Alaina nodded. “I think I can understand. Bodies like those can be wonderful, or the biggest curse you can have. And I’ll help. Mavra’s fee was agreed to, recorded, and never paid. I think you could do a pretty good job with a million, couldn’t you?”
Wooley’s eyes went wide. “A
Vistaru laughed. “Yeah, but take it easy. You aren’t my husband any more. You’re superwoman now.”
“I started out a woman,” the other pointed out. “Not much of one, I admit. Maybe it’s time for Wu Julee to find out what it’s really like.”
Vistaru nodded. “It can really be wonderful,” she said softly.
“Look!” Renard yelled. “The asteroids are about there!”
As he spoke four smaller dots converged on the large ball. A tremendous flash of energy blurred their vision momentarily, then there was nothing.
Scans revealed no trace of New Pompeii, not the slightest speck of dust.
Alaina sighed. “That’s it, then. Let’s get out of here.”
The ship throbbed to life and started moving. There were tears in Renard’s eyes and all were silent.
“Good-bye, Mavra. Forgive us.”
And even the Yugash’s hood bowed.
An Unnamed Star in M-51
She stood and stretched all four legs in the darkness. She was used to working in the dark, and her nose quickly found some edible fruit and some stale bread. It would do, and the fruit provided needed water. She’d gone through the last of the preserved foodstuffs the day before.
She wondered why she was still alive. She wondered why she persisted in postponing the end.
The lights came on. That, in itself, was no surprise. She’d been expecting it any time now, ever since she’d experienced the familiar blackout and that long dropping feeling a few hours before.
She turned her downward-facing head and looked around. The place was a mess. Much of the structures had collapsed, including part of the far balcony.
The explosions, hisses, and rumbles had stopped several days earlier, but they had been replaced by the sounds of hammering and welding and lots of clanking. She’d actually gone out to see what was making them, but except for discovering some emergency lighting still going in the main shaft area, there was nothing that could be seen. Whatever was going on was going on far below her, she was sure.
“Hello, Mavra,” Obie’s soft, pleasant tenor sprang suddenly out of the air near her. She almost jumped out of her skin.
“Obie!” she responded, almost scolding in tone.
She was about to say more, but suddenly realized that while it could talk to you you had to broadcast to it.
The computer seemed to realize her thoughts. “No, it’s not necessary to transmit any more,” he informed her. “There’s nothing left to transmit with anyway. Things have changed a great deal in the last few days.
She felt numbed, as though in some sort of half-sleep. Nothing seemed quite real, and she only half believed in her continued existence.
“All right, Obie—just what did you do? And how?” she called.
The computer actually chuckled. “They decided to destroy me by pushing four antimatter asteroids at me. I just used the big dish and translated two of the asteroids into normal matter—for us, that is. Then, two and a half milliseconds before they all collided, I translated here. They met with a nice flash and it looked like we were all blown up as the two antimatter asteroids met my newly transformed matter asteroids.”
“Two milliseconds?” she responded, aghast. “Wasn’t that cutting it a little close?”
“Two and a half,” he corrected. “No, it was just right. You see, the amount of change their instruments could detect is five milliseconds, so I provided for a safety margin. Plenty of time, really.”
Mavra decided to avoid further conversation on that subject. Anybody who could talk about two and a half milliseconds as plenty of time was not somebody she could directly relate to on that level. Instead she said, “I thought we destroyed you. The bomb went off, didn’t it?”
“Oh, yes,” Obie replied cheerfully. “The bomb went off all right. It’s just that the deck was stacked. The bomb didn’t remove control, it removed blockages to control, just as we’d planned it.”
“We?” she came back, puzzled.
“Dr. Zinder and I, of course,” the computer told her. “You see, from the start Trelig was afraid somebody might get their hands on me. So, if that happened, he wanted bombs that would destroy me planted in key areas. The trouble was, the people he was most afraid of were people like Yulin, who could operate me properly. So, he forced Dr. Zinder to do it. They were all proper and checked. But they all had electrical triggers. In other words, I had to pass on the triggering voltage myself, and, as I told you on the radio, I was programmed absolutely never to assist in my own destruction. Dr. Zinder knew I could not accept the order to initiate those voltages. He placed the bomb where it would have to blow outward, destroying the two modules that separated my voluntary circuits from the involuntary and life-support areas. A simple matter, really. Only, it had to be triggered from outside. So, when things went all wrong and we wound up jammed around the Well World, I had to create a situation where that bomb would be detonated.”
Now she was fascinated. “How did you do that?”
“Well, for one thing, in the plans I placed in all the agents’ heads, that’s the only bomb detailed. It’s the one that comes up when you think of the destruction of New Pompeii.”
She nodded. “So you played the odds—but, do you mean you did that before you even knew about the Well World and us going there?”
“Percentages,” he explained. “The odds were heavy we’d die when Dr. Zinder and I double-crossed Trelig and reversed to the Well World. But, if we didn’t, then I’d still be under the control of Trelig or Yulin or both. That meant those able to do so would try and destroy me. So, I included the contingency—and it worked!”
“After twenty-two years,” she noted.
“It was sufficient,” he replied. “Besides, in that time I learned a lot. And now I’m an individual, Mavra—a totally self-sufficent organism. I control and see and perceive everything on this planetoid. I am Topside as well as Underside. And nobody can ever force orders into me again. This world
She wasn’t sure she shared his enthusiasm. No one should have such power, she thought.
“My apologies, too, for not getting to you sooner, but all of my energies were taken up in simulating my total breakdown while at the some time using my service modules, which I’d never had conscious control of before, to repair and modify myself. And now I’m a person, Mavra—an independent organism!”
“But you’re a small
That didn’t disturb him. “So? Considering all the other creatures you have seen, and the oddity you are now, what’s one more kind of person? What somebody looks like, what somebody is externally, isn’t important. It’s what that individual is on the inside that counts. Surely that is the lesson of the Well World. Aren’t the different life forms there simply exaggerated examples of what is seen in human society? Too fat, too thin, too short, too tall, too dark, too light. Be concerned with the contents, not the package. It’s easier on the Well, isn’t it? Everybody’s expected to look different there, yet all of them, no matter how alien, sprang from the same Markovian roots.”
She sighed. “I suppose so,” she said wearily. “What will you do now? And where are we, anyway?”
“To answer the last first, we’re in M-51, orbiting a lonely star, about thirty-five million light-years from anything that thinks. I picked it out of the Well years ago in case I needed a place to go. As for the other…” He paused, seemingly hesitant to voice his next thought. Quietly, he said, “Why didn’t you go with the others, Mavra?
