Jack Chalker - Cerberus - A Wolf in the Fold

Two assistants came up with a crazy-looking vertical hand truck, and as we watched, the giant was told to stand, then tilted forward, the platform slipped expertly under, then tilted back so it could carry the thing, which remained rigid. They wheeled him out a side door as we watched, Merton following.

“Where are they going?” I asked curiously.

“First we’ll hook him up to some analytical equipment to see if the change took—or if it did, whether or not we can see it at all.” Laroo told us. “After—well, one step at a time.”

Several nervous minutes passed, after which Merton reappeared. “Nothing I can measure has changed in the slightest,” she told us. “As far as I can see, everything’s the same.”

Laroo sighed. “All right, then. We have to try a live test. Is Samash prepared?”

She nodded, went to a wall intercom, and called somewhere. I could recognize Bogen’s voice, and the surprise when she said Samash. But in less than a minute an unconscious figure was wheeled into the lab, one that looked nothing like the giant In fact he was the oldest man I’d ever seen on Cerberus, although he was probably no more than in his middle fifties.

“Samash is a technician here on the island,” Laroo told us. “He’s very loyal and not very bright, but he’s handy. And you can see, he’s more than overdue for a new body.”

“Some new body,” Dylan noted.

“Well, now he’ll look the part.”

“Is he—drugged?”

“Kabash leaves, a substance about which, if I remember, you also know something.”

“Oh.”

I got the picture. This was the stuff that forced a transfer if anybody else in the area had it or was receptive. Samash was wheeled into the other room, and soon Merton and the techs all emerged. “Give him, say, an hour,” she said confidently. “I’ll call you.”

And with that, we were dismissed. As before, we were fed, and very nicely, too.

“I’m still worried about all this,” Dylan commented.

“Want more?” I told her about my fears of Merton.

She sighed. “Well, we did our best, right?”

“We’ll see. It isn’t over yet.”

An hour or so later we were called back and found.the lab the same except that now the great giant seemed to be sleeping on the table in the center. Of the old body I saw nothing, and guessed it had died from lack of interest.

Even though the giant robot was sleeping, there was no doubt that there was a person inside it now. It looked natural and normal; somehow even its sleeping face was filled with an indefinable something that had not been there before.

“Wake him up,” Laroo ordered.

Dr. Merton and the two assistants stood back, and there was a sudden, almost deafening cymbal-like sound all around. It subsided quickly, and Merton called, “Samash! Wake upl”

The body stirred, and we stepped back to the wall and held our breath. Even the Laroos seemed extremely tense.

Samash’s eyes opened, and the face took on a puzzled look. He groaned, a deep bass, shook his head, and sat up on the cart and looked around. “Wha—what happened?” he managed.

“Look at yourself, Samash,” Laroo told him. “See what you’ve become! See what I have given you!”

Samash looked and gasped, but seemed to realize instantly what had happened. He jumped off the cart, stretched, smiled, and looked around, a slight smile on his face. I didn’t like the looks of that smile.

“Samash, I am Wagant Laroo. Activation Code AJ360.”

The giant hesitated a moment as if puzzled, then started to laugh.

“Samash, Activation Code AJ360!” Lartte repeated uneasily.

Samash stopped laughing and started looking mean and irritated. He turned and pointed to goatee. “I don’t take orders from you,” he sneered. “Not any more. I don’t take orders from nobody! You don’t know what you did, Laroo! Sure, I know what Activation Code AJ360 means. But it don’t mean nothin’ to me. Not me. You fouled up this time, Laroo.” He turned, ignoring us all, and said to himself, aloud, “You don’t know the feeling! The power! Like a god!” He turned back to goatee. “Greater than you’ll ever know, Laroo, whichever one of you you really are. You’re through now!” With that he lunged for the five Laroos.

“Protect me!” screamed the teenage girl we’d rightly fingered, real panic in her voice—and to our shock the other four, plus Merton and the two assistants, all leaped upon the giant with almost bunding speed. In seconds they had pinned him to the floor.

“Oh, my God!” Dylan breathed. “They’re all robots!”

The girl—Laroo, the real one—stepped nervously to the far wall and tripped the intercom. “This is Laroo. Security on the double!”

On the double was right: we were suddenly flooded with National Police as well as Bogen, arms drawn.

“Stand away from him!” Bogen shouted. “Let him up!”

As quickly as they were on him, they were off. Then it took only a split second for Samash himself, in one motion, to get to his feet and charge Bogen and the NPs.

He never had a chance. As lightning-fast as he was, they were even faster. Beams shot out, covering the giant’s body. It was an incredible display, since any one of those beams would slice steel in two and burn, melt, or disintegrate almost anything we knew—and all they did was stop Samash. No, not even stop him, exactly—just slowed him to a crawl. He was almost at them, but they kept firing and stood their ground—and suddenly you could see the beams finally taking effect.

There was a sudden, acrid smell. Samash stopped, looked surprised and more confused than anything, and then, with a bright flash that almost blinded us, ignited and melted down into a horrid little puddle of goo. At the moment of ignition, all weapons stopped firing at the same moment, so no beam went astray—an incredible display.

“All of them,” Dylan was saying. “Even Merton and Bogen and the cops. All of them.”

“Except her,” I noted, pointing to the still frightened face of the teenaged girl. “That’s Wagant Laroo for today.”

Laroo regained some of his—-her—composure.

“Yes, that’s right. All the important people on the island are robots,” she admitted. “Normally only two of my party are, but I didn’t want to take any chances this time. You can see why.”

I nodded. “But you took one anyway. He almost got you, even after taking enough blast to melt the Castle.”

She nodded nervously. “We’ll have better precautions next time. I really didn’t quite expect that”

“Well? What did you expect?” Dylan asked caustically. “You’re not exactly the most popular person on Cerberus, you know, and you suddenly gave the old guy tremendous power and a real shot at you.”

“Enough for now!” Laroo snapped. “Get out of here, you two! Go back upstairs until I call for you again.”

If you need us again, you mean, I thought grumpily.

“Well, at least we proved the system works, I think,” I noted, and both of us exited at that line, carefully stepping around the NPs, Bogen, and the still smoldering pile of goo.

“How did they stop him?” Dylan wondered later that evening.

“I suspect they trained a bunch of different weapons at different settings on him,” I told her. “His cells kept compensating for one kind of charge and he was finally faced with too many contradictory conditions to fight at one time. One got through, damaged something vital, and triggered the self-destruct in the cell units.”

She shivered. “It was horrible.”

“I don’t think we’d have liked Samash, either,” I pointed out.

“No, not that. The fact that they’re all robots. Even that nice Dr. Merton.”