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—enougb 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?”