Berserker - Berserker Base Part 10

"I told you you couldn't tell them anything," Pat said. "I put the fire out. It wasn't the coal after all. The Cotabote had taken half their smash crop down in the mine with them. I doused the main tunnel. The lander's still sitting there. It wasn't hurt at all in the explosion. What do you want done with it?"

"You're being removed," Jameson said. "We're taking you off Botea tomorrow morning."

"I'm not leaving without Gemma."

"You're hardly in a position to make demands," Jameson said. "Even a.s.suming that Gemma wanted to go with you."

"What's that supposed to mean? Of course she wants to go with me. The Cotabote tried to kill us both.

If you 'hadn't come along..."

"Yes, apparently it was a good thing I came along when I did." He stood up. "The charges against you are destruction of private property, attempted murder, s.e.xual a.s.sault..."

"s.e.xual a.s.sault? You don't believe that, do you? Ask Gemma. Sh.e.l.l tell you."

"She did tell me," Jameson said, "She's the one who filed the charge. Failure to file protests, and refusal to cooperate."

"Gemma filed the charge?"

"Yes, and it's made the matter much more, serious. The Cotabote originally demanded your removal, but in their culture s.e.xual violence is considered the ultimate taboo."

"Oh, great. I suppose they want to hang me, and you're going to go right along with it. It's too bad you blew up the berserker. He was a nice guy compared to you and the Cotabote." And Gemma.

"You're not getting hanged," Jameson said, "though in my opinion you deserve to be. You're getting married."

Jameson took Pat to the Cotabote village under armed guard. It hadn't all burned. The clay houses were still standing.

Gemma was standing outside a smash storage hut, dressed in a shapeless black sack and holding a bouquet of nematej thorns. She didn't look at him. Pat didn't look at her either.

Jameson performed a ship's captain ceremony, glaring at Pat and smiling pityingly at Gemma. The second he was done he slammed the book shut, and stuck a marriage certificate under their noses to sign. Gemma signed it without a word, waited until Pat had signed it, and then disappeared into the hut.

Scamballah shook her finger in Pat's face. "You will now be married in the Cotabote ceremony." She turned to Jameson and smiled sweetly at him. "We have put up a part.i.tion in the hut to make sure that Devil doesn't vile Gemenca during the ceremony."

The armed guard tossed him in the hut and locked the door. The hut smelled like burning chicken feathers. The part.i.tion was a sheet of thin black metal, wedged between the heavy sacks of drying smash and poking up through what was left of the roof.

"They put up this part.i.tion so I wouldn't vile you," Pat said. "I suppose that was your idea."

Gemma didn't answer.

"s.e.xual a.s.sault, huh? I suppose you told them I started the fire, too. Nice touch. Why didn't you tell them I brought the berserker here, too, just to kill them?"

There was still no answer. He could hear Rutchirrah chanting something outside. He heard the words "Devil" and "filthy viler."

"Well, don't worry," he said. "You can tell them after we're married." He went over to the part.i.tion and put his ear against it. He couldn't hear anything. The sound of chanting moved off till he couldn't hear it anymore. He could smell smoke, "Great. Now they're going to burn us alive. It's probably their favorite part of the ceremony."

Gemma obviously wasn't talking to him. Maybe she wasn't even on the other side of the metal part.i.tion.

Maybe they'd put Sc.u.mbag in there instead, and she was going to burst through it and stick her finger in his face. He tried to lift the part.i.tion, but it was heavier than he'd thought. He wondered where the Cotabote had gotten it. It could be part of the worm that had blown up, although the worm's metal was light gray and this was almost black.

"I knew it!" he shouted. "They've taken apart the lander. "They'll be using the berserker for lamps next.

Why did I think they needed saving? We should have sent them out to save us!"

"They did save us," Gemma said. Her voice, distorted by the metal, had a bell-like quality. "They sent for Jameson."

"Oh, they did, huh? Would you mind telling me how they managed to get a message to Adamant in twenty minutes flat?"

"They didn't," she said. "They sent it three weeks ago. I told you there was an extra protest. They copied your voice access and filed a protest on their own."

He could hear Gemma's voice clearly through the metal, so there was really no need to yell, but' he yelled anyway. "What makes you think Adamant would come running over one protest when, they never paid any attention to the ones you filed."

"I never sent the ones I filed," she said.

The metal part.i.tion didn't weigh anything. He heaved it over onto the smash sacks in the corner and looked at Gemma. She was plucking the thorns out of her bouquet. "Why didn't you file the protests?" he said.

"Jameson's got a plan for getting us out of here," she said to her bouquet. "The Cotabote contract expressly forbids any legal contracts to be negotiated between ICLU reps and Adamant people. Conflict of interest."

"And a marriage certificate is a legal doc.u.ment. What's he going to do? Haul us both back to Adamant for trial?"

"No. He's going to accuse Rutchirrah of trying to get out of the contract. He's going to say the Cotabote conspired to the marriage by insisting on my going on the orbital survey with you. Which they did. He'll tell them Adamant wants out of the contract, that it's going to close down the diamond mines. Rutchirrah will take the opposite side and insist they don't want out of the contract. Jameson will say the only way Adamant will agree to it is if the ICLU rep and the Adamant engineer are taken back to Adamant to have their marriage annulled."

"So Jameson came up with this plan all by himself, huh?"

She plucked at a th.o.r.n.y flower. "Well, not exactly. I mean, I told him how you got the Cotabote to do what you wanted and then we came up with the plan together."

"Whose idea was it that we get married?" he said.

She had cut herself on a thorn. She watched her finger bleed. "Mine," she said.

"Why didn't you send the protests?"

"Because I was afraid they'd have you removed," she said, and finally looked up at him. "I didn't want you to go."

"I don't care what Jameson says, we're not getting this marriage annulled."

"I told you he couldn't keep his filthy hands off her," Retch said from above them. He was leaning over the edge of the charred roof looking down on them.

"Is that why you left them in here together?" Jameson said from the doorway, "Is that why you sent her on the orbital survey with him? Because you knew what would happen?"

Gemma insisted Pat go talk to his replacement before they left, "I intend to tell mine a thing or two about how to handle the Cotabote. It's not fair to just let her walk into this without at least warning her about them. I feel sorry for her. Jameson just picked her because she's an engineer."

The replacement was in Pat's office, glaring at the terminal screen of the computer, When they came in, she stood up and put her hands on her hips. She had pale, spongy-looking skin and lank hair, "I suppose you're responsible for this computer calling me "sweetheart," she said, and stack her finger in his face. "I consider that s.e.xual hara.s.sment of the lowest-sort. I intend to file a protest." She sat back down at the voice-terminal.

"Why don't you just do that?" Gemma said. She reached across her and typed in an access code. "This is the transmission program I always used for filing my protests, I'm sure you'll find you get good results with it."

"I'm perfectly capable of writing my own transmission programs," she-said.

Gemma reached across her again and erased the code from the screen, "Fine,", she said. "Don't use it.

Come on, Pat, we don't want to miss our ship."

Pat turned at the door, "You're going to love it here, honey," he said, and blew her a kiss.

THE FOUNTS OF SORROW.

And so another of the d.a.m.ned things had been destroyed, thanks to a few good people in the right place. That made two down at least, Lars thought, when he was able to come back to his own thoughts.

Not that the defeat would be considered much of a setback by this far-distant machine that had wrung its prisoners' minds and bodies to obtain the news of it. The berserker base had plenty of other fighting units to send out. And on the plus side for the enemy, at least one more entire planet, Polara, had been destroyed too.

But when the telepathic session connecting Lars Kanakuru with people on the planet of Botea was completely over, his body and mind again released from immediate bondage, he retained the memory of that fortunate far world to cling to. To keep himself going, he had received a transfusion of hope from Gemenca Bahazi and Pat Devlin.

He, Lars, had once known someone who was in the Adamant navy. That corporation had a stronger fleet than a lot of planetary governments could boast. If only, Lars thought, as he got slowly back to his feet beside the mind-probing machinery, if only the other half of that navy were here now... or all of it.

But all of it probably still wouldn't be enough to take a base like this one.

Again Lars was returned to the society of his fellow prisoners, back in the common room. He found them arguing at the moment over the question of who should have which sleeping blanket. It seemed to Lars as he came upon them that this childish behavior exemplified the divisions and weaknesses of humanity.

He wanted, to interrupt and say to them: "The berserkers are going to win the great war, in the end.

Because they are one, ultimately, and life, humanity, is ultimately, divided, scattered, always working at cross-purposes." That was the truth, Lars told himself, that he had never been able to bring himself to face, till now. There were a lot of people who could not face it Dorothy Totonac appeared to be near tears, on the verge of breakdown, not having got the blanket she had wanted. Probably the others would have been willing to give it to her by now, but the situation was more complicated than that- all situations were.

Pat Sandomierz seemed to be trying to negotiate some way to help her, but the two men for some reason resented Pat's efforts, and they themselves were doing no one any good Probably an unfair criticism, Lars thought, What real good could anyone do anyone else here?

Now Captain Naxos moved a little apart from the others, with an expression oh his face as of wonder, maybe at how he had got himself into such a childish argument. He was muttering something that Lars could not hear. Meanwhile the other man, Nicholas Opava, went to stand by himself too, on his face an expression of childish sullenness. He was generally, Lars thought, in a condition that Lars himself felt only in his worst moments.

Naxos at last took note of Lars's arrival. "Where've you been?"

"Hooked up to the thing in there. Where else?" He had been about to say that he had just stepped out for a drink, but decided that at the moment humor would not be well received.

"Let's not talk shop." Naxos almost made it an order. "It's bad enough we have to do it."

Dorothy Totonac looked up. "Talking helps keep me sane, and I intend to go on doing it!"

And Pat added: "There's no sense in being afraid it'll overhear us. It already knows everything we've experienced here."

But Lars, at least, knew better than that. He couldn't very well say so, though.

Time went by, and the prisoners were not recalled to duty. There were no clocks or watches available, no day or night here in the cells, but everyone agreed that this interval between telepathic sessions was longer than any similar interval that had pa.s.sed before.

Someone put into words a thought that was new to no one: "Maybe our usefulness is almost over.

Maybe it doesn't need us anymore; because the rest of the units it sent out are winning, all across the board."

There was no way to argue with a statement like that.

Then unexpectedly the inner door of the airlock opened. Several escort machines stood there. They were carrying s.p.a.cesuits, one for each ED prisoner.

The five people looked at each other. Then the machines handed out the suits and the people began to pull them on. When they were ready, they were escorted out in a group.

We could all open our suit valves at once, thought Lars. Bat the thought had no place within him to take root. The idea of suicide had become remote and academic.

The five discovered at once thai their suit radios worked, and were set on a common channel. They could still converse.

"It wouldn't bother with the suits if it was going to kill us now."

"Rather obvious. But what does it want, then?"

"'We're just being moved. It's dug put bigger quarters for as."

"Or smaller ones."

"With a set of the latest model mind-probing machines."

The berserker volunteered no information, and answered no questions. Lars had not heard it speak since he arrived, though he did not doubt it could. But judging by its actions, what it wanted was to take them on a tour.

At first, when they were led outside into the glare of the blue-white sun, and toward the great docks where there waited a seemingly endless rank of s.p.a.cegoing destroyers, at least some of which were undergoing repair, the prisoners all believed that they were going to be shipped somewhere else.

"Maybe it has goodlife, who want human slaves. I've heard stories..."

Someone else cut that speaker off: "We all have."

They were taken aboard s.p.a.cegoing death machines, one after another, but they were not locked up on any of them; it was a relief to all five people, a surprisingly intense relief, that they were not yet to be separated. A bond had formed, despite the childish arguments.

The idea was evidently not to ship them out, but to give them all an extensive and intensive tour of the berserker base and its facilities. The whole thing took a couple of hours. The five prisoners were made to crawl in and out of machines, across catwalks-none high enough, in this low gravity, to suggest a chance for suicide to those who might be so inclined-and to peer into mine shafts. There were hundreds of machines, of all sizes and shapes and functions. Some were workers, all of them busy, others were fighting devices either under construction or in for repair. The whole operation looked even more formidable than Lars had imagined it. Maybe two Adamant navies wouldn't be enough.

It's going to ask us now, he thought. It's going to ask us to be goodlife, officially and formally. The really hideous thing was that at that moment he wasn't sure what he would answer.

But the offer never came. Whatever the great computer that ran the base expected to accomplish by displaying its might to them, it was not that. The reason behind the tour had to be something else. Perhaps it was only meant to overawe them more thoroughly than before, to beat down inward mental resistance that counted for more than formal statements.

Lars wondered suddenly if the Carmpan were going to be given a comparable tour, if Carmpan too sometimes turned goodlife. Though certainly, he thought, the ones he had been teamed with so far had proven that they were not. Then for a moment, Lars was puzzled by his own thought. How had they proven that? Oh yes. It was something that he would be wise not to remember... deliberately he steered his thoughts to something else.

Presently the five ED prisoners were brought back to their quarters, the s.p.a.cesuits silently demanded back. Then they were allowed a rest period, during which no one had much to say, and everyone was thoughtful.

And again if was time for another telepathic session...

The session for Lars this time did not go well. Or at least it did not go as the others had. This time, Lars realized shortly after the induced semi-trance began, the Canmpan he was teamed with was somehow blocking the material from coming through completely into his, Lars's, conscious mind. Something came through... but then it was gone again, in some way concealed.

Lars was aware of nothing but the mental a.n.a.log of static. The Carmpan was doing something subversive, blocking a good coherent episode, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g it up, hiding it somehow. Burying it. Where?