Jack Chalker - Cerberus - A Wolf in the Fold

I relaxed, in spite of my old instincts. He was right, of course—and it was unlikely that I could do anything but trust him. This was a smart man who’d protect himself.

“Can you remove that ‘call the office’ command? At least the part about forgetting I did it?”

“Sadly, no. Not with what I have. However, both commands are simple enough that they could be canceled out.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“Well, using the level and intensity of the patterns I have here, I could lay on a new set of commands of absolutely equal strength. For example, I could lay on one that said you liked Wagant Laroo and had good feelings whenever his name was mentioned. This would negate the other. If I phrased the command exactly right, you’d wind up in a love-hate relationship that would cancel. As for the other—well, I could give an equal command that you will not use a transceiver for off-planet communication. Same effect. You’d still go when called, but you wouldn’t tell ’em anything.”

“I’m not too concerned about those,” I told him. “At least not now. Later I might want to have that call command negated; right now it might be useful, although I’m not sure how. But I want to remember doing it, and what I did. Any tricks there?”

“After the fact, perhaps. After all, it’s all there, in your memory. You’re just barred from consciously recollecting it. I suspect that with a very strong neutral field under a psych converter, together with a hypnotic series, for example, we might be able to get the information out of you and recorded. When you awoke you still wouldn’t be able to remember it, but you could then examine the recording and get the data no matter what”

“All right,” I told him. “Let’s do it.”

The trick worked, after a fashion. I really don’t know what is being transmitted even now, you bastards, but I now know how it’s done and by whom. And how damnably obvious the whole thing was once the truth was out.

Who better to have such a spatial link with you than old fat, friendly Otah? An electronics shop with black-market connections. No wonder Otah could get whatever he needed in the way of bootleg gear! That’s how you pay him, right? Very clever. I should have thought of it as soon as I figured out that you had something to do with my being sent to Medlam, so close to Laroo’s Island, in the first place. Medlam, and associated with Tooker, a corporation well suited to my talents. And waiting there, where you knew I’d eventually go, was Otah.

Well, it didn’t matter now. In fact it helped. Now at least I knew who—and when.

Three weeks had passed since my dirty deeds at Emyasail, and I was beginning to feel nervous. Something, I felt sure, should have happened by now. I began to turn my mind to more direct, less devious, but more risky alternatives.

The one bright spot was Dylan, whose treatment was really helping. I’ll say this for Dumonia: although he is crazy as a loon and more amoral and cynical than I am, he really knows his stuff. I began to believe that in his own field he was one of the most brilliant men I had ever known. This is not to say that Dylan was anything like back to normal, but she was more comfortable with herself and with me, more like a real human being, and she seemed happier. Dumonia explained that he could do a lot, but the key breakthrough eluded him, the point of her own insecurity regarding me. It was a wall he couldn’t get past, a wall erected of her deep-rooted conviction that without the pity angle I would not like her as she wanted to be and would tire of her and leave. She was very wrong, of course, but her fear was deeply rooted in her understanding of the culture from which I came and the culture of Cerberus in which she had been raised—cultures minimizing close personal attachments and emotional factors. In the Cerberan culture you held your power and position by the favors owed you or by blackmail or by some other hook. So the idea of such things not being necessary was a cultural gap that seemed impossible to bridge. In reversed circumstances, I could see myself having the same hang-ups.

“If she weren’t under judgment, there are things that might be used,” Dumonia told me. “Unorthodox, maybe dangerous things, but quite effective. But as long as she’s trapped in that body we’re stuck.”

That thought depressed me a bit, since I most wanted the old Dylan back, a partner I could deal with as an equal, almost the part of me I’d gotten used to having. It was peculiar that I, the consummate loner, born and bred to be above such things and never before touched by them, should suddenly have this need, almost a craving, for someone else. I instinctively knew that it was my Achilles’ heel. Still, the fact that I had these weaknesses, didn’t matter to me as much as it had, and there was also the corner of my mind that said that everyone, even me at my old top form, had flaws and weaknesses anyway. Nobody was immune. The important thing was to recognize your own and get to know them so that perhaps they could also work for you.

A few days later, when I’d just about given up, my scam paid off. I was visited in midmorning at my Hroyasail office by a big, burly man whose dark eyes indicated an intelligence his general appearance belied.

“I’m Hurl Bogen,” he introduced himself, offering his hand, which I shook, then gestured for him to have a seat.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Bogen?”

“I’m the security coordinator for Chairman Laroo,” he told me, and my heart almost stopped. This was either very good or bad news. “You know he has an island resort south of here?”

I nodded. “I’m afraid I’ve even taken a vicarious look at it from one of our boats,” I told him honestly. If he didn’t already know that he should have. “Just out of curiosity.”

He grinned. “Yeah, lots of folks do. I don’t blame ’em and I don’t worry about it. Basically, though, we’ve run into a big problem with a project we’re working on over there and we need your help. We’ve contracted with Emyasail to keep steady supplies coming and going to and from the island, and it’s worked out fine until a couple of weeks ago. We got just creamed by borks—never saw so many of ’em in my life. We got most of ’em, but they did a pretty good job on Emyasail’s fleet. We’re down to a dozen trawlers, all smaller types, and just one gunboat.”

I feigned shock. “But hell, how many borks could you have? Those were good crews, and we haven’t had any problems of that sort. Matter of fact, we’ve been pretty damned peaceful around here the last few weeks, with only one or two reported and only one actual engagement”

He nodded ruefully. “No wonder. They were all down our way. The bio boys say that something attracted them down there, possibly a run of some chemical in subsurface currents. Rotten luck.”

I held my breath. “How many people were lost?”

“We were pretty lucky there, although we did lose a dozen or so. Luck of the job, really. You should know that. But the main thing is, we no longer have enough boats to meet our supply needs. We’ve limped along with what we had for a while, using some air supply for the emergency stuff, but we really need some boats. Not trawlers—we’re commandeering some big freighters now—but gunboats. We need a full four to make it out to the island okay.”

“I can understand that,” I replied, “but I’ve only got the four here myself.”

“We need one of ’em,” he told me matter-of-factly. “We’re also pulling one each from two other companies along the coast here. You’ll have to make do with three.” It wasn’t a request but a command.

I sighed. “All right. But I’m responsible for those boats and crews and I don’t like the idea of a high-risk bork area being worked by four crews unused to each other.” I pretended to think for a moment. “Look, for your safety as well as ours, why not do this instead? Pull all four of my boats and crews off—that is, let Hroyasail take over entirely from Emyasail. We’ll use your surviving Emyasail boat and the other two to fill in here. The Emyasail skipper knows the territory around here, and putting three crews from three spots into a routine trawling and protection operation is a lot safer than cargo.”