Cerberus: A Wolf in the Fold

by Jack L. Chalker

  We filed slowly out into a long and modern passenger ramp, which was totally covered but not heated. It was chilly, and that sped us along. None of us could really think of the chill, though; all had been pushed out by a single, overriding fact.

  The moment that chill had hit us, the moment that air reached our skin and nostrils and entered our bodies, we were systematically being invaded by a submicroscopic organism that was our new, and final, jailer. We were here, and free, but we were, from this moment on, also stuck..

  CHAPTER THREE

  Orientation and Placement

  We entered a small lounge, and were greeted by two men and a woman, all dressed like soldiers in tight-fitting khaki uniforms and boots, although we quickly learned they were not military. We were given robes and sandals as a temporary measure; then our names were checked against a clipboard list and we were quickly ushered out of the terminal to a waiting air-bus. Robe or not, it was damned cold and the bus’s heating system, though good, was hardly comfortable.

  We lifted quickly and swung out away from the terminal, and with this maneuver we had our first look at our new world. It was a strange vista—the ocean gleaming in the sunlight to our right and the “shoreline” to our left, but shore it definitely was not Rather, it was a dense-looking forest of reddish-brown and orange trees topped with huge, broad leaves of varying shapes and sizes. At many points the trees had been partially or completely cut into. Clearly, people lived inside the trunks themselves—you could see sunlight reflected off windows. Here was a surrealist’s vision, this great forest with trunks half resembling ancient, gnarled trees of tremendous size and half resembling a complex of modern office buildings. Often we could see where some of the great trunks branched, one had been cut off horizontally and then refinished or surfaced with some glossy material, providing landing platforms and entryways.

  The woman in charge saw us gaping and smiled. Picking up a small PA mike, she became an impromptu tour guide. “Welcome to Cerberus. My name is Kerar, and my two associates are Monash and Silka. You are in the Borough of MaDell. We use boroughs here because the nature of the living space makes anything as dense as a big city nearly impossible. Fortunately, with efficient transit we are able to link up areas sufficient to make cities in economic terms, and that’s what we call boroughs. As you can see, there is no land whatsoever on Cerberus. Biologists tell us that people were once tree-dwelling creatures. Here, of necessity, we have returned to our origins.”

  I kept looking out the window at the eerie tree-land. Somehow the whole place looked like a piece of furniture I once owned, with a support pole and several flat, clover-like surfaces surrounding the stem as small shelves. Of course, this was much larger and rougher-looking, and not all the “shelves” were flat or barren, but it still had that look about it.

  “You are seeing many different types of trees,” Kerar continued. “There are over five thousand varieties of big trees on Cerberus, with about eighty different types in MaDell alone. As you can see, many types can be used extensively as dwellings, since much of the circulatory system goes around the outside of the trunk, allowing the trees to be hollowed out without killing them. A few are naturally hollow, although the outer bark in most parts is up to eight meters thick. They can support an enormous amount of weight because they get much thicker below the water’s surface, and, over the millions of years they evolved, they also support each other. Master botanists have a special place here because they are responsible for telling us how many branches can be cut off for building and landing zones, and which ones, and also which architect’s ideas for tree dwellings are practical and which are not. Mistakes can be costly. The death of one key tree might well undermine the support for a dozen, even hundreds more, in a mushroom effect that might kill our whole community.”

  I could see the point she was making—don’t mess around with the trees. I wondered how many of the earliest pioneers had, and what sort of damage they’d wrought.

  I looked out toward the ocean and caught sight of many boats, some quite large, others obviously pleasure craft—even some sailboats. Looking back into that fantastic jungle, I caught sight of a huge, imposing structure up ahead, -a gleaming, modern building many stories tall sitting atop one of the cut-off sections, which, I was to learn, were called mesas on Cerberus.

  “Up ahead is the government center for the borough,” our guide informed us. “That is where we are heading.”

  We were ushered into the place and guided past curious onlookers to a tenth-floor room. There waiting for us was a hot buffet lunch. I frankly didn’t recognize much of what was there, but after all that time on prison food it tasted just great. After we had eaten, while we were all just sitting around enjoying that stuffed feeling, an efficient little man came in and took our measurements. Within a hour he was back with some bundles, which turned out to be underwear, a pullover thick shirt, work pants, heavy socks, and low boots. Also included were belts and a full range of cosmetics and toiletries. In twos we were taken down the hall to a full lavatory complete with showers, which we all happily used; then we put on our clean, new clothes. I had little trouble with so simple an outfit despite the gender problem, but was thankful that my hair had been cut very short, prison-style. Come to think of it, though, Kerar’s was short, too, although professionally cut and styled.

  Finally, now that we were feeling human again, they decided we were ready for the full briefing. We sat in folding chairs while our guide gave us the basic stuff.

  “The first world to be explored in the Warden system was Lilith,” she began. “Lilith is a beautiful world, like a tropical garden. From their base camp, the first Exploiter Teams reached and set up bases on the other three Warden worlds, as well as examining the moons of Momrath, a huge gas giant further out. What they didn’t know was that they were carrying an organism from Lilith, an alien thing like no other.”

  Briefly she recounted how the organism at last had struck Lilith, wiping out all manufactured things and reducing the population to primitive savages. Machines wouldn’t work there, and the entire society was nontechnological. I couldn’t help but think of my poor counterpart on Lilith. I was good, yes—the best. But I was born and raised and existed my entire life in a highly technological society. How would I be able to function in a nontechnological one? Would I be able to? I wondered, and felt more relieved that it wasn’t my problem.

  “The organism,” Kerar went on, “was carried to the other places, where it thrived and mutated. There are many theories on this, the most logical being that it reacts to the sun’s relative energy and perhaps the amount of solar wind itself, but nobody really knows. Here, as you can see, it did not destroy machines. On Lilith, its native world, it adapted men to the planet, made them a part of Lilith’s ecosystem. Here it had to be the one to adapt, and it did. It’s inside you now, moving in, making itself comfortable, settling down in every molecule of your body.”

  We all stirred at this unpleasant thought, which we’d managed to push to the back of our minds until now. It was funny—I didn’t feel any different. No dizziness, no signs of anything out of the ordinary.

  “Early scientists had the idea that the organism had some sort of collective intelligence,” Kerar told us. “It became obvious that every single tiny subviral form was somehow in contact with every other one. We now know that they were only partly right. It is one organism, each one like a part of a cell to a huge body, but it doesn’t think. Its behavior patterns are well known and quite consistent. Once you know how it acts, it will never surprise you.

  “On Lilith, this intercommunication led to some people getting tremendous power, since the organism there exists in literally every molecule of solid matter. Some there can simply will a hole to be cut in rock, for example, or cause trees, fruit, even people to mutate. This works because some minds are so strong ‘that they can transmit their will through the Warden organisms in their own body to others in people and things nearby. Here we have a different effec
t.”

  Again there were murmurs, and again I thought of my poor counterpart. Such a world would seem to be one of magic, and there magic alone worked.

  “On Cerberus,” our guide continued, “the organism is also in every molecule of solid matter. We’ve found it in tree samples taken by divers a full kilometer below the surface of the sea, and in the sea and air creatures themselves. As on Lilith, it doesn’t like things that don’t have Warden organisms inside them, and it will invade them as it has you. It seems to have a much easier time with organic molecules, though, particularly ones in living creatures, because it adapts to you with little trouble. Put a manufactured item from, say, the Confederacy here, though, and it will try and invade that, too—not very successfully. The stuff just doesn’t work and usually falls apart. Fortunately, it doesn’t care which kind of Warden creature is there, at least on Cerberus, so we can import raw materials, finished products, and food from our fraternal worlds, and with the exception of Lilith, export our goods to them. The Lilith original just won’t take anything that upsets the primitive nature of the planet.

  “Now, there are some good things about this invasion of your body. For one thing, since it depends on you to give it what it needs to live, it keeps you in tip-top shape. It purges your body of disease, so nobody gets sick. It cleans out the blood vessels and directs cellular repairs, so you don’t get cancer, heart attacks, strokes, or whatever. Even things like drugs and alcohol, for the most part, will be purged before they can have any effect—with the exception of solids from the Warden system, and those are very rare and restricted. The worst you can do to yourself is get a little fat or out of condition. And of course the organism cannot retard the aging process, although even there it keeps you in far better shape far longer than normal.”

  That was an interesting benefit, I told myself. Still, no more getting drunk or high or using any kind of recreational drugs. This was a clean world.

  Kerar looked at us and smiled a bit, pausing before dropping the other shoe, the one only she truly knew about. “However, you are fortunate to have been sent to Cerberus. Only the best are sent here. No murderers, no persons with violent histories. This is not a violent world, and for very good reason. You see, only we here on Cerberus have the potential of living forever.”

  There it was—along with an interesting additional bit of information. No violent criminals. I wondered why.

  When the rest of the group had caught hold of itself, she continued her orientation. “I told you that on Lilith people could contact and command Warden organisms, and control and change them. That does not happen here. However, all the Warden organisms here are in constant contact with others, with proximity being the guide. The closer you are to somebody or something else, the more contact the Warden organism has with the other. When you are awake, your consciousness controls those within your body and there is no problem and no effect. But if you are tired, sleepy, or asleep, or in semiconscious or unconscious state, the Warden organisms reach out to others near them.” She paused a moment, choosing her words carefully. “I’ll give you an example, with the understanding that we know what happens but we have never discovered exactly how it happens.

  “Let’s say I go to sleep here next to you, and you fall asleep too. Unlike those on Lilith, Warden organisms here tend to communicate mostly with those in complementary positions, so those inside you don’t communicate with, or link with, or whatever it is they do, those in rocks, trees, and the like the same way they do to those in other people. Freed from conscious restraint, the Wardens in your body would link with the Wardens in my body. This linkage would become strongest during the short periods of sleep when we aren’t dreaming. If two of those periods match—mine and yours—the Warden organisms in your brain and mine would link, and, for reasons we don’t understand, start to exchange information. Now, remember, I told you that the creatures are in every molecule and actually can cleanse, change, repair, or replace parts of your body to keep you healthy. In the same way, as a by-product of their very nature, they change the molecules in your cerebral cortex to my code and mine to yours, even adjusting the brain-wave pattern to match. It’s done in a matter of minutes. Since memory is chemically stored and electrically retrieved, this means a total change of information within the brain. So you wake up with my memories and personality, and I wake up with yours. In effect, we have switched bodies.”

  “Then why don’t they switch all the information?” a bearded young man to my left asked skeptically. “You should have hormonal imbalances, differentials in respiration and blood pressure—enough wrong commands tailored for the wrong body to cause it to be very wrong and very sick.”

  “Agreed,” she responded. “Good question. The answer is simply that in the early days some of that happened, but it no longer does. The Warden organism is incredibly adaptable, and it exchanges information with other parts of itself, even with other organisms outside its physical form. It learned. As to why it wants to do so—well, we don’t know. We’re not even sure it does. The person may be a by-product of its unique life form. It may be some necessary adjustment to keep itself going in the Cerberan atmosphere. We don’t know. I’m not sure we ever will. But it does happen, it has, and it almost certainly will continue.”

  “Have you ever switched bodies?” another skeptic asked.

  She smiled. “Many times. I am a native, unlike you. The switching phenomenon comes with puberty—a rite of passage here, you might say. Adolescents here undergo many switches, particularly since that age is more highly emotional and so control is more difficult. Besides, what adolescent could resist the experimentation? Boys curious about what it’s like to be a-girl, vice versa—that sort of thing. I often wonder what it would be like to be trapped at birth in a particular gender and body. I, for example, was born male, but by the age of sixteen, having been in three male and two female bodies, I found myself more comfortable, somehow, as a female. I found a female who felt more comfortable as a male and we slept together and settled it. However, don’t think we run around swapping bodies as often as we change clothes. We don’t. Oh, some of us change often, and there are occasional marriages where the partners switch around constantly, but those cases are rare.”

  A thought had occurred to me early in her talk and I wanted to get the question out before it slipped away. “You said it takes several minutes to exchange minds during this sleep,” I noted. “What happens if you’re awakened in the middle of it?”

  “Normally, once the exchange begins it can’t be stopped—you remain comatose, as it were, even if the building’s burning down,” she replied. “However, there are cases—very rare—when this happens. You’re right to bring it up, since it occurs only among people from Outside like yourselves. The odds, I should emphasize, are one in a million, even to you. The transfer is all at once, so to speak, so all of the molecules in your brain start their rearrangement together. If you are jolted awake early in the process, you’ll have a dim remembrance of that other life which will usually fade. If this happens late in the transfer, you’ll have a period of psychological problems, a sort of schizophrenia, but that too will pass and the dominant information will control. But if the process is just about exactly half over, then both of you will be in both bodies. There is a lot of extra space in the cerebrum and the new information will slowly shift to the unused parts, creating either a total split personality—two minds in one body, alternating—or a merger into a new personality that is a combination of both. And, understand, this will be the case for both bodies. But I wouldn’t worry; there have been less than twenty such cases in the history of Cerberus. You almost have to do it deliberately, and nobody wants that.”

  I nodded. Those seemed like favorable odds. She returned to her basic briefing once more, with a new question from a woman on the end.

  “What happens,” she was asked, “when a switch occurs to someone in a critically skilled field? I mean, suppose your doctor now has the mind of your janitor? How can
you tell?”

  “That was an early problem,” we were told. “In a non-technological age or setting, like Lilith’s, it probably Wouldn’t have been solvable. Fortunately, tiny electrical patterns in the brain set up to handle our specific memories are unique to each individual. The new brain adjusts to the new pattern. We have sensitive devices able to read and record that distinctive electrical ‘signature,’ and you’ll find them all over the place. Before you leave here today we’ll take your imprint and this will open your account in the master planetary computer. Early imprint reading devices were quite bulky, but now it’s a simple device quickly and easily used, and it is used for everything. There is no money here, for example. You are paid according to job and status directly into your computer account. Any time you wish to make a purchase, your imprint is read and compared to your identity card. As you can see, it is virtually impossible for anyone to masquerade as someone else, since it is a crime not to report a body change within eight hours of its occurrence.” She paused for a moment, then added, “For a society founded by what the Confederacy calls criminals, Cerberus has probably the most crime-free civilization in man’s history.”

  I could see that this thought disturbed some of the others, and it disturbed me to an extent, too. In the most literal sense of the word, this was probably the most totalitarian society ever built. Not that crime here was impossible—the society was computer-dependent, and anything computer-dependent could be manipulated. But the system had few weak spots, and the ultimate penalty of death for crimes was even more terrifying here, in a society where it might be possible to move from body to body and stay young—if there was a supply of bodies, and if the government let you.