Cerberus: A Wolf in the Fold Read online

  “All right,” Laroo began, “you win this round. We contacted five of the top psychs in the area, including your own, and two out of five agreed with you while the other three weren’t sure. All things considered, I can’t take the chance on you right now. I also toyed with the idea of replacing your wife—a very simple procedure, really.”

  I tensed, but said nothing.

  “However,” he continued, “Dumonia said that doing so would eventually turn you into a suicidal assassin of the first rank, which would mean killing you immediately. It’s still an attractive idea—and you might consider that you won’t know if and when I decide to do it—but I won’t for now. The fact is, your kind of mind comes along all too seldom around here, and your type is one I find fascinating and useful.”

  “Aside from the fact that if you replaced Dylan I’d know the first time we swapped minds, assuming I survived the swap.”

  He sighed. “Yes, that is the compelling reason. See what I mean? You think right. And because you think right, I’m inclined to give you a chance. I’m inclined to let you try.”

  I relaxed. Second big hurdle crossed. “When?”

  “As soon as possible,” he told me. “Ordinarily I’d take this up at the semiannual meeting of the Lords of the Diamond, which is the day after tomorrow, but with Kreegan gone I can no longer afford the luxury of committee decisions. He usually made them, anyway. I will, however, bring the matter up at the time.” He rose, as if to dismiss me.

  “My wife,” I reminded him. “The down payment.”

  He hesitated, then sighed. “Very well. Call Dumonia when you get back to shore. I’ll arrange things through him. Get it done quickly. But the psych commands and network remain. You understand that? And the credit dependency. If she tries to get out of the motherhood again, I’ll fix it so she’ll beg for mercy—and you, too. Also, her life as well as yours is in your hands as of now. One cross, one little slip by either of you, one thing going even slightly off—even if it’s something beyond your doing or control—and both of you won’t be dead, but you’ll wish you were. You understand?”

  I nodded seriously, noting the vicious undertone in his voice. It was an edge, a very slight chilling undertone, that had been absent before. I realized suddenly that I was facing the real Wagant Laroo, although I hadn’t the first time, and I felt the odds tilt very slightly back to me. I could recognize him if I was careful. Could pick him out in his room full of doubles. Those others, that first one, were damned good actors, but the kind of emotional undertone here had to be, I felt, unique to the real “one.

  Bogen suddenly paled as a worthy opponent’ in my eyes. I could see him shrink into insignificance in my mind, a minor-league security chief. Wagant Laroo was the most chillingly dangerous human being I had ever met. I never doubted for a second his threat, or his ability to make good on it.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Creative Psych and Proposition Time

  “I still can’t believe you managed it,” Dylan told me on the way over to Dumonia’s. “My God, Qwin! In one year you’ve come here, framed a big shot, become a company president, wormed your way into a high-level security project, and now you’ve even managed to get a judgment reversed—a judgment not too many months old!”

  I nodded and smiled, but that dark edge that came in when things were underway and out of control was irrepressible, “Still, we’re only halfway home. The trickiest parts are yet to come, and this guy Laroo really bothers me. Dylan, I looked at him and I knew real fear, real danger. These Four Lords are the best of their kind, an ultimate evolutionary type. The whole Warden Diamond concept was the dumbest thing the Confederacy ever accomplished. I see that now. They put the absolute best, most brilliant criminal psychopaths together on one spot. The survivor of such struggles has to be the perfection of their kind—thoroughly brilliant, totally amoral, totally ruthless. He thought of every way to screw me up just while I was sitting there, and I think he knows, or at least suspects, what I’m up to.”

  “But you talked yourself out of his traps,” she pointed out, “and he went along with you. If he’s that good, why did he?”

  “I think I know. Consider his position. His biggest weakness is his fear that at any moment his enormous and growing power may be snuffed out. It was already a fear before, but now that one of the Four Lords is gone, it has become an obsession. He has the best minds on Cerberus working on his ultimate solution—including Merton, who may be one of the best minds in that area, period. And they can’t crack it. He needs Project Phoenix. So even figuring on a double-cross of some kind, he’s willing to let me go ahead anyway. He has no choice. The only thing he can do is let me go all the way, using Merton and the others to uncover my tricks, in the hopes that I’ll still solve the problem for him. It’s the ultimate challenge, Dylan. He’s betting his ego against mine that he can outfox me before I can outfox him.”

  “You’re sure he knows you’re planning something?”

  I nodded. “He knows. Like Bogen said, you get a gut feeling, pro to pro. Like the gut feelings you relied on most heavily in the bork hunts. He knows simply because of the bottom line. Once I deliver, he has everything to fear from me and nothing to gain by keeping me around. We both understand that. He knows I’ll have to pull something, and he is betting he can figure it out. That’s why the free leash right now, the giving in to my conditions. It doesn’t matter—as long as I deliver the goods.”

  She looked at me. “Can you deliver?”

  I shrugged. “I haven’t the slightest idea. That’ll be up to Otah and my brother and Krega and those above him. In the end, I have to bet on their being able to come up with the solution to the problem.”

  She just nodded and turned and looked back out the window of the helicab.

  Soon we arrived at Dumonia’s offices and were quickly ushered in. Laroo had wasted no time in setting all this up, since he saw assassins in every corner. He was probably right.

  Dumonia, too, seemed impressed. While Dylan was off with the thirteen judges assembled on Laroo’s orders just for this purpose, we sat, relaxed, and talked. I liked Dumonia, although I didn’t trust him.

  “Well, so you blew the lid off your cover,” he noted casually.

  I nodded. “Why not? It was always shaky anyway.

  And frankly, if you knew, it’d eventually get out in any event.”

  He winced. “Am I that disreputable?”

  “For all I know, you’re exactly what you seem to be. Or you could be Wagant Laroo himself. On this world, who can tell?”

  He found the idea amusing. “That’s the most common problem we face, you know, here on Cerberus. Paranoia. Fear of who’s who. It’s the thing that keeps the people in line. We have a really nasty element in our population, courtesy of the Confederacy, but it takes something like that to keep us as peaceful and relatively crime-free as we are. That and the threat of a judgment, or death, if caught. I suspect that that’s why I love this place so much. Think of the business!”

  I had thought a lot about Svarc Dumonia over the past several weeks, and had been extra careful even in choosing him. The man was a total contradiction—a totally amoral, cynical person with criminal tendencies in the mass and abstract sense, yet totally devoted to helping and curing his individual patients.

  “Just your idea that I might be Laroo is a good example,” he said. “Total paranoia reigns. But I’m not Laroo. I couldn’t ever be Laroo, for the very simple reason that I hate governments. I hate all institutions, from the Confederacy to the Cerberan government to the local medical society. Organized anthills, all of ‘em. Designed to stifle and straitjacket the -individual human spirit, and doing a damned good job as well. Religions are just as bad, maybe worse. Dogma. You have to believe this; you ‘ have to behave like that. Run around wasting time in silly rituals instead of being productive. You know we have a hundred and seventy different faiths in Medlam alone? Everything from the Catholic Church and Orthodox Judaism—consider the problems with
sex changing, circumcision, and the rest they face in our changeable world—to local nut cults that believe the gods are sleeping inside Cerberus and will awaken to take us to the Millennium someday.”

  “You’re an anarchist, then.”

  “Oh, I suppose. A comfortable, upper-class anarchist

  a sort, wearing tailored suits and having a seaside resort home I can get to in my private flier. That’s where the old philosophers went wrong, you know. Anarchism isn’t the way for the masses. Hell, they want to be led, or they wouldn’t keep tolerating and creating all these new bureaucratic institutions’ to tell them what to think. It’s an individual” philosophy. You compromise, becoming as much of an anarchist as you can without worrying about man in the collective. The only thing you can do in the collective sense is to shake them up periodically, give ‘em a revolutionary kick in the pants. It never lasts—it creates its own dogmas and bureaucracies. But the shake-up is healthy. When the Confederacy got so institutionalized that even a little revolt here and there was impossible, that’s when dry rot set in.”

  I began to see where he was heading. “And you think I’m a local revolutionary?”

  “Oh, you’ll probably get your fool head blown off, but maybe you’ll give ‘em a kick. Eventually you’ll become what you destroy even if you succeed, but then some new smart ass will come along and do the same to you. It’ll keep the juices flowing for the long run.”

  I accepted that. I liked -Dumonia, although not necessarily all that he said or believed. I certainly couldn’t see myself as another Laroo and said so.

  “But you are,” he responded. “You told me you felt real apprehension and fear when you met him. Know why? Because you looked at Laroo and knew, deep down, that you were looking at yourself. Knew that you were looking straight into the eyes of somebody whose mind worked just like yours.”

  “I don’t worship power.”

  “Because you’ve never had that degree of power, so you can’t really imagine what it might do to you. But you do love it. Every time you took on an opponent, a system, something, and won, you exercised power and demonstrated your mastery over those people, that system.”

  “I hope not. I sincerely hope you’re wrong. But tell you what. In the incredibly unlikely event that I ever get to be Lord of Cerberus, I’ll continue to see you often just to have you kick me in the rear. How’s that?”

  He didn’t laugh. “No, you won’t. You won’t like, or will choose not to believe, what I tell you, and you’ll eventually grow sick of it. I know. You see, twenty years ago I had almost this identical conversation with Wagant Laroo.”

  “What!”

  He nodded. “I’ve seen ‘em come and go. I helped put him in, and I’ll help put you in if I can, but nothing will change.”

  “How do you stay alive, Doc?”

  He grinned. “My little secret. But remember, everybody now running this place has at one time or another been a patient of mine.”

  “Including me,” I muttered, more to myself than him. I suddenly realized that here in this office was truly the smartest, most devious man on Cerberus—and oddly, not one to be feared, at least yet. Dumonia could have been Lord any time he wanted, but he didn’t want it Running a place was against his religion.

  “Well, let’s get on to more direct matters,” I suggested, feeling more and more uncomfortable. “You said that if Dylan were out of judgment you might effect a complete cure. Well, that’s going to be the case. Now, what needs to be done?”

  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 pike. 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 st
ep.”

  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.”