Berserker - Berserker Base Part 31

Machinery and records were another thing entirely. As the berserker drew near the moon, its telescopes picked up details of the trapped machine. It saw lunar soil heaped over a dome. Its senses peered inside.

Machinery occupied most of what it could see. There was little room for a life support system. A box of a room, and stored air, and tubes through which robot or goodlife could crawl to repair damage; no more. That was rea.s.suring; but design details were unfamiliar.

Hypothesis: the trapped berserker had used life-begotten components for its repairs. There was no sign of a drive; no sign of abandoned wreckage. Hypothesis: one of these craters was a crash site; the cripple had moved its brain and whatever else survived into an existing installation built by life.

Anything valuable in the goodlife's memory was now lost, but perhaps the "fortress moon's" memory was intact. It would know the patterns of life in this vicinity. Its knowledge of technology used by local self-defensive life might be even more valuable.

Hypothesis: it was a trap. There was no fortress moon, only a human voice. The berserker moved in with shields and drive ready. The closer it came, the faster it could dodge beyond the horizon... but it saw nothing resembling weaponry. In any case, the berserker had been allowed to destroy a planet.

Surely there was nothing here that could threaten it. It remained ready nonetheless.

At a hundred kilometers the berserker's senses found no life. Nor at fifty.

The berserker landed next to the heap of lunar earth that goodlife had called "fortress moon." Berserkers did not indulge in rescue operations. What was useful in the ruined berserker would become part of the intact one. So: reach out with a cable, find the brain.

It had landed, and still the fear didn't come. Gage had seen wrecks, but never an intact berserker sitting alongside him. Gage dared not use any kind of beam scanner. He felt free to use his sensors, his eyes.

He watched a tractor detach itself from the berserker and come toward him, trailing, cable.

It was like a dream. No fear, no rage. Hate, yes, but like an abstraction of hate, along with an abstract thirst for vengeance... which felt ridiculous, as it had always felt a bit ridiculous. Hating a berserker was like hating a malfunctioning air conditioner.

Then the probe entered his mind.

The thought patterns were strange. Here they were sharp, basic; here they were complex and blurred.

Was this an older model with obsolete data patterns? Or had the brain been damaged, or the patterns scrambled? Signal for a memory dump, see what can be retneived.

Gage felt the contact, the feedback, as his own thoughts. What followed was not under his control.

Reflex told him to fight! Horror had risen in his mind, impulses utterly forbidden by custom, by education, by all the ways in which he had learned to be human.

It might have felt like rape; how was a man to tell? He wanted to scream. But he triggered the Remora program and felt it take hold, and he sensed the berserker's reaction to Gage within the berserker.

He screamed in triumph. "I lied! I am not goodlife! What I am-"

Plasma moving at relativistic velocities smashed deep into Gage. The link was cut, his senses went blind and deaf. The following blow smashed his brain and he was gone.

Something was wrong. One of the berserker's brain complexes was sick, was dying... was changing, becoming monstrous. The berserker felt evil within itself, and it reacted. The plasma cannon blasted the "fortress moon," then swung round to face backward. It would fire through its own hull to destroy the sick brain, before it was too late.

It was too late. Reflex: Three brains consulted before any major act. If one had been damaged, the view of the others would prevail.

Three brains consulted, and the weapon swung away.

What I am is Hilary Gage. I fought berserkers during my life; but you I will let live. Let me tell you what I've done to you. I didn't really expect to have an audience. Triple-redundant brains? We use that ourselves, sometimes.

I'm not life. I'm not goodlife. I'm the recording of Hilary Gage. I've been running a terraforming project, and you've killed it, and you'll pay for that.

It feels like I'm swearing vengeance on my air conditioner. Well, if my air conditioner betrayed me, why not?

There was always the chance that Harvest might attract a berserker. I was recorded in tandem with what we called a Remora program. I wasn't sure it would interface with unfamiliar equipment. You solved that one yourself, because you have to interface with thousands of years of changes in berserker design.

I'm glad they gave me conscious control of Remora. Two of your brains are me now, but I've left the third brain intact. You can give me the data I need to run this... heap of junk. You're in sorry shape, aren't you? Channith must have done you some damage. Did you come from Channith?

G.o.d curse you. You'll be sorry. You're barely in shape to reach the nearest berserker repair base, and we shouldn't have any trouble getting in. Where is it?

Ah.

Fine. We're on our way, I'm going to read a poem into your memory; I don't want it to get lost. No, no, no; relax and enjoy it, death-machine. You might enjoy it at that. Do you like spilled blood? I lived a b.l.o.o.d.y life.

BERSERKER BASE.

"... it's not a berserker. Not..."

"What?" The face of Naxos looming over Lars, demanding answers, was the first thing that Lars saw when his perception returned to his immediate surroundings. He was pinned flat on his back, but not by berserkers this time. Naxos and Dorothy Totonac were holding down his arms, while Pat hovered over them all.

Lars repeated what he had just discovered: "Not a berserker. This machine we're riding in." There was no doubt that they were riding in it, s.p.a.ceborne-the artificial gravity wavered crazily, so that his body sometimes rose right off the deck, along with those of the people who were trying to restrain him. To Lars, who now had a more-than-intellectual feeling for just how badly damaged their transportation was, the sensation was terrifying.

"You're crazy," Naxos told him flatly.

"No, I'm not. It was a berserker, but it isn't now. Tell you the details later," Lars raised his voice. "Gage, say something rea.s.suring to these people."

The breathy, wheezy voice came from a speaker somewhere nearby: "I'm busy. But I'll try to think of something; meanwhile you'd better all keep those suits on." Lars, who had partially removed his, scrambled to get it on again and sealed.

Gage's 'very human-sounding voice (which was after all a human voice recorded) went on: "I'm going to open a door for you people; I think you'll be marginally safer if you go through it."

And nearby a hatchway opened.

Lars led the way. The others hesitated, then scrambled after him as if afraid of being left behind. Here was a room barely big enough to hold them all, a cell of the kind so many berserkers had, ready to carry goodlife or unwilling prisoners when such were computed to be useful.

Those who had expected to meet their host here looked around uncertainly.

Pat nudged Lars. "If he's human., where is he?"

"He's recorded. A computer program."

She blinked at him. Slowly understanding came. "G.o.d."

"'But be was a human being once, and he still composes poetry. The Carmpan or some of their more gifted allies could reach him, telepathically, through verse. They kept trying to bring him into touch with me directly, and it almost drove me crazy-"

The disembodied voice of Gage returned, explaining tersely how he had managed their getaway. His landing had been unopposed. The central berserker brain of the base, overworked with tactical decisions, had not investigated this strange damaged fighting unit as closely as it might have otherwise.

Nor did it take note that the telepathic prisoners were being spirited away. Then, with the third of his tripart.i.te brain that was still more or less pure berserker. Gage had signaled the repair facility that his most urgent repairs had been completed-as indeed the most urgent of them had-and that he was s.p.a.ceworthy.

Now there was a brief silence, interrupted by booming voices, different voices, also definitely human.

Local radio traffic was being patched into the former prisoners' quarters by Hilary Gage.

It was evident that the Adamant navy along with other hostiles were heavily engaged in attacking the berserker base.

Jameson cheered them on, and gave some further explanation of how the attack had come about.

"There're some people called the Cotabote, who think Adamant ought to be held responsible for everything in the universe. They live on a rock you probably never heard of, called Botea-"

"Oh."

"-and they suddenly started complaining to us of nightmares, of all d.a.m.n things. Strange bad dreams about people sealed-up in rock-"

"Oh," said Lars again.

"Well, one thing led to another. Your chunky partners here, as I say, were sending out a lot of calls.

We'd been wanting to find this base, and we were almost here when we ran into two other fleets that had the same idea in mind. One was a whole armada from around Adam. The other almost as big, from Nguni. Various non-ED people in contact with 'em all, and we got together. We'd have had to turn back otherwise, when we saw the size of this base."

s.p.a.ce pinged and twitched around them with the energies of weapons, lancing and hammering, from swarming ships down at the world below, and from that world back out at the attacking fleets. You could feel the energies through armor, you could feel them through anything.

Pat asked: "What are the Carmpan doing now?"

"I get the feeling that they're making an intense effort to get the attacking human fleets to lay off this particular berserker."

She shuddered. Maybe she hadn't expected that.

There was a greater twitch in s.p.a.ce, a dart and flash somewhere nearby. There were no screens in this prison room from which to watch the battle, but Lars had sensed something like that dart and flash before. Not through his own eyes. "Qwib-qwib," he murmured.

"What's qwib-qwib?"

"Another story that I'll tell you sometime." Lars wondered if the last qwib-qwib in the universe had got its factory up and running somewhere before going kamikaze. He supposed it had.

The plucking and thrumming of s.p.a.ce became gradually less noticeable. Gage, too damaged to do much fighting, was fleeing the battle as best he could. Gradually Lars began to believe that he, that all of them, might survive.

Someone in the jammed compartment started up a song.

end.