Short Fiction Complete

by Fred Saberhagen

  “Some virus, you think? What’s it doing to you, Carr? Are you in pain—I mean, more than before?”

  “No.” Carr swirled his chair to look at the little chart he had begun. It showed that in the last two days his weight loss had started to reverse itself. He looked down at his body, at the bandaged place near the center of a discolored, inhuman-looking area. That area was smaller than it had been, and he saw a hint of new and healthy skin.

  “What is the stuff doing to you?”

  Carr allowed himself to smile, and to speak aloud his growing hope.

  “I think it’s killing off my cancer.”

  END

  1965

  STONE PLACE

  It was a fantastic place to fight a space war—where a million orbiting rocks could conceal an alien ambush!

  I

  Earth’s Gobi spaceport was perhaps the biggest in all the small corner of the galaxy settled by Solarian Man and his descendants; at least, so thought Mitchell Spain, who had seen most of those ports in his twenty-four years of life.

  But looking down now from the crowded, descending shuttle, he could see almost nothing of the Gobi’s miles of ramp. The vast crowd below, meaning only joyful welcome, had defeated its own propose by forcing back and breaking the police lines. Now the vertical string of descending shuttle-ships had to pause, searching for enough clear room to land.

  Mitchell Spain, crowded into the lowest shuttle with a thousand other volunteers, was paying little attention to the landing problem for the moment. Into this jammed compartment, once a luxurious observation lounge, had just come Johann Karlsen himself; and this was Mitch’s first chance for a good look at the newly appointed High Commander of Sol’s defense, though Mitch had ridden Karlsen’s spear-shaped flagship all the way from Esteel.

  Karlsen was no older than Mitchell Spain, and no taller, his shortness somehow surprising at first glance. He had become ruler of the planet Esteel largely through the influence of his half-brother, the mighty Felipe Nogara; but he held that rule by his own talents.

  “This field may be blocked for the rest of the day,” Karlsen was saying now, to a cold-eyed Earthman who had just come aboard the shuttle from an aircar. “Let’s have the ports open, I want to look around.”

  Glass and metal slid and reshaped themselves, and sealed ports became small balconies open to the air of Earth, the fresh smells of a living planet—open, also, to the roaring chant of the crowd a few hundred feet below: “Karlsen! Karlsen!”

  As the High Commander stepped out onto a balcony to survey for himself the chances of landing, the throng of men in the lounge made a seemingly involuntary brief surging movement, as if to follow. These men were mostly Esteeler volunteers, with a sprinkling of adventurers like Mitchell Spain, the Martian wanderer who had signed up on Esteel for the battle bounty Karlsen offered.

  “Don’t crowd, outlander,” said a tall man ahead of Mitch, turning and looking down at him.

  “I answer to die name of Mitchell Spain.” He let his voice rasp a shade deeper than usual. “No mote an outlander here than you, I think.”

  The tall one, by his dress and accent, came from Venus, a planet terraformed only within the last century, whose people were sensitive and proud in newness of independence and power. A Venerian might well be jumpy here, on a ship filled with men from a planet ruled by Felipe Nogara’s brother.

  “Spain—sounds like a Martian name,” said the Venerian in a milder tone, looking down at Mitch.

  Martians were not known for patience and long suffering. After another moment the tall one seemed to get tired of locking eyes and turned away.

  The cold-eyed Earthman, his face somehow familiar to Mitch, was on the communicator, probably to the captain of the shuttle. “Drive on toward the city; cross the Khosutu highway, and let down there.” Karlsen, back inside, said: “Tell him to go no more than about ten kilometers an hour; they seem to want to see me.”

  The statement was matter-of-fact; if people had made great efforts to see Johann Karlsen, it was only die courteous thing to greet them.

  Mitch watched Karlsen’s face, and then the back of his head, and the strong arms lifted to wave, as the High Commander stepped out again onto the little balcony. The crowd’s roar doubled.

  Is that all you feel, Karlsen, a wish to be courteous? Oh, no, my friend, you are acting. To be greeted with that thunder must do something rital to any man. It might exalt him; possibly it could disgust or frighten him, friendly as it was. You wear well your mask of courteous nobility, High Commander.

  What was it like to be Johann Karlsen, come to save the world, when none of the really great and powerful ones seemed to care too much about it? With a bride of famed beauty to be yours when the battle has been won?

  And where was brother Felipe today? Scheming, no doubt, to get economic power over yet another planet.

  With another shift of the little mob inside the shuttle the tall Venerian moved from in front of Mitch who could now see clearly out the port past Karlsen. Sea of faces, the old cliche, this was really it. How to write this . . . Mitch knew he would someday have to write it. If all men’s foolishness was not permanently ended by the coming battle with the unliving, the battle bounty should suffice to let a man write for some time.

  Ahead now were the bone-colored towers of Ulan Bator, rising beyond their fringe of suburban slideways and sunfields a highway, and bright multicolored pennants, worn by the aircars swarming out from the city in glad welcome.

  Police aircars were keeping pace protectively with the spaceship, though there seemed no possible danger from anything but excess enthusiasm.

  Another, special, aircar approached. The police craft touched it briefly and gently, then drew back with deference. Mitch stretched his neck, and made out a Carmpan insignia on the car. It was probably their ambassador to Sol, in person. The space shuttle eased to a dead slow creeping.

  Some said that the Carmpan looked like machines themselves, but they were the strong allies of Earth-descended man in the war against the enemies of all life. If the Carmpan bodies were slow and squarish, their minds were visionary; if they were curiously unable to use force against any enemy, their indirect help was of great value.

  Something near silence came over the vast crowd as the ambassador reared himself up in his open car; from his head and body ganglions of wire and fiber stretched to make a hundred connections with Carmpan animals and equipment around him.

  The crowd recognized the meaning of the network; a great sigh went up. In the shuttle men jostled one another trying for a better view. The cold-eyed Earthman whispered rapidly into the communicator.

  “Prophecy!” said a hoarse voice, near Mitch’s ear.

  “—of Probability!” come the ambassador’s voice, suddenly amplified, seeming to pick up the thought in mid-phrase. The Carmpan Propherts of Probability were half mystics, half cold mathematicians. Karlsen’s aids must have decided, or known, that this prophecy was going to be a favorable, inspiring thing which the crowd should hear and had ordered the ambassador’s voice picked up on a public address system.

  “The hope, the living spark, to spread the flame of life!” The inhuman mouth chopped out the words, which still rose ringingly. The armlike appendages pointed straight to Karlsen, level on his balcony with the hovering aircar. “The dark metal thoughts are now of victory, the dead things make their plans to kill us all. But in this man before me now, there is life greater than any strength of metal. A power of life, to resonate—in all of us. I see—with Karlsen—victory—”

  The strain on a Carmpan prophet in action seemed always to be immense, just as his accuracy was always high. Mitch had heard that toe stresses involved were more topological than electrical. He had heard it, but like most Earthdescended, had never understood it.

  “Victory,” the ambassador repeated. “Victory . . . and then . . .”

  Something changed in the nonSolarian face. The cold-eyed Earthman was perhaps expert in reading lien express
ions, or was perhaps taking no chances. He whispered another command, and the amplification was taken from the Carmpan voice. A roar of approval mounted up past shuttle and aircar, from the great throng who thought the prophecy complete. But the ambassador was not finished, though now only those a few meters in front of him, inside the shuttle, could hear his faltering voice.

  “. . . then death, destruction, failure.” The square body bent, but the alien eyes were still riveted on Karlsen. “He who wins everything—will die owning nothing . . .”

  The Carmpan bent down and his aircar moved away. In the lounge of the shuttle there was silence. The hurrahing outside seemed to have a tone of mockery.

  After long seconds, the High Commander raised his voice: “Men, we who heard the finish of the prophecy are few—but still we are many, to keep a secret. So I don’t ask for secrecy. But spread the word, too, that I have no faith in prophecies that are not of God. The Carmpan have never claimed to be infallible.”

  The gloomy answer was unspoken, but almost telepathically loud among the group. Nine times out of ten, the Carmpan are right. There will be victory, then death and failure.

  But did the dark ending apply only to Johann Karlsen, or to the whole cause of the living? The men in the shuttle looked at one another, wondering and murmuring.

  The shuttles found space to land, at the edge of Ulan Bator. Disembarking, there was no chance for gloom, with the joyous crowd growing thicker by the moment around the ships. A lovely Earth girl came wreathed in garlands, to throw a flowery loop around Mitchell Spain, and to kiss him. He was an ugly man, quite unused to such willing attentions.

  Still, he noticed when the High Commander’s eye was on him.

  “You, Martian, come with me to the General Staff meeting. I want to show a representative group in there so they’ll believe Esteel is cosmopolitan. I need one or two who were born in Sol’s light.”

  “Yes, sir.” Was there no other reason why Karlsen had singled him out? They stood together in the crowd, two short men looking levelly at each other. One ugly and flower-bedecked, his arm still around a girl who stared with sudden awed recognition at the other man, who was magnetic in a way beyond handsomeness or ugliness. The ruler of a planet, perhaps to be the savior of all life.

  “I like the way you keep people from standing on your toes in a crowd,” said Karlsen to Mitchell Spain. “Without raising your voice or uttering threats. What’s your name and rank?”

  Military organization was vague, in this war where everything that lived was on the same side. “Mitchell Spain, sir. No rank assigned, yet. I’ve been training with the marines. I was on Esteel when you offered a good battle bounty, so here I am.”

  “Not to defend Mars?”

  “I suppose, that too. But I might as well get paid for it.”

  Karlsen’s high-ranking aides were wrangling and shouting now, about groundcar transportation to the Staff meeting. This seemed to leave Karlsen with time to talk. He thought, and recognition flickered on his face.

  “Mitchell Spain? The poet?”

  “I—I’ve had a couple of things published. Nothing much . . .”

  “Have you combat experience?”

  “Yes, I was aboard one berserker, before it was pacified. That was out—”

  “Later, we’ll talk. Probably have some marine command for you. Experienced men are scarce. Hemphill, where are those groundcars?”

  The cold-eyed Earthman turned to answer. Of course, his face had been familiar; this was Hemphill, fanatic hero of a dozen berserker fights. Mitch was faintly awed, in spite of himself.

  At last the groundcars came. The ride was into Ulan Bator. The military center would be under the metropolis, taking full advantage of the defensive forcefields that could be extended up into space to protect the area of the city.

  Riding down the long elevator zig-zag to the buried War Room, Mitch found himself again next to Karlsen.

  “Congratulations on your coming marriage, sir.” Mitch didn’t know if he liked Karlsen or not; but already he felt curiously certain of him, as if he had known the man for years. Karlsen would know he was not trying to curry favor.

  The High Commander nodded. “Thank you.” He hesitated for a moment, then produced a small photo. In an illusion of three dimensions it showed the head of a young woman, golden hair done in the style favored by the new aristocracy of Venus.

  There was no need for any polite stretching of truth. “She’s very beautiful.”

  “Yes.” Karlsen looked long at the picture, as if reluctant to put it away. “There are those who say this will be only a political alliance. God knows we need one. But believe me, Poet, she means far more than that to me.”

  Karlsen blinked suddenly, and, as if amused at himself, gave Mitch a why-am-I-telling-you-all-this look. The elevator floor pressed up under the passengers’ feet, and the doors sighed open. They had reached the catacomb of the General Staff.

  II

  Many of the Staff were Venerian in these days, though not an absolute majority. From their greeting, it was plain that the Venerian members were coldly hostile to Nogara’s brother.

  Humanity was, as always, a tangle of cliques and alliances. The brains of the Solarian Parliament and the Executive had been taxed to find a High Commander. If some objected to Johann Karlsen, no one who knew him had any honest doubt of his ability. He brought with him to battle many trained men, and unlike some mightier leaders, he had been more than willing to take responsibility for the defense of Sol.

  In the frigid atmosphere in which the Staff meeting opened, there was nothing but to get quickly to business. The enemy, the berserker machines, had abandoned their old tactics of single, unpredictable raids. Those tactics had once threatened the intelligent life of this part of the galaxy with ruin, but slowly over the last decades the defenses of life had been strengthened, the scales had begun to tip.!

  There were now thought to be about two hundred berserker machines; they had recently formed themselves into a fleet, with concentrated power capable of overwhelming one at a time all centers of human resistance. Two strongly defended planets had already been destroyed. A massed human fleet was needed, first to defend Sol, and then to meet and break the power of the unliving.

  “So far, then, we are agreed,” said Karlsen, straightening up from the plotting table and looking around at the General Staff. “We have not as many ships, or as many trained men as we would like. Perhaps no government away from Sol has contributed all it could.”

  Kemal, the Venerian Admiral, glanced around at his planetmen, but declined the chance to comment on the weak contribution of Karlsen’s own half-brother, Nogara. There was no living being upon whom Earth, Mars, and Venus could agree, as the leader for this war. Kemal seemed to be willing to try and live with Nogara’s brother.

  Karlsen went on: “We have available for combat two hundred and forty-three ships, specially constructed or modified to suit the new tactics I propose to use. We are all grateful for the magnificent Venerian contribution of a hundred ships. Six of them, as you all probably know, mount the new long range, C-plus cannon.”

  The praise produced no visible tow among the Venerians. Karlsen went on. “We seem to have a numerical advantage of about forty ships. I needn’t tell you how the enemy outgun us and outpower us, unit for unit.” He paused. “The ram-and-board tactics should give us just the element of surprise we need.”

  Perhaps the High Commander was choosing his words carefully, not wanting to say that some element of surprise offered the only logical hope of success. After the decadeslong dawning of hope, it would be too much to say that. Too much for even these tough-minded men who knew how a berserker machine weighed in the scales of war against any ordinary warship.

  “One big problem is trained men,” Karlsen continued, “to lead the boarding parties. I’ve done the best I can, recruiting. Of those ready and in training as boarding marines now, the bulk are Estellers.”

  Admiral Kemal seemed to guess what
was coming; he started to push back his chair and rise, then waited, evidently wanting to make certain.

  Karlsen went on in the same level tone. “These trained marines will be formed into companies, and one company assigned to each warship. Then—”

  “One moment, High Commander Karlsen.” Kemal had risen.

  “Yes?”

  “Do I understand that you mean lo station companies of Esteelers board Venerian ships?”

  “In many cases my plan will mean that, yes. You protest?”

  “I do.” The Venerian looked around at his planetmen. “We all do.”

  “Nevertheless it is so ordered.”

  Kemal looked briefly around at his fellows once more, then sat down, blank-faced. The stenocameras in the room’s corners emitted their low sibilance, reminding all that their proceedings were being recorded.

  A vertical crease appeared briefly in the High Commander’s forehead, and he looked for long thoughtful seconds at the Venerians before resuming his talk. But what else was there to do, except put Esteelers onto Venerian ships?

  They won’t let you be a hero, Karlsen, thought Mitchell Spain. The universe is bad; and men are fools, never really all on the same side in any war.

  III

  In the hold of the Venerian warship Solar Spot the armor lay packed inside a padded coffin-like crate. Mitch knelt beside it inspecting the knee and elbow joints.

  “Want me to paint some insignia on it, Captain?”

  It was a young Esteeler named Fishman, one of the newly formed marine company Mitch now commanded. Fishman had picked up a multicolor paintstick somewhere, and he pointed with it to the suit.