Cerberus: A Wolf in the Fold

CHAPTER NINETEEN The Final Scam

Dumonia and his psych computers had built a tremendously impressive psychological profile of Wagant Laroo over the years, back from when he first appeared on Cerberus. Like all the world’s most powerful men throughout history, his one fear was assassination or even accidental death. This fear had actually been compounded, on Cerberus, where one had the potential of eternal life—and that was the kicker. By now Laroo felt almost omnipotent, but to feel like a god and know you were potentially mortal was unthinkable. The robot was the closest thing to total security he could ever hope to achieve. Even more, it would allow him to leave the Warden Diamond—and return—at will, thus making him certainly the most powerful man our spacefaring race had ever known. Surrounded by a small army of the more obedient sort of organic robots, he would be virtually invulnerable. Freed from all wants and needs of the flesh, and armed with a mind that could operate with the swiftness and sureness of a top computer, he would be a monster such as mankind had never known.

He knew this, and knowing this, his psych charts said, he had to take the risk. Add to that the knowledge that one Lord had already been done in, a Lord he obviously respected and feared—and you had the clincher.

I couldn’t help but think that Dumonia had had a lot to do with my decisions. I’d been seeing him—and he’d made sure it would be him—about Sanda and Dylan before I ever made the Project Phoenix move, and then I’d done nothing until just the right psychological time—for Laroo. Then and only then had I been willing to take the ultimate risk and had done so practically without hesitation, and with Dylan’s full support. I couldn’t help wondering how many little pushes and suggestions I’d gotten from him even before I ever heard of him.

It really didn’t matter now, though. Now everything would come together—or it would all come apart. Either way, I had no doubt he was protected. And I suspected that if we did fail there was a cruiser even now prepared to come in close to Cerberus and fry Laroo’s Island to a crisp and us with it.

Dylan and I spent almost a full week in the Castle, mostly enjoying ourselves, although always under the watchful eyes of guards and scanners. She was fascinated by the broad, green lawn, something she frankly had never even conceived of before, and by the museums of stolen goods, many of which I could take pleasure in explaining both the history and something about the culture they came from.

When we first arrived we were taken to Dr. Merton, who ran some tests to verify our psych commands and blocks, as expected, and had done so. Unlike the first time I’d come to the Castle, I wasn’t bluffing now, and they confirmed it.

We also revealed, without really knowing or understanding what it was we were describing, the type of equipment necessary for the deprogramming process. Merton checked the information over with interest; obviously understanding it, and assured us that it could be assembled quickly.

Finally, though, and without any real warning, a big transport landed on the front lawn. Out stepped five people as before, only these were far different. Dylan surveyed them curiously from the window. A teenage boy and girl. A tough-looking woman pushing forty, with short gray-brown hair. A short, wiry man of very dark complexion. And finally, a young executive type in full dress suit and black goatee.

“He has quite a collection,” I said approvingly. “Nobody there I recognize, from last time or any other time.”

“They walk alike,” Dylan noted. “Even the women walk just like the men.”

“I see what you mean. They’re good actors. Damned good.”

“How will we know which one is the real Laroo? Or if any of them are?”

“That’s simple,” I replied. “The real one will be the one left alive and kicking at the end.”

We were summoned by National Police to the downstairs lab complex, and left immediately. All five of the newcomers, plus Merton and Bogen, awaited us in the lab, where seats had been provided—five seats.

“They even cross their legs the same,” Dylan whispered, and I had to suppress a laugh.

We stopped. The goateed businessman proved the spokesman this time.

“Well, well. Qwin Zhang, I hadn’t intended that we meet a second time, but you made it unavoidable.”

“I’ll make it worth your while,” I promised him.

“You better,” he growled. “I don’t like people who make themselves indispensable. You should understand that.”

I nodded. “You have a choice. We can call this off and all go home.”

He ignored the comment and looked over at Dylan. “A pleasure. I trust all is satisfactory with you now?”

“Extremely,” she responded with that old confidence. I could almost read her mind, and I loved her for it. Wagant Laroo would be a pantywaist in a bork hunt.

“You understand there’ll be some, ah, tests first?”

We both nodded. “We’re ready when you are,” Dylan told him. “The truth is, we no more understand this than you do.” She looked them all over. “Who goes first?”

“None of us. Yet.” He nodded at Bogen, and the security man went out. Two technicians wheeled in a device that was pretty much what we’d described several days before to Merton. It was a hybrid, and obviously had been knocked together, but if Merton thought the thing would work, well, I was willing to trust the expert.

The machine looked essentially like three hair driers on long, thick gooseneck poles leading into a rear electronic console. They brought it in, and with Merlon’s help fitted it against the instrument cluster that was a permanent part of the lab. Cables—lots of them—were taken from the top rear of the console part and plugged into the instrumentation, and switches were thrown. Merton checked the whole thing out, then nodded. “It’s ready.”

I looked at the gadget and couldn’t shake the feeling that I was about to be electrocuted. According to Merton, it was a variation of the basic psych machine itself, although without a lot of the electronics and analytical circuits. In effect, it would allow Dylan and me, if we concentrated, to send impulses from our own minds to a third. What we were going to do could have been done by computer, of course, but then they wouldn’t have needed us. Chairs were brought in and placed under the gadget, and the helmets or whatever were adjusted to hover just over each one.

“Now what?” Laroo demanded.

“We need a robot,” I told him. “First we feed the signal into the robot, then you slide a mind in there any good old Cerberan way.”

“Merton?” he said expectantly.

The doctor walked over to one of those booths and opened it, obviously prepared for this. The robot inside didn’t look like a cadaver this time, but was fully propped and animated. Still, it had a totally vacant look that would be impossible for a human being to duplicate.

Dylan and I both gasped the same time. “Sanda!” she breathed.

No, it wasn’t Sanda, but it was a perfect facsimile of Sanda’s current, and Dylan’s old body.

“I see I haven’t underestimated the old boy,” I muttered. “What a rotten trick.”

Laroo—all the Laroos—looked at us with smug satisfaction. “I thought that if you were going to try any funny business, you’d be less likely with somebody you both know and like,” he told us.

“You’re going to kill her after this works!” Dylan accused. “You know I can’t be a party to that. I won’t be.”

One of the Laroos stopped, thought a moment, and I thought I could see his eyes divert to his side. For a moment none of the others moved. Then, interestingly, I saw the teenage girl very naturally reach up and scratch her nose. Goatee paused a moment, then pretended to consider things while glancing idly at the ceiling. Finally he said, “All right. But for reasons you obviously understand, you’re making a test very difficult—and I will not proceed without one.”

I shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I’m not the one who insisted that the psych inhibitors remain on.”

“It wouldn’t matter. I wouldn’t do that kind of thing anyway,” Dylan snapped.

Laroo sighed, and thought, again. Finally he said, “Leave us for a minute, both of you. Just wait outside.”

“Stuck you, didn’t I?” Dylan stated smugly. I nudged her to keep her from baiting him further. Paranoia, psych profile, or not, Laroo was psychotic enough to call the whole thing off if we pushed him far enough. We left and stood outside.

“Don’t bait him,” I warned her. “There are some things more important to him even than this.”

She just nodded and squeezed my hand. We didn’t have long to wait, and were soon called back in by Dr. Merton.

“All right,” Laroo said, “let’s start one step at a time. First we’ll just try and clear a neutral body, so to speak. Then I want Merton to check it over, see what can be done, what we can learn. Will you go that far with me?”

We looked around and found that the robot Sanda had been replaced in its booth. I looked over at Dylan and shrugged. She sighed. “What choice do we have? All right.”

The robot body produced was impressive. A huge bronze giant of a man with great, bulging muscles. If any one of them looked the part of a superior human being, this male body did.

It too was as blank as you could conceive, and had to be helped to the chair by Merton and two assistants.

“I gather they don’t have much basic programming when they arrive,” I commented.

“Activate, deactivate, walk forward, walk back, stand, and sit—that’s about it,” Dr. Merton told us. “They don’t need much else, although in a pinch I can feed in some basic additional commands. When you’re putting a complex human mind in there, you don’t need much.”

I could see her point. I took the seat next to the thing and Dylan sat next to me as Merton pointed out which helmet was which.

This point was the most nerve-racking to me personally, since I knew Laroo was as close to totally evil as anyone I had ever met and I hardly trusted him a moment.

The helmets came down and I felt clamps and probes fit into place.

“All right,” Dr. Merton said. “You’re all set, just like you told me. Do whatever it is you do.”

I relaxed, took a couple of deep breaths, heard Dylan doing much the same, then concentrated—no, willed—the transfer.

I felt a momentary dizziness, or disorientation, and then it was over. So quick I could hardly believe it.

“That’s it,” I told them. “Dylan?”

“I guess so. If that funny feeling was it.”

The assistants nicked switches retracting the probe helmets and gently lifted them off our heads—all three of us. I got up, as did Dylan, and we stared again at our giant. He looked as blank as ever.

Laroo looked over at Merton. “Anything?”

“Well, we recorded something,” she told him. “Who knows what?”

Realization came suddenly. Countermove, I thought. Laroo’s move, really. Merton had created the Merton Process, by which I was here—and in four other places, too. A process that didn’t transfer but recorded and duplicated information in the brain I If she had the key from both our minds, then Laroo no longer needed us at all. It had been a major mistake on my part. I fervently hoped that this hadn’t been overlooked by Dumonia or Security.

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.”

“I know. Even I didn’t think of that, which shows how paranoid he really is. And damn it, they’re so stinking real! Bogen, Merton—they were real people. Natural, Understandable. They looked, talked, acted just like normal people.” I shivered a bit. “My God! No wonder they haven’t found a defense against these things!”

“So now what do we do?” she asked.

I sighed. “We relax, get some sleep, and find out if we still wake up in the morning.”

We did wake up and were served an excellent breakfast to boot. It was a good sign. After we ate, dressed, and cleaned up a bit we were summoned back down to the lab. Laroo had not changed bodies and was alone now, except for Merton, Bogen, and a figure we both recognized.

“Sanda?” Dylan called.

She saw us and smiled. “Dylan! Qwin! They told me you were here! What’s this all about? I don’t remember anything since I went to sleep last night back in Medlam.”

Dylan and I both suddenly froze, the same idea in our heads, and Sanda, sensing something wrong, stopped too, her face falling and looking a little puzzled. “What’s the matter?”

I turned to Laroo. “You did it anyway.”

She shrugged. “She was here, prepped and available. We decided to see if Dr. Merton’s process would work from what we took off of you.”

“I gather it didn’t, or we wouldn’t still be here,” I noted.

Sanda looked genuinely bewildered. “Qwin? Dylan? What’s all this about? What are you talking about?”

“That’s quite enough, Sanda,” Laroo told her wearily. “Go report to housekeeping on the third level.”

Suddenly Sanda’s manner changed. She forgot about us and her bewilderment, turned to Laroo and bowed. “As you wish, my lord,” she said, then walked out. Our eyes followed her in stunned amazement.

“How does it work, Laroo?” I asked. “I mean, what does the programming we’re canceling say?”

“You don’t know? Basically it states that you love, admire, worship, or whatever whoever gives you the activation code, and that you wish to serve only the wishes of that person or that person’s designated agents. It’s sort of an emotional hook, but it’s unbreakable. They genuinely love me.”

“Surely you don’t activate all of them yourself!”

“Oh, no. But if one of my own robots is the activator, it works out to the same thing, you see. Complicated, though. Takes a computer to remember who loves whom.”

“Well, I gather your process doesn’t work in recording, anyway,” I said, relieved, then turned to Dylan. “Don’t worry about Sanda. She’s still all there. She’s just finally in love with somebody else.”

Laroo sighed. “Well, we’ve done what we could. Merton assures me that the language is still gibberish. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t record and work—but it doesn’t. We tried it out not only on Sanda but on three others, varying various factors. It didn’t work with any of them. I sadly have to admit that I need you,”

Back to my move, I thought, and thank you, Dr. Dumonia or whoever.

“Ready now to take the plunge yourself?” Dylan asked Laroo.

She nodded. “But I’ll need a half-hour or so in prep. However, I want to warn you—both of you. Any funny business, anything wrong with my programming, even accidentally—anything—and you won’t live a moment. My robots will tear you to pieces, slowly.”

“There won’t be any double-cross,” I assured her. “We have some stake in this ourselves, remember. We’re the only two people who can’t become those robots—and as such, we need you for new bodies at the proper time. It’s an even trade.”

“It better be.” It was that little girl’s voice, but that same threatening tone was there.

We waited anxiously for the prep.

To our surprise, the body Laroo had chosen was rather nondescript. Average in almost all respects—civilized world standard, male, nothing exceptional, wouldn’t stand out in a crowd. ”

“Still, it makes sense,” I told Dylan. “The last thing he wants is to attract attention to himself.”

“It’s not too bad,” Dylan said critically. “Looks a little like you, really.”

“Thanks a lot.”

In a short time the girl’s body was wheeled in by Bogen and the two attendants, and off into the back room. We wasted no time at all giving the jolt to the selected body on the helmet machine, and watched that body get the same hand-truck treatment to the back.

I spent the time looking around the lab, asking Merton a few mane and useless questions and taking in what I could. Something bothered me. Laroo had given in too easily, even considering the stress. Particularly after last night. Something just felt wrong. It was a while, though, before I figured out what it was and whispered to Dylan. “Another trick. Don’t fall for it”

She frowned and whispered back so low I could barely hear, “How do you know?”

“Those were cameras up there yesterday, I’m sure. Now they’re laser cannons.”

“You sure they weren’t there before?”

“Sure. Otherwise they’d have used them on golden boy. They can track anything in the lab on those camera mounts.”

“So he switched during the night.”

“Uh-huh. Clever bastard, but hold tight. We got him.” His move. No countermove.

A little over an hour later they wheeled the body back out and went through the wakeup routine again. At least this time we held our ears when the cymbals clanged. The man on the table went through much the same experience as Samash had the day before, and when he jumped to the floor, he looked around wonderingly. “Well, I’ll be damned!”

Merton went up to him. “Activation Code AJ360,” she said to him.

The man paused, smiled, and shook his head. “Nope. There’s a little tingle when you say it, like something inside wants to be let out, but it’s suppressed, all right.” He sighed. “I can see now what Samash must have felt. Like a godl” He turned back to Merton. “You have no idea what it’s like—oh, of course you do. I forget. It’s—unbelievable!” He turned to us.

“Well,” he said, “it works. It really works! You have no idea of the power I feel. It’s almost a strain to slow myself down to your speed just to converse with you. Every cell in my body’s olivet. Alive and sentient! Sentient—and obedient! The power in each is phenomenal! Even I had no idea until now just how powerful and versatile these bodies were. And no pain! Every single body has some pain at all points after they’re born. We live in it. The rush of freedom—to be totally immune to it—is almost awesome!”

“I wonder, though—if these aliens are so smart, why did they allow this loophole to slip by?” I commented. It was a genuine question that really bothered me.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. That bothered me, too—but not now. Nothing,” he added darkly, “will ever bother me again. Nothing and no one.” He looked back at us. “Now, tell me. Give me one reason why I should allow either of you to live one moment longer.”

Dylan looked up at me questioningly, as if to ask, are you sure this isn’t Laroo?

“Trust me,” I whispered beneath my breath, then turned to Laroo once more—the fake Laroo, I was convinced. “Insurance,” I told him aloud, hoping his superior hearing would mistake her glance and my comment for reassurance and nothing more sinister. “Remember Samash. And that robot they caught in Military Systems Command. Hard to kill—yes. Superior? Yes. But immortal? No. Not only that, but I think I know, or can at least guess, the alien’s insurance policy.”

Both Merton and “Laroo” looked startled. “Go on,” he urged.

“They—these robot bodies. They’ll wear out. They have to, no matter how good they are. What’s to prevent a little bit of that programming we dared not touch, the autonomic system’s, say, from suddenly stopping at some predetermined point in time?”

He looked nervously at Merton. “Is this possible?”

She nodded. “But not insurmountable. Remember, I have recorded your and other people’s imprints. As long as you update them periodically, as they do in Confederation Intelligence, you can die over and over again—and still live again.”

That explanation satisfied him, and also me. “Might I point out, though, that if somebody’s not there to clear the next robotic programming, you’ll have to go back into a human body again.”

“Never!” he snapped. “Once you’ve been in one of these you can never go back. Not for an instant! Never!” He realized the implications of what he was saying. “Yes, all right. You’re right. But you will remain here on the island as my permanent guests. For all time, and from body to body. You say you want to keep your children, raise them yourselves. Very well, do so here, in the midst of luxury.”

“Luxury prison, you mean,” Dylan responded.

He shrugged. “As you wish. But it’s velvet-lined and gold-plated. You’ll want for nothing here. It’s the best I can do. You and I both know the Confederacy will quickly know that you played false with them. They’ll want you at all costs, to erase that information which is probably easily done with a simple verbal trigger—so I can afford you no contact except with my own.”

“And if they fry the island?” Dylan asked pointedly.

“They won’t,” he responded confidently. “Not until they’re sure. And we’ll give them corpses to look at and a really convincing story, not to mention obviously dismantling Project Phoenix. Everything back to normal. They’ll believe something went wrong, all right—but it’ll be convincing. Believe me.”

I sighed and shrugged. “What choice have we got?”

“None,” he responded smugly. At that point I noticed he was alone in the center of the room. The laser cannon opened up, and after an incredible time he too was melted. I looked over at the brownish patch left from Samash, still there despite a strong cleanup effort. My move—success. And check.

Dylan gasped and whispered, “You were right!” Then she hesitated. “How will we know the real one?”

“We won’t,” I told her. “Just trust me.”

We went through three more acts, each one as or more convincing than the first. Each time the robot was suddenly melted. I kept wondering if they’d all be so confident if Laroo told them what had happened to their predecessors.

The fourth one, though, another civilized worlds standard like the others and equally nondescript, was different at the end. He finally smiled when we finished the interminable wonderment conversation and sighed. “All right, that’s it. Enough fun and games. I’m convinced.” He turned, gestured, and we followed nervously, avoiding the puddles and eyeing those cannon suspiciously. But, this time, we all walked out of the lab.

Bogen awaited us, and bowed. “Did all go well, my lord?”

“Perfectly. Hard as it is for me to believe, it seems as if our friends here really delivered. Take good care of them, Bogen. Give them anything they want—except communication with the outside world. Understand?”

“As you wish, my lord,” he responded respectfully.

We all began walking down the corridor and I started singing, softly and lightly, a ditty I neither understood nor had known before, but one I knew the function of quite well.

“ ’Twos brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mirnsy were the borogoves, And mome roths outgrabe…”

Laroo stopped and turned, curious. “What’s that?”

“Just a little light song from my childhood,” I told him. “I’ve been under a hell of a lot of tension the past few weeks, remember, and it’s gone now.”

He shook his head in wonder. “Umph. Crazy business.”

“We’ll see you again, won’t we?” Dylan asked him innocently.

“Oh, yes, certainly. I have no intention of leaving just yet”

“Maybe a month from now,” I suggested helpfully. “At least then we could talk about our lives here.”

“Why, yes, certainly. In a motith.” And with that we went up to the quarters level while he and Bogen went elsewhere.

Freed at last of the constant guard, we walked out onto the lawn and sat in the middle of it, basking in the sunlight and warmth, stripping down and lying next to each other. For a while we said nothing. Finally Dylan spoke. “Did we actually just take control of the Lord of Cerberus?” she asked, wonderingly.

“I’m not sure. Well know in a month, certainly,” I replied. “If he lives to get off this island, he’s the real one. If not, we’ll just do it again and again until we get it right But I think he was the right one.”

She giggled. “In a month. We have a whole month. Just us, here, with every wish catered to. It’ll be a relief. And then…”

“It’s all ours, honey. All Cerberus is ours. Good old Dr. Dumonia.”

She looked startled. “Who?”

“Dr. Du—now why did I bring him up?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. We sure won’t be needing a psych any more. Except maybe to get that implant to report out of your head.”

“Yeah, but I suppose that Dr. Merton could do that as well. I hope so.”

She turned to me. “You know why I love you? You did it all yourself! Without any outside help! You’re incredible!”

“Well, the Confederacy had to go along with the plan, you know.”

“Pooh. You knew it all along. Every single one of your crazy, mad, nonsensical schemes worked. In a little more than a year you went from exile to true Lord of the Diamond.”

“And you’re the Lady of the Diamond, remember.”

She lay idly for a moment, then said, “I wonder if we’d shock anybody if we made love out here?”

“Only robots, probably,” I responded, “and we know what they’re worth.”

She laughed. “Shocking. You know, though—remember when they suggested we put ourselves in each other’s minds? Who was that, anyway?”

I shook my’head. “Too long ago. I can’t remember. Not important, anyway. But why do you bring that up?”

She laughed. “It wasn’t necessary. I’m a part of you anyway now. And you, me, I believe. At least I can’t get you out of my head.”

END REPORT. REFER TO EVALUATION. STOP TRANSMISSION STOP STOP.