“The agent is aware that no transmitter was possible with Cerberus,” the computer reminded him. “It was necessary to land the needed equipment at predetermined points by remote and, at the time of cerebral imprinting, to place an absolute command to report at intervals. Subjectively, however, the process to you will be the same.”
The agent didn’t react, didn’t think, just accepted the information. He was no longer himself, but someone else, someone like him and yet in many ways quite different.
“The agent is commanded to report,” the computer ordered, sending the command deep into his own mind, a mind no longer his own. What would follow would be a sort of total recall from the mind of his counterpart down below, which his own mind would sort, classify, and edit into a coherent narrative, a narrative in the form of a report.
Recorders clicked on.
The man in the chair cleared his throat several times. It still took more than three hours to get him to do more than mumble some odd words or sounds, but computers are nothing if not patient, knowing that the man’s mind was receiving a massive amount of data and struggling to cope with it.
Finally, though, as if in a dream, the man began to speak.
CHAPTER ONE
Rebirth
After being briefed by Commander Krega and a little preparation to put my own affairs in order—this would be a long assignment—I checked into the Confederacy Security Clinic. I’d been here many times before, of course, but not knowingly for this purpose. Mostly, this was where they programmed you with whatever information you’d need for a mission and where, too, you were “reintegrated.” Naturally, the kind of work I did was often extralegal—a term I prefer to illegal, which implies criminal intent. All agents had their own experience of a mission wiped from their minds whenever it involved sensitive matters.
It may seem like a strange life, going about not knowing where you have been or what you’ve done, but it has its compensations. Because any potential enemy, military or political, knows you’ve been wiped, you can live a fairly normal, relaxed life outside of a mission structure. There’s no purpose in coming after you—you have no knowledge of what you’ve done or why or for whom. In exchange for those blanks, an agent of the Confederacy lives a life of luxury and ease, with an almost unlimited supply of money and with all the comforts supplied. They have sensors in you that they constantly monitor and decide when you need a good refresher. I often wondered just how sophisticated those sensors were. The idea of having a whole security staff see all my debauchery and indiscretions used to worry me, but after a white I learned to ignore it The life offered in exchange is just too nice. Besides, what could I do about it, anyway?
But when a mission came up it wasn’t practical to forgo all the past experience you’d had. A wipe without storage simply wouldn’t have been very practical, since a good agent gets better by not repeating his mistakes. So in the Security Clinic they kept everything you ever experienced on tap, and the first thing you did was go and get the rest of you put back so you would be whole for whatever they’d dreamed up this time.
It always amazed me when I got up from that chair with my past fully restored. Even the clear memories of the things I’d done always amazed me—I of all people had done this or that. The only difference this time, I knew, was that the process would be taken one step further. Not only would the complete me get up from that table, but the same memory pattern would be impressed on other minds, other bodies—as many as needed until a take was achieved.
I wondered what they’d be like, those four other versions of myself. Physically different, probably—the kind of offenders they got here weren’t usually from the civilized worlds, where people had basically been standardized in the name of equality. No, these people would come from the frontier, from the traders and miners and freebooters that existed at the edge of expansion. They were certainly necessary in an expanding culture, since a high degree of individuality, self-reliance, originality, and creativity was required in the dangerous situations in which they lived.
The damned probe hurt like hell. Usually there was just some tingling, then a sensation much like sleep, and I woke up a few minutes later in the chair, myself once again. This time the tingling became a painful physical force that seemed to enter my skull, bounce around, then seize control of my head. It was as if a giant fist had grabbed my brain and squeezed, then released, then squeezed again in excruciating pulses. Instead of drifting off to sleep, I passed out.
I woke up and groaned slightly. The throbbing was gone, but the memory was still all too current and all too real. It was several minutes, I think, before I found enough strength to sit up.
The old memories flooded back as usual, and again I amazed myself by recalling my past exploits. I wondered if my surrogate selves would get similar treatment, considering they couldn’t be wiped after this mission. That realization caused me to make a mental note that those surrogates would almost certainly have to be killed if they did receive my entire memory pattern. Otherwise, a lot of secrets would be loose on the Warden Diamond, many in the hands of people who’d know just what sort of use to make of them. No sooner had I had that thought than I had the odd feeling of wrongness. I looked around the small room in which I’d awakened and realized immediately the source of that feeling.
This wasn’t the Security Clinic, wasn’t anyplace I’d ever seen before. A tiny cubicle, about twelve cubic meters total, including the slightly higher than normal ceiling. In it was a small cot on which I’d awakened, a small basin and next to it a standard food port, and in the wall, a pull-down toilet That was it. Nothing else—or was there?
I looked around and spotted the most obvious easily. Yes, I couldn’t make a move without being visually and probably aurally monitored. The door was almost invisible and there was certainly no way to open it from inside. I knew immediately what sort of room I was in.
It was a prison cell.
Far worse than that, I could feel a faint vibration that had no single source. It wasn’t irritating; in fact it was so dim as to be hardly noticeable, but I knew what it was. I was aboard a ship, moving somewhere through space. I stood up, reeling a bit from a slight bout of dizziness that soon passed, and looked down at my body. Looked down—and got what I think is the greatest shock of my life.
A woman’s body. A Confederacy-standard woman at that. At that moment a tremendous shock and revulsion ran through me. First and foremost I was most solidly and assuredly male and liked things that way, but, worse, that body told me the most horrible of facts. I was not the original but a surrogate. I’m one of them! I thought in sheer panic. I sat back down on the cot, telling myself that it just wasn’t possible… I knew who I was, remembered every bit, every detail of my life and work.
The shock gave way to anger and frustration. Not only was this female body foreign to me and my personality, but that very mind and personality wasn’t real but a copy, an imitation of somebody else entirely, somebody still around, alive, possible monitoring my every move, perhaps my every thought. I hated him then, hated him with a pathological force beyond reason. He would sit there comfortable and safe, in his man’s body, watching me work, watching me do it all—and, when the mission was over, he’d go home for debriefing, return to that easy life, while I—
They were going to dump me on a world of the Warden Diamond, trap me like some kind of master criminal, imprison me there, hold me there for the rest of my life—of this body’s life, anyway. And then? When my job was done? I’d said it myself upon awakening—passed my own sentence. The things I knew! I would be monitored at all times, of course. Monitored and killed if I blew any of those secrets. Killed in any event at the completion of the assignment just for insurance’s sake.