Next the goodlife man turned to the larger of the two boarding machines standing near him. Bowing his head, speaking now in a low, actually reverent tone, he asked the thing whether he and his fellow goodlife should conduct a search for weapons.
The answer came directly from the machine this time; it was the same voice, though at a lower volume, that had earlier issued from the speakers in the lounge. “Such an effort would only waste time. No badlife will be able to use a weapon while under our surveillance.”
At this point the goodlife woman suddenly spoke up for the first time, addressing the Lady on her tall chair. The intruder was bright-eyed and spontaneous, and it was as if her thoughts had been racing on ahead: “Ever see anyone skinned alive, Your Ladyship? People don’t really have the skill in their fingers, the fine control of tools, to do it properly. The machines do, though. They can do it perfectly. But we don’t need that kind of thing to happen. If you do have any weapons hidden about here, don’t try to use them. You’d never be quick enough, with the machines watching.”
And the goodlife man, on catching sight of Skorba’s media machine which lay now on the wide table, within easy reach of its owner “Whether that thing’s a weapon or not, young lad, don’t grab it up in a hurry. In fact you’d best not touch it at all.”
As the male intruder spoke, a lens-turret on one of the death-machines swiveled smoothly in its socket to look directly at Skorba. The pudgy young man hastily hitched his chair back, moving himself half a meter farther from his broad-band recording device. “Not the kind of weapon you have to worry about,” he muttered.
“What’s that you say?”
“Nothing. I was speaking in a political context. I said it was not the kind of weapon you have to worry about.”
The Lady Blanqui still had not stirred out of her chair. She had let go of Yero’s hand and was paying him no attention. Now she spoke, in a manner that made it clear she had assumed the role of spokesperson for everyone on her yacht.
In the same loud, clear voice that she had used before, the Lady said to me scruffy man: “You are evidently goodlife.” A judgment had been passed—contemptuously—and was not subject to comment. “What is your name?”
The man raised his eyebrows at her, then glanced quickly at the larger of the two nearly motionless machines beside him. After a moment’s pause, as if he read in the berserker’s silence permission to speak for himself, he turned his own gaze, as contemptuous as hers, back to the old woman.
“Aye, little Hinna here and I are goodlife—whereas you’re no longer life at all.”
Little Hinna, the goodlife woman, made a choking, throaty sound, that might have been a laugh.
Her male companion paused, looking around at his grim-faced badlife audience, as if to give them a chance to think over what he had just told them. None of his audience spoke. Among them only the Lady herself seemed to be breathing at the moment.
The goodlife man, disgust in his voice, continued: “None of ye. Your bodies will soon be free of life’s infection. Only question now be the manner of your coming purification. And that depends entirely on how willingly ye go along with what it wants. Master”—and here he nodded in the direction of the tall machine—“sees no good in making pain for the sake of pain. It only wants your death, the cleansing that ends all hurts. Could be done in much pain, very slow, or could be quick and easy. No difference to master.”
“We shall see about that,” said the Lady, and again Tanya had to marvel at the older woman’s firm control of voice and body. “I have asked you your name.”
“Wirral, my Lady.” The scrawny figure of the goodlife spokesman made her a mocking bow. “Though we are all of us upon the brink of being done with names.”
“Wirral, then—you who take it upon yourself to be the spokesman of Death—a Death, who, like the rest of us it seems, must struggle and strive to overcome the problems of this world—what do you say to a bargain?”
“Bargain?” The man frowned, his face taking on an utterly witless expression. He might never have heard the word before. He squinted at the Lady as if she were hard to see. Again he looked humbly at the machine beside him, and again his god remained silent.
Lady Blanqui said patiently: “By a bargain I mean a trade. Our lives here—those of myself, all my crew and passengers—in exchange for wealth. Wealth is the thing I have to bargain with.”
“Wealth?” Wirral still looked bemused. He sounded scornful. “What use do you think my master has for—”
“Wait.” The inhuman voice from the machine interrupted him: “I will hear the badlife female.” Lenses on both standing machines were swiveling now toward the owner of the yacht. “What amount of wealth do you have to bargain with?”
“What do you know of human values? How can I translate them to you? I speak of riches greater than all these together”—her gesture swept across the other humans present—“could hope to gather into their hands in a long lifetime. And yet of no more than I could readily obtain, on a planet very near where we are now, and put into your hands within a standard day. In a compact form. Easily negotiable. Acceptable to any human in the Galaxy. Easily—”
“What form precisely?”
Lady Blanqui drew a deep breath. “I am speaking of santana stones. If you, death-machine, are not familiar with gemstones and their value among those you call bad-life, perhaps one of your trusted goodlife can explain to you the—”
“I am familiar with the concept of wealth. Proceed to outline your terms, in detail.”
Tanya was holding her breath again. Only once in her life had she seen a genuine santana stone. The jewels appeared in nature—very, very rarely—in a variety of colors, each more beautiful than the last. Their origin was uncertain, but they were thought to have been formed in the heart of certain stars, and no human cleverness had yet devised a way of creating them artificially.
While Wirral looked on, with a sullen expression suggesting that he would, if he dared, be outraged at this turn of events, the Lady proceeded to detail her plan. If the machines would allow her to go on to the planet Damaturu, with one companion—her usual bodyguard, she assumed—she could obtain a satchel full of the stones from her banker there, even on such short notice. Then she would bring the stones back, and hand them over, in exchange for human lives.
The Lady ignored the gaping sneers of the two goodlife, and bore up under the steady unliving gaze of the machines. She did not appear to have lost any of her customary arrogance in the intimidating presence of Death itself.
She concluded by repeating her description of what she offered. “An attaché case full of such gems—vast wealth indeed. Wealth, I repeat, in a form that is easy to carry and to transfer, acceptable by any Earth-descended humans, anywhere in the Galaxy, as wealth.”
Lenses swerved to Wirral. “Comment,” demanded the machine.
Wirral admitted, with obvious reluctance, that he had heard of the Lady Blanqui. So had a great many people. There was no doubt that a life-unit in her special position would have the power to deliver such wealth as she was promising.
“But I see no reason to trust her, master. Surely you will not trust—”
“I will search our data bank,” said the machine.
“Try under ‘Mercantile Planets’,” suggested Hinna, the goodlife woman. Wirral glared at her. The machine said nothing.
Through all this the Lady herself had remained calm. When the larger machine turned its lenses at her, she said: “I am an old woman, and probably have only a short time left to live in any case. But I have a great responsibility to these people who are with me on my ship.”
Suddenly the goodlife man seemed to remember something; eyes gleaming with triumph, he crept close to the nearest embodiment of his mechanical master, and whispered into a spot on the metal skull.
“Then it is agreed,” said the machine. “The life-unit Blanqui may go on to Damaturu, to procure wealth.”
The Lady looked up. “Yes. You may re
ly on us to return. I shall—”
“But the life-unit you call Yero must stay here as hostage for your good behavior.”
The Lady was silent for a full ten seconds. When she spoke again, her voice had turned querulous. “But why should I believe you? That if I bring back the gems you’ll keep your bargain and let us live?”
“Because I do nothing without logical reason. I allow the goodlife to survive, for a time, because they are useful tools. In themselves they represent only a small amount of life. By using them, I can purify much greater amounts of matter from the life-disease.
“Similarly,” continued the machine, “wealth such as you have promised can be a tool of great value. But I can use such a tool only in secrecy, a fact that will operate to assure your safety—provided you keep your part of the bargain.”
“I am not sure,” said the Lady, “that I understand.”
Tanya had a momentary impression that the lenses were glaring at this obstinate, impertinent badlife. Then the voice of the berserker spoke again. “At least three of you who are now my captives, are prominent people, whose disappearance would immediately draw attention among the badlife of nearby worlds. Especially if your vanishing followed hard upon the Lady’s unexplained withdrawal from her store of a vast sum of wealth. Some of my badlife enemies might connect the two events and deduce the truth. Steps might be taken to prevent my use of the tool of wealth.
“So when I have your wealth in hand, you will all go free; go free and say nothing of our encounter here, or of our bargain. Because for any of you to speak, to tell of your cooperation with what you call Death, would be to condemn yourselves as goodlife.”
Tanya muttered something.
“You may discuss it among yourselves,” said the machine.
She turned to Skorba, whispering to prevent the glowering goodlife, if not the enemy machine, from hearing. Carl confirmed her thoughts: once crew and passengers went along with such a scheme they would be goodlife themselves, in the eyes of interplanetary law. To argue that they had acted under duress would be no defense. And it would be hard to find, in the whole Galaxy, any human society where any other crime was considered more vile, or punished more severely.
“What do we do, then?”
Skorba shrugged. “We go along. We don’t really have a choice.”
“I think I understand why it wants wealth.”
“I think I do too. But there’s nothing we can do about it at the moment, is there?”
The purpose that Tanya had deduced for the berserker was indeed horrible. But if the berserker’s present captives could survive, reach the surface of an inhabited planet still alive, there would be something they could do—even if it meant condemning themselves in the process. It seemed to Tanya now that any human punishment, no matter how harsh, would be preferable to—
The Lady was saying: “Then it is agreed between us. I am to be allowed to go on to Damaturu—or taken there, somehow—”
“You will be taken there aboard a launch, a vessel you have not yet seen. You and one other life-unit, since it appears to be your custom to travel thus escorted. If you do not return with the promised amount of santana stones, those life-units you leave here, and one of them in particular, will be skinned—”
The Lady’s hands flew up to shield her ears. Her eyes were closed, as if she could already feel the pain in her own flesh. “Stop! I will come back, I will. If—if Yero is allowed to go with me, I can answer for it that he will come back too.”
“The man called Yero will remain here—”
“He must come with me!” the Lady screamed, all her control suddenly in tatters. “He must—”
Effortlessly the mechanical voice amplified itself to override mere human pain, to blast all other sounds aside. “THE LIFE-UNIT CALLED YERO WILL REMAIN HERE AS HOSTAGE FOR YOUR RETURN. UNDER THOSE CONDITIONS I AM CONFIDENT THAT YOU WILL COME BACK WITH THE JEWELS.”
Silence.
The Lady, shuddering, clinging to the arms of her chair, appeared even more deeply shaken than before. For a few moments she seemed cowed.
But when she raised her head again she was not yet ready to give up. Her voice was quietly stubborn. “I need Yero’s help. And it will be thought strange by the people of Damaturu, even suspicious perhaps, if I appear on their world without my usual companion.”
“Study of my data banks reveals that you must be virtually a stranger on Damaturu.” The squeaky voice was as stubborn as only a machine could be. Tanya thought that the relentless enemy’s data base must be rather extensive. “Another man will go with you. Now I will hear no further arguments.”
Carl Skorba stood up suddenly. “I volunteer!” When everyone stared at him, he hastily added: “Let me point out to you, machine, that your goodlife people, if these two are a fair sample, look entirely too scruffy to appear in a bank without at least arousing some unwelcome curiosity.” He paused again. “Do you understand what I mean by ‘scruffy’?”
The machine swiveled lenses at him. But it ignored his question and posed one of its own. “Why should you be willing to come back?”
Lady Blanqui tried to interrupt, swearing that if her escort must be Skorba, she would compel him to come back.
Now Tanya stared at the man beside her, as if she had never seen him before. Skorba ignored her. He was grinning, and looked elated.
“Why should I come back? I’ll tell you. Because I want to see this deal go through, just the way you describe it. Because you couldn’t keep me away from the next deal. I mean the one the Lady and I are on the verge of concluding. The one we’re going to have between us when we walk away from this alive.” Seeing the way that Lady Blanqui and the others looked at him, he smiled boldly at her. “Oh, I know, you haven’t even heard the details of this fabulous deal yet. Just take my word for it, when you hear them you’ll feel you can’t say no.” He swept his gaze around over the rest of his audience, including the two machines.
“What you just told us, machine, it all works out. If fits, it feels right. You want the wealth, because—of what you want it for. I can see that. And you’re absolutely right, once you have it, your best move is to let us go. We aren’t going to talk, any of us. And the Lady and I—we’re going to do business.”
Summoning the small ship to carry two passengers on to Damaturu was going to take a little time, the berserker told them, more time than the passengers would really need to prepare themselves. Meanwhile the prisoners were free to move about the yacht as they liked. Tanya and Skorba, encountering each other in the little passage outside their cabins, had a brief chance to talk alone.
“What are you doing?” Tanya demanded in an urgent whisper.
He returned her gaze boldly. “Just what I told everyone I was going to do. Have you got a better idea?”
“I was ready to fight them, to die fighting. But no one else was. Now—no, I have nothing better than your plan to suggest. But you understand, don’t you, the only reason a berserker would want wealth?”
Carl Skorba sounded calm and matter-of-fact about it. “Actually there are a couple of reasons I can think of. The first is bribery, of course. Acting through their goodlife agents, to get to someone who’s playing a vital part in the defense of some planet.”
Tanya had thought of that. “You said there might be a second reason?”
“Well, to purchase weapons.”
“Purchase them? But berserkers build their own weapons, or capture them. Everyone knows—”
“Sure, sure. But sometimes it’s hard to build or capture just what you want. There might be some special bit of hardware, a space inverter for example, that takes some very special tools and skills to put together. There are people who would sell weapons to goodlife, to berserkers. People who’d do anything for money.”
Present company, she thought, included. And again she thought: If this man is lying, he’s doing it very skillfully.
Aloud she asked him: “And are you really intending to come back?”
III.
The launch that had conveyed the boarding party of machines and goodlife to the yacht now separated from the larger vessel, carrying away Wirral and Hinna as well as one of the boarding machines. Within a few minutes its place at the docking hatch had been taken by another small craft, bringing Wirral back alone. The goodlife man, reappearing in the lounge, announced in a grim voice that his unliving master had assigned him the task of piloting the two prisoner-messengers to Damaturu and back. He appeared to have no relish for the job.
Then he added: “Before we go, master wants to look at your ship’s master controls.”
The mistress of the ship protested. “You don’t mean to strand us here!”
“We’ll scramble a few connections to the drive, the shields, the weapons. Nothing that can’t be fixed in an hour’s time. Want to be sure you’ll do nothing foolish when master lets you go, that’s all.” Wirral still seemed of the opinion that letting anyone go alive was a big mistake.
The roughly man-shaped robot pointed with an imperious claw.
“Yes, master,” Wirral muttered, and ordered the Lady to precede them through the short, curving corridor that led from the lounge directly to the bridge. Wirral followed her closely, and the machine stalked after him. Tanya, tagging along warily at a little distance, got close enough to look into the bridge. It was a considerably smaller compartment than the lounge, most of its space taken up by three or four heavily padded chairs and what seemed to her an excess of equipment. Wirral, under his master’s watchful gaze, poked about among some of the controls with his human fingers, activating displays and testing functions until the berserker had evidently been satisfied. Tanya could see that certain connections were now hanging loose.
Short Fiction Complete Page 142