Berserker Omnibus - Berserker Man Part 35

"No," she answered weakly. Of course there were innumerable code names that she had never heard.

She was trying to imagine what kind of weapons system might have her eleven-year-old plugged into it.

Frank's child too, of course, and she could well imagine a boy of unusual ability. The whole idea still seemed insane to her, which did not mean that desperate men and women, Frank Marcus one of their number, were not going to come up with something like it for their next effort in the war. Elly's imagination presented her a picture of her child, amputated somehow to fit a set of Frank-like boxes, and fired off into the void. . . .

"From what we know of Lancelot it is a horror," Stal was saying. "And we intend to save Michel from it.

Michel, that is what his adoptive parents named him. Here, Elly, I have a picture."

Metal-steady in Stal's wiry fingers, there appeared a photograph that had been taken somewhere out of doors. On a second-story porch on the front of a log building, a young boy stood gazing upward toward the camera. His hands, large and square-looking like a workman's, were on the railing and he squinted into a wind that pulled at his long, fair hair. Above his head the roof was steep and Elly, thinkingAlpine, knew a chill of beginning conviction.

The clarity of the boy's face had been somehow enhanced, at the expense of peripheral details. He was good-looking, Elly thought, in a rather sharp-featured way, and in his forehead and in his eyes she involuntarily discovered something of herself. What there might be of Frank Marcus was not so easy to discover.

Both men were obviously waiting for her reaction. "Michel what?" she finally asked them.

"Geulincx," said Stal. "An eminent Alpine family you may have heard of. Folk art. Woodcarving."

"I haven't been paying much attention to art of any kind." At last she had produced a sentiment for which Mabuchi's face could register approval. "I still don't understand-except that you must think this kid is the Savior. And you think I am his mother. If so, is this the way you honor me?"

The men exchanged glances, after which Mabuchi went out, evidently controlling struggling emotions with a great effort.

"I expect you will be of great help to us," Stal explained then. "When we have Michel on board here, and when both you and he have truly grasped the situation. What happens when we liberate him from the badlife may very well be traumatic. Therefore-Savior or not-a mother's care may be important."

"You expect to simply land this ship at the proving grounds somewhere and load him on board, a.s.suming he's really there? Without-"

"Without resistance from the badlife? No, lady, I do not expect that. But provisions have been made."

His stiff lips moved a trifle, almost smiling.

"Are you the captain of this ship, Stal?"

"I? No."

"I demand to see the captain, then."

"Your chance will come."

"Now."

"I have no orders to arrange such a meeting. But perhaps in this case I should use initiative." After staring at Elly a thoughtful moment longer, Stal suddenly bent and reached under her berth. His hand emerged holding a heavy metal case, and she was reminded at once of the thing she remembered seeing him carry in the Temple. There, to the degree that she had thought of it at all, she must have a.s.sumed that it was some kind of holography equipment, a common piece of tourist baggage.

Stal swung the empty berth opposite down from the wall. Then, with the care of one handling a valued object, he hoisted the case up into the berth, securing it there deftly with the common acceleration restraints. Then there was a click, as Stal opened a small door on the front of the case-or perhaps the door had opened automatically, Elly was not sure. Something very thin and snakily metallic drew itself out of the case, almost like a line sketched in the air. It reached across the s.p.a.ce between berths for one of Elly's almost immobilized fingers, and stung her briefly.

"What-?"

The sinuous limb withdrew. Then, just above the place where the arm had disappeared, a new opening in the case revealed what looked like the subtle vibration of a broad-spectrum liquid lens. Elly had the uncomfortable impression that her whole form was being scanned intently.

"Just a little blood test, I should imagine," Stal said, in a voice that was possibly intended to be soothing.

"The Co-ordinator will wish to make absolutely sure that you are who we think you are. And perhaps to confirm some details of Michel's genetic inheritance."

"You-imagine?" Elly had never before seen a robot medic that looked very much like- From the small case issued words. They came in a ridiculously squeaky voice, which under other circ.u.mstances might possibly have offered her at least momentary amus.e.m.e.nt. The voice said sharply: "You will tell this life-unit nothing more without further orders."

Stal bowed at once. Stammering, he made humble acknowledgement of the Co-ordinator's command.

But Elly could no longer see or hear him.

EIGHT.

Some ten standard years ago, operations headquarters for the new proving grounds had been established on the surface of the Uranian satellite Miranda. Under one dome the structure offered room for a hundred humans to work and live; some of the quarters could be called luxurious, and all were at least reasonably comfortable. At the order of the President of Earth provision had also been made for housing members of any of the very few known non-Earthly intelligent races. So far none of these had ever appeared as guests.

"Told 'em when they built it that we'd never see a Carmpan here." This from Tupelov, who today was conducting a grand tour of the facility for one lone and probably lonely guest. Walking normally in the augmented gravity, he led Carmen Geulincx from the lobby of the living quarters out into the central operations room. Here one tall wall was made up almost entirely of viewing ports, all of them at the moment cleared.

"Oh!" said Carmen. Then she added, quite unnecessarily, "That's Ura.n.u.s itself."

The solar system of her homeworld contained no sight at all like this. Her hand on Tupelov's arm, they walked right up to the ports. The blue-green gas giant, a great scimitar of its surface in direct sunlight at the moment, seemed to be almost leaning right against the outer surface of the heavy gla.s.s. What could be seen of Miranda's own slaggy skin, just underneath and outside the port, was bathed by reflection from the planet, producing an eerie underwater glow.

Carmen hung back for a moment, and the Secretary tugged his arm forward, so that she came with him rather than let go. Standing just inside a port, he pointed out to her the moons Oberon and Ariel, each turning toward the distant Sun a bright miniature of Ura.n.u.s' own crescent. The satellites were moving perceptibly, in the plane of the monster's spinbulging equator, and the same aquamarine light that lay on the Mirandan landscape tinged also the dull, scarred flanks that the two other visible moons turned toward their primary.

"t.i.tania and Umbriel are evidently hiding behind Daddy at the moment," said Tupelov.

"And the rings . . ." breathed Carmen. "Ahh, beautiful."

"Sometimes you can't see them at all, even from here." But sometimes, as now, the great circlets, like ghosts of the rings of Saturn, worked like giant diffraction gratings, shredding cold sunlight into a nebulous multicolored spectrum, and sending a sample of it in through the ports. Tupelov tried a new metaphor: "A rainbow ballet skirt for a fat, dancing planet."

Carmen, perhaps through kindness, made no comment on that effort. "Where's Earth?" she asked at last.

He had to get right up against the gla.s.s and squint into the incoming Sunlight. "There. The bluish star."

Carmen moved up close beside him and it felt natural to rest a pointing forearm on her shoulder; she was as tall as he.

"It looks so near Sol," she said tritely. Even at this alt.i.tude in the System there was no doubt which star lay at its center.

"It is. Very near. Out here we're nineteen times as far away. That's Mars, see, looking red, right beside the Earth."

"Yes. And I think I can recognize Venus now. Inward, looking brighter."

"Right you are."

"And beyond. That's Orion, isn't it?-you pointed it out to me from Moonbase. It doesn't look any different at all."

To Tupelov it looked bigger. They had left a village and climbed a little hill, and now looking back past the village they saw a distant mountain practically unchanged. In angular measurement a little shrunken, but in subjective vision magnified, because of the vast shrinkage of the houses and the streets that they had left behind.

For a human mind connected to Lancelot's well-nigh supernatural vision-what would the effect be like?

Tupelov asked, "How does Michel like all this traveling?"

"Oh, I think he enjoys it. Not that he ever tells me a lot about how he feels. Do you and Vera have any children, Mr. Tupelov?"

"No." He tried to make it sound just a bit regretful.

"You're very kind to take the time to show me all these things."

"Oh, not at all." It was time he would have had to use on things of secondary importance anyway, while Michel and the latest refinement of the equipment were being melded for the first tests at the proving grounds. "I'll tell you a secret," Tupelov continued, sounding confidential though there were twenty other people in the big room. "Being nice to certain people is part of my job, just as being nasty to others is part of it also. But for you I'd be nice anyway."

The athletic lady from far away didn't know quite what to make of that. Well, it seemed he didn't yet know his own mind regarding her, which was doubtless why he talked that way.

Turning away from the ports at last, he led her closer to the center of the room. "Here's the Moonbase ticker."

"Ticker? Why do you call it that?"

"I guess some of the ancient models actually used to tick. The name, as applied to remote printers, goes way back." Coming through as usual across the ticker's screens and on its writer were streams of information all more or less relevant to Defense. Some of the data were answers to questions transmitted from here down to Moonbase hours ago, and some were questions that the people down there had thought up for the Secretary or his aides during the few hours since he had left them. "See, when it takes more than two hours to beam a message one way, you don't wait for an answer, you just keep chattering." Tupelov briskly tapped the human operator's shoulder, and in a different tone demanded, "Any word from Lombok yet?"

"Negative, sir."

"Earth isthatfar." Carmen was musing aloud, looking back toward the ports. "And that's two hours'

communication time. And Alpine ismonthsaway, even moving at multiples of the speed of light. We can't really grasp it, can we? I can't, anyway."

He was wondering whether he ought to try to commiserate with Carmen over her separation from her husband, when a double door opened on the far side of the big room. "Here we go," he said instead.

"Here comes Michel."

The kid was garbed in Lancelot over a tight-fitting orange undersuit. As usual, he looked calm, intent, and ready to go. Carmen immediately hurried over to her son to make a little fuss about him, her hands stroking the invisible forcefields that guarded his face and tender neck as if there might be a collar there to be turned up. Then, with a technique she had discovered on Moonbase, she reached inside and actually touched his cheek. It could be done, as long as the reaching hand moved slowly enough, and the wearer was willing to be touched. Tupelov found himself wishing, not for the first time, that the d.a.m.ned thing lookedmore formidable; small wonder that half the bra.s.s were unable to generate any faith in it. It was much too late now, of course, to make any design changes for appearance's sake. But it would have been easier to sell to everyone if it had looked more like a suit of armor. Somehow this version didn't appear to be able to keep its wearer dry in the rain, let alone . . . Actually, it made the kid look like some kind of fairy in the school play.

Carmen, abruptly realizing that everyone else was waiting for her to get out of the way, dropped her hands and with a few nervous words took herself aside.

Tupelov stepped forward. "Michel, I hope this time you've been adequately briefed on what's expected.

I hear we've been a little lax about that in the past."

Michel answered clearly. "They said that this time you just want me to fly all the way around Miranda."

"That's right. After you've done that we'll talk about what comes next. Some of us are going to be following along close beside you, in a scoutship. Ready?"

Elly Temesvar, recovering from her faint, had no idea how much time had elapsed since her introduction to the Co-ordinator, except that her body in its prolonged bondage was beginning to be uncomfortable in several ways. The restraints were as tight as ever. The door to the corridor was closed again, and the berth opposite hers had been swung back up into the bulkhead. She was alone.

Except, of course, that.i.tmight have ordered itself put back under the berth she lay upon.

It was time for a little deliberate deep breathing. She was not going to allow herself to sail off into another faint, no matter what. But fear and confinement were making her arms and legs feel so weak that she was not sure she would be able to stand up even if she were set free. . . .

The reopening of the cabin door actually came as a relief. A youngish, heavy-bodied woman looked in.

Her heavy b.r.e.a.s.t.s seemed to be bound, to flatten them, by some constricting fabric underneath a steel-colored shirt. Elly could not tell if she was one more of the pseudo-tourists from the Temple or not.

"Where-" Elly began, and discovered that her mouth was now so dry that the simplest speech was difficult.

"Where what?" The woman's voice was harsh, like a reedy imitation of Stal's. She came to stand right beside the bunk, evidently with no fear in her legs of anything that might be beneath it. "Never mind.

There's nothing that you need to know just yet."

"Get me a drink," Elly managed, in a whisper.

"All right. But don't make any fuss that's going to bother them out in the control room." What was probably the same spray device that had been used in the Temple appeared in the woman's hand. "Or off you go to sleep again."

Just as at Moonbase, a rink-sized portion of the Mirandan surface had been smoothed and prepared, and starting marks laid out. The natural gravity here was ridiculously weak, so that Michel/Lancelot drifted without even trying, and his suited human escorts were variously anch.o.r.ed and attached to one another with lines. For a small distance beyond the edges of the smoothed arena the floodlights made the natural land look like broken gla.s.s and cinders. The surface notched up frequently in man-sized sawteeth, local features nicking a dark horizon that circled the floodlit area and the adjacent operations building at a distance of no more than a few hundred meters. Ura.n.u.s' polar cap of sunlight, half below the horizon now, still washed the landscape, the dark building and its docked scoutships, with fading underwater light.

In the opposite direction, the large moon that they had told Michel was called Oberon was shifting his own tiny crescent, as swifter Miranda in her smaller orbit began to overtake him. When Michel had first heard the names, he had wondered briefly about coincidence; but right now there were other things that seemed to need wondering about more.

From here, Lancelot's eyes could scan interplanetary s.p.a.ce with fair efficiency, in particular the regular approach lanes leading to the solar system's inner harbors. Without much effort Michel could pick out at least a dozen s.p.a.ceships of various sizes, moving in their several directions at various speeds. Though all of the ships that he could see looked spherical, and all were enormously distant, Michel thought he could at least begin to distinguish types. Those of the military somehow moved a little differently, radiating a different blend of energies, even here in the gravitational deeps of the solar system where nothing like full interstellar speed could safely be attained.

A few meters from where Michel drifted amid his small bodyguard of technicians, suited, watchful and mostly silent, the scoutship that was to pace him on his first circuit of Miranda rested, still docked against the hemispherical bulk of the operations building. Between observations of ships and moons, Michel could switch his attention to what some of the people in the building and the nearby ship were saying.

There were a good many words he could not catch, but with every minute of practice there were a few more that he could.

At the moment the most easily recognizable voices were those of Mr. Tupelov and Dr. Iyenari.

Relatively near, the two men were supposed to ride the scout during the test but were at the moment exercising what Michel had come to understand was one of the most noticeable privileges of rank, that of keeping other people waiting.

Tupelov's voice said, " . . . still no other successful wearers in the . . . or so . . . possibility of trying to clone him."

Moons and ships dropped out of Michel's thoughts for the moment. He stared at the building's side as if Lancelot might be able to see through that.

Iyenari: "-never worked too well, historically . . . Marcus is an example . . ."

Tupelov: " . . . the good colonel out to stud, perhaps . . . follow one order at least without any argument.

Then the . . . Michel when he's a little older. Do me a little report . . . speed up his maturation."

Iyenari (with some feeling, only surprise perhaps): " . . . you had started that . . . risky to mess around with . . . hormonal . . . only one we've got. But I'll check it out."

Tupelov: "Do that."

The two men were easier to hear, now, walking toward the scoutship and about to enter it. Michel shifted his gaze back to the sky. Another moon in view now, this one also being overtaken. Would this be Umbriel? Two sets of clumsy feet were entering the scoutship from the building now, men's voices innocently greeting his mother, who had got on ahead of them.

Umbriel, if that was truly its name, occulted a bright nameless star. What would it be like to live on Umbriel? Alone, of course. Except for Lancelot.

Hormonal treatments. He was a little vague about that, but in general he thought he understood.