Jack Chalker - Charon - A Dragon at the Gate

They were going to dump me on a world of the Warden Diamond, trap me like some kind of master criminal, imprison me there, hold me there for the rest of my life—of this body’s life, anyway. And then? When my job was done? I’d said it myself upon awakening—passed my own sentence. The things I knew! I would be monitored at all times, of course. Monitored and killed if I blew any of those secrets. Killed anyway at the completion of the mission just for insurance’s sake.

My training came into automatic play at that point, overriding the shock and anger. I regained control and considered everything that I knew.

Monitor? Sure, more than ever. I recalled Krega saying that there was some sort of organic linkup. Are you enjoying this, you son of a bitch? Are you getting pleasure from vicariously experiencing my reaction?

My training clicked in again. It didn’t matter, I told myself. First of all, I knew just what he must be thinking—and that was an advantage. He of all people would know that I would be a damned tough son of a bitch to kill.

It was a shock to discover that you are not who you thought you were but some artificial creation. It was a shock, too, to realize that the old life, the life you remembered even if you personally “didn’t experience it, was gone forever. No more civilized worlds, no more casinos or beautiful women or—And yet as I sat there, I adjusted. That was what they picked men like me for from the start—our ability to adjust and adapt to almost anything.

It was not my body, but I was still me. Memory and thought and personality were the individual, not his body. This was no different than a biological disguise, I told myself, of a particularly sophisticated sort As to who was really me—it seemed to me that this personality, these memories, were no more that other fellow’s than my own. Until I got up from that chair back in the Security Clinic I’d really been somebody else anyway. A lot of me, my memories and training, had been missing. That old between-missions me was the artificial me, the created me, I thought He, that nonentity playboy that presently did not exist, was the artificial personality. Me—the real me—was bottled up and stored in their psychosurgical computers and only allowed to come out when needed—and for good reason. Unlocked, I was as much a danger to the power structure as to whomever they set me against.

And I was good. The best Krega had called me. That’s why I was here now, in this body, in this cell, on this ship. And I wouldn’t be wiped and I wouldn’t be killed if I could help it. That other me, sitting there in the console—somehow I no longer hated him very much, no longer felt anything at all for him. When this was all over he’d be wiped once more—perhaps get killed himself if my brother agents on the Diamond and I found out too much. At best he’d return to being that stagnant milquetoast.

Me, on the other hand… I would still be here, still live on, the real me. I would become more complete than he would.

I was under no illusions, though. Kill me they would, if they could, if I didn’t do their bidding. They’d do it automatically, by robot satellite and without qualms. I would. But my vulnerability would last only until I mastered my new situation and accustomed myself to my new and permanent home. I felt that with a deep sense of certainty, for I knew their methods and how they thought I’d have to do their dirty work for them, and they knew it—but only until I could get around it. They could be beaten, even on their own turf. That was why they had people like me in the first place. To uncover those who had expertly covered over their whole lives and activities, who had managed to totally vanish from their best monitors. To uncover them and get them.

But there’d be no new expert agent sent to get me if I beat them. They’d just be putting somebody else in the same position.

I realized then, as they had undoubtedly figured, that I had no choice but to carry out the mission. Only so long as I was doing what they wanted would I be safe from them while still in that vulnerable position. After—well, we’d see.

The thrill of the challenge took over, as it always did. There was a puzzle to be solved, were objectives to be accomplished. I liked to win. Doing so was even easier when you felt nothing about the cause, just the challenge of the problem and the opponent and the physical and intellectual effort needed to meet that challenge. Find out about the alien menace. The outcome no longer concerned me either way, since I would be trapped on a Warden world from now on anyway. If the aliens won the coming confrontation, the Wardens would survive as allies. If they lost—well, it wouldn’t make a damned bit of difference, only maintain the status quo. That meant the alien problem was purely an intellectual challenge and that made the situation perfect.

The other assignment created a similar situation. Seek out the Lord of that particular Diamond world and kill him if I could. In a sense this would be more difficult, for I’d be operating on totally unfamiliar ground and would therefore require time and possibly allies. Another challenge. And if I got him, it could only increase my own power and position over the long term. If he got me instead, of course, that would solve everybody’s problem, but the thought of losing is abhorrent to me. That set the contest in the best terms, from my point of view. Trackdown and assassination was the ultimate game—either you won or you died and never had to live with the thought that you lost.

It suddenly occurred to me that the only real difference that probably existed between me and a Lord of the Diamond was that I was working for the law and he—or she—against it. But no, that wasn’t right, either. On his world he was the law and I would be working against it Fine. Dead heat on moral grounds.

The only thing wrong at this point, I reflected, was that they were starting me at a tremendous disadvantage and I disliked having more handicaps than absolutely necessary. The normal procedure was to program all pertinent information into my brain before setting me off on a mission, but they hadn’t done it this time. Probably, I thought, because they had me once on the table for four separate missions, and the transfer process to a new body was hard enough without trying to add anything afterwards. Still, the outcome put me in a deep pit I thought sourly that somebody should have thought about that.

Somebody did, but it was a while before I discovered how. About an hour after I had awakened a little bell clanged near the food port and I walked over to it Almost instantly a hot tray appeared, along with a thin plastic fork and knife I recognized as the dissolving type. They’d melt into a sticky puddle in an hour or less, then dry up into a powder shortly after that Standard for prisoners.

The food was lousy, but I hadn’t expected better. The vitamin-enriched fruit drink with it though, was pretty good. I made the most of the drink, keeping the thin, dear container which was not the dissolving type in case I wanted water later. The rest I put back in the port, and it vaporized neatly. All nice and sealed. You couldn’t even draw more than a thimbleful of water at a time from the tap.

About the only thing they couldn’t control was bodily functions, and a half hour or so after eating my first meal as a new man, say, I just had to go. On the far wall was a panel market Toilet and a small pull ring. Simple, standard stuff, the same sort of thing you might get in a cheap cabin on a passenger liner. I pulled the ring, the thing came down—and damned if there wasn’t a paper-thin probe in the recess behind it.

So I sat down on the John, leaned back against the panel, and got a brief and relief at the same time.