Short Fiction Complete

by Fred Saberhagen

  None would speak to them; Andreas had left and no one else was willing to answer their protests and questions.

  While they were being led from the Temple back to their rooms there was time to exchange a few words. Schoenberg advised his shipmates: “Whatever it is they want, they’ll tell us when they’re ready. Meanwhile it’s important that we all keep our heads.”

  “We’ll back you up, Oscar,” Athena told him. Behind her determined face, those of Celeste and De La Torre were pale and frightened.

  Schoenberg winked at her. Then they were put firmly into their separate rooms. He could hear his door being locked and barred. His personal servant had disappeared and when he peered out through the grillwork of the window he saw that a guard had been stationed outside his door. Schoenberg stretched out on the comfortable bed and tried to think. After a while he got up and tried tapping messages on the stone wall between his room and Athena’s, but there was no reply. Probably the masonry was too thick.

  Surprisingly, he slept well and felt reasonably rested when he was awakened early in the morning. An escort of soldiers had come to take him to Andreas. He went with them eagerly. They re-entered the Temple by another of its back doors and again went down some steps, this time to a cell-like stone chamber into which gray morning light filtered through a single high window. Andreas was seated behind a table. Schoenberg’s escort saluted and went out; he and the ancient and ugly High Priest were left alone. Andreas was the thinner of the two, and biologically much the older, but he wore a dagger at the girdle of his purplish robe, and seemed utterly unconcerned about being left alone with a bigger and stronger man who had just become his enemy.

  Even before the door had closed behind the soldiers, Schoenberg spoke. “If you are wise, Andreas, you will free us at once.”

  Andreas calmly gestured to a chair, but Schoenberg remained standing. The High Priest then said: “Before I can dismiss your guards I must have assurance that you are going to cooperate in the project in which we are going to use your ship. Your willing cooperation will be a great help, though not essential.”

  “Imprisoning me and my friends does not make me want to cooperate. What about the other two members of my party—what has happened to them?”

  Andreas folded his hands on the table before him. “The girl is confined to her stateroom on your ship. She is there to speak reassuringly over ships’ radio, on the remote chance that another spaceship should appear and attempt to contact the Orion.”

  “Last night your people threatened her, frightened her, so that when she spoke to me she dared not tell me what had happened.”

  “She has seen the wisdom of cooperation.” Andreas spoke mildly. “As for the coward, he is still missing. Probably he will come to no great harm, and will be back looking for food today or tomorrow.

  I am not going to demean my warriors by ordering them to search for him.”

  After a moment’s silence Schoenberg took the chair that had been offered to him earlier. “What exactly do you want me to do?”

  “Answer some questions about your ship, its drive in particular, and move the ship for us when the time comes.”

  There was a little pause. “You will have to tell me more than that. I do not want to get into serious trouble with the outworld authorities.”

  The High Priest shook his head. “Right now I am the only authority with whom you must concern yourself. Those outside this planet may be powerful in their own worlds, but they would not care much what happens here, even if they could know.”

  Schoenberg relaxed a trifle, crossed one leg over the other. “That is half true, Andreas. They do not care about such hunting trips as mine, not really. Not enough to take the time and trouble to prevent them. They would not care much about my standing and watching your Tournament—or even taking part in it, if I could have been so honored. But they will care, believe me, if I should take part in one of your wars, using outworld weapons, or even using the ship to help you in any military way. Doing any such thing would be a grave risk for me; not a battle-risk, understand, which a man should welcome, but a social risk when I have returned to my own people, a risk of dishonor. Being an honorable man yourself, you will appreciate why I cannot help you.”

  “I assure you most solemnly, no one outside this planet will ever know what you do here.”

  “Excuse me, but I doubt that. I am not the only hunter to come to this planet, and sooner or later a trader or a military ship will call. Your enemies on this planet cannot be entirely silenced, and they will not miss the chance to complain about the spaceship that, unprovoked, molested them, and it will be discovered that the ship was mine. I mention these facts first, because you may not believe me when I tell you that, in any case, the Earth authorities will be concerned if I fail to return from this trip on time.” Schoenberg lifted his arm casually and briefly glanced at his calendar watch.

  Andreas smiled slightly. “No one on Earth or any of the other worlds knows where you are. Whatever search is made for you will not be on my planet.”

  SCHOENBERG did not hesitate for a moment. So far he had not shown the slightest sign of fear. “It will be your mistake, High Priest, if you do not believe me. But never mind that now. Let us return to what you want. Say that I am now sitting in the command chair in the control room of my ship with you presumably leaning over me and holding a knife against my throat. Where to?”

  “Schoenberg, I am not literally going to hold a knife against your throat. Not in your control room anyway, where you might be tempted to push something the wrong way in an effort to disrupt my plans. There is a priest here who has been aboard spaceships before, and we are not so utterly ignorant of them as you might suppose . . . I had thought you might be willing to join in a military sort of adventure. De La Torre would be, but he is ignorant. I have questioned the other people of your party, and believe them when they say they know nothing about the ship’s drive, nor of pilotage.”

  “That is correct. I am the only pilot here.”

  “Tell me, for my curiosity, how could they have gotten home if a glacier-beast had killed you?”

  “Autopilot could handle that. Just punch in a destination, and it’ll deliver you in-system, near any civilized world you want. Your priest who’s been aboard spaceships must know that. I take it you want some other kind of piloting.”

  “Yes. But mainly some detailed information about the drive.”

  “Tell me what it’s all about and maybe I’ll provide that information.”

  Andreas’s eyes probed at him, not fiercely but deeply, for what seemed a long time. “Perhaps that would be best.” The old priest sighed. “Perhaps other ways . . . tell me, what effect do threats of torture and maiming have upon you?”

  Schoenberg half rose, and leaned forward glaring. “High Priest, I am a powerful man out there, in the big world that holds your little world surrounded. Do you think that just anyone can possess his own starship and take it where he likes? I have made it in the interest of several other powerful and ruthless people to look out for my safety, to avenge my death or disappearance. And those people do know exactly where I am and when I am due to return. For every dol of pain you make me suffer, you will feel two, or perhaps ten, of one kind of pain or another. My friends and I can pull down your city and your Temple if you provoke us to it. Now threaten me no more!”

  The two men’s eyes were still locked when there came a tap at the door and it opened and one of the Inner Circle put in his head, making a slight nodding signal to Andreas. Other business called.

  The High Priest sighed and arose. Smiling, skull-faced, he bowed his head very slightly in salute to Schoenberg. “You are a hard man to frighten, outworlder. Nevertheless I think it will be worthwhile to do so. Think for a while on what I have said, and shortly we will talk again.”

  SUOMI was afraid.

  He was not simply afraid of being caught by Andreas’s soldiers, who yesterday had taken the ship and Barbara and had no doubt also swept up t
he four other unsuspecting outworlders with little difficulty. No, the night in the thicket had given Suomi plenty of time to think and there was a lot more to it than that.

  Hours ago he had left the thicket where yesterday his flight had come to an exhausted halt. Now he was crouched in the poor concealment of some thin, bush-like vegetation near the road that climbed the mountain, watching and waiting—for what he was not exactly sure. He had vague hopes of spying some lone traveler whom he might approach in hopes of getting some kind of help.

  Alternatively he imagined another pack train of the kind he had already seen, passing by, and a convenient bag of vegetables or haunch of meat tumbling forgotten to the road, where he might spring out a minute later to grab it up. He had as yet found nothing very palatable in the woods and thickets, and so he had not eaten anything worth mentioning in more than a standard day.

  He was also thirsty, despite the rainwater he had licked from some dripping leaves, and he was limping fairly badly from yesterday’s fall. His back bothered him, and he thought that one of the minor cuts on his leg might be infected, despite the routine immunological precautions taken before leaving Earth.

  The thicket into which he had burrowed himself when he stopped running was so dense and extensive that it seemed possible that a man might stay there undiscovered—until it pleased his pursuers to detail a hundred men or so to hunt him out. But perhaps Suomi had no pursuers. On this alien planet he had literally nowhere to go. He suspected strongly that his continued freedom, if it could be called that, was due only to the fact that no particular effort had been made to round him up. He could not believe that the warriors of Hunters’ were particularly afraid of dying by his rifle, so it must be that they were not hunting him because more important things were going on.

  Realizing that he could not accomplish anything there he had left the thicket. There was a warning to be spread. At moments it seemed possible that the whole thing had been no more than a monstrous practical joke, like an initiation . . . but then he recalled his dark clear thoughts of the night just past, and shivered a little in the warmth of day. It was not only for himself that he feared, and not only for the people who had come with him from Earth. In his mind’s eye Suomi could still see with perfect clarity the robot’s shattered carapace, the debris of components spilling out. And there, mixed with all the handmade parts . . .

  “SOFTLY, outworlder,” said a gentle voice quite close behind him.

  He whirled and found he was presenting the rifle at a rather short man with sandy hair, who was standing beside a tree six or eight meters off, muscular arms raised and hands open in an unmistakable gesture of peace. The man wore the gray clothing Suomi had seen on Godsmountain’s slaves, and tucked into the heavy rope that served him as a belt was a short massive sledge. The killer of fallen gladiators. The man stood taller than Suomi remembered and also had a more open and attractive face.

  “What do you want?” Suomi held the rifle steady, though his gaze went darting around the woods. No one else was in sight; the slave had come here alone.

  “Only to talk with you a little.” The man’s tone was reassuring. He very slowly lowered his hands but otherwise did not move. “To make common cause with you, if I can, against our common enemies.” He nodded in an uphill direction.

  Did slaves on Hunters’ habitually talk like this? Suomi doubted it. He scarcely remembered hearing them talk at all. He did not relax. “How did you find me?”

  “I guessed you might be somewhere near the road by this time, thinking about giving up. I have been trying to find you for an hour, and I doubt anyone else has made the effort.”

  Suomi nodded. “I guessed that much. Who are you? Not a slave.”

  “You are right, I am not. But more of that later. Come, move back into the woods, before someone sees us from the road.”

  Now Suomi did relax, lowering the rifle with shaking hands and following the other back into the trees, where they squatted down to talk.

  “First, tell me this,” the man demanded at once. “How can we prevent Andreas and his band of thieves from making use of your stolen ship?”

  “I don’t know. Where are my companions?’ ”

  “Held in the Temple, under what conditions I am not sure. You don’t look good. I would offer you food and drink, but have none with me at the moment. Why do you think Andreas wants your ship?”

  “I am afraid.” Suomi shook his head. “If it is only Andreas I suppose he has some simple military use in mind to complete his conquest of this planet. He may think our ship carries weapons of mass destruction. It has none.”

  The man was looking sharply at Suomi. “What did you mean, if it is only Andreas?”

  “HAVE you heard of the berserkers?”

  A blank look. “Of course, the death machines of legend. What have they to do with this?”

  Suomi began to describe his combat with the man-shaped machine. His hearer was ready to listen.

  “I heard a rumor that Mjollnir had walked forth to fight, and was slain,” the man in gray mused. “So, it was a berserker that you destroyed?”

  “Not exactly. Not entirely. Against a true berserker android this rifle would have been useless. But inside the machine’s broken body I found this.” He drew from his pocket a small sealed box of shiny metal. From the box a thick gray cable emerged, to expand into a fan of innumerable gauze-fine fibers at the point where his force packet had sheared it off. “This is a solid-state electronuclear device, in other words part of an artificial brain. Judging from its size, and the number of fibers in this cable. I would say that two or three of these, properly interconnected, should be enough to control a robot that could do physical things better than a man can do them, and also obey simple orders and make simple decisions.”

  The man reached for the box and weighed it doubtfully in. his hand.

  Suomi went on: “Many solid-state electronuclear devices are made on Earth and other technological worlds. I have seen countless varieties of them. Do you know how many I have seen that closely resemble this? Exactly one. I saw that in a museum. It was part of a berserker, captured in a space battle at the Stone Place, long ago.”

  The man scratched his chin, and handed back the box. “It is hard for me to take a legend as reality.”

  Sumoi felt like grabbing him and shaking him. “Berserkers axe very real, I promise you. What do you suppose destroyed the technology of your forefathers, here on Hunters’ ?”

  “We are taught as children that our ancestors were too proud and strong to let themselves remain dependent on fancy machines. Oh, the legends tell of a war against berserkers, too.”

  “It is not only legend but history.”

  “All right, history. What is your point?”

  “That war cut off your ancestors from the rest of the galaxy for a long time and wrecked their technology—as you say, they were rough men and women who found they could get by without a lot of fancy machines. Made a virtue of necessity. Anyway, it has been taken for granted that Karlsen’s victory here destroyed all the berserkers on Hunters’ or drove them away. But perhaps one survived, or at least its unliving brain survived when the rest of its machinery was crippled or destroyed. Perhaps that berserker is still here.”

  His auditor was still receptive but unimpressed. Suomi decided that more explanation was in order. He went on: “On other planets there have been cults of evil men and women who have worshipped berserkers as gods. I can only guess that there might have been some such people on Hunters’ five hundred years ago. After the battle they found their crippled god somewhere, rescued it and hid it. Built a secret cult around it, worshipped it in secret, generation after generation. Praying to Death, working for the day when they could destroy all life upon this planet.”

  The man ran strong-looking, nervous fingers through his sandy hair. “But, if you are right, there was more to it than the figure of Mjollnir? The berserker has not been destroyed?”

  “I am sure there is more to it t
han that. The real berserker brain must have included many more of these small units. And other components as well. Probably it put only spare parts into Mjollnir. Or human artisans did, working at the berserker’s direction.”

  “Then why must there be a true berserker, as you put it, here at all? Andreas has very good artisans working for him. Perhaps they only used parts from destroyed berserkers to build the figure of Mjollnir—and one of Thorun as well.” He nodded to himself. “That would explain why men swear they have actually seen Thorun walking with the High Priest in the Temple courtyards.”

  “Excuse me, but it is not possible that any human artisans on this planet designed the robot that attacked me. No matter what components they had to work with. Can you grasp the programming problems involved in designing a machine to run and fight and climb like a man? Better than a man. No human could have climbed that mesa where the machine did it, in a few minutes, hammering in pitons all the way. And the mechanical engineering difficulties? No. On Earth, Venus, a handful of other planets, there are men and facilities capable of designing such a robot. Only a functioning berserker-brain could do it here.”

  THE two men were quiet for a little while, both thinking, each studying the other. Suomi eased himself into a different position, sitting with his back against a tree trunk. His wounded leg throbbed. At last the Hunterian said: “Suppose a berserker is here as you say, and the priests of Godsmountain have it. What then?”

  “You do not understand!” Suomi almost grabbed him by the ragged shirt to attempt a shaking. “Say rather that it has them. How can I begin to tell you what a berserker is?” He sighed and slumped back, feeling hopeless and exhausted. How to convey, to someone who had never seen even depictions on film or holograph, the centuries of mass destruction berserkers had visited upon the galaxy, the documented cases of individual horrors? Whole planets had been sterilized, whole solar systems laid waste by the unliving enemy. People by the thousands or tens of thousands had perished in berserkers’ experiments aimed at discovering what made the strange two-legged Earth-descended blobs of protoplasm so resistant to the fundamental truth-assumption of the berserkers’ programming: that life was a disease of matter that had to be expunged. It had all happened here, was still happening somewhere a thousand light years or more away, on the outer edge of man’s little domain within the galaxy.