Jack Chalker - Cerberus - A Wolf in the Fold

He considered that, and it made sense. “All right. Transmit the proposal and problems to Security Central and get an evaluation and recommendations.”

“Being done,” the computer responded.

I notified Bogen that I had initiated the contact and could only wait for results. It would be a nervous time, I knew. The only bright spot was that Dylan was so much fresher, so much more alive, her old self again in spades. If it hadn’t been for the noose, those next three days would have been among the happiest and most satisfying of all my time on Cerberus.

At the end of the third day, though, I received a call from someone I didn’t know and from a place I couldn’t guess. I knew Bogen had the phone bugged and traces all over the place, but somehow I doubted his ability to do much about this.

There was no visual, only audio. “Qwin Zhang?”

“Yes?”

“Your proposal has merit, but nothing can be done without a physical sample.”

I held my breath. “How much of a sample?”

“About fifty cubic centimeters of brain tissue and another fifty of other random tissue should suffice. Is this possible?”

“I’ll see,” I told whoever or whatever it was. “How do I let you know?”

“We’ll be in touch.” The line was dead.

Dylan came in. “Who was that?”

“You know who,” I responded. “Time to call Bogen from the security shack.”

Bogen insisted on talking to me directly, so I got on the line.

“They contacted me. They need two tissue samples.”

He nodded. “Figures. We anticipated that. Just out of curiosity, though—how did they do it? You haven’t been out all day and you haven’t received any phone calls or messages.”

“They called. On my phone. Surely you tapped it.”

He looked more than a little nervous. “We sure did. And your quarters, too. I’ll check it out, but nobody called me from the monitors like they were supposed to. I don’t like this at all. They shouldn’t have power like that—not here.”

He switched off, but I understood his concern and waited at the shack for a reply, which wasn’t long in coming.

“Did you check the phone?” I asked him.

He nodded worriedly. “Sure did. No calls of any kind. And we ran the recording of our bugs in your place, too. You wouldn’t be kidding us, would you, Zhang? There’s nothing on that tape but normal noises. No conversation on the phone at all, although we do hear your wife come in and ask ‘Who was that?’ and you reply.”

I whistled. I was impressed, and so was Bogen—although not in the same way. “So what’s the answer?”

“You’ll get your tissue.”

“Shall I pick up or do you deliver?”

“Very funny. No, it should be picked up, if only because I want to see how they collect the sample.”

“I’ll get a boat started up,” I told him.

“No. As a precautionary measure, Chairman Laroo has ordered that you never set foot on the island again, and security will fry you if you try.”

“That wasn’t part of the deal!” I protested, feeling a sinking sensation in my stomach. If Security went along, I had to be there.

“We changed it. You’re are an admitted assassin, Zhang, and we don’t minimize your skills. We can’t afford to take the chance.”

“But I’ll have to come in if they give me anything.”

“Nope. If anything physical is required that we can’t handle, you will send your wife. Between the psych implant against killing and the fact that she’s native here, we feel more secure.”

“I don’t want to involve her! The deal’s off!”

He laughed evilly. “Well, that’s okay, but if it ends here, so do the both of you. You knew that when you started this. Our terms, or forget it. Now, send her over in two hours exactly.’’

“All right,” I sighed. “We’ll play it your way—for now. But wait a minute. She’s of the motherhood. She’s prohibited from ocean travel.”

“By whom? By authority of Chairman Laroo she’s been waived of that requirement. Anybody gives you trouble on it, tell ’em to call me.”

“But I thought she had a psych implant against it.”

“We had Dumonia remove it. It wasn’t much anyway. Go ahead. We’re wasting time.”

I switched off, feeling less than confident now. This change in the ground rules was hairy indeed.

Dylan, however, didn’t mind at all. “We’re in this together, remember.”

I nodded, and could do nothing but see her down to the docks and off. She was excited to be on a boat again, for she really did love the sea. She was gone about five hours, a time in which I became increasingly worried and nervous. When she finally returned I was still apprehensive.

“They didn’t do anything to you, did they?” I asked her.

She laughed. “No. Mostly I took the wheel and had a little fun. That’s a gorgeous place inside there, though. They only let me on the main floor, handed me the sealed, refrigerated case here, and marched me back.”

I looked at her nervously. Would I know if they’d replaced her with a robot? Would I know if they’d pulled a fast one with the psych machines?

Well, I’d know the robot situation if we swapped during the night, and I felt reasonably confident that at this stage they wouldn’t risk it. For the other, I’d need Dumonia—if I could trust him.

Suddenly I stopped short. “That son of a bitchl” I muttered. “That crafty old anarchist!”

She looked at me, puzzled. “What? Who?”

“Dumonia. He’s ahead of both Laroo and me. He knew this all along, set me up for it.”

Points of similarity indeed. He knew damned well what he was saying when he told me that.

We just brought the case into the apartment and then waited for more instructions, which didn’t come. Finally, we got tired of waiting, caught up on some routine paperwork, and went to bed.

In the morning the case was gone. I reported the theft to Bogen, who sounded none too thrilled about it all. He’d had lenses, agents, and a full security system trained on the place, and nobody had seen a thing. Worse, at least five separate tracing devices had been placed inside the case, all of which had functioned perfectly, apparently. At least they still were—they said the case was still in the apartment. The trouble was, no amount of detection and searching could reveal it, although they finally came up with a tiny recording module, something like a tiny battery, wedged inside the floorboards.

Sure enough, it nicely broadcast exactly all five tracing signals.

Bogen was both furious and unnerved by it all. I knetw damned well that a far different account would reach Laroo, one in which Bogen didn’t look so bad.

I had to admire the Confederacy’s ftther agent in this area, who seemed head and shoulders above even me, at least in audacity. In fact I was so impressed that when he called and made an appointment for us to go and see him, I could hardly wait.

The samples had been gone nine days, and during that time little of interest happened in any direction, except Bogen was becoming more impatient and threatening toward us. Both Dylan and I started becoming a little fidgety.

Finally, though, the call I’d been expecting came, and off we went, almost certainly unsuspected by Bogen and his other people.

“I always wondered how and why you thought you could talk so freely in here,” I told the agent.

Dr. Dumonia smiled and nodded to the two of us. “Oh, it’s a couple of modern wonders, really. The fact is, the place is bugged and Bogen’s people are right now hearing us talk. They’re just hearing something quite different. It’s so pleasant to work in a technological environment that’s a few decades behind what’s current.”