“And what part does the berserker play in this brave new world you plan to forge?”
“Death, Commodore Prinsep, is an inevitable part of any world. Death and life are perpetually bound in co-existence.
Either would be quite meaningless without the other, don’t you agree?”
“Perhaps.” Prinsep frowned. He had never been much for the abstract pleasures of philosophy. “Do you mean that when it becomes necessary for some of the human components of your new world to die-”
“I mean that their deaths will not be random, or entirely meaningless. In the form of the machine, death becomes quantified, organized, manageable and meaningful at last.”
The commodore stared at the Premier. Dirac’s face wore an expression of achievement, of satisfaction, as if what he was saying did indeed make sense to him.
“And who,” the commodore demanded, “is to quantify and organize, as you put it? To decide which human life units are to die so meaningfully, and when, and for what purpose?”
“Who decides? The minds with the clearest, deepest vision!”
Prinsep did not try to hide his anger. “Reaching a truce with a crippled berserker, more or less by default, is perhaps forgivable.
But this-no, what you seem to be suggesting is intolerable!”
Dirac drew himself up. He reminded his accuser that for the great mass of a billion protopeople aboard, the only possible future lay on some new world where some kind of independent colony might eventually be established. They were not wanted elsewhere; that was why they were here now.
He challenged Prinsep to name any Solarian world, whatever its type or degree of civilization, that would extend a cheerful welcome to a billion strangers, that would take in that number of people who, no matter how much they might eventually contribute, would first have to be nurtured through all the difficulties of immaturity.
Prinsep shook his head, condemning. “You would give them life only to serve you. To be coins in some damned bargain you think that you can make with death.”
“I say it is only my bargaining with death, as you put it, Commodore, that has kept us all from being exterminated.”
Prinsep demanded: “Then you have definite evidence that the berserker retains a capability for aggressive action?”
Dirac nodded slowly. “It is possible that it does. More than possible.”
“You seem to know a lot about it.”
Slowly the Premier was becoming enraged. “At least you should admit that I know more on this subject than you. You’ve been here in our little world a matter of days, my friend. I have been dealing with this problem, keeping my people alive, for three centuries.”
Prinsep, on leaving Dirac, went wandering the decks and corridors of the station alone, trying gloomily to decide whether his only course was bloody conflict to overthrow the Premier’s rule. Such a conflict might well kill every Solarian on board, and only succeed in doing the berserker’s work.
The commodore’s feet carried him into Freya’s territory, and presently he once more stood looking down at the three dead men she was preserving.
He mused aloud: “Too bad their minds could not have been recorded. I suppose there was no hope of that by the time they reached you.”
“None,” agreed Freya2. Her image had sprouted in welcome on a nearby ‘stage. “The mind, the personality, ceases to be detectable with organic death. It is still possible for some hours afterward-longer with good preservation-to obtain a distinctive individual pattern from the brain cells, a pattern which would appear also in the recorded personality. But as yet we can do no more than that.”
“Interesting,” was Prinsep’s comment. “So, for example, if the Lady Genevieve’s original body were still available-”
“Yes, it could be shown to be hers. Even as this body here is readily identifiable as the organic basis for Nicholas Hawksmoor’s matrix.” And she indicated the still, dead form of Fowler Aristov.
Prinsep’s head turned slowly, wonderingly. He stared at the calm image of Freya, her long hair tossed gently by an invisible wind. “Tell me that again?” he asked slowly.
Nick3 soon heard the story of his own origins, from Prinsep.
The story as Freya told it included the fact of Dirac’s parenthood, which she had been able to deduce from the Premier’s genetic pattern kept on file.
When Nick knew the truth, his thoughts churned with murderous rage-as had those of his immediate predecessor on hearing the same revelation. He wanted to strike for revenge, this time beginning directly against Loki. But Loki’s physical storage was inaccessible to him, almost certainly in Dirac’s private stateroom.
It would only be possible to get in there when Dirac was elsewhere, and Loki with him, concentrating his attention as always on protecting Dirac.
Meanwhile, the Premier wanted to consult once more with the berserker, before making a final choice on what his own next move should be. Now, less worried than before about the secret contacts being discovered, he had taken steps to establish a video link-he wanted to present the graphic of his proposed colonial design.
He had wondered, with deep curiosity, what image if any a berserker would present upon a holostage to represent itself in a dialogue with Solarians. The answer turned out to be that there was only noisy emptiness. No real video signal at all was coming through.
Dirac was ready to concede that his plan for a new colony, a new mode of human life, might well require additional centuries to perfect. Probably it had been a mistake to talk about the plan to Prinsep. He had known from the day the commodore and his people arrived that there would be virtually no hope of getting them to cooperate in the scheme. No. They would have to be dealt with in some other way.
He paced now in the narrow cleared space of his private quarters, occasionally turning his head to glance at the image of noisy fog, as if he half expected the noise to coalesce into something more meaningful. The little communicator Scurlock had brought the Premier so long ago now lay forgotten on a table.
Scurlock and Varvara Engadin stood by listening anxiously.
Dirac was saying to the berserker’s chaotic image: “It has been obvious from the beginning of our-I might say partnership-that you are being forced to operate under severe physical limitations.
That massive damage of one kind or another prevents you from fulfilling the basic commands of your programming directly.”
Only a droning near silence came through the audio channel.
Dirac paced some more. “For three hundred years now you have been in possession of a billion potential Solarian lives-and you are still unable to put them to your original purpose. To an organic intelligence, this would be very frustrating indeed. You must experience some analogous… feeling.”
At last the voice of the machine responded. It was clear enough, but it seemed to come from a great distance, and it spoke as always in unpleasantly ugly tones, as if even the minimal amount of stress thus created might be of value in wearing away the endless resistance of Solarian humanity.
It said: “I assume these statements indicate that you have some further accommodation to propose?”
Dirac nodded. “I have. A long-term plan indeed. A great bargain between life and death, the organic and the inorganic. A number of details will have to be worked out. But I have a holographic display to show you-and I will soon send you another Solarian life unit. Perhaps several of them.”
The holostage in Havot’s cabin lit up, showing the signal which meant that someone was trying to call in. He had been lying in his bunk-alone-and thinking, and now he rolled halfway over, raising himself on one elbow. “Display,” he said.
The head and shoulders of the Lady Genevieve appeared.
Breathlessly Jenny’s image demanded: “Chris? I must see you at once.”
He was surprised. “Won’t that be rather dangerous for you, given your husband’s suddenly suspicious attitude? I don’t know…”
“He’s out of the way for the mom
ent. Come as soon as you can.
To the place you called our leafy bower. Will you come?”
Havot sighed. He smiled. “All right, within the hour.”
“Please hurry!” The stage went dark.
Frowning thoughtfully, Havot was halfway through the process of getting dressed when his ‘stage lit up again. “Display!” he ordered the device.
This time the imaged head was that of Nicholas Hawksmoor, who wasted no time in preliminaries. “Havot, I know you’ve just been summoned to a meeting. But you’d best not go. I don’t care much what happens to you, but I want to save the Lady Genevieve from any further trouble.”
The movements of Havot’s arms, pulling on his clothing, slowed to a stop. “Ah. Aha. What sort of trouble exactly?”
“That wasn’t really her, you know. The image on your holostage just now.”
“What?” Though now that the suggestion had been made, Havot realized that something about the image had been just a little- odd.
Hawksmoor nodded. “It was Loki. He can do tricks with recorded images and voices. Not quite as well as I can do them, but still well enough to serve the purpose.”
“And I suppose if I respond to the summons, I’ll die?”
Nick seemed to hesitate momentarily. “Perhaps you won’t die instantly. But something will happen that you won’t like. Loki is already waiting in suit-form near the rendezvous. And a small shuttle is standing by, with Scurlock at the controls.”
Havot sighed. “Thanks for the warning.”
“I don’t give it for your sake.”
“I see. Thanks anyway.” He paused. “Nick? One good turn deserves another. We ought to be able to work out something where I do one for you.”
The image of Nick3 looked at Havot steadily for what seemed to Havot a long time. Then Hawksmoor said: “At the moment I am inclined to give an alliance favorable consideration.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Mick needed only moments to locate the Lady Genevieve. He knew that currently she was nowhere near the leafy bower, nor was she in her quarters, where, unknown to her, her enemies and Nick’s were ready to monitor any incoming calls. Instead, Jenny had gone wandering through the laboratory deck, and now at Freya’s recommendation she was visiting the station’s ten-cube.
Jenny was suddenly aware of a need to come to grips with, attain an understanding of, her own past life.
Three centuries ago, as Dirac’s bride, she had come aboard this station intending a brief visit for a special purpose. Having handed over her offspring, boy or girl-actually she could not remember ever asking the sex-to the blandly tender organic doctors and machines, the Premier’s young bride had then fled the station and proceeded to get herself killed-or so almost everyone had been convinced.
Her donation of three hundred years ago, the zygote sought so assiduously by the Premier when he first came aboard, had never been located. Evidently that tile had been truly lost among the enormous mass of other genetic mate-rial, as a result of Hoveler’s successful scrambling of the records.
Certainly, she thought now, as she watched the development of the elaborate display that she had ordered up at Freya’s suggestion, her husband was right about one thing: for the billion protopeople aboard the biostation the future existed, if it existed anywhere at all, only on some new world, where a Solarian colony could eventually be established.
Jenny’s fanatical determination to cling to her restored flesh had never wavered. But she had come to feel only hate and fear for her husband. And he was jealous of her, not because he cared for her particularly as a woman, but as he would have resented any other encroachment upon his exclusive rights to anything.
Recently Dirac, gripped by jealousy, had threatened his wife with something worse than an extended deep freeze: a re-recording, followed by a reprogramming such as he had more than once inflicted upon Nick.
Centuries ago, when this Solarian bioresearch station had functioned normally, its VR chamber, like similar devices in many other scientific establishments throughout the Solarian portion of the Galaxy, had been one of the most favored research tools aboard.
Inside such a facility, researchers could easily blow up a microscopic zygote-or even a single cell or a single molecule-to room size or to the imaged size of Westminster Abbey, accommodated within a comparatively modest thousand cubic meters of real room, and could go climbing around among the imaged components sculpted by the chamber’s software out of polyphase matter. Working through such modeling, researchers could obtain exactly the view they wanted of their subject; and then, with the proper tools connected, they could alter individual molecules, or even atoms, as desired.
Under normal conditions, one of the most important uses of the chamber on the biostation had been the imaging of individual specimens, in preparation for various efforts at genetic engineering.
Freya of course did not need this kind of help in grasping physical relationships and patterns. Nor did Nick. But for organic humans such graphics could be a great aid to visualization.
Today, somewhat to Nick’s surprise, he found the lady standing among gigantic representations of complex molecules, getting what was evidently her first serious look at the image of human origins, the architecture of genetics.
She looked at Nick through the eyes of the VR helmet and greeted him abstractedly. He delayed delivering the warning that had brought him here, long enough to conduct a very brief tutorial session, explaining what some of the exotic shapes in the graphic represented.
Lady Genevieve appeared to be impressed with all the looping, spiraling intricacies. “So, this is what we are.”
“This is how we start, my lady. Or, rather, what we look like only a very little way out of the starting gate. Or while we’re still in the gate, if you prefer to look at the matter that way.”
“Nick, you say ‘we.’ But none of this really applies to you.”
“Jenny, there is something I have just learned about myself.
Something I want you to know.”
And even as Nick explained to the lady his recent discoveries about himself, he was simultaneously carrying out two other operations, jobs that would not, could not wait.
First, acting in discrete microsecond intervals, slices of time abstracted from his talk with Jenny, he was skillfully deceiving Loki as to Havot’s whereabouts.
Actually Havot, clad now in full armor and carrying his carbine, was stalking Loki near the leafy bower, approaching from a direction in which Loki was not expecting to see him. As the young man advanced, he remained in almost continuous communication with Nick. And Nick, by employing various service machines he had at his disposal, was able to provide slight noises, carefully timed distractions meant to conceal the slight sound of Havot’s quiet movements from Loki’s perception.
Presently Havot came to a stop, standing very quietly in front of a door that impeded further progress. Silently he lifted his carbine in both arms.
Nick silently and partially slid open the door in front of Havot.
Not ten meters down the corridor which was now revealed, Havot could now see Loki. Dirac’s optelectronic bodyguard was waiting in suit-form, his inorganic attention focused away from Havot. Somewhat farther in the same direction, just round the next corner, Nick was using a service robot to fabricate the sound of cautious human footsteps, thus creating a phantom Havot, a pseudovictim, who was walking steadily if somewhat suspiciously straight into the planned ambush.
And where was Dirac himself? For a moment Nick was frightened, thinking he had lost track of the Premier. But no, there he was, in a small room just out of sight of the spot where Loki waited. The old man, in accordance with his usual behavior nowadays, was curious and jealous and worried about what his wife was doing. But for the moment at least the Premier was ignoring her. Intent on getting word from Loki and Scurlock, he was standing by to make sure that the intended abduction of Havot went off without a hitch.
And Nick, even while talking wit
h Jenny and guiding Havot, was concurrently conducting yet a third enterprise. At this moment he came bursting, in suit-form, into Dirac’s private quarters, his violent entry triggering alarms that for the moment rang unheeded. There was also the detonation at knee level of some kind of booby trap. The explosion was only partially successful against Nick’s armored suit, which lost one leg just at the knee.
But that was not enough to stop him. Even damaged, Nick’s armored shape crawled on to discover Loki’s physical storage, three skulls’ volume of metal concealed behind a bulkhead panel.
In a moment Nick was rooting out his enemy with fire.
And on another deck, at the last possible moment, the avatar of Loki waiting to ambush Havot became aware of the threat behind him. Loki’s suit-form blurred into evasive action at superhuman speed. But the bodyguard program had been waiting to take Havot alive, not to kill him. Therefore Loki had to draw a weapon before he could shoot back, and the fraction of a second’s delay proved fatal.
For once the optelectronic reactions could not be fast enough.
Havot’s alphatriggered carbine stuttered and flared, spitting armor-piercing packets of force. Enough of the missiles hit home to blast another set of Loki’s hardware into ruin.
And now events outside of the ten-cube abruptly demanded Hawksmoor’s undivided attention. When he suddenly abandoned the Lady Genevieve, just as the distant sound of alarms and fighting reached her ears, the lady was terrified.
The unexpected sounds of fighting also interrupted a conference Prinsep had been having with Lieutenant Tongres, Ensign Dinant, and Drs. Zador and Hoveler.
Before the fighting started, the commodore had been telling his allies that there seemed no way to avoid launching a direct assault on the berserker, but how soon they could mount any such operation depended to a great extent on Dirac.
Some of those present thought that before undertaking such a desperate course of action it would first be necessary to depose Dirac as de facto ruler.
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