Rogue Berserker

by Fred Saberhagen

  Here came another couple, man and woman, straggling down the corridor. By this time there were perhaps a dozen intact and living humans altogether, clustering around Harry. Since the tour on which he led them had given them a look at what was hanging on the walls, the idea of staying behind had been pretty much abandoned as an option.

  Harry pointed, with a jerk of his carbine’s muzzle. “Show me the cells. I’ve got to try to see things for myself.”

  It took less than a minute to reach the place. The cells, or at least the ones that Harry got to see, were startlingly ordinary, with the appearance of bedrooms, comfortable if small. They were spaced around a common room, where evidently the inmates had been allowed to meet and mingle. All the cells in this area were currently empty, with doors wide open, and there was evidence that their former occupants might have enjoyed, if that was the right word, good gravity, good air, even reasonable food.

  Of course it was quite possible that what Harry saw here was only one colony, one branch of some elaborate system of prisons or laboratory cages. For all any of these people knew, there might be another branch, or a dozen more, dug into some lower level of the base.

  One of the people stuttered out a kind of explanation. The rogue berserker had once explained that it wanted a lengthy period of study of certain life-units in something close to their normal environment before it began destructive testing. Previous studies had employed harsh treatment almost exclusively, and those had produced comparatively little in the way of useful results.

  People were still pestering him. “How many ships are there in your task force?”

  “Ninety-seven. Go away.” He kept sweeping his gaze from side to side. Where the hell were Ethan and Becky?

  “Ninety-seven?” The questioner blinked at him. “That seems a lot.”

  The prisoner who was gradually assuming the role of group spokesman was at least paying some attention to Harry’s concern. “Look, sir, officer, whoever you are, the two people you describe aren’t here. No one like that has ever been here. Now, please, hadn’t we better get moving?”

  Harry’s own thoughts had been coming around a hundred and eighty degrees, from being convinced that Becky and Ethan must be here, dead or alive, to a growing belief that the rogue had never had them. Satranji in his recorded message had been telling the truth about the second kidnapping, but then he’d lied—the rogue had not yet taken delivery. The door of hope had come open just a crack, some pieces of the great puzzle were falling into place.

  And then the rogue gave him a shock. “I have opened the last cell. Here are its tenants, two specimens answering your description.”

  Harry’s heart leaped up and settled back. Despite that, the two figures coming down the hall toward him, both of them as bare as all the others, were no particular surprise. The young woman striding forward, dragging an eight-year-old boy by one wrist, had to be Claudia Cheng in charge of little Winnie. Pale and gaunt and fragile-looking, the pair were still readily recognizable from their cavorting images in the old man’s office. They stood in contrast to the other prisoners by the fact of having no plugs inserted in their wrists and ankles.

  Claudia Cheng appeared ready to accept the presence of an armed and armored man without marveling. She came to stand directly in front of Harry. She seemed utterly indifferent to her own nudity, and almost unreasonably calm, as if she there had never been any doubt that someone would be coming for her. No doubt she found it irritating that it had taken so long.

  “My grandfather’s finally ransomed us,” she said, in the tone of one preparing to register complaints.

  “He’s doing the best he can, lady.” Harry nodded his helmet toward the corner where she had appeared. “Is anyone else back there?”

  “Anyone else? Not that I know of.” Only now did the young woman seem to take full notice of the small crowd of her fellow prisoners. It was as if she had never seen them before. “Where did all these people come from? Look at their arms and legs. They’ve been hurt.” There was disapproval in the observation, if no great sympathy. Meanwhile the others were staring back at Claudia, without recognition, not knowing what to make of her and the small boy clinging to her leg, in the manner of an even younger child.

  She said to Harry: “The berserker said there were others, but it assured me we were going to be given special treatment. But that seemed only natural. I didn’t know—”

  Interruption came blasting into Harry’s helmet, the rogue’s radio voice demanding to be told the exact current location of the life-unit called Winston Cheng.

  Harry was certain that both berserkers must know enough of the shapes and sizes and markings of ED spaceships to be able to identify Cheng’s yacht, and no doubt that vessel had now come on the scene. He said: “Cheng’s probably right about where you think he is.” There didn’t seem to be any point in trying to be cute.

  * * *

  Claudia Cheng, peeling little Winnie off her leg while still keeping a fierce grip on his arm, kept pestering Harry, trying to tell him how she had argued and pleaded with the rogue, promising that the family patriarch would give it much in return for their safe release. The implication seemed to be that next time someone should arrange to provide a better class of kidnapper.

  She wound up with: “What’s happening now? How soon can we get out of here?”

  “Shut up,” Harry advised. “I’m having a radio chat with the berserker.”

  “You are? My grandfather’s the one it really wants, isn’t he? Tell it that if it lets us go, my grandfather will arrange to meet it. He’ll give it anything it wants.”

  Harry shot back: “You’ll have to do your own negotiating, lady, after I’ve done mine.”

  The rogue’s voice had disappeared again, and he kept trying to reestablish contact. On the scale of ordinary, standard berserker values, it would be much better to terminate two young lives that still had ahead of them the possibility of reproducing, than one very old one that had probably lost whatever capacity it might have had to create yet more badlife, and was likely to die soon from natural causes.

  Ordinarily a berserker would bargain only for that which it really wanted, something in tune with its basic programming, calling for the termination of all lives, everywhere. But in the rogue’s case that goal was beginning to seem uncertain. It seemed that berserker programming had mutated into something far less predictable.

  * * *

  Harry turned down his airmikes to shut out most of the groaning and crying around him, along with the highbred complaints of Claudia Cheng.

  As soon as the rogue came back on radio he said to it: “You understand that these are not the two people I’m looking for?”

  “You have made that plain. I am still intermittently in contact with the life-unit Satranji. He is providing no new information that would be of interest to you.”

  “You’re stalling me, you bloody junkpile. I won’t have it.” Harry tilted up the muzzle of his carbine and blasted another twenty kilograms or so of delicate machinery, far enough away from all the naked people that none should be hit by flying fragments. He had no idea if it was anything of great importance to the rogue or not, but he could hope.

  The rogue’s response came in a tone of what sounded like philosophical detachment. “I had already computed such a reaction on your part was highly probable.”

  Before Harry could decide what to do next, the deck beneath his feet and the walls around him vibrated with some kind of explosion, or heavy impact, much more violent than anything else Harry had felt or heard since his arrival.

  The small huddle of naked refugees screamed, and some of them tried to crawl under machinery in search of shelter.

  Harry brushed away clutching arms, and demanded of the world: “What in hell was that?”

  The rogue had a calm answer ready. “An ED vessel identifiable as Ship of Dreams, the property of Winston Cheng Enterprises, has crash-landed at the other end of this installation, only about forty meters from the p
oint where you entered. The damage to my structure is unimportant, that to the vessel is moderate. It will be no longer spaceworthy. Can you explain this event?”

  Harry hesitated momentarily. Then he said: “Partly. I’ll tell you this much right away: There won’t be any landing party coming off that one to attack you. They had nothing like that on board. Now you tell me something I can use.”

  The rogue said: “You will doubtless find the following information useful: The machine you have allied yourself with is a dedicated assassin, designed to have you, the individual Harry Silver, as its specific target. It will spare you only as long as you are useful.”

  “Something I can use, I said!” He called the voice in his helmet a filthy name. “That information isn’t news at all.” With words, and a few violent gestures, Harry started to get the people around him moving, toward the room where he had earlier discovered spacesuits.

  Before the rogue had framed an answer, there came a second crash, on the same scale of violence as the first. Harry in his heavy armor was staggered, clutched at a nearby wall to keep from going down.

  A moment later Harry raised his head. Unprotected and unarmed humans were scattered all around him, trying to regain their feet. All had fallen except little Winnie, who had reestablished his clinging hold, this time on Harry’s armored bulk. No one was seriously hurt, but he was going to have to try to get them all into suits and helmets. Yeah, in his spare time.

  “Well?” he demanded on radio.

  The rogue was of course unflappable. “A second object has just crash-landed, close beside the first. It, too, has sustained moderate damage. In this case I can make no certain identification. It might be an auxiliary of the assassin, except that certain subtle anomalies suggest a badlife attempt at deception.”

  Suddenly the machine was roaring at Harry again. It reported that strange fighting machines, obviously the slave-tools of badlife, were pouring out of the most recent arrival, hurling themselves into the ongoing battle …

  Harry raised his free hand, the one not cradling the carbine, uselessly to the side of his helmet. “Go easy on my ears, you motherless, bloody …”

  Several moments passed before he could communicate coherently again. “Tell me if I’m wrong: this new hardware’s neither on your side or the assassin’s. I’ll bet it’s just waded in and is crunching both.”

  “It is attempting to do so, so far without notable success.” The rogue did not sound much concerned. Of course it never did, apart from turning up or down the volume—as if, he thought, it were groping for ways to generate, or at least simulate, appropriate emotions.

  Meanwhile, the little knot of human escapees clustering around Harry kept breaking apart, dissolving into individuals who tried to run away, then finding nowhere to run and coming together again, surrounding their lone rescuer.

  Overriding outside management, gesturing fiercely at the naked people to let him alone for just a minute, he succeeded in establishing mental control of the volume in his helmet and turning it down. “I passed through a locker room full of spacesuits, rogue. Let’s start getting these people into them.”

  “I do not object.”

  “You’d better not.”

  “In truth, Harry Silver, I allow you to have your way because I am gleaning a wealth of data on human behavior from this series of events. Also I approve your equipping my valuable specimens with protection.”

  “They’re no more your bloody specimens, goddam it! You said you were giving them to me.”

  “That is still conditional upon your cooperation.” The voice in Harry’s helmet said: “Whatever the assassin machine has promised you, I will give more. Explain to me the nature of this deceptive device, or ship, whose arrival caused the second impact.”

  “If you mean what you say about giving me more, we’ve got a deal. Between you and my designated murderer, I’d rather be fighting on your side. But before I answer more questions, before I even stop trying to shoot your guts out, I want my people back. As soon as you show me convincing evidence that my two have been sent out of your reach, and the assassin’s reach, that they’re safely on their way to some badlife port or base—then I will help you in your fight.”

  Harry was damned if he could see how any berserker locked in a battle for survival was really going to take time out to pack two living prisoners—assuming it had been lying and really had them—away to safety. That might be impossible even if it tried. But he could think of no better way to proceed with negotiations.

  The rogue said: “Having survived the first surprise attack, Harry Silver, l am going to win this fight.”

  “All right, maybe you are—if you get the right help at the right time. So?”

  “Obviously I will then need to reestablish my research facility in a different place, much more distant from berserker command. Disposing of your assigned assassin will not solve your fundamental problem, nor will it solve mine. You and I have this in common: berserker command will be all the more determined to hunt us both down and wipe us out.”

  “Go on.”

  “From now on, Harry Silver, you can best protect your beloved life-units by distancing yourself from them. Therefore you would be well advised to accept the invitation I now offer: after they are sent to safety, or are confirmed dead, you should come with me when I seek to relocate. Together the two of us will have marvelous adventures.”

  “Adventures! If you think—” Harry choked and spluttered.

  “What I think, Harry Silver, is that I have begun to understand you. You are like other life-units, in that what you say you want and what you really want may not be the same thing.”

  * * *

  One of the naked strangers was grabbing at Harry’s arm, imploring him to do something. Whatever it was, Harry couldn’t listen to it. He shoved the stranger away, the unclad body backpedalling to sprawl on a flat deck.

  To the rogue he snarled: “So find my woman and my boy, and get them to safety.”

  “I calculate that to find them, we must induce the life-unit Satranji to cooperate.” The rogue’s continued calm, no hint in the voice of breathlessness or even excitement, tended to make the conversation seem unreal.

  “Then we’ll do that. Can you get him in here somehow? He must have been aboard the Ship of Dreams, probably piloting. Put him here in front of me, and we’ll find out what he knows.”

  “That may be possible. I have established communication with the life-unit Satranji, who was aboard the first vehicle to crash into my structure.”

  “I want to establish communication with him too. But not just yet.”

  “I find that interesting,” the rogue assured him.

  * * *

  Meanwhile the group had been moving on. The little mob of freed prisoners had followed Harry as far as the chamber he thought of as the locker room. Here he had started helping them get into spacesuits. He was relieved to find that there seemed to be enough suits to go around, with a few left over—just in case someone else showed up.

  Whatever locks Harry had not earlier shot away were now standing open, courtesy of the rogue, as Harry supposed. While he began helping people into suits, the rogue relayed what it said was Satranji’s latest communication.

  “He observes that a battle is in progress here, and demands that I give him an explanation. So far I have provided none.”

  “What about the other people who were with him? Are they still in Cheng’s yacht?”

  “He says nothing about other life-units, and I can spare none of my units to look for them. I have assured my prize goodlife of my great concern for his welfare, and advised him on how to avoid the regions of bitterest fighting here on the ground.

  “Of course, Harry Silver, I would be pleased if the life-unit Satranji could effectively fight off the assassin’s units for me. Like you, the Satranji-unit carried a moderately effective weapon, but like all life-forms he is very slow. If he is caught up in the firefight now taking place, I expect he will be prom
ptly cured of life, his potential usefulness as a vehicle of discovery in my laboratory entirely wasted. Besides that, in combat how is he to distinguish the assassin’s machinery from mine?” There was a pause, suggesting thoughtful humanity. “How are you to do so, if it comes to that?”

  Harry said: “Get me my wife and son, and I’ll figure out some way. You’re right, nothing Satranji can do is going to tip the balance in this fight. So quit stalling. Find out where my two people are. What’s the son of a snake done with them?”

  “The life-unit Satranji has never told me that.” There was a brief pause. “He is steadily making his way in this direction, and is currently about two hundred meters from your location. With my help he has bypassed the zone of hard current fighting. He repeats that he is mystified by the fierce fighting, and again demands to be told what is going on.”

  “But he doesn’t have my people with him.”

  “Certainly not. Of course his first purpose in this reconnaissance is to determine whether I am likely to survive this battle which he finds so puzzling, and his second to discover the nature of my chief attacker. He still knows nothing of my rogue status, and is astonished by the number and quality of machines attacking me. He cannot tell their origin.”

  Harry, carbine ready, was walking again, with a different gait, on the move in the direction where Satranji was supposed to be. The refugees would have to get themselves into suits as best they could. He was thinking that it wouldn’t do to kill the bastard on sight, not until there was some information about Ethan and Becky. He said: “Tell him the attacking machines are secret weapons, made by the designer of the Secret Weapon.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “He will, and he’ll believe it. It may satisfy him for the moment. Tell him!”

  Half a minute later the assassin’s voice was back: “He accepts the answer, and speaks with confidence of soon being able to turn over to me the two life-units he has promised. Of course that cannot be possible, unless the units in question are already somewhere nearby.”