I FIND I MUST ADD A POSTSCRIPT TO THIS JOURNAL. I visited Charcot again this afternoon, and thanked him for his efforts as I paid his bill. I told him nothing of last night’s events. The doctor, as might be expected, sympathizes with my bruised throat. But Charcot remains unable to regard my nocturnal experiences with Lucy as anything but dreams or delusions. He still doubted that a physical lesion of the brain, caused by disease, was likely to be responsible. In this glorious conclusion I heartily concur.
Charcot’s parting advice to me echoed that of the London specialist: rest, good food, and exercise. Then: “If these fantasies continue to trouble you, Mr. Stoker, my advice is to continue to record them with pen and ink.”
I believe that I shall soon be writing another book.
AUTHOR’ NOTE
Bram Stoker died in London in 1912, of locomotor ataxia, or tertiary syphilis, leading to “exhaustion.”
2007
SERVANT OF DEATH
Jane Lindskold is the author of eighteen novels and over fifty short stories. Although most of her fiction is fantasy, she loves science fiction and is delighted when the opportunity arises to write about space ships, computers, and alien worlds. Visit her at www.janelindskold.com.
Fred Saberhagen has been writing science fiction and fantasy for somewhat more than forty years. Besides the Berserker® series he is known for his Swords and Lost Swords series, and also his Dracula series. His most recent publication is Ardneh’s Sword, connecting the Swords series and Empire of the East. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with his wife, Joan Spicci.
“This base is under attack! This base is under attack!”
The hollow, booming voice from the loudspeakers jarred Vivian Travers to her feet and started her moving across her private laboratory to where her customized battle armor hung in its rack. Her hands were in contact with the cool metal almost before her conscious mind had fully registered what the voice was saying.
There had of course been practice alerts during the several centuries since this research base, on the large moon of the planet Lake, had become her regular residence—but far too few such drills, in her judgement.
With the skill of long practice Vivian had already opened the front of the armor, stepped inside, and leaned back, pressing against key contact points. Leads automatically inserted themselves at various points, cutting through clothing where necessary. The sensation was uncomfortable, but Vivian ignored it, reaching for her carbine even as the front of the armor closed and latched. This is not a drill! Berserkers sighted approaching this base. All hands to battle stations. Repeat!
This is not a drill.
“And why shouldn’t they be approaching,” Vivian muttered inside her helmet, closing the door of her private lab behind her, locking it out of habit. “When the defenses have been allowed to go to hell?
Damned politicians!” But as she did not transmit, there was no reply. She hurried down the corridor, feeling rather than hearing as hatches and bulkheads sealed behind and beneath her throughout the base. Lake Moon Research Base tunneled deep into the rock of its name-sake moon. Its overall design was a good one. Vivian knew. She had created it herself over a hundred years before.
Vivian’s battle station was in the main weapons bay, where she was assigned to damage control and back-up gunnery. If berserkers were attacking, both would likely be needed—if anyone survived to need anything at all.
The sprawling base housed not quite four hundred people, mostly researchers and their immediate families. The bulk of the moon around them was naturally devoid of any native life, and so were the planets, moons, comets, and asteroids that made up the Pinball System, in which Lake was the fifth planet from the sun. Even the “lakes” for which the fifth planet was named were devoid of life, mere pools of stagnate acid, which were slowly corroding the minerals upon which they rested. Moving past other suited, hurrying human figures through the cavernous main weapons bay, Vivian began to run a check on one of the gun batteries.
“Yes,” she muttered to herself again. “Why should they not have decided to attack?”
The berserkers were programmed to exterminate life in all its forms, wherever and whenever they could come to grips with it. Created by a race that the Earth-descended version of Galactic humanity had dubbed the Builders, the berserkers had been forged as the ultimate weapon in the Builders’ war against the Red Race. Some flaw in their programing had led to the berserkers annihilating not only the Red Race but the Builders as well. After many thousands of years, if one was inclined to include microscopic creatures in the tally, the berserkers had expunged from the Galaxy uncountable billions of what they called life-units. But their quest for the perfect order of death was far from ended. Rebuilding, reconstructing, redesigning themselves as the years passed, the berserkers came in a variety of forms, ranging from bipedal robots to immobile data-processing boxes, from machines the size of a small dog to the pair of hulking dreadnoughts that now, according to the latest announcement from the loudspeakers, were bearing down upon Lake Moon.
As she hurried to her battle station, Vivian had tuned her helmet speakers to bring her command chatter. Now she heard General Gosnick, the base commander, saying calmly, “Launch individual fighters. What we think are the appropriate enemy schematics are being beamed to your control panels. This pair look like older models, and they’re pretty badly beaten up. We may be able to disable them before they can close to effective striking range of the base.”
“Understood.” That would be the voice of the relatively junior officer in tactical command of the squadron just now launching.
In mental communication with her own armor, Vivian called up on her visor an image of what the base’s sensors were picking up. The information appeared both as a direct visual image and as a stream of data overlaying the visual. She was studying it when General Gosnick’s voice came over her private channel.
“Vivian, do you concur with my analysis of the situation?”
“I do.” With a thought, she zoomed in for a tighter inspection of the hull of the marginally closer of the two approaching behemoths. “Definitely old damage. Judging from the angle of the scatter pattern, I’m wondering if it may possibly be even older than berserker contact with Earth-descended humans.”
It was an eerie thought, that these two hulks, survivors of some ancient battle, might have been struggling through the Galaxy in normal space for millennia, perhaps trying to free themselves from some entangling nebula of gas or dust.
“However that may be, our fighters should be able to take them out. And maybe after this we can get some serious updating of our defenses.”
“Maybe.” The general did not sound too optimistic. For a long time, political complications had blocked progress in that direction.
Vivian went on: “I’m going to transmit a series of suggested targets . . . with your permission.”
She remembered to add the last, although General Gosnick did not tend to be a stickler for command hierarchy as some of his predecessors had been. The Templars often rotated injured officers to Lake Moon, where they could continue to make useful contributions while recuperating. General Gosnick had lost both legs, and his metabolism was proving resistant to accepting bio-linked prosthetics. His role on Lake Moon rotated on a regular basis between that of administrator and test subject. He was accustomed to taking suggestions, even direct orders, from Vivian Travers, who, by reason of both her specialized skills and seniority, occupied a unique position in the base community. Damaged as they were, the berserkers proved to be not totally ineffective as opponents, though they never managed to attack the base directly. When the battle was over, the enemy reduced to drifting chunks of relatively harmless hardware, interspersed with glowing incandescent clouds, several of the fighters needed to be towed back to base. Three pilots were going to be very glad that the hospital was not merely on the cutting edge of medical technology—it was where that edge was honed. On standing down from her battle station, Vivian
went to the hangar bay and put in several hours consulting with the workers and robots repairing the damaged fighters. Since working on the fighters was easier in minimal gee, and since low-gee was easier to adapt to in her suit, she left it on. Cobalt blue, with a surface texture that resembled lacquer, her battle armor stood out among the more utilitarian equipment worn by those around her. Vivian didn’t miss the occasional envious gaze or covetous sigh as she extruded various auxiliary limbs as needed.
Make your own, she thought cheerfully. I did.
Consulting with the crew chief in charge of repairs on the fighters, Vivian took note of a set of peculiar small piercings on the hull of one of the small craft. Four little holes, a couple of centimeters apart, in one short row, and another similar row of four about two meters away. The crew chief speculated that the piercings had been caused by some sort of mine, one that threw shrapnel, but that the shrapnel had not been able to do sufficient damage.
General Gosnick glided over to join them. He was not wearing his prosthetics, which would have been a distraction, but was riding in a state-of-the art chair that doubled as body armor if needed. Its lower profile gave him an advantage when viewing the fighter’s undercarriage.
“Odd that shrapnel would have hit in such neat lines.”
“Maybe,” a new speaker said, coming up to join them, “what made those marks was an automated mine rather than shrapnel. The mine might have tried to anchor, but failed and dropped off. We’d never have noticed one more explosion among all the rest.”
The new arrival went by the name Brother Angel. He belonged to a militant subcult of the Templars. There he had served with such distinction that the envious joked that if he wore all his medals, he could dispense with any other form of armor. Although synthetic skin had been grafted on, Brother Angel still showed the ravages of the complex surgeries that had been done to save his sight and hearing. Pious, devoted, and apparently as focused on the destruction of the berserkers as they were on the destruction of all Life, he had been repeatedly frustrated in his desire to return to active duty by sporadic irregularities that cropped up in the functioning of his new sensory apparatus.
Doubtless, Vivian thought sourly, Brother Angel is thrilled to have the action come to him.
“That’s an interesting suggestion, Brother Angel,” General Gosnick said. “I’d be interested in seeing the specs for such a mine. This might not be the only wave in this attack.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Brother Angel said.
Vivian excused herself. She headed back to her quarters, still wearing her armor, although she’d opened the face plate on the helm. She might first have dropped her armor off at the lab, but at the moment the shortest path to a hot shower and a meal took priority.
She strolled through “her” hub, waving at a few neighbors who were gathered in the garden area of the central residential plaza, sharing drinks and doubtless speculating about the berserker attack. A bit of excitement for a change, and no serious harm done—that seemed to be the flavor of the remarks she caught. She waved and promised to join them when she’d had a chance to clean up. Vivian’s quarters were grouped along their own corridor off one of the residential hubs. Most of the residential suites were arranged in about the same way, as it facilitated sealing off an area in case of mechanical failure or contagious illness. It also guaranteed that the residents would have a certain amount of privacy, a valuable commodity in an enclosed and isolated social system. Thinking ahead to the pleasures of warm water followed by whiskey and light conversation, Vivian almost bumped into the service robot that was coming around one of the blind bends in what amounted to her private hallway. The serbot was shorter than she was—shorter than most humans—perhaps a meter and a third where its upper portion rose like the head and chest of a centaur above the multilimbed barrel that scuttled along on a variety of adaptable appendages.
“Excuse m—,” Vivian began automatically, then stopped herself. First, it was ridiculous to apologize to a service robot, any more than to a table or a chair. Second, there was no way a properly functioning robot should have come that close to hitting her. Buffers were preprogramed, and the corridor was plenty wide enough that, even allowing for the relative bulk of her battle armor, the serbot should have had plenty of clearance.
She was about to demand that the serbot submit to inspection when she realized that what now blocked her return to the hub only superficially resembled a serbot—or rather, it would resemble a serbot to anyone who did not look at it with a critical and experienced eye. To Vivian, who was both critical and experienced, the differences were glaring.
Sheer, deadly terror hit her so hard that had she not been encased in her battle armor, it was likely her legs would have buckled. She broke into a sweat and backed against the corridor wall, trembling with fear.
When she could force herself to think clearly, all the evidence needed was there in plain sight. Joints and support struts were too flexible, too solid. The central chassis was armored, although the armor was nearly concealed by the outer carapace. The optic lenses were of a model capable of seeing into the infrared and ultraviolet. The manipulative digits were too numerous and included a tentacle-like appendage that extruded from the base of the thing’s wrist. Finally, no serbot had ever been armed, but this one had raised one limb, revealing a glowing fingertip that had precisely the look of the muzzle of a charged energy carbine.
The mysterious piercings on one of the fighters’ hulls had been just about the right size to have been made by the claws that ended four of the ostensible serbot’s limbs.
Vivian realized in horror that the two battered dreadnaughts, the feint at a full-scale attack on the base, had all been to accomplish this . . .
Standing before her, holding a weapon on her, was a berserker unit, undoubtedly an assassin model. It had somehow hitchhiked in on that fighter, possibly for the sole purpose of killing her, the genius inventor who kept piling up new weapons for the human side. Why, then, wasn’t it getting on with the job?
Vivian had enough control of herself now that she could scream for help. Surely it was her duty to yell, alert the base. But she remembered her neighbors, unarmored, unarmed but for the refreshments in their hands, and knew that calling them would be a summons to Death. There must be another way . . . Before she could think of one, the berserker spoke. “You are life-unit Vivian Travers.”
Its voice was not, as was often the case with the death machines, a hodgepodge of human utterances spliced together to create a discordant and frightening sound. This berserker spoke in a pleasant and even melodious voice, possibly adapted from that of one of the human traitors—the goodlife—who for reasons as varied as human perversity joined sides with the killer machines.
“I am,” she agreed.
“You are the life-unit who created Lancelot.”
Vivian blinked. Lancelot was the code name for what had been—depending on her mood and how she chose to look at it—either her greatest success or her greatest failure. Some had termed Lancelot a type of battle armor. Others, focusing on its capacity for interstellar flight, had termed it a fighter craft. Vivian had thought of Lancelot as a miracle, the means of transforming a soldier into a perfect knight. However, Lancelot had proven to be Siege Perilous, as well as armor and mount, and had rejected most of those who donned it. Only one had lived up to the promise and he . . .[*]
Vivian shook her head, putting memory aside. It was surprisingly easy to do so. The glowing fingertip, along with the promise of claws sharp enough to rend the hull of a space fighter, were wonderful at concentrating the attention.
“I did create Lancelot.”
“You are the greatest artificer of all humanity, but alas here you are isolated on this small rock, effectively deprived of honor, of all the great rewards you might justly have expected from your fellow humans. Am I not correct?”
Vivian was confused. “I have not ‘been deprived.’ I chose to come here. This base is a secret. Therefore
, so is my work.”
The berserker was unfazed. “I have come to offer you an opportunity to continue your career as a servant of death.”
“Servant of death? I am no goodlife! I serve no berserker.”
Somehow the sweat inside her armor seemed to have turned cold. The life support continued to wick moisture away efficiently.
“But you have already served us,” it told her gently.
“I . . . what?”
“You are the greatest artificer of all humanity,” the berserker intoned with what Vivian could have sworn was a note of reverence in its voice. “Your weapons have prolonged the war considerably, led many to fight berserkers when otherwise they might have fled. Your armor has shielded so that ships and warriors thought they could join battle against us and live. But for your actions, much life would have been destroyed, but also because of you, much life—and that often of those who are bravest and finest among your kind—has been taken. Therefore, we already classify you with us—a servant of death.”
“You are insane.”
“No,” the berserker denied with perfect calm. “I can give proofs, show where the death toll was much higher because your creations led to battle being joined.”
While it addressed her, the berserker had slowly reconfigured itself so that it was no longer oriented after the fashion of the squat centaurian serbot but instead stood nearly as tall as she, although its lower body rested on four limbs rather than her two. Two other limbs showed the stubby ends of what appeared to be carbine barrels, both aimed squarely upon her.
Between them a central panel glowed, becoming a screen across which marched symbols of logic and mathematics.
“The Battle of Pelam Deeps,” the berserker said, “where your improved form of the hydrogen lamp was used for ship power. We were halted there, but at the cost of . . .”
“Stop!” Vivian said imperiously. “I am not interested in your rationalizations. You said you came to offer me an opportunity. What I assume you are offering—when shorn of all the psychological claptrap—is an opportunity to turn goodlife or die.”
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