Cerberus: A WOLF IN THE FOLD (8 page)

 
Later still we were holographically photographed and fingerprinted, had our retinal patterns taken, that sort of thing, and were also hooked up to a large machine the operative part of which looked like a test pilot's crash helmet This, then, was the imprint-taker. A bit later we were taken in and a small headset with three fingerlike probes was lowered on our foreheads and a check made on a computer screen. Apparently the big apparatus was used only for the recording of the imprint; the little device would be the familiar control mechanism for checking it. There was no sensation with either device, and therefore no way to figure put how they operated, something I very much wanted to know. Unless you could fool or defeat that system any authority could trace your life exactly—where you were, whom you were with, what you bought, literally everything.

 
In the evening they brought in cots for us. Apparently we were to remain there several days—until'the Warden
organism
had "acclimated" itself to us—while they decided what to do with us. A book on the basic organization of the planet was provided, too.
Dry but fascinating reading, including a great deal of detail about the social and economic structure.

 
Politically there were several hundred boroughs, each with a central administration. Some were quite small, others huge, and seemed to be based on economic specialties as much as anything. The Chief Administrator of .each borough was elected by the Chairmen of the Syndicate Councils in each borough. The syndicates were also economic units, composed of corporations of similar types, all apparently privately owned stock companies. The economic system was, then, basic corporate syndicalism. It works rather simply, really: all the like companies—steel, say—get together to form a syndicate headed by a government specialist on steel. The needs of the government and the private sectors are spelled out, and each steel company is given a share of all that business based on its size and productivity, guaranteeing it business and a profit, that margin also set by the syndicate and government expert-^the Steel Minister, let's call him. The only competitive factor is that a corporation within the syndicate which markedly increases productivity—does a better job, in other words, perhaps for less and thereby increasing its profits—will get a bigger share of the next quarter's business.

 
Extend this to every single raw materials and basic manufacturing business and you have a command economy, thoroughly under government control and management, that nonetheless rewards innovation and is profit-motivated. Only on the retail level would there be independent businesspeople, but even they would be under government control, since with profit margins fixed all wholesale prices would also be fixed. Then, using something as simple as borough zoning and business licenses, the government could apportion retail outlets where the people and need was. Because no money changed hands and the government handled even the simplest purchases electronically, there could be no hidden bank accounts, no stash of cash, nor even much barter—since all commodities would be allocated by and kept track of by the syndicates.

 
Nice and neat.
No wonder there were so few crimes, even without the ultimate punishment angle.

 
From the individual's viewpoint, he or she was a free employee. But since the ultimate control was the governments, you'd better not make the syndicate mad or you might find yourself unemployed—and being unemployed for more than three months for reasons other than medical in this society was a crime punishable by forced labor. It seemed that those basis
^ra
w materials came mostly from mines and works on several moons of Momrath, and the mining syndicate was always eager for new workers.

 
To do anything you needed your identity card, whichcontained all your physical data, including your photo, but no name or personal details. That was on a programmable little microchip in the card itself which could be changed automatically should someone else find himself or herself in your body. Not to report a change was a crime punishable by being locked in an undesirable body and packed off to a lifetime of meaningful labor under the shine of beautiful Momrath.

 
The next day I asked our hosts how it would be possible to lock someone into a body, and was told that some people, through sheer concentration and force of will, could essentially "cut off" your Warden
beasties
from sufficient contact to make a switch. These people, called judges, were on call to the government; they didn't judge but merely carried out sentences. Top judges working together could actually force a transfer, too.

 
And of course there it was. Older, undesirable bodies were always around, and you could reward the faithful with a young, new body while shipping the malefactor off to Momrath until he or she dropped dead.

 
Chief industries were light manufacturing in general, computers and computer design, weapons, tools, all manner of wood products, seafood protein, and fertilizer. They even exported some of this stuff beyond the Warden
system,
something I hadn't realized was possible. It was even possible to "sterilize" some types of things, mostly inorganic compounds, and keep them together and working. That led to an obvious connection.
That very human robot that had broken into the defense computers, for example.
Was it possible that somewhere here among the more primitive machines, at least one place was turning out these sophisticated robots to some alien-supplied design? And if so, was there here some sort of programming genius capable of turning out robots so real they would fool even close friends and family, as had the alien robot? It sounded and felt right. No violent criminals here,
they .
said
.
Only technological ones.
The best.

 
By our fourth day all of us were becoming bored and restless.
As much as could be learned in any brief period bad already been taught us, so obviously we were being kept here at this point only for reasons not yet revealed by our hosts.
For me, the wait was getting dangerous, since several of the prisoners had formed casual liaisons and I'd been propositioned repeatedly. Pressure mounted as I became a "challenge" to a couple of the men. I had no desire for any such experience, not in
this
body, but the situation was causing a social gap to open between me and the others. I wanted this waiting over with and for us to be out in the world as soon as possible.

 
I also wanted classification, something they certainly should have been able to do long before now, considering all the tests. I'd tried to angle the aptitude parts heavily toward computers and math, since not only was that consistent with the individual I was supposed to be but also that was where the greatest potential for moving up and finding out things might be. Besides, I'd listed a high level of expertise on many of the older-type computers in use here.

 
Near the end of the fourth day it hit me just what we
were
waiting for. Obviously, if some measure of control was needed, they didn't want to throw us Cerberan virgins out before we knew just what the Warden facts of life would be. Close proximity, they'd said.

 
All those cots all close together.

 
Acclimation, they'd told us, took three or four days, so it was about right. They were waiting, then, until the morning when all or most of us woke up in different bodies.

 
That thought brought up a mental dilemma for me. If we had to switch to leave, I'd rather leave as a man—but because of the personal problem I noted, I'd been sleeping off in a corner nearest the other women but more or less to myself. How many days would it take? I wondered. And did I have the skill and the guts to get on with this? I finally decided I had to give it a try or be trapped on the wrong side. So I picked my man carefully with an eye to age, looks, physical condition, and the like. Fortunately, my candidate, Hull Bruska, was a shy, somewhat gentle-seeming man who had caused me the least problems. His crime was even more remote from people than Qwin's had been. Apparently he'd managed electronically to tap and shift small parts of planetary budgets into frontier accounts, all from a small repair service on one of the civilized worlds. He was somewhat proud of his accomplishment, and not at all hesitant to talk about it
The
cause of his downfall, ironically, was that he was too successful. Too much money showed up in the accounts of several frontier banks, the kind that attracts security, police just because of the size of the assets. Obviously he needed to use more than the four banks he did to spread it out. When a bank's assets quadruple in less than two years without apparent cause, you
know
somebody's going to ask how, but Bruska's forte was machines, not the fine points of getting away with the spoils.

 
Curiously, he had no real plans for the money. He'd done it, he told me, mostly out of boredom. After nine years of repair and redesign of financial computers he'd simply worked it out as a mental exercise, "more or less for fun." Then when he'd put his plan into action just to see if it would work, and it had, doing it again became sort of irresistible, almost to see how much he could get away with. "I wasn't really hurting anybody," he explained, "and there was a tiny bit of satisfaction in fooling the whole Confederacy, of putting one over on them.
Kinda made them human."

 
I liked Bruska, who also enjoyed talking about himself enough that we never got through the hand-holding stage that night. He was shy enough as a man that maybe, I hoped, becoming a woman would open up a whole new social life for him.

 
We slept very close, my cot against a wall and his next to mine to minimize any risks on my part. I fell asleep that night hoping against hope I'd get lucky, and quickly.

 
DATA REPORT INTERRUPTION. END TRANSMISSION DIRECT TRANSCEIVER, AS SUBJECT LEFT. ORIGINAL BODY, ORGANIC TRANSMTITER LINK BROKEN. SUBSEQUENT REPORTS VIA READOUT BY SUBCONSCIOUS DEEP-PROBE HYPNOTIC COMMAND INTO DEVICES SUPPLIED, CUED, NATIVE AGENTS IN OUR EMPLOY. RUN NEXT SEQUENCE READOUT.
SUBJECT UNAWARE OF COMPULSION OR READOUT.

CHAPTER FOUR - Settling In

All but four of us changed bodies during that fourth night. Luck being with me, I was once again young, male, and Confederacy standard, although Bruska didn't really accept the swap with good grace. They separated all of us quickly to minimize the trauma, and I was assured that good psychs would help those who needed it to adjust

 
They did a complete set of tests once again, mostly on the psych side, to determine if any of us not showing severe distress were actually hiding it. Naturally I passed with flying colors. I was overjoyed at my carefully planned result.

 
I also found that the two most objectionable men had changed with their female partners during that night, which I considered poetic justice. Let them find out how unpleasant men like them could be from the other side; then perhaps if they got to be men again they'd be better and more considerate.

 
The small ID card was simply placed in a slot. I was told it would work from
any
slot for it, in stores or even to unlock doors, if you first called the number of the Identity Placement Bureau and told them which slot you were using. Basically, Bruska's name and computer code were erased from the little chip and mine were placed there. They did a check with the brain-reading machine to make sure all worked okay, and it had, so at last I was given an assignment.

 
"Tooker Compucorp in Medlam needs programmers," I was told, "and your experience fits that bill. Two hundred units have been credited to your account compliments of the government, which will be enough to get you there and get you settled. It's a good company and a good location if you like the tropics. Warm there most of the year."

 
And with little more than this and some instructions on how to buy things like clothes and tickets and who to see, I was off.

 
I found that the little three-pronged gadgets were literally everywhere. To get on the shuttle to Medlam you walked up, put your card in the slot, and put on the little device. If everything checked, the fare was deducted from your account and your card returned to you, and in this case a physical ticket was printed.
Very efficient and very simple.

 
I also found that a number of small purchases worked just with the card—newspapers, confections, that sort of thing. .

 
It was a long ride with a lot of stops and several times I had to keep myself from dozing off—the situation could get serious if somebody else was dozing, too. Fortunately the shuttle had a small food service dispensing system where you could get stimulant drinks, including a Cer-beran version of coffee and another of tea, and snacks. I drank a lot of stimulant drinks along the way and needed all of them.

 
I arrived late in the afternoon, but got a robocab to the Tooker offices anyway on the off-chance that I wouldn't be too late for that day.

 
The place was imposing, that was for sure. Glassy windows lined towering tree trunks all around, and in
_x
be^ tween, cradled like some play treehouse for the impossibly rich, an imposing all-glass-fronted office building that connected to all the vast trunks. This, then, was Tooker.