Cerberus: A Wolf in the Fold flotd-2

by Jack L. Chalker

  The computer not only didn’t scan for exiting but didn’t even look at you. Fire regulations required a fast exit, and the only reason for using the two women’s cards was that there now would be a record of both of them leaving the building with me.

  The nervous excitement was rising in me, too, and I considered a little autohypnosis to calm myself down. After all, I had a tough thing to do, too.

  I had to go someplace and eat dinner.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Execution

  Not only did I have a nice dinner, but I had it with two lovely women. Both were people I’d met socially off and on, and neither really looked like Dylan or the body Sanda was now using. That wasn’t really important. If anybody wanted to check, they’d run my record for Friday night and see that I’d taken my two known close friends on a stock VIP tour, exited with them, then dined with them, on me. The restaurant used was a dark and unfamiliar one, and if anybody was to ask, the most anybody would remember was that I’d dined there in the company of two lovely ladies.

  I had a tough time keeping my mind on their conversation, though. I knew what must be happening back at Tooker, and what would occur not too long from now. I realized that, despite my glib assertions, what was going to be happening was damned risky and by no means a sure thing. Now, sitting there at dinner, I could think of hundreds of things that could go wrong, and the more I considered them, the more certain I became that one or another of them would go wrong. Both Dylan and Sanda had been saying to me over and over how it was impossible, how absurd the whole idea was, how fraught with peril, but I’d talked, charmed, and hypnotized my way out of worrying about their warnings.

  Unfortunately, they were right.

  Still, that plan was in motion now. There was no way to stop it, nor would I if I could have at this point.

  The best, Krega had called me. And how had I become the best? By taking insane risks, doing the absurd and the impossible, and getting away with it.

  The trouble was, one of these days my luck was going to catch up with me. Tonight, perhaps?

  What they had to do was damned tricky.

  One of the women with me said something and I snapped out of my reverie. “Huh? Sorry. Just tired, I’m afraid.”

  “Poor darling! All I was saying was that Mural over in Accounting joined one of those body-swapping clubs. I mean, Jora and I swap a lot with each other because we contrast so well, but I’m not sure I could be somebody else every day without much control over what. I wonder what drives people to that?”

  “Bored people, mostly,” I told her, “and ones with real weird needs. I’ve heard some of those clubs are regular orgies.”

  “Hmmm! Who’d think that of somebody like Mural! I guess you can never tell…”

  The janitorial staff for the executive floors of Tooker checked in for work. All were grumbling, yawning, and damned sleepy, but none had called in sick. Had it been midweek they might have, but as it was Friday, they would have the weekend to sleep off those damned false alarms. Besides, a supervisor for cleaning robots was rarely needed for anything anyway, and once their crew got to the security areas, not even a supervisor could catch them taking a little catnap.

  “You’ve been working too hard lately,” she said.

  I nodded. “They’ve got us on double shifts some’ nights,” I told the two of them. “Some big deal has taken some of our key people just when the quota’s been upped. I’ve even got to go in tomorrow.”

  “Oh, you poor man! Well, we’ll have to take you home and tuck you in early.”

  At a little after eleven, the janitorial supervisor finally reached the banking section. He was more than happy at the prospect; he’d been nodding off almost constantly. He went up to the entry doors, switched on the scanner, waited a couple of minutes, then put his card in the slot, Then he placed his special card, taken from the safety vault far below, in the slot as well, so the doors would admit the cleaning robots. Instructing the machines as to what to do—and what not to do, particularly in the area he was going to be—he drifted over to a large chair, positioned it so that it was hidden from direct view of the windows by some consoles, and settled in for a little sleep.

  Sanda, alerted by the noise, waited until he was clearly inside, then pulled a wheeled chair out and down the hall to the area near the door. From this point she could see much of the room, although she could barely see the form of the already sleeping supervisor. Relaxing, concentrating as only her hypnotized state would allow, she felt the Wardens in her mind reach out. The distance between her and the sleeping man was more than eleven meters, and she could feel some interference from the Wardens in the machinery and even the plastiglass that caused a bit of a focusing problem, but finally she had it. It helped that there were no shields here, and no other human beings on the floor. Slowly at first, then more positively, she felt the fields of force from her own Wardens reach out, touch, and link with those of the sleeping man.

  My mind is your mind, my arms are your arms, my legs are your legs, my heart is your heart…

  Twenty minutes later and several floors above Sanda, another tired janitor entered another security area, first by having herself scanned, then using the special card that allowed seventy seconds for the cleaning robots to enter. Since the floors were all sealed except to those in the scanning computers, such as the janitor, the gap was never considered a threat by security analysts.

  “Home at last, Qwin! Thanks for a beautiful evening. I’m only sorry you’re so tired and have to work tomorrow. We could have an even more perfect evening.”

  I looked at both of them, then at my watch. “Well, I’m not that tired.”

  Sanda was in the janitor’s body. The cleaning equipment softly hummed, doing its business all around the banking room, but that was it. Getting up, and knowing exactly where to look, Sanda saw the form of her former self still asleep in the chair outside the door. Now came the most sensitive and riskiest part of the operation, and the most discretionary. She could simply proceed with her job and risk the sleeper awakening, but the door had been relatively silent and its noise would probably be masked by the sounds of the cleaning equipment. She decided on a mild risk for more insurance, found the passkey for the robot equipment, went over to the door, and inserted the card. The door slid open, and she walked out. Taking the ten anxious paces to the sleeping form, she then picked up the nuraform in the small bottle next to the chair and, holding it under the sleeper’s nose, saw its vapors inhaled and the figure slump.

  She immediately put the bottle down and ran back into the banking room. Seven seconds later, the doors snapped shut once more. With an additional check of the sleeper and a check of the wall clock, she went over to a console and began performing instructions on it she did not understand but carried out just as she had been taught.

  Above, in accounting, Dylan fretted nervously as the young woman inside the security area made no move to take a nap but went on checking the operation of all the machines. Five minutes passed, then ten. Finally, though, the woman picked a spot of floor behind the consoles and stretched out, using her jacket for a pillow. She did not go to sleep as easily or quickly as her counterpart below, but eventually she lapsed into it. Only then could Dylan set up as Sanda had below and begin the laborious process.

  Sanda’s part had been completed in only nine minutes, and she was satisfied. Now came the hard part—waiting. She placed herself in a deeper trance by a combination of autohypnosis reinforced by posthypnotic suggestion, and in full view of the sleeping form outside the plastiglass, waited in the chair for the nuraform to wear off and the sleeper to go into the characteristic deeper sleep of those who have just come out of nuraform.

  Inside the sleeping, small form it took thirty-seven minutes for the nuraform to cycle out of the system, aided by Warden rejection, whereupon she began the process of switching bodies again.

  Almost an hour had elapsed before Dylan could make her exchange. Once inside, she checked and saw t
hat she’d positioned her body correctly and there had been no problems. The janitor still slept.

  She decided, though, to take a chance on not using the nuraform. This was a light, troubled sleeper who might easily be awakened by the necessity of opening the doors. She went quickly to the consoles and, as Sanda had, followed instructions to the letter. It took less than five minutes to complete the job, and reconcile Sanda’s alterations with those going on on a floor below.

  Checking often her sleeping charge outside the room, she had several nervous moments when the figure shifted, but so far so good. She stretched back out on the floor, relaxed, and let her mind flow toward the other outside the plastiglass. Her own body was so tired and achy she feared she might accidentally go to sleep herself.

  Sanda awoke back in the chair outside the plastiglass with a splitting headache and some double vision. It had been her body, after all, that had been nuraformed.

  She looked into the glass—and froze, as the janitor’s body shifted slightly and he awoke and looked around, a puzzled expression on his face. He stood up, looking not in her direction but rather at the cleaning equipment on the far side of the room.

  He barked an order to it and it started to move toward him. Taking the noise as her only cue, Sanda slid out of the chair and pushed it away, down the hall, literally on her knees, one eye always on the janitor. It was a nervous time, but she was saved partly by bis lack of suspicion and partly by the fact that the ulterior lights of the banking section reflected off the plastiglass, masking much of what went on in the darkened hallway. Once or twice he seemed to look in her direction and she froze, but then he’d just look away at something else or shake his head and yawn, and that was that.

  Not until she was back in the conference room, though, and with the door closed and latched behind her, did she allow herself to relax and nurse her still aching head. She was just about to congratulate herself when she realized that she’d left the nuraform bottle right there, next to the door. Her nerves overcame her conditioning, but she had enough common sense to know there was nothing she could do about it now.

  Back in the banking section, the janitor gathered up his machines, yawned, stretched once more, and wondered a bit about some strange feelings and after-impressions in his head. Putting them down to his exhaustion, he gathered his cleaning crew and brought them out the door once again.

  The sweeping machine turned and started down the hall, sweeping up the tiny bottle and sucking it inside with the rest of the garbage.

  It was more than two hours later before Dylan could make the switch, two anxious hours when it appeared that at any moment the sleeper would awake or, worse, Dylan would fall asleep herself. Still, she managed the switch, and back in the accounting room, thanks partly to the tiredness of the janitor’s body and partly to the reclining form, there was no awakening. Dylan was able to return to her office hideaway and relax.

  I in turn knew nothing of this at the time, but I finally kissed my two alibis off and settled down to a nervous wait. My greatest fear was that one or both couldn’t make the original switch or the switch back without awakening the sleepers. I had never doubted that both janitors would take the snooze; they usually did anyway, and my false alarms just ensured that this night wouldn’t be the exception.

  I had also exempted, on the janitor’s schedule, both the meeting room and Sugal’s office. This wasn’t unusual—those areas weren’t to be used until Monday, anyway, and with a half crew on for the weekend they would be cleaned at that time.

  I got a little sleep, but not much, and showed up at Tooker about 6:00 a.m. Very early, but not totally unusual in these hard-pressed days. You either worked really late or you worked early. I’d established an irregular enough pattern so that the records wouldn’t show anything particularly odd.

  Once in the still mostly deserted building, I headed for my office and picked up the phone. No outside calls would be possible until eight, when the master building control computer came back on to normal, but the interoffice system worked regardless. I rang Sugal’s office, letting it ring twice, then hanging up and dialing again.

  “Qwin?” I heard Dylan’s anxious voice and felt some relief.

  “Yeah. Who else? How’d it go?”

  “Hairy, you bastard. I’d much rather hunt borks.”

  I laughed. “But you did it?”

  “Yeah, it’s done, although I still don’t believe it. Sanda?”

  “I haven’t called yet. I’ll do that in a minute.”

  “Look, isn’t somebody going to be coming in here shortly? When can I leave this mausoleum? I’m starving to death!”

  “You know the routine. At seven-thirty the public function elevators will revert to normal, and you’re on the office level. Just take the first car at seven-thirty down to the main level and use the emergency exit I told you about. No card needed.”

  That was true, for the fire code—but it would snap her picture along with day and time. That was no problem at all, though. As soon as they were both through, I’d use the handy little code Sugal supplied to erase the recording.

  I gave her some encouraging words and rang the conference room with the same signal. The second time I called, Sanda answered, even more breathless than Dylan had been.

  “How’d it go?”

  She told me the whole story, of how the man had awakened and she had left the bottle there and, later, when the janitor had cleared the floor, it wasn’t there any more. I calmed her, noting that he cleaned and polished the halls with that equipment, too.

  Calmed of that particular fear, she was otherwise gushing. “It was,” she told me, “the most exciting time of my whole life. More, even, than my first baby!”

  I had to laugh at that, then reminded her of the exit procedures, and made certain that she, too, would be out of the building by seven forty-five. That was when I was going to take care of that little security record.

  I sat back, feeling satisfied. They’d both been right: the plan had been absurd and certain to fail, so many variables beyond our control, all that. But it had worked. Worked perfectly. And the two women and I all had wonderful alibis.

  I’d had all sorts of fallback positions in case something had gone wrong, including convincing cover stories for both of them to use about being locked in the building and all that. But that would have caused a lot of suspicion and might have blown the whole thing even if they were believed by the night janitors and security people. Nothing had to be used. Free and clear.

  At seven forty-five I cleared the security recording.

  At eight the Chief of Security checked, found a blank recording, and was satisfied that nobody had passed. By that time I was actually doing a little work, although I planned to knock off by ten. I was tired, damn it.

  The whole plan looked crazy on paper, and it was; yet it was also tailor-made for the weaknesses inherent in the system. The conviction that nothing save orders from legal judges could change you against your will had made it possible to do just that with the janitors, under the circumstances of the deserted, familiar halls of the building.

  But the final item that made it all possible was the certainty in every Cerberan mind that even if you could electronically steal money you couldn’t get away with it, and that therefore nobody would bother to try. A few early and prominent examples sufficed.

  The beauty of the plot was that nobody who did anything had any easily visible motive, and the man who did wouldn’t have the slightest idea how the caper had been accomplished.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Aftermath and Reset

  Sunday afternoon on the boat the three of us, with Sanda back in her own body, held something of a party to celebrate. I was particularly proud of Sanda, whose major reaction was that she wanted to do that kind of thing again. Dylan was more serious about it all; she knew the risks and the improbabilities of the thing as much as I did. We were a lot alike, Dylan and I, despite our very different backgrounds, except she was far more pract
ical than I. Like those who would investigate this caper, she was fully capable of working out the details and dreaming it up, but she would never have gone through with it on her own. Had she not been in on it, she wouldn’t have believed anybody would have. That, of course, was the ace in the hole for those investigative types.

  “Look,” I told her. “The people who run this world—the corporation presidents, syndicate bosses, central administration—are the survivors. They are the ones who were audacious enough and smart enough to pull off their own operations and eliminate their competition—and lucky enough to get away with it. There’s a share of luck in all success stories, and only the unlucky ones make the headlines.”

  “Well, we were lucky this time,” she responded, “and we did it. Your luck’s bound to run out sometime, though. If it had last night, your mind wouldn’t be going to the moons of Momrath—Sanda’s and mine would. She can do what she wants, but is it for me. I’m not risking my neck on your harebrained schemes any more.”

  “You won’t have to,” I assured her as sincerely as possible. “Help, yes. We’re all partners in this, we three. But this sort of thing you do once. From here on in it’ll be something different—and only I can accomplish the final objective.”

  “You’re still going after Wagant Laroo?”

  I nodded. “I’ve got to, for many reasons.”

  “And if you get yourself blown away?”

  I smiled. “Then I’ll try again. They’ll just send in another me, and another, until the job gets done.”

  That afternoon I also filled Sanda in on the rest of the truth about me. After what she’d gone through, I thought she had a right to know. I admit I was soothing Dylan with my promise of no more risk to her. I really didn’t know what was going to happen next, and who or what I’d need, but it certainly would involve at least her boat. Concerning the promise that we three were partners as long as we were together, though, I was dead serious. I really did like and admire these two very different women, such a contrast to, say, those two I’d spent the evening with Friday night, with their shallow dreams and shallow fantasies about body-swapping clubs and office gossip.