It took over ten minutes to reach the other end and, even at that, they traveled at a tremendous rate of speed. Finally they felt the car slow, and then craw to a stop. They waited three or four minutes, nervously wondering if they were stuck. Then they heard the sound of something above them, and, less than a minute later, the force field and solid projection in front of them dissolved, and Trelig was there, smiling.
“Sorry about the delay. I should have warned you,” he said cheerily, sounding not the least bit sorry.
They unbuckled their belts and got up, stretching, and walked out into a narrow corridor. They followed their host down the steel-clad pathway. It turned an< ended on a large riveted metal platform with railings all around. Ahead of them was an enormous shaft that seemed to have no top or bottom. The size of the round gap dwarfed them to insignificance, and they gasped in awe. All around the shaft were panels, countless modules with even, small gaps between.
A long bridge led from the platform across the shaft; a wide bridge of the same metal flooring as the platform but with 150-centimeter sidewalls of a plastic substance. They realized that they were somewhere in the bowels of a great machine.
Trelig stopped in the middle of the bridge, and hat the party gather around him. Everywhere were the hum and crackle of active circuits opening and closing, echoing off the shaft walls. He had to raise his voice to be heard.
“This shaft runs from a point about halfway between the theoretical equator and the South Pole of New Pompeii on the rocky and unprotected surface, almost to the core of the planetoid,” he shouted. “II is fusion powered, indirectly, through the solar and plasma network. For almost twenty kilometers in all directions around us is the computer-self-aware of course-which Dr. Zinder calls Obie. Into it we have been pouring all of the data at our command. Come.”
He continued the dizzying walk, past a shining copper-colored pole that ran lengthwise through the center of the shaft and seemed to disappear in both directions, and onto a platform identical to the first one. To their left a window opened on a large room filled with a myriad apparently inactive electronic instruments. A door like that of an airlock stood directly before them. When it slid open with a hiss, there did hi fact seem to be a slight change in pressure and temperature. They entered and found themselves hi what seemed a miniature duplicate of the larger machine. A balcony and several control consoles surrounded an amphitheaterlike floor below, on which was a small, round, silvery disk. Overhead, what looked like a twenty-sided mirror with a small projecting device in its center was attached to a mobile arm that was suspended from a mount on one wall.
“The original Obie and the original device,” Trelig explained. “Obie is attached, of course, to the larger one, which is just nearing completion. Come! Fan out around the rail here so that you may all view the disk below.” He glanced over, and they saw a young, good-looking man dressed in a shiny lab tech uniform sitting at the far control panel.
“Citizens, that is Dr. Ben Yulin, operations manager here,” Trelig told them. “Now, if you’ll look below, you’ll see two of my associates bringing a third out and placing her on the disk.”
They looked down and saw two of the women Mavra recognized as guards gently leading a frightened girl of no more than fourteen or fifteen toward the disk.
“The girl you see is a victim of the addiction known as sponge,” Trelig explained. “Already the drug has rotted her mind so that she is no more than a childlike idiot. I have many such poor unfortunates here; they will soon be cured. Now, watch and be quiet. Dr. Yulin will take it from here.”
Ben Yulin flipped a couple of switches on his console. They heard the crackle of some sort of speaker and could hear his cool, pleasant baritone clearly.
“Good morning, Obie.”
“Good morning, Ben,” came Obie’s pleasing tenor-no longer coming from the console transceiver, but seemingly from the air around them. It was not a big voice or a threatening one, but it seemed to be all around them, every place and no place in particular.
“Index subject file code number 97-349826,” Yulin intoned. “Record on my mark-now!”
The mirror swung into place over the terrified girl, and the blue light shone from it, enveloping her. They saw the girl freeze, flicker, and wink out.
Trelig grinned and turned to them. “Well, what do you think of that?”
“I’ve seen holographic projectors before,” a little man said skeptically.
“Either that or you’ve disintegrated her,” another put in.
Trelig shrugged. “Well, what will convince you?” He brightened. “I know! Tell me, name a creature of the common forms! Anybody!”
They all remained silent for a second. Finally, someone called out, “A cow.”
Trelig nodded. “A cow it is. Did you hear, Ben?”
“Very good, Councillor,” Yulin responded through the speaker. His voice changed tone, and he called to his computer.
“Index RY-765197-AF, Obie,” he intoned.
“I know what a cow is, Ben,” Obie scolded gently, and Yulin chuckled.
“All right, then, Obie,” he replied, “I’ll leave it to you. Nothing dangerous, though. Docile, huh?”
“All right, Ben. I’ll do my best,” the computer assured him, and the mirror swung out once again, the blue light shone, and something flickered in.
“Magician’s tricks,” scowled the red-bearded man. “Woman into cow.”
But what materialized below was not a cow; it was a centauroid: a cow’s body-hooves, tail, and udder -and the girl’s torso and head, unchanged except that her ears stuck out as a cow’s ears would, and from the area around her temples grew two small, curved horns.
“Let’s go down and examine her,” Antor Trelig suggested, and they all moved single-file down a small staircase nearby.
The cow-woman stood there, looking blankly forward, hardly paying them notice.
“Go ahead!” Trelig urged. “Touch her. Examine her as closely as you want!”
They did, and the girl paid them little notice except when one observer touched the udder nipples, provoking a mild and annoying kick that misssed its target.
“Good lord! Monstrous!” grumbled one councillor. Others were stunned.
Trelig then led them back up to the balcony, explaining that the viewing area had invisible shielding that was necessary to screen out the effects of the small mirror.
He nodded to Ben, who gave another series of instructions to Obie. The girl-cow vanished and was replaced, only moments later, by the girl. Again they went down, looked at her, found her dull-eyed and fearful but otherwise perfectly human-and unmistakably the same girl.
“I still don’t believe it,” the bearded man uttered. “Some kind of monstrous genetic cloning, yes, but that’s all.”
Trelig smiled. “Would you like to try, Citizen Rumney?” he prodded. “I assure you that we will not harm you hi any way. Or, if not you, then anyone else?”
“I’ll try,” the red-bearded man replied. The girl was guided down from the disk and taken out a door below. Rumney stepped up, looked around, still trying to figure out the trick. The rest returned to their perch.
Yulin was ready. Rumney was encoded quickly, winking out and then, almost immediately, winking back in. They had made two slight alterations in him: he had a donkey’s long ears and a large, black equine tail emerging just above his rectum and covering it. Since reality was kept consistent for him, he was quickly aware of his change. He felt his long ears in wonder, and moved his tail. He looked stunned.
“What do you think, now, Citizen Rumney?” Trelig called out good-naturedly.
“It’s-incredible,” the man managed, voice cracking.
“We can adjust all reality so that you and everyone else will believe you have always been that way,” the master of New Pompeii told them. “But, hi this case, I think not.”
“Did it hurt?” Someone called to the man. “What did it feel like?” another asked.
Rumney shook his head. “It didn’t feel like anything,” he replied, wonderingly. “Just saw the blue light, then you all seemed to flicker, and here I was.”
Trelig smiled and nodded. “See?” he told them all. “I said there was no pain.”
“But how did you do it?” someone gasped.
“Well, much earlier, we fed Obie the codes for various common animals, plants, and the like. He used the device overhead to reduce them to an energy pattern that is, mathematically, the equivalent of the creature. This information was stored, and when Citizen Rumney was on the disk it did the same for him. Then, using Dr. Yulin’s instructions, it,blended the ears and tail of the ass to the physiognomy of Rumney; it re-encoded the cells as well to make it his natural form.”
Mavra Chang felt the same chill run through her that ran through the others. Such incredible powerin the hands of Trelig.
The councillor of New Harmony relaxed, savoring the expressions and the thoughts he knew were troubling them. Finally, he said, “But this is only the prototype. Right now we can take only a single individual at a time. We can, of course, make our own individuals, but there are some things we haven’t figured out how to get into Obie so they come out whole people, mentally. That’s only a matter of time and practice. And, of course, we can create anything known that is no larger than the disk and whose code we’ve first stored in Obie. Food of any kind, anything organic or inorganic, absolutely real, absolutely indistinguishable from the original.”
“You said this machine was a prototype,” Mavra Chang noted. “May we assume that things have advanced beyond that stage now?”
“Very good, Citizen Chang,” Trelig approved. “Yes, yes indeed! You saw the large tube going through the center of the big shaft?” They nodded. “Well, it has just been connected to a huge version of that little energy radiator you see in the center of that little mirror, there. I had the parts built in a dozen different places and assembled here by my own planet’s people. The same with a huge version of that mirror, slightly different in shape and property, of course. And huge-it fills most of the surface of Underside. If the power is sufficient, and we believe it is, it should be effective from a distance of over fifteen million kilometers on an area at least forty-five to fifty thousand kilometers in diameter.”
“You mean a planet!” someone gasped.
Trelig looked mock-thoughtful. He was enjoying this. “Yes, I suppose so. Why, yes, I do believe you’re right! If there is sufficient power, of course.”
They thought over what he had just said, each realizing that what they’d feared most of all was true. This madman possessed a device that could alter planets to his design in limited ways. Limited, perhaps, but he certainly wouldn’t be going to this extreme just to give the inhabitants funny ears and tails.
Trelig looked down, saw that Rumney, who could hear the conversation, hadn’t moved off the disk. He was waiting to be changed back.
“Now I’ll show you the full potential,” Trelig whispered, and nodded to Yulin.
Before he could do anything, the man with the ears and tail was captured again in the blue glow. When he winked back in a few moments later there had been an additional change. He still retained the ears and tail, and even his beard, but through the thin robe they could clearly see that he was now sexually a female despite the retention of the rest of his large, masculine body.
Trelig grinned evilly at the others, then called down. “Tell me, Citizen Rumney, do you notice any other changes?”
The person on the disk looked and felt all over, then shook his-her?-head. “No,” the person responded in a voice that unmistakably belonged to the same person but was now a half-octave higher in tone. “Should I?”
“You are female, now, Citizen Rumney.”
Rumney looked bewildered. “Why, yes, of course. I always have been.”
Trelig turned back to the group, a smug expression on his face. “You see? This time we altered something basic in the equations that created.him. We made him a her. A simple thing, really-easier than the reverse, since he is now XX where, in the opposite way, we have to postulate the Y factor. The important thing is that only we know a change has taken place. He doesn’t-and, if you returned with him like that, you’d find that everyone else remembered him as a female, too, that all his records were those of a female, that his whole past was adjusted to show he’d been born that way. That is the real power of the device. Only the shielding and our close proximity to the change allow us to be exempt from this change ourselves.”
They thought it over. New Pompeii, of course, would be shielded, probably something added to the plasma shield. When the big mirror did its work on a planet, no one in the whole galaxy would even know that anything was changed. The victimized world wouldn’t know it, either. The inhabitants would become his playthings and his property as a part of the natural scheme of things.
“You monster!” one of the councillors spat. “Why show us this at all? Why expose yourself, except for ego?”
Trelig shrugged. “Ego, of course, is part of it. But such power is no fun unless somebody knows what’s going on. But, no, there’s more to it than that.”
“You need the Council Fleet to move New Pompeii and protect it,” Mavra guessed.
He smiled. “No, not really. According to the calculations, if a reverse bias is applied to the device, it would be possible to envelop New Pompeii in the field and then transport it anywhere it wanted-sort of picking itself up by its own bootstraps. No, this concerns our own limitations. You can’t remake a planet into something else without knowing exactly what you want and then feeding the information into Obie. The ears and tail wouldn’t have been possible unless Obie had first had the code for the ass. It will take much time and research to remake a world properly, and I am an impatient man. If I tried a planet now, or in the next few years, the results would probably be monstrous. No, I need access to all the information, the best brains, the best of everything to carry it out. I need the resources of hundreds of worlds. To get the resources I need, I’ll need the Council Fleet under my control.”
Mavra and a couple of others turned a little at some movement behind them. Four guards had emerged there, all carrying nasty electron rifles.
Rumney called up from the disk. “Hey! Trelig! Are you going to let me keep these ears and tail?”
The master of New Pompeii looked over at Yulin and nodded. The blue light winked on again, and when it winked off Rumney was again male and had normal ears.
And he still retained the tail.
Trelig ordered him upstairs, and he came, grumbling. He reached the top and saw the guards. He almost started back again, but thought better of it and joined the rest.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Rumney grumbled, and the others added their complaints.
Trelig moved away from them slightly. “I need the Fleet and the Weapons Control Locker. Please don’t move toward me or the guards. The rifles are on high spray stun. It would do you no good, even if they shot me, too. Besides, I need you all alive to go back and tell your councillors what you have witnessed, except for you councillors, whose votes I need directly. I need you to tell your story, and I need to send some proof. Tell them that when the Council meets in four days time I will require a vote to make me First Councillor with sole authority over the Fleet and Weapons Locker. If the vote fails, then we will experiment with the big dish on those worlds you represent. New Pompeii will be everywhere and anywhere. You won’t catch it. I may not have all the data to alter a world, but I can cancel its existence with Obie! I can whittle the Council down to where I will have the votes!”
They were shocked. While he had them in that state, he pressed home, becoming friendlier, more conciliatory.
“You see, my friends,” he concluded, “not giving me that power will cause me a great deal of pain, cost a lot of lives, and give me a lot of time and trouble. But I’ll win either way. In four days-or in four years. It won’t matter. But, I’m impatient, and I am direct. We can save a lot of pain, trouble, and lives by conceding to my demands now.”
Rumney reached back, felt his tail unbelievingly. “And this tail-this is the proof?”
Trelig nodded. “Now, one at a time, each of you will go down and stand on the disk. A minor thing will be done to you, nothing more serious than what we did to Citizen Rumney here, unless you cause trouble. If you resist, we will stun you and, I assure you, the results will not be minor!” He underscored that last as if he hoped someone would resist. “But, as Rumney told you, the process is painless, and I do promise you that anyone whose world’s vote is with me will be changed back. That can be done without a return to New Pompeii.”
“What good is your promise?”
Trelig was genuinely surprised and a little hurt at the remark. “I always keep my word, Citizen. I always make good my promises-and my threats.”
Nobody did resist. It would have been futile. Even if they jumped Trelig, they would all get stunned, Trelig included, and then the alterations would be monstrous, as he promised. Even if they managed to rush the guards, they couldn’t operate the lift car, nor did they know how, if there was an alternate way, to get to the surface.
Trelig didn’t bother to be creative. Each, in turn, was given the same long horselike tail Rumney’s got, color-matched to their own hair. Mavra’s was jet-black, thick, and extended below her knees. The new condition took a little getting used to, although the tail muscle was almost infinitely controllable and the bone seemed soft and pliant. Even so, sitting in the chairs for the ride back up felt odd and uncomfortable, like sitting on a slightly hard object. When shifting position, one had a tendency to pull on the tail inadvertently, causing some pain.
But the addition to their anatomy was convincing proof to them, and it would serve as convincing proof of the threat that hung over everyone when they made their reports to their own leaders.
Mavra looked around at the people seated in the car with her and saw in their eyes and whispers that Antor Trelig would have the votes he needed. That meant, tail or no tail, getting Nikki Zinder away was imperative.
Topside again, she ventured to ask Trelig about Dr. Zinder.
“Oh, he’s around somewhere. We couldn’t do without him, you know. Not for the big test. If you could see beyond the dome now, you’d see an asteroid about the size of this one, but barren, being towed by New Harmony rugs into position about ten thousand kilometers out. A small target, a nothing. We will see tomorrow what we can make of it.”
“Will we be able to see the transformation?” she asked.
He nodded. “Of course. It’s the final demonstration. I’ll have screens set up here so you can all view it. Then, of course, you will depart with your messages -and, ah, your souvenirs,” he added lightly.
Mavra returned to her room feeling both tired and numb. The events of the day had been exactly what she’d been told to expect. But being told something and seeing it, hearing it, and experiencing it firsthand was something else again. The sleek horse’s tail that was now a part of her was proof of that.
She saw with satisfaction that the boots and belt were where she’d left them; at least they hadn’t touched any of the equipment. The clothing, on the other hand, had been neatly laundered, pressed, and was nicely folded on top of the writing table. She threw off the wrap she’d been wearing the whole day and went over to retrieve her clothes. There was a mirror over the writing table, and, for the first time, she actually saw her tail. She turned this way and that and had to admit that it looked extremely natural. She swished it, extended it out a bit, and marveled at it.
Suddenly she felt terribly tired, as if a great shock had just worn off. That disturbed her. She shouldn’t feel that way, not at this stage. But, it was early yet, she thought. The corridor light was still slightly visible through the big door, and that meant it was not yet the best time to venture forth. Almost without thinking, she walked over to the bed and lay down.
Sleeping on her back was uncomfortable, especially with a tail. She never had liked sleeping face down, so a side position proved the best. The sudden lethargy really concerned her; she was afraid that Trelig had, after all, drugged their food or, perhaps, programmed delayed responses in her brain. That last thought should have startled her awake, but it was gone, and she drifted into a strange, deep sleep.
And she dreamed. Mavra rarely dreamed; at least, she never remembered doing so. But this dream was as clear as reality, without any quality of fogginess about it.
She was back in the computer center, standing on the silver disk again, and yet, as she looked around, there were no faces on the balcony, no faces at the controls. The room was deserted, except for herself and the slight humming of the computer.
“Mavra Chang,” the computer spoke to her. “Listen, Mavra Chang. This dream is being caused by me as you are processed. All that is now being witnessed has already passed, including our conversation, in the millionth of a second between initial and final processing. This record is being made to bring memory when you sleep, an induced hypnotic sleep.”
“Who are you?” she asked. “Are you Dr. Zinder?”
“No,” responded the computer. “I am Obie. I am a machine, one endowed with self-awareness. Dr. Zinder is as much my parent as he is his own daughter’s, however, and there is the sameness of bond between us. I am his other child.”
“But you do the work for Trelig and his man Yulin,” she pointed out. “How can you do this?”
“Ben designed much of my storage capacity and, as a result, has the ability to coerce my actions,” Obie explained. “However, while I must do what he tells me to do, my mind, my self-awareness, is Dr. Zinder’s creation. It was deliberately designed so, so that no one could gain complete control of the device we have built.”
“Then you have freedom of action,” she replied, amazed. “You can act unless specifically directed not to.”
“Dr. Zinder said that making such prohibitions to me would be like making a pact with the devil; there are always mental loopholes. I have found it so.”