“So? What does this all mean?” Dylan asked impatiently.
“Well, half the samples went elsewhere and the other half stayed here, where my lab handled the practical stuff. Wardens were essential, which we have in abundance here. It became a fascinating exercise, really. Using an organism we can’t understand at all to influence another we can’t build or duplicate. But with the aid of computers Outside and my lab here, we finally managed to get a readout. The chemical coding language is quite complex and not at all human, and that’s what took the time, but we finally got it. Fortunately, the basic obedience stuff is duplicated in every cell. In fact all the cells, whether brain or tissue, are pretty much the same and can simply become what they need to be. The programming is rather basic, as it would have to be, since it’s serving as a single base for all the different robot agents being sent back to all sorts of different worlds, jobs, and conditions.”
“Then you can get rid of it?” I pressed.
“Nope. But we can do the same thing I suggested as regards psych implants. The aliens have made it impossible to separate the basics without lousing up the cell and triggering this meltdown process. But the cells are programmable, remember. They have to be. So we can add programming to override these initial steps. Cancel it out completely, leaving an unencumbered mind in a super body.”
“Surely Merton would have thought of that,” I pointed out.
“Undoubtedly she has,” he agreed, “but she hasn’t the computer capacity and resources to get a complete readout of the codes, let alone actually break the language used. That’s what stuck them. You wouldn’t believe how much time had to be devoted to this. Laroo was right: not every string he could pull could commandeer that much computer time for that long without drawing Security like a magnet.”
“So we can give him what he wants,” Dylan sighed. “How does that gain us anything?”
“Well, for starters, we’ll need to give you some absolute protection. That can be accomplished simply by making it a complex psych implant using the Security system. Laroo can’t break it. Nobody here could break it—or if they can, we’ve already lost the war. In other words, you can’t give the information to ’em unless you want to, which is the only time you’ll know it—and you’ll just know what to do, not what you’re doing. And it’ll have to be done one at a time, one robot at a crack.”
“But he’s only allowing me on the island,” Dylan pointed out. “Doesn’t that mean he’ll just make a robot out of me and have it any time he wants it, block or no block?”
“No, and there’s an easy way to handle that. Very easy. We add another block, similar to the dozens Security’s placed in Qwin’s brain over the years, as insurance. There is no human who cannot be tortured, or chemically or mechanically made to spill his or her guts. None. So we use the same methods to make sure that such operations will be fruitless. It’s what stopped Laroo from going the robot route with Qwin here right from the start. I’m sure he has some implants like this himself. It’s really simple, and one they’ll understand and accept right off because they all know the type. Basically, it’s a psych command that erases other information if any sort of coercion is used, and can even be triggered voluntarily if need be. He won’t dare try anything with you. He’ll need you totally—and he can use his own psych staff to verify the existence of the erase commands. It protects you—and it protects us.”
Dylan looked puzzled by that, but I understood him exactly. “He’s telling us that not only can it be triggered voluntarily or involuntarily to erase, but it can be triggered externally, as by a Confederacy agent. Similar to what the good doctor here must have used on Laroo to ensure his own well-being.”
Dumonia smiled and nodded.
“But you’re still going to give him the answer he wants!” Dylan protested.
Dumonia kept smiling.
“Think about it, Dylan,” I urged her. “You’ve seen the way we think long enough. Remember the cells are programmable.”
She considered what he said, and I was beginning to think we were going to have to spell it out. Then suddenly I saw her mouth shape into an oval. “Oooh… Oh, my!”
“My only regret is that Dylan’s going to have to do this all alone,” I grumbled. “I hate missing out on the climax of the big scam. After all, it was my idea.”
“There’s a way, you know,” Dumonia reminded us softly, but I could see that eager gleam in his eyes. “I set things up in case you wanted to do so.”
Dylan looked at him, then me. “I—I’m not sure I want to,” she told us. “I’m a little scared of it.”
“I told you there was a big risk,” the psych admitted. “And I understand the cautions. First, you could split. No big deal there, as long as you wanted to stay together forever, and that’s a long time. You could merge into one new personality. Or you could find out that deep down neither of you really like the other. That’s particularly the case in Qwin’s mind, since he was a very unpleasant person until he came here and found his humanity.”
She nodded. “I know. That scares me the most, I guess. I love him the way he is now, but I don’t think I would like the old Qwin very much at all. He sounds too much like Wagant Laroo.”
I looked at her strangely. Her, too?
“There’s another possibility,” he suggested, sounding slightly disappointed at her reluctance. I think he really wanted to pull off that merger or whatever, strictly for professional curiosity or maybe just for fun. “I could manipulate the psych plants so that it would require both of you to complete the programming operation.”
I looked up at him accusingly. “That’s what they recommended right along, wasn’t it? To make sure that neither of us could be held hostage to the other’s cooperation.”
He coughed apologetically, then shrugged and gave a wan smile. “So would I be a good doctor if I didn’t point out all the interesting alternatives?”
“Then we go together, whether they like it or not,” Dylan said firmly. “That’s good.” She hesitated. “But won’t this operation point an arrow straight back to you? Won’t they know who had to be the one to give us the information?”
“If it works, it’s academic,” he told us. “If it doesn’t, or if anything goes wrong, well, I have contingency plans. Don’t worry about me. I cover myself pretty well.”
“I’ll bet you do,” I said dryly. “Well, let’s get on with it”
As I predicted, Bogen didn’t like the revised plan, not one bit.
“What could I do?” I asked him innocently. “Here we were going down the elevator from Dumonia’s office and suddenly, bang, out go the lights for both of us. We wake up half an hour later halfway across town, with the briefing identically planted in our minds and the blocks in place. You know your men lost us.”
He didn’t much like that, either, but could only glower.