The Ultimate Enemy

by Fred Saberhagen

  “I think I have explained my interest often enough in the past. If there is any chance that this—device—contains information pertinent to my studies, I should like to apply through whatever channels may be necessary—“

  “Perhaps I can save you the trouble. This time the device is merely the storage cartridge of a video recorder of a common type. It was recovered last night during a routine search of some newcomers’ quarters in the entertainment district. The information on the recorder is intricately coded and we haven’t solved it yet. But I doubt it has any connection with cosmophysics. This is just for your private information of course.”

  “Of course. But—excuse me—if you haven’t broken the code why do you think this device falls into the restricted category?”

  “There is a certain signature, shall we say, in the coding process. Our experts have determined that the information was stored at some stage in a berserker’s memory banks. One of the two young women who lived in the apartment committed suicide before she could be questioned—a typical goodlife easy-out, it appears. The other suspect so far denies everything. We’re in the process of obtaining a court order for some M-E, and that’ll take care of that.”

  “Memory extraction. I didn’t know that you could still—?”

  “Oh, yes. Though nowadays there’s a formal legal procedure. The questioning must be done in the presence of official witnesses. And if innocence of the specific charge is established, questioning must be halted. But in this case I think we’ll have no trouble.”

  Sabel privately ordered a printout of all court documents handled during the previous twenty-four hours. There it was: Greta Thamar, order for memory-extraction granted. At least she was not dead.

  To try to do anything for her would of course have been completely pointless. If the memory-extraction worked to show her guilt, it should show also that he, Sabel, was only an innocent chance acquaintance. But in fact it must work to show her innocence, and then she would be released. She would regain her full mental faculties in tune—enough of them, anyway, to be a dancer.

  Why, though, had her roommate killed herself? Entertainers. Unstable people …

  Even if the authorities should someday learn that he had known Greta Thamar, there was no reason for him to come forward today and say so. No; he wasn’t supposed to know as yet that she was the one arrested. Gunavarman had mentioned no names to him.

  No, indeed, the best he could hope for by getting involved would be entanglement in a tedious, time-wasting investigation. Actually of course he would be risking much worse than that.

  Actually it was his work, the extraction of scientific truth, that really mattered, not he. And, certainly, not one little dancer more or less. But if he went, his work went too. Who else was going to extract from the Templar Radiant the truths that would open shining new vistas of cosmophysics? Only seven other Radiants were known to exist in the entire Galaxy. None of the others were as accessible to study as this one was, and no one knew this one nearly as well as Georgicus Sabel knew it.

  Yes, it would be pointless indeed for him to try to do anything for the poor girl. But he was surprised to find himself going through moments in which he felt that he was going to have to try.

  Meanwhile, if there were even the faintest suspicion of him, if the Guardians were watching his movements, then an abrupt cessation of his field trips would be more likely to cause trouble than their continuation. And, once out in the lonely reaches of Dardania, he felt confident of being able to tell whether the Guardians were following him or not.

  This time he took with him a small hologram-stage, so he could look at the video records before he brought them back.

  “This time,” he said to the armored braincase projecting from the slag-bank, “you are ordered to give me the information in intelligible form.”

  Something in its tremendous shoulders buzzed, a syncopated vibration. “Order acknowledged.”

  And what he had been asking for was shown to him at last. Scene after scene, made in natural Radiant-light. Somewhere on the inner surface of the Fortress, surrounded by smashed Dardanian glass roofs, a row of berserkers stood as if for inspection by some commanding machine. Yes, he should definitely be able to get something out of that. And out of this one, a quite similar scene. And out of—

  “Wait. Just a moment. Go back, let me see that one again. What was that?”

  He was once more looking at the Fortress’s inner surface, bathed by the Radiant’s light. But this time no berserkers were visible. The scene was centered on a young woman, who wore space garb of a design unfamiliar to Sabel. It was a light-looking garment that did not much restrict her movements, and the two-second segment of recording showed her in the act of performing some gesture. She raised her arms to the light above as if in the midst of some rite or dance centered on the Radiant itself. Her dark hair, short and curly, bore a jeweled diadem. Her longlashed eyes were closed, in a face of surpassing loveliness.

  He watched it three more times. “Now wait again. Hold the rest of the records. Who was that?”

  To a machine, a berserker, all human questions and answers were perhaps of equal unimportance. Its voice gave the same tones to them all. It said to Sabel: “The life-unit Helen Dardan.”

  “But—“ Sabel had a feeling of unreality. “Show it once more, and stop the motion right in the middle—yes, that’s it. Now, how old is this record?”

  “It is of the epoch of the 451st century, in your time-coordinate system.”

  “Before berserkers came to the Fortress? And why do you tell me it is she?”

  “It is a record of Helen Dardan. No other existed. I was given it to use as a means of identification. I am a specialized assassin-machine and was sent on my last mission to destroy her.”

  “You—you claim to be the machine that actually—actually killed Helen Dardan?”

  “No.”

  “Then explain.”

  “With other machines, I was programmed to kill her. But I was damaged and trapped here before the mission could be completed.”

  Sabel signed disagreement. By now he felt quite sure that the thing could see him somehow. “You were trapped during the Templars’ reconquest. That’s when this molten rock must have been formed. Well after the time when Helen lived.”

  “That is when I was trapped. But only within an hour of the Templars’ attack did we learn where the life-unit Helen Dardan had been hidden, in suspended animation.”

  “The Dardanians hid her from you somehow, and you couldn’t find her until then?”

  “The Dardanians hid her. I do not know whether she was ever found or not.”

  Sabel tried to digest this. “You’re saying that for all you know, she might be still entombed somewhere, in suspended animation—and still alive.”

  “Confirm.”

  He looked at his video recorder. For a moment he could not recall why he had brought it here. “Just where was this hiding place of hers supposed to be?”

  As it turned out, after Sabel had struggled through a translation of the berserkers’ coordinate system into his own, the supposed hiding place was not far away at all. Once he had the location pinpointed it took him only minutes to get to the described intersection of Dardanian passageways. There, according to his informant, Helen’s life-support coffin had been mortared up behind a certain obscure marking on a wall.

  This region was free of the small blaze-marks that Sabel himself habitually put on the walls to remind himself of what ground he had already covered in his systematic program of exploration. And it was a region of some danger, perhaps, for here in relatively recent times there had been an extensive crumbling of stonework. What had been an intersection of passages had become a rough cave, piled high with pieces great and small of what had been wall and floor and overhead. The fragments were broken and rounded to some extent, sharp corners knocked away. Probably at intervals they did a stately mill-dance in the low gravity, under some perturbation of the Fortress’s stat
ely secular movement round the Radiant in space. Eventually the fallen fragments would probably grind themselves into gravel, and slide away to accumulate in low spots in the nearby passages.

  But today they still formed a rough, high mound. Sabel with his suit lights could discern a dull egg-shape nine-tenths buried in this mound. It was rounder and smoother than the broken masonry, and the size of a piano or a little larger.

  He clambered toward it, and without much trouble succeeded in getting it almost clear of rock. It was made of some tough, artificial substance; and in imagination he could fit into it any of the several types of suspended-animation equipment that he had seen.

  What now? Suppose, just suppose, that any real chance existed … he dared not try to open up the thing here in the airless cold. Nor had he any tools with him at the moment that would let him try to probe the inside gently. He had to go back to base camp and get the flyer here somehow.

  Maneuvering his vehicle to his find proved easier than he had feared. He found a roundabout way to reach the place, and in less than an hour had the ovoid secured to his flyer with adhesive straps. Hauling it slowly back to base camp, he reflected that whatever was inside was going to have to remain secret, for a while at least. The announcement of any important find would bring investigators swarming out here. And that Sabel could not afford, until every trace of the berserker’s existence had been erased.

  Some expansion of the tent’s fabric was necessary before he could get the ovoid in, and leave himself with space to work. Once he had it in a securely air-filled space, he put a gentle heater to work on its outer surface, to make it easier to handle. Then he went to work with an audio pickup to see what he could learn of the interior.

  There was activity of some kind inside, that much was obvious at once. The sounds of gentle machinery, which he supposed might have been started by his disturbance of the thing, or by the presence of warm air around it now.

  Subtle machinery at work. And then another sound, quite regular. It took Sabel’s memory a little time to match it with the cadence of a living human heart.

  He had forgotten about time, but in fact not much time had passed before he considered that he was ready for the next step. The outer casing opened for him easily. Inside, he confronted great complexity; yes, obviously sophisticated life-support. And within that an interior shell, eyed with glass windows. Sabel shone in a light.

  As usual in suspended-animation treatment, the occupant’s skin had been covered with a webbed film of half-living stuff to help in preservation. But the film had torn away now from around the face.

  And the surpassing beauty of that face left Sabel no room for doubt. Helen Dardan was breathing, and alive.

  Might not all, all, be forgiven one who brought the Queen of Love herself to life? All, even good-life work, the possession of restricted devices?

  There was also to be considered, though, the case of a man who at a berserker’s direction unearthed the Queen and thereby brought about her final death.

  Of course an indecisive man, one afraid to take risks, would not be out here now faced with his problem. Sabel had already unslung his emergency medirobot, a thing the size of a suitcase, from its usual perch at the back of the flyer, and had it waiting inside the tent. Now, like a man plunging into deep, cold water, he fumbled open the fasteners of the interior shell, threw back its top, and quickly stretched probes from the medirobot to Helen’s head and chest and wrist. He tore away handfuls of the half-living foam.

  Even before he had the third probe connected, her dark eyes had opened and were looking at him. He thought he could see awareness and understanding in them. Her last hopes on being put to sleep must have been for an awakening no worse than this, at hands that might be strange but were not metal.

  “Helen.” Sabel could not help but feel that he was pretending, acting, when he spoke the name. “Can you hear me? Understand?” He spoke in Standard; the meagre store of Dardanian that he had acquired from ancient recordings having . completely deserted him for the moment. But he thought a Dardanian aristocrat should know enough Standard to grasp his meaning and” the language had not changed enormously in the centuries since her entombment.

  “You’re safe now,” he assured her, on his spacesuited knees beside her bed. When a flicker in her eyes seemed to indicate relief, he went on: “The berserkers have been driven away.”

  Her lips parted slightly. They were full and perfect. But she did not speak. She raised herself a little, and moved to bare a shoulder and an arm from clinging foam.

  Nervously Sabel turned to the robot. If he was interpreting its indicators correctly, the patient was basically in quite good condition. To his not-really-expert eye the machine signalled that there were high drug levels in her bloodstream; high, but falling. Hardly surprising, in one just being roused from suspended animation.

  “There’s nothing to fear, Helen. Do you hear me? The berserkers have been beaten.” He didn’t want to tell her, not right away at least, that glorious Dardania was no more.

  She had attained almost a sitting position by now, leaning on the rich cushions of her couch. There was some relief in her eyes, yes, but uneasiness as well. And still she had not uttered a word.

  As Sabel understood it, people awakened from SA ought to have some light nourishment at once. He hastened to offer food and water both. Helen sampled what he gave her, first hesitantly, then with evident enjoyment.

  “Never mind, you don’t have to speak to me right away. The-war-is-over.” This last was in his best Dardanian, a few words of which were now belatedly willing to be recalled.

  “You-are-Helen.” At this he thought he saw agreement in her heavenly face. Back to Standard now. “I am Georgicus Sabel. Doctor of Cosmophysics, Master of … but what does all that matter to me, now? I have saved you. And that is all that counts.”

  She was smiling at him. And maybe after all this was a dream, no more …

  More foam was peeling, clotted, from her skin. Good God, what was she going to wear? He bumbled around, came up with a spare coverall. Behind his turned back he heard her climbing from the cushioned container, putting the garment on.

  What was this, clipped to his belt? The newly-charged video recorder, yes. It took him a little while to remember what he was doing with it. He must take it back to the lab, and make sure that the information on it was readable this time. After that, the berserker could be destroyed.

  He already had with him in camp tools that could break up metal, chemicals to dissolve it. But the berserker’s armor would be resistant, to put it mildly. And it must be very thoroughly destroyed, along with the rock that held it, so that no one should ever guess it had existed. It would take time to do that. And special equipment and supplies, which Sabel would have to return to the city to obtain.

  Three hours after she had wakened, Helen, dressed in a loose coverall, was sitting on cushions that Sabel had taken from her former couch and arranged on rock. She seemed content to simply sit and wait, watching her rescuer with flattering eyes, demanding nothing from him—except, as it soon turned out, his presence.

  Painstakingly he kept trying to explain to her that he had important things to do, that he was going to have to go out, leave her here by herself for a time.

  “I-must-go. I will come back. Soon.” There was no question of taking her along, no matter what. At the moment there was only one spacesuit.

  But, for whatever reason, she wouldn’t let him go. With obvious alarm, and pleading gestures, she put herself in front of the airlock to bar his way.

  “Helen. I really must. I—“

  She signed disagreement, violently.

  “But there is one berserker left, you see. We cannot be safe until it is—until—“

  Helen was smiling at him, a smile of more than gratitude. And now Sabel could no longer persuade himself that this was not a dream. With a sinuous movement of unmistakable invitation, the Queen of Love was holding out her arms …

  When he wa
s thinking clearly and coolly once again, Sabel began again with patient explanations. “Helen. My darling. You see, I must go. To the city. To get some—“

  A great light of understanding, acquiescence, dawned in her lovely face.

  “There are some things I need, vitally. Then I swear I’ll come right back. Right straight back here. You want me to bring someone with me, is that it? I—“

  He was about to explain that he couldn’t do that just yet, but her renewed alarm indicated that that was the last thing she would ask.

  “All right, then. Fine. No one. I will bring a spare spacesuit… but that you are here will be my secret, our secret, for a while. Does that please you? Ah, my Queen!”

  At the joy he saw in Helen’s face, Sabel threw himself down to kiss her foot. “Mine alone!”

  He was putting on his helmet now. “I will return in less than a day. If possible. The chronometer is over here, you see? But if I should be longer than a day, don’t worry. There’s everything you’ll need, here in the shelter. I’ll do my best to hurry.”

  Her eyes blessed him.

  He had to turn back from the middle of the airlock, to pick up his video recording, almost forgotten.

  How, when it came time at last to take the Queen into the city, was he going to explain his long concealment of her? She was bound to tell others how many days she had been in that far tent. Somehow there had to be a way around that problem. At the moment, though, he did not want to think about it. The Queen was his alone, and no one … but first, before anything else, the berserker had to be got rid of. No, before that even, he must see if its video data was good this time.

  Maybe Helen knew, Helen could tell him, where cached Dardanian treasure was waiting to be found …

  And she had taken him as lover, as casual bed-partner rather. Was that the truth of the private life and character of the great Queen, the symbol of chastity and honor and dedication to her people? Then no one, in the long run, would thank him for bringing her back to them.