Jack Chalker - Cerberus - A Wolf in the Fold

He assumed a more professional tone. “Frankly, the easiest thing to do is to stop here and let it ride. The safest, too. She’s quite a bit better now. She knows who she is and what she is and understands herself pretty well. Most of her old personality is back, and some of the confidence, too. The remaining block is that she’s scared deep down of losing you. If not now, then years down the pipe. Not by violence, which seems likely—she could accept that, I think. She lived with friends and co-workers dying for five years. But, well, losing your heart, so to speak. There’s really only one way to show her it’s a groundless fear, and it involves tremendous risk to both of you.”

“I’m rolling for all the marbles now, Doc,” I told him. “What’s a little more risk at this stage?”

He sat back, thinking. “All right. You’ve heard of Cerberan-induced schizophrenia? A misnomer, by the way, since it not only has nothing to do with schizophrenia, it doesn’t even have any related symptoms.”

“I’m not really sure,” I told him honestly.

“Well, in very rare, freak instances during the personality transfer process, we wind up with one of two very strange conditions. If we can control the transference between two minds and interrupt it at a precise spot, the data from both minds will be present equally in both brains, so to speak. We have more than enough room in there, you know. The two primary results are either eventual merging of the two into one new personality after a period of acute identity, crisis, or winding up with two complete, distinct personalities in each body, alternating. Timing, mental and physical setup, and the like, is crucial and not guaranteed.”

“I think I remember hearing something about it. Early on, in the briefings after I came.”

He nodded. “Very rare—but we can do it in the lab. The problem is that every individual is physically different, and the time tolerances are incredibly fine to get any result, let alone the desired one. And there’s very little margin for error. We’ve occasionally been able to get the splits to merge, but that’s about it. The process is irreversible and permanent.”

“And just what does this have to do with Dylan?”

“Well, barring the discovery of mental telepathy in practical form, the only way to reassure her totally—if you really are sincere and her fears are groundless—is to try something akin to this process. Control it, and stop the transference just short of the induced split. This will put a strong imprint from the other person in each mind. It’ll be as if you could read each other’s innermost thoughts and secrets—which is why almost nobody has the guts to try it. No more secrets, period. None. But if timed correctly, it’ll fade over a period of weeks, leaving only the original personality and the ultimate memory of knowing the other. If we could do this with the two of you, she would know, would have been inside your head so to speak, and there would be no more doubting you—if you really don’t, deep down, give cause for the doubt. For a brief time, a few days at least, she would have total access to your mind, memories, and personalities inside her own head—and you, hers.”

I whistled. “That’s a pretty nasty load. Do I even know myself what I really want or feel?”

“Yes. You see the risk. And there’s the additional one. To be really effective, the timing is crucial, and as I said, individual factors not all quantifiable come into play, making it an educated guess. Split or merger is a very real possibility.”

“I see. And what are the odds of something going wrong like that?”

“Fifty-fifty, frankly.”

I sighed. “I see. And, just on the off-chance I still wanted this, and Dylan was willing too, how much prep time would you need? How much notice?”

“At least a day. Several weeks would be better, since I’d have to cancel a lot of my appointments, but it’ll be worth it. I haven’t done anything like this in a long, long time.”

“How many times have you done it in your twenty or thirty years of practice?”

He thought a moment. “Four, I think.”

“And how many times did it succeed?”

“Well, that’s relative. Two worked, and two caused the induced state I mentioned. Of the two that worked, one couple became the closest duo I’d ever known, and seemed to almost reach nirvana.”

“And the other?”

“Wound up hating each other’s guts. That was partly my fault. I really didn’t dig deep enough into one of ’em.”

“We’ll have to think about this,” I told him, “It’s a big step. And right now I can’t afford to have anything less than a clear head. It’s a pretty drastic step.”

He nodded. “That’s understandable. But I might mention something that might come in handy, maybe not. The brain-scan devices have a preset pattern they look for, allowing for variances if bodies have been switched in the electrical and chemical requirements of the new body. It’s a points-of-similarity thing, like partial fingerprints. If it gets twenty points of similarity with what’s recorded, it says it’s you. Under any of the induced states, at least for a period of days, the scan machines would recognize those points in either mind. I’ve been playing with that idea for years, but never had a use for it. Maybe you will.”

I looked at him strangely, then had to laugh. “You old anarchist bastard!”

“Things are so bright and clear again,” Dylan told me as we sped away from the office. “You don’t realize how much you see and hear the Warden organisms between people and things until you’re deprived of that contact for the first time in your life. It’s like being blind and then suddenly being able to see again.”

I could only partly understand that. True, I was aware of the things, and you could feel ’em and hear ’em if you concentrated, but they’d become just something that was, something you damped out and never gave a thought to. And that of course may have been what she really meant. You don’t notice the noises of the sea, but if they stopped, you sure would.

“You’ve got to watch yourself now, though,” she warned. “You can wake up automatically inducted into the motherhood some morning.”

I laughed and kissed her. “Don’t worry about it. I can always get my body back if I want to.”

We went on to talk about a lot of things, including Dumonia’s radical ideas.

“You’d be willing to do that?” she asked. “For me?”

“If that was what you wanted and needed,” I assured her. “That is, if we survive the next few days.”

She hugged me. “Then we don’t have to. Just knowing that you would is more than enough for me. Partner.”

“Lover,” I retorted, and hugged her back.

Otah’s shop hadn’t changed at all, nor had Otah himself. He hadn’t seen me in some time, though, and looked surprised and pleased to see me, although less so at the sight of Dylan. Still, he pulled himself up as straight as he could and came over to us.

“Qwin! How delightful! I’d given you up for dead!”

“I’ll bet,” I responded dryly, then gestured with my head to Dylan. “This is my wife, Dylan Kohl.”

“Your wi—Well, I’ll be damned! And to think you two first met here!”

“We didn’t,” Dylan told him. “That was somebody else, same body.”

That news befuddled him a bit, which I took as a good sign. That meant that Otah had no idea, what I had transmitted, or he’d have known of Dylan, Sanda, and the rest. He didn’t listen—or couldn’t.

“Well, what can I do for you two this lovely day?” he asked pleasantly, and I could see that behind that fat face his mind was trying to figure out how to separate the two of us so he could force a report.