Berserker Fury

by Fred Saberhagen

  Gavrilov was not surprised at all by what had come into his ship. It was what he had been expecting, no better and no worse.

  Fear and pride together showed in his voice and manner, as he spoke to it.

  "I am here," he told the thing. "As I promised my Teacher. And I have brought you an important prisoner."

  The invader ignored the remark. "Move quickly," it told them all, speaking in the standard language, sounding the deadly, squeaking berserker voice tones. "Discussion later. A battle is impending."

  Meanwhile, at no great distance from the newly boarded ship, the man who wanted to be called the Viceroy, and the quiet woman who had chosen to humor him, still huddled in their odd shambles of quarters aboard a berserker carrier. They too had been told by their Teacher that a battle was impending. The man's eager requests for more information had been ignored.

  In recent days Laval had been trying his best to garb himself in an impressive uniform, but very little in the way of spare clothing was available. The Teacher had offered no help, or even encouragement, and without help not much could be done. Part of his uniform was a length of chain he wore looped beltlike around his waist, and padlocked.

  The Templar prisoner was still present—his unrepentant head just visible above the top surface of a force-field cube, with the appearance of shimmering gray gelatin. Now and then a machine came by, to spoon-feed the helpless man with food or water.

  Roy Laval had been aboard this machine for a long time now. So long that his dark hair and beard had grown long, and he had lost track of the duration of his stay.

  Laval was gaunt and hollow-eyed, of indeterminate age. He bore a vague physical resemblance to Nifty Gift, whom he had never met.

  Laval and his companion had just taken notice of the approach of a small ship, but they had no idea whether any life units, either goodlife or prisoners, might be on it.

  While the two of them were talking about this, the Templar prisoner, visible only as a talking head atop his force-field block at a little distance from the others, kept rudely interrupting. "Hey, clowns! What makes you think that any berserker has any reason to tell you anything, except maybe sit down and shut up, and follow orders. Why should it tell you about the way it's going to do business?"

  Laval cast over a scornful, almost pitying glance, but said nothing to the Templar. The woman turned her head and looked at him sadly, as she looked at everything.

  Then Laval resumed a kind of lecture he had been delivering, to his only disciple. "If the Teachers in their wisdom chose to create machines that could pass, in casual inspection, for Solarian slime units, we would have no role to play at all. But the truth is that they wish us to share with them, in the creation of a new universe." Laval's face took on an exalted expression as he spoke.

  The nameless woman nodded silently. From her blank expression it was hard to tell whether she had really understood a word or not.

  "I'd like to see your new universe," the Templar said, and cackled.

  "You never will, life slime. You will be dead before it comes about."

  "Lucky me! Hey, how do you know," the Templar cried, from his impregnable sanctuary, his perfect prison, "that I am not just such a machine, sent here to test your loyalty?"

  "You are only a crazy man, and the only reason our Teacher allows you to live is to test our sanity," Laval muttered over his shoulder. "Shut up."

  "Shut me up, if you can. Maybe one of your own group, your precious goodlife, is just such a machine. Have you thought of that?"

  Reflexively, Laval and his woman looked suspiciously at each other. But neither of them could believe that.

  And then distraction came, not totally unexpected. The ship they had so recently noticed making its approach was now docking—or landing, rather, coming down gently to rest in the standard generated gravity, at a spot right next to this fenced-off portion of the flight deck.

  Laval and the woman who had abandoned her name got to their feet. Presently they could see that someone was indeed approaching. A man and an experienced goodlife, judging by the calm way he moved in this environment. Then he walked out of shadow and into a place where the light of distant starclouds fell through the transparent overhead to reveal his face.

  "Gavrilov," said the one who meant someday to be the berserker viceroy of Earth.

  The dark man, casually clad, walking in his distinctive stooped fashion, approached and acknowledged the greeting with a cool nod. He did not appear much surprised to find Laval and his woman here; possibly he had even been expecting them.

  Flower was following Gavrilov slowly, keeping in the background and looking about her with a stunned expression.

  It was obvious from the way these two men faced each other that they had met before, and that they were not particularly pleased to be meeting again.

  And all the while, on the deck in the background, the spasmodic dance of berserker fighting machines went on, as they prepared to accomplish the next step in their dual plan, of occupying the atoll called Fifty Fifty, and annihilating any Solarian fleet that might attempt to challenge them.

  It was also soon obvious that the newcomer considered the "viceroy" his rival, and was not disposed to tell him anything.

  The feeling was mutual.

  "What news from the slime worlds?" Laval inquired. "Are the Solarians still holding any planets?"

  "Quite a few, as a matter of fact."

  The Templar, from his privileged position in the background, laughed at that.

  Gavrilov only now became aware of the presence of the prisoner. He looked through the shadowy grillwork barrier at the man's head, sticking up out of a block of dim, shimmering force field.

  "What have we here?" the newcomer inquired.

  Laval, still not minded to provide his rival with any useful information, remained silent; but the Templar himself offered a kind of twisted explanation.

  He had not got far before Laval interrupted. "Never mind that slime. I think his slimy badlife masters have drugged him so that he feels no fear. But the Teacher will be interrogating him soon." Now his eyes widened as he suddenly caught sight of Flower, who had come to a stop in the background, her attention raptly on her new surroundings. "Here, you! Who are you?"

  Flower was plainly not impressed by his uniform, or indeed anything about him. She continued to look around her as she gave him her name. The excitement and anticipation with which she had come aboard the enormous machine were fading visibly.

  "Where are we going to stay?" she asked at last, addressing the world in general.

  By now Laval's nameless woman had emerged from the little shelter, a kennel-like and improvised structure at one side of the enclosed space reserved for life, to confront Flower. The two women began a halting conversation. Meanwhile Gavrilov and Laval were continuing the argument they had begun on first seeing each other.

  There were certain things the two goodlife men agreed on: All, or most, of the evils of the universe could be blamed upon the stubbornness of Solarian humans—and perhaps a few other life forms that in their own ways, all relatively ineffective, tried to resist the machines.

  Gavrilov believed that once the berserkers had perfected an imitation human, then there would be no further need for goodlife like themselves. Machines could do an infinitely better job of infiltrating the remnants of the human resistance and preparing its final downfall.

  And in halting speech the nameless woman was explaining to Flower that for the time being all right-thinking goodlife were going to have to rough it. The worldly paradise, when living machines and life-hating people would exist together in perfect harmony, still lay in the future.

  Flower was staring at the shabby kennel, at the ragged, haggard woman who had just crawled out of it, and the look on Flower's face indicated that she was waiting to be told that this was all a joke, an initiation of some kind. At any moment now the secret door would open somewhere, and the laughing, kindly people would pour forth, well-fed and well-dressed. And
with them would come their friends, the wise, harmonious machines. All along she had believed, really and truly, that Gavrilov was taking them to a paradise world.

  And Nifty Gift was a witness to most of it. He had been escorted by two machines out through the small ship's airlock, emerging after Gavrilov and Flower. His captors marched him into an area that was out of the other humans' sight, but still 'part of the walled-off portion of the flight deck of the giant berserker carrier.

  When the two berserker robots had abruptly closed in on Gift, one on either side, he prayed that they would kill him quickly. But no such luck.

  He could hear human voices at a little distance, but was not taken to join the others. Rather he was put into a closet-sized cage, or holding cell.

  Obviously, this was a prepared place of confinement. A spigot on one wall gurgled with cold running water, and right below it a hole in the deck was ready to serve as a crude latrine.

  The two man-shaped machines locked him in, closing a force-field door, and left him. He scarcely had time to look around before one of them was back, carrying an odd-shaped bundle that Gift automatically assumed must be some instrument of torture. But the bundle opened turned out to be a suit of space armor—one that appeared to have undergone some peculiar alterations.

  His inanimate jailer gestured at him, then watched while he put on the suit, over his frayed and dirty civilian clothes that had remained unchanged during the voyage from Uhao. Then it tossed him a matching helmet, and stood by until he had tried that too, and made sure it mated with his suit.

  Then the thing that had brought the suit turned on its two legs and went wordlessly on its way, once more closing the force-field door of his little cell behind it.

  Gift heard a murmur of voices. Looking through the grill-work of one side of his cell, he discovered that he could see and hear most of the conversation among the other Solarians, though they could not see him from where they were. They had no suits of armor.

  As soon as Gift began to move around inside his special little cell, he realized that the suit they had given him had been altered. The servos were weakened, so that the wearer would have no chance to resist berserkers—the suit felt heavy and slow-moving. But Gift supposed it would still offer substantial protection against injury.

  Still the purpose of the special treatment he had received eluded him. Why would a berserker protect an enemy prisoner, but not its goodlife friends? What threatened him, except the berserker itself? The chance of running into any Solarian patrol in this vastness ought to be really almost infinitesimal.

  It was after Gift had begun to listen to the strange conversation taking place among his fellow Solarians, that there dawned on him a likely reason for all this concern over his welfare. He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the bars.

  He, like the Templar in his block, was being saved for interrogation. The Teacher really wanted to talk to him; but it just had to fight a battle first.

  The goodlife living quarters on this machine seemed to be all above decks, consisting of a few walls and inflated balloons, improvised under a thin transparent canopy. A few rags of padding on a hard surface. Water pipes and holes in the deck were the extent of plumbing, and food provision was decidedly sporadic.

  Judging from the maneuvers of berserker small ships that he was able to observe on the adjoining flight deck, artificial gravity seemed to be in operation across the whole deck, perhaps throughout the whole machine, not laid on only in the life-unit pens. He supposed this offered some advantage. Gift as part of standard military training had been taught something about how large berserkers were usually organized, designed, and put together. Trouble was that his teachers had been notably short of firsthand experience in their subject. He'd be able to teach the course now.

  Listening to Gavrilov's argument with the other goodlife man, whoever he might be, Gift felt the numbness of terror giving way slowly to sullen hate. Somehow these idiots had convinced themselves that berserkers really wanted to be benevolent rulers—hell, if the berserkers ever won the war, it would be because humanity was too stupid to be allowed to live.

  As far as he could tell from what he overheard, Laval's plan, or maybe Gavrilov's, or the plan of both, had been to teach their mechanical Teachers what the best (read: the least human) of humanity was really like. Then the Teacher machines in turn would come to love and trust him—and see that when the time came, they would see to it that he was recorded, thus becoming as much like the superior life form as it was possible for him to become.

  But Laval and the others who had chosen to be goodlife were quite right about one thing: Their metal masters wanted to learn from them what humanity was like. Great optelectronic brains always gathering data, bits and pieces of information that would form a great mosaic, from all their prisoners. Eventually the vast structure of information thus created would enable the berserkers to understand the phenomenon of Solarian humanity sufficiently well to crush it out of existence.

  And while his fellow Solarians—slime units was the name that some of them preferred for their own kind—haggled with one another, Nifty Gift stood voiceless in his cell, ignored except for an occasional look-in by one of the machines that had given him the suit.

  He wasn't really thinking anymore, but he was starting to take stock of his surroundings.

  To begin with, this was an enormous berserker, vastly bigger than the one that in some bygone age had crushed his spy ship. From what he could see on the expanse of deck stretching away beyond the little area fitted with life support, it had to be a carrier.

  Nifty was gradually coming to grips with the realization that his worst fear had now been realized. This was just what he had been willing to kill his shipmates to prevent: He was a berserker's helpless captive, in deep space, beyond any hope of rescue.

  And then another thought suggested itself to his stunned mind: At least Traskeluk would never be able to find him here.

  The more he considered that idea, how terribly successful his flight from Traskeluk had been, the funnier it began to seem. Gift started laughing, gradually sliding into a helpless hysteria.

  In a minute or so Flower, coming back evidently to see what had happened to him, stopped at the door of his little cell and looked in at him curiously. It was as if she were looking everywhere for an explanation, but he had none to give.

  The man-sized berserker units, Gift noticed, seemed indifferent to Flower's presence. They were allowing her to wander back and forth at will, within the boundaries of the small region where life was temporarily tolerated. This, then, was Paradise. Her eyes roamed restlessly about. Gift could see that she was looking sadder and sadder.

  When Flower left Gift's door and wandered back in sight of Laval, the would-be viceroy barked more questions at her, trying to satisfy himself as to whether she was goodlife or a prisoner. Evidently to him the distinction was of tremendous importance.

  He assumed that he had now met everyone who had just arrived on the ship.

  Under this interrogation Flower's growing shock and horror turned into fright.

  Meanwhile, Gavrilov had looked back toward the yacht once or twice, with a faintly puzzled expression. He might be wondering what had happened to Gift; but he kept to himself whatever thoughts he might have on the subject. Laval was not going to be given any information free.

  Except for Gift and the separated Templar, the humans making up the strange little group were standing, now and then sitting or reclining, in what looked like an arena ringed with fire; along with what felt like normal artificial gravity, their unliving host had provided air, and presumably food and water, at least the minimal life support that goodlife and badlife alike required if they were going to answer questions and demonstrate for the machine the almost unfathomable complexities of Solarian psychology.

  And the Solarians' talk returned to the subject of possible berserker imitations of humanity. Why is it the machines, with all their computing capacity and technical skills, h
ave never accomplished that successfully? They seem to have some built-in block against doing it.

  "The berserkers have never been able to build an imitation of a Solarian human, or any other complex life form, that would convince passersby who saw it in a good light. It seems, in a way, that they've never wanted to try—or have never been able to make a good attempt."

  "Why is that?"

  "I think that no organic being in the Galaxy knows why."

  Laval once more expressed his great contempt for all organic beings. The way he looked at his own hands as he spoke seemed to indicate that he was including himself.

  Then one of the three goodlife advanced an explanation. The machines wouldn't lower themselves to the apparent duplication of dirty life.

  And from the background the voice of the captive Templar, who had been almost forgotten, came, saying: "Berserkers have them, it seems. Or at least these do. Like a dog has fleas. Or is it lice?"

  One of the goodlife men jumped up and tried in vain to punish the Templar. The man in the force-field block laughed, maniacally, and then began to sing.

  And the machine, in its untiring examination of human motives, only wanted to hear more of the Templar song:

  The prisoner was ready to oblige:

  He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat

  He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment-seat;

  Oh, be swift my soul to answer him, be jubilant, my feet!

  Our God is marching on!

  There was a momentary silence.

  And still Gift continued listening, in a curiously detached way, from behind the bars of his prison cell. He thought that hundreds of berserkers over the centuries of conflict must have had the concept of God explained to them a thousand times— as many different explanations as there were explainers—in contradictory theologies: By cool goodlife cynics, by devout prisoners almost frightened to death, by fanatical preachers who had come to preach to their unliving hardware. How the idea of a divine creator, or a first cause, figured in the calculations of the death machines, if at all, seemed impossible to guess.