Dylan frowned, puzzled. “You mean they’re around here?”
I shook my head. “No, what happens next has to be something like this. The target is snatched-—kidnapped. Probably on vacation. At least at a time when he or she won’t be missed for up to a couple of weeks. The victim is brought to the station and infected with the Cerberan version of the Warden organism and allowed to season there. Then—Dylan, you remamber that drug you stole to get out of the motherhood?”
She nodded. “I—I got it off a shuttle pilot.”
“Great! It’s coming together nicely. So, after seasoning, their target is given some of this drug and introduced to the similarly infected robot facsimile. The target’s mind and personality goes into the robot’s, but the robot is already preprogrammed as an agent.”
“As they programmed me,” Dylan said emotionlessly.
I nodded. “Only a far more sophisticated method. A psych machine wouldn’t do the job, since they need the complete person—and only that person’s attitude is changed. No, it’s in the original programming of the robot when it’s made by the aliens, of that I’m sure.”
“But how can this robot return and replace the original?” she asked. “Wouldn’t the Warden organism destroy it when it left?”
“No, not necessarily. Remember, there are several items, several products that even now can be sterilized. Apparently these robots can too. Basically, all they do is get out of the system. The Wardens die, but so adaptable are the quasi-cellular components of the robot that they can make immediate repairs. The target returns to work from ‘vacation,’ the absolutely perfect agent-spy. It’s beautiful.”
“It sounds too much like what happened to me,” she noted.
“I’m sorry,” I said gently. “I was. admiring a finely Grafted gem. I don’t want to make light of the human tragedy involved. Still, considering the size and complexity of the Confederacy, it’d be almost impossible to block them all out, and the major damage has probably already been done.”
“And Laroo’s Project Phoenix?”
I considered it a moment. “There’s only one possibility I can come up with, and it’s a terrifying one in some respects. The aliens have no reason to use the island, and less reason to use people who know less about their robots than they do. To put any of their operation directly on a Warden world would eventually tip off the Confederacy anyway, and they know the Wardens are ‘hot’ for them right now. No, for the answer you have to think as Wagant Laroo thinks, from the perspective of the Warden Diamond, and the answer becomes obvious.”
“Not to me it doesn’t,” she said.
“All right—all along we’ve wondered just what the aliens could offer the Four Lords other than revenge. Well, here’s the payoff. When they win, the Four Lords, and those others whom they choose—maybe even the whole population of all four worlds—will be given new bodies. Perfect bodies, those of organic robots. You see what the Four Lords were offered? A way out. Escape. The freedom to leave. If these agent robots can do it, anybody can. But there’s a hitch, one that necessarily paranoid Lords like Laroo would immediately think of.”
“I can follow this part. What’s to stop these aliens from preprogramming the payoff robots as well, so they have a population of superhuman slaves?”
“Very good. High marks. So here you’re given a way of escape and you dare not use it. What would you do?”
She thought a moment. “Study theirs and build my own.”
“All right. But it’s unlikely that you could do it without such a massive plant that the Confederacy watchers wouldn’t take notice. Besides, it might well involve construction materials or support materials not found anywhere in the Warden Diamond, maybe unknown to anybody on our side at this point. What if you couldn’t build one?”
“Well, I guess you’d order a few you didn’t need as agents from the aliens, who have to trust your judgment in these matters, and use them.”
“Right again! But these will come preprogrammed by a method unknown to our science. To make them work you have to find out how they are programmed and eliminate the programming. No mean trick, since it’s probably integrated with instructions on how the robots function and those you have to keep. The best you can do is hope. Gather everything you can, and everybody who might know something about it, lock ’em up on the island with the robots, lab, computer links, and whatever, and try and find an answer. And that’s what Project Phoenix is all about.”
“Laroo’s not only getting back at the Confederacy,” Dylan said in an almost awed tone, “but double-crossing the aliens, too!”
I nodded. “I have to admire the old boy for that, anyway. And it’s probably not just Laroo but all the Four Lords. And I think I know, at least, how the robots are getting in and out, too. It has to be in the shuttle system. But aside from the Diamond they go only one other place—the moons of Momrath. Out there someplace, possibly inside those moons’ orbits, alien and Warden human meet.”
I sat back, feeling satisfied. In one moment I’d solved at least half the Warden puzzle. I didn’t know anything about the aliens, true, and I had no idea as to the nature and scope of their plot, but I now understood, I felt certain, much of the Warden connection.
“And what good does it do you to know these things?” Dylan asked. “You can’t do anything about them.”
Good old practical Dylan! Her comment was on the mark. What could I do?
Or more accurately, what did I want to do?
Kill Laroo and topple the system, yes—but even if I figured out how, did I really want Project Phoenix to fail?
At the moment I knew only one thing. The biggest deal in Warden history was happening out there on Laroo’s Island—and I wanted in on it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The easy way into an impregnable fort
A few days later I had Karel take me out in her boat and go through all the routine motions, but this time we went almost as far south as we dared go. I remembered Dylan’s comment about chasing a bork to within sight of Laroo’s Island, and I had questioned her on the incident. I felt certain we could get as far chasing an imaginary one as she had chasing a real one.
The “island” was really pretty far out in the ocean, far from any sight of land and exactly the kind of dictator would love as a refuge. It was a small stand of major trees, giving an area of perhaps a hundred or so square kilometers. Not a really big place. At some point this grove had obviously been connected to the main body, but something had happened, probably ages ago, leaving only isolated islands of trees out here now. There were several dozen in the area, none really close enough to be within sight of the others; still, they pointed like a wavering arrow toward our familiar “mainland” bunch.
We skirted the island just outside the main computer defense perimeter, an area clearly visible on electronic scans of the place. It was a mass of orange, purple, and gold foliage atop the thick, blackish trunks, and even from our vantage point of almost fifteen kilometers out, my spotting scopes revealed an extraordinary building in the center of the mass. Gleaming silvery in the sun, sort of like a fantasy castle or some kind of modernistic sculpture, it was both anachronistic and futuristic. The exiled concubines and even Dylan herself had given rough descriptions of it, but these paled before the actual sight.
Still, thanks to Dylan and contacts throughout the Motherhood, at other Houses where Laroo’s women had been sent, I knew it pretty well. Knew, at least, the basic room layouts and the locations of the elevators, the key power plant, the basic defense systems, and things like that. From it all, I concluded that it was as close to an impregnable fortress as was possible to build on Cerberus.