Short Fiction Complete

by Fred Saberhagen

  Heads turned at Holt’s entrance, and a moment of silence was followed by a cheer. In all the eyes and faces turned now toward his prisoners, Holt could see nothing like pity.

  “Welcome, Captain,” said Nogara in a pleasant voice, when Holt had remembered to bow. “Is there news from Flamland?”

  “None of great importance, sir.”

  A puffy-faced man who sat at Nogara’s right hand leaned forward on the table. “No doubt there is great mourning for the late governor?”

  “Of course, sir.” Holt recognized Mical. “And much anticipation of the new.”

  Mical leaned back in his chair, smiling cynically. “I’m sure the rebellious population is eager for my arrival. Girl, were you eager to meet me? Come, pretty one, round the table, here to me.” As Lucinda slowly obeyed, Mical gestured to the serving devices. “Robots, set a chair for the man—there, in the center of the floor. Captain, you may return to your ship.”

  Felipe Nogara was steadily regarding the manacled figure of his old enemy Janda, and what Nogara might be thinking was hard to say. But he seemed content to let Mical give what orders pleased him.

  “Sir,” said Holt to Mical. “I would like to see—the remains of Johann Karlsen.”

  That drew the attention of Nogara, who nodded. A serving machine drew back sable draperies, revealing an alcove in one end of the Hall In the alcove, before a huge viewport, rested the coffin.

  Holt was not particularly surprised; on many planets it was the custom to feast in the presence of the dead. After bowing to Nogara he turned and saluted and walked toward the alcove. Behind him he heard the shuffle and clack of Janda’s manacled movement, and held his breath. A muttering passed along the table, and then a sudden quieting in which even the throbbing music ceased. Probably Nogara had gestured permission for Janda’s walk, wanting to see what the brainwashed man would do.

  Holt reached the coffin and stood over it. He hardly saw the frozen face inside it, or the blur of the hypermass beyond the port. He hardly heard the whispers and giggles of the revelers. The only picture clear in his mind showed the faces of his crew as they waited helpless in the grip of the berserker.

  The machine clothed in Janda’s flesh came shuffling up beside him, and its eyes of glass stared down into those of ice. A photograph of retinal patterns taken back to the waiting berserker for comparison with old captured records would tell it that this man was really Karlsen.

  A faint cry of anguish made Holt look back toward the long table, where he saw Lucinda pulling herself away from Mical’s clutching arm, Mical and his friends were laughing.

  “No, Captain, I am no Karlsen,” Mical called down to him, seeing Holt’s expression. “And do you think I regret the difference? Johann’s prospects are not bright. He is rather bounded by a nutshell, and can no longer count himself king of infinite space!”

  “Shakespeare!” cried a sycophant, showing appreciation of Mical’s literary erudition.

  “Sir.” Holt took a step forward. “May I—may I now take the prisoners back to my ship?”

  Mical misinterpreted Holt’s anxiety. “Oh ho! I see you appreciate some of life’s finer things, Captain. But as you know, rank has its privileges. The girl stays here.”

  He had expected them to hold on to Lucinda, and she was better here than with the berserker.

  “Sir, then if—if the man alone can come with me. In a prison hospital on Esteel he may recover—”

  “Captain,” Nogara’s voice was not loud, but it hushed the table. “Do not argue here.”

  “No sir.”

  Mical shook his head. “My thoughts are not yet of mercy to my enemies, Captain. Whether they may soon turn in that direction—well, that depends.” He again reached out a leisurely arm to encircle Lucinda. “Do you know, Captain, that hatred is the true spice of love?”

  Holt looked helplessly back at Nogara. Nogara’s cold eye said: One more word, courier, and you find yourself in the brig. I do not give two warnings.

  If Holt cried berserker now, the thing in Janda’s shape might kill everyone in the Hall before it could be stopped. He knew it was listening to him, watching his movements.

  “I—I am returning to my ship,” he stuttered. Nogara looked away, and no one else paid him much attention. “I will—return here—in a few hours perhaps. Certainly before I drive for Esteel.”

  Holt’s voice trailed off as he saw that a group of the revelers had surrounded Janda. They had removed the manacles from the outlaw’s dead limbs, and they were putting a horned helmet on his head, giving him a shield and spear and a cloak of fur, equipage of an old Norse warrior of Earth—first to coin and bear the dread name of berserker.

  “Observe, Captain,” mocked Mical’s voice. “At our masked ball we do not fear the fate of Prince Prospero. We willingly bring in the semblance of the terror outside!”

  “Poe!” shouted the sycophant in glee.

  Prospero and Poe meant nothing to Holt, and Mical looked disappointed.

  “Leave us, Captain,” said Nogara, making a direct order of it.

  “Leave, Captain Holt,” said Lucinda in a firm, clear voice. “We all know you wish to help those who stand in danger here. Lord Nogara, will Captain Holt be blamed in any way for what happens here when he has gone?”

  There was a hint of puzzlement in Nogara’s clear eyes. But he shook his head slightly, granting the asked for absolution.

  And there was nothing for Holt to do but go back to the berserker to argue and plead with it for his crew. If it was patient, the evidence it sought might be forthcoming. If only the revelers would have mercy on the thing they thought was Janda.

  Holt went out. It had never entered his burdened mind that Karlsen was only frozen.

  V

  Mical’s arm was about her hips as she stood beside his chair, and his voice purred up at her. “Why, how you tremble, pretty one . . . it moves me that such a pretty one as you should, tremble at my touch, yes, it moves me deeply. Now, we are no longer enemies, are we? If we are, I should have to deal harshly with your brother.”

  She had given Holt time to get clear of the Nirvana. Now she swung her arm with all her strength. The blow turned Mical’s head halfway round, and made his neat gray hair fly wildly.

  There was a sudden hush in the Great Hall, and then a roar of laughter that reddened all of Mical’s face to match the handprint on his cheek. A man behind Lucinda grabbed her arms and pinned them. She relaxed until she felt his grip loosen slightly, and then she grabbed up a table knife. There was another burst of laughter as Mical ducked away and the man behind Lucinda seized her again. Another man came W help him and the two of them, laughing, took away the knife and forced her to sit in a chair at Mical’s side.

  When the governor spoke at last his voice quavered slightly, but it was low and almost calm.

  “Bring the man closer,” he ordered. “Seat him there, just across the table from us.”

  While his order was being carried out, Mical spoke to Lucinda in conversational tones. “It was my intent, of course, that your brother should be treated and allowed to recover.” He paused to see the effect of that statement on her.

  “Lying piece of filth,” she whispered, smiling.

  Mical only smiled back. “Let us test the skill of my mind-control technicians,” he suggested. “I’ll wager that no bonds will be needed to hold your brother in his chair, once I have done this.” He made a curious gesture over the table, toward the glassy eyes that looked out of Janda’s face. “So. But he will still be aware, with every nerve, of all that happens to him. You may be sure of that.”

  She had planned and counted on something like this happening, but now she felt as if she was exhausted by breathing evil air. She was afraid of fainting, and at the same time wished that she could.

  “Our guest is bored with his costume.” Mical looked up and down the table. “Who will be first to take a turn at entertaining him?”

  There was a spattering of applause as a giggling ef
feminate arose from a nearby chair.

  “Jamy is known for his inventiveness,” said Mical in pleasant tones to Lucinda. “I insist you watch closely, now. Chin up!”

  On the other side of Mical, Felipe Nogara was losing his air of remoteness. As if reluctantly, he was being drawn to watch. In his bearing was a rising expectancy, winning out over disgust.

  Jamy came giggling, holding a small jeweled knife.

  “Not the eyes,” Mical cautioned. “Thew’ll be things I want him to see, later.”

  “Oh, certainly!” Jamy twittered. He set the horned helmet gingerly aside, and wiped the touch of it from his fingers. “We’ll just start like this on one cheek, with a bit of skin—”

  Jamy’s touch with the blade was gentle, but still too much for the dead flesh. At the first peeling tug, the whole lifeless mask fell red and wet from around the staring eyes, and his steel berserker-skull grinned out.

  Lucinda had just time to see Jamy’s body flung across the Hall by a steel-boned arm before the men holding her let go and turned to flee for their lives, and she was able to duck under the table. Screaming bedlam broke loose, and in another moment the whole table went over with a crash before the berserker’s strength. The machine, finding itself discovered, thwarted in its primary function of getting away with evidence on Karlsen, took as its secondary goal the old berserker one of simple killing. It moved through the Hall, squatting and hopping grotesquely, mowing its way with scythe-like arms, harvesting howling panic into bundles of bloody stillness.

  At the main door, fleeing people jammed one another into immobility, and the assassin worked among them, methodically mangling and slaying. Then it turned and came down the Hall again. It came to Lucinda, still kneeling where the table-tipping had exposed her; but the machine hesitated, recognizing her as a semi-partner in its prime function. In a moment it had dashed on after another target.

  It was Nogara, swaying on his feet, his right arm hanging broken. He had come up with a heavy handgun from somewhere, and now he fired left-handed as the machine charged down the other side of the overturned table toward him. The gun-blasts shattered Nogara’s friends and furniture but only grazed his moving target.

  At last one shot hit home. The machine was wrecked, but its impetus carried it on to knock Nogara down again.

  There was a shaky quiet in the Great Hall, which was wrecked as if by a bomb. Lucinda got unsteadily to her feet. There were sobs and moans and gropings everywhere, but no one else was standing.

  She picked her way dazedly over to the smashed assassin-machine. She felt only a numbness, looking at the rags of clothing and flesh that still clung to its metal frame. Now in her mind she could see her brother’s face as it once was, strong and smiling.

  Now there was something that mattered more than the dead, if she could only recall what it was—of course, the berserker’s hostages, the good kind spacemen. She could try to trade Karlsen’s body for them.

  The serving machines, built to face emergencies on the order of spilled wine, where dashing to and from the nearest thing to panic that mechanism could achieve. They impeded Lucinda’s progress, but she had the heavy coffin wheeled halfway across the Hall when a weak voice stopped her. Nogara had dragged himself up to a sitting position against the overturned table.

  He croaked again: “—alive.”

  “What?”

  “Johann’s alive. Healthy. See? It’s a freezer.”

  “But we all told the berserker he was dead.” She felt stupid with the impact of one shock after another. For the first time she looked down at Karlsen’s face, and long seconds passed before she could tear her eyes away. “It has hostages. It wants his body.”

  “No.” Nogara shook his head. “I see, now. But no. I won’t give him to berserkers, alive.” A brutal power of personality still emanated from his broken body. His gun was gone, but his power kept Lucinda from moving. There was no hatred in her now.

  She protested: “But there are even men out there.”

  “Berserker’s like me.” Nogara bared pain-clenched teeth. “It won’t let prisoners go. Here. The key . . .” He pulled it from inside his tornopen tunic.

  Lucinda’s eyes were drawn once again to the cold serenity of the face in the coffin. Then on impulse she ran to get the key. When she did so Nogara slumped over in relief, unconscious or nearly so.

  The coffin lock was marked in several positions, and she turned it to EMERGENCY REVIVAL. Lights sprang on around the figure inside, and there was a hum of power.

  By now the automated systems of the ship were reacting to the emergency. The serving machines had begun a stretcher-bearer service. Nogara being one of the first victims they carried away. Presumably a robot medic was in action somewhere. From behind Nogara’s throne chair a great voice was shouting.

  “This is ship defense control, requesting human orders! What is nature of emergency?”

  “Do not contact the courier ship!” Lucinda shouted back. “Watch it for an attack. But don’t hit the lifeboat!”

  The glass top of the coffin had become opaque.

  Lucinda ran to the viewport, stumbling over the body of Mical and going on without a pause. By putting her face against the port and looking out at an angle she could just see the berserker-courier, pinkly visible in the wavering light of the hypermass, its lifeboat of hostages a small pink dot still in place before it.

  How long would it wait, before it killed the hostages and fled?

  When she turned away from the port, she saw that the coffin’s lid was open and the man inside was sitting up. For just a moment, a moment that was to say in Lucinda’s mind, his eyes were like a child’s, fixed helplessly on hers. Then power began to grow behind his eyes, a power somehow completely different from his brother’s and perhaps even greater.

  Karlsen looked away from her, taking in the rest of his surroundings, the devastated Great Hall and the coffin. “Felipe,” he whispered, as if in pain, though his halfbrother was no longer in sight.

  Lucinda moved toward him and started to pour out her story, from the day in the Flamland prison when she had heard that Karlsen had fallen to the plague.

  Once he interrupted her. “Help me out of this thing, get me space armor.” His arm was hard and strong when she grasped it, but when he stood beside her he was surprisingly short. “Go on, what then?”

  She hurried on with her tale, while serving machines came to arm him. “But why were you frozen?” she ended, suddenly wondering at his health and strength.

  He ignored the question. “Come along to Defense Control. We must save those men out there.”

  He went familiarly to the nerve center of the ship and hurled himself into the combat chair of the Defense Officer, who was probably dead. The panel before Karlsen came alight and he ordered at once: “Get me a contact with that courier.”

  Within a few moments a flatsounding voice from the courier answered routinely. The face that appeared on the communication screen was badly lighted; someone viewing it without advance warning would not suspect that it was anything but human.

  “This is High Commander Karlsen speaking, from the Nirvana.”

  He did not call himself governor or lord, but by his title of the great day of the Stone Place. “I’m coming over there. I want to talk to you men on the courier.”

  The shadowed face moved slightly on the screen. “Yes sir.”

  Karlsen broke off the contact at once. “That’ll keep its hopes up. Now I need a fast launch. You, robots, load my coffin aboard one. I’m on emergency revival drugs now and if I live I may have to re-freeze for a while.”

  “You’re not really going there?” Up out of the chair again, he paused. “I know berserkers. If chasing me is that thing’s prime function it won’t waste a shot or a second of time on a few hostages while I’m in sight.”

  “You can’t go,” Lucinda heard herself saying. “You mean too much to all men—”

  “I’m not committing suicide, I have a trick or two in mind.�
�� Karlsen’s voice changed suddenly. “You say Felipe’s not dead?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Karlsen’s eyes dosed while his lips moved briefly, silently. Then he looked at Lucinda and grabbed up paper and a stylus from the Defense Officer’s console. “Give this to Felipe,” he said, writing. “He’ll set you and the captain free if I ask it. You’re not dangerous to his power. Whereas I . . .”

  VI

  From the Defense Officer’s position, Lucinda watched Karlsen’s crystalline launch leave the Nirvana and take a long curve that brought it near the courier at a point some distance from the lifeboat.

  “You on the courier,” Lucinda heard him say. “You can tell it’s really me here on the launch, can’t you? You can DF my transmission? Can you photograph my retinas through the screen?”

  And the launch darted away with a right-angle swerve, dodging and twisting at top acceleration, as the berserker’s weapons blasted the space where it had been. Karlsen had been right. The berserker spent not a moment’s delay or a single shot on the lifeboat, but hurled itself instantly after the launch.

  “Hit that courier!” Lucinda screamed. “Destroy it!” A salvo of missiles left the Nirvana, but it was a shot at a receding target, and it missed. Perhaps it missed because the courier was already in the fringes of the distortion surrounding the hypermass.

  Karlsen’s launch had not been hit, but it could not get away. It was a glassy dot vanishing behind a screen of blasts from the berserker’s weapons, a dot being forced into the maelstrom of the hypermass.