Berserker b-1

by Fred Saberhagen

  Mitch shook his head. “Are we talking about the same Johann Karlsen?”

  “Of course.”

  “Two years ago he went down into a hypermassive sun, with a berserker-controlled ship on his tail. Unless that story is not true?”

  “It’s perfectly true, except we think now that his launch went into orbit around the hypermass instead of falling into it. Have you seen the girl who’s aboard?”

  “I passed a girl, outside your cabin here. I thought . . . ”

  “No, I have no time for that. Her name is Lucinda, single names are the custom on her planet. She’s an eyewitness of Karlsen’s vanishing.”

  “Oh. Yes, I remember the story. But what’s this about his being in orbit?”

  Hemphill stood up and seemed to become more comfortable, as another man would be sitting down. “Ordinarily, the hypermass and everything near it is invisible, due to the extreme red shift caused by its gravity. But during the last year some scientists have done their best to study it. Their ship didn’t compare to this one”—Hemphill turned his head for a moment, as if he could hear the mighty engines—“but they went as close as they dared, carrying some new instruments, long-wave telescopes. The star itself was still invisible, but they brought back these.”

  Hemphill stood behind him. “That’s what space looks like near the hypermass. Remember, it has about a billion times the mass of Sol, packed into roughly the same volume. Gravity like that does things we don’t yet understand.”

  “Interesting. What forms these dark lines?”

  “Falling dust that’s become trapped in lines of gravitic force, like the lines round a magnet. Or so I’m told.”

  “And where’s Karlsen supposed to be?”

  Hemphill’s finger descended on a photo, pointing out a spot of crystalline roundness, tiny as a raindrop within a magnified line of dust. “We think this is his launch. Its orbiting about a hundred million miles from the center of the hypermass. And the berserker-controlled ship that was chasing him is here, following him in the same dust-line. Now they’re both stuck. No ordinary engines can drive a ship down there.”

  Mitch stared at the photos, looking past them into old memories that came flooding back. “And you think he’s alive.”

  “He had equipment that would let him freeze himself into suspended animation. Also, time may be running quite slowly for him. He’s in a three-hour orbit.”

  “A three-hour orbit, at a hundred million miles . . . wait a minute.”

  Hemphill almost smiled. “I told you, things we don’t understand yet.”

  “All right.” Mitch nodded slowly. “So you think there’s a chance? He’s not a man to give up. He’d fight as long as he could, and then invent a way to fight some more.”

  “Yes, I think there is a chance.” Hemphill’s face had become iron again. “You saw what efforts the berserkers made to kill him. They feared him, in their iron guts, as they feared no one else. Though I never quite understood why . . . So, if we can save him, we must do so without delay. Do you agree?”

  “Certainly, but how?”

  “With this ship. It has the strongest engines ever built—trust Nogara to have seen to that, with his own safety in mind.”

  Mitch whistled softly. “Strong enough to match orbits with Karlsen and pull him out of there?”

  “Yes, mathematically. Supposedly.”

  “And you mean to make the attempt before this ship is delivered to Nogara.”

  “Afterwards may be too late; you know he wanted Karlsen out of the way. With these police aboard I’ve been keeping my rescue plan a secret.”

  Mitch nodded. He felt a rising excitement. “Nogara may rage if we save Karlsen, but there’ll be nothing he can do. How about the crew, are they willing?”

  “I’ve already sounded out the captain; he’s with me. And since I hold my admiral’s rank from the United Planets I can issue legal orders on any ship, if I say I’m acting against berserkers.” Hemphill began to pace. “The only thing that worries me is this detachment of Nogara’s police we have aboard; they’re certain to oppose the rescue.”

  “How many of them are there?”

  “A couple of dozen. I don’t know why there are so many, but they outnumber the rest of us two to one. Not counting their prisoners, who of course are helpless.”

  “Prisoners?”

  “About forty young men, I understand. Sword fodder for the arena.”

  Lucinda spent a good deal of her time wandering, restless and alone, through the corridors of the great ship. Today she happened to be in a passage not far from the central bridge and flag quarters when a door opened close ahead of her and three men came into view. The two who wore black uniforms held a single prisoner, clad in a shirt of chain mail, between them.

  When she saw the black uniforms, Lucinda’s chin lifted. She waited, standing in their path.

  “Go round me, vultures,” she said in an icy voice when they came up to her. She did not look at the prisoner; bitter experience had taught her that showing sympathy for Nogara’s victims could bring added suffering upon them.

  The black uniforms halted in front of her. “I am Katsulos,” said the bushy-browed one. “Who are you?”

  “Once my planet was Flamland,” she said, and from the corner of her eye she saw the prisoner’s face turn up. “One day it will be my home again, when it is freed of Nogara’s vultures.”

  The second black uniform opened his mouth to reply, but never got out a word, for just then the prisoner’s elbow came smashing back into his belly. Then the prisoner, who till now had stood meek as a lamb, shoved Katsulos off his feet and was out of sight around a bend of corridor before either policeman could recover.

  Katsulos bounced quickly to his feet. His gun drawn, he pushed past Lucinda to the bend of the corridor. Then she saw his shoulders slump.

  Her delighted laughter did not seem to sting Katsulos in the least.

  “There’s nowhere he can go,” he said. The look in his eyes choked off her laughter in her throat.

  Katsulos posted police guards on the bridge and in the engine room, and secured all lifeboats. “The man Jor is desperate and dangerous,” he explained to Hemphill and to Mitchell Spain. “Half of my men are searching for him continuously, but you know how big this ship is. I ask you to stay close to your quarters until he’s caught.”

  A day passed, and Jor was not caught. Mitch took advantage of the police dispersal to investigae the arena—Solar News would be much interested.

  He climbed a short stair and emerged squinting in imitation sunlight, under a high-domed ceiling as blue as Earth’s sky. He found himself behind the upper row of the approximately two hundred seats that encircled the arena behind a sloping crystalline wall. At the bottom of the glassy bowl, the oval-shaped fighting area was about thirty yards long. It was floored by a substance that looked like sand but was doubtless something more cohesive, that would not fly up in a cloud if the artificial gravity chanced to fail.

  In this facility as slickly modern as a death-ray the worst vices of ancient Rome could be most efficiently enjoyed. Every spectator would be able to see every drop of blood. There was only one awkward-looking feature: set at equal intervals around the upper rim of the arena, behind the seats, were three buildings, each as large as a small house. Their architecture seemed to Mitch to belong somewhere on Ancient Earth, not here; their purpose was not immediately apparent.

  Mitch took out his pocket camera and made a few photographs from where he stood. Then he walked behind the rows of seats to the nearest of the buildings. A door stood open, and he went in.

  At first he thought he had discovered an entrance to Nogara’s private harem; but after a moment he saw that the people in the paintings covering the walls were not all, or even most of them, engaged in sexual embraces. There were men and women and godlike beings, posed in a variety of relationships, in the costumes of Ancient Earth when they wore any costumes at all. As Mitch snapped a few more photos he gradually
realized that each painted scene was meant to depict some aspect of human love. It was puzzling. He had not expected to find love here, or in any part of Felipe Nogara’s chosen environment.

  As he left the temple through another door, he passed a smiling statue, evidently the resident goddess. She was bronze, and the upper part of her beautiful body emerged nude from glittering sea-green waves. He photographed her and moved on.

  The second building’s interior paintings showed scenes of hunting and of women in childbirth. The goddess of this temple was clothed modestly in bright green, and armed with a bow and quiver. Bronze hounds waited at her feet, eager for the chase.

  As he moved on to the last temple, Mitch found his steps quickening slightly. He had the feeling that something was drawing him on.

  Whatever attraction might have existed was annihilated in revulsion as soon as he stepped into the place. If the first building was a temple raised to love, surely this one honored hate.

  On the painted wall opposite the entrance, a sowlike beast thrust its ugly head into a cradle, devouring the screaming child. Beside it, men in togas, faces glowing with hate, stabbed one of their number to death. All around the walls men and women and children suffered pointlessly and died horribly, without hope. The spirit of destruction was almost palpable within this room. It was like a berserker’s—

  Mitch took a step back and closed his eyes, bracing his arms against the sides of the entrance. Yes, he could feel it. Something more than painting and lighting had been set to work here, to honor Hate. Something physical, that Mitch found not entirely unfamiliar.

  Years ago, during a space battle, he had experienced the attack of a berserker’s mind beam. Men had learned how to shield their ships from mind beams—did they now bring the enemy’s weapons inside deliberately?

  Mitch opened his eyes. The radiation he felt now was very weak, but it carried something worse than mere confusion.

  He stepped back and forth through the entrance. Outside the thick walls of the temple, thicker than those of the other buildings, the effect practically disappeared. Inside, it was definitely perceptible, an energy that pricked at the rage centers of the brain. Slowly, slowly, it seemed to be fading, like a residual charge from a machine that had been turned off. If he could feel it now, what must this temple be like when the projector was on?

  More importantly, why was such a thing here at all? Only to goad a few gladiators on to livelier deaths? Possibly. Mitch glanced at this temple’s towering bronze god, riding his chariot over the world, and shivered. He suspected something worse than the simple brutality of Roman games.

  He took a few more pictures, and then remembered seeing an intercom station near the first temple he had entered. He walked back there, and punched out the number of Ship’s Records on the intercom keys.

  When the automated voice answered, he ordered: “I want some information about the design of this arena, particularly the three structures spaced around the upper rim.”

  The voice asked if he wanted diagrams.

  “No. At least not yet. Just tell me what you can about the designer’s basic plan.”

  There was a delay of several seconds. Then the voice said: “The basic designer was a man named Oliver Mical, since deceased. In his design programming, frequent reference is made to descriptive passages within a literary work by one Geoffrey Chaucer of Ancient Earth. The quote fantastic unquote work is titled The Knight’s Tale.”

  The name of Chaucer rang only the faintest of bells for Mitch. But he remembered that Oliver Mical had been one of Nogara’s brainwashing experts, and also a classical scholar.

  “What kind of psycho-electronic devices are built into these three structures?”

  “There is no record aboard of any such installation.”

  Mitch was sure about the hate-projector. It might have been built in secretly; it probably had been, if his worst suspicions were true.

  He ordered: ”Read me some of the relevant passages of this literary work.”

  “The three temples are those of Mars, Diana, and Venus,” said the intercom.”A passage relevant to the temple of Mars follows, in original language:

  “First on the wal was peynted a forest

  In which there dwelleth neither man ne beast

  With knotty, knarry, barreyn trees olde

  Of stubbes sharp and hidous to biholde.”

  Mitch knew just enough of ancient languages to catch a word here and there, but he was not really listening now. His mind had stopped on that phrase “temple of Mars.” He had heard it before, recently, applied to a newly risen secret cult of berserker-worshippers .

  “And downward from a hill, under a bente

  Ther stood the temple of Mars armipotente

  Wrought all of burned steel, of which the entree

  Was long and streit, and gastly for to see.”

  There was a soft sound behind Mitch, and he turned quickly. Katsulos stood there. He was smiling, but his eyes reminded Mitch of Mars’ statue.

  “Do you understand the ancient language, Spain? No? Then I shall translate.” He took up the verse in a chanting voice:

  “Then saw I first the dark imagining

  Of felony, and all its compassing

  The cruel ire, red as any fire

  The pickpurse, and also the pale dread

  The smiler with the knife under his cloak

  The stable burning with the black smoke

  The treason of the murdering in the bed

  The open war, with all the wounds that bled . . . ”

  “Who are you, really?” Mitch demanded. He wanted it out in the open. And he wanted to gain time, for Katsulos wore a pistol at his belt. “What is this to you? Some kind of religion?”

  “Not some religion!” Katsulos shook his head, while his eyes glowed steadily at Mitch. “Not a mythology of distant gods, not a system of pale ethics for dusty philosophers. No!” He took a step closer. “Spain, there is no time now for me to proselytize with craft and subtlety. I say only this—the temple of Mars stands open to you. The new god of all creation will accept your sacrifice and your love.”

  “You pray to that bronze statue?” Mitch shifted his weight slightly, getting ready.

  “No!” The fanatic’s words poured out faster and louder. “The figure with helmet and sword is our symbol and no more. Our god is new, and real, and worthy. He wields deathbeam and missile, and his glory is as the nova sun. He is the descendant of Life, and feeds on Life as is his right. And we who give ourselves to any of his units become immortal in him, though our flesh perish at his touch!”

  “I’ve heard there were men who prayed to berserkers,” said Mitch. “Somehow I never expected to meet one.” Faintly in the distance he heard a man shouting, and feet pounding down a corridor. Suddenly he wondered if he, or Katsulos, was more likely to receive reinforcement.

  “Soon we will be everywhere,” said Katsulos loudly. ”We are here now, and we are seizing this ship. We will use it to save the unit of our god orbiting the hypermass. And we will give the badlife Karlsen to Mars, and we will give ourselves. And through Mars we will live forever!”

  He looked into Mitch’s face and started to draw his gun, just as Mitch hurled himself forward.

  Katsulos tried to spin away, Mitch failed to get a solid grip on him, and both men fell sprawling. Mitch saw the gun muzzle swing round on him, and dived desperately for shelter behind a row of seats. Splinters flew around him as the gun blasted. In an instant he was moving again, in a crouching run that carried him into the temple of Venus by one door and out by another. Before Katsulos could sight at him for another shot, Mitch had leaped down an exit stairway, out of the arena.

  As he emerged into a corridor, he heard gunfire from the direction of the crew’s quarters. He went the other way, heading for Hemphill’s cabin. At a turn in the passage a black uniform stepped out to bar his way, aiming a pistol. Mitch charged without hesitation, taking the policeman by surprise. The gun fired as Mitch knoc
ked it aside, and then his rush bowled the black-uniform over. Mitch sat on the man and clobbered him with fists and elbows until he was quiet.

  Then, captured gun in hand, Mitch hurried on to Hemphill’s door. It slid open before he could pound on it, and closed again as soon as he had jumped inside.

  A dead black-uniform sat leaning against the wall, unseeing eyes aimed at Mitch, bullet-holes patterned across his chest.

  “Welcome,” said Hemphill drily. He stood with his left hand on an elaborate control console that had been raised from a place of concealment inside the huge desk. In his right hand a machine pistol hung casually. “It seems we face greater difficulties than we expected.”

  Lucinda sat in the darkened cabin that was Jor’s hiding place, watching him eat. Immediately after his escape she had started roaming the ship’s passages, looking for him, whispering his name, until at last he had answered her. Since then she had been smuggling him food and drink.

  He was older than she had thought at first glance; a man of about her own age, with tiny lines at the corners of his suspicious eyes. Paradoxically, the more she helped him, the more suspicious his eyes became.

  Now he paused in his eating to ask: “What do you plan to do when we reach Nogara, and a hundred men come aboard to search for me? They’ll soon find me, then.”

  She wanted to tell Jor about Hemphill’s plan for rescuing Karlsen. Once Johann Karlsen was aboard, no one on this ship would have to fear Nogara, or so she felt. But just because Jor still seemed suspicious of her, she hesitated to trust him with a secret.

  “You knew you’d be caught eventually,” she countered. “So why did you run away?”

  “You don’t know what it’s like, being their prisoner.”

  “I do know.”

  He ignored her contradiction. “They trained me to fight in the arena with the others. And then they singled me out, and began to train me for something even worse. Now they flick a switch somewhere, and I start to kill, like a berserker.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He closed his eyes, his food forgotten. “I think there’s a man they want me to assassinate. Every day or so they put me in the temple of Mars and drive me mad, and then the image of this man is always sent to me. Always it’s the same face and uniform. And I must destroy the image, with a sword or a gun or with my hands. I have no choice when they flip that switch, no control over myself. They’ve hollowed me out and filled me up with their own madness. They’re madmen. I think they go into the temple themselves, and turn the foul madness on, and wallow in it, before their idol.”