Berserker Omnibus - Berserker Man Part 14

Even as I in my greed have sometimes dealt with the bones of a little roast fowl . . . but no, these bones have not been gnawed for nourishment. Only broken, and broken again, as if by some creature more wantonly savage than any wolf."

The name of Brother Jovann symbolized gentleness and love to Modern historians as well as laymen, to skeptics as well as the orthodox temple-members who venerated him as a saint. Like Vincento, St.

Jovann had become a towering folk figure, only half-understood.

"We're just this hour catching on to Jovann's practical importance," said Time Ops' voice in Derron's head, as Derron ran. "With Vincento stabilized, and all our observers concentrated on the area you're in, we're getting a better look at it than ever before. Historically, Jovann's lifeline goes on about fifteen years from your point, and all along the way it radiates support to other lines. What has been described as 'good-turn-a-day stuff.' Then these other lines tend to radiate life support in turn, and the process propagates on up through history. Our best judgment now is that the disarmament treaty three hundred years after Jovann's death will fall through, and that an international nuclear war will wipe out our civilization in pre-Modern times, if St. Jovann is terminated at your point."

When Time Ops paused, a girl's voice came in briskly. "A new report for Colonel Odegard."

Walking again, Derron asked, "Lisa?"

She hesitated for just an instant, then continued, business first. "Colonel, the lifeline that was described to you earlier as having an embryonic appearance is moving out of the safety zone after the other two. It seems to be traveling at a high rate of speed, faster than a man or a load-beast can run. We can give no explanation of this. Also, you're to bear five degrees left."

"Understand." Derron turned five degrees left, as near as he could judge. He was getting out of the lowlands now, and there was a little less mud to impede his progress, "Lisa?"

"Derron, they let me come on because I said I'd tend strictly to business."

"Understand. You do that." He judged he had walked fifty steps and began to run once more, his breath immediately turning into gasps. "I just want to say-I wish-you were carrying my baby."

There was a small, completely feminine sound. But when Lisa's voice came back on intelligibly, it was cool again, with more bearing corrections to be given.

From the corner of his eye Brother Saile caught the distant moving of something running toward them through the trees and brush. He turned, squinting under the afternoon sun, and with surprise at his own relative calm he saw that their search for the wolf had come to an end. Wolf? The thing approaching should perhaps be called monster or demon instead, but he could not doubt it was the creature that had spread terror among the peasants, come now to find the men who dared to search for it.

Poisonous-looking as a silver wasp, the man-sized creature was still a hundred yards away, running through the scrub forest silent, catlike, four-legged. Brother Saile realized that he should now attempt to lay down his life for his friend, he should shove Brother Jovann back and rush forward himself to distract the thing. And something in Brother Saile wanted to achieve such heroism, but his belly and feet had now turned to lead, leaving him immobile as a statue. He tried to shout a warning, but even his throat was paralyzed by fear. At last he did manage to seize Brother Jovann by the arm and point.

"Ah," said Jovann, coming out of a reverie and turning to look. A score of paces away, the monster was slowing to a halt, crouching on its four slender legs, looking from one friar to the other as if to decide which of them it wanted. Peasants glimpsing the creature might call it wolf. Shreds of gray fabric festooned it here and there, as if it had been clothed and then had, beastlike, torn itself out of the garment. Naked and hairless and s.e.xless, terrible and beautiful at once, it flowed like quicksilver as it took two rapid strides closer to the men. Then it settled again into a crouching, silent statue.

"In G.o.d's n-name, come away!" Brother Saile whispered, his jaws shivering. "It is no natural beast.

Come away, Brother Jovann!"

But Jovann only raised his hands and signed the horror with the wedge; he seemed to be blessing it rather than exorcising.

"Brother Wolf," he said lovingly, "you do indeed look unlike any beast that I have ever seen before, and I know not from what worldly parentage you may have sprung. But there is in you the spirit of life; therefore never forget that our Father above has created you, as He has created all other creatures, so we are all children of the one Father."

The wolf darted forward and stopped, stepped and stopped, inched up and stopped again, in a fading oscillation. In its open mouth Saile thought he saw fangs not only long and sharp, but actually blurring with vicious motion like the teeth of some incredible saw. At last there came forth a sound, and Saile was reminded simultaneously of ringing sword blades and of human agony.

Jovann dropped to one knee, facing the crouching monster more on a level. He spread his arms as if willing an embrace. The thing bounded in a blur of speed toward him, then stopped as if a leash had caught it. It was still six or eight paces from the kneeling man. Again it uttered a sound; Saile, half-fainting, seemed to hear the creak of the torture rack and the cry of the victim rise together.

Jovann's voice had nothing in it of fear, but only blended sternness with its love.

"Brother Wolf, you have killed and pillaged like a wanton criminal, and for that you deserve punishment!

But accept instead the forgiveness of all the men you have wronged. Come now, here is my hand. In the name of the Holy One, come to me, and pledge that from this day on you will live at peace with men.

Come!"

Derron, approaching at a staggering, exhausted run, first heard a murmur of speech, and then saw the figure of Brother Saile standing motionless, looking off to one side at something concealed from Derron by a thicket. Derron lurched to a halt, raising his staff but not yet aiming it. He knew now that Saile was not the berserker. What Operations had reported about the embryo-like lifeline had fitted in at last in Derron's mind with something the berserker had said to him in the cathedral, fitted in to make a wondrous kind of sense. Three steps sideways brought Derron to where he could see what Saile was gaping at.

He had come in time to see the berserker-wolf take the last hesitant step in its advance. To see it raise one metal paw-and with its steel claw-fingers gently touch the kneeling friar's extended hand.

"So, my guess was right; it had become a living thing," said Derron. His head was resting in Lisa's lap, and he could if he chose look up past her face at the buried park's real tree tops and artificial sun. "And, as such, susceptible to St. Jovann's domination. To his love . . . I guess there's no other way to put it."

Lisa, stroking his forehead, raised her eyebrows questioningly.

Derron put on a defensive frown. "Oh, there are rational explanations. The most complex and compact machine the berserkers ever built, driven up through twenty thousand years of evolutionary gradient from their staging area-something like life was bound to happen to it. Or so we say now. And Jovann and some other men have had amazing power over living things: that's fairly well doc.u.mented, even if we rationalists can't understand it."

"I looked up the story about St. Jovann and the wolf," said Lisa, still stroking his brow. "It says that, after he tamed it, the animal lived out its days like a pet dog in the village."

"That would refer to the original wolf. . . . I guess the little change in history we had wasn't enough to change the legend. I suppose it was the berserker's plan all along to kill the original animal and take its place during the taming episode. Killing Jovann then might make people think he had been a fraud all his life. But tearing the original wolf into bits was an irrational, lifelike thing to do-if we'd known about that sooner, we might have guessed what'd happened to our enemy. There were other little clues along the way-things it did for no reason that would be valid for a machine. And I really should have guessed in the cathedral, when it started babbling to me about pa.s.sages between life and not-life. Anyway, Operations isn't as trusting as Jovann and his biographers. We've got the thing in a cage in present-time while the scientists try to decide what to . . ."

Derron had to pause there, to accommodate a young lady who was bending over him with the apparent intention of being kissed.

" . . . Did I mention how nice some of that country looked around there?" he went on, a little later. "Of course, the big hill is reserved for the rebuilding of the cathedral. But I thought you and I might drop into a Homestead Office some time soon, you know, before the postwar rush starts, and put our names down for one of those other hilltops. . . ."

And Derron had to pause again.

Berserker's Planet I.

The dead man's voice was coming live and clear over ship's radio into theOrion's lounge, and the six people gathered there, the only people alive within several hundred light years, were listening attentively for the moment, some of them only because Oscar Schoenberg, who ownedOrionand was driving her on this trip, had indicated thathewanted to listen. Carlos Suomi, who was ready to stand up to Schoenberg and expected to have a serious argument with him one of these days, was in this instance in perfect agreement with him. Athena Poulson, the independent one of the three women, had made no objection; Celeste Servetus, perhaps the least independent, had made a few but they meant nothing. Gustavus De La Torre and Barbara Hurtado had never, in Suomi's experience, objected to any decision made by Schoenberg.

The dead man's voice to which they listened was not recorded, only mummified by the approximately five hundred years of s.p.a.cetime that stretched between Hunters' system, where the radio signal had been generated, andOrion's present position in intragalactic s.p.a.ce about eleven hundred light years (or five and a half weeks by ship) from Earth. It was the voice of Johann Karlsen, who about five hundred standard years ago had led a battle fleet to Hunters' system to skirmish there with a berserker fleet and drive them off. That was some time after he had smashed the main berserker power and permanently crippled their offensive capabilities at the dark nebula called the Stone Place.

Most of the bulkhead s.p.a.ce in the lounge was occupied by viewscreens, and then, as now, they were adjusted for the purpose, the screens brought in the stars with awesome realism. Suomi was looking in the proper direction on the screen, but from this distance of five hundred light years it was barely possible without using telescopic magnification to pick out Hunters' sun, let alone to see the comparatively minor flares of the s.p.a.ce battle Karlsen had been fighting when he spoke the words now coming into the s.p.a.ce yacht's lounge for Schoenberg to brood over and Suomi to record. Briefly the two men looked somewhat alike, though Suomi was smaller, probably much younger, and had a rather boyish face.

"How can you be sure that's Karlsen's voice?" Gus De La Torre, a lean and dark and somehow dangerous-looking man, asked now. He and Schoenberg were sitting in soft ma.s.sive chairs facing each other across the small diameters of the lounge. The other four had positioned their similar chairs so that the group made an approximate circle.

"I've heard it before. This same sequence." Schoenberg's voice was rather soft for such a big, tough-looking man, but it was as decisive as usual. His gaze, like Suomi's, was on the viewscreen, probing out among the stars as he listened intently to Karlsen. "On my last trip to Hunters'," Schoenberg went on softly, "about fifteen standard years ago, I stopped in this region-fifteen lights closer-in, of course-and managed to find this same signal. I listened to these same words and recorded some of them, just as Carlos is doing now." He nodded in Suomi's direction.

Karlsen broke a crackling radio silence to say: "Check the lands on that hatch if it won't seal-should I have to tell you that?" The voice was biting, and there was something unforgettable about it even when the words it uttered were only peevish sc.r.a.ps of jargon indistinguishable from those spoken by the commander of any other difficult and dangerous operation.

"Listen to him," Schoenberg said. "If that's not Karlsen, who could it be? Anyway, when I got back to Earth after the last trip I checked what I had recorded against historians' records made on his flagship, and confirmed it was the same sequence."

De La Torre made a playful tut-tutting sound. "Oscar, did n.o.body ask you how you came by your recording? You weren't supposed to be out in this region of s.p.a.ce then, were you, any more than we are now?"

"Pah. n.o.body pays that much attention. Interstellar Authority certainly doesn't."

Suomi had the impression that Schoenberg and De La Torre had not known each other very long or very well, but had met in some business connection and had fallen in together because of a common interest in hunting, something that few people now shared. Few people on Earth, at least, which was the home planet of everyone aboard the ship.

Karlsen said: "This is the High Commander speaking. Ring three uncover. Boarding parties, start your action sequence."

"Signal hasn't decayed much since I heard it last," Schoenberg mused. "The next fifteen lights toward Hunters' must be clean." Without moving from his chair he dialed a three-dimensional holographic astrogation chart into existence and with his lightwriter deftly added a symbol to it. The degree of clean emptiness of the s.p.a.ce between them and their destination was of importance because, although a starship's faster-than-light translation took place outside of normal s.p.a.ce, conditions in adjacent realms of normal s.p.a.ce had their inescapable effects.

"There'll be a good gravitational hill to get up," said Karlsen on the radio. "Let's stay alert."

"Frankly, all this bores me," said Celeste Servetus (full figure, Oriental and black and some strain of Nordic in her ancestry, incredibly smooth taut skin beneath her silver body paint, wig of what looked like silver mist). Here lately it was Celeste's way to display flashes of insolence toward Schoenberg, to go through periods of playing what in an earlier age would have been described as hard-to-get. Schoenberg did not bother to look at her now. She had already been got.

"We wouldn't be here now, probably, if it weren't for that gentleman who's talking on the radio." This was Barbara Hurtado. Barbara and Celeste were much alike, both playgirls brought along on this expedition as items for male consumption, like the beer and the cigars; and they were much different, too.

Barbara, a Caucasian-looking brunette, was as usual opaquely clothed from knees to shoulders, and there was nothing ethereal about her. If you saw her inert, asleep, face immobile, and did not hear her voice or her laugh, or behold the grace with which she moved, you might well think her nothing beyond the ordinary in s.e.xual attractiveness.

Alive and in motion, she was as eye-catching as Celeste. They were about on a par intellectually, too, Suomi had decided. Barbara's remark implying that present-day interstellar human civilization owed its existence to Karlsen and his victories over the berserkers was a truism, not susceptible to debate or even worthy of reply.

The berserkers, automated warships of terrible power and effectiveness, had been loosed on the galaxy during some unknown war fought by races long vanished before human history began. The basic program built into all berserkers was to seek out and destroy life, whenever and wherever they found it. In the dark centuries of their first a.s.saults on Earth-descended man, they had come near overwhelming his modest dominion among the stars. Though Karlsen and others had turned them back, forced them away from the center of human-dominated s.p.a.ce, there were still berserkers in existence and men still fought and died against them on the frontiers of man's little corner of the galaxy. Not around here, though. Not for five hundred years.

"I admit his voice does something to me," Celeste said, shifting her position in her chair, stretching and then curling her long naked silver legs.

"He loses his temper in a minute here," said Schoenberg.

"And why shouldn't he? I think men of genius have that right." This was Athena Poulson in her fine contralto. Despite her name, her face showed mainly Oriental ancestry. She was better looking than nine out of ten young women, carrying to the first decimal place what Celeste brought to the third. Athena was now wearing a simple one-piece suit, not much different from what she usually wore in the office. She was one of Schoenberg's most private and trusted secretaries.

Suomi, wanting to make sure he caught Karlsen's temper-losing on his recording, checked the little crystal cube resting on the flat arm of his chair. He had adjusted it to screen out conversation in the lounge and pick up only what came in by radio. He reminded himself to label the cube as soon as he got it back to his stateroom; generally he forgot.

"How they must have hated him," said Barbara Hurtado, her voice now dreamy and far away.

Athena looked over. "Who? The people he lost his temper at?"

"No, those hideous machines he fought against. Oscar, you've studied it all. Tell us something about it."

Schoenberg shrugged. He seemed reluctant to talk very much on the subject although it obviously interested him. "I'd say Karlsen was a real man, and I wish I could have known him. Carlos here has perhaps studied the period more thoroughly than I have."

"Tell us, Carl," Athena said. She was sitting two chairs away. Suomi's field was the psychology of environmental design. He had been called in, some months ago, to consult with Schoenberg and a.s.sociates on the plans for a difficult new office, and there he had met Athena . . . so now he was here, on a big-game hunting expedition, of all things.

"Yes, now's your chance," De La Torre put in. Things did not generally go quite smoothly between him and Suomi, though the abrasion had not yet been bad enough to open up an acknowledged quarrel.

"Well," said Suomi thoughtfully, "in a way, you know, those machines did hate him."

"Oh no," said Athena positively, shaking her head. "Not machines."

Sometimes he felt like hitting her.

He went on: "Karlsen is supposed to have had some knack of choosing strategy they couldn't cope with, some quality of leadership . . . whatever he had, the berserkers couldn't seem to oppose him successfully.

They're said to have placed a higher value on his destruction than on that of some entire planets."

"The berserkers made special a.s.sa.s.sin machines," Schoenberg offered unexpectedly. "Just to get Karlsen."

"Are you sure of that?" Suomi asked, interested. "I've run into hints of something like that, but couldn't find it definitely stated anywhere."

"Oh, yes." Schoenberg smiled faintly. "If you're trying to study the matter you can't just ask Infocenter on Earth for a printout; you have to get out and dig a little more than that."

"Why?" Infocenter, as a rule, could promptly reproduce anything that was available as reference material anywhere on Earth.

"There are still some old government censor-blocks in their data banks holding information on berserkers."

Suomi shook his head. "Why in the world?"

"Just official inertia, I suppose. n.o.body wants to take the time and trouble to dig them out. If you mean why were the censor-blocks inserted in the first place, well, it was because at one time there were some people who worshipped the d.a.m.ned things; berserkers, I mean."

"That's hard to believe," Celeste objected. She tried to say more but was interrupted by Karlsen shouting in anger, chewing out his men about something unintelligibly technological.

"That's about the end," said Schoenberg, reaching for a control beside his chair. The frying crackle of radio static died away. "There're several hours of radio silence following." Schoenberg's eyes went shifting restlessly now to his astrogational chart. "So there was some dimwitted bureaucratic policy of restricting information about berserkers . . . the whole thing is fascinating, ladies and gents, but what say we move on toward our hunting?"

Without pretense of waiting for agreement he began to set his astrogational and drive computers to take them on toward Hunters'. It would be another seventeen or eighteen standard days beforeOrionarrived in-system there. Exact timing was not possible in interstellar travel. It was something like piloting a sailing ship in a sea full of variable currents, depending upon winds that were undependable from day to day even though they held to a fairly consistent pattern. Variable stars, pulsars, spinars and quasars within the galaxy and out of it had each their effects upon the subfoundation of s.p.a.ce through which the starship moved. Black holes of various sizes committed their wrenching gravitational enormities upon the fabric of the Universe. The explosions of supernovae far and near sent semieternal shock waves lapping at the hull.

The interstellar ship that effectively outpaces light does not, cannot, carry aboard itself all the power needed to make it move as it does move. Only tapping the gravitational-inertial resources of the universe can provide such power, as the winds were tapped to drive the sailing ships of old.

Though the artificial gravity maintained its calm dominion in the lounge a change in lighting of the holographic chart signalled thatOrionwas under way. Schoenberg stood up, and stretched expansively, seeming to grow even bigger than he was. "On to Hunters'!" he announced. "Who'll join me in a drink?

To the success of the hunt, and the enjoyment of any other amus.e.m.e.nts we may run into."

They all would have a drink. But Athena took only a sip before dropping her gla.s.s away into the recycling station. "Shall we get our chess tournament moving again, Oscar?"

"I think not." Schoenberg stood with one hand behind his back under the short tails of his lounging jacket, almost posing, savoring his own drink. "I'm going below. Time we got the firing range set up and got in a little practice. We're not going after pheasant, exactly . . . we'll have enough of tournaments after we land, perhaps." His intelligent eyes, lighted now by some private amus.e.m.e.nt, skipped around at all of them, seemed to linger longest, by a fraction of a second, on Suomi. Then Schoenberg turned and with a little wave went out of the lounge.

The party broke up. After taking his recorder back to his stateroom, Suomi started out again to see what the firing range was going to be like, and ran into De La Torre in the pa.s.sageway.

Suomi asked: "What was that all about, 'enough of tournaments after we land'?"

"He's told you nothing about the tournament he wants to watch?"

"No. What kind?"

De La Torre smiled, and would not or could not give him a straight answer.

II.

In the camp by the placid river, under G.o.dsmountain's wooded flanks, there were sixty-four warriors when all were a.s.sembled at last, on this warm morning in the eastern-sunrise season. Out of the sixty-four there were not more than four or five who had ever seen each other before because they had come each from his own district, town, fiefdom, nomadic band or island, from every corner of the inhabitable world.

Some had journeyed here from the sh.o.r.es of the boundless eastern ocean. Others had come from the edge of permanently inhabited territory to the north, where spring, already a sixtieth-of-an-old-man's-lifetime old, was melting free the glacier-beast and rime-worm. From the north came the mightiest hunters of this world named for hunting. Others of these warriors had come from the uncrossable shattered desert that lay to the west of the lands of men, and others still from the tangle of rivers and swamps in the south that blended finally into ocean again and blocked all travel in that direction.