The facility had been planned and built as a study for a colonization vehicle. It was equipped with smoothly reliable artificial gravity and a lot of research machinery, including a ten-meter cube, also called a ten-three, or just a tencube, for research carried on in the mode of virtual reality. Hoveler seemed to remember that its architects had fallen out of favor with Premier Dirac over the last year or so, as he had gradually become dissatisfied with their work. That was one reason why Nicholas Hawksmoor had been brought on line.
In order to complete his job of disruption properly, Hoveler would have to cope with redundancies in the system by moving physically from one deck to another. He feared that murderous berserker machines must be aboard the station now, and that they would detect his presence if he used the lift again. They might detect him anyway if they decided to tap into the intercom, but he would just have to risk that.
Easing his way as quietly as possible out of the small room in which he had been working, Hoveler closed its door behind him and tiptoed down a curving corridor toward the nearest companionway.
The shortest, simplest route to his next stop required that he traverse at least a corner of the deck on which the great majority of the mechanical wombs had been installed. In the midst of this passage, while peering carefully to his right, Hoveler froze momentarily. Far across the deck, perhaps forty meters away, and only partially visible between rows of silent, life-nurturing machines stood another metal shape that was completely unfamiliar and intrusive. It seemed that a berserker guard had been established.
He couldn’t stand here all day waiting to be caught; he had to move. Perhaps the muted murmurs of flowing air and electricity were loud enough to muffle the faint sounds his softly shod feet must have made on the smooth floor. Perhaps the intervening machines blocked the berserker’s line of sight. In any event, Hoveler managed to get to the next companionway and the next deck without being detected.
Once there, under great tension, the evader managed to get inside the last compartment from which the system’s records could be restored. Easing the door shut, he got on with his task of befuddling the central inventory system.
Perhaps it was some noise he unavoidably made, working with the necessary small tools, that betrayed his presence. Whatever the reason, he had not been at work for twenty seconds when one of the boarding machines pulled open the door of the small room and caught him in the act.
In the circumstances, Hoveler hoped for a quick death, but the hope
failed.
In
another
moment
the
multilimbed
machine-obviously being careful not to hurt him very much-was dragging him back to the laboratory deck.
There, moments later, he and Anyuta Zador exchanged incoherent cries, on each discovering that the other was still alive. The machine that had been dragging Hoveler released him, and a moment later the two humans were in each other’s arms.
And still, ominously as it seemed, Death forbore to make any quick, clean claim. Instead of destroying the helplessly vulnerable station entirely, or gutting it ruthlessly with boarding machines, the gigantic foe had clamped onto its outer hull with force fields-as the prisoners, allowed access to a holostage, were able to observe-and was starting to haul it away. The hull sang for a while under the unaccustomed strain, emitting strange mournful noises. Then it quieted.
Minutes of captivity dragged on, as if divorced from time.
Exhausted by strain, their weary eyelids sagging, the prisoners attempted to rest. The last chance I’ll ever get to rest, Hoveler thought dully. The artificial gravity was still functioning with soothing steadiness, damping out or quenching entirely any acceleration that would otherwise have resulted from the new, externally imposed motion. The people inside the station could not feel themselves being towed.
Puzzlingly, the berserker seemed to be ignoring the incident of Hoveler’s sabotage. So far the boarding machines had administered no punishment, made no threats, asked him no questions. It was an attitude both humans found unsettling. A berserker that did not do something bad could only be preparing something worse.
When Hoveler and Zador had given up for the time being trying to rest, they conferred again. For some reason they found themselves speaking in soft whispers, despite the fact that their metal captors nearby were almost certainly able to detect sounds much fainter than those required by the human ear. Both humans were thoroughly bewildered, almost frightened, by their own continued survival. And also by the fact that they still had access to almost the full spectrum of commonly used controls, at least those within the lab. Not that any of these allowed them any influence over what was happening to their vessel. Once Hoveler had been dragged back, neither he nor Zador had attempted to leave the laboratory deck.
Meanwhile Hoveler, despite his terror, could silently congratulate himself that he had indeed managed to scramble most of the cargo inventory system. Still, he dared not try to communicate this achievement to Annie. Nor did he want to raise with her, in the berserkers’ presence, the question of what might have happened to the last zygote that had been contributed.
Anyuta Zador had said nothing about his absence and recapture. But an hour or so after his return, she took the chance of giving him a long questioning look, whose meaning he read as Where were you?
The look he gave Annie in response was an attempt to express that he understood the question, but didn’t know how to go about conveying a good answer.
However they tried to distract themselves or each other, both people’s thoughts inevitably kept coming back to the gritty peril of their own situation.
Dan Hoveler had no immediate family of his own-a lack for which he currently felt a devout gratitude. But he could tell, or thought he could, that his companion, in the long silent minutes when she closed her eyes or stared at nothing, must be thinking about the man she was going to marry.
Hoveler considered suggesting the possibility of a successful rescue attempt-but Annie knew at least as well as he did how very unlikely anything of the kind really was.
After several hours had passed, and a few exchanges of whispered words, the captive couple decided to make an attempt to leave the lab deck and go to their cabins. Somewhat to their surprise they were allowed to do so. Not that the berserker had forgotten its prisoners-two machines accompanied them when they left the lab, and searched their cabins thoroughly before the tenants were allowed to enter.
Though each cabin was now occupied by a guardian, the humans were allowed to rest-choosing under the circumstances to stay together in one cabin. Hoveler, sprawled on a couch, soon found himself actually dozing off.
A few hours later, a little rested though still under observation, and back on the lab deck again, the bioworkers tried to satisfy their curiosity about what was happening. Cleared ports and free use of a holostage made it possible to gain some information.
“You’re right, no doubt about it, we’re being towed.”
“I don’t get it.” Hoveler blew out breath in a great sigh.
“Nor do I. But here we are. Pulled. Dragged along. The entire station is being towed away. Our hull, or a large part of it anyway, seems to be wrapped in force fields. Like a faint gray mist that you can see only at certain angles.”
They adjusted the stage again and watched, while their own watchers stood by, tolerating them in enigmatic silence. After a while Zador announced: “Dan, this just doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know that.”
“So where is it taking us? Why?”
He shrugged. “We’re bound away from the sun, it seems.
Steadily but slowly accelerating out of the system. Since we’re now out of communication with the rest of humanity, I can’t see enough to be any more specific.”
Time passed, disjointedly. The humans sat or stood around, terror slowly congealing into a sick approximation of calm, waiting for whatever might happen to them next.
&nbs
p; Gradually Hoveler’s sense of minor triumph at what he had done to the inventory system faded, to be replaced by a sickening thought: the berserker might well be completely indifferent as to the individual identities of any of its captured protocolonists.
Maybe one Solarian human or protohuman would serve as well as another in whatever fiendish scheme the enemy calculated.
Still the machines inflicted no harm upon the captive humans.
Nor had the berserker any objection to their talking to each other; in fact it seemed to Hoveler that their captor by not separating them was actually encouraging them to converse freely.
He had a thought, and couldn’t see any harm in speaking it aloud. “Maybe it’s letting us talk because it wants to listen.”
Annie nodded immediately. “That idea had occurred to me.”
“So what do we do?”
“What harm can we do by talking? Neither of us knows any military secrets.”
Meanwhile, the invading machines were not standing idle. One at least of them remained in sight of each prisoner at all times.
Others worked intermittently, probing with their own fine tools into the station’s controls and other machinery; whether their intention was to make alterations or simply to investigate, Hoveler found impossible to determine.
Eventually the humans, growing restless and being allowed to roam about the station at will though under guard, were able to observe machines on other decks as well, some of them digging into various kinds of hardware there. Privately Hoveler estimated the number on board the station to be about a dozen in all.
Since the first minutes of their occupation, the boarding machines had had nothing to say to their new captives.
The number of hours elapsed since the boarding lengthened at last into a standard day. Zador and Hoveler were spending most of their time on the more familiar laboratory deck. They were there, in the midst of a low-voiced conversation, when Annie broke off a statement in midsentence and looked up in astonishment. Hoveler, following her gaze with his own, was likewise struck dumb.
A man and woman he had never seen before, ragged scarecrow Solarian figures, had suddenly appeared in front of him. The newcomers were staring with odd hungry eyes at Hoveler and Zador.
It was left to Hoveler himself to break the silence. “Hello.”
Neither of the newcomers responded immediately to this greeting. From the look of their shabby, emaciated figures, the expression on their faces and in their eyes, Hoveler quickly got the idea that a clear answer was unlikely.
He tried again, and presently the two new arrivals, urged by repeated questioning, introduced themselves as Carol and Scurlock.
Annie was staring at them. “How did you get aboard? You came-from the berserker?”
They both nodded. The man mumbled a few words of agreement.
Zador and Hoveler exchanged looks of numbed horror, wondering silently if they were beholding their own future.
The more closely Hoveler studied the newcomers, the more his horror grew. Scurlock was unshaven. The hair of both was matted and dirty; their dress was careless; garments were unfastened, incomplete, unchanged for far too long. Carol was wearing no shoes, and her shirt hung partially open, her breasts intermittently exposed. Evidently that wasn’t normal behavior in whatever society they’d come from, for Scurlock, who at moments appeared vaguely embarrassed, now and then tried to get her to cover up. Still, the pair appeared to have been allowed free access to food and drink-they were indifferent to what Zador and Hoveler offered them from one of the station’s serving robots.
And they showed no signs of overt, serious physical abuse.
But the blank way the newcomers, especially Carol, looked around the lab, their halting silences, their appearance-these things suggested to Hoveler that eccentric if not downright crazy behavior was to be anticipated. Obviously Carol and Scurlock were long accustomed to the berserkers’ presence, because for the most part they simply ignored the omnipresent machines.
Hoveler caught himself hoping silently, fervently, that the pair would not do anything to damage the lab’s machinery.
As if that now mattered in the least.
The pair settled in, helping themselves to one of the number of empty staterooms, which they occupied with a guardian machine.
Between themselves, the biolab workers soon agreed that both of the newcomers, particularly Carol, must have become unbalanced under the strain of some lengthy captivity. This tended to make the sporadic intervals of conversation with them extra rich and strange.
Annie asked: “Do you mind telling us how you were captured?
And where?”
“We were taken off a ship,” Scurlock said by way of partial explanation. Then he looked at the station’s two original occupants as if he were worried about their reaction to this news.
“How long ago?”
Neither Carol nor Scurlock could say, or perhaps they wanted to keep this information secret.
Annie Zador turned to a ‘stage and began calling up news of missing ships, trying to find out from the station’s data banks if any vessels had disappeared locally within the past few months.
The banks provided a small list of craft recently vanished within the sector, but Carol and Scurly seemed strangely disinterested in cooperating. They did admit they’d been working with a small, unnamed ship taking a survey for the Sardou Foundation; no, they’d no idea what the berserker might be doing with their ship now. In fact they couldn’t remember when they’d seen it last.
Next the bioworkers tried, with only small success, to trade information about backgrounds. Neither Carol nor Scurlock sounded quite rational enough to state clearly how long they had been the berserker’s prisoners. No, they hadn’t formed any opinions as to why it had now brought them aboard the station.
“Does the berserker have any other people aboard?” Zador asked suddenly, thinking of a new tack to try. “Any goodlife, maybe?”
” We are goodlife,” Carol announced clearly, with an apprehensive glance at the nearest listening machine. Two of her listeners recoiled involuntarily. The ragged, dirty woman sounded very emphatic, if not entirely sane.
Her companion nodded, slowly and thoughtfully. “We are,” he agreed. “What about you?”
There was a silence. Then in a small, firm voice Anyuta Zador said: “We are not.”
The machine appeared to take no notice.
Slowly Scurlock began to pay more attention to the new environment in which his metal master had established him.
“What is this place, anyway?” he demanded.
Hoveler began to explain.
The dirty, unkempt man interrupted: “I wonder what our machine wants it for?”
“Your machine? You mean the berserker?”
“Call it that if you want. It asked us an awful lot of questions about this… place… before it brought us here.”
As Zador and Hoveler listened in mounting horror, Carol added: “I don’t see what use a cargo of human zygotes is going to be. Ugh. But our machine knows best.”
Hoveler, his own nerves thoroughly frayed by now, could not completely smother his anger. “Your machine, as you call it, seems to have computed that you’re both going to be very helpful to it!”
“I am certainly going to help,” Carol agreed hastily. For once her speech was clear and direct. “We are. We just don’t know how as yet. But the machine will tell us when the time comes, and we’re ready.”
“We’re ready!” agreed Scurlock fervently. Then he fell silent, aware that both Hoveler and Zador were looking at him in loathing and contempt. “Badlife!” he whispered, indulging his own disdain.
“We are goodlife.” Carol, once more looking and sounding unbalanced,
had
suddenly
adopted
an
incongruous,
schoolteacherish refrain and manner.
Zador snapped at her: “Who’s arguing with you? All right, if you
say so. You’re goodlife. Yes, I can believe that readily enough.”
Hoveler heard himself adding a few gutter epithets.
Carol let out a deranged scream and sprang at Annie in a totally unexpected assault, taking the taller woman by surprise and with insane strength driving her back, clawing with jagged nails at her face.
Before Annie went down, or was seriously injured, Hoveler stepped in and shoved the smaller woman violently away, so that she staggered and fell on the smooth deck.
“Let her alone!” Scurlock in turn shoved Hoveler.
“Then tell her to let us alone!”
The quarrel trailed off, in snarling and cursing on both sides.
Hours later, an uneasy truce prevailed. Hoveler and Zador, talking privately between themselves, were developing strong suspicions that Scurlock and Carol might actually have sought out the berserker in their little ship and volunteered as willing goodlife.
“Do you think it’s waiting for us to do the same thing?”
Zador raised her head. “I wonder if it’s listening?”
“No doubt it’s always listening. Well, I don’t give a damn.
Maybe it’ll hear something it doesn’t want to hear for a change.
What really frightens me,” the bioengineer continued, “is that I think I can understand now how people come to be goodlife. Did you ever think about that?”
“Not until now.”
There were intervals when it seemed that Scurlock, at least, was trying to come to terms with the other couple. Carol seemed too disconnected to care whether she came to terms with anyone or not.
Scurlock: “Look here, we’re all prisoners together.”
Hoveler nodded warily. “Has the machine given you any idea of what it plans to do with you? Or with us?”
“No.” Then Scurlock put on a ghastly smile: “But Carol and I are going to play along. That’s the only course to take in a situation like this.”
Berserker Kill Page 7