Cerberus: A Wolf in the Fold

by Jack L. Chalker

  “I wonder, though—if these aliens are so smart, why did they allow this loophole to slip by?” I commented. It was a genuine question that really bothered me.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. That bothered me, too—but not now. Nothing,” he added darkly, “will ever bother me again. Nothing and no one.” He looked back at us. “Now, tell me. Give me one reason why I should allow either of you to live one moment longer.”

  Dylan looked up at me questioningly, as if to ask, are you sure this isn’t Laroo?

  “Trust me,” I whispered beneath my breath, then turned to Laroo once more—the fake Laroo, I was convinced. “Insurance,” I told him aloud, hoping his superior hearing would mistake her glance and my comment for reassurance and nothing more sinister. “Remember Samash. And that robot they caught in Military Systems Command. Hard to kill—yes. Superior? Yes. But immortal? No. Not only that, but I think I know, or can at least guess, the alien’s insurance policy.”

  Both Merton and “Laroo” looked startled. “Go on,” he urged.

  “They—these robot bodies. They’ll wear out They have to, no matter how good they are. What’s to prevent a little bit of that programming we dared not touch, the autonomic system’s, say, from suddenly stopping at some predetermined point in time?”

  He looked nervously at Merton. “Is this possible?”

  She nodded. “But not insurmountable. Remember, I have recorded your and other of people’s imprints. As long as you update them periodically, as they do in Confederation Intelligence, you can die over and over again—and still live again.”

  That explanation satisfied him, and also me. “Might I point out, though, that if somebody’s not there to clear the next robotic programming, you’ll have to go back into a human body again.”

  “Never!” he snapped. “Once you’ve been in one of these you can never go back. Not for an instant! Never!” He realized the implications of what he was saying. “Yes, all right. You’re right. But you will remain here on the island as my permanent guests. For all time, and from body to body. You say you want to keep your children, raise them yourselves. Very well, do so here, in the midst of luxury.”

  “Luxury prison, you mean,” Dylan responded.

  He shrugged. “As you wish. But it’s velvet-lined and gold-plated. You’ll want for nothing here. It’s the best I can do. You and I both know the Confederacy will quickly know that you played false with them. They’ll want you at all costs, to erase that information which is probably easily done with a simple verbal trigger—so I can afford you no contact except with my own.”

  “And if they fry the island?” Dylan asked pointedly.

  “They won’t,” he responded confidently. “Not until they’re sure. And we’ll give them corpses to look at and a really convincing story, not to mention obviously dismantling Project Phoenix. Everything back to normal. They’ll believe something went wrong, all right—but it’ll be convincing. Believe me.”

  I sighed and shrugged. “What choice have we got?”

  “None,” he responded smugly. At that point I noticed he was alone in the center of the room. The laser cannon opened up, and after an incredible time he too was melted. I looked over at the brownish patch left from Samash, still there despite a strong cleanup effort. My move—success. And check.

  . Dylan gasped and whispered, “You were right!” Then she hesitated. “How will we know the real one?”

  “We won’t,” I told her. “Just trust me.”

  We went through three more acts, each one as or more convincing than the first. Each time the robot was suddenly melted. I kept wondering if they’d all be so confident if Laroo told them what had happened to their predecessors.

  The fourth one, though, another civilized worlds standard like the others and equally nondescript, was different at the end. He finally smiled when we finished the interminable wonderment conversation and sighed. “All right, that’s it. Enough fun and games. I’m convinced.” He turned, gestured, and we followed nervously, avoiding the puddles and eyeing those cannon suspiciously. But, this time, we all walked out of the lab.

  Bogen awaited us, and bowed. “Did all go well, my lord?”

  “Perfectly. Hard as it is for me to believe, it seems as if our friends here really delivered. Take good care of them, Bogen. Give them anything they want—except communication with the outside world. Understand?”

  “As you wish, my lord,” he responded respectfully.

  We all began walking down the corridor and I started singing, softly and lightly, a ditty I neither understood nor had known before, but one I knew the function of quite well.

  “ ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

  All mimsy were the borogoves,

  And mome roths outgrabe …”

  Laroo stopped and turned, curious. “What’s that?”

  “Just a little light song from my childhood,” I told him. “I’ve been under a hell of a lot of tension the past few weeks, remember, and it’s gone now.”

  He shook his head in wonder. “Umph. Crazy business.”

  “Well see you again, won’t we?” Dylan asked him innocently.

  “Oh, yes, certainly. I have no intention of leaving just yet”

  “Maybe a month from now,” I suggested helpfully. “At least then we could talk about our lives here.”

  “Why, yes, certainly. In a month.” And with that we went up to the quarters level while he and Bogen went elsewhere.

  Freed at last of the constant guard, we walked out onto the lawn and sat in the middle of it, basking in the sunlight and warmth, stripping down and lying next to each other. For a while we said nothing. Finally Dylan spoke. “Did we actually just take control of the Lord of Cerberus?” she asked, wonderingly.

  “I’m not sure. We’ll know in a month, certainly,” I replied. “If he lives to get off this island, he’s the real one. If not, we’ll just do it again and again until we get it right But I think he was the right one.”

  She giggled. “In a month. We have a whole month. Just us, here, with every wish catered to. It’ll be a relief. And then …”

  “It’s all ours, honey. All Cerberus is ours. Good old Dr. Dumonia.”

  She looked startled. “Who?”

  “Dr. Du—now why did I bring him up?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. We sure won’t be needing a psych any more. Except maybe to get that implant to report out of your head.”

  “Yeah, but I suppose that Dr. Merton could do that as well. I hope so.”

  She turned to me. “You know why I love you? You did it all yourself! Without any outside help! You’re incredible!”

  “Well, the Confederacy had to go along with the plan, you know.”

  “Pooh. You knew it all along. Every single one of your crazy, mad, nonsensical schemes worked. In a little more than a year you went from exile to true Lord of the Diamond.”

  “And you’re the Lady of the Diamond, remember.”

  She lay idly for a moment, then said, “I wonder if we’d shock anybody if we made love out here?”

  “Only robots, probably,” I responded, “and we know what they’re worth.”

  She laughed. “Shocking. You know, though—remember when they suggested we put ourselves in each other’s minds? Who was that, anyway?”

  I shook my head. “Too long ago. I can’t remember. Not important, anyway. But why do you bring that up?”

  She laughed. “It wasn’t necessary. I’m a part of you “anyway now. And you, me, I believe. At least I can’t get you out of my head.”

  END REPORT. REFER TO EVALUATION. STOP TRANSMISSION STOP STOP.

  Epilogue

  The observer leaned back, removed the helmet, and sighed. He looked weary, worn, and even a little old beyond his years, and he knew it.

  “You are still disturbed,” the computer noted. “I fail to see why you should be upset. It was a splendid victory, perhaps a key one for us. We will he
nceforth have our own spy in the ranks of the Four Lords.”

  He didn’t reply immediately. The computer irritated him, and he couldn’t quite explain that either. Computers and agents were well matched to each other, and before he had always somewhat identified with the machine. Two of a kind. Cold, emotionless, logical, a perfect analytical working team. Was he in fact irritated at the computer, he wondered, or was it that the machine was such a reflection of. his own previous ego and self-image that he couldn’t bear the mirror it presented? He wasn’t site, but his mind did seize for a moment on the word previous. A curious word. Why had he used it? Had he changed that much?

  I haven’t changed! he told himself, banging a clenched fist down on the armrest. They changed. Not me!

  But they are you, his mind accused.

  What was so different about their missions, anyway? The planets, to be sure, Were far more exotic than the majority of plastic and steel worlds he was used to, but not as different as a few on the frontier. Never before had that changed him. What had—down there?

  Perhaps it was the fact that they—his other selves-knew that they were down there for life. No check back in, debrief, and lay off until the next mission. No return to the good life and the best the Confederacy could offer. A last mission. No more responsibilities to the Confederacy, no more working for anyone except yourself.

  All his life he’d been trained to think in the collective sense. The greatest good for the greatest number. The preservation of the civilized worlds from internal forces that threatened it. As long as humanity in the mass was bettered, they’d taught him, it hardly mattered that a few had to die, innocent or not, or even an entire planet Bettered. Protected. Saved.

  Did he really believe that any more? he asked himself.

  Plastic worlds. Did they, then, breed plastic people? Was Dumonia right? Was the alien threat more of a threat because of the way we’d remade ourselves?

  And yet the civilized worlds were happy places. There was no poverty, few diseases, no hunger or other forms of human misery that had plagued man through the ages. Not even the frontier, with its vast technological support, was as miserable or threatening as past frontiers had been. He was raised in that culture and, seeing the historical record, believed in it. It was better than anything man had ever had before. That was the trouble. The basic puzzle that haunted him. It was neither bad nor evil. It was a good society full of happy, healthy, well-adjusted people, on the whole.

  That thought cheered him slightly. Dumonia was wrong, too, in believing that the sparks of human greatness were extinguished in such a system. They hadn’t been extinguished—they merely lay dormant until needed. The Warden Diamond proved that.

  Humanity’s strength and hope lay in that dormancy. In the fact that under trial the reserve was there to adapt, to change, to meet new challenges. Dormant but not extinct.

  That thought brightened his mood somewhat, although not completely. That was fine for the collective, but not for the individual. Not for one particular individual in five bodies.

  Twice now he’d followed himself on dangerous ground. Twice he had seen himself change, in some ways radically, putting aside his self-image, his devotion to duty and ideals—even the ideals themselves. In all cases he’d violated, once and for all, his personal standards, his own sense of himself as a bedrock, the ultimate loner who uses but does not need. These, too, were dormant inside him and came out when—well, when the leash was cut. The leash that bound him to the Confederacy, its authority, principles, and ideals. He had willingly been leashed, and the cut had not been of his own making, but still it was there.

  What disturbed him most of all was that he was still on that leash. That very thought was horrible, a violation of all he’d ever stood for or believed in, but it was a truth that had to be faced. Those men down there—they thought themselves trapped, and him the free man. They were wrong. And as they envied him, so he too was envying them.

  ‘But, still, there was a mission, a problem. One that even they had continued to serve. He could at least address that.

  “Evaluation?”

  “Correlations with Lilith are fascinating,” the computer told him. “There are certain totally irrational common grounds.”

  He nodded. “I saw them.”

  “We’ll need to get someone out to Momrath, of course, but that may have been done for us from the data sifting in. We will also have to intensify patrols throughout the Warden system, since there are points of contact between alien and human here somewhere.”

  “We should tighten up on vacation resorts back in the civilized worlds, too,” he noted. “Obviously that’s the key place from which they kidnap their targets. They would have to be missing for at least a week to ten days.”

  “That can be done only to a point,” the computer pointed out. “It would be helpful to know who selects those targets. So far the grand design, the pattern, eludes me, mostly because we do not have enough identified robot agents to correlate their positions. It seems obvious, though, that the aliens are quite subtle.”

  “We knew that from the start. Who the hell would ever imagine an enemy alien force hiring the chief criminal elements to do all its advance work?”

  “I worry that it is more than advance work. Let us postulate one or two conditions that seem reasonable from the facts, bearing in mind that we are dealing with alien minds developed in an unknown evolutionary pat* tern that might not follow our logic.”

  “Go on.”

  “We assume that they are either numerically inferior to our own forces or unwilling to take the casualty rates a direct attack might bring.”

  “That may be a wrong assumption,” he pointed out “After all, if they can make super-robots like this, they could do their fighting entirely with surrogates.”

  “Perhaps. But I tend to believe that the processes involved in perfecting these devices is too long, involved, laborious, and costly for such mass production. Instead, I suggest that their plot may be entirely on the subtle side. We have been looking too hard at the direct military option.”

  “Huh? What do you mean?”

  “Suppose their plot is to bore from within? To weaken and disrupt key services, key facilities, the bedrock of our economic and social system? A carefully chosen and placed organic robot could do more harm for longer periods than any direct attack by planet killers. I need only look at your own psychological reactions to the Warden to see how easily and subtly we can be turned. The human race and its culture is such that it would destroy itself rather than be conquered from outside. There are parallels among the early independent planets and even earlier, in the age of nations on a single planet We have often come very, very close to self-destruction rather than total capitulation. A direct attacker, then, would have nothing to win.”

  “So you think the choice of the Four Lords was more than just a clever expediency? Hmmm … Laroo indicated that Kreegan was the original mastermind; and Kreegan, to be sure, had a penchant for nasty and sneaky plots and behavior.” He sat back. “Now, let me get this straight. You’re suggesting that the aliens never intend to attack us directly. That the war they chose is the war they are now fighting. That they aim for internal disruption and collapse by exploiting our weaknesses, rather than conquest.”

  “It makes the most sense.”

  He nodded. “And it’s the least costly of the alternatives. None of their people are exposed or jeopardized. The Diamond, and through it the robots, do the dirty work. It’s even cost-effective. Assuming you’re right—analysis?”

  “If the Four Lords are directing things in this manner, and choose properly and correctly, it will work. Not quickly. We might not even know or realize the extent of their success until it’s too late. And with the promise of those robot bodies and the chance to escape, the end could come not by kidnapping key people and replacing them but by mobilizing the best criminal minds of the last seventy years in such bodies and loosing them on an already weakened and infiltrated Con
federacy.”

  The prospect appalled him. “But wait a moment. Only Cerberan criminals could be used. Those on the other three worlds have other Warden variants that won’t step aside to allow a Cerberan mind-switch.”

  “Have you forgotten the Merton Process?”

  He whistled and shook his head. “Then finding the aliens, bringing them out into the open, is our only hope. And we have no guarantees that there are any of them anywhere hear the Warden system. It could all be handled by robots and third parties hired by the Four Lords.”

  “Perhaps one of the remaining two will tell us for sure,” the computer suggested hopefully. “Or if not, perhaps our in-system patrols will get lucky.”

  “Correlate and transmit what we’ve got,” he ordered. “We just have to wait and see.”

  “Done.”

  The man walked back to the living quarters of the module on the great picket ship, poured himself a drink, and sat down on his bed. All that the computer had suggested disturbed him, but still he couldn’t bring his mind to focus for long on the larger problem and plot.

  Cal Tremon … Qwin Zhang … H … Dylan Kohl …

  Like some song that gets stuck in your mind and you keep hearing it over and over whether you want to or not.

  I can’t get you out of my head.

  About the Author

  JACK L. CHALKER was born in Norfolk, Virginia, on December 17, 1944, but was raised and has spent most of his life in Baltimore, Maryland. He learned to read almost from the moment of entering school, and by working odd jobs had amassed a large book collection by the time he was La junior high school, a collection now too large for containment in his house. Science’ fiction, history, and geography all fascinated him early on, interests that continue.