The Berserker Throne

by Fred Saberhagen

  It took him less time than he had expected to locate Captain Lergov. So things usually went when one’s duty had been understood clearly, when worries about nonessential difficulties had been abandoned.

  Lergov was just coming up a stair from the third underground level to the second when Beraton intercepted him. The grand marshall guessed that the near miss on the surface had sent the timid captain down temporarily to a shelter still deeper, if one not necessarily really safer.

  Well, there would be no more of that.

  “Captain, I require your assistance.”

  The stocky man, who had once seemed to Beraton to possess a kind of impassive courage, but now seemed only secretive, replied: “Certainly, sir. What can I do?”

  “Come this way. We can discuss it as we walk.”

  “In a moment, sir.” And the captain turned away briefly. It was a way he had of putting off a grand marshall’s requests and even orders: finishing some detail of his own. This insolent habit had never really struck Beraton as forcibly before this moment as it did now. This moment’s delay was used by Lergov to leave his precious subordinate, Mr. Abo—the grand marshall had never had much use for most politicians—in charge of his precious and utterly useless communicator. But Beraton let the irritation pass now. He had something much more vast on his mind.

  Lergov looked about apprehensively when the two of them had reached the surface, and took note of the newly devastated building nearby. But for the moment things were quiet again, and the captain only asked: “Where are we going, Grand Marshall Beraton?”

  Beraton was already leading the way toward some nearby staff cars, all of them apparently so far undamaged. He spoke crisply over his shoulder: “We are going to arrest the traitor. You and I were sent here to do that. It is our duty, and we should have faced up to our duty long before this moment.”

  Captain Lergov stopped. It was a dull dead stop. His eyes had a stunned look, as if he were the one who had an aching head.

  “Arrest the traitor, sir?”

  “To arrest General Harivarman. Yes. He is the man we have come here to arrest. We are going to obey our orders and take him into custody.”

  Lergov said: “Grand Marshall, he is . . .”

  “He is what? Speak up, man, if you have anything to the point to say.”

  “He is, he is protected, sir. It doesn’t seem likely we can just, just . . .”

  “Well, we are not protected, whether we sit here like cowards or go about our duty like men. When in doubt, Captain, proceed to do your duty. There’s an axiom that will carry you through.” Beraton’s head had suddenly begun to hurt abominably, and for a moment he could see at least two Lergovs in front of him. But willpower helped him straighten his vision out.

  “Sir. In my opinion we cannot simply go out there and . . . there is the matter of coordinating the dragoons’ defense. Our soldiers are scattered . . .”

  “Scattered in the face of the enemy, while you want to hide in a shelter. Captain, I am giving you a direct order. Get in this car. Take the driver’s seat; I shall ride in the rear.”

  “Sir, you are tired, you are hurt.”

  “I am not hurt. I am perfectly capable.”

  “You are injured, wounded, sir. Grand Marshall, I must with all due respect refuse to . . .” There Lergov stopped again, staring with disbelief at the drawn pistol that had suddenly appeared in the grand marshall’s fist.

  That fist was trembling a little now, but only partially with age and weariness. “Mutinous scum!” Beraton roared. “Hand me your sidearm!” He snatched it from the other’s trembling hand, knowing proudly that the heavy weapon in his own was staying level with murderous steadiness. “I’m placing you under . . . no. No, by all the gods, I’m not arresting you. You’ll have one chance yet to redeem yourself, and why should you sit safe in a buried cell while better men and women die up here? Get in the car, and drive!”

  Chapter 17

  Chen stared at Hana. Even after the shocks of recent days and hours, her mere presence here at the Fortress still jolted and astonished him.

  The implications of her presence began to come upon him only gradually, in the moments after the first shock.

  His response to her greeting was not entirely happy. “What’re you doing here?” he demanded.

  While Olga stared at the two of them in silence, Hana looked around, then grabbed Chen by his spacesuited arm and pulled him aside, a few steps down a narrow catwalk nearby. It was a passage among exposed structural elements, where it seemed likely that they would be able to count on at least a few moments of relative privacy.

  “I’m doing the same thing here that you are,” Hana said to him then. “They had me locked up on the ship, but now I’m free.”

  “Locked up.”

  “Yes, of course.” Hana gave her head a rapid little shake, her usual way of expressing the opinion that someone else was being unnecessarily slow. “The prime minister’s security people rounded me up near the capital shortly after the Empress was killed. Of course I didn’t even know at the time that she was dead. Neither did you. But now they think that we had some connection with it.” And she favored Chen with her familiar little conspiratorial smile.

  Chen nodded. The gesture was not really a sign of agreement or belief, only that he understood what she was saying. A few days ago he would have taken at face value just about anything that Hana might have said to him. But no longer.

  As if she sensed some change in him, Hana’s own manner now turned mildly accusing. “What’ve you been doing since you got here, Chen? What’re you up to now?”

  Olga, who was hovering near, was looking as if she might at any moment remember that Chen was officially still her prisoner. But before she intervened in the conversation, one of the dragoons who had separated himself from the main group that was still on the next lower terrace came up a nearby stair to Hana. The manner of this soldier’s approach was not that of a guard approaching a prisoner, but rather that of a private addressing an officer—in recent days Chen had become familiar with both attitudes.

  “Uhh,” said the soldier. It was a tentative sound, made in his throat as he approached Hana hesitantly. Chen had the strong impression that his next word was going to be “Ma’am.”

  Hana turned to him with annoyance. “You guys figure it out, can’t you? Let me alone for a minute.”

  The soldier nodded silently, turned and walked back toward his group, obediently leaving her alone. Hana, as soon as the young man was gone, turned back to Chen and saw how he was looking at her. Quickly she offered an explanation: “Some of them seem to think I’m someone important, just because I was kept locked up in a private cabin—but never mind about that. What’s been going on here? Where did these berserkers come from?”

  Chen studied her. Hana’s clothes, the only civilian garments on anyone in sight, were worn and dirty-looking. She had evidently not had an easy time of it, traveling the kilometers between here and the Salutai ship at the docks. But the clothes Hana was wearing now had been expensive garments once, not the kind Chen was used to seeing her wear. She had no spacesuit. Neither did any of the dragoons in sight. Of course, so far the Fortress’s life support systems were still working beautifully, and no one needed spacesuits. So far.

  “I don’t know where the berserkers came from,” said Chen.

  “And what’ve you been doing?”

  He started to open his mouth to tell his old friend Hana about his meeting with the Prince, but the words died somewhere inside him before they could be spoken. “Surviving,” he said instead. Definite suspicion had been born.

  Olga, looking increasingly suspicious herself, and ill-at-ease at being so outnumbered by dragoons, was hovering nearer and nearer to Chen and Hana.

  “This is Olga,” said Chen, turning to make the belated introduction. “She and I came out here trying to find some heavy weapons.”

  “So did we,” said one of the two other Templars who had been visible among the di
ffuse group. Evidently drawn by the sight of familiar uniforms, they had been approaching slowly. Both of them looked worn and shocked. The Templar who had just spoken went on: “But someone’s already hauled it all away, what little heavy stuff there really was out here.”

  Chen turned back to Hana. “So, the security people grabbed you on Salutai and locked you up. But why did they bring you here?”

  She accepted the question coolly. “They had some idea of confronting the Prince with me, evidently. Trying to make it look as if we had some deadly conspiracy going, and he was in on it—it’s all really stupid.” She paused. “Of course, now . . .”

  “Now what?”

  “Well. I hate to credit it, but it looks now as if the Prince may have turned goodlife.”

  “Prince Harivarman?”

  Chen had been about to ask Hana about Mr. Segovia’s face on the communicator screen, but the accusation against the Prince—and coming from Hana herself of all people—had temporarily blasted Mr. Segovia entirely out of Chen’s thoughts. Before he could refocus, Hana was off in a different direction.

  “Tell you what, Chen. Let me go down there and talk to these people for a few minutes. I’ll see if I can get them to organize themselves a little better, so we can all do something constructive together. Don’t you and your friend go away.”

  “We won’t,” said Chen mechanically.

  With a parting smile Hana moved away from them, going down another stair to talk to the dragoons.

  Olga stepped up beside Chen as the other young woman departed. Olga said: “She’s supposed to be their prisoner? She doesn’t act like one.”

  “No, she doesn’t,” agreed Chen.

  Most of the dragoons were now gathering in one place, making a knot of people on the next terrace down. The two Templars, who appeared to be wandering around rather dazedly, had now rejoined the gathering there. Chen saw that the dragoons were now moving the communicator. Maybe they were hoping for better reception. Hana was embedded in the group, talking to them. At this distance Chen couldn’t tell what she was saying, but a couple of the soldiers were now repositioning the communication device so its screen was no longer visible where Olga and Chen were standing.

  “Where’d you meet her?” Olga muttered suspiciously.

  Chen sighed. “On Salutai. Of course. It was a kind of a political club. We were supposed to be working to get Prince Harivarman recalled to power. And now she’s trying to tell me that the Prince . . .”

  Chen broke off. His memory had suddenly shown him the tall robot pacing in pursuit of him, with Prince Harivarman’s voice calling him, booming from its speakers. The Prince, goodlife. Goodlife. But no, it couldn’t possibly be.

  “Huh.” It sounded as if Olga disapproved of organization on Prince Harivarman’s behalf. Or maybe she was only envious again, of people who had time and opportunity to make up things like political clubs.

  Chen said suddenly: “Come on. Let’s move over this way just a little. I want to try to see something.”

  The two of them, with Chen for once in the lead, did a little climbing, maneuvering around and behind some structural supports, the titanic bones of the Fortress, that stood exposed here in the immediate vicinity of the firing range. In a few moments Chen had reached a point from which it was possible to see the communicator screen once more.

  “What is it?” Olga asked, hanging on his shoulder from behind. “What’s wrong?”

  Chen got one more good look at the communicator’s screen, before someone in the group around it turned a control on the device and the screen went blank. But even after that the man’s voice still issued from it. At this distance, most of the incoming words were indistinguishable, but the tones of the voice still came through. And Chen was more than ordinarily good at remembering voices.

  “I think I know the man,” said Chen, “that one they’re talking to.”

  “So. Who is it?”

  “His name’s Segovia . . . Olga, I don’t like this. I think we’d better move on.”

  “I’m not crazy about it either,” Olga admitted. “There’re no weapons here anymore, and those people are all disorganized. They’re going to get themselves wiped out, one way or another. All right, come on.”

  Olga sounded jumpy, which was natural enough after what they had been through already. She added, as they climbed back to the catwalk: “If I could signal to those two Templars—but maybe I can get them on their suit radios afterwards.”

  And she moved off at a quick pace, heading away from the firing pits, with Chen right on her heels. Hana must have been keeping half an eye on the two of them, or else she had someone else doing so, for they had gone only a little distance when Chen heard Hana’s voice calling after him.

  Chen said: “Ignore her. Let’s keep going.”

  Three seconds later a sound, as of a struck gong, reverberated through the structural beam beside his head. It was not quite like any sound that Chen had ever heard before, yet there was something hideously familiar in it. For the second time in a few days, he knew that he was being fired on.

  Less frightened than outraged at Hana’s treachery, Chen turned and fired back, almost blindly, the carbine throbbing in his hands as it projected missiles. Olga’s handgun blasted. Then the two of them ran again. When shots sounded around them they stopped again, crouching behind girders to return fire. Chen caught only quick glimpses of dragoons, and couldn’t tell if he had damaged any of them or not. He saw Hana herself appear briefly, back near the pit, then drop out of sight as if she might have been hit.

  Olga was running again and he turned and followed her, putting distance and angles and walls and more girders between themselves and the dragoons. There were shouts behind them, but no more shooting.

  He fled on, following Olga’s moving back. He counted the steps of his flight for a while, trying to estimate the distance they had come from the firing range, and then gave up. He had no idea where they were going now. All he was certain of was that now two sets of powerful enemies were after them.

  * * *

  The only faction that wanted to keep them alive—unless he was willing to trust what a berserker had said, calling his name in a Prince’s voice—were the Templars, who were still holding out around the base. An intermittent thunder-rumble of fighting from that direction testified that the base was indeed still holding out, that it was the only place where they might find help, and also that trying to reach it might well be suicidal.

  When they had put more than a kilometer between themselves and the range, Chen and Olga stopped for a brief rest, then drove themselves on. Chen worried and worried at the question of why the machine that had pursued him should have called on him in Prince Harivarman’s voice. He could come up with nothing that seemed very satisfactory in the way of an explanation.

  All the fountains were still running in the plazas that they passed, though the plazas were empty of people. Very few flyers or groundcars appeared to be in use anywhere in the City, and the temptation to borrow another one was correspondingly reduced. Olga and Chen passed several wrecked vehicles, one of them in particular looking scorched, as if something other than a mere accident had brought it down.

  Here and there people were starting to look out of their doors and windows. Some of the civilians called out questions when they saw Templars passing. Olga called back their ignorance, and advised the questioners to stay in shelter as much as possible. The drinking founts in the plazas and the streets still worked, the air remained normally breathable. For whatever reason, the berserkers were not attempting to destroy all life within the Fortress.

  “He’s made a pact with them, that’s what he’s done,” Olga muttered. “A regular damned treaty, to save his neck.”

  Chen refused to believe it. Even if the Prince were willing to turn goodlife, why should berserkers care to make a treaty with him, a powerless exile?

  But if they were here, as they were, with a military advantage, which they appeared to have, why wer
e they not slaughtering the human population, expunging life from the Fortress down to the bacteria in the air and in the scattered gardens of imported soil? That was what berserkers did, whenever they had the chance.

  Not this time, though. Something was different about this time.

  Olga wanted to know more about the man on the communications screen. Why had Chen thought the presence of that particular man’s face on the screen so important?

  “Because now that man is one of Roquelaure’s dragoons, and when I saw him before, he wasn’t.” Chen paused. It seemed to him that an interior light was dawning. It was an ugly light. “Or at least he didn’t have his uniform on then.”

  Olga had no immediate reply. Chen wondered if the look she gave him meant she thought that he was crazy.

  Chen tried to explain. “I thought then that he was one of us, our group. Or at least that he was sympathetic to our cause, to get Prince Harivarman set free.”

  Olga had evidently given up trying to understand about Segovia. But she had an opinion on the Prince: “They should have kept that man locked up. Instead they let him run around the Fortress wherever he wanted.”

  “I know.” When Olga looked at him, Chen amplified. “The commander took me along in her staff car to meet him. I think she wanted to see, well, if we might have been in any sort of plot together. We weren’t, of course. She took me way out in the boondocks to meet him, into the airless area. Somewhere near the outer surface of the Fortress, it must have been.”

  They hiked on, heading in the general direction of the Templar base, but not hurrying to get there or taking the most direct route. They paused to rest fairly often.

  “Why’d you join the Templars, Olga?”

  “Getting away from things.” She didn’t sound anxious to give details, and Chen didn’t press for them. He understood how that could be.

  They had been under way again for only a few minutes when a civilian called to them from an apartment window, wanting to know what news they had. The man told them that the regular broadcast news channels were useless due to some kind of sophisticated jamming, and a thousand rumors were circulating among the people. They gave the man what information they could, and were invited in for food. At that point both Olga and Chen discovered that they were ravenous. And despite their frequent rest stops, the hours of exertion and danger had taken their toll in exhaustion. Feeling like fugitives, the two of them took a welcome chance to sleep, one at a time, in the apartment, keeping their suits on and weapons ready. Like everyone around them, they were still breathing ambient air, which seemed as safe and as steady in pressure as ever.