Short Fiction Complete

by Fred Saberhagen

  “I see.” Tanya seemed to find the answer important. “Lady Blanqui, I’ve got to talk to you at once. It’s extremely urgent.”

  The Lady lifted an eyebrow elegantly. “Indeed?” She glanced around at her assembled people. “All of you may go about your business,” she informed them.

  In a matter of moments, she and Tanya were alone, save for the machine that stood guard over the lounge. “And now, my dear?”

  Tanya said: “You’ve been swindled.”

  The Lady blinked. “Of course, if you mean—”

  “I don’t mean what you think.” Turning aside, Tanya marched directly toward the machine. The man-shaped thing turned smoothly to confront her as she came near, but she did not hesitate, even when the machine began to raise its arms.

  Sidestepping the extended grippers at the last moment, she reached with both hands for the metal body. She caught the machine under one armpit, bent slightly and heaved with all her strength.

  The mechanical terror teetered off balance, then crashed to the deck with a loud noise. It lay on die lounge carpet, all four limbs moving slightly, ineffectually.

  Tanya stood back. She announced simply, and quite unnecessarily: “This is not a real berserker.”

  IV.

  The Lady said nothing.

  She was standing still, hands clasped in front of her, mouth compressed into a tight line as she gazed upon the fallen idol. Tanya thought that she had never seen such iron control, in the face of what must have been overwhelming surprise.

  The younger woman took a step toward the older. Tanya began an explanation. “Don’t you see? They’re not really berserkers and goodlife, they’re swindlers, con men, after your wealth from the start. They—”

  The Lady wasn’t listening. Instead she was looking at me display stages, where the swift-moving image of another small vessel had appeared. Once more a launch was approaching from the large craft which hung in space a couple of kilometers away.

  Tanya continued. “I doubt they’ll be bringing Skorba back. The way I see it, he’s one of them, and he wanted to be present when the loot was divided up. That’s why he was ‘taken hostage’. As I read the situation, they’re not kidnappers or murderers, they’re the type of criminals who pride themselves on staying clear of physical violence.

  “Probably they’re sending the empty launch back here now on autopilot to pick up their dummy machine—they’ve been too busy counting up their gains to notice what I did to the dummy just now. If they did notice, they’d just leave it here. They’ve got your gems and they can just take off—Lady Blanqui?”

  Ignoring Tanya completely, the Lady was issuing crisp orders into an intercom station, summoning her people back to the lounge. Stanhill was first to arrive. Even as he entered, the Lady went with her head high to the table and seated herself in her tall chair. Yero came in carrying a lap robe which he tenderly tucked around her legs. The human crew and servants came straggling in.

  “What are you planning to do?” Tanya asked their mistress.

  The Lady continued to ignore her. Already the launch was docking.

  The hatch in the deck swung up and open, and Tanya fell back a step in surprise. The launch had not been empty after all. An angry little mob of more than half a dozen people, most of whom she had never seen before, came bursting up into the lounge. None of these intruders did more than glance at the toppled metallic fraud. Wirral, with Hinna at his elbow, was at their head. Just behind Hinna and Wirral, Skorba was being dragged along by a couple of scruffy strangers. Some at least of the group’s anger seemed to be directed at the pudgy man.

  Wirral’s earlier expression of docility and feeble cunning had been replaced by a glare of alert and lively rage. He was gripping the attaché case in one hand as he stalked forward to the octagonal table. The pseudo-berserker happened to lie athwart the man’s path, and as he stepped over the thing it waved a spastic claw as if in some parody of a salute.

  Wirral halted directly opposite the Lady in her tall chair. A little behind him, Skorba, struggling and cursing at those who would have continued to hold his arms, managed to jerk them free. The other men and women who had just arrived, Hinna among them, all of them as shabby and unkempt as Wirral himself, milled about. The members of the little mob were muttering among themselves, arguing and cursing in low voices. The subject of their angry debate, as far as Tanya could make it out, was whether they ought to take violent action against the old woman who controlled this ship, against whoever had seen through their scheme and tried to turn the tables on them.

  The chief object of their wrath remained perched on her throne-like chair, a soft robe now tucked around her legs as if she were an invalid, observing this invasion calmly.

  Seemingly speechless with anger, Wirral flung down the attaché case upon the table, so violently mat the container popped open on impact. Out across the marble surface spilled the weighty bundle of computer printout that had been its only contents. The mass of paper was obviously the cheap kind that could be readily generated at any public terminal.

  For a moment there was silence in the lounge. The Lady gazed at the intruders, and at the spilled paper, with no readable expression. Skorba, rubbing his freed arms, glanced in Tanya’s direction, and she thought he was relieved to see she was unhurt—or possibly he was still acting.

  Wirral still seemed unable to find words to express his outrage.

  “You, old woman!” The speaker this time was a black-bearded man among the newcomers. Pushing his way forward, he bellowed an obscenity. “If you think you can bloody well cheat us, well, you can’t!” He pointed at Skorba. “You’ve got some kind of a game going with him!”

  “I assure you I do not.” Lady Blanqui’s tone was icily remote.

  “Never mind!” From inside his jacket Blackbeard pulled out a handgun, and waved it at the imperturbable, imperious object of his wrath. “We’re taking this ship—”

  The Lady’s right hand moved slightly, half-concealed beneath her laprobe. Blue fire spat through the robe’s upper fold, a precise jet aimed just above the table at the shouting man. Blackbeard looked incredulously at the old woman on her tall chair, even as his own weapon slid from his dying fingers to the deck. A moment later his lifeless body had crumpled on top of it.

  Showing a fine instinct for survival, three of the surviving intruders turned in an instant, diving, scrambling for the open hatchway and their launch that waited just below it. The remainder of the band, consisting of Skorba, Wirral, and Hinna, appeared to have been frozen momentarily into statues.

  Tossing her robe aside, Lady Blanqui stood erect, revealing her own handgun. “Stop them from getting out!” she cried. She fired one more shot, poorly aimed, after the escapees. A jolt of energy seared some decorations from the lower portion of a bulkhead, revealing a patch of inner hull. Some of the Lady’s people ducked for cover, others were caught as flat-footed as her remaining enemies. Yero tried to obey her shouted command, but he was too late; the carpeted hatch slammed down in his face. Moments later the two vessels had separated.

  Shouting again at her people, issuing commands in a jargon incomprehensible to Tanya, the Lady sent some of them, including the captain, running from the lounge.

  Meanwhile Skorba had stooped over Blackbeard’s body, as if in an attempt to render aid. Suddenly the young man straightened, Blackbeard’s weapon in his hand. But even as he started to turn toward the Lady, he was borne to the deck by Yero’s flying tackle.

  Carl Skorba was evidently quicker and stronger than his appearance at rest had suggested. But Stanhill too had been watching him alertly, and Skorba was quickly pinned by two opponents.

  “Do not kill him!” the Lady cried, as the gun was wrenched out of Skorba’s grasp.

  Tanya, with mixed feelings, satisfaction still dominant, saw the three would-be swindlers who were still aboard herded away at gunpoint to be locked up. Skorba’s arms were now secured behind his back with handcuffs.

  “Lock them i
n somewhere,” the Lady called after her retainers. “A temporary arrangement will do. And hurry back!”

  When the offenders and their guards were out of sight, the Lady at last turned back to Tanya, who responded to the older woman’s expression of triumph with a smile of her own.

  Then Tanya suddenly demanded of her hostess: “Did you actually realize it before I did?”

  “Realize what, child?”

  That response cooled whatever Tanya was feeling in the way of a nascent sense of kinship with this woman. “I must insist, Lady Blanqui, that I am not your child, or anyone’s.”

  “Ah? Oh? Are you not?” For a moment the Lady peered at her uncertainly; for a moment, senility was showing. “What was your question?”

  “I was asking you at what point you first realized the truth about those people and their machines. Was it before I gave my little demonstration?” Confronted by a strangely blank expression, Tanya thought she had to be more specific. “When I tipped over the robot. Showing that there had been no real berserker, no real goodlife here on your ship.”

  The Lady Blanqui made no answer, except that for several moments she continued to watch the younger woman intently. Something about this silent gaze struck Tanya as eerie; she had the odd feeling that she was being pitied.

  Having locked herself in the cabin a few minutes later, Tanya stood considering the bolted door in the side bulkhead. A moment later, she had quietly slid back the bolt.

  One of the decorative tall corner posts of Carl Skorba’s bed, which was similar to Tanya’s, had been run through the space between his bound arms and his body; he was sitting on the bed and leaning back against the post when Tanya entered.

  He raised his head to stare at her. “Well,” he said. “I had hopes from the beginning of our voyage, when I left my side of the door unbolted. A good thing, too.”

  She stood frowning down at him. “Can I get you a drink of water? Anything like that?”

  “Some water would be great for a start.”

  When she had held a drink for him, and he had thanked her politely, he asked: “Satisfied? No gems lost to the con men. Half of the evildoers, including me, locked up, ready to be delivered to the proper authorities.”

  “Pretty much satisfied,” Tanya answered slowly.

  “But not completely? Something in the situation doesn’t seem quite crystal clear? That gives me hope. Tell me, was it you who tipped the dummy over?”

  “It was.”

  “Deliberately?”

  “Of course.”

  “So, you had deduced that the people pretending to be goodlife were fraudulent, and so was their hardware. And that I was in league with them. Very intelligent of you.”

  “In my place, I suppose, you would have made the deduction sooner.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound patronizing. I don’t know whether I would have made those particular discoveries or not, in your place.” Skorba paused. “As a matter of fact I was busy making a different one.”

  “Some great revelation, for which you are now preparing me? And which, when you’ve convinced me of its truth, will require me to turn you loose?”

  “Only if you value your life.”

  “Does this revelation—let me guess—does it concern the Lady, and her crew—?”

  “It does indeed. Have you wondered what kind of people routinely carry handcuffs?”

  “Police, certainly.”

  “That’s only one category. Not the right one.”

  Tanya started to speak, then paused, looking around. “What was that?”

  Some component of the sudden distraction had been sound; but a larger part had been a strange, slight ripple in the field of the yacht’s artificial gravity.

  Skorba gave her a sickly smile. “That would be her Ladyship, at last using some of the yacht’s weapons. She’s trying, if I’m not mistaken, to keep my three former associates who made it back to our ship from getting away—trying to keep their ship here in normal space, until—”

  “Now she wants to make a fight of it?”

  “She had no need to do so, earlier. No one was trying to leave.”

  “I don’t understand you, Skorba—if that’s your real name.”

  “It’ll do.”

  “We know our lives aren’t really in danger from three frightened confidence men. If we just let them run away—”

  He gave a little groan, as of fear and sympathy combined. “The Lady’s people didn’t kill me right away, but when I consider their motives I don’t feel grateful. Please get me loose? Somehow?”

  “Can you give me one good reason why I should?”

  “I can and will, as soon as I think there’s a fair chance that you’ll believe me. Look, Tanya, my media machine is in that drawer. Get it, and I’ll show you how to turn on such modest destructive power as it can generate. This bedpost is very solid—I expect it’ll take the beam a few minutes to cut through the chain on these cuffs. I strongly urge you to start it working as soon as possible. As soon as it’s working I’ll start talking, and if you don’t like what I say you can always turn the beam off again.”

  Tanya stood up and went to the indicated drawer, opened it and lifted out the device, which felt unexpectedly heavy.

  She turned back to the prisoner. “I don’t think you’re really physically dangerous, and anyway I’m now armed. So I’ll start as you suggest. You start talking.”

  “Here I go—tell me, student of deception, what convinced you that my colleagues and I were fakes? When did you first suspect?”

  “Oh. You’ll believe my story, and then I’ll feel a duty to believe yours, is that it?”

  “We’re wasting time.”

  “All right,” Tanya said. “My conviction that you were a liar crept up on me gradually.”

  “Lock the black button and the red one, at the same time—that’s it.” A stubby flame appeared, projecting five centimeters or so at right angles to the gadget’s length. “Now if you can aim the beam against the chain—try not to fry my arm—tell me how you deduced my associates were frauds.”

  With the beam in operation, Tanya continued. “Certain things that the supposed berserker said, things that when I thought about them didn’t seem right. Once it talked about ‘our’ data bank. It mentioned ‘prominent people’, instead of life-units. There were probably more; enough to subliminally alert me.

  “Then there was the way Wirral walked ahead of the machine when they went to the bridge. And the way it let him check the controls when they got there—I suppose its grippers are really pretty clumsy. Finally I decided that the formidable-looking machine standing watch in the lounge had to be rather maladroit and probably quite harmless. Its voice had to be that of a person hidden on your ship, using some kind of voice-changing audio to play the part of Oz the great and powerful.”

  “You became willing to bet your life that you were right.”

  “Eventually I felt completely convinced, or at least enough to take that chance. Want to hear what I considered the final proof?”

  “Tell me quickly.”

  “When you and your fellow crooks took the attaché case aboard your own ship, so you could open it together!”

  The almost invisible beam was still burning steadily at the handcuff chain. So far the metal a few centimeters away wasn’t getting particularly hot.

  “That was an exciting moment,” Skorba acknowledged dryly. “You’d have enjoyed watching.”

  “Of course real goodlife, serving a real berserker, wouldn’t have done that. They’d have been worried about other things instead.”

  “Such as what?”

  “Well, suppose the Lady had brought back a bomb instead of jewels? Or some other kind of effective weapon? A real berserker would have made sure that the attaché case was opened somewhere outside its own hull.”

  As Skorba listened, the expression on his face suddenly altered. His shoulders moved; the last weakened thread of metal broke with a snap, and he brought his ar
ms around in front of him.

  Tanya stood up alertly, and turned off the jet of flame from the device in her hands. Then she staggered and almost fell. This time the disturbance had come more violently than before, making a loud noise, sending a shudder through space within the cabin, bouncing people, furniture and decorations. The bed, supported by four solid stanchions, stayed put.

  “What’s that?”

  “Must be my three non-violent associates in our ship, shooting back at us in self-defense. If the Lady insists on fighting it out with them, this tub isn’t going to last long. They’ve got great shields, and one damned powerful gun. That hardware is what this whole game is all about, you see.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “It’s a long story. If our ship over there had a decent combat control system to go with her firepower, they’d have vaporized this yacht on the first shot.”

  Tanya was backing away from him. “I think your friends aboard are locked in the next cabin. Set them free if you can, in case we all have to abandon ship. I’m going to talk to our crazy mistress!”

  “Wait! There’s something I’ve got to tell you first—”

  But Tanya, having thrown down Skorba’s multipurpose gadget, was already running out of his cabin and down the corridor.

  In another moment she came rushing into the lounge, where she stumbled to an abrupt halt.

  Very strange things indeed were going on.

  Lady Blanqui was installed like a queen in her tall chair, at her side the control console that allowed her to command her ship directly. She was surrounded by her crew and servants, and all of them for once were jubilant.

  Exultantly she called to Tanya: “Come, dear; come, my lovely child, and see!”

  Following the Lady’s gaze, Tanya observed the new image that was even now taking shape in the display stages. A moving disturbance, approaching very swiftly from a relatively great distance, was hurtling nearer through the troubled half-reality of subspace. It looked significantly larger than the swindlers’ ship, even though not all of this new presence was visible. It was as if the newcomer were doing something that had the effect of obscuring its own image. Tanya, feeling the hair trying to rise on the back of her neck, was inescapably reminded of a shark’s fin cleaving surface water.