Quest for the Well of Souls - Jack L. Chalker [127]
"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-sufficient 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 is me now, Mavra—not just this room. Everything. The big dish and the little dish, too."
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 same 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 planet," she pointed out.
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