Anxiously, Yulin flipped the intercom open. “Obie?” he called.
“Yes, Ben?” the computer replied.
“Obie, how are your visuals in the tunnel? Can you give us a fix on how many there are and what damage there is?”
“My visuals are unimpaired,” Obie responded. “There are seven of them left. You shot three and they are gone. There is a lot of damage to the pit control room and the facing wall, but nothing major.”
Yulin nodded to himself, and Trelig suddenly and quickly crouched, leaned out of the doorway, and shot a volley.
“Missed them by a kilometer, Trelig,” Obie observed in a tone that indicated a smug satisfaction. Trelig, hearing it, bristled but said nothing.
“Obie, how operational are you?” Yulin asked, gesturing to Zinder to crawl over to the console. The older man at first seemed too scared to move, but then, slowly, started inching his way there.
“Not very,” the computer told them. “The computer that runs the world down there is both infinitely more complex and simpler than I am. Its input capabilities appear to be unlimited, and it has complete control of all prime and secondary equations at output-but it is entirely preprogrammed. It is not self-aware, not an individual entity.”
Gil Zinder reached the console and sighed, then crouched next to Yulin.
“Obie, this is Dr. Zinder,” he told the machine. “Can you break contact with the other computer?”
“Not at this time, Dr. Zinder,” Obie responded, his tone much nicer now, and more tinged with concern. “When we activated the reverse field, we released the tension of the energy controlling our own existence. It brought us here. Apparently the world computer has been preprogrammed for just such an event, but the programmers assumed that anyone who could tap the Markovian equations in such a manner and bring themselves here would be at close to the same technological level as the builders of the world computer. We are supposed to supersede previous programming, tell it what to do next.”
“Where is here, Obie?” Zinder asked.
“The coordinates would be useless, even if I had a frame of reference,” Obie replied. “We are, in a sense, in the center of the tangible universe, or so I gather from what I can make of the other computer’s information circuits.”
Even Trelig understood the implications. “You mean this is the center for all existence of all matter in the galaxy?” he shouted.
“Just so,” agreed Obie. “And all energy, too, except the primal energy that is the building blocks for everything else. This is the central Markovian world, from which, as near as I can see, they recreated the universe.”
That thought sobered all of them. Trelig’s eyes shined, and his expression took on new determination. “Such awesome power!” he said, too low for the others to hear. A blue-white shot didn’t snap him out of it but did bring him back to reality. With such power within his grasp, he still had to survive this experience.
“Obie, can you converse with this big machine?” Yulin asked eagerly.
The computer seemed to think for a moment. “Yes and no. It’s hard to explain. Suppose you had a functional vocabulary of just eighty words? Suppose, in fact, you were only capable of knowing eighty words. And suppose someone from your culture with a doctorate in physics started talking his technical field with you. You couldn’t even absorb all the words, let alone understand any of the conversation.”
“But you could talk to it in those eighty words,” Yulin pointed out.
“Not if you couldn’t even phrase the question,” Obie retorted. “I haven’t the ability even to say ‘hello’ in an understandable manner-and I’m almost afraid to try. There is an incredibly elaborate preprogrammed sequence that I am aware of but cannot follow or comprehend. I don’t dare try. It might wipe out all reality, or the other computer and all reality as well, leaving me as the only thing left. What then?”
The scientists saw what he meant. The Markovians had preprogrammed the computer to turn over everything to their successors, when they reached the Markovian level. It apparently had never occurred to them that a Gil Zinder, a primitive ape, would stumble onto their precious formula millennia before man was ready. The master computer out there was waiting for Obie to tell it to shut down, that new masters were taking over.
But the new masters were three very scared primitives and an equally scared computer, the primitives trapped by the former employees of one of them. The guards, seeing the change in position and realizing that the sponge supply ship would not be coming, knew they were going to die horribly.
But they were going to die free. They were going to take their hated master with them.
“Obie?” Yulin called.
“Yes, Ben?”
“Obie, can you figure out how the hell we can get out of here?”
The computer had anticipated that one.
“Well, you could just wait them out,” Obie suggested. “There are provisions here for a week, and I can create more than enough to sustain you. In three weeks or so all the guards will be dead; in two they will be in no condition to oppose you or do you harm.”
“No good!” Trelig shouted to them all. “There are two ships up there that must be placed under our control-otherwise we’re trapped. Remember, there are a lot of agents and diplomatic people who won’t be affected by the sponge wearing off! With the guards gone wild, some are probably armed by now and might be able to take the ships. If they jump away, we’re stuck for good!”
“Correction,” Obie responded. “There is one ship. Mavra Chang, Nikki Zinder, and a guard named Renard got off in one.”
Gil Zinder seemed to come to life again. “Nikki! Away from here! Obie-did they make it out? Are they back home?”
“Sorry, Dr. Zinder,” the computer said sadly. “The early start for the tests forced my hand. They were taken in the vortex with us, and have since crashed on the Well World.”
The old scientist’s look of hope gave way to despair, and he seemed to crumble. Trelig was upset by a different point entirely.
“What do you mean, forced your hand?” the erstwhile master of New Pompeii snarled angrily. “You treasonous machine!”
Obie was nonplussed. “I am a self-aware individual, Councillor. I do what I must do, and yet I have certain freedom of action outside those parameters. Just like people,” he added, not a little smugly.
Ben Yulin’s mind was the engineer’s. “What did you call that world they crashed on, Obie?” he asked, ignoring the others.
“The Well World,” responded the computer. “That is its name.”
Yulin thought for a moment. “The Well World,” he murmured, almost to himself. Now he looked straight at the speaker. More shots were being exchanged between Trelig and the guards outside.
“Obie?” Ben almost whispered, “tell me about this Well World. Is it just a big Markovian computer, or what?”
“I have to interpolate, Ben,” Obie apologized. “After all, I’m getting this information in bits and pieces and it’s all coming in at once. No, I don’t think so, though. The computer-the Well-is the entire core of the planet. The planet itself seems to be divided into many more than a thousand separate and distinct biospheres, each with its own dominant life form and supporting its own flora, fauna, atmospheric conditions, and the like. It’s like a massive number of little planets. I infer these as prototype colonies for later implantation into the universe in their true, mathematically precise environments. They are alive, they are active, they exist.”
The other two were listening now, fascinated in spite of themselves.
“The three who crashed,” Gil Zinder tried dryly. “Did they-did they .. . survive?”
“Unknown,” Obie replied truthfully. “Since they are not part of the Well World matrix, they are not in the computer’s storage. Even if they were, I doubt if they could be picked out. There are too many sentient beings down there.”
“Why don’t you ask him something practical, like how the hell we get out of here?” Trelig snapped breaking the reverie. “The fact that there’s only one ship left makes the matter even more pressing!”
Yulin nodded, unhappy to break this fascinatin new line of discovery but unable to argue with Trelig practicality. But the computer was a hostile accomplice; questions would have to be in absolutes. Yuli. suddenly felt like he knew what it was like to have to strike a bargain with the devil.
And then, suddenly, without Obie’s aid, he had it. Yulin let out a disgusted exclamation that made the others turn, then slammed his right fist into his left palm. “Curse me for a fool!” he swore. “Of course!” Calming himself down, he asked, “Obie, is your little disk still operable?”
“Yes, Ben,” Obie replied. “But only witnin its previous limits. The big disk is locked into the Well computer until I or somebody can figure out how to disengage it, and I have no ideas at all on that right now.”
Yulin nodded, more to himself than to the machine. “Okay. Okay. The little one’s all I need now. Obie, you have the formula for sponge, don’t you?”
“Of course,” came the reply, a little startled. “From the bloodstream of a number of early subjects.”
“Uh, huh,” Yulin muttered. He was all business now. “Activate and energize. I want a small quantity of sponge, say five grams, in a leakproof plastic container. The straight stuff. And, I want an additional kilogram of the stuff with the following chemical substitutions.” He proceeded to rattle off a long chemical chain that startled the others.
Zinder was the first to realize where Yulin was headed, and almost moaned, “But-you can’t do that!”
But Yulin could, had ordered it, energized Obie, and the disk was even now swinging out over the circular platform, and the blue field was forming.
“What the hell are you going to do?” Trelig shouted.
“He’s going to poison the poor bastards,” Gil Zinder replied. He looked up at Yulin. “But-why? With sponge they’ll be back under your command again anyway.”
Ben Yulin shook his head. “Maybe upstairs-maybe. But not these folks out there. They are already resigned to death and they’re committed.” He turned to Trelig. “Keep a watch on old doc here while 1 get the stuff,” he called.
In a flash Yulin was off, bounding down the stairs to the platform. Carefully, he examined the two packages, found some gloves, and picked up both of them. He still didn’t quite trust Obie. And then he was back.
“Have we still got communication?” he asked the councillor.
Trelig nodded. “I think so, unless they’ve shot out the circuits. Try it.”
Yulin went over to the wall, flipped a switch. “You, out there!” he called, hearing his own voice echoing eerily from the vast pit beyond the wall. “Listen to me! We have sponge! Things aren’t hopeless! We’ll give it to you if you surrender your weapons!” He flipped the intercom back to Open.
There was a sudden silence from the outside, as if the news had unsettled the others, which was good, There was no reply as yet, but no shots, either.
After what seemed like an interminable wait, Trelig growled, “They didn’t buy it.”
Yulin, although fearing much the same thing himself, replied, “Don’t jump the gun. They’re probably voting on it. And thinking about the pain of no-dose for the first time. Even though they won’t really start to feel the effects for a while, they feel it in their minds even now.”
And he was right. A few minutes later the intercom burst into life.
“Okay, Yulin, maybe you get out,” came a rather pleasant voice with a very unpleasant undertone. “But how do we know you aren’t lying? We know how much sponge comes in. Every gram.”
“We can make it! All you need!” Yulin responded, trying to keep his tension and anxiety out of his tone. “Look, I’ll prove it to you. Send a representative over the bridge. Any one. I’ll toss out a fiver. Try it. You’ll know what I say is the truth.”
There was another long silence, and then the same voice came back, “All right. I’m coming over. But if I don’t make it or the stuff’s no good, the other six will get you if it’s the last thing they do-and there’s plenty more of us Topside. They know what’s going on down here.”
Yulin grinned to himself. Another piece of useful information. The intercoms on Topside still worked Now he knew just how much of the story they would know, and that intelligence would possibly make the difference.
A few minutes later a lone figure could be seen walking across the great bridge that spanned the pit to Obie’s major core. It was a tiny, frail-looking figure, dwarfed almost to insignificance by the magnitude of the structure around it. It was either a very young girl or one of the screwy sexers. It didn’t matter.
The former guard seemed to take forever to get there, and finally stopped about ten meters from the doorway.
“I’m here!” she (he?) announced needlessly.
Yulin gripped the small bag of pure sponge. “Here it comes!” he shouted and tossed it onto the bridge. It hit with a pock sound and slid almost to the other’s feet.
The guard picked it up, looked at it, then tore open the plastic and pulled out the tiny piece of yellow-green sponge, an actual living creature of sorts. It really was a sponge, too, a denizen of a beautiful world that had been settled centuries ago by a prototype human colony. Interaction of alien bacteria with some of the synthetic elements in the colony’s initial food supply had spawned the horror that made Antor Trelig and his vast syndicate so powerful. The new mutated substance had permeated every cell of the human’s bodies, replacing vital substances. The cells took to it fantastically; once in, it was neither rejected nor displaced. Indeed, the cells actually started making more of the stuff. The initial contamination was irreversible. A moderate amount caused no apparent physical changes, but was there all the same. A large amount, as the guards had gotten, caused cells to trigger in strange ways, causing deformity, accenting opposite sexual characteristics, or, as in Nikki Zinder’s case, causing runaway obesity or other equally horrible characteristics. It varied with the individual, although sexual characteristics, being the most sensitive, were the most common.
The organism, however, was totally parasitic. It would consume the host, particularly its brain, where brain cells died irreplaceably in a great progression. Unchecked, the mutant substance would slowly destroy the mind well ahead of the body; it was painful. Since the stuff was not selective, often mental capacity was reduced or limited for all intents and purposes while the central core of one’s being was the last to go. One knew what was happening, knew until it struck the cerebral cortex full and turned one first into an animal, then into a vegetable that would simply lie there and starve to death. A slow-motion lobotomy.
Sponge was not the drug, it was the antidote. Not an effective one, since it had to be periodically renewed, but the secretions of the native sponge plants did in fact arrest the growth of the mutant strain. To need sponge was to become the syndicate’s slave. The stuff was too dangerous for the Com to keep around; the sponge itself contained the addicting material. But greedy, ambitious politicians had it, grew it, and ruled with it.
Facing such a future, the guard greedily and unhesitantly gobbled up the sponge in the plastic envelope. It was not a sufficient dose-all of New Pompeii’s personnel were deliberately given massive overdoses, which required massive amounts of sponge to counter -but it would be convincing.
It was. “It’s real!” the guard shouted, clearly amazed. “It’s the pure stuff!”
“A kilo in exchange for your weapons!” Trelig yelled, feeling in charge once again. “Now-or we wait you out!”
“The word has gone to Topside!” came a new, deeper voice from the intercom. “Okay, we’re coming over-four of us. The others will make sure you don’t blast us. You get their weapons when we get the kilo and you come out. Not before.”
Trelig waited what he thought would be a convincing period of time, grinning evilly now. Their ploy was all too obvious.
Three more joined the first one, looking somewhat eagerly at the very door that, just moments before, they’d been trying to blast.
“Okay, here’s the kilo!” shouted the master of New Pompeii, as he heaved it out.
They almost pounced on it, and two of them made a simultaneous grab for the package. One scooped it up and started running back to the other side, while the other three nervously blocked Trelig’s view.
“What if they don’t take it right away?” Yulin whispered, worried.
“They will,” Trelig replied confidently. “They’re overdue, remember. How powerful is that stuff?”
“It should feel great for five or six minutes,” the younger man told him. “After that, well, they should just all get massive heart seizures and keel over.”
Trelig looked suddenly worried. “Should? You mean there’s some doubt?”
“No, no, not really,” Yulin replied, shaking his head. “I didn’t really mean that. No, what’s in there is enough to kill an army. Give them ten minutes, no more.”
“Think they’ll run for Topside?” Trelig continued, still worried. “Or maybe one will live long enough to radio a warning.”
Yulin considered this. “No, I doubt if they’ll wait to get to Topside. You yourself just said they’re overdue. As for one giving a warning, well, if you can find a personal intercom, we ought to be able to find out.”
They waited anxiously. Trelig could not find the intercom; the one he had originally worn was long smashed in the reversal. “We’ll just have to bluff it through,” he growled, uncertainty again in his voice. “Say-how will we know they’re gone? You want to be the first target? Or maybe Doc, there?”
Yulin shook his head. “Not necessary. Obie’s sensors are still on.” He walked over to the console.
“Obie, are the guards still alive?”
“No, Ben,” responded the computer. “At least, I register no life forms in their old area. They winked out pretty suddenly. You murdered them clean.”
“Save your sarcasm,” Yulin growled. “Did you monitor any transmissions to Topside?”
“I haven’t much capability there,” Obie noted. “I don’t know.”
Ben Yulin nodded, then turned to Trelig. “Well, we got by obstacles one through six. Topside’s gonna be a lot tougher, though. Any ideas?”
Trelig thought for a moment, eyes gleaming. The immediate threat over, he was beginning to enjoy this.
“Ask the machine if anyone Topside is aware of who escaped in the first ship,” he ordered.
“How could Obie know?” Yulin asked. “I mean, if he can’t even monitor communications. Why? What have you got in mind?”
“To get to my position, you have to think of all the angles,” the syndicate boss told him. “For example, either ship was capable of carrying at least half the guests, yet only Mavra Chang, Nikki Zinder, and the guard went. Why?”
Yulin thought a minute. “Because they sneaked out. Chang was paid to get the girl, not save everybody on Topside. The more people in a plot, the more chance for a foul-up.”
Trelig nodded. “Now you begin to see. There are a lot of them, and they barely know one another. I’d guess, too, that they have, at best, an uneasy relationship with the guards. All hell broke loose not long after the ship left. Want to bet some of them don’t even know a ship is gone?”