Berserker Omnibus - Berserker Man Part 23

"Autopilot could handle that. Just punch in a destination, and it'll deliver you in-system, near any civilized world you want. Your priest who's been aboard s.p.a.ceships must know that. I take it you want some other kind of piloting."

"Yes. But mainly some detailed information about the drive."

"Tell me what it's all about and maybe I'll provide that information."

Andreas's eyes probed at him, not fiercely but deeply, for what seemed a long time. "Perhaps that would be best." The old priest sighed. "Perhaps other ways . . . tell me, what effect do threats of torture and maiming have upon you?"

Schoenberg half rose, and leaned forward glaring. "High Priest, I am a powerful man out there, in the big world that holds your little world surrounded. Do you think that just anyone can possess his own starship and take it where he likes? I have made it in the interest of several other powerful and ruthless people to look out for my safety, to avenge my death or disappearance. And those peopledoknow exactly where I am and when I am due to return. For every dol of pain you make me suffer, you will feel two, or perhaps ten, of one kind of pain or another. My friends and I can pull down your city and your Temple if you provoke us to it. Now threaten me no more!"

The two men's eyes were still locked when there came a tap at the door and it opened and one of the Inner Circle put in his head, making a slight nodding signal to Andreas. Other business called.

The High Priest sighed and arose. Smiling, skull-faced, he bowed his head very slightly in salute to Schoenberg. "You are a hard man to frighten, outworlder. Nevertheless I think it will be worthwhile to do so. Think for a while on what I have said, and shortly we will talk again."

Suomi was afraid.

He was not simply afraid of being caught by Andreas's soldiers, who yesterday had taken the ship and Barbara and had no doubt also swept up the four other unsuspecting outworlders with little difficulty. No, the night in the thicket had given Suomi plenty of time to think and there was a lot more to it than that.

Hours ago he had left the thicket where yesterday his flight had come to an exhausted halt. Now he was crouched in the poor concealment of some thin, bush-like vegetation near the road that climbed the mountain, watching and waiting-for what he was not exactly sure. He had vague hopes of spying some lone traveler whom he might approach in hopes of getting some kind of help.

Alternatively he imagined another pack train of the kind he had already seen, pa.s.sing by, and a convenient bag of vegetables or haunch of meat tumbling forgotten to the road, where he might spring out a minute later to grab it up. He had as yet found nothing very palatable in the woods and thickets, and so he had not eaten anything worth mentioning in more than a standard day.

He was also thirsty, despite the rainwater he had licked from some dripping leaves, and he was limping fairly badly from yesterday's fall. His back bothered him, and he thought that one of the minor cuts on his leg might be infected, despite the routine immunological precautions taken before leaving Earth.

The thicket into which he had burrowed himself when he stopped running was so dense and extensive that it seemed possible that a man might stay there undiscovered-until it pleased his pursuers to detail a hundred men or so to hunt him out. But perhaps Suomi had no pursuers. On this alien planet he had literally nowhere to go. He suspected strongly that his continued freedom, if it could be called that, was due only to the fact that no particular effort had been made to round him up. He could not believe that the warriors of Hunters' were particularly afraid of dying by his rifle, so it must be that they were not hunting him because more important things were going on.

Realizing that he could not accomplish anything there he had left the thicket. There was a warning to be spread. At moments it seemed possible that the whole thing had been no more than a monstrous practical joke, like an initiation . . . but then he recalled his dark clear thoughts of the night just past, and shivered a little in the warmth of day. It was not only for himself that he feared, and not only for the people who had come with him from Earth. In his mind's eye Suomi could still see with perfect clarity the robot's shattered carapace, the debris of components spilling out. And there, mixed with all the handmade parts . . .

"Softly, outworlder," said a gentle voice quite close behind him.

He whirled and found he was presenting the rifle at a rather short man with sandy hair, who was standing beside a tree six or eight meters off, muscular arms raised and hands open in an unmistakable gesture of peace. The man wore the gray clothing Suomi had seen on G.o.dsmountain's slaves, and tucked into the heavy rope that served him as a belt was a short ma.s.sive sledge. The killer of fallen gladiators. The man stood taller than Suomi remembered and also had a more open and attractive face.

"What do you want?" Suomi held the rifle steady, though his gaze went darting around the woods. No one else was in sight; the slave had come here alone.

"Only to talk with you a little." The man's tone was rea.s.suring. He very slowly lowered his hands but otherwise did not move. "To make common cause with you, if I can, against our common enemies." He nodded in an uphill direction.

Did slaves on Hunters' habitually talk like this? Suomi doubted it. He scarcely remembered hearing them talk at all. He did not relax. "How did you find me?"

"I guessed you might be somewhere near the road by this time, thinking about giving up. I have been trying to find you for an hour, and I doubt anyone else has made the effort."

Suomi nodded. "I guessed that much. Who are you? Not a slave."

"You are right. I am not. But more of that later. Come, move back into the woods, before someone sees us from the road."

Now Suomi did relax, lowering the rifle with shaking hands and following the other back into the trees, where they squatted down to talk.

"First, tell me this," the man demanded at once. "How can we prevent Andreas and his band of thieves from making use of your stolen ship?"

"I don't know. Where are my companions?"

"Held in the Temple, under what conditions I am not sure. You don't look good. I would offer you food and drink, but have none with me at the moment. Why do you think Andreas wants your ship?"

"I am afraid." Suomi shook his head. "If it is only Andreas I suppose he has some simple military use in mind to complete his conquest of this planet. He may think our ship carries weapons of ma.s.s destruction.

It has none."

The man was looking sharply at Suomi. "What did you mean, if it is only Andreas?"

"Have you heard of the berserkers?"

A blank look. "Of course, the death machines of legend. What have they to do with this?"

Suomi began to describe his combat with the man-shaped machine. His hearer was ready to listen.

"I heard a rumor that Mjollnir had walked forth to fight, and was slain," the man in gray mused. "So, it was a berserker that you destroyed?"

"Not exactly. Not entirely. Against a true berserker android this rifle would have been useless. But inside the machine's broken body I found this." He drew from his pocket a small sealed box of shiny metal.

From the box a thick gray cable emerged, to expand into a fan of innumerable gauze-fine fibers at the point where his force packet had sheared it off. "This is a solid-state electronuclear device, in other words part of an artificial brain. Judging from its size, and the number of fibers in this cable, I would say that two or three of these, properly interconnected, should be enough to control a robot that could do physical things better than a man can do them, and also obey simple orders and make simple decisions."

The man reached for the box and weighed it doubtfully in his hand.

Suomi went on: "Many solid-state electronuclear devices are made on Earth and other technological worlds. I have seen countless varieties of them. Do you know how many I have seen that closely resemble this? Exactly one. I saw that in a museum. It was part of a berserker, captured in a s.p.a.ce battle at the Stone Place, long ago."

The man scratched his chin, and handed back the box. "It is hard for me to take a legend as reality."

Suomi felt like grabbing him and shaking him. "Berserkers are very real, I promise you. What do you suppose destroyed the technology of your forefathers, here on Hunters'?"

"We are taught as children that our ancestors were too proud and strong to let themselves remain dependent on fancy machines. Oh, the legends tell of a war against berserkers, too."

"It is not only legend but history."

"All right, history. What is your point?"

"That war cut off your ancestors from the rest of the galaxy for a long time and wrecked their technology-as you say, they were rough men and women who found they could get by without a lot of fancy machines. Made a virtue of necessity. Anyway, it has been taken for granted that Karlsen's victory here destroyed all the berserkers on Hunters' or drove them away. But perhaps one survived, or at least its unliving brain survived when the rest of its machinery was crippled or destroyed. Perhaps that berserker is still here."

His auditor was still receptive but unimpressed. Suomi decided that more explanation was in order. He went on: "On other planets there have been cults of evil men and women who have worshipped berserkers as G.o.ds. I can only guess that there might have been some such people on Hunters' five hundred years ago. After the battle they found their crippled G.o.d somewhere, rescued it and hid it. Built a secret cult around it, worshipped it in secret, generation after generation. Praying to Death, working for the day when they could destroy all life upon this planet."

The man ran strong-looking, nervous fingers through his sandy hair. "But, if you are right, there was more to it than the figure of Mjollnir? The berserker has not been destroyed?"

"I am sure there is more to it than that. The real berserker brain must have included many more of these small units. And other components as well. Probably it put only spare parts into Mjollnir. Or human artisans did, working at the berserker's direction."

"Then why must there be a true berserker, as you put it, here at all? Andreas has very good artisans working for him. Perhaps they only used parts from destroyed berserkers to build the figure of Mjollnir-and one of Thorun as well." He nodded to himself. "That would explain why men swear they have actually seen Thorun walking with the High Priest in the Temple courtyards."

"Excuse me, but it is not possible that any human artisans on this planet designed the robot that attacked me. No matter what components they had to work with. Can you grasp the programming problems involved in designing a machine to run and fight and climb like a man? Better than a man. No human could have climbed that mesa where the machine did it, in a few minutes, hammering in pitons all the way.

And the mechanical engineering difficulties? No. On Earth, Venus, a handful of other planets, there are men and facilities capable of designing such a robot. Only a functioning berserker-brain could do it here."

The two men were quiet for a little while, both thinking, each studying the other. Suomi eased himself into a different position, sitting with his back against a tree trunk. His wounded leg throbbed. At last the Hunterian said: "Suppose a berserker is here as you say, and the priests of G.o.dsmountain have it. What then?"

"You do not understand!" Suomi almost grabbed him by the ragged shirt to attempt a shaking. "Say rather that it has them. How can I begin to tell you what a berserker is?" He sighed and slumped back, feeling hopeless and exhausted. How to convey, to someone who had never seen even depictions on film or holograph, the centuries of ma.s.s destruction berserkers had visited upon the galaxy, the doc.u.mented cases of individual horrors? Whole planets had been sterilized, whole solar systems laid waste by the unliving enemy. People by the thousands or tens of thousands had perished in berserkers' experiments aimed at discovering what made the strange two-legged Earth-descended blobs of protoplasm so resistant to the fundamental truth-a.s.sumption of the berserkers' programming: that life was a disease of matter that had to be expunged. It had all happened here, was still happening somewhere a thousand light years or more away, on the outer edge of man's little domain within the galaxy.

Suomi said quietly: "If it is true that a berserker has captured our ship then it can be for only one purpose; to somehow sterilize this planet of all life."

"You said there were no ma.s.s weapons on the ship!"

"I meant there were none in the usual sense. But there is the drive that brought us between the stars."

Suomi considered. "If the ship were buried beneath this mountain, say, and the drive suddenly turned on full force, the mountain might be blown up into the air and everyone on it killed. Not good enough for a berserker, not if it could find a way of doing worse.

"I'll bet that if the drive were worked on cunningly enough some weapon could be made of it that could sterilize a planet. Perhaps by polluting the atmosphere with radioactivity. The weapon wouldn't have to be instantly effective. There probably won't be another interstellar ship here for fifteen standard years. No way for anyone here to call for outside help, even if they understood what was happening.'

The man in gray was excited at last. He stood up cautiously and looked about, then squatted down again. He fingered the handle of his maul, as if itching to pull it from his belt and fight. "By all the G.o.ds!" he muttered. "It should be effective, whether or not it is the truth!"

"Effective? What should be?"

"It should be effective against G.o.dsmountain's priests, to spread the story that the drive of the captured ship is to be altered, our air poisoned. That a berserker really rules G.o.dsmountain, and means to destroy the world. If we can convince people of that, we will have them!"

"It is the truth, I believe. But to spread any story across the planet will take far too long."

The man with the maul glanced up toward the mountaintop, invisible beyond the trees. "I do not think we will need to go that far. Now. How to put the story in convincing terms? Let's see. Five hundred standard years ago the berserker fleet was here. The demiG.o.d Karlsen drove them out. The priests for some reason have been asking if any of your outworlders mentioned Karlsen; that seems to fit. Now-"

Now Suomi did actually seize him by the shirt, to the Hunterian's great astonishment. "They asked that?"

Suomi barked. "Of course it fits!"

For half an hour thereafter they made their plans.

X.

The four remaining contestants were awakened early from their sleep on the soft groundcover of what Thomas the Grabber had called the G.o.ds' private park. At dawn there erupted a racket of small winged creatures, each defending his bit of territory against encroachment by the others. Farley of Eikosk, roused by the noise of this miniature Tournament, watched it for a while, and then, with sudden awareness of where he was, turned his gaze uphill through the park-like forest, toward the summit of the mountain.

There, in the early morning light, the white walls had a dull and ghostly look. Later, he knew, when he saw them in full sunlight, they would shine a dazzling white. All his life he had listened eagerly, whenever he could, to the tales of travelers who had visited this city. To see its white stones actually before him inspired him with awe.

Thorun lived there.

Thorun actually lived there.

From the moment of Farley's awakening on this morning a sense of unreality grew in him rapidly. He could not fully credit his own presence here on the mountaintop, or his success thus far in the Tournament. (How pleased his father would be, at last, if he should be the winner!) This feeling of unreality persisted through the morning ritual of worship, and through their meager breakfast of cold fried cakes left over from the day before. The dumb slave who served them protested with gestures that no dead wood was available here to make a fire for cooking.

The other slave had gone off somewhere, perhaps on a search for wood. Leros still had not returned.

The priest Yelgir, who still seemed a stranger to Farley, looked stiff-jointed and disheveled after a night spent in the open. He spoke to them apologetically about the fact that no fighting ring had been prepared here in advance.

Yelgir, in consultation with the warriors, chose a flat area of ground and the slave was set to work stripping away the groundcover and stamping flat the earth as best he could. The task took the slave several hours, while the others sat watching.

Farley was not exactly impatient, but the delay was one more change in routine, and made everything all the more unreal for him. At last the ring was ready, however. Yelgir was muttering prayers and it was time for the first two men to fight to take their places.

"Farley of Eikosk-Jud Isaksson."

Now both of them were in the circle from which only one of them could ever walk. But as Jud moved toward him, more slowly than was his wont, it occurred to Farley that death itself might well be different here, almost under the windows of Thorun's hall. Would the loser of this fight really die as men usually did, like some butchered animal? Might he not instead simply look down at his gaping wound, acknowledge defeat with a salute and a courteous nod, and, like one leaving a field of harmless practice, simply walk off yonder through the trees, perhaps to be met halfway by welcoming Mjollnir or Karlsen or even Thorun himself?

In Farley's eyes the scimitar flashed sunlight. Jud was warming up now, starting to come on with his usual fury. Farley suddenly felt free and loose, faster and stronger than ever in his life before. It was as if he now breathed in the immortality of the G.o.ds by merely sharing their high air.

He parried the scimitar with a seeming carelessness that was really something else, and then he stepped in looking for the best way to kill. Now Farley carried his long sword too high, now too low, now he let his blade stray far aside into what should have been a weak position, until he could almost hear his father shouting at him in anger, but none of this was carelessness. Not today. Whatever tactic his whims, his nerves, chose for him was fated to succeed. His blade always came back into position in time to block the scimitar. On the attack his long sword reached closer and closer to Jud's lifeblood.

To Farley the end seemed foreordained and only the suddenness with which it came surprised him. He stood there almost disappointed that the fight was over, while Jud dying on the ground seemed to be trying to tell him something. Jud's life ran out too quickly, before the words could come.

The priest Yelgir cleared his throat. "Omir Kelsumba-Thomas the Grabber." Today he needed no paper to keep track of names.

Standing to one side, Farley was struck by the realization that in this round, for the first time, there would be no other victors to stand at his side watching with him, now and then pa.s.sing a joke or a comment on the fight in progress. Watching alone, except for the priest, he beheld a serene happiness on Kelsumba's face; obviously here was another who felt favored by the G.o.ds today. Things appeared to be different with Thomas the Grabber. Even before the first blow his expression was that of a man who knows himself defeated.

In the center of the ring the two of them closed promptly. The axe flashed out with reckless confidence with what must be Kelsumba's certainty of approaching G.o.dhood. The spear moved with the speed of desperation, and yet as accurately and steadily as if wielded by a G.o.d. Incredibly, the fight was over.

Or was it over? Kelsumba, even with the heavy spear transfixing him, fought on. His axe, though it was much slower now, still rose and fell. Thomas was still unhurt. But instead of backing away and waiting for his man to fall, he chose for some reason to leap in and grab. As the two men wrestled it was still Omir who smiled, and Thomas who looked desperate. But it was quickly demonstrated that Omir was not the stronger of the two, at least not with a spear stuck through him. Only after Thomas had wrenched away the axe and used it for a finishing blow did his face lose its look of desperation. Now the clangor of arms, that had long since silenced the winged quarreling creatures, was ended also. The forest at last was still.

When Schoenberg was brought before him again, about midday, Andreas was seated as before. As soon as the two of them were left alone, the High Priest began: "Since the thought of torture does not immediately terrify you, and I suspect its application might provoke you to some rash attempt at misinforming us about the ship, I have decided I must take an extreme measure to frighten you sufficiently. You have brought it on yourself." Andreas was smiling again, evidently finding his own wit amusing.

Schoenberg, unimpressed, sat down. "How do you mean to terrify me, then?" he answered.

"By saying a few words."

"Andreas, my respect for you is fading. If the threats you have already made have not had their desired effect neither will any mutterings about some great unnameable terror. You are not going to scare me that way. In fact you are not going to scare me at all, not in the way you seem to want."

"I think I can. I think I know what a man like you is truly afraid of."

"What?"

"Perhaps I can do it by saying to you only one word." Andreas clapped his hands together playfully.

Schoenberg waited.

"The one word is his name."

"Thorun. I know that."

"No. Thorun is a toy. My G.o.d is real."

"Well, then. Utter this terrible name." Schoenberg lifted his eyebrows in almost jaunty inquiry.