“How could you do that? From reading psych profiles taken in only one night?”
He grinned like a man about to lower the noose. “No, because I know from your cover application on her what she told you was done to her. I knew in a minute it couldn’t have been like that—that sort of complete turnaround takes weeks, maybe months, if it can be done at all. So I just got the test results on her, and they confirmed my suspicions.”
“Which are?”
“Considering the time, it was a masterful job, as I said, but it was hardly that extensive. Dylan believes they did all of it—she is convinced of that. But what the psychs did was far slighter and more subtle. They simply gave her a nudge here, a tap there, a very subtle working of her subconscious desires, ones she herself was not fully willing to admit to herself. She did the rest to convince herself and you that those things she wanted to do and be were involuntarily imposed from above. Look, Zhang, if we could do such a complete job on somebody like her overnight, the syndicates would put us all through the ringer and you know it.”
“Are you telling me that there’s no psych command that says she has to obey my every wish? No psych plant against going out on the boats?”
“I’m saying there is not. The first, the obedience thing, comes partly from her early training and psyche, partly from inner needs, and partly out of her very real total dependence on you financially. She is convinced there is such a command, but it comes from her own subconscious—and is no less real because it does. Furthermore, there is absolutely nothing preventing her from going near the boats except the laws governing the motherhood, but it’s a damn good way of not having to face up to the fact that she doesn’t want to go any more. You see, she’s taken the things she doesn’t want to face and transferred them to a third party—the psych. That way she can accept it, and that way you have to accept her.”
I had half risen from the chair, but now I sat back down again. “What you’re saying is that she’s living in a fantasy world completely now. One of her own making.”
“Somewhat,” he agreed. “Now, we can schedule a series of sessions that will allow her to accept the truth, but it may take time. With your help we can bring her face to face with herself again, so she’ll be a whole person. Nonetheless, she’ll be more the present Dylan than the past one—you understand that?”
I nodded, feeling slightly dazed. “All right. We’ll schedule it. But I’m—stunned. What psych commands did they put in?”
“Well, the prohibition against taking any human life is real and pretty standard for sentencing,” he told me. “It protects her and you. She’s also got a command that prohibits her from ever leaving the motherhood of her own accord again, although that’s mostly reinforcing—under judgment she can’t switch bodies anyway. The rest, as I said, is all subtle. The brain triggers hormones and the like. Reinforcing her natural drives, so to speak, as defined by that body. This has the nice by-product of reinforcing her feelings for you, which is damned clever, since that in turn feeds her psychoses and gives them the force of commands, too.”
“From what you’re saying, maybe we shouldn’t snap her out of it,” I noted. “You claim she’s happy.”
“No. She’ll never be happy until she realizes that this is what she wants and until she is convinced that what she wants is also all right with you. Not doing something about these convictions, particularly the second, could in the long run turn her into the very robot she thinks she is. Which is fine for the state and the state’s psychs, but not for her or for you.”
“Okay, you convinced me. But what about my original purpose for coming?”
“Sanda Tyne. An interesting case, quite unlike Dylan, you know. She’s one of those never really cut out for the motherhood, but she hasn’t nearly the intelligence potential nor the vision to really be somebody in the outside world, although she has great dreams. She enjoys thrills and adventure, but only as a child might, with no real understanding of the dangers to herself or to others. As with Dylan and with all the best psych work, they simply took what was there and used it, although in her case they more or less froze it. Hard as it is to believe, Sanda is more psyched than Dylan.”
“What!”
He nodded. “She feels no real guilt about what happened to Dylan. Not really. In fact she’s somewhat disappointed that she didn’t replace Dylan in your life; she still hopes to one day. That’s the limit of her ambition and vision—and now you understand why she doesn’t call on you both more often.”
“Jealousy?”
“Envy, mostly. Her whole life has been nothing but envy. The grass is always greener to her. Physically and intellectually she might have lived for twenty years, but emotionally she’s somewhere around eight or nine. The psychs merely damped down whatever ambition was left and much of that active imagination. They reinforced the envy, but also lay down prohibitions about doing anyhing about it. The way they have her damped and oriented, she’ll be perfectly happy chipping paint and collecting garbage, secure in the knowledge that someday her prince—you—will come to her.”
“What about that business concerning harm to self or others? You said it was standard?”
“True, but there’s only so much you can do in a few hours, and they did a lot. Much the same thing was accomplished by the other conditioning, as I mentioned. She isn’t going to hurt Dylan because that might alienate you. Besides, she’s sure you’ll dump Dylan sooner or later and come down and see the errors of your ways. She isn’t going to hurt you because she’s patient, as long as she’s near you. And secure in the knowledge that she’ll win in the end, she’s hardly going to do anything to herself. That being the case, no prohibition was necessary. In fact I can foresee only one way in which she could harm anybody for the rest of her judgment, and only one, so you’re safe.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“If you asked her to. She’ll do anything to demonstrate to you the mistake she thinks you made.”
I grinned, feeling a bit more comfortable. “No chance of that, of course.”
“Of course,” Dumonia agreed.
The torpedoes had been rerouted to Emyasail, where they were supposed to be all along, and my devices were ready. Confident now of Sanda’s complete cooperation, we went down one evening to scout out the place and found it similar in layout to Hroyasail. It would be, I told myself, considering it was built by the same parent corporation at the same time for the same purposes.
Of course there were guards all over the place, and all sorts of electronic security as well, but it was oriented toward the warehouses.
Sanda, like all Cerberans, knew how to swim. When you lived in giant trees with an eternal ocean always underneath, that was one thing you absolutely learned from the start.
We were using just basic wet suits and snorkels. I wanted no giveaways should there be underwater devices for picking up sounds like mechanical rebreathers or an underwater cycle. As a check, we donned the suits and, starting from more than two hundred meters beyond the docks, actually swam up to and under the boats, checking out the lay of the land. We found some small sensors along the docks themselves, but not only was there nothing to keep us from the bottom of the boats but the area was floodlit so they were nicely silhouetted.
But then why should Laroo suspect sabotage? What would be gained? It was sure to be discovered. But even if it wasn’t, it would just slow him down slightly—he could get boats from other places, if need be. The only irreplaceable stuff, the organic robots, would come in from space to his new landing pad. Anybody else would be more interested in the warehouses, which were heavily guarded, than in the boats—since, any good security officer would reason, why would anybody attack them? Not only expendable, but you’d lose the cargo to the depths. Nothing to gain.