Berserker Kill

by Fred Saberhagen

  Was this an attempt to induce him to take his helmet off, thus exposing himself to physical attack?

  The image frayed and flickered at one side. Now Dirac could see Brabant, walking in his armored suit, coming toward him through layers of illusion, raising one arm in an urgent gesture, beckoning the Premier to come closer.

  Dirac, suspecting something was wrong, did not move. Fighting down a momentary impulse to panic, the Premier realized that he had at least temporarily no control over what was happening around him.

  Urgently he attempted to summon Loki by means of his suit radio. But he feared that the signal was not getting through; Loki had been temporarily baffled, cut off from contact with his master.

  Now another human figure loomed, this one towering above the Premier as it confronted him. It was the magnified image of his son. Dirac could not be sure if this was real at all, but he brought up his weapon. Mike’s clothing kept varying, in some quirk of the disturbed Abbey programming, from medieval robes to imaged armor to modern shipboard dress and back again. His hands looked empty, but Dirac knew better than to assume they really were.

  The huge mouth of Mike’s image moved, and a voice came forth. “Do you recognize me?” it demanded.

  “I-” For some reason the Premier found it difficult to speak.

  The young man, his expression distorted and unreadable, was staring directly at him. “I’m here, in the flesh, just as you are.

  Father. Do you recognize me?”

  “All right. I know you. Mike.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “How about me?” This voice came from a different direction, and Dirac spun around. An armored suit, its helmet empty, was standing in the south transept, down near Poets’ Corner. Nick’s voice pressed at him. “Who am I? Father, can you tell me who I am?”

  “Nick, someone’s been fooling with your programming.” He wanted to sound calm and eminently reasonable. “You shouldn’t be acting like this.” (Loki, where are you? Come to my help at once!)

  The empty suit advanced a step. “Fooling with my programming? My programming! Someone’s been doing worse than that.”

  Now letting his anger show, the Premier demanded: “Is this your poor idea of a joke, Nick? What does this mean?”

  And now Brabant’s image loomed once more, shambling toward him from the north transept, beckoning and clad in armor.

  “Brabant-?”

  Then the bodyguard’s armor became modern, and the Premier realized with a hideous shock that Brabant’s face inside the walking suit was dead.

  With his gun he shot down the walking corpse.

  Return fire blasted at Dirac. His armor, the best made anywhere, pounded at his body, burned him, but it saved his life.

  He caught brief glimpses of Kensing and of Mike, both armed with heavy pistols though unarmored. They were shooting from positions concealed in the VR’s room distorting displays.

  Dirac cut loose with more rounds of his own, setting his weapon on full automatic. Meanwhile he went groping his way backward through the virtual reality of the Abbey, around stone columns, past stone skeletons on tombs, trying to find the exit.

  No wonder they had lured him in here to be assassinated; here in the ten-cube Nick had some hope of being able to control the flow of events. Or thought he did.

  Nick’s voice came at him, inexorably. “This is my territory, Father. Only my dreams can be real in here, not yours. And Loki will not be able to get in here to help you.”

  Dirac fired again. And again. Plenty of force packets left. He couldn’t tell what he had hit. But get off enough rounds, and the machinery maintaining the VR world was bound to be damaged into failure.

  The complex battle circuits in his helmet had now wakened, tuning in to alpha waves and feeding back. As lower levels of his consciousness inevitably became engaged, symbolic images emerged to confuse and trouble him.

  And then a fragmentary message came through on Dirac’s suit radio, just a few words and it broke off again, but it was enough to provide a surge of hope. Loki was aware of his peril, was coming to his aid, was raging just outside the barriers put up by Nick, an immaterial juggernaut, a tidal wave of information assaulting an optelectronic drawbridge, battering and roaring to get in.

  Here inside the VR pit, the fight was very material and real.

  Dirac, still heavily protected by his armor in spite of everything, still only battered and bruised, not seriously hurt, battled for his life. At moments of great fear or horror he closed his eyes to avoid the images, but that was little or no help. The terrible images still offered information, if he could interpret them coolly.

  Before him he saw dueling knights, and one of them was himself-thoughts of conflict, of weapons, evoked images of medieval swords and armor.

  Now the combatants were dueling gargoyles, as the stone creatures crawled down from their waterspout niches, marking the edges and the channels of the Abbey’s leaded roof.

  A hideous throng of demonic enemies swarmed about him.

  Knight against monster, bright sword against white fangs, then points and edges all blood red. But he no longer knew which combatant he was, or which he chose to be.

  And then at some point the portcullis failed, the gates gave way, and Loki came roaring in-inevitably, because Dirac had taken great care in his creation to make sure that Loki should be stronger than Hawksmoor.

  From that point on, the tide turned swiftly, and cold reality was winning. Solid flesh and blood, and metal, would inevitably have their way with dreams and images.

  Swathes of deceptive image were peeling and falling away now, exposing to Dirac’s eager, realistic gaze the dull black walls of the ten-cube chamber.

  Moments later, most of the images were gone, and Dirac could see out of his helmet clearly and realistically again. At this point, when a last burst from his weapon seemed to slice open the imaged stone of one of the Abbey’s royal tombs-Henry Seventh, master of his own transcendent chapel-he discovered the body of Superintendent Gazin lying there in state.

  The fight was over now. Mike had fallen, and so had Kensing.

  Only the latter was still alive. Loki, bursting in physically at last, animating his own team of armored suits, had simply been too strong.

  In the ringing silence after the battle, looking down coldly at the fleshly body of his dead son, Dirac thought: what a terrible mistake. I should have-I should have-But he didn’t know, he couldn’t tell himself, just what his mistake had been. Having a son in the first place? He didn’t know. He couldn’t say just what it was he should have done.

  Nick had held out longer than the organic men against Loki’s overwhelming power, but Loki after all had been designed and built to be able to manage Nick. Now Hawksmoor, still in his suit, was being confined, bottled up like a genie, like so much hydrogen power plasma.

  The suit Nick inhabited was now effectively paralyzed, able to maintain its balance only by leaning against one of the VR

  chamber’s polyphase matter walls. Meanwhile Nick was being granted an experience very few humans ever had, that of looking on his own dead body.

  Nick, the loser, had a few last words to say before he was turned off. Perhaps it was involuntary, because Loki was already rifling his programming-Dirac did not particularly want to listen, but he could tell that Hawksmoor’s voice seemed to be reciting, almost singing, ancient poetry. Something about a kiss, and a chair.

  Dirac shook his head sadly. “Well, here we go again. Goodbye, Nick-only until you can be reprogrammed, mind. We’ve been through this before, but I’m not ready to give up on you. Not by a long shot.”

  Loki invisibly clamped down.

  Nick’s suit, now truly empty, crumpled softly to the padded deck.

  Dirac and his guard Loki were left standing as victors upon the field of half-shattered images.

  Slowly, wearily, Dirac loosened his helmet and pulled it off.

  The sight of the distorted, gun-riddled chamber round hi
m was no help. Ten meters, three stories high, the same distance wide and deep. Now he could confirm the dull black reality of the ten-cube room, dusty and littered with the mixed debris of battle damage.

  For a few moments all was silence. Then a small force of prosaic robots, summoned by Loki, were coming in to clean things up.

  The dead bodies of Mike Sardou and Superintendent Gazin and Brabant the bodyguard were left to be disposed of by the service robots.

  Wearily Dirac gave the machines their orders. “Yes, just get rid of all three of them somehow. I don’t care how.”

  Kensing was the only survivor on the losing side. Loki, still in solid suit-form, with tatters of medieval armor-image clinging to his shape as long as he remained inside the ten-cube, and Dirac himself, dragged the half-conscious Sandy Kensing away. Loki had methodically, neatly, bound the captive’s hands and feet.

  “Don’t kill him. Don’t hurt him seriously. He’ll have value, as an intact life unit, being given away.”

  Commodore Prinsep, on waking with a start from the sleep he had so desperately needed, found himself sprawled in his underwear on the bunk in his comfortable new quarters aboard the station. Havot, still in his armor and with his carbine at his side, was sleeping on the floor directly in front of the room’s only entrance.

  Sitting up, the commodore made it his first duty to cast a wary, jaundiced eye at Havot’s carbine, reassuring himself about the relative safety of the setting. Then he began to dress.

  The slight sound of movement aroused Havot. The two men talked briefly.

  Then Prinsep set about communicating with Tongres and Dinant, who were lodging in the rooms on either side of his. He made sure that his remaining crew members were safe for the moment, and that their most urgent needs had been met.

  Where was Superintendent Gazin? None of Prinsep’s people had yet seen him aboard the station. Not that any of them felt vitally concerned.

  In a few minutes Dr. Zador, alerted by the station’s brain to the fact that the newcomers were now awake, came calling with news. Premier Dirac had returned from the yacht only a couple of hours ago, in a glum, uncommunicative mood. Now the Premier was sleeping in his quarters-ordinary sleep, not suspended animation-having left orders not to be disturbed except for the most serious emergency.

  Deciding there was no use fretting over Gazin for the time being, Prinsep sat down to enjoy a vitally needed breakfast with Annie Zador and with Havot, who had at last shed his armor.

  Both men had showered and ordered up new clothing.

  Poached eggs and ship-grown asparagus came to Prinsep’s order, with commendable speed. He was relieved to find that robot service was as good here as on most ships. Nothing to complain about, though of course not up to the commodore’s preferred gourmet standards.

  In the course of their morning meal Prinsep resumed his historical probing in conversation with Dr. Zador. One of the commodore’s main objectives was to find out all he could about Dirac’s berserker. But he was also concerned about the obvious peculiarities marking this society. It gave a first impression of having evolved into a kind of benevolent-seeming dictatorship.

  “The kind of thing that historically is often not really benevolent at all.”

  Dr. Zador several times expressed concern over what might have happened to Kensing. She feared that the Premier might have ordered him put back to sleep, this time before she had even had a chance to talk to him. She said that Scurlock and the optelectronic Loki obeyed Dirac slavishly and would have seen to it.

  Havot was eating pancakes with a good appetite, and listening with interest. But he offered no comment.

  Prinsep made no bones about his objections. “A bit high-handed, isn’t it? Ordering people to spend years in unconsciousness, without regard for what they might want?”

  Annie Zador said with quiet bitterness: “The Premier keeps reminding us that he is in command of this ship, and that we are all subject to discipline. No one disputed that at first. What we have now is a situation that’s-crept up on us somehow.”

  The commodore let that pass for the moment. He told Dr.

  Zador that he would like her, as soon as possible, to check on his seriously wounded people occupying medirobots both here on the station and on the yacht.

  Zador agreed. She was eager to go over to the yacht, because she was beginning to be worried about Sandy. Dirac on his return had refused to say anything about Kensing at all.

  Before Prinsep and his two companions had quite finished their meal, a woman the commodore had not seen before appeared, to stand in the doorway of his room looking at him balefully. Zador informed him tersely that this was Carol, Scurlock’s consort.

  To Prinsep, this latest caller at first glance appeared mentally unstable. Her behavior during her visit did nothing to counteract this impression.

  “So,” she began, having subjected Prinsep and Havot to a prolonged scrutiny. “Does the machine know that new people, you people, have come aboard here? But of course it does.”

  “The machine?” the commodore inquired politely.

  “Don’t play innocent with me!” she flared at him. “I mean what the badlife call the big berserker. Very big. Do you know, I have seen the shadows of a hundred berserkers, crossing the face of the full moon?”

  Havot chuckled artlessly; he found this entertaining. Prinsep frowned at him, then turned to ask the glaring woman: “The full moon? What planet’s moon is that?”

  “Don’t play innocent with me. I have seen them. I have watched! I know!” Havot’s louder laughter bothered Carol and she snarled something and moved on, stopping several times in her passage down the corridor to look back.

  Dr. Zador, who was now casting uncertain looks at Havot, informed the men that Carol was periodically tranquilized. But she was still demented, a crabbed and crazy elder, still youthful in appearance because she was usually brought out of deep sleep only when Scurlock wanted her.

  Prinsep asked: “Have I met everyone now? All of your contemporaries?”

  “You haven’t met Dr. Hoveler. A good man, you must talk to him. But he will still be in the freezer, I expect.”

  “Then we must see about getting him out. Nor have I seen much of the Lady Genevieve. Now hers must be a curious story.”

  Annie Zador told them as much of it as she knew. Not much about how the lady had been recorded, something of how she had been restored to flesh. And other people, other bodies at least, had been born on the station during the past three hundred years.

  When the advanced machinery was properly employed, a human body could be grown to physical maturity in only three or four years.

  Prinsep listened carefully. “I shouldn’t think this-this voyage, this exile, whatever it is, was precisely the situation where one would expect reproduction to be high on the list of desirable activities.”

  Havot yawned and stretched-deep moralistic talk was boring.

  Presently he rose, murmured some polite excuse, and drifted away. The young man was wearing fresh garments ordered from the robots this morning, a fashionable outfit topped by a flowing robe. It suddenly occurred to the commodore to wonder whether the flowing robe concealed weapons. Considering the nature of the authority that now ruled here, he didn’t know whether to hope that it did, or that it did not.

  Today he meant to bear his own weapon as if it were just part of a uniform.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Kensing regained consciousness slowly, with the feeling that the universe was roaring and collapsing around him, a titanic VR

  display being suddenly reprogrammed by some indifferent god.

  He was lying on his back in an acceleration couch, and his immediate surroundings made it plain that he was now aboard some very small space vessel. In fact it had to be one of the little shuttles commonly used to travel from station to yacht and back again. From where Kensing was lying he couldn’t really see out, but he could tell from subtle hints of sound that the small craft was in motion.
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  When he tried to move, he realized with a chill that his ankles were tied together, his wrists firmly bound behind him.

  His last clear memory was of the fight in the yacht’s ten-cube.

  But he could not recall just what had knocked him out. His body felt battered and bruised, but he seemed to have suffered no very serious injury, apart from having been stunned.

  The shuttle seemed to be making one of its usual brief unhurried passages. Turning his head, Kensing could see that Scurlock, not wearing armor, was at the controls. No one else appeared to be on board.

  Whoever had bound Kensing’s arms and legs-probably Loki, he supposed-had done a well-nigh perfect job, doing no injury but leaving not the least room for trying to work free.

  “We’re going back to the station,” he murmured aloud, with the fog of unconsciousness still not quite cleared from his mind.

  Scurlock turned his head to give his passenger-his captive-a look that was hard to read. “Not exactly.”

  Kensing made an effort to consider that, but was forced to abandon it. “Where are the others?” he asked at last.

  “The Premier is seeing to the cleanup. Brabant is dead, as I’m sure you must remember.”

  “Mike?”

  “I don’t know of anyone by that name. You also killed a volunteer mentor called Fowler Aristov.”

  Kensing took a few deep breaths. “Scurlock,” he said. “You don’t really believe that, do you? That that was his name, or that I killed him?”

  Scurlock turned his gaze forward again. “The Premier and Loki have explained to me what happened on the yacht.”

  The shuttle suddenly dipped and sighed in flight, then grated on something hard. It didn’t sound like any ordinary docking.

  Kensing was suddenly shocked into full consciousness.

  “It doesn’t matter what you think,” said Scurlock, getting out of his own couch and coming to undo the fastenings on Kensing’s.

  He sounded as if he were talking to himself.