“Ready now to take the plunge yourself?” Dylan asked Laroo.
She nodded. “But I’ll need a half-hour or so in prep. However, I want to warn you—both of you. Any funny business, anything wrong with my programming, even accidentally—anything—and you won’t live a moment. My robots will tear you to pieces, slowly.”
“There won’t be any double-cross,” I assured her. “We have some stake in this ourselves, remember. We’re the only two people who can’t become those robots—and as such, we need you for new bodies at the proper time. It’s an even trade.”
“It better be.” It was that little girl’s voice, but that same threatening tone was there.
We waited anxiously for the prep.
To our surprise, the body Laroo had chosen was rather nondescript. Average in almost all respects—civilized world standard, male, nothing exceptional, wouldn’t stand out in a crowd. ”
“Still, it makes sense,” I told Dylan. “The last thing he wants is to attract attention to himself.”
“It’s not too bad,” Dylan said critically. “Looks a little like you, really.”
“Thanks a lot.”
In a short time the girl’s body was wheeled in by Bogen and the two attendants, and off into the back room. We wasted no time at all giving the jolt to the selected body on the helmet machine, and watched that body get the same hand-truck treatment to the back.
I spent the time looking around the lab, asking Merton a few mane and useless questions and taking in what I could. Something bothered me. Laroo had given in too easily, even considering the stress. Particularly after last night. Something just felt wrong. It was a while, though, before I figured out what it was and whispered to Dylan. “Another trick. Don’t fall for it”
She frowned and whispered back so low I could barely hear, “How do you know?”
“Those were cameras up there yesterday, I’m sure. Now they’re laser cannons.”
“You sure they weren’t there before?”
“Sure. Otherwise they’d have used them on golden boy. They can track anything in the lab on those camera mounts.”
“So he switched during the night.”
“Uh-huh. Clever bastard, but hold tight. We got him.” His move. No countermove.
A little over an hour later they wheeled the body back out and went through the wakeup routine again. At least this time we held our ears when the cymbals clanged. The man on the table went through much the same experience as Samash had the day before, and when he jumped to the floor, he looked around wonderingly. “Well, I’ll be damned!”
Merton went up to him. “Activation Code AJ360,” she said to him.
The man paused, smiled, and shook his head. “Nope. There’s a little tingle when you say it, like something inside wants to be let out, but it’s suppressed, all right.” He sighed. “I can see now what Samash must have felt. Like a godl” He turned back to Merton. “You have no idea what it’s like—oh, of course you do. I forget. It’s—unbelievable!” He turned to us.
“Well,” he said, “it works. It really works! You have no idea of the power I feel. It’s almost a strain to slow myself down to your speed just to converse with you. Every cell in my body’s olivet. Alive and sentient! Sentient—and obedient! The power in each is phenomenal! Even I had no idea until now just how powerful and versatile these bodies were. And no pain! Every single body has some pain at all points after they’re born. We live in it. The rush of freedom—to be totally immune to it—is almost awesome!”
“I wonder, though—if these aliens are so smart, why did they allow this loophole to slip by?” I commented. It was a genuine question that really bothered me.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. That bothered me, too—but not now. Nothing,” he added darkly, “will ever bother me again. Nothing and no one.” He looked back at us. “Now, tell me. Give me one reason why I should allow either of you to live one moment longer.”
Dylan looked up at me questioningly, as if to ask, are you sure this isn’t Laroo?
“Trust me,” I whispered beneath my breath, then turned to Laroo once more—the fake Laroo, I was convinced. “Insurance,” I told him aloud, hoping his superior hearing would mistake her glance and my comment for reassurance and nothing more sinister. “Remember Samash. And that robot they caught in Military Systems Command. Hard to kill—yes. Superior? Yes. But immortal? No. Not only that, but I think I know, or can at least guess, the alien’s insurance policy.”
Both Merton and “Laroo” looked startled. “Go on,” he urged.
“They—these robot bodies. They’ll wear out. They have to, no matter how good they are. What’s to prevent a little bit of that programming we dared not touch, the autonomic system’s, say, from suddenly stopping at some predetermined point in time?”
He looked nervously at Merton. “Is this possible?”
She nodded. “But not insurmountable. Remember, I have recorded your and other people’s imprints. As long as you update them periodically, as they do in Confederation Intelligence, you can die over and over again—and still live again.”
That explanation satisfied him, and also me. “Might I point out, though, that if somebody’s not there to clear the next robotic programming, you’ll have to go back into a human body again.”
“Never!” he snapped. “Once you’ve been in one of these you can never go back. Not for an instant! Never!” He realized the implications of what he was saying. “Yes, all right. You’re right. But you will remain here on the island as my permanent guests. For all time, and from body to body. You say you want to keep your children, raise them yourselves. Very well, do so here, in the midst of luxury.”
“Luxury prison, you mean,” Dylan responded.
He shrugged. “As you wish. But it’s velvet-lined and gold-plated. You’ll want for nothing here. It’s the best I can do. You and I both know the Confederacy will quickly know that you played false with them. They’ll want you at all costs, to erase that information which is probably easily done with a simple verbal trigger—so I can afford you no contact except with my own.”
“And if they fry the island?” Dylan asked pointedly.
“They won’t,” he responded confidently. “Not until they’re sure. And we’ll give them corpses to look at and a really convincing story, not to mention obviously dismantling Project Phoenix. Everything back to normal. They’ll believe something went wrong, all right—but it’ll be convincing. Believe me.”
I sighed and shrugged. “What choice have we got?”
“None,” he responded smugly. At that point I noticed he was alone in the center of the room. The laser cannon opened up, and after an incredible time he too was melted. I looked over at the brownish patch left from Samash, still there despite a strong cleanup effort. My move—success. And check.
Dylan gasped and whispered, “You were right!” Then she hesitated. “How will we know the real one?”
“We won’t,” I told her. “Just trust me.”
We went through three more acts, each one as or more convincing than the first. Each time the robot was suddenly melted. I kept wondering if they’d all be so confident if Laroo told them what had happened to their predecessors.
The fourth one, though, another civilized worlds standard like the others and equally nondescript, was different at the end. He finally smiled when we finished the interminable wonderment conversation and sighed. “All right, that’s it. Enough fun and games. I’m convinced.” He turned, gestured, and we followed nervously, avoiding the puddles and eyeing those cannon suspiciously. But, this time, we all walked out of the lab.