Jack Chalker - Cerberus - A Wolf in the Fold

I worked late on Thursday night, partly to catch up from the time lost at the meetings earlier in the week and partly because everybody was putting in at least one long day these days—we were really understaffed. Sugal had no idea where they went or what they were working on, but a rundown of the people pulled told me a little. All were junior staff like me, and every one of them had been involved in the field of organic computers, which were banned on Cerberus, before being sent here. It was only six, but they were all exiles, all experts in the same field, and all good minds. And, all of their forwarding addresses were care of the corporation headquarters building—a forwarding box service. Interesting. Obviously something was going on. Something I wanted to know about.

Late that evening, stretching my legs, I just happened to meet the night janitorial supervisory staff coming on. Most of the cleaning was automated, but the rules required a few human beings to make sure all was working right, since self-aware computers were banned on the planet. I looked at the men and. women coming on, skilled technicians themselves, and noted that some of them looked tired.

During the day on Friday all hell broke loose in the fire control computer, with false alarms all over the place and the whole system going crazy. It took half of Tooker Service to track down the problem and replace the bad parts, but by early evening they had completed the job, fortunately—since most people worked regular days like me, and thus weren’t there when all this happened.

Only the few night workers, most of whom lived in an apartment about eight kilometers west of the plant, went through hell. Few of them got any sleep at all, poor things.

According to the readouts, the system really was in awful shape. I hadn’t caused nearly all that happened to that system on Friday afternoon. Apparently my defects triggered breakdowns in real defects within the system. I had hoped for that but hadn’t planned on it The system really was in dire need of replacement.

While all those people were having problems, I managed to finish early, thanks to my extra-long day the day before. At a little before four I walked down to the main entrance for a previously scheduled VIP tour. Like most, this VIP tour had no VIPs; many of us took friends on little demo tours to show off, and the company encouraged such things as good public relations.

Dylan had put in sick for the day, so she had plenty of sleep and was in fine shape for the evening. With her was a tiny, thin olive-skinned beauty with long jet-black hair and eyes I’d never seen before. I had to stop and shake my head in wonder. I’d never get used to this switching stuff.

“Sanda?” I ventured.

She smiled and nodded. “You wouldn’t believe what this is going to cost you. I think you’re going to have to wine, dine, and romance half of Akeba House.”

I thought about it “Doesn’t sound too terrifying.” I looked at both of them, sensing an inward nervousness in each that they were only partly successful in masking. I hugged both of them and whispered, “Don’t worry so much. It’s going great”

Beyond the public rooms, a scan was necessary to make certain that only authorized employees passed beyond certain points. Since I had prearranged the tour, which wasn’t that unusual, entry caused no problems at all. Basically, you faced a door, put the headpiece on, then inserted your identicard in the slot If all was okay, the door opened and you walked into a small antechamber, whereupon the door closed behind you. You then slotted the card again and the second door would open, admitting you—in the same way as an airlock did.

If the more than four thousand Tooker employees had to do this, they would be all day just getting to work, so the internal computers simply recognized your body features and all you did was put your card in the slot. Scanning took a couple of minutes, and since the system was tied to the master computer—which, I discovered, was in orbit and linked to the entire surface by a series of satellites—it was also advisable to discourage an expensive overload of any local system. Scans within Tooker were required only in high security areas.

That, of course, was,a second flaw. Not only because they didn’t use full scan everywhere, but also because you could walk right past all those security areas, outside, separated only by a floor-to-ceiling sheet of thick, unbreakable, and alarmed plastiglass. For extra security, you could see the whole of the security areas from this walk—although of course you couldn’t get to anything going on inside or even get close enough to figure out what was going on. Computers monitored the inside of those areas to make certain that nobody except those properly scanned could enter, and the list of those so authorized was quite short.

We stood outside one such area while I acted the guide. Some of the staff were still huddled over consoles and transceivers, although they were thinning out as the end of the workday approached.

“This area controls the local banking system,” I told them. “Eleven borough small banks keep all their transaction records here, and shift money and assets between them. Of course it’s just a bank link to the master computer, where all our electronic money is stored, but that master computer holds only the total assets of every person and corporation. These machines hold where that money came from and where it’s to go, and can effect a transfer of funds within the master accounts with a simple set of coded orders. The codes are pretty simple—so much so that anybody who could get to one of the register machines there could steal millions in moments.”

“Then why aren’t they made more complicated?” Sanda asked.

“Because, since everybody’s money is in the master computer, any unusual bulge in it, or any pattern of smaller bulges, would flag the central banking authorities that something was funny and promote an investigation.” We’d actually been over this material before, but with people still around we needed to complete the grand tour.

Her question, besides being a normal one, pointed up the second flaw in the system. It would be damned hard, beyond all but the best computer minds in the galaxy armed with unlimited resources, to get away with any sort of money theft on Cerberus. It better be—I was counting on everybody in the system being competent.

Down a long hall from the banking center was a small group of conference rooms. I selected one I knew wasn’t scheduled for anything and opened the door. It was the usual small meeting room—rostrum, round table of nice, polished wood, and five comfortable executive chairs. You could lock the room from the inside for privacy, but not from the outside. There was no need.

We entered and locked the door, and in a matter of minutes I had put both of them under. Oddly, Sanda was the hardest to hypnotize—she was just too excited.

Dylan had brought two small bottles of nuraform from the ship medikit, and I gave one to Sanda. Under as she was, I had her repeat the procedure and everything she was to do exactly, then gave her all the added cautions. I also added a suggestion that she felt neither nervous nor excited and would calmly and coolly perform her duties.

We left her in the conference room and I took Dylan up two levels to the company accounting section, also a security area. Almost everybody was gone now which made it even easier.

The bosses were long gone for the weekend, so I used Sugal’s office as Dylan’s waiting area. Again I made her go through her own procedure exactly, then left her.

I returned to the main level and took out not one but three identicards and, one at a time, put them in the slot, allowing the equipment to act as if a person were going through each time. I used a rear exit to avoid any undue attention, although I had a cover story ready if I needed one. The third card was mine, of course, and I walked out with that one.