Jack Chalker - Cerberus - A Wolf in the Fold

“You and your anti-Confederacy anarchism. I knew there was something funny about you, almost from the first, but I missed which side you were on.”

“I’m on my side, of course. So are you two—on your side, that is. I’m not a fraud, and everything I told you is true. I detest the Confederacy. If I could be sure these aliens of ours wouldn’t eliminate our whole race I’d cheer ’em on as they attacked. There would be no better shot in the arm for humanity than a good old war, as long as the race survived to build and grow. I’m a psychiatrist and I like my creature comforts and my profession, too.”

“Then why—why work for them?” Dylan asked, puzzled.

“Oh, I don’t work for them, exactly. On Cerberus, I just about am the Confederacy, which I consider a delicious joke on all of them. It has to do with the way I look at history and society. Qwin here might tell you more about that. I don’t really feel like philosophical chats right now, there’s too much to be done. Let’s just say that I use them, and they use me, and we both profit. I also use Laroo and his people and system. All to the end of living exactly the life I want, doing what I most love to do.”

“I don’t understand why they sent me at all,” I told him honestly, and with the respect one professional offers another. “You could have done everything easier and with less risk yourself.”

“Well, that’s not true. If I got anywhere near Laroo, or particularly his island and his projects, I’d put myself in severe and immediate danger, and I’m just not willing to do that. As I said, my activities are designed to keep me in my own personal nirvana as long as possible. Indefinitely, I hope. So I’m not the active sort. Laroo wouldn’t trust me near him or his babies simply because I know too much about him, know him too well.” He grinned. “He thinks I had a partial mindwipe about that, which is the only reason I’m still here. But on a secondary level, I’m too close to the problem. I’ve been here too many years, know too many people. My objectivity is askew. A fresh analytical mind was needed to filter the information. Besides, this way it’s your neck, not mine.”

“But you said you didn’t care if the aliens attacked,” Dylan noted, still trying to figure him out. “Then why help against this thing at all?”

He became very serious. “The ultimate threat is those creatures out there. Perfect organisms, superior in every way. Homo excelsus. And all totally programmable. Totally. Everybody’s programmed, of course, by what we call heredity and environment. But we have the ability to transcend much of that, to become what the programming never intended. That’s why no totalitarian society, no matter how absolute, in the whole history of mankind has been able to eradicate the individual human spirit These—robots—are the first true threat to that. They can’t outgrow their programming. Speaking euphemistically, I have to say they scare the shit out of me.”

We both nodded. “So where do we go from here?” I asked him.

“All right. We’ve analyzed and dissected and played with all those samples. I’ll tell you the truth: Dr. Merton is correct. We have no idea how to duplicate that stuft, how to make it ourselves. It’s beyond us. Which is all to the good, I think. I wouldn’t want [ulwin] that business, either, although Lord knows they’ll try. That’s the bad news, sort of. The good news is that though we can’t make it or quite understand how it works, we know how to work it, if that makes sense.”

“Not a bit,” I told him.

“Well, I don’t know how to make a pencil, but I know how to use one. Even if I’d never seen one before, I could still figure it out. The operation, that is. We have an infinitely Complex variation of that same idea here. Now, if the basic obedience programming were in the very chemical makeup of the thing, we’d be up the creek. No way to deprogram without dissolving it. Fortunately, it’s not. There is a programming device inside each quasicell, and it’s quite complex and we don’t understand it at all. However, knowing that, we can add programming information and be sure that the information is transmitted and stored via the Wardens the same way as we swap here. There’s an interesting implication that the thing is designed with Wardens in mind and might not work without them, which may mean that these things were developed by our aliens specifically for us here and now on Cerberus, rather than just being a variation of something common in their culture.”

“So? What does this all mean?” Dylan asked impatiently.

“Well, half the samples went elsewhere and the other half stayed here, where my lab handled the practical stuff. Wardens were essential, which we have in abundance here. It became a fascinating exercise, really. Using an organism we can’t understand at all to influence another we can’t build or duplicate. But with the aid of computers Outside and my lab here, we finally managed to get a readout. The chemical coding language is quite complex and not at all human, and that’s what took the time, but we finally got it. Fortunately, the basic obedience stuff is duplicated in every cell. In fact all the cells, whether brain or tissue, are pretty much the same and can simply become what they need to be. The programming is rather basic, as it would have to be, since it’s serving as a single base for all the different robot agents being sent back to all sorts of different worlds, jobs, and conditions.”

“Then you can get rid of it?” I pressed.

“Nope. But we can do the same thing I suggested as regards psych implants. The aliens have made it impossible to separate the basics without lousing up the cell and triggering this meltdown process. But the cells are programmable, remember. They have to be. So we can add programming to override these initial steps. Cancel it out completely, leaving an unencumbered mind in a super body.”

“Surely Merton would have thought of that,” I pointed out.

“Undoubtedly she has,” he agreed, “but she hasn’t the computer capacity and resources to get a complete readout of the codes, let alone actually break the language used. That’s what stuck them. You wouldn’t believe how much time had to be devoted to this. Laroo was right: not every string he could pull could commandeer that much computer time for that long without drawing Security like a magnet.”

“So we can give him what he wants,” Dylan sighed. “How does that gain us anything?”

“Well, for starters, we’ll need to give you some absolute protection. That can be accomplished simply by making it a complex psych implant using the Security system. Laroo can’t break it. Nobody here could break it—or if they can, we’ve already lost the war. In other words, you can’t give the information to ’em unless you want to, which is the only time you’ll know it—and you’ll just know what to do, not what you’re doing. And it’ll have to be done one at a time, one robot at a crack.”

“But he’s only allowing me on the island,” Dylan pointed out. “Doesn’t that mean he’ll just make a robot out of me and have it any time he wants it, block or no block?”

“No, and there’s an easy way to handle that. Very easy. We add another block, similar to the dozens Security’s placed in Qwin’s brain over the years, as insurance. There is no human who cannot be tortured, or chemically or mechanically made to spill his or her guts. None. So we use the same methods to make sure that such operations will be fruitless. It’s what stopped Laroo from going the robot route with Qwin here right from the start. I’m sure he has some implants like this himself. It’s really simple, and one they’ll understand and accept right off because they all know the type. Basically, it’s a psych command that erases other information if any sort of coercion is used, and can even be triggered voluntarily if need be. He won’t dare try anything with you. He’ll need you totally—and he can use his own psych staff to verify the existence of the erase commands. It protects you—and it protects us.”