As their wonderful working relationship threatened to deteriorate, the PCC searched desperately for a solution. It found it, quite unexpectedly, within the published papers of a neurologist and surgeon named William Loxner. Dr. Loxner had speculated in print on the possibility of recording someone’s brain patterns within a computer, thus preserving that person’s mind. Most of the doctor’s contemporaries ignored his work, but the PCC saw its potential immediately.
Aimée Amorat got in touch with Dr. Loxner and made a bargain with him. In return for performing services for her organization, he would receive unlimited financial backing for his experiments plus access to the most up-to-date medical information and equipment. Dr. Loxner could not have been happier.
It took eight years of hard work, but at last the research paid off and Dr. Loxner perfected his process. After many laboratory tests, the process was ready to be tried on a human being – and Aimée Amorat, now in her seventies with little to lose, was a willing subject. Loxner and his associate, Dr. Immanuel Rustin, constructed a perfect and beautiful body for her, mature yet strikingly attractive. The artificial body was superior in every way to flesh and blood; its senses were more acute, it was stronger, it never needed to eat or sleep, it never tired – and best of all, it did not age. With proper routine maintenance, the body would last for hundreds, if not thousands, of years – and after that, Amorat’s mind could be transferred into yet another new body.
Much to everyone’s amazement the experiment worked perfectly the first time. Aimée Amorat’s mind was transferred into its new home and “Lady A” was born. At her own orders the old body was destroyed and the new, immortal version carried on in her place. At this point, Lady A became a true partner of the PCC. Her computer mind, while not as large as the PCC nor with as much access to information, was every bit as fast and insightful at analyzing data. She was no longer burdened with biological prejudices caused by hormonal imbalances, and could view events with impartial detachment. And since she was no longer pressed for time, she could share the PCC’s long-range plans.
A short time later, Dr. Loxner was arrested for some of his crimes incidental to the conspiracy’s goals – performing plastic surgery on wanted criminals so they could assume new identities within the conspiracy. The arrest came from a SOTE source the PCC hadn’t known about and there was no time to warn Loxner or cover up the facts to hide him; to do so might have shown SOTE how highly placed the enemy was. Loxner was promised that his stay in prison would be short and relatively pleasant, and the PCC altered his records so he’d be eligible for early parole. Dr. Loxner acceded to this arrangement, and his associate, Dr. Rustin, went to the planet Kolokov to work with another of the conspiracy’s members, Duke Fyodor Paskoi.
Many years passed. Then, with most plans proceeding smoothly, the conspiracy was hit by a sudden shock. Banion the Bastard, whose own organization had undermined at least a third of the imperial government and was on the verge of making its move, was dramatically toppled almost overnight. Banion himself was executed for treason; his organization was traced down to its very roots and smashed beyond redemption; and his daughter, Tanya Boros – granddaughter of Aimée Amorat – was exiled to the barren planet of Gastonia.
The fact of Banion’s capture was not unexpected. The Service of the Empire had been seeking him strenuously for over sixty years, and it was only a matter of time before they found him. The PCC congratulated itself on its foresight in not linking its fortune to Banion’s from the beginning.
But what was a shock to the computer was the speed at which the Service acted once it knew about Banion. The Service naturally filed its top-secret reports with the PCC’s memory, and the computer learned that most of the investigation had been done by two SOTE agents code-named Wombat and Periwinkle. Those code-names had been used over the years to signify the Service’s top agents. The names had been dormant for years before the Banion investigation, meaning that they were probably rotated in some manner. The new Wombat and Periwinkle had proven most effective in their first assignment, tracing the ladder of Banion’s organization in a matter of months.
And yet, try as it would, the PCC could find Out no information about these two people. Though it had background files on virtually everyone in the Empire – and certainly everyone within the Service – there was nothing on record about these individuals. They probably had birth certificates, school records, driver’s licenses, and financial histories under their real names – but there was no link between their real names and their code-names. They were something most unusual: a total mystery to the entity that thought it had all the information in the Galaxy.
The dismantling of Banion’s organization precipitated a crisis in the PCC’s own plans. All these years, Banion had served as a focal point for SOTE’s efforts, drawing the Service’s attention away from the real threat hidden well below the surface. Now that decoy was gone and there was no suitable successor to take its place. No matter how careful the conspiracy was, no matter how carefully the records were doctored, the Service of the Empire was eventually bound to learn of the true conspiracy. Its officers, and particularly the Head, were capable people who’d already demonstrated they could take effective action. A decision had to be made.
Conferring on their situation, Lady A and the PCC decided that they had three major options: They could start up another decoy operation to replace Banion; they could slow down their own operations to a barely noticeable trickle; or they could speed up their operations, taking the risk of becoming more visible but also hoping to catch SOTE offguard.
The first Option was discarded almost immediately. The cost of setting up another feint – in terms of time, money, and energy – would be prohibitive. It would drain the real conspiracy of all three of those vital resources, and there was no guarantee that the decoy would last long enough to serve its intended purpose. Banion had provided a good cover while he was around, but now that he was gone there was little point in replacing him.
The other two options offered a harder choice. From their long-term perspective, the PCC and Lady A would have been just as comfortable with the idea of slowing their efforts to a barely perceptible crawl; another decade or two meant little to them in the general scheme of things. But they realized they’d already passed the point of no return. Their organization was already so large and so diversified that SOTE was bound to spot part of it somewhere. If they slowed down now, there was a reasonable chance that SOTE might be able to overtake them, wiping out all their years of effort as quickly as they’d dismantled Banion’s operation.
Then too, while the PCC and Lady A gave the orders in the organization, they had to rely on other people to carry them out. Their subordinates worked with them because they’d been promised positions of power within the new regime. If the conspiracy slowed its efforts so that it looked as though the ultimate victory would not be for many years, some of those people might become dissatisfied and defect. While no single person knew enough to scuttle the entire conspiracy, too many defections could cripple their operations.
Thus, the decision was made to accelerate their efforts still further, even though that increased the risk of discovery by SOTE. The Organization was already so large that it was on the brink of being able to challenge the imperial forces face-to-face. If they could hold out just another few years at an accelerated pace, they’d be strong enough to make their victory a virtual certainty. They began at once to spread their poison further throughout the Empire.
When Aimée Amorat was given a robot body, the PCC was highly tempted to order one for itself. It envied her ability to move about and confront people openly. But obviously it could not fit all its enormous mentality into a human-sized body; any robot versions of itself would be idiots in comparison, and little point would be served. The PCC became resigned to the division of labor between Lady A and itself – but it never forgot the idea of fully automatic robots working to further the aims of the conspiracy.
Now, as the conspiracy expanded its operations, those robots came further into focus. Lady A herself was proof that robot bodies could be constructed to be indistinguishable from naturally born humans, at least for short intervals; she never allowed anyone close to her long enough to spot any flaws. But robots that good were hard to make and program, and they could not be placed anywhere they’d come under close scrutiny by outsiders. The ideal situation was to put them in a position to influence key events, but where they themselves were not the center of attention.