Berserker Omnibus - Berserker Man Part 9

When they came up to him he said, no longer angry, "My leg gives me trouble. I think the path will be easier along the water's edge."

Between his friends, he moved toward the sound of surf. He went slowly, for in truth his leg did feel worse, having stiffened while he sat. No matter, now. He walked along thinking only in disconnected pictures and phrases, since the time for thought and worry was now past.

He had pulled the stone-man from the poison-digger's pit-that was twenty thousand years ago, and indeed it seemed to him that he had lived through twenty thousand years since then. He had been able to see the tribe-of-all-men grown to stretch across immensities of s.p.a.ce and time. He had known, a little, the spirits of life. He had been a king, and a woman with the spirit of a princess had looked at him with love.

They had been walking for a minute along the water's edge, when, without surprise, he saw a sh.o.r.eline rock ahead suddenly move and become a nightmare head that rose amid moonlit spray on a sinuous column of neck. The dragon's vast body heaved itself up from the sea and lurched toward the men, moving faster than a man could run.

"I have the dagger," Matt said to his friends. "And right now both of you can use sword and ax better than I." The dragon was not coming for Harl or Torla, and it would have been a pointless insult to bid them run.

He kept the dagger hidden in his hand, the blade turned up flat behind his wrist, as the dragon's head came straight toward him on its tree-trunk neck that could swallow a man and hold him safe. Sword and ax hewed at it uselessly from either side. Matt was very tired, and in a way he welcomed the grave-wide jaws, which, he saw now, held no teeth. Only in the instant of the jaws' soft powerful closing did he bring the dagger up, holding the point steady at his own heart while the pressure came down. . . .

"It killed him." The first time, Time Ops whispered the words unbelievingly. Then he let them out in a whoop. "It killed him, it killed him?" The other hunters, who had been frozen at their screens, sharing their computers' creeping certainty of failure, were galvanized once more into action. On their screens the spiderwebs tightened like nooses, imaging a target greenly solid and sure.

In the deep cave called Operations Stage Two, metallic arms extended a missile sideways from its rack while a silvery circle shimmered into being on the floor beneath. With a cluck and a jolt the arms released their burden. Falling, the missile was gone.

Derron had seen a keyhole hit and closed before, and he understood perfectly what a victory he was seeing now. On the screens, the whole writhing build-up of change surrounding Ay now burst like a boil; and the lines began to straighten themselves out like a string figure when the loose end is pulled. History's flow turned strongly and safely back into its familiar riverbed. Only the one lifeline that had been the catalyst was newly broken; you had to look closely at the screens not to miss that small detail.

The raw stump of that line left no room for reasonable doubt, but still Derron's hand went out to punch his communicator for Stage Three. "Alf? Listen, will you let me know what shape he's in, the moment-All right, thanks."

He waited, holding the circuit open to Stage Three, gazing blankly through tired eyes at the screens.

Around him in Operations' nerve center, the first waves of jubilation foamed up around the edges of discipline.

"Derron?" Alf's reply was slow in coming and slow-spoken when it came, to tell about the wound in the heart and to speculate on how the man must have arranged to have the knife driven in. And to confirm that Matt's brain had been too long without blood and oxygen for the medics to do anything for him now.

Derron flipped off the switch and sat at his post, tired and immobile. Some of the victorious hunters around him were breaking out cigars, and one was calling jovially for a ration of grog. A few minutes later, Time Ops himself came strolling by with a gla.s.s in his hand, but he was not smiling as he paused at Derron's position.

"He was a good man, Odegard. The best. Not many can accomplish a thousandth part of what he did.

With their lives or with their deaths." Time Ops raised his gla.s.s in a solemn, sipping toast to the bitten-off green line on the screen. Later, of course, there would be ceremonies, and perhaps a monument, to say the same thing more elaborately.

"The thing is," said Derron, "I don't really much care what happens to the world. Only about a person here and there."

Time Ops might not have heard, for the noise of celebration was growing louder. "You did a necessary job, Major, and did it well, from the start of the operation right up until today. We're going to be expanding even more here in Time Operations and we'll need good men in key positions. I'm going to recommend you for another promotion. . . ."

Nomis stood with arms upraised, gray beard and black robes whipping in the wind, while he persisted in the evil endeavor that had kept him here for the past three days on his secret pinnacle of rock. Nomis persisted, though he could not escape the feeling that all his labors against Ay were doomed to be in vain.

On the battlement, Alix shaded her eyes against the morning sun and strained them seaward to catch sight of sail or mast. She waited, trembling inwardly a little, for her first sight of her future husband and lord. . . .

The cliffs of Queensland were dead ahead, Harl knew, though still a day's rowing out of sight. He frowned, gazing out to port across the sea's gray face, where nothing broke the line of the horizon but a distant line of squalls. Then his face cleared with the thought that young Ay, in his tent amidships, was doubtless planning for the fighting that was sure to come.

PART THREE.

The barefoot man in the gray friar's habit reached the top of a rise and paused, taking a look at the country ahead of him. In that direction, the paved road he was following continued to run almost straight under a leaden sky, humping over one gentle hill after another, cutting through scrubby woods and untended fields. The stones of this road had been laid down in the days of glory of the great Continental Empire; there was not much else in the world that had survived the centuries between then and now.

From where the friar stood, the road appeared to be aimed at a slender tower, a sharp and lonely temple spire, gray and vague in the day's dull light, which rose from an unseen base at some miles'

distance. The friar had walked with that spire in sight for half a day already, but his goal still lay far beyond.

The friar was of medium height and wiry build. His appearance seemed to have little relation to his age; he might have been anywhere between twenty and forty. His scantily bearded face was tired now, and his gray robe was spotted with mud of darker gray. Here along the shoulders of the road the fields were all ankle-deep in mud, and they showed no sign of having been plowed or planted this spring or last.

"Oh, Holy One, I thank you again that I have had this pavement to follow for so much of my journey,"

the friar murmured, as he started forward again. The soles of his feet looked as scarred and tough as those of well-used hiking boots.

Except for the distant spire, the only sign of any recent human presence in this unpromising landscape was a heap of low, ruined walls at roadside just ahead. Only the fact of ruin was recent; the walls themselves were old and might have been a part of a caravanserai or military post in the days of the Empire's strength. But last month or last tenday a new war had pa.s.sed this way, dissolving one more building into raw tumbled stones. What was left of the structure looked as if it might be going to sink without a trace into the mud, even, before the spring gra.s.s could start to grow around the foundations.

The friar sat down on the remnant of the old wall, resting from his journey and looking with minor sadness at the minor destruction about him. After a bit, in the manner of one who cannot sit entirely still for very long, he leaned over and took one of the fallen stones in his lean strong hands. Looking at the stone with what might have been a mason's practiced eye, he fitted it deftly into a notch in the stump of wall and sat back to study the effect.

A distant hail made him raise his head and look back along the way he had come. Another lone figure, dressed in a habit much like his own, was hastening toward him, waving both arms for attention.

The first friar's thin face lighted gently at the prospect of company. He returned the wave and waited, forgetting his little game of masonry. Soon he got to his feet.

Presently the approaching figure resolved itself into a man of middle height, who was almost stout and who had recently been clean-shaven. "Glory to the Holy One, revered Brother!" puffed this newcomer, as he arrived at last within easy talking distance.

"Glory to His name." The bearded friar's voice was warm but unremarkable.

The portly one, a man of about thirty, seated himself heavily on the low wall, wiped at his face, and inquired anxiously, "Are you, as I think, Brother Jovann of Ernard?"

"That is my name."

"Now may the Holy One be praised!" The heavier man made a wedge-sign with his hands and rolled his eyes heavenward. "My name is Saile, brother. Now may the Holy One be praised, say I-"

"So be it."

"-for He has led me in mysterious ways to reach your side! And many more shall follow. Brother Jovann, men will flock to you from the four corners of the world, for the fame of your heroic virtue has spread far, to the land of Mosnar, or so I have heard, and even to the lands of the infidel. And here in our own land-even at this moment, in the isolated villages of these remote hills-some of the most backward peasants are aware of your pa.s.sage."

"I fear my many faults are also known hereabouts, for I was born not far away."

"Ah, Brother Jovann, you are overly modest. During my arduous struggles to reach your side, I have heard again and again of your holy exploits."

Brother Jovann, his face showing some concern, sat down on the wall again. "Why have you struggled, as you say, to reach my side?"

"Ahh." What a struggle it had been, said Saile's headshake. "The flame of my determination was first kindled several months ago, when I was told by unimpeachable sources, eyewitnesses, how, when you were with the army of the Faithful in the field, you dared to leave the sheltering ranks, to cross no-man's-land into the very jaws of the infidel; there to enter the tent of the arch-infidel himself and preach to him the truth of our Holy Temple!"

"And to fail to convert him." Jovann nodded sadly. "You do well to remind me of my failure, for I am p.r.o.ne to the sin of pride."

"Ah." Saile lost headway, but only for a moment. "It was, as I say, upon hearing of that exploit, Brother Jovann, that it became my own most humble wish, my most burning and holy ambition, to seek you out, to be among the very first to join your order." Saile's eyebrows went up questioningly. "Ah, it is true, then, that youareon your way to Empire City even now, to pet.i.tion our most holy Vicar Nabur for permission to found a new religious order?"

The thin friar's eyes looked toward the spire in the distance. "Once, Brother, G.o.d called me to rebuild fallen temples with stone and brick. Now, as you say, I am called to rebuild with men." His attention came back to Brother Saile, and he was smiling. "As for your becoming a member of the new order when it is formed, why, I can say nothing yet of that. But if you should choose to walk with me to Empire City, I will be happy for your company."

Saile jumped to his feet, to bob up and down with bowing. "It is I who am most happy and most honored, Brother Jovann!"

Saile prolonged his thanks as the two men walked on together. He had then commented at some length on the unpleasant prospect of yet more rain falling and was discoursing on the problem of where, in this deserted-looking land, two mendicant friars might hope to obtain their next meal, when there occurred a distraction.

A speedy coach was overtaking them on the road. The vehicle was not ornate, but it was well built, looking as if it might belong to some n.o.bleman or prelate of lower-middle rank. The friars' ears gave them plenty of warning to step aside; four agile load-beasts were making the wheels clatter over the leveled stones at a good speed.

As the coach rumbled past, Brother Jovann felt his eyes drawn to the face of an occupant who rode facing forward, with his head visible in profile and one elbow extended slightly from a window. So far as could be judged, this man was of stocky build. He was well dressed, old and gray-bearded, though the short-cut hair on his head was still of ginger color. His thick mouth was twisted slightly, as if ready to spit or to dispute.

"They might have given us a lift," Brother Saile muttered unhappily, looking after the coach as it dwindled into the distance. "Plenty of room. There were no more than two pa.s.sengers, were there?"

Brother Jovann shook his head, not having noticed whether there had been any other pa.s.sengers. His attention had been held by the old man's eyes, which had probably never seen the friars at all. Those eyes, fixed in the direction of the Holy City a hundred miles and more away, were clear and gray and powerful. But they were also very much afraid.

When Derron Odegard walked out on the victory celebration at Time Operations, he had no clear idea of where he was going. Only when he found himself approaching the nearby hospital complex did he realize that his feet were taking him to Lisa. Yet, it would be best to face her at once and get it over with.

At the student nurses' quarters he learned that she had moved out the day before, after having gotten permission to drop out of training there. While being tested and considered for other jobs, she was sharing a cubicle with another girl in a low-rank, uplevel corridor.

It was Lisa's new roommate who opened the door to Derron's knock; since the girl was in the midst of doing something to her hair, she went back inside the cubicle and pretended not to be listening.

Lisa must have seen Derron's news in his face. Her own face at once became as calm as a mask, and she remained just inside the half-open door, letting him stand in the narrow corridor to be brushed by the curious and incurious pa.s.sers-by.

"It's Matt," he said to her. When there was no reaction, he went on, "Oh, the battle's won. The berserkers are stopped. But he sacrificed himself to do it. He's dead."

Proud and hard as a shield, her mask-face lifted slightly toward him. "Of course he is. He did the job you gave him. I knew he would."

"Understand, Lisa-when I went to him with that sales talk I thought he was going to have a chance, a good chance."

She was not going to be able to keep the shield up, after all; with something like relief he saw her face begin to move and heard her voice begin to break. She said, "I-knew you were going to kill him."

"My G.o.d, Lisa, that wasn't what I meant to do!" He kept his hands from reaching out to her.

Slowly dissolving and melting into a woman's grief, she leaned against the doorjamb, her hands hidden behind her. "And now-there's-n-nothing to be done!"

"The doctors tried-but no, nothing. And Operations can't go back to do anything for Matt in the past-it'd wreck the world if we tried to pull him out of that mess now."

"The world's not worth it!"

He was murmuring some ba.n.a.lity and had reached out at last to try to comfort her, when the door slammed in his face.

If Lisa was the woman he needed, he would have stayed there; so he thought to himself a few days later as he sat alone in his tiny private office on the Operations Level. He would have stayed and made her open the door again or else kicked it down. It was only a door of plastic, and behind it she was still alive.

The fact was, of course, that the woman he did need had been for a year and more behind the door of death. And no man could smash through that. A man could only stand before that door and mourn, until he found that he was able to turn away.

Derron had been sitting in his office staring into s.p.a.ce for some little time before he noticed an official-looking envelope that some courier must have left on his small desk. The envelope was neat and thick, sealed and addressed to him. After looking inertly at it for a while he took it up and opened it.

Inside was the formal notice of his latest promotion, to the rank of lieutenant colonel. " . . . in consideration of your recent outstanding service in Time Operations, and in the expectation that you will continue . . ." A set of appropriate collar insignia was enclosed.

The insignia held in his hand as if forgotten, he sat there a while longer, looking across the room at an object-it was an ancient battle-helmet, ornamented with wings-that rested like a trophy atop his small bookcase. He was still doing this when the clangor of the alert signal sounded throughout Operations and pulled him reflexively to his feet. In another moment he was out the door and on his way to the briefing room.

Latecomers were still hurrying in when a general officer, Time Ops' chief of staff, mounted the dais and began to speak.

"The third a.s.sault we've been expecting has begun, gentlemen. Win or lose, this will be the last attack the berserkers can mount outside of present-time. It'll give us the final bearing we need to locate their staging area twenty-one thousand years down."

There were a few scattered expressions of optimism.

"I suggest that you don't cheer yet. This third attack gives every indication of involving some new tactics on the enemy's part, something subtle and extremely dangerous."

The general performed the usual unveiling of some hastily a.s.sembled maps and models. "Like the previous attack, this one is aimed at a single individual; and, again, there's no doubt about the target's ident.i.ty. This time the name is Vincent Vincento."

There was a murmur at that name, a ripple of awe and wonder and concern. There would have been a similar reaction from almost any audience that might have been a.s.sembled on Sirgol. Even the half-educated of that world had heard of Vincento, though the man was some three hundred years dead and had never ruled a nation, started a religion, or raised an army.

Derron's attention became sharply focused, and he sat up straighter, his feeling of inertia slipping away.

In his prewar historical studies he had specialized in Vincento's time and place-and that locale was also oddly connected with his private grief.

The general on the dais spoke on, in businesslike tones. "Vincento's lifeline is among the very few ultraimportant ones for which we have provided continuous sentry protection along their entire effective lengths. Of course, this doesn't mean that a berserker can't get near him. But should one of them try to do violent harm to Vincento, or even to any other person within a couple of miles of him, we'd be on to its keyhole in a couple of seconds and cancel it out. The same thing applies if they should try to kidnap or capture Vincento himself.

"This special protection actually starts back in Vincento's grandparents' time and runs along his lifeline until his completion of his last important work at the age of seventy-eight, and we can a.s.sume the enemy knows that this protection exists. That's why I said that this time the berserkers' plans are no doubt subtle."

After going into the technical details of the sentry protection against direct violence, the general moved on to discuss another point. "Chronologically, the enemy penetration is not more than a ten-day before the start of Vincento's famous trial by the Defenders of the Faith. This may well be more than a coincidence. Suppose, for example, that a berserker could alter the outcome of this trial to a death sentence for Vincento. If the Defenders should decide to burn him at the stake, the berserker's part in his death would be too indirect to give us any help in finding its keyhole.

"And also remember-an actual death sentence would not seem to be necessary for the enemy's purpose. Vincento at the time of his trial is seventy years old. If he should be put to torture or thrown into a dungeon, the odds are high that his life would be effectively ended."

A general seated in the front row raised a hand. "Doesn't he historically undergo some such treatment?"

"No. That's a fairly common idea. But, historically, Vincento never spent a day of his life in prison.

During his trial he occupied a friendly amba.s.sador's quarters. And after his recantation, he pa.s.sed the few years left to him in physically comfortable house arrest. There he gradually went blind, from natural causes-and also laid the foundation of the science of dynamics. On that work of his, needless to say, our modern science and our survival most heavily depend. Make no mistake about it, those last years of Vincento's life after his trial are vital to us."

The questioning general shifted in his front rank chair. "How in the world is an alien machine going to influence the outcome of a trial in an ecclesiastical court?"

The briefing officer could only shake his head and stare gloomily at his charts. "Frankly, we've still a shortage of good ideas on that. We doubt that the enemy will try again to play a supernatural role, after the failure of their last attempt along that line.

"But here's an angle worth keeping in mind. Only one enemy device is engaged in this attack, and from all screen indications it's a physically small machine, only about the size of a man. Which immediately suggests to us the possibility that this one may be an android." The speaker paused to look round at his audience. "Oh, yes, I know, the berserkers have never, anywhere, been able to fabricate an android that would pa.s.s in human society as a normal person. Still, we hardly dare rule out the possibility that this time they've succeeded."

A discussion got going on possible countermeasures. A whole a.r.s.enal of devices were being kept in readiness in Stage Two for dropping into the past, but no one could say yet what might be needed.