Cerberus: A Wolf in the Fold Page 18

  Sanda was puzzled, but there was a slight glow of excitement in her as she realized another operation was underway. “I don’t see what good switching the numbers will do,” she commented, sounding more curious than anything else. “I mean, they just won’t test out and they’ll be rejected, like those three over there of ours.”

  I grinned. “But they will test out,” I told her. “We aren’t just changing numbers. We are exchanging the numbers. All the numbers are still good, just for the wrong torpedoes. When they load these and test them, they’ll get a response from their computers—from the torpedoes in the warehouse—but the computer won’t know that, or at least won’t tell. So they’ll sail off with a batch of torpedoes that will test out perfectly, but when they have to use them, they won’t work.”

  “Sounds like you’re gonna blow up the dock instead,” she noted.

  “No. It’s highly unlikely that any borks will come within three kilometers of land. The danger zone’s out past five kilometers. And that’s too far. Still, if there’s a really thorough investigation, I can always blow the docks—from one of our boats.”

  She stared at me, looking slightly shocked. “Oh,” she said.

  Rigging the torpedoes was only part of the problem. The other was making certain that there would be an occasion to use them. For that, I began a thorough search for everything that turned borks on.

  It turned out that the most reliable and effective means were pretty simple—some soluble sulfides would draw them if they were anywhere, close and would drive them into something of a frenzy (as if that weren’t their normal state anyway). But for long-range attraction, I needed something more. Again the solution was rather simple. Like marine creatures on many worlds, the borks were supersensitive to ultra-high-frequency sounds and apparently used them for territorial claims, fights, lovemaking (hard to imagine with something like that, but, then again, there were a lot of borks), and such. The vocabulary was not extensive, but it was clearly known, so much so that various boat engines and the like were made to specific noise standards to avoid any such sounds within their operating ranges.

  On such a simple idea I didn’t go the circuitous route, but simply got some modified UHF broadcasters from Otah myself, then worked with them, a circuit diagram, and some easy modifications of tiny programmable chips to create a remote transceiver that I could tune to any selective frequency from anywhere within an area of fifty to a hundred kilometers. Various shops specializing in special underwater gear provided easy cases that could be adapted to, the transmitters without much problem. A couple of chemical supply houses sold various standard compounds that together would in my makeshift kitchen lab create one hell of a glue to reinforce the magnets on the inside of the case. I didn’t want the things falling off under battle stress, as magnets might risk—and a magnet powerful enough to stay regardless would be a magnet powerful enough to be detected by ship’s instruments. More electronic modification and I had a small charge I could also set off by remote control—enough to melt the little transmitters into a nondescript goo, but-not enough to cause harm to the hull.

  Although they were curious, I dared not tell Dylan or the boat captains and crews what I was doing, since in Dylan’s case she might try and stop me because of her prohibition against any violence, while the boat people would hardly be enthusiastic about my possibly doing in several of their own. I didn’t like that prospect much myself, but more was at stake here than a few lives. This was Laroo I was going against, not some minor executive or fire department employee. At least my way they had a chance and so did I. Simply to have sabotaged the boats might not accomplish what I wanted, but would certainly alert Laroo and his security forces that somebody nasty was up to something.

  But I would need somebody to help me plant the things and that meant Sanda—and I wasn’t 100 percent certain of her. Up to now she had gone along, it was true, but before I actually put anything into practice I had to be certain she wouldn’t cross me up at the wrong time—not by choice, I knew, but I had no real idea what her psych inhibitors and commands were. So I had to see somebody who could tell me.

  Most doctors were pretty bored on Cerberus; the Warden organism was extremely efficient at keeping the natives ultra-healthy. Still, some were around for emergency services and for research, and one group, considering the culture, was absolutely necessary and always busy—the group I was most concerned with, the psychiatrists. Almost all were exiles, of course, sent here for a variety of infractions. Most were not adverse to a little under-the-table money for private work of a less-than-official nature. A large number of people, some otherwise quite ordinary, recommended Dr. Svarc Dumonia as the ultimate psych expert who would, do anything for tin extra unit, so it was he I went to see, taking Dylan along—not because I felt he could help her, but because it would make seeing him more natural, and the big fee look legitimate. Dylan, however, would undergo an extensive series of mostly useless tests while Dumonia and I had our real little chat

  He was a thin, wiry, nervous little man who wore hornrimmed glasses, something I took particular note of, since everyone on Cerberus had eyesight in the same condition as the rest of their bodies—near perfect. He caught my glance and shrugged.

  “The glasses. Oh, call them an affectation. I’d like to think I wear ‘em—the panes are perfectly clear, of course—to be more of an individual, to stand out in the crowd. Truth was, I’d been getting a tad nearsighted back home and never seemed to have the time to have the matter attended to. I just got some glasses, liked the look, and kept wearing them. After I got here I felt unnatural without ‘em.”

  I smiled slightly and took a seat in his office. My record of never meeting a psych who didn’t need a psych was holding firm.

  “Doctor,” I began carefully, “I’m here so I can understand more about the process of psychological conditioning. As you’re aware, I live with its results almost constantly.”

  He nodded and flipped through a folder. “Hmmm … interesting treatment, I must say. Highly creative. The design team that worked out your wife’s pattern had to be one of the best. It’s a highly skilled profession, you know, and getting the results you want from what’s ordered is often nearly impossible. Every time you implant anything beyond, say, a simple command, as in say, post-hypnotic suggestion but making it permanent, you’re taking risks with the entire mind, the entire personality. Information is filed scattershot throughout the brain in tiny electrochemical bytes, you know. It’s put together up front by the cerebral cortex, which reaches at the speed of light for whatever it needs to create holographic memory, personality, whatever. To do something this complex takes—well, not technicians but artisans.”

  “Some artisans,” I muttered. “They destroyed her.”

  “Oh, sorry. Didn’t mean to offend, but when you’re in the business and you see it as a mathematical abstract rather than in human terms it’s, well, like admiring a skillful heart restoration back home. If you don’t know the person, you admire the work in isolation, even if afterward you find that the person died.”

  I accepted that notion, or at least understood it. “Still, she was changed into someone, well, very different. The result seems somehow more awful than death or imprisonment.”

  “Oh, no! Actually, it’s not that way at all. Back home, where both of us come from, the procedure is so common you probably met hundreds, even thousands of people with some psych work and never knew it. In psychiatry, for example, we can actually go in and get at the deep psychoses, do things our forefathers never dreamed of. There are no more hopeless cases in my profession. And in the case of your wife, think of the alternatives. You might not agree that she did anything wrong or that the law or judges were just, but who does in any society? Isn’t that why we’re both here?”

  “Well, in your wife’s case, from the point of view of society, they took someone who violated the law and made her into a productive member of that society who won’t violate any laws. Not the important ones,
anyway.”

  “Important to whom?”

  “To the state, of course., To understand my job, you have to remember that our task is to restore abnormal people to normal. Normality isn’t an objective standard, but rather a subjective term imposed by each society on its people by laws and culture. Ancient cultures used to sacrifice people to appease the gods. In those societies, anybody who objected to that sacrifice or doubted the existence of the gods wasn’t normal. The social fabric of the civilized worlds would be horribly abnormal to many of our own ancestors, but it’s ours. We were born into it and accept most of its values, even if we question or violate one or two. Cerberan culture is nothing but a modification of the civilized worlds’ own culture adapted to local conditions and limitations. Deep down you can understand that.”

  This line of conversation was making me slightly uncomfortable, and I couldn’t really figure out why.

  “Now, in your wife’s case,” he continued, “we have somebody with a couple of problems from the state’s point of view that made her abnormal. First, she escaped from the motherhood, something which is culturally forbidden and which held the threat of undermining a basic underpinning of Cerberan society. But since everybody here in any position got there by getting away with breaking the rules—and she had only bent them slightly—they couldn’t do much to her at that point without questioning their basic values and themselves. Besides, she overcompensated for her previous cloistered life by taking on a profession most Cerberans consider suicidal.”

  “Overcompensated?”

  He nodded. “Sure. The unhappy ones in the motherhood are basically of two kinds—those really unfit for the role, who are usually given psych treatments, and the romantics. Extremely bright and very limited by her assigned role, Dylan had only one view of outside, in this case outside her House—that dock and those adventurous seamen. She fantasized about what she knew and could see, and that really was Hroyasail. But when she did get out and did attain her dreams, they weren’t all they were cracked up to be. The fantasy was far more romantic than the reality. It was either as dull as the motherhood or horribly life-threatening, and when you take risks like that day after day, knowing the odds, even that becomes unsatisfying. Like most people who work on the boats, she was really past caring. The motherhood was dull and repressive, and her fantasy was dull and in its own way equally repressive. So she continued going through the motions without much hope for the future, knowing that sooner or later her luck would run out and she’d be killed. Being killed in her work became her new romantic fantasy.”

  I was a bit shocked at this. “You mean she was suicidal?”

  He looked back down at his charts. “In a sense, yes. Oh, she wouldn’t try to kill herself, but she herself must have told you that you get to be captain mostly by attrition. Everybody likes thrills, but with the kind of odds in her business you have to have a death wish. It shows tip clearly in her profile.”

  I shook my head in wonder. “I can’t believe that of her.”

  “Oh, it’s true. What in fact her profile suggests she really wanted was to be what she is—a mother. But a complete mother, one who not only bears but raises her children, frontier-style. In fact, for all her rationalization, the addition of a new factor in her life, when her odds were surely running low, was the final trigger for her to take the action she did.”

  “New factor?”

  He nodded. “You. She fell in love with you. And suddenly she found it more and more difficult to go out on her daily hunts. For the first time she started getting scared because she no longer was content to die at the helm, so to speak. When you restored her will to live, you shortened her odds of surviving to a tiny fraction. She couldn’t consciously face this, but her subconscious knew, and that’s why she decided to give in—to violate the law—and take the girl Sanda along that day. She was at her peak, of course, because she had both you and Sanda to protect, but you have no idea the risk you took that day. Half of Tier, I’m sure, considered the idea of going down with those she loved, a tidy and romantic ending. She didn’t, because she loved you too much.”

  “You’re saying she knew she’d get caught?”

  “I’m saying she wanted to get caught. If she hadn’t been caught this time she’d have done something else. She wanted out so she would no longer be faced with inevitable death and separation from you.”

  I felt at once touched, uncomfortable, and incredulous. “But she could have quit. We’d have created a place for her with the company.”

  “No, no. She couldn’t consciously face that either. I suspect that the idea never entered her head, since she also feared losing you. You admired her courage, even as you feared for her life. She was afraid that any such move would be interpreted as cowardice on your part and might leave her without you—and that was the only thing that mattered to her. You.”

  “But that’s ridiculous! I wouldn’t have—”

  ‘You probably wouldn’t,” he agreed, “but the human mind is more than a computer, which is why we have psychiatrists at all. We’re individualists, with emotions and a streak of irrational thinking that both makes us humans great and is our biggest weakness.”

  “I still can’t really accept this,” I told him.

  “Ah! Love!” he sighed. “Our craziest failing. It has almost been eliminated on the civilized worlds, and it’s pretty damned rare here on Cerberus, too. But give it half a chance, give it a little crack to slip into and it raises its head nonetheless. Look, Zhang, I can tell you really don’t like Cerberan culture very much, but next to the frontier the Warden worlds—all of them—allow one thing that makes them, I think, better places. Here we still dream, we still fantasize and romanticize. On the civilized worlds they’ve eradicated that, and they know it. That’s why the frontier’s a continuing operation. It’s the only place where people can still dream. All of humankind’s advances—since the precursor of Man came down from the trees on ancient primordial Earth—have resulted from dreams, fantasies, imagination. Dylan broke free of the motherhood for a dream—she found a way. But as with the civilized worlds, which were begun with the most glorious of dreams in mind, the reality proved less than that Hollow. If you search inside yourself you know it, too.”

  I gave a dry, humorless chuckle. “I can see how you wound up here.”

  He gave a genuine chuckle in return. “They made a mistake on me. Sent me off to the frontier because they had a shortage of medical officers for a short tour. When I returned to the civilized worlds I couldn’t believe how hollow and empty they were—the same places I loved and yearned for only a year before. I became convinced that civilization as I knew it would continue of its own momentum much as other ancient empires bad continued, but being hollow, it was also fragile. I knew that we’d crack against any good assault from outside and campaign to restore some vigor, some mental health.” He spread his arms. “And here I am. And know what? I really haven’t been that sorry about it.”

  “Suit yourself,” I told him. “I certainly see your point, even if I don’t accept your conclusions on the civilized worlds or on Dylan.”

  “An interesting metaphor, one that appeals to me. Your wife and our old civilization. History will eventually prove me right on the civilized worlds, but I can prove my point on Dylan easily.”

  “How could you do that? From reading psych profiles taken in only one night?”

  He grinned like a man about to lower the noose. “No, because I know from your cover application on her what she told you was done to her. I knew in a minute it couldn’t have been like that—that sort of complete turnaround takes weeks, maybe months, if it can be done at all. So I just got the test results on her, and they confirmed my suspicions.”

  “Which are?”

  “Considering the time, it was a masterful job, as I said, but it was hardly that extensive. Dylan believes they did all of it—she is convinced of that. But what the psychs did was far slighter and more subtle. They simply gave her a nudge here, a
tap there, a very subtle working of her subconscious desires, ones she herself was not fully willing to admit to herself. She did the rest to convince herself and you that those things she wanted to do and be were involuntarily imposed from above. Look, Zhang, if we could do such a complete job on somebody like her overnight, the syndicates would put us all through the ringer and you know it.”

  “Are you telling me that there’s no psych command that says she has to obey my every wish? No psych plant against going out on the boats?”

  “I’m saying there is not. The first, the obedience thing, comes partly from her early training and psyche, partly from inner needs, and partly out of her very real total dependence on you financially. She is convinced there is such a command, but it comes from her own subconscious—and is no less real because it does. Furthermore, there is absolutely nothing preventing her from going near the boats except the laws governing the motherhood, but it’s a damn good way of not having to face up to the fact that she doesn’t want to go any more. You see, she’s taken the things she doesn’t want to face and transferred them to a third party—the psych. That way she can accept it, and that way you have to accept her.”

  I had half risen from the chair, but now I sat back down again. “What you’re saying is that she’s living in a fantasy world completely now. One of her own making.”

  “Somewhat,” he agreed. “Now, we can schedule a series of sessions that will allow her to accept the truth, but it may take time. With your help we can bring her face to face with herself again, so she’ll be a whole person. Nonetheless, she’ll be more the present Dylan than the past one—you understand that?”