher, tears coming to his eyes.  “I wish I could.”  He looked down for a
moment, then back into her eyes.  “And you were my salvation,” he said, his
hand stroking her cheek.  “My beautiful angel.  And I can’t stand the thought
of anything happening to you.”

Pandi pushed her cheek
into the hand, feeling like letting out a purr. 
He really thinks I’m
beautiful
, she thought in wonder.  She knew she was attractive, that men
seemed to like her combination of fair freckled skin, red hair and blue eyes. 
She thought she was a little too slender, her breasts just a bit too small. 
But
what woman doesn’t want to look different
, she thought with a chuckle. 
And
the wrinkles are all gone
, she thought, remembering how smooth her face
looked in the mirror, all the little lines around her eyes gone.

A cat jumped onto the
bed with a meow, bringing a laugh from the lovers.  “Pudding,” said Pandi,
reaching a free hand to stroke the orange tabby cat on the head.  “Not afraid
now that the bed’s not moving.”

Watcher stroked the cat
on his back while Pandi continued to scratch the top of the feline’s head,
eliciting a deep purr.  Pandi looked down Watcher’s body, a grin on her face,
and her hand soon followed her eyes.  Watcher closed his own eyes and purred
himself as her hand worked its magic.

“What say we chase this
poor little kitty off the bed for another hour,” said Pandora in a throaty
whisper.

“An hour,” said
Watcher, his smile growing.

“I don’t see any reason
to rush it this time,” said Pandi, sliding down so she could be closer to her
work.  And then her mouth was too busy for talking.

*     *     *

After the bedroom this
was Pandora’s favorite place on the station.  The room itself was large, a
globe over a hundred meters in diameter.  But from the central station where
she now stood it looked as big as the Galaxy, stretching out across tens of
thousands of light years of space in all its glory.

Watcher sat at the
control station, a large chair with minimal controls, his own brain being the
primary command system.  From here he could tap the greatest power of the
station, the ability to open wormholes between any two points within the range
of the graviton projectors.  Meaning any two points within billions of
kilometers of the station.  Anything greater and a vessel would actually have
to transport the wormhole mouth, or a graviton projector would have to be in
place.

That’s what brought me
here
,
thought Pandi, her mind pulling up the images of her ship, the
Niven,
destroyed
by the very space it occupied.  She had been aboard the
Hernando
, the
ship that had traveled through the past by way of another dimension in which
time ran backwards as compared to the Universe she was familiar with.  And the
only way out had been the wormhole.  Some people might have been paralyzed at
that instant, and been snuffed out as their molecules were ripped to quarks and
spewed throughout space by a Universe correcting a paradox.  Pandora Latham had
not been paralyzed. 
Watcher called me one in a million
, she thought,
looking over his shoulder as he moved the view of the holo and honed in on one
area of space.  She had acted, and saved her life, jumping into a world of
wonder and danger beyond her wildest dreams.

“It seems that our
friends are back,” said Watcher as the familiar warships came into focus.

“Evil bastards,”
declared Pandi as she focused on the warships, recognizable by the projectors
of their space destroying drives in plain sight on their hulls.

“More accurately
misguided,” said Watcher, his own eyes focused on the dozen enemy ships in
orbit around the planet.  A K5 Class star shone in the background, Garnett, the
sixth system out from the Black Hole.

“They’re xenophobic
sons of bitches,” growled Pandi, wishing she could send her thoughts across the
void and incinerate the hyper-religious fools.  “They would kill you the minute
they had you in their grasp, just because you don’t fit their conception of
human.”

“I don’t know about
that,” said Watcher, a smile creeping across his face.  “I’m sure they would
want to torture what I knew out of me, then kill me.”

“Can’t you just use the
graviton projectors and, you know, snuff them out of existence?”

“It doesn’t work that
way,” said Watcher, the smile turning over into a frown.  “They don’t have that
kind of power at this range.”

“Then how did your
ancestors move stars and planets around?”

“We moved the
projectors to the proper range to construct a gravitational gradient,” said
Watcher in an exasperated voice.  “You already know this.  Why are you letting
your hate push you into irrational and wishful thinking?”

“Because I’m fucking
human,” said Pandora, her voice hissing.  “Not a damned machine.”  Her brain
caught up with her words a second later, and she regretted that they had come
out of her mouth.

Watcher stiffened in
his chair, then turned his head to look back at her.  The anger was apparent in
his eyes, and the pain, and he was no longer the rational controlled superman.

“I am so sorry,” said
Pandora, putting her hand over her chest.  “I really didn’t mean to say that.”

“But you are human,”
said Watcher, his eyes narrowing.  “Controlled by your limbic system, unlike
this superior being.”

“Then why are you so
angry, lover,” said Pandi, showing enough teeth to hopefully trigger that male
response to the female smile.  “Looks to me like your limbic system is not so
detached as advertised.”

Watcher huffed and
turned back to the holo, the set of his shoulders showing his tension.

Only one thing to do
about this
,
thought Pandi, leaning forward and running her tongue around his ear.  He
tensed some more, then relaxed as a chuckle came from his lips.  “I guess I’m
not so inhuman after all,” he said through that chuckle.

“Nope,” she said as she
traced her tongue around the lobes, then back to the upper surfaces.

“Stop that,” he said,
playfully slapping at her.  “We have work to do. “  He went back to his mental
link as she kissed his cheek and then leaned back.

“Our friends are back
in force as well,” said Watcher, zooming in on the Inertial Warp Bubble
equipped ships in orbit around a planet circling a G2 class star.  Topaz
System, the fourth out from the Black Hole.  “Looks to be about equal to the
enemy.”

“So we help them out in
whatever battle develops and everything is straight,” said Pandi, smiling as
she remembered the people from the Kingdom of Surya.  They had also been
slightly more religious than she preferred, but not in a murderous xenophobe
sort of way like those others.  She actually had some hope for their
civilization.

“That would be a good
plan except for this,” said Watcher, and the view expanded out, until it
focused on a series of ripples that seemed to be approaching the Supersystem.

“Space destroying
drives,” exclaimed Pandi, a scowl on her face.

“The same,” said
Watcher, matching her frown.  “Which means our xenophobic friends are getting
reinforcements.”

“We’ve got to do
something,” said Pandi, a sense of doom pervading her thoughts.  “They’ll beat
the others, then go about and ravage the alien races.  Do whatever they want to
do.”

“And what do you
suggest?”

“We have millions of
robots on this station,” said the woman, looking at the ripples in space that
presaged more Nation of Humanity forces.  “Surely enough to defeat anything
they can put into space.”

“And the robots cannot
man spaceships,” said Watcher, ticking points off his fingers.  “And they can’t
operate in a military role without sentient organics within a half million
kilometers.”

“And can’t you override
them?” asked Pandora, planting her hands on her hips.

[He cannot, Pandora
Latham,] spoke the voice of the new station computer in her mind.  She still
shuddered a bit when the thing contacted her, remembering the trouble the old
station comp had put them through.  But the quantum computer was an order of
magnitude faster than the old, and had not done anything untoward since it had
come online.  And it especially had not wiped out civilization, like the old
one.

“Well, you can,” she
said, looking at the ceiling, as if the comp resided there.  “Can’t you?”