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what was there and used it, although in her case they more or less froze it.
Hard as it is to believe, Sanda is more psyched than Dylan."
"What!"
He nodded. "She feels no real guilt about what happened to Dylan. Not really.
In fact she's somewhat disappointed that she didn't replace Dylan in your
life; she still hopes to one day. That's the limit of her ambition and
vision and now you understand why she doesn't call on you both more often."
"Jealousy?"
"Envy, mostly. Her whole life has been nothing but envy. The grass is always
greener to her. Physically and intellectually she might have lived for twenty
years, but emotionally she's somewhere around eight or nine. The psychs merely
damped down whatever ambition was left and much of that active imagination.
They reinforced the envy, but also lay down prohibitions about doing anyhing
about it. The way they have her damped and oriented, she'll be perfectly happy
chipping paint and collecting garbage, secure in the knowledge that someday
her prince you will come to her."
"What about that business concerning harm to self or others? You said it was
standard?"
"True, but there's only so much you can do in a few hours, and they did a lot.
Much the same thing was accomplished by the other conditioning, as I
mentioned.
She isn't going to hurt Dylan because that might alienate you. Besides, she's
sure you'll dump Dylan sooner or later and come down and see the errors of
your ways. She isn't going to hurt you because she's patient, as long as she's
near you. And secure in the knowledge that she'll win in the end, she's hardly
going to do anything to herself. That being the case, no prohibition was
necessary. In fact I can foresee only one way in which she could harm anybody
for the rest of her judgment, and only one, so you're safe."
"Oh? What's that?"
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"If you asked her to. She'll do anything to demonstrate to you the mistake she
thinks you made."
I grinned, feeling a bit more comfortable. "No chance of that, of course."
"Of course," Dumonia agreed.
The torpedoes had been rerouted to Emyasail, where they were supposed to be
all along, and my devices were ready. Confident now of Sanda's complete
cooperation, we went down one evening to scout out the place and found it
similar in layout to Hroyasail. It would be, I told myself, considering it was
built by the same parent corporation at the same time for the same purposes.
Of course there were guards all over the place, and all sorts of electronic
security as well, but it was oriented toward the warehouses.
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Sanda, like all Cerberans, knew how to swim. When you lived in giant trees
with an eternal ocean always underneath, that was one thing you absolutely
learned from the start.
We were using just basic wet suits and snorkels. I wanted no giveaways should
there be underwater devices for picking up sounds like mechanical rebreathers
or an underwater cycle. As a check, we donned the suits and, starting from
more than two hundred meters beyond the docks, actually swam up to and under
the boats, checking out the lay of the land. We found some small sensors along
the docks themselves, but not only was there nothing to keep us from the
bottom of the boats but the area was floodlit so they were nicely silhouetted.
But then why should Laroo suspect sabotage? What would be gained? It was sure
to be discovered. But even if it wasn't, it would just slow him down
slightly he could get boats from other places, if need be. The only
irreplaceable stuff, the organic robots, would come in from space to his new
landing pad. Anybody else would be more interested in the warehouses, which
were heavily guarded, than in the boats since, any good security officer would
reason, why would anybody attack them? Not only expendable, but you'd lose the
cargo to the depths.
Nothing to gain.
They were wrong.
The next night Sanda and I returned, this time with the bag of little goodies
I
had made up from Otah's materials and other sources. We easily and silently
affixed the devices not only to the gunboats but to several of the biggest
trawlers as well.
The work went so easily, in fact, that Sanda was moie than a little
disappointed. It was exhausting, yes, but not thrilling. It was in fact as
easy as writing a letter.
The devices triggered at different points, and I arranged for them to be
triggered from our boats when we came within range during routine operations.
Nobody on our boats knew, of course, that they were doing anything like that,
but that didn't matter. The one thing I couldn't control was when those
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