Dylan and I both gasped the same time. “Sanda!” she breathed.
No, it wasn’t Sanda, but it was a perfect facsimile of Sanda’s current, and Dylan’s old body.
“I see I haven’t underestimated the old boy,” I muttered. “What a rotten trick.”
Laroo—all the Laroos—looked at us with smug satisfaction. “I thought that if you were going to try any funny business, you’d be less likely with somebody you both know and like,” he told us.
“You’re going to kill her after this works!” Dylan accused. “You know I can’t be a party to that. I won’t be.”
One of the Laroos stopped, thought a moment, and I thought I could see his eyes divert to his side. For a moment none of the others moved. Then, interestingly, I saw the teenage girl very naturally reach up and scratch her nose. Goatee paused a moment, then pretended to consider things while glancing idly at the ceiling. Finally he said, “All right. But for reasons you obviously understand, you’re making a test very difficult—and I will not proceed without one.”
I shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I’m not the one who insisted that the psych inhibitors remain on.”
“It wouldn’t matter. I wouldn’t do that kind of thing anyway,” Dylan snapped.
Laroo sighed, and thought, again. Finally he said, “Leave us for a minute, both of you. Just wait outside.”
“Stuck you, didn’t I?” Dylan stated smugly. I nudged her to keep her from baiting him further. Paranoia, psych profile, or not, Laroo was psychotic enough to call the whole thing off if we pushed him far enough. We left and stood outside.
“Don’t bait him,” I warned her. “There are some things more important to him even than this.”
She just nodded and squeezed my hand. We didn’t have long to wait, and were soon called back in by Dr. Merton.
“All right,” Laroo said, “let’s start one step at a time. First we’ll just try and clear a neutral body, so to speak. Then I want Merton to check it over, see what can be done, what we can learn. Will you go that far with me?”
We looked around and found that the robot Sanda had been replaced in its booth. I looked over at Dylan and shrugged. She sighed. “What choice do we have? All right.”
The robot body produced was impressive. A huge bronze giant of a man with great, bulging muscles. If any one of them looked the part of a superior human being, this male body did.
It too was as blank as you could conceive, and had to be helped to the chair by Merton and two assistants.
“I gather they don’t have much basic programming when they arrive,” I commented.
“Activate, deactivate, walk forward, walk back, stand, and sit—that’s about it,” Dr. Merton told us. “They don’t need much else, although in a pinch I can feed in some basic additional commands. When you’re putting a complex human mind in there, you don’t need much.”
I could see her point. I took the seat next to the thing and Dylan sat next to me as Merton pointed out which helmet was which.
This point was the most nerve-racking to me personally, since I knew Laroo was as close to totally evil as anyone I had ever met and I hardly trusted him a moment.
The helmets came down and I felt clamps and probes fit into place.
“All right,” Dr. Merton said. “You’re all set, just like you told me. Do whatever it is you do.”
I relaxed, took a couple of deep breaths, heard Dylan doing much the same, then concentrated—no, willed—the transfer.
I felt a momentary dizziness, or disorientation, and then it was over. So quick I could hardly believe it.
“That’s it,” I told them. “Dylan?”
“I guess so. If that funny feeling was it.”
The assistants nicked switches retracting the probe helmets and gently lifted them off our heads—all three of us. I got up, as did Dylan, and we stared again at our giant. He looked as blank as ever.
Laroo looked over at Merton. “Anything?”
“Well, we recorded something,” she told him. “Who knows what?”
Realization came suddenly. Countermove, I thought. Laroo’s move, really. Merton had created the Merton Process, by which I was here—and in four other places, too. A process that didn’t transfer but recorded and duplicated information in the brain I If she had the key from both our minds, then Laroo no longer needed us at all. It had been a major mistake on my part. I fervently hoped that this hadn’t been overlooked by Dumonia or Security.
Two assistants came up with a crazy-looking vertical hand truck, and as we watched, the giant was told to stand, then tilted forward, the platform slipped expertly under, then tilted back so it could carry the thing, which remained rigid. They wheeled him out a side door as we watched, Merton following.
“Where are they going?” I asked curiously.
“First we’ll hook him up to some analytical equipment to see if the change took—or if it did, whether or not we can see it at all.” Laroo told us. “After—well, one step at a time.”
Several nervous minutes passed, after which Merton reappeared. “Nothing I can measure has changed in the slightest,” she told us. “As far as I can see, everything’s the same.”
Laroo sighed. “All right, then. We have to try a live test. Is Samash prepared?”
She nodded, went to a wall intercom, and called somewhere. I could recognize Bogen’s voice, and the surprise when she said Samash. But in less than a minute an unconscious figure was wheeled into the lab, one that looked nothing like the giant In fact he was the oldest man I’d ever seen on Cerberus, although he was probably no more than in his middle fifties.
“Samash is a technician here on the island,” Laroo told us. “He’s very loyal and not very bright, but he’s handy. And you can see, he’s more than overdue for a new body.”
“Some new body,” Dylan noted.
“Well, now he’ll look the part.”
“Is he—drugged?”
“Kabash leaves, a substance about which, if I remember, you also know something.”
“Oh.”
I got the picture. This was the stuff that forced a transfer if anybody else in the area had it or was receptive. Samash was wheeled into the other room, and soon Merton and the techs all emerged. “Give him, say, an hour,” she said confidently. “I’ll call you.”
And with that, we were dismissed. As before, we were fed, and very nicely, too.
“I’m still worried about all this,” Dylan commented.
“Want more?” I told her about my fears of Merton.
She sighed. “Well, we did our best, right?”
“We’ll see. It isn’t over yet.”
An hour or so later we were called back and found.the lab the same except that now the great giant seemed to be sleeping on the table in the center. Of the old body I saw nothing, and guessed it had died from lack of interest.
Even though the giant robot was sleeping, there was no doubt that there was a person inside it now. It looked natural and normal; somehow even its sleeping face was filled with an indefinable something that had not been there before.
“Wake him up,” Laroo ordered.
Dr. Merton and the two assistants stood back, and there was a sudden, almost deafening cymbal-like sound all around. It subsided quickly, and Merton called, “Samash! Wake upl”
The body stirred, and we stepped back to the wall and held our breath. Even the Laroos seemed extremely tense.
Samash’s eyes opened, and the face took on a puzzled look. He groaned, a deep bass, shook his head, and sat up on the cart and looked around. “Wha—what happened?” he managed.