The Ultimate Enemy

by Fred Saberhagen

  “Are you saying, then, that every brilliant person must be a fortifications expert? Why not a strategist?”

  “Now, there’s another—“

  “Why not a doctor? Then we could always be ready to treat each other’s wounds, in case of sudden attack or accident.”

  Why not a lawyer? He could certainly play the game of argument, varying tactics to suit opponents, sending most of them retreating in confusion. Opponent must totter two spaces backward, according to the Argument Results Calculator. Even if Opponent had started out with what looked like a real advantage in his logic. Logic was only one part of even the most logical of human games.

  But eventually Khees wearied of the arguing, and so did they. A compromise was reached; and here he was now, doing a real-world job, and even a job that carried a fair amount of status in society. The family politicians had, among them, seen to that.

  The elevator opened silently. Ahead, the door to the overseer’s room atop Khees’ own chess rook stood ajar as usual, and he walked in. Great sealed windows viewed the patchwork land two hundred meters down, the thin-aired, purple sky, the five other towers that stood no more than a kilometer or two away, heads just level with the misty flatness of horizon. “Anything going on, Kara?” “Booby traps again.” The woman he was relieving looked up from her panels with a brief smile. “Double one, this time.” In one sense, Maximus had not yet been completely reconquered from the berserkers. “The second went off and did some damage to the engineer machines while they were clearing out the first.”

  Khees stood beside her, scanning the printouts and the panels. “Haven’t had booby traps for a while. Doesn’t look too bad, though, hey? Anything else?”

  “No.” Like everyone else in the permanent party, Kara was anxious to have her chance to socialize with the visitors in the brief time they were on-world.

  “Well, this doesn’t look too hard to handle. Go on, take off.”

  Kara was hardly out the door before a communicator chimed. Radio brought in the voice of the robot foreman on Khees’ sector of the distant frontier of work. The robot was evidently speaking from the scene of the latest accident.

  “Overseer, I request that an aircar be sent out here immediately from Central.” Its mechanical voice was deep and pleasant, as unlike as it could be made from the voices that berserkers usually took to themselves when they put on the habit of human speech.

  “An aircar. What for?”

  “Part JS-828 in the forward limb assembly of a workrobot Type Six is broken. The workrobot is otherwise essentially undamaged, and can be speedily returned to duty if a replacement part is sent out.”

  Khees was already punching at his computer console to get a look at the inventory of spare parts. He thought he knew what he would find, and he was right. A similar part had been broken in a freak accident ten days ago, and the stock of replacements was now down to zero. He so informed his foreman. “We’ll bring in the damaged piece, then, and the shop can decide whether to try to fix it, or produce a new one, or wait and hope we get another on the next shipment in.”

  “Is then the aircar to be sent?”

  Khees, on the verge of turning his mind to something else, paused. The video screen was blank, since the Boss believed that screens were distracting when not absolutely necessary, but he stared at it anyway. “No, a groundcar will come, as usual for repairs. Perhaps the mobile repair machine can fix the workrobot on the spot.”

  “It appears to me that it will not.” The robot foreman’s permanently jovial tones made the announcement of bad news sound impertinent. Maybe it was only that, but Khees thought the damned thing sounded odd today.

  “You’re not qualified to judge,” he told it. “The groundcar’s coming.” Good roads had been laid as far as that work area; the difference in time between ground transport and air would be minimal. “Meanwhile proceed with the programmed job as best you can.”

  “Orders understood. Proceeding.”

  Khees switched off that communicator, and turned to another, the tight light-beam that could be used for private talk among the towers.

  And now, he thought. The Game.

  It was certainly not chess, though its inventor had been one of the great chess masters of the very late twentieth century. Like any other board game, it could be played by a computer, and its inventor had in fact used one of the most advanced computer systems of his day to help design it. He had sought to create a game that could be played by a computer but not analyzed by one; not for The Game were the endless labyrinths of opening theory that now made learning chess more of a burden than a joy.

  Having six players helped make The Game resistant to analysis, and was no longer much of a drawback to practical play. By the close of the twentieth century there were on old Earth a lot of bright people with a lot of spare time and a taste for games. But what really foiled computer analysis, outside of actual play, was the sophisticated addition of chance to the Game; whatever moves a computer came up with for a particular contest would probably be useless in any other. Openings tended to be wild; it was proverbial that you had to be either good or lucky to survive the opening at all, and it was much better to be both. Khees had not failed to survive an opening in serious play since his first tournament, a startling (to him) number of years ago.

  The players were in place in their several towers, and the preliminaries were over; play began. Adrienne and Barkro had been installed in towers otherwise unused at the moment. Jon Via, LeBon, and Narret all signalled ready, their light-beams winking dully from the horizon.

  Play was shown on the large video screen normally reserved for emergencies; the pictured board was a simulation of a space war, stylized to the point of complete unrealism, the six fleets showing as points or bars of different colors. In the opening moves, Khees played conservatively, content to survive the buffetings of chance. He parried deadly threats when they appeared, and otherwise tried nothing more ambitious than a small improvement of position here, the mobilization of a new squadron there, saving his efforts for the middle game, when chance would be less important. Barkro justified Adrienne’s estimate of his skill by adopting the same general course. Adrienne herself, a basically good player but not of master strength, was given advantage by luck in the early moves, and seemed daringly determined to make the most of it. She was off at once on a flashy, aggressive campaign, threatening Khees, threatening Via. If her good luck held for another half-dozen moves she might have a won game before the opening was fairly over. She was a brilliant woman in most fields of mental endeavor; and if it were not for a certain little quirk or two, she could learn to be brilliant in this as well …

  The other players performed generally like the strong amateurs they were. LeBon launched a well-planned though premature attack on Adrienne, thinking evidently that if he waited she was only going to get stronger, and no doubt expecting he would get support from Khees. Open diplomacy was not part of The Game, but tacit agreements and understandings were.

  Khees moved in turn, without having to take much thought. He had plenty of time between moves to go through the undemanding routine of an overseer’s watch, observing what he could of his distant machinery with binoculars, eyeing the panels and printers that brought more precise information in from the frontier. He would not have cared to enter a championship tournament in his present rusty and unpracticed state; years had now passed since he had played against serious opposition. But in this game he thought himself in more danger of boredom than of losing—except for Barkro, of course, they didn’t give out master’s ratings, even low ones, lightly. Barkro was the one to watch, and to really play against.

  A good thing, too, that he could manage without perfect concentration, for this was turning out to be a day of oddities on the job. Here, for example, came the groundcar back from the frontier, presumably carrying the damaged part—and it stopped and hesitated and made false starts after entering the Central complex, as if its directing computer could have somehow beco
me confused about which tunnel-mouth of the underground works would lead it to the proper repair shop.

  Could someone have set up a ploy involving robots and groundcars to distract him from the Game by making him think that something regarding the work in his sector was really going wrong? He began to watch his panels very carefully.

  On the game board, through the next few turns, Adrienne’s power was still augmented by moderately good luck. Luck would mean less and less, though, as the Game progressed. LeBon, pounced on from behind, was all but out. Could LeBon be the one to gimmick groundcars? No. And Adrienne and Barkro were visitors, lacking the expertise. Jon Via was serious enough about winning, and knowledgeable enough. But. .

  Another round of moves, another, and now an expert stranger would have been convinced that Adrienne was going to win. Barkro’s forces were still mainly intact, but he was beaten. Khees had suddenly struck at him instead of at Adrienne. The visiting master was doubtless a bit stunned, unable to believe that Khees was going to throw the game so blatantly to his old girl friend—which of course was not what Khees had in mind at all. On a Game board, Khees would have smashed his own mother into a corner just as soon as the best chance came to do it. If you want to be nice, and sociable, play something else …

  Now they were all waiting for Adrienne’s next move, which was quite slow in coming. Khees smiled a little to himself.

  “Adrienne? We’re waiting for your move.” That voice on the light-beam net among the towers was Barkro’s, sounding half impatient, half sulky with the way he thought the Game was going.

  Shortly her move came on the board. Coldly logical, completely crushing.

  Khees’ smile vanished. Wrong … impulsively he opened the microphone before him. “Adrienne …”

  “What?” Her answering voice was cold, too, and he thought it had a distracted sound. A day for unusual voices, among its other oddities.

  And on the panel to his right, three indicators showed minor troubles out on his section of the frontier. Things that the foreman should be taking care of. Maybe the foreman would get to them soon, he told himself.

  Khees and the other players moved through the round, and Adrienne moved again. With sudden clarity Khees understood. He felt a weakness in the knees, not unlike that he had known in some tournaments, but more intense. He faced certain and utter defeat.

  -Or almost. Logic said loss, but there were still intangibles. There might be one, just one, more chance for the right move…

  The sound of the opening of the door of her tower room, soft though it was, startled Adrienne. Why would anyone come up here now—?

  She turned. Before there was time for fear the silent speed-blurred rush of something vaguely manlike in size and shape, but embodying a flow of metal and power that could not possibly be human, culminated in cold grippers touching her throat and then each of her limbs in turn.

  By the time she would have screamed it was too late. She could not talk, could barely breathe; something small but weighty clung to her throat after the machine had set her down in a corner, propped in an angle of wall. She could move her head, enough to look down at herself. To each of her paralyzed arms and legs a thing that looked like a small metal leech was now attached.

  Berserker …

  When screaming failed, she willed herself to faint. That failed also.

  The man-sized thing, ignoring her now, began a quick scanning of the tower’s instruments, of which only the Game board screen and the light-beam communicator were functioning. In seconds it had completed this inspection. With a snapping sound it now opened its own torso, and brought out a small stand which unfolded to support a tube filled with a weighty something. This assembly the berserker erected on a ledge below one of the great windows, adjusting the tube to point downwards at an angle, in the direction of…

  The monument was down there, at that end of the great plastic dome.

  The Chief was on his way …

  “Adrienne?” The voice coming through the communicator startled her so her half-deadened body almost jumped against the supporting walls. “We’re waiting for your move.”

  If the berserker had been startled too (if in its own electronic way it could be startled), it did not jump, but went at once to the Game-screen. Adrienne had a wild hope that it would not know what The Game was, but her hope was doomed. After five seconds’ study it reached out a metal arm to the controls, and moved for her.

  Another man’s voice, Khees’ voice, said into the small room: “Adrienne …”

  To her absolute horror, what seemed to be her own voice now issued from the metal creature’s throat. “What?”

  There was a small pause. “Oh, nothing,” Khees replied, dejectedly. And that, it seemed, was that…

  … she looked up from a blur of faintness to find the thing crouched down beside her. Glassy scanners that were not shaped or spaced like human eyes were studying her face.

  “Now,” it said when she looked up. (And this was surely its preferred voice, this screech that somehow formed itself hi distinct words.) “Now you are to provide me with complete details on the itinerary of the visit here of the life-unit which you call the Chief, which serves as Premier of the Ten Planets. If you cooperate you will be spared. If you do not—“ Another click, and in one metal hand it showed a small container. “This is nerve acid. One drop instantly penetrates the surface of human skin. It has affinity for living tissues of the sensory system, and it produces in them pain beyond any—“

  So silent were the towers’ elevators that even the berserker had evidently not heard this one’s functioning outside the room’s closed door. But now someone was gently, with seeming casualness, trying that door and finding that it was locked.

  “Who is it?” It was Adrienne’s voice again. And with a swiftness almost unbelievable the machine had crossed the room, was standing just to one side of that closed door. Small projections like gun-muzzles had appeared upon its chest and shoulders, and it poised like a praying mantis, ready to strike with arms of steel.

  “Who is it?”

  “Message for Adrienne Britton.” Some male voice she did not recognize.

  “I’m busy.”

  “Look, lady, do you want this note or do I have to hike all the way back there and tell him you won’t take it? It’s something about some damn game you’re supposed to be playing; he’s all upset. Didn’t want anyone else to see this or hear it.”

  “All right. Just hand it in.”

  Pounding her head against the metal wall, about the only movement she could make, was not going to create enough sound to serve as warning—

  The berserker unlocked and opened the door part way. And in the same motion, faster than any human could possibly act or react, it reached forward and outward in a swift grabbing blur—

  —and was hurled back, lifted from its feet and flung across the room, held skewered upon a lance of pounding flame. The small room roared with a continuous concussion. The metal body was smashed into the window, where tough plastic cracked and broke but would not yield entirely, and now the chamber filled with outward-rushing fog. Air pressure dropped. Three human figures, masked, in partial armor, tensely crouching, cleared the door. Two of them seemed to be pulled forward by the flaring, jerking weapons in their arms. The third one came for her. The last thing Adrienne saw before the thinning air blanked out her brain was Khees’ eyes above a breathing mask…

  “So some of the Marines’ small arms have kinetic sensors now,” Khees was saying, walking with her in the park, helping her work out some of the stiffness left in her legs after the metal leeches had been removed. “One of my escort had his weapon set to trigger at anything moving extraordinarily fast—like a berserker’s grabbing arm. Whammo, locks on target and keeps firing until the operator turns it off.”

  Adrienne shuddered, and squeezed his arm. “You knew it was a berserker,” she said, regarding him. “And yet you came for me.”

  “Walking between two Space Marines.
Even so my knees were shaking.”

  “It might have fired through the door at you, not grabbed.”

  “We figured that it wanted to be quiet, until the Chief came down and it could get a shot at him. It was a special assassin-machine, of course. They must have thought it a good bet that sooner or later the Chief would show up on Maximus to do his wreath-laying as he has so many other places. So before their raiders left they planted one extra-special booby trap; it must have been monitoring our local radio chatter and it knew when he was coming.”

  “You knew it was a berserker and yet you came for me. But—how’d you know?”

  “Well. There were some strange things going on, with the work machines. Too much of a coincidence, just when the Chief was due. It hit me that an assassin-machine could have taken the place of my foreman, and then come back here to Central in a groundcar I sent out. And where else would it go, to get a good shot at the Chief, but up in one of the towers overlooking the monument? So I hooked up my own computer to play a few moves of the Game for me, and …”

  “But how did you know that it was in my tower?”

  “How do you think?” Smiling at her.

  Adrienne was smiling too, and at the same time trying not to cry. “My little psychological block. You knew I could never in all my life have brought myself to beat you in The Game.”

  As life may transmit evil, so machines of great power may hand on good.

  Wings Out Of Shadow

  In Malori’s first and only combat mission the berserker came to him in the image of a priest of the sect into which Malori had been born on the planet Yaty. In a dreamlike vision that was the analogue of a very real combat he saw the robed figure standing tall in a deformed pulpit, eyes flaming with malevolence, lowering arms winglike with the robes they stretched. With their lowering, the lights of the universe were dimming outside the windows of stained glass and Malori was being damned.

  Even with his heart pounding under damnation’s terror Malori retained sufficient consciousness to remember the real nature of himself and of his adversary and that he was not powerless against him. His dream-feet walked him tunelessly toward the pulpit and its demon-priest while all around him the stained glass windows burst, showering him with fragments of sick fear. He walked a crooked path, avoiding the places in the smooth floor where, with quick gestures, the priest created snarling, snapping stone mouths full of teeth. Malori seemed to have unlimited time to decide where to put his feet. Weapon, he thought, a surgeon instructing some invisible aide. Here—in my right hand.