Jack Chalker - Cerberus - A Wolf in the Fold

He considered my suggestion. “Makes sense,” he admitted. “In fact I’ll recommend it if you and your crews check out okay.”

My eyebrows went up. “Check out? Come on, Mr. Bogen. You’re a security man. You’ve already checked us out.”

He smiled and gave a slight shrug. “Well, yes. Your boats and crews check out nicely, I admit. You, however, are a question mark to me, Mr. Zhang. You don’t fit. You don’t quite add up to me. Your psychological profile feels funny. I have the funny feeling I should take the rest of Hroyasail and not you.”

“What! I don’t understand.”

“Don’t ask me why. It’s just a gut feeling. Still, my gut feelings are often correct. Besides, we don’t really need you, you know.”

This guy was good. I hadn’t quite counted on this and I had to make some split-second decisions on him based on risky and incomplete data.

“Look,” I said. “What do you think I am? A Confederacy spy or something? You have my old records.”

“Yes, we do. And more completely than you can believe. We find your whole personality and profile too much at variance from Qwin Zhang’s to dismiss.” Then he thought for a moment, as if wrestling with himself, while I suppressed my rising tension. Damn Security for that sex switch! First Dumonia, now the infinitely more dangerous Bogen, smelled a rat because of it.

“Tell you what,” he said at last. “I don’t know your game, Zhang, nor whether you’re who or what you say you are. But I’ll admit I’m curious—and more than curious, I’m interested. So I’m going to take a mild risk and let you come along. What throws me is that your current profiles indicate a strong, almost overriding attachment to your wife, and she to you. That’s enough of a lever for now.”

I relaxed, pleased that I hadn’t had to play any trump cards at this point and take some real risks. “When do you want us to move down?”

“Day after tomorrow,” he told me. “Brief your crews, then switch over your computer nets.” He stood up and again shook my hand. “I don’t know why, but I have the feeling this is going to be very, very interesting.”

I nodded. “Somehow I think so, too, Mr. Bogen. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a lot of work to do. I want to brief my crews this afternoon and make the adjustments with Tooker.”

“The day after tomorrow, then, at Emyasail.” And he was gone.

I sighed, and didn’t like the vibrations I got from Bogen at all. I think I knew the final step he’d taken in deciding to invite me along, and it was another one of those gut feelings. We had stared into each other’s eyes—and seen each other there. One good pro always deserves another. That would mean that he’d be out to get me, perhaps out to give me enough rope.

One against one, Bogen, I thought, feeling better than I should. With the best man winning.

Moving down was no real problem since we were taking only the gunboats and the administrative staff. The layout was similar to the one we had, except the upstairs offices weren’t in very good shape and hadn’t been used for more than storage for some time. Dylan threw herself into getting the place into at least reasonable shape, although for the first week we felt more as if we were camping out than being in familiar surroundings, cooking over a small portable stove and sleeping on a mattress on the floor. “I offered to get her some help, but she was determined to do everything herself and seemed to really enjoy it.

One major change was the large number of scanning machines you had to pass through to go just about anywhere. We all had to have new imprints taken for the benefit of the security system. I had no intention of trying that security system. I was in the big leagues here, and the schemes that had brought me to this point were no longer valid. Bogen would have me under a microscope, and I had no intention of giving him an opening unless it was on my terms. A dozen lives had already been spent getting me here; I felt a strong sense of responsibility to those innocents to do what I had been sent here to do. I owed them at least that.

Dylan suspected I had somehow engineered my way here. Hell, she more than suspected—she had worked with me before and had given me the initial information about it. Only her feeling that I would not deliberately cause the deaths of any innocents kept the peace. I had no intention of ever telling her differently.

One of the first things I had to do, though, was check the torpedoes still in the weapons warehouse against my little list of serial numbers. None of my old numbers were still there, but since we’d come down with a full load of our own in our boats I felt safe.

The stuff we ferried out to the island varied from the usual stuff—food, general electronic and maintenance supplies, that sort of thing—to major communications and computer links and lots of biolab stuff. The fact that so much was still going out, along with an occasional new face from one of the corporations, told me that Laroo wasn’t having a lot of success with Project Phoenix. Still, though I was allowed to ride the boats out to the island and back, I had not been permitted off the island dock and was closely watched at all times when I went over. The strange, futuristic structure in the center appeared even more imposing close up, but that was as near as I could get.

I kept going through everything I knew or had surmised or deduced and what I was seeing, though, and I understood the dead end I was at. Merely having access to the island dock wasn’t enough, but even if I managed to sneak in I’d be caught in short order, as would anybody else I might send.

“I’m frustrated,” I admitted to Dylan one day. “I’m at a dead end, and I can’t figure out any way to proceed. I’ve been here a year now and I’ve accomplished a great deal—but now I’m stuck. The most frustrating thing is to be this close to all of it and not be able to move.”

“You’re still bent on killing Laroo, aren’t you?” she responded. “I wish I could help you, but I couldn’t and wouldn’t. You know I can’t be a party to taking a human life.”

I nodded and squeezed her hand. “I know. Still, killing isn’t my major objective. I want to find out about those robots. I don’t like the idea of a legion of those things, all under Laroo and Bogen and perhaps the others of the Four Lords, unleashed on the Confederacy. Those things are so perfect they scare the hell out of me. If they could negate the obedience programming, that would in and of itself create a new form of life, human-looking but not at all human. Imagine such people able to think with the speed of a super-computer, literally able to control every ‘cell’ of their bodies, to give them whatever they want—the ability to fly, to survive in a vacuum, and all the rest. People like that mentally reduced to great super-computers in human form with only one drive, their own ultimate drive—power. They’d be nearly immortal, too—and if they ever did have problems or wanted a new shape or mass, they would just return here and take on a new one.”

“Surely the Confederacy could track them down and destroy them!”

“Maybe. I keep remembering that one of them got into the most absolutely secure area of the Confederacy, survived all the traps and both human and robot security personnel, and was caught and destroyed in the end only because its programming demanded that it report back to the Warden Diamond. It was basically a senior clerk! Put the best, the crookedest, the nastiest minds of the Warden Diamond in those forms and—well, Dr. Dumonia suggested that the Confederacy was fragile, continuing to be a success mostly because it had never met a real challenge to it These people alone would be a challenge. Put them together with a sophisticated alien culture and it could very well be the end of all we know. I’ve got to stop him, Dylan.”