Cerberus: A WOLF IN THE FOLD (27 page)

 
"Are you telling me that there's no psych command that says she has to obey my every wish? No psych plant against going out on the boats?"

 
"I'm saying there is not. The first, the obedience thing, comes partly from her early training and psyche, partly from inner needs, and partly out of her very real total dependence on you financially. She is convinced there
is
such a command, but it comes from her own subconscious—and is no less real because it does. Furthermore, there is absolutely nothing preventing her from going near the boats except the laws governing the motherhood, but it's a damn good way of not having to face up to the fact that she doesn't
want
to go any more. You see, she's taken the things she doesn't want to face and transferred them to a third party—the psych. That way
she
can accept it, and that way
you
have to accept her."

 
I had half
risen
from the chair, but now I sat back down again. "What you're saying is that she's living in a fantasy world completely now.
One of her own making."

 
"Somewhat," he agreed. "Now, we can schedule a series of sessions that will allow her to accept the truth, but it may take time. With your help we can bring her face to face with herself again, so she'll be a whole person. Nonetheless, she'll be more the
present
Dylan than the past one—you understand that?"

 
I nodded, feeling slightly dazed.
"All right.
We'll schedule it. ^ut I'm—stunned. What psych commands
did
they put in?"

 
"Well, the prohibition against taking any human life is real and pretty standard for sentencing," he told me. "It protects her and you. She's also got a command that prohibits her from ever leaving the motherhood of her own accord again, although that's mostly reinforcing— under judgment she can't switch bodies anyway. The rest, as I said, is all subtle. The brain triggers hormones and the like. Reinforcing her natural drives, so to speak, as defined by that body. This has the nice by-product of reinforcing her feelings for you, which is damned clever, since that in turn feeds her psychoses and gives them the force of commands, too."

 
"From what you're saying, maybe we shouldn't snap her out of it," I noted. "You claim she's happy."

 
"No. She'll never be happy until she
realizes
that this is what she wants and until she is convinced that what she wants is also all right with you. Not doing something about these convictions, particularly the second, could in the long run turn her into the very robot she thinks she is.
Which is fine for the state and the state's psychs, but not for her or for you.
"

 
"Okay, you convinced me.
But what about my original purpose for coming?"

 
"Sanda Tyne. An interesting case, quite unlike Dylan, you know. She's one of those never really cut out for the motherhood, but she hasn't nearly the intelligence potential
nor
the vision to really be somebody in the outside world, although she has great dreams. She enjoys thrills and adventure, but only as a child might, with no real understanding of the dangers to herself or to others. As with Dylan and with all the best psych work, they simply took what was there and used it, although in .her case they more or less froze it. Hard as it is to believe, Sanda is more psyched than Dylan."

 
"What!"

 
He nodded. "She feels no real guilt about what happened to Dylan. Not really. In fact she's somewhat disappointed that she didn't replace Dylan in your life; she still hopes to one day. That's the limit of her ambition and vision—and now you understand why she doesn't call on you both more often."

 
"Jealousy?"

 
"Envy, mostly. Her whole life has been nothing but envy. The grass is
always
greener to her. Physically and intellectually she might have lived for twenty years, but emotionally she's somewhere around eight or nine. The psychs merely damped down whatever ambition was left and much of that active imagination. They reinforced the envy, but also lay down prohibitions about doing anyhing about it. The way they have her damped and oriented, she'll be perfectly happy chipping paint and collecting garbage, secure in the knowledge that someday her prince —you—will come to her."

 
"What about that business concerning harm to self or others? You said it was standard?"

 
"True, but there's only so much you can do in a few hours, and they did a lot Much the same thing was accomplished by the other conditioning, as I mentioned. She isn't going to hurt Dylan because that might alienate you. Besides, she's sure you'll dump Dylan sooner or later and come down and see the errors of your ways. She isn't going to hurt you because she's patient, as long as she's near you. And secure in the knowledge that she'll win in the end, she's hardly going to do anything to herself. That being the case, no prohibition was necessary. In fact I can foresee only one way in which she could harm
anybody
for the rest of her judgment, and only one, so you're safe."

 
"Oh? What's that?"

 
"If you asked her to.
She'll do anything to demonstrate to you the mistake she thinks you made."

 
I grinned, feeling a bit more comfortable. "No chance of that, of course."

 
"Of course," Dumonia agreed.

 
The torpedoes had been rerouted to Emyasail, where they were supposed to be all along, and my devices were ready. Confident now of Sanda's complete cooperation, we went down one evening to scout out the place and found it similar in layout to Hroyasail. It would be, I told myself, considering it was built by the same parent corporation at the same time for the same purposes.

 
Of course there were guards all over the place, and all sorts of electronic security as well, but it was oriented toward the warehouses.

 
Sanda, like all Cerberans, knew how to swim. When | you lived in giant trees with an eternal ocean always underneath, that was one thing you absolutely learned from the start.

 
We were using just basic wet suits and snorkels. I wanted no giveaways should there be underwater devices for picking up sounds like mechanical rebreathers or an underwater cycle. As a check, we donned the suits and, starting from more than two hundred meters beyond the docks, actually swam up to and under the boats, checking out the lay of the land. We found some small sensors along the docks themselves, but not only was there nothing to keep us from the bottom of the boats but the area was floodlit so they were nicely silhouetted.

 
But then why should Laroo suspect sabotage? What would be gained? It was sure to be discovered. But even if it wasn't, it would just slow him down slightly—he could get boats from other places, if need be. The only irreplaceable stuff, the organic robots, would come in from space to his new landing pad. Anybody else would be more interested in the warehouses, which
-were
heavily guarded, than in the boats—since, any good security officer would reason, why would anybody attack them? Not only expendable, but you'd lose the cargo to the depths.
Nothing to gam.

 
They were wrong.

 
The next night Sanda and I
returned,
this tune with the bag of little goodies I had made up from Otah's mate-' rials and other sources. We easily and silently affixed the devices not only to the gunboats but to several of the biggest trawlers as well.

 
The work went so easily, in fact, that Sanda was moie than a little disappointed. It was exhausting, yes, but not thrilling. It was in fact as easy as writing a letter.

 
The devices triggered at different points, and I arranged for them to be triggered from our boats when we came within range during routine operations. Nobody on our boats knew, of
course, that
they were doing anything like that, but that didn't matter. The one thing I couldn't control was when those defective torpedoes would be loaded and used. I could only give them an intermittently bad bork problem that would cause torpedoes to be used up at a fearful rate. Otherwise, all I could do was
go
about my normal routine and wait it out. I wouldn't even hear the horror stories. I just hoped that the aftermath of their troubles would, otherwise unbidden, wash right over me. It was the easiest, if least certain, way. The best way of doing what you want to do, of course, is to create a situation wherein your enemy invites you, even commands you, to do precisely what you wanted to do in the first place—which was the plot here. If
that
worked out, then the solution of how to get into Laroo's fortress would work out, too. The easiest way into an impregnable fortress is to be invited in by the owner.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Facts
About
Myself, Some Psych Work, and Fruition

During the waiting period, Dylan began her sessions with Dumonia—and so did I, since convincing her that I loved her no matter what incarnation was at the heart of the whole thing. It was true. I
did
love her, and if frontier wife was her new goal, then that was fine with me. I wanted her to be happy, and as Dr. Dumonia had noted, under the present circumstances she was not. What was intended was to give her a sense of
security—
which in its own way was somewhat ironic. I was arranging to kill Wagant Laroo and at the same time trying to make Dylan
secure. -

 
What was really interesting about the process was that during a few sessions some of her visions of me and my earlier caper slipped out, as inevitably they would. Although I was paying Dumonia enough to ensure he kept his medical ethics about him, I was more than slightly amused when I discovered that he totally misread this one as another of Dylan's romantic fantasies in which I had somehow became involved. That computer fraud scheme had been so nutty and unbelievable that even her psych refused to believe it. That, of course, had been precisely why I had done it the wayl had.

 
Naturally, during the process, I had to undergo a bit myself, but I wasn't really worried. My early training and conditioning automatically switched in under such probes, giving the psychs whatever information I wanted them to have. My probing also wasn't deep, but was only directed toward my feelings about Dylan and so I was on relatively safe ground. At the end of the second session with the psych and his machines, however, I got one shock.

 
"Did you know you have two surface-planted command impulses?" He asked me. "Been to a psych before?"

 
"No," I answered, slightly worried, "I know of
one
that should be there.
Basic data about Cerberus.
It was
a,
new process they were trying with me to help people get acclimated."

 
He nodded. "We got that.
Some of it, anyway.
Quite thorough.
But there's another."

 
I frowned and leaned forward. "Another?"

 
He nodded. "Actually, as I said, two. Two commands, in addition to the briefing."

 
I was beginning to get worried, not only because I didn't know what these were—all my agent conditioning would be beyond these machines—but also because they might betray me and who I really was. "Do you know what they are?"

 
"One is treasonous," he replied, sounding as objective as he did when discussing mundane matters. "It appears to be a command to kill Wagant Laroo if you can. Actually more of
a reinforcement
—designed to make you detest him enough to kill him.
Very nice job, really.
I wonder if
every
new exile is being sent in with this sort of
conditioning?
Still, I wouldn't worry about it. The readouts state that you're really not violent or self-destructive. Though this impulse is enough to ensure that you're never going to love the state and its glorious leader, it's no stronger than your common impulses, which would be to damp down the actuality. We'd
all
like to kill
somebody
at one time or another, but few of us do. The impulse is no stronger than that.
Unless you have a specific pre-Cerberan reason for wanting to do him in?
Revenge?"

 
"No," I responded smoothly.
"Nothing like that.
I never met the man, never even
heard
of him until I was told I was being sent here."

 
"All right But that makes the second one all the more puzzling."

 
"Huh?"

 
"Basically it boils down to an instruction to call your office every so often when the opportunity's offered you, then forget all about doing so. Do
you
understand that?"

 
Instantly I
did
understand, but the trouble was finding a way to explain it away, all the while mentally kicking myself for not thinking of this before. The sons of bitchesl
Of
course! How could they track me, know what I was doing on Cerberus? The organic transmitter would cease functioning the moment I switched bodies. The answer was simple and staring me in the face, but I'd been too cocky to think of it before.