What a cheery afternoon I’m having, I thought sourly. Still, I truly understood and sympathized with Sanda and the others like her. There were better ways, I felt sure. Not less cruel, perhaps, to some of the children, for there would be a revolution here if the new’ bodies for old potential was destroyed, but at least for the people like Sanda. A technological world should allow mothers to be anything they wanted as well, and it should be able to meet its need not only to grow but also to replace. There was a simple system that would at least put the responsibility where it belonged.
Everyone could be forced to bear his own replacement. Then he alone would have the option of killing his offspring or himself in the normal way. And, with body switching, assuming sterility was ended, everyone could bear his own replacement. That it was the only fair way. It wouldn’t end cruelty to the kids who got stuck as replacements, but far fewer would take that option—and nobody could sweep the responsibility under a mental rug.
This body-switching business sounded great at the beginning, but I was beginning now to see it for what it was—a disease. A disease that was population-wide and required a totalitarian system to maintain.
This realization made my assignment easier—and more urgent. I no longer had any thought whatsoever about not doing away with Wagant Laroo. And, at least for the period of time needed to create a real social revolution on Cerberus, I intended to be Lord myself.
CHAPTER FIVE
A Glimmer of a Plan
Over the next few weeks I continued to meet with Sanda, whom I not only felt sorry for but genuinely liked. She seemed to enjoy the company of someone from a place she would never see and a background she could hardly imagine—one who treated her as a person, not a pariah. I was, however, becoming restless and a little impatient. By this point I felt I had enough contacts and enough elements put together to get into action. But I lacked the proper starting point, the opening I needed to have any chance of success.
My long-range objective was clear: locate and kill Wagant Laroo, then somehow assume political control of the syndicalist machinery that would allow me to retailor this world for the better. The fact that my plan dovetailed with the wishes of the Confederacy was all to the good, since I didn’t want any problems from that quarter and I knew that somehow they were keeping tabs on me, probably with the aid of blackmailable agents down here—exiles with family or something else to lose back home.
My experience at Tooker convinced me that computer and robotic science on Cerberus was too far behind the Confederacy to be directly linked to the alien robots, but I still had suspicions. At least a few really good minds in the organic computer field had wound up here. Though their names occasionally cropped up in shoptalk at parties and the like, they were nowhere in evidence. Of course Tooker wasn’t the only or even the largest computer firm on Cerberus, but it was definitely a middleweight in the economic mainstream, unlikely to be left out of any major deals. Part of the trouble was I was still too low down in the hierarchical ranks to even hear the tumors of anything so secret.
Therefore, several steps had to be taken before I could even consider Laroo, one being I first had to make friends in high places who could be of help with such information as well as with favors. I also needed considerably more money than I had or could easily make—and some way to conceal it if I could figure out a way. Not that I couldn’t steal money from banks-—that was relatively easy with this computer system. The trouble was, money had to be put somewhere. In an all-electronic currency system it would show a conspicuous bulge. To disguise a stash properly would take a major operation with major resources. In other words, it would take a fortune to steal and hide a fortune.
Finally, after money and influence, I’d need somebody on the inside of Laroo’s top operation. No mean trick. But that was the last of my problems and was contingent on the other two.
I traveled to Akeba one weekend mostly thinking these dark thoughts and hoping something would break my way. I had to go down there now to see Sanda, who was starting to show and so was generally restricted to her area, more by social custom than by any firm law.
Akeba House was a huge complex located on its own network. It resembled the hotel I’d stayed in my first night in town. I could see a swimming pool, various game courts, and other resortlike additions, and was told there were more such inside. But it was restricted territory, so I could get only to the gate.
Sanda had left a message for me at the gatehouse that she was down on the docks. I took the public elevator down. Just outside the compound was a small complex of commerical trawlers and bork-hunting boats, mostly the commercial type that protected the watermen rather than the sports charter type.
Sanda, out on a dock next to a formidable-looking hunter-killer bqat, spotted me, called, and waved. I ambled over, wondering what she was doing down here.
“Qwin! Come on! I want you to meet Dylan Kohl!” she told me, and together we boarded the boat. It was sleek and functional with twenty-five centimeters or more of armor plate, a retractable hydrofoil, and a nasty-looking cannon. The vessel looked more like a warship than a commercial boat. I’d never been on one before, but found it fascinating.
Dylan Kohl turned out to be a tall, tanned, muscular-looking young woman wearing a sunshade, dark glasses, some very brief shorts and tennis shoes. Smoking a huge, fat Charon-import cigar, she was working on some sort of electronics console near the forward turret. At our approach, she dropped a small tool and turned to meet us.
“So you’re Qwin,” she said, her voice low and hard, putting out a hand. “IVe heard a lot about you.”
I shook the hand. A hell of a grip, I noted. “And you’re Dylan Kohl, about whom I’ve never heard a word up to this moment,” I responded.
She laughed. “Well, until you came along I was the only conversation Sanda had on a more than business basis outside the House.”
“Dylan’s a rare hope,” Sanda added. “She’s the only person I know who ever got out of the motherhood.”
That raised my eyebrows. “Oh? And how’d you manage that? I’ve been hearing how impossible it was.”
“Is,” Dylan told me. “I cheated. I did it crooked, I admit, but I never regretted doing so. I drugged my way out”
“Drugged? Even caffeine and other stimulants usually get pushed out in an hour or less.”
She nodded. “Some drugs work. Stuff distilled from Warden plants, particularly ones from Lilith. Strictly controlled, government use only—but I managed to get a little of a hypnotic. Let’s not go into how. Swapped with a Class II dockworker.”
We walked back to the aft section behind the pilot house, which had been set up as a sun deck while in port. I settled into a chair and so did Sanda. Dylan went below and returned with some refreshing-looking drinks laced with fruit. She then stretched out on a collapsible chaise tongue. I tried the drink—a little too sweet for my taste, but not at all bad.
Dylan’s hard, determined manner contrasted sharply with Sanda’s. No matter what body she’d originally had, it was hard to imagine her as a professional mother.