Berserker Base

by Fred Saberhagen

  "Huh?" said the questioner. "What's a boojum?"

  "It's fortunate that classical literacy is not a requirement of a first-rate fighter." Dr. Epsleigh snorted. "The long-range sensors detected an object and coded it as a snark, a possible cometary object. One of our programmer ancestors liked literary allusions…"

  At the table, Morgan's head jerked and she half-raised one hand toward an ear.

  "What's wrong?" said Holt, feeling a start of concern.

  "Runagate," she answered. "The ship's link. I've got to turn down the volume. Runagate just shouted in my ear that he knows all about snarks and boojums. Quote: For the snark was a boojum, you see.' "

  "So just what is—" he started to say.

  Dr. Epsleigh's amplified voice overrode him. "What we shall be fighting, as best can be determined at this time, is an automated destroyer, a deadly relic from an ancient war. It's a sentient machine that has been programmed to terminate all the organic life it encounters."

  "So what's it got against us?"

  "That's a dumb question," someone else pointed out. "Maybe you're not organic intelligence, Boz." The first questioner flushed pink.

  "Thank you," said Dr. Epsleigh. "We've been running an historical search for information in the computers. Objects like that machine orbiting Kirsi were known when we sought refuge in this planetary system four centuries ago. They were just part of the oppressive civilization our ancestors fled. Our people wanted to be left alone to their own devices. It was assumed that the vastness of the Galaxy would protect them from discovery by either the machines or the rest of humanity." Dr. Epsleigh paused. "Obviously the machines were better trackers—or perhaps this is just a chance encounter. We don't know."

  "Is there room for negotiation?" That was Tanzin.

  Dr Epsleigh's humorless smile appeared again. "Apparently not. In the past the machines negotiated only when it was part of a larger strategy against their human targets. The attack on Kirsi was without warning. The machine has not attempted to communicate with any human in the system. Nor has it responded to our overtures. It is merely pounding away at Kirsi with single-minded ferocity. We think it picked that world simply because Kirsi was closer to its entrance point into this system." Dr. Epsleigh's jaw visibly tightened; the tension was reflected in her voice. "It's not merely trying to defeat our neighbors. The machine is annihilating them. "We're witness to a massacre."

  "And we're next?" said Morgan.

  "All of Almira," said Dr. Epsleigh. "That's what we anticipate, yes."

  "So what's the plan?" Amaranth's voice boomed out.

  Holt glanced aside at Morgan, her hair almost glowing in the hall's artificial glare. His job had been to send back fee dividends to North Terrea, the village that had invested in him and his ship. Until only a short time ago, his life had centered around adventure, peril, and profit. Now a new factor had intervened. It seemed there suddenly was another facet of life to consider, Morgan. Maybe it was only a crush—he'd never find out if it would work or not unless he explored the possibilities. But instead they'd both fly out with the rest to Kirsi. The machine would kill him. Or her.

  Or the both of them. It was depressing.

  Dr. Epsleigh interrupted his reverie. "We don't know what the defensive capabilities of the machine are. The few ships that investigated from Kirsi didn't even get close enough to test its screens. You'll be more careful. We think you've got considerably more speed and mobility than the machine. The strategy will be to slip a few fighters through the machine's protective screens while the other ships are skirmishing. We're jury-rigging some heavier weapons than standard issue."

  "Um," said a pilot off to the left. "What you're saying is, you hope some of us can find points of vulnerability on that critter?"

  "We're continuing to gather intelligence about the machine," said Dr. Epsleigh. "If a miracle answer comes up, believe me, you'll be the first to know."

  "It's borking suicide." Amaranth's voice carried throughout the hall.

  "Probably." Dr. Epsleigh's smile heated from grim to wry. "But it's the only borking chance we've got."

  "Why even bother with quintuple bonuses," someone muttered. "No one'll be around to spend 'em other than the machine."

  "How can that boojum-thing just want to wipe us all out?" came an overly loud musing from the back of the room.

  "Aren't you forgetting us and the 'Reen?" Holt said angrily, also loud. His neighbors stared at him.

  "We didn't kill 'em all," said Bogdan mildly.

  "Might as well have. For four hundred years, we took their land whenever it suited us. They died when they got in our way."

  "Not in my way," protested Bogdan. "I've never done anything to those stinking badgers."

  "Nor for them," said Holt.

  "Shut up," said Tanzin. "Squabble later. When the machine bombards Almira, I'm sure it won't distinguish between human and 'Reen." She raised her voice back in the direction of Dr. Epsleigh. "So what happens next?"

  "We're outfitting the fighters. It will take some hours. You'll be leaving in successive waves. The ready rooms are prepared. I suggest you all get whatever sleep or food or other relaxation you can manage. I'll post specific departure rosters when I can. Questions?"

  There were questions, but nothing startling. Holt drew his courage together and turned toward Morgan. "Buy you a caf?" She nodded.

  "Buy as all a caf," said Taazin, "but get a head start now. We'll meet you later."

  Unwelcome satellite, the machine continued to circle Kirsi.

  Dust.

  Steam.

  Death.

  Oblivion.

  Thai list pretty much inventoried the status of Kirsi's surface. Orbital weapons probed down to the planet's substrata.

  The boojum, you see, wanted to be sure.

  The ready rooms were clusters of variously decorated chambers color-keyed to whatever mood the waiting pilots wished. This dawn, the pilots had tended to gather together in either the darkest, most somber rooms, or else the most garishly painted. Seeking privacy, Holt conducted Morgan to a chamber finished in light wood with neutral, sand-colored carpets.

  Holt told the room to shut off the background music. It complied. The man and woman sat opposite one another at a small table and stared across their mugs of steaming caf.

  Morgan finally said, "So, are you frightened?"

  "Not yet." Holt slowly shook his head. "I haven't had time yet. I expect I will be."

  She laughed. "When the time comes, when that machine looms up as sharp and forbidding as the Shraketooth Peaks, then I expect I'll shake from terror."

  "And after that?" said Holt.

  "Then I'll just do my job."

  He leaned toward her over the table and touched her free hand. "I want to do the same." She almost imperceptibly pulled her fingers back.

  "I know something of your career," said Morgan. "I pay attention to the stats. I'm sure you'll do fine."

  Holt reacted to a nuance in her tone. "I'm not that much younger than you. I just haven't had quite as much experience."

  "That's not what I meant." This time she touched his hand. "I wasn't making light of your youth. I've watched the recordings of your skill as a young fighter pilot. What I'm wondering about is what it took to get there…"

  Her words lay in the air as an invitation. Holt started to relax just a little. Their fingers remained lightly touching.

  It was rarely simple or easy for Holt to explain how he had been raised in the wild by the 'Reen. A casual listener might toss it off as a joke or an elaborate anecdote. But then Holt rarely talked about his background with anyone. The few hearers invariably were impressed with his sincerity.

  He found himself not at all reluctant to tell Morgan.

  Simply put, Holt had been set out on a hillside to die, while only an infant, by the North Terrea villagers. In the laissez-faire way of all Almira, no one had wanted to take the rap for doing in the baby. It all had something to do with Holt's parents who had p
erished under hazy circumstances that had never been explained to their son's satisfaction—but then, that circumspection was part of the eventual pact between Holt and the villagers.

  At any rate, following the death of his parents, a very young Holt Calder had been placed on the steep, chilly flank of a small mountain, presumably to perish. Within hours, he was found by a roving band of 'Reen hunters. The 'Reen were a stocky, carnivorous, mammalian, sentient species with mythically (according to the human settlers) nasty temperaments—but in spite of colonists' scare-the-children stories, they didn't eat human babies. Instead the 'Reen hunters hissed and grumbled around the infant for a while, discussing this incredible example of human irresponsibility, and then transported the baby down to North Terrea. Under cover of the night, they sneaked past the sentries and deposited Holt Calder at the threshold of the assembly hall.

  North Terrea held a village meeting the next night and again voted—although by a smaller margin than the first time—to set Holt out on a hillside.

  It took longer for a 'Reen band to happen across the infant this time. Holt was nearly dead of exposure. Rather than return him to what the 'Reen presumed would be a barbaric and certain death, they took him into their own nomadic tribe.

  For a decade, Holt grew up speaking the rough sibilance of the 'Reen tongue. There were certainly times when he realized he was as much less hairy than his fellows in the tribe, that his claws and teeth were far less impressive, and that he didn't possess the distinctive flank stripe, lighter than the surrounding fur. The 'Reen went to pains to keep Holt from feeling too much the estrangement of his differentness. The boy was encouraged to roughhouse with his fellow cubs. He enjoyed the love of a mated couple who had lost their offspring to a human trap.

  After a certain rotation of long winters, though, the 'Reen determined it would be a kinder thing to return Holt to his original people. The time had come for the 'Reen his age to join the Calling. It was a rite of adulthood, and something the 'Reen suspected Holt would never be capable of. So regretfully they deposited him on his twelfth birthday (though none of them knew it) on the threshold of the North Terrea assembly hall.

  Holt had not wanted to go. The humans found him in the morning, trussed warmly and securely in a cured skelk hide. Before sunset, Holt had escaped onto the tundra and found his 'Reen band again. They patiently discussed this matter with him. Then they again made him helpless and spirited him into North Terrea.

  This time the villagers put the boy under benevolent guard. That night the assembly met for a special session and everyone agreed to take Holt in.

  They taught him humanity, starting with their language. They groomed and dressed him in ways differing from how he had previously been groomed and dressed. After a time, he agreed to stay. 'Reen-ness receded; humanity advanced.

  The passage of more than a decade had brought about certain social changes in North Terrea. The inhabitants wanted to forget the affair of the elder Calders. They plowed their guilt and expiation into rearing the son. And there were those who feared him.

  When Holt reached young manhood, it was readily apparent to all who would notice that he was a superior representative of all the new adults in the community. It only followed feat his incorporation into the North Terrea population should be balanced with a magnificent gesture. The assembly picked him to be the primary public investment of the North Terrea community partnership.

  And that is why they purchased him the second-hand fighting ship, refurbished it, paid for Holt's training, and sent him out to seek his own way, incidentally returning handsome regular bonus dividends to fee investors.

  Years after his return to human society, Holt had again essayed a return visit to the 'Reen, The nomads traveled a regular, if wide-ranging, circuit and he had found both the original band and his surviving surrogate parent. But it hadn't been the same.

  PereSnik't, the silver-pelted shaman of the band, had sadly quoted to Holt from the 'Reen oral tradition: "You can't come home again."

  "But aren't you curious about what your parents did to trigger their mysterious fate?" said Morgan, somewhat incredulous.

  "Of course," Holt said, "but I'd assumed I'd have a lifetime to find out. I didn't suspect I'd wind up zapped into plasma somewhere In Kirsi orbit."

  "You won't be." Morgan pressed his fingers lightly. "Neither of us will be."

  Holt said nothing. Morgan's eyes were ellipsoid, catlike, and marvelously green.

  Morgan met the directness of his look. "What was that about the Calling," she said, "when the 'Reen returned you to North Terrea?"

  He shook himself, eyes refocusing on another place and time. "Though the Almiran colonists didn't want to admit it, the 'Reen have a culture. They are as intelligent in their way as we are in ours—but their civilization simply isn't as directed toward technology. It didn't have to progress in that line.

  "The 'Reen can manipulate tools if they wish—but usually they choose not to. They are hunters—but they have few hunting weapons. That's where the Calling comes in."

  He paused for a drink of caf. Morgan remained silent.

  "I'm not an ethnologist, but I've picked up more about the 'Reen by living with them than all the deliberate study by the few humans who showed interest through the centuries." Holt chuckled bitterly. "A formal examination would have led to communication, and that to a de facto acknowledgment of intelligence. And that would have brought the ethical issue of human expansionism into the open." He shook his head. "No, far better to pretend the 'Reen merely extraordinarily clever beasts."

  "I grew up in Oxmare," said Morgan. "I didn't think much about the 'Reen one way or another."

  Holt looked mildly revolted. "Here's what I'll tell you about the Calling. It's one of the central 'Reen rituals. I'm not sure I understand it at all, but I'll tell you what I know."

  It's one of the earliest of my memories.

  The 'Reen band was hungry, as they so often were. Shortly before dawn, they gathered in the sheltered lee of the mountain, huddled against the tatters of glacial wind that intermittently dipped and howled about them.

  There was little ceremony. It was simply something the band did.

  The shaman PereSnik't, his pelt dark and vigorous, stood at their fore, supporting the slab of rock between his articulated paws. On the flat surface he had painted a new representation of an adult skelk. The horned creature was depicted in profile, PereSnik't had used warm earth colors, the hue of the skelk's spring coat. All the 'Reen—adult, young, and the adopted one—looked at the painting hungrily.

  PereSnik't had felt the presence of the skelk. It was in hunting range, in Calling range. He led his people in their chant:

  "You are near.

  Come to us.

  As we come to you.

  With your pardon,

  We shall kill you

  And devour you,

  That we, the People,

  Might live."

  The chant repeated again and again, becoming a litany and finally a roundelay, until the voices wound together in a tapestry of sound that seemed to hang in the air of its own accord.

  PereSnik't laid down the effigy upon the bare ground and the voices stopped as one. The pattern of sound still hung there, stable even as the winds whipped through the encampment. The shaman said, "The prey approaches."

  The hunters accompanied him in the direction he indicated. Shortly they encountered the skeik walking stiffly toward them. The hunters cast out in the Calling and perceived, overlaid on the prey's muscular body, the life-force, the glowing network of energy that was the true heart of the animal. With an apology to the beast, PereSnik't dispassionately grasped that heart, halting the flow of energy as the hunters chanted once more. The skelk stumbled and fell, coughed a final time and died as a thin stream of blood ran from its nostrils. Then the 'Reen dragged the carcass back to the tribe. Everyone ate.

  "Sympathetic magic," said Morgan, her eyes slightly narrowed. "That's what it sounds like."


  "When I became human"— Holt's voice wavered for just a moment—"I was taught there is no magic."

  "Do you really believe that?" said Morgan. "Call it a form of communal telekinesis, then. It makes sense that the 'Reen wouldn't evolve a highly technological culture. They have no need—not if they can satisfy basic requirements such as food with a rudimentary PK ability."

  "I didn't have the power," said Holt. "I couldn't join in the Calling. I could only use my teeth and claws. I couldn't be truly civilized. That's why they finally sent me back."

  There was a peculiar tone in his voice, the melancholy resonance of someone who has been profoundly left out. She reached for his hand and squeezed it.

  "I would guess," she said, "we've greatly underestimated the 'Reen."

  Holt coughed, the sound self-conscious and artificial. "What about you?" he said. "I know you're an extraordinary warrior. But I've also heard people call you the"—he hesitated again— "the obnoxious little rich kid."

  Morgan laughed. "I'm a remittance woman," she said.

  He stared at her blankly.

  Morgan Kai-Anila had been born and reared, as had been the eight previous generations of her line, in Oxmare. The family redoubt reposed in austere splendor not too many kilometers to the south of Wolverton, capital city of Victoria continent. The glass and wood mansion, built with the shrewdly won fortunes of the Kai-Anilas, had been Morgan's castle as a girl. Child of privilege, she played endless games of pretend, spent uncountable chilly afternoons reading, or watching recordings of bygone times, and programmed a childhood of adventurous dreams. She expected to grow up and become mistress of the manor. Not necessarily Oxmare. But someone's manor somewhere.

  That didn't happen.

  When the right age arrived, Morgan discovered there was no one whose manor she wished to manage—and that apparently was because her family had simply reared her to be too independent (at least that's what one of her frustrated suitors claimed). Actually, Morgan had simply come to the conclusion that she wanted to play out the adventures she had lived vicariously as a child.