Well, I told myself, the system worked both ways. I knew how he thought, how they thought. This monitoring worked both ways. I was going to be a tough son of a bitch to kill. No, I thought, suddenly morose once more, not son. Did I in fact want to live the rest of my life in this body? I really didn’t know. Not now, certainly—and not ever, deep down. And yet the tiniest of suspicions rested in the back of my mind that my attitude might be just what they had in mind. The perfect double trap for me. If that was the case, they were mistaken. If I began believing for one minute that they did this to me just so I wouldn’t want to outlive my mission, I’d live a thousand years just to spite them. There was probably no such plot, though, I knew. Either they had an ulterior motive having to do with the mission that caused this, or they just didn’t consider it one way or the other. I wished I knew.
But what about now, in any event? For now I’d bide my time, hold my peace, and adjust as best I could. Odd, in a way, how very ordinary and normal I felt. Arms, legs, head, all in the same places. A lot lighter in weight, yes, but that was relative; and being a little weaker in the arms wasn’t anything you really noticed, particularly not in a barren prison cell. Only occasionally did I feel protrusions where none had been before, or the lack of some thing that had always been there. I knew here in an isolated cell I wouldn’t be aware of the differences. Only later, down there, on whatever hellhole they dumped me, around lots of other people—then things would get rough.
I was very dry after waking and located a small water tap and cup in the wall just above the basin. I drank a good deal. Naturally, it went right through me, whereupon I discovered that having to piss was the same feeling only I now had to do it sitting down. I pulled down the toilet and sat and relieved myself—and got yet another shock…
The thing worked by skin contact—don’t ask me how. I’m not one of the tech brains. It was not as good as a neural program, but it allowed them to talk to me in total privacy, even send me pictures only I could see and hear.
“I hope by now you are over the initial shock of who and what you are,” Krega’s voice came to me, so loud and clear it seemed impossible that none of the monitors could hear. “As you recall, the Merton Process of personality transfer is rather wasteful of bodies—roughly thirty die for one take, as it were—and of the first four that did take, one was this woman. We decided to use her for several reasons. She will put any Warden authorities off their guard if there’s been any sort of leak about you, and Cerberus, the planet to which you are being sent, has unique properties that make your sex and age totally irrelevant. To calm you down, I suspect, I should tell you right off that Cerberans enjoy a natural form of the Merton Process—in fact we got the process partially by studies on Cerberus. In other words, you can expect to change bodies once or often down there, as well as sex, age, and all the rest.”
I gave a half-startled cry at this thought and stood up, causing the toilet to flap back into the wall and flush. It worried me for a moment that I might have wiped the briefing; but because my old professional self was re-emerging, I knew that I would have to wait before finding out just to ward off any suspicion by my unseen jailers.
I walked back to the cot and sat down once again, but my mood had abruptly changed. Body switchers. That changed everythingl I was suddenly alive again, alive and excited.
I’d had some nasty shocks, but the worst one was merely temporary. The other—the discovery that I wasn’t who I thought I was but some artificial creation—was still there. The old life, the life I remembered even though I really hadn’t personally experienced it, was gone forever. No more civilized worlds, no more casinos and beautiful women and all the money I could spend. And yet, as I sat there, I adjusted. That was why they’d picked me from the start. My ability to adjust and adapt to almost anything.
Memory, thought, personality—those were the individual, not the body that intelligence wore. / was still mel This was no different than a biological disguise of a particularly sophisticated sort As to whom was really me—it seemed to me that this personality, these memories, were no more that other fellow’s than-my own. Until I got up from that chair back at the Security Clinic I’d really been somebody else anyway. A lot of me, my memories and training, had been missing. That old between-missions me was the artificial one, the created me. He, that nonentity playboy that presently did not exist, was the artificial personality. The real me was bottled up in storage in their psychosurgical computers and allowed to come out only when they needed it—and for good reason. Unlocked, I was as much a danger to the power structure as I was to whoever they set me against.
And I was good. The best, Krega had called me. That’s why I was here, now, in this body, in this cell, on this ship. And I wouldn’t be wiped this time—and now I was sure I would not permit them to kill me, either. Suddenly I no longer felt hatred toward that other me out there someplace. In fact I found I could no longer feel much of anything for him at all. When this was all over he’d be wiped once more—perhaps killed himself if my brother agents on the Diamond and I found out too much. At best he’d return to being that stagnant milquetoast. Not me. I’d still be here, still live on, the real one. A whole person. I would be more complete than he would.
I was under no illusions, though. Kill me they would, if they could, if I didn’t do their bidding. They’d do it automatically, by robot satellite and without qualms. But my vulnerability would only last a short time—even less on Cerberus than elsewhere, since they would have to find out who I was as well and without the aid of biotracers or any other physiological gadget. I wondered how they were going to get me to report. I remembered Krega saying something about a thing implanted in the brain, but the moment I switched bodies that was useless. Probably there was some deep psychocommand to report, perhaps with the aid of agents or paid accomplices on Cerberus. I would get to that matter when I could. Until then, I’d do their dirty work for them. I had no choice, as they undoubtedly knew. During that vulnerable stage—who knew how long?—I was their property. After—well, we’d see.
The thrill of the challenge took over, as it always did. The puzzle to be solved, the objectives to be accomplished. I liked to win, and it was even easier when you felt nothing about the cause, just the challenge of the problem and the opponent and the physical and intellectual effort needed to meet that challenge. Find out about the alien menace. The outcome no longer concerned me directly, since I would be trapped on a Warden world from now on. If the aliens won the coming confrontation, the Wardens would survive as allies. If they lost—well, it would only maintain the status quo. This reduced the alien question to an abstract problem for me and made my situation perfect.
The other assignment created a similar situation. Seek out the Lord of Cerberus and kill him if I could. In a sense doing so would be more difficult, since I’d be operating on unfamiliar ground and would therefore require time and possibly allies; Another challenge. If I get him, I’d only increase my power and position on Cerberus. If he got me instead, then I wouldn’t give a damn because I’d be dead. But the thought of losing is abhorrent to me. That set the contest in the best terms, from my point of view. Track-down assassination was the ultimate game, since you won or you died and never had to live with the thought that you’d lost.