Exiles at the Well of Souls

use. I had no idea it was in there until you used it.”

Ben Yulin smiled. “That’s all right, Obie. Even you don’t have to remember everything.”

What Obie had discovered, and Ben was enjoying, was the mode by which he could use Obie and then have Obie file the record of what was done in such a way that even the great computer couldn’t get at it. Obie would still perform normally, but have a case of total amnesia not only about what Ben was about to do but about his even being there.

Yulin heard the elevator door open below. He looked over the balcony and saw Nikki, dressed only in that flimsy nightgown, walk normally and deliberately into the lab chamber and step up onto the disk. Centering herself, she stood erect, her eyes closed, and she seemed frozen, a statue except for barely perceptible breathing.

“Record subject in aux mode, Obie,” Yulin instructed. The big mirror overhead swung out, centered over the disk, and shot out the blue ray. Nikki flickered once or twice, then vanished. The ray cut off.

It would be tempting, Yulin thought, just to leave her there. But, no, the risk was too great. She would probably have to be produced in the end, and he didn’t want her on that disk with Zinder at the controls.

“Obie, this will be an unstable equation. It will not adjust. The act of change shall in itself be part of reality.”

“Yes, Ben,” the computer responded. “There will be no reality adjustment.”

Yulin nodded in satisfaction.

“Psychological adjustment only, Obie,” he told the great machine.

“Ready,” responded Obie.

“Maximum emotional-sexual response level,” he ordered. “Subject is to be fixated on Dr. Ben Yulin, data in your banks. Subject will be madly, irrationally in love with Yulin, and will think of nothing but Yulin. Will do anything for Yulin, will be loyal only to Yulin, without exception. Subject will consider herself the willing property of said Ben Yulin. Code it ‘love-slave mode’ for future reference and store in aux one.”

“Done,” the computer acknowledged.

“Sequence, then store as soon as both humans have left the lab.”

“Sequencing,” the computer said, and Yulin looked over the balcony. The blue light had flipped on again, and Nikki, still the same and still wearing the same nightgown, winked back in. She was still frozen.

Yulin cursed himself. It’d been less than twenty minutes since he had administered the dosage which was good for probably three times that. He’d taken no chances.

“Additional instructions, Obie,” he shot back. “Remove all traces of the drug Stepleflin from subject and restore subject at full wakefulness, with the equivalent of eight hours sleep. Do this immediately, then return to previous instructions.”

The computer accepted the new instructions, the blue light went on, Nikki flickered but did not wink out for more than half a second this time, then was back, awake, looking in amazement about the lab.

Yulin leaned over the railing. “Hey, Nikki!”

She looked up, spotted him, and the look on her face was suddenly so full of rapture that she appeared to be seeing the face of god. She trembled and moaned in ecstasy at the sight of him.

“Come up to this level, Nikki,” he instructed, and she all but ran off the disk to the elevator. She was next to him in less than two minutes. She continued to look at him in awe and wonder. He lightly touched her cheek with his hand and an orgasmic shudder went through her. He nodded, satisfied.

“Come with me, Nikki,” he ordered softly, taking her hand. She gripped it and followed. They boarded the elevator, and Yulin told it to rise to the surface.

The top level opened onto a small park, dimly lit by the artificial light of the clear dome. The stars shown distantly from horizon to horizon. She hadn’t uttered a sound, asked a question, during all this.

There were a few people about. But since much of the research center was devoted to thousands of other projects, many kept different hours for various reasons, some just because of the need to share facilities.

“We must stay hidden from anyone, Nikki,” he whispered to her. “No one must see us.”

“Oh, yes, Ben,” she responded, and they crept along the side of the walk, for the most part hidden in the bushes. There were some sharp needles on some of the bushes and plants that lined the walk, and Nikki was scratched and splintered by them, but aside from occasional rubbing or a near-silent exclamation, she didn’t complain. Once he didn’t see a short, dark man turn a corner, and she pulled him down behind a bush.

Finally they reached the grassy, unlit area that for obscure reasons some called the campus, and they cut across it, walking normally. Finally, crouched in a dark corner in the shadow of another building, they waited.

She kept her arm around him and leaned into him.

He put his arm around her, and she sighed. She was rubbing him and kissing his clothing.

He found the whole thing embarrassing and slightly nauseating, but he’d established the rules of the game and had to suffer for it.

At last, a small, sleek private carrier slid up to them in the blackness. A gull-wing was raised, and a man emerged and approached them. Nikki, hearing movement, looked around and then tried to drag Yulin back into the blackness.

“No, Nikki, that man’s a friend of mine,” he told her, and she accepted his statement and immediately relaxed.

“Adnar! Over here!” he called, and the man heard and came closer.

“You must go with Adnar,” he told her softly. She looked stricken and clung even tighter to him.

“This is the only way we can be together, Nikki,” he told her. “You must go away for a short time, but, if you make no complaints and do everything Adnar and his friends tell you without question, I’ll come to you, I promise.”

She smiled at that. Her mind was clouded; she could think only of Ben, and if Ben said something then it was true.

“Let’s go,” Adnar called impatiently.

Yulin steeled himself, then hugged the girl and kissed her long and passionately.

“Remember that while we’re apart,” he whispered. “Now, go!”

She went with the strange man. Unquestioningly, without complaint, they climbed into the black carrier, and it sped away.

Ben Yulin allowed himself to exhale, and for the first time noticed he was perspiring. Shakily, he made his way back to his own building and bed.

* * *

Antor Trelig displayed the charming smile of a poisonous snake. He sat, relaxed, in Gil Zinder’s office once more. The little scientist was visibly shaken.

“You monster!” he snapped at the politician. “What have you done with her?”

Trelig looked hurt. “Me? I would do nothing, I assure you. I am much too big a man for something like a petty kidnapping. But, I do have a lead on where she might be, and I have some facts on what’s happened to her up to this point.”

Zinder knew the big man was lying, but he could also see the reason for the pretense. Trelig hadn’t done the deed personally, and he would have made very certain that it wasn’t traceable to him.

“Tell me what you—they’ve done to her,” he groaned.

Trelig did his best to look serious. “My sources tell me that your daughter is in the hands of the sponge syndicate. You’ve heard of it?”

Gil Zinder nodded, a cold chill going through him.

“They deal in that terrible drug from that killer planet,” he responded, almost mechanically.

“Quite so,” Trelig responded sympathetically. “Do you know what it does, Doctor? It decreases the IQ of someone by ten percent for every day it goes untreated. A genius is merely average in three or four days, and hardly more than an animal in ten days or so. There’s no cure—it’s a mutant thing unlike any life form we’ve ever encountered, produced by a mixture of some of our organic matter and some alien stuff. The effect is painful, too. A burning in the brain, I believe is the description, spreading to all parts of the body.”