Berserker Wars (Omnibus) Read online

  “No, the therapy doesn’t really help.” Lisa sighed faintly; her memory of her personal life before the missile wave caught her was still almost completely blank. She put the subject aside with a wave of her hand and went back to talking about what new things Matt had done today.

  Derron, not listening, closed his eyes for a moment, savoring the sensation of life he had when he was with Lisa. At this moment he possessed the touch of her hand in his, the feel of grass and soil under his feet, the warmth of the pseudo-sunshine on his face. Next moment it might all be gone—another missile wave could come down through the miles of rock, or the unraveling of King Ay’s severed cord of life might propagate faster than expected up through the fabric of history.

  He opened his eyes and saw the muraled walls surrounding the buried park, and the improbably alive, singing, and soaring birds. Down here at the level where humans walked, the place was almost thronged, as usual, with strolling couples and solitaries; in places the touch grass was showing signs of wear, and the gardeners had to defend it with string fences. All in all, a poor imitation of the murdered real world; but with Lisa beside him it became transformed into something better than it was.

  Derron pointed. “Right there’s the tree where I first came to your rescue. Or you came to mine, rather.”

  “I rescued you? From what horrible fate?”

  “From dying of loneliness in the midst of forty million people. Lisa, I’m trying to tell you that I want you to move out of that hospital dormitory.”

  She turned her eyes away, looking down. “If I did that, where would I live?”

  “I’m asking you to live with me, of course. You’re not a little lost girl any more; you’re on your own, studying to be a nurse, and I can ask. There are some unused apartments around, and I’ll rate one of them if I take a companion. Especially with this promotion they’ve given me.”

  She squeezed his hand, but that was all. She was thoughtfully silent, her eyes on the ground a few paces ahead of them.

  “Lisa? What do you say?”

  “Just exactly what are you offering me, Derron?”

  “Look—yesterday, when you were telling me about your new girl friend’s problems, you seemed to have a very firm grasp of what this male-female business is all about.”

  “You want me to live with you temporarily, is that it?” Her voice was cool and withdrawn.

  “Lisa, nothing in our world can be permanent. At the staff meeting just now—Well, I’m not supposed to talk about that. But things don’t look good. I want to share with you whatever good things may be left.”

  Still silent, she let him lead her on stepping-stones across the park’s little stream.

  “Lisa, do you want a marriage ceremony? I should have put that first, I suppose, and asked you formally to marry me. The thing is, not many people are going to raise their eyebrows if we do without a ceremony, and if we do without one we’ll avoid some delay and red tape. Would you think we were doing wrong if we didn’t have a wedding?”

  “I … suppose not. What bothers me is the way you talk about everything being temporary. I suppose feelings are included.”

  “When everything else is temporary, yes! That doesn’t mean I necessarily like it. But how can anyone in our world say what they’ll be feeling or thinking a month or a year from now? In a year we’ll most likely all…” He let his voice trail off.

  She had been searching for words and now at last she found the ones she wanted. “Derron, at the hospital I’ve absorbed the attitude that people’s lives can be made less temporary, now or any time. That people should go on trying to build, to accomplish things, even though they may not have long to live.”

  “You absorbed this at the hospital, you say?”

  “All right, maybe I’ve always felt that way.”

  He had, too, at one time. A year, a year and a half ago. A lifetime ago, with someone else. The image that he could not stop seeing and did not want to stop seeing came back to him again.

  Lisa seemed to have her own private image. “Look at Matt, for instance. Remember how badly hurt he was. Look at what an effort of will he’s made to survive and recover—”

  “I’m sorry.” Derron interrupted her, looking at the time, finding valid excuse for getting away. “I’ve got to run, I’m almost late for the staff meeting.”

  The scientists, by some combination of calculation and debate, had reached a consensus.

  “It comes down to this,” their newly elected spokesman explained, when the staff meeting had resumed. “If we’re to have any hope of healing the break in Ay’s lifeline we must first immobilize the affected part, to minimize damage—something like putting a splint on a broken arm or leg.”

  “And just how do you go about splinting a lifeline?” demanded Time Ops.

  The scientist gestured wearily. “Commander, the only way I can suggest is that someone be sent to take Ay’s place temporarily. To continue his interrupted voyage to Queensland and there play his part, for a few days at least. The man sent could carry a communicator with him, and be given day-to-day or even hour-to-hour instructions from here, if need be. If the berserkers stood still for it, he might play out the remainder of Ay’s life in its essentials, well enough to let us survive.”

  “How long do you think any man could play a part like that successfully?” someone broke in.

  “I don’t know.” The scientists’ spokesman smiled faintly. “Gentlemen, I don’t know if a substitution scheme can be made to work at all. Nothing like it has ever been tried. But I think it will buy us at least a few more days or weeks of present-time in which to think of something else.”

  Time Ops thoughtfully rubbed his stubbled face. “Well, now, substitution is the only idea we’ve got to work with at this point. But Ay is about twelve hundred years back. That means that dropping a man from here to take his place is out of the question. Right?”

  “Afraid so, sir,” said a biophysicist. “Mental devolution and serious memory loss sets in at about four hundred years.”

  Time Ops thought aloud in a tired monotonous voice. “Does anyone suppose we could get away with using a slave-unit on that kind of job? No, I thought not. They just can’t be made convincingly human enough. Then what’s left? We must use one of Ay’s contemporaries. Find a man who’s able to do the job, motivate him to do it, and then train him.”

  Someone suggested, “Appearance isn’t too much of a problem. Ay isn’t known in Queensland, except by reputation, when he first arrives there.”

  Colonel Lukas, the Psych Officer on Time Ops’ staff, cleared his throat and spoke. “We ought to be able to get Ay’s crew to accept a substitute, provided they wantAy to be alive, and if we can snatch the whole bunch of them up to present-time for a few days’ work.”

  “We can manage that if we have to,” Time Ops said.

  “Good.” Lukas doodled thoughtfully on a pad before him. “Some tranquilizer and pacifier drugs would be indicated first… . Then we can find out whatever details of the assassination we need to know … then a few days’ hypnosis. I’m sure we can work something out.”

  “Good thinking, Luke.” Time Ops looked around the table. “Now, gentlemen, before it should slip our minds, let’s try to solve the first problem, the big one. Who is our Ay-substitute going to be?”

  Surely, thought Derron, someone besides me must see where one possible answer lies. He didn’t want to be the first one to suggest it, because … well, just because. No!Hellfire and damnation, why shouldn’t he? He was being paid to think, and he could put forward his thought with the clearest conscience in the world. He cleared his throat, startling men who seemed to have forgotten his presence.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, gentlemen. But don’t we have one man available now who might be sent down to Ay’s century without losing his wits? I mean the man who comes from the even deeper past himself.”

  Harl’s duty was painfully clear in his own mind. He was going to have to take the ship on to Queensla
nd, and when he got there he was going to have to stand before King Gorboduc and the princess, look them in the face and tell them what had happened to Ay. Harl was gradually realizing already that his story might not be believed. And what then?

  The rest of the crew were spared at least the sudden new weight of responsibility. Now, many hours after the monster’s attack, they were still obeying Harl without question. The sun was going down, but Harl had started them rowing again, and he meant to keep them rowing for Queensland right through the night, to hold off the mad demonstration of grief that was sure to come if he let the men fall idle now.

  They were rowing like blind men, sick men, walking dead men, their faces blank with rage and shock turned inward, neither knowing nor caring where the ship was steered. Frequently the oars fell out of stroke, clattering together or splashing awkwardly along the surface of the sea. No one quarreled at this or even seemed to notice. Torla groaned a death-song as he pulled—woe to the next man who faced Torla in a fight.

  Inside the purple tent, atop the chest that held Ay’s personal treasure (that chest was another problem for Harl, a problem that would grow as rage and grief wore away), the winged helmet now rested in a place of honor. It was now all that was left… .

  Ten years ago, Ay had been a real prince, with a real king for a father. At about that time, Ay’s beard had started to sprout, and Harl had first begun to serve as the young prince’s good right hand. And, also at about that time, the twin sicknesses of envy and treachery had started to spread like the plague among Ay’s brothers and uncles and cousins. Ay’s father and most of his house had died in that plague, and the kingdom had died too, being lost and divided among strangers.

  Ay’s inheritance had shrunk to the deck of a fighting ship—not that Harl had any objection to that on his own account. Harl had not even complained about the books and the reading. Nor even about prayers to a man-god, a slave-god who had preached love and mercy and had gotten his bones split with wedges for his trouble… .

  Over the ship, or beneath it, there suddenly passed a force, a tilting, swaying motion, over in an instant. Harl’s first thought was that the dragon had come back, rising from the deep to scrape its bulk beneath the long-ship’s hull. The men evidently thought the same, for in an instant they had dropped their oars and drawn their weapons again.

  But there was no dragon to be seen, nor much of anything else. With a speed that seemed nothing short of supernatural, a mist had closed in around the ship; the red lingering light of sunset had been transformed into a diffused white glow. Looking round him now, battle-ax ready in his hand, Harl noticed that even the rhythm of the waves was different. The air was warmer, the very smell of the sea had changed.

  The men looked wild-eyed at one another in the strange soft light. They fingered their swords and muttered about wizardry.

  “Row slowly ahead!” ordered Harl, putting the useless ax back in his belt. He tried to sound as if he had some purpose other than keeping the men busy, though in fact his sense of direction had for once been totally confused.

  He gave the steering oar to Torla and went forward himself to be lookout. Then, before the rowers had taken fifty slow strokes, he threw up a hand to halt them, and water gurgled around the backing oars. No more than an easy spear-cast from the bow, a gentle sandy beach had materialized out of the grayness. What manner of land might be behind the beach it was impossible to tell.

  When the men saw the beach, their murmuring grew louder. They knew full well that only a few minutes ago there had been no land of any kind in sight.

  “Yet that’s certainly solid ground ahead.”

  “Lookslike solid ground. I’d not be surprised to see it vanish in a puff of smoke.”

  “Sorcery!”

  Sorcery, certainly; no one disputed that. Some kind of magic, good or bad, was at work. What might be done about it, if anything, was another question. Harl quit pretending that he knew what he was about and called a council. After some debate it was decided that they should row straight away from the beach, to see if they might in that way get beyond the reach of whatever enchantment held them in its grip.

  Sunset was now long overdue, but the pale light filtering down through the mist did not fade. In fact, it became brighter, for as they rowed the mist began to thin.

  Just as they emerged from the fog bank, and Harl was beginning to hope they were indeed getting away from the enchantment, they came near driving their ship straight into a black, smooth, almost featureless wall that rose from the sea. The wall was slightly concave, and it had no edge or top in sight; it rose and extended and curved back without limit around the sea and over the mist. From the foot of this wall the men looked up to find that it made an enormous inverted bowl over their tiny ship; from near the zenith, far above their heads, lights as bright and high as sun-fragments threw down their fire on white fog and black water.

  Men cried out prayers to all the gods and demons known. Men shrieked that they had come to the sky and the stars at the end of the world. They almost broke their oars as they pulled on them to spin their ship and drive it back into the mist.

  Harl was as much shaken as any other, but he swore to himself that he would die before he showed it. One man had collapsed to the deck, where he lay with his hands over his eyes, groaning, “Enchantment, enchantment,” over and over. Harl kicked and wrestled him viciously back to his feet, meanwhile seizing upon the idea and putting it to use.

  “Aye, enchantment, that’s all!” Harl shouted. “Not a real sky or stars, but something put into our eyes by magic. Well, if there be wizards here who mean us harm, I say they can be made to bleed and die like other men. If they are thinking to have some fun with us, well, we know a game or two ourselves!”

  The others took some heart from Harl’s words. Back here in the concealing fog, the world was still sane enough so that a man could look around it without losing his powers of thought.

  In an almost steady voice, Harl gave the order to row back in the direction of the beach they had glimpsed earlier. The men willingly obeyed; the man who had collapsed pulled hardest, looking to right and left at his fellows as if daring any among them to make some comment. But he would be safe from jokes, it seemed, for a good while yet.

  They were not long in coming to the gentle sloping beach again; it proved to be real and solid. As the long-ship slid lightly aground, Harl, sword in hand, was the first to leap into the shallows. The water was warmer than he had expected, and when a splash touched his lips he discovered that it was fresh. But by this time he was beyond being surprised at such relative trifles.

  One of Matt’s tutors stepped ahead of Derron, tapped on the door of the private hospital room, then slid it open. Putting his head inside, the tutor spoke slowly and distinctly. “Matt? There is a man here who wants to talk to you. He is Derron Odegard, the man who fought beside you in your own time.”

  The tutor turned to motion Derron forward. As he entered the room, the man who had been sitting in an armchair before the television screen got to his feet, standing tall and erect.

  In this man, dressed in the robe and slippers that were general issue for hospital patients, Derron saw no resemblance to the dying savage he had helped a few days ago to carry into the hospital. Matt’s hair had been depilated and was only now starting to grow back in, a neutral-colored stubble. Matt’s face below the eyes was covered by a plastic membrane, which served as skin while the completion of the healing process was held in abeyance.

  On the bedside table, half covered by some secondary-level schoolbooks, were several sketches and composite photographs, looking like variations on one basic model of a young man’s face. Derron was now carrying in his pocket a photo of a somewhat different face—Ay’s—caught by a spy device that had been sent, in the shape of a bird, to skim near the young king-to-be on the day he began his fateful voyage to Queensland. That was the closest the Moderns had been able to get to the space-time locus of the assassination—as usual, paradox-loops
strongly resisted repeating interference with history at any one spot.

  “I am pleased to meet you, Derron.” Matt put genuine meaning into the ritual phrase. His voice was quite deep; at most, a little minor work would be needed to match it to Ay’s, which had been recorded when the photo was made. Matt’s manner of speaking, like his tutor’s to him, was slow and distinct.

  “I am pleased to see that your health is returning,” Derron answered. “And glad that you are learning the ways of a new world so quickly.”

  “And I am pleased to see that you are healthy, Derron. I am glad your spirit could leave the metal man it fought in, for that metal man was very much hurt.”

  Derron smiled, then nodded toward the tutor, who had taken up a jailer’s or servant’s stance just inside the door. “Matt, don’t let them con you with talk of where my spirit was. I was never in any direct danger, as you were, during that fight.”

  “Con me?” Matt had the question-inflection down pat.

  The tutor said, “Derron means, don’t let us teach you wrong things. He’s joking.”

  Matt nodded impatiently, knowing about jokes. A point had been raised that was quite serious for him. “Derron—but it was your spirit in the metal man?”

  “Well … say it was my electronic presence.”