Short Fiction Complete

by Fred Saberhagen

  “Why not?” Greenleaf stretched and got up from the now-useless console. “You know, once a man gives up his old ways, badlife ways, admits he’s really dead to them, the new ways aren’t so bad. There are even women available from time to time, when the machines take prisoners.”

  “Goodlife,” said Malori. Now he had spoken the obscene, provoking epithet. But at the moment he was not afraid.

  “Goodlife yourself, little man.” Greenleaf was still smiling. “You know, I think you still look down on me. You’re in as deep as I am now, remember?”

  “I think I pity you.”

  Greenleaf let out a little snort of laughter, and shook his own head pityingly. “You know, I may have ahead of me a longer and more pain-free life than most of humanity has even enjoyed—you said one of the models for the personae died at twenty-three. Was that a common age of death in those days?”

  Malori, still clinging to his stanchion, began to wear a strange, grim little smile. “Well, in his generation, in the continent of Europe, it was. The First World War was raging at the time.”

  “But he died of some disease, you said.”

  “No. I said he had a disease, tuberculosis. Doubtless it would have killed him eventually. But he died in battle, in 1917 CE, in a place called Belgium. His body was never found, as I recall, an artillery barrage having destroyed it and his aircraft entirely.”

  Greenleaf was standing very still. “Aircraft! What are you saying?”

  Malori pulled himself erect, somewhat painfully, and let go of his support. “I tell you now that Georges Guynemer—that was his name—shot down fifty-three enemy aircraft before he was killed. Wait!” Malori’s voice was suddenly loud and firm, and Greenleaf halted his menacing advance in sheer surprise. “Before you begin to do anything violent to me, you should perhaps consider whether your side or mine is likely to win the fight outside.”

  “The fight . . .”

  “It will be nine ships against fifteen or more machines, but I don’t feel too pessimistic. The personae we have sent out are not going to be meekly slaughtered.”

  GREENLEAF stared at him a moment longer, then spun around and lunged for the operations console. The display was still blank white with noise and there was nothing to be done. He slowly sank into the padded chair. “What have you done to me?” he whispered. “That collection of invalid musicians—you couldn’t have been lying about them all.”

  “Oh, every word I spoke was true. Not all World War One fighter pilots were invalids, of course. Some were in perfect health, indeed fanatical about staying that way. And I did not say they were all musicians, though I certainly meant you to think so. Ball had the most musical ability among the aces, but was still only an amateur. He always said he loathed his real profession.”

  Greenleaf, slumped in the chair now, seemed to be aging visibly. “But one was blind . . . it isn’t possible.”

  “So his enemies thought, when they released him from an internment camp early in the war. Edward Mannock, blind in one eye. He had to trick an examiner to get into the army. Of course the tragedy of these superb men is that they spent themselves killing one another. In those days they had no berserkers to fight, at least none that could be attacked dashingly, with an aircraft and a machine gun. I suppose men have always faced berserkers of some kind.”

  “Let me make sure I understand.” Greenleaf’s voice was almost pleading. “We have sent out the personae of nine fighter pilots?”

  “Nine of the best. I suppose their total of claimed aerial victories is more than five hundred. Such claims were usually exaggerated, but still . . .”

  There was silence again. Greenleaf slowly turned his chair back to face the operations display. After a time the storm of atomic noise began to abate. Malori, who had sat down on the deck to rest, got up again, this time more quickly. In the hologram a single glowing symbol was emerging from the noise, fast approaching the position of the Judith.

  The approaching symbol was bright red.

  “So there we are,” said Greenleaf, getting to his feet. From a pocket he produced a stubby little handgun. At first he pointed it toward the shrinking Malori, but then he smiled his nice smile and shook his head. “No, let the machines have you. That will be much worse.”

  When they heard the airlock begin to cycle, Greenleaf raised the weapon to point at his own skull. Malori could not tear his eyes away. The inner door clicked and Greenleaf fired.

  Malori bounded across the intervening space and pulled the gun from Greenleaf’s dead hand almost before the body had completed its fall. He turned to aim the weapon at the airlock as its inner door sighed open. The berserker standing there was the one he had seen earlier, or the same type at least. But it had just been through violent alterations. One metal arm was cut short in a bright bubbly scar, from which the ends of truncated cables flapped. The whole metal body was riddled with small holes, and around its top there played a halo of electrical discharge.

  Malori fired, but the machine ignored the impact of the force-packet. They would not have let Greenleaf keep a gun with which they could be hurt. The battered machine ignored Malori too, for the moment, and lurched forward to bend over Greenleaf’s nearly decapitated body.

  “Tra-tra-tra-treason,” the berserker squeaked. “Ultimate unpleasant ultimate unpleasant stum-stum-stimuli. Badlife badlife bad—”

  By then Malori had moved up close behind it and thrust the muzzle of the gun into one of the still-hot holes where Albert Ball or perhaps Frank Luke or Werner Voss or one of the others had already used a laser to good effect. Two forcepackets beneath its armor and the berserker went down, as still as the man who lay beneath it. The halo of electricity died.

  Malori backed off, looking at them both, then spun around to scan the operations display again. The red dot was drifting away from the Judith, the vessel it represented now evidently no more than inert machinery.

  Out of the receding atomic storm a single green dot was approaching. A minute later, Number Eight came in alone, bumping to a gentle stop against its cradle pads. The laser nozzle at once began smoking heavily in atmosphere. The craft was scarred in several places by enemy fire.

  “I claim four more victories,” the persona said as soon as Malori opened the hatch. “Today I was given fine support by my wingmen, who made great sacrifices for the Fatherland. Although the enemy outnumbered us by two to one, I think that not a single one of them escaped. But I must protest bitterly that my aircraft still has not been painted red.”

  “I will see to it at once, mein herr,” murmured Malori, as he began to disconnect the persona from the fighting ship. He felt a little foolish for trying to reassure a piece of hardware. Still, he handled the persona gently as he carried it to where the little formation of empty cases were waiting on the operations deck, their labels showing plainly:

  ALBERT BALL;

  WILLIAM AVERY BISHOP;

  RENE PAUL FONCK;

  GEORGES MARIE GUYNEMER;

  FRANK LUKE;

  EDWARD MANNOCK;

  CHARLES NUNGESSER;

  MANFRED VON RICHTHOFEN;

  WERNER VOSS.

  They were English, American, German, French. They were Jew, violinist, invalid, Prussian, rebel, hater, bon vivant, Christian. Among the nine of them they were many other things besides. Maybe there was only the one word—man—which could include them all.

  Right now the nearest living humans were many millions of kilometers away, but still Malori did not feel quite alone. He put the persona back into its case gently, even knowing that it would be undamaged by ten thousand more gravities than his hands could exert. Maybe it would fit into the cabin of Number Eight with him, when he made his try to reach the Hope.

  “Looks like it’s just you and me now, Red Baron.” The human being from which it had been modeled had been not quite twenty-six when he was killed over France, after less than eighteen months of success and fame. Before that, in the cavalry, his horse had thrown him again and again.
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br />   BERSERKER’S PLANET

  For half a millennium the disembodied killer-machine had been haunted by the ghost of one man!

  I

  THE dead man’s voice was coming live and clear over ship’s radio into the Orion’s lounge, and the six people gathered there, the only people alive within several hundred light years, were listening attentively for the moment, some of theni only because Oscar Schoenberg, who owned Orion and was driving her on this trip, had indicated that he wanted to listen. Carlos Suomi, who was ready to stand up to Schoenberg and expected to have a serious argument with him one of these days, was in this instance in perfect agreement with him. Athena Poulson, the independent one of the three women, had made no objection; Celeste Servetus, perhaps the least independent, had made a few but they meant nothing. Gustavus De La Torre and Barbara Hurtado had never, in Suomi’s experience, objected to any decision made by Schoenberg.

  The dead man’s voice to which they listened was not recorded, only mummified by the approximately five hundred years of spacetime that stretched between Hunters’ system, where the radio signal had been generated, and Orion’s present position in intragalactic space about eleven hundred light years (or five and a half weeks by ship) from Earth. It was the voice of Johann Karlsen, who about five hundred standard years ago had led a battle fleet to Hunters’ system to skirmish there with a berserker fleet and drive them off. That was some time after he had smashed the main berserker power and permanently crippled their offensive capabilities at the dark nebula called the Stone Place.

  Most of the bulkhead space in the lounge was occupied by viewscreens, and then, as now, they were adjusted for the purpose, the screens brought in the stars with awesome realism. Sumoi was looking in the proper direction on the screen, but from this distance of five hundred light years it was barely possible without using telescopic magnification to pick out Hunters’ sun, let alone to see the comparatively minor flares of the space battle Karlsen had been fighting when he spoke the words now coming into the space yacht’s lounge for Schoenberg to brood over and Suomi to record. Briefly the two men looked somewhat alike, though Suomi was smaller, probably much younger, and had a rather boyish face.

  “HOW can you be sure that’s Karlsen’s voice?” Gus De La Torre, a lean and dark and somehow dangerous-looking man, asked now. He and Schoenberg were sitting in soft massive chairs facing each other across the small diameters of the lounge. The other four had positioned their similar chairs so that the group made an approximate circle.

  “I’ve heard it before. This same sequence.” Schoenberg’s voice was rather soft for such a big, tough-looking man, but it was as decisive as usual. His gaze, like Suomi’s, was on the viewscreen, probing out among the stars as he listened intently to Karlsen. “On my last trip to Hunters’,” Schoenberg went on softly, “about fifteen standard years ago, I stopped in this region—fifteen lights closer-in, of course—and managed to find this same signal. I listened to these same words and recorded some of them, just as Carlos is doing now.” He nodded in Suomi’s direction.

  Karlsen broke a crackling radio silence to say: “Check the lands on that hatch if it won’t seal—should I have to tell you that?” The voice was biting, and there was something unforgettable about it even when the words it uttered were only peevish scraps of jargon indistinguishable from those spoken by the commander of any other difficult and dangerous operation.

  “Listen to him,” Schoenberg said. “If that’s not Karlsen, who could it be? Anyway, when I got back to Earth after the last trip I checked what I had recorded against historians’ records made on his flagship, and confirmed it was the same sequence.”

  De La Torre made a playful tut-tutting sound. “Oscar, did nobody ask you how you came by your recording? You weren’t supposed to be out in this region of space then, were you, any more than we are now?”

  “Pah. Nobody pays that much attention. Interstellar Authority certainly doesn’t.”

  Suomi had the impression that Schoenberg and De La Torre had not known each other very long or very well, but had met in some business connection and had fallen in together because of a common interest in hunting, something that few people now shared. Few people on Earth, at least, which was the home planet of everyone aboard the ship.

  Karlsen said: “This is the High Commander speaking. Ring three uncover. Boarding parties, start your action sequence.”

  “Signal hasn’t decayed much since I heard it last,” Schoenberg mused. “The next fifteen lights toward Hunters’ must be clean.” Without moving from his chair he dialed a three-dimensional holographic astrogation chart into existence and with his lightwriter deftly added a symbol to it. The degree of clean emptiness of the space between them and their destination was of importance because, although a starship’s faster-than-light translation took place outside of normal space, conditions in adjacent realms of normal space had their inescapable effects.

  “There’ll be a good gravitational hill to get up,” said Karlsen on the radio. “Let’s stay alert.”

  “Frankly, all this bores me,” said Celeste Servetus (full figure, Oriental and black and some strain of Nordic in her ancestry, incredibly smooth taut skin beneath her silver body paint, wig of what looked like silver mist). Here lately it was Celeste’s way to display flashes of insolence toward Schoenberg, to go through periods of playing what in an earlier age would have been described as hard-to-get. Schoenberg did not bother to look at her now. She had already been got.

  “We wouldn’t be here now, probably, if it weren’t for that gentleman who’s talking on the radio.” This was Barbara Hurtado. Barbara and Celeste were much alike, both playgirls brought along on this expedition as items for male consumption, like the beer and the cigars; and they were much different, too. Barbara, a Caucasian-looking brunette, was as usual opaquely clothed from knees to shoulders, and there was nothing ethereal about her. If you saw her inert, asleep, face immobile, and did not hear her voice or her laugh, or behold the grace with which she moved, you might well think her nothing beyond the ordinary in sexual attractiveness.

  Alive and in motion, she was as eye-catching as Celeste. They were about on a par intellectually, too, Suomi had decided. Barbara’s remark implying that present-day interstellar human civilization owed its existence to Karlsen and his victories over the berserkers was a truism, not susceptible of debate or even worthy of reply.

  The berserkers, automated warships of terrible power and effectiveness, had been loosed on the galaxy during some unknown war fought by races long vanished before human history began. The basic program built into all berserkers was to seek out and destroy life, whenever and wherever they found it. In the dark centuries of their first assaults on Earth-descended man, they had come near overwhelming his modest dominion among the stars. Though Karlsen and others had turned them back, forced them away from the center of human-dominated space, there were still berserkers in existence and men still fought and died against them on the frontiers of man’s little corner of the galaxy. Not around here, though. Not for five hundred years.

  “I admit his voice does something to me,” Celeste said, shifting her position in her chair, stretching and then curling her long naked silver legs.

  “He loses his temper in a minute here,” said Schoenberg.

  “And why shouldn’t he? I think men of genius have that right.” This was Athena Poulson in her fine contralto. Despite her name, her face showed mainly Oriental ancestry. She was better looking than nine out of ten young women, carrying to the first decimal place what Celeste brought to the third. Athena was now wearing a simple one-piece suit, not much different from what she usually wore in the office. She was one of Schoenberg’s most private and trusted secretaries.

  Suomi, wanting to make sure he caught Karlsen’s temper-losing on his recording, checked the little crystal cube resting on the flat arm of his chair. He had adjusted it to screen out conversation in the lounge and pick up only what came in by radio. He reminded himself to l
abel the cube as soon as he got it back to his stateroom; generally he forgot.

  “HOW they must have hated him,” said Barbara Hurtado, her voice now dreamy and far away.

  Athena looked over. “Who? The people he lost his temper at?”

  “No, those hideous machines he fought against. Oscar, you’ve studied it all. Tell us something about it.”

  Schoenberg shrugged. He seemed reluctant to talk very much on the subject although it obviously interested him. “I’d say Karlsen was a real man, and I wish I could have known him. Carlos here has perhaps studied the period more thoroughly than I have.”

  “Tell us, Carl,” Athena said. She was sitting two chairs away. Suomi’s field was the psychology of environmental design. He had been called in, some months ago, to consult with Schoenberg and Associates on the plans for a difficult new office, and there he had met Athena . . . so now he was here, on a big-game hunting expedition, of all things.

  “Yes, now’s your chance,” De La Torre put in. Things did not generally go quite smoothly between him and Suomi, though the abrasion had not yet been bad enough to open up an acknowledged quarrel.

  “Well,” said Suomi thoughtfully, “in a way, you know, those machines did hate him.”

  “Oh no,” said Athena positively, shaking her head. “Not machines.”

  Sometimes he felt like hitting her.

  He went on: “Karlsen is supposed to have had some knack of choosing strategy they couldn’t cope with, some quality of leadership . . . whatever he had, the berserkers couldn’t seem to oppose him successfully. They’re said to have placed a higher value on his destruction than on that of some entire planets.”

  “The berserkers made special assassin machines,” Schoenberg offered unexpectedly. “Just to get Karlsen.”

  “Are you sure of that?” Suomi asked, interested. “I’ve run into hints of something like that, but couldn’t find it definitely stated anywhere.”

  “Oh, yes.” Schoenberg smiled faintly. “If you’re trying to study the matter you can’t just ask Info-center on Earth for a printout; you have to get out and dig a little more than that.”