Berserker Wars (Omnibus) Read online

  Some expansion of the tent’s fabric was necessary before he could get the ovoid in, and leave himself with space to work. Once he had it in a securely air-filled space, he put a gentle heater to work on its outer surface, to make it easier to handle. Then he went to work with an audio pickup to see what he could learn of the interior.

  There was activity of some kind inside, that much was obvious at once. The sounds of gentle machinery, which he supposed might have been started by his disturbance of the thing, or by the presence of warm air around it now.

  Subtle machinery at work. And then another sound, quite regular. It took Sabel’s memory a little time to match it with the cadence of a living human heart.

  He had forgotten about time, but in fact not much time had passed before he considered that he was ready for the next step. The outer casing opened for him easily. Inside, he confronted great complexity; yes, obviously sophisticated life-support. And within that an interior shell, eyed with glass windows. Sabel shone in a light.

  As usual in suspended-animation treatment, the occupant’s skin had been covered with a webbed film of half-living stuff to help in preservation. But the film had torn away now from around the face.

  And the surpassing beauty of that face left Sabel no room for doubt. Helen Dardan was breathing, and alive.

  Might not all, all, be forgiven one who brought the Queen of Love herself to life? All, even goodlife work, the possession of restricted devices?

  There was also to be considered, though, the case of a man who at a berserker’s direction unearthed the Queen and thereby brought about her final death.

  Of course an indecisive man, one afraid to take risks, would not be out here now faced with his problem. Sabel had already unslung his emergency medirobot, a thing the size of a suitcase, from its usual perch at the back of the flyer, and had it waiting inside the tent. Now, like a man plunging into deep, cold water, he fumbled open the fasteners of the interior shell, threw back its top, and quickly stretched probes from the medirobot to Helen’s head and chest and wrist. He tore away handfuls of the half-living foam.

  Even before he had the third probe connected, her dark eyes had opened and were looking at him. He thought he could see awareness and understanding in them. Her last hopes on being put to sleep must have been for an awakening no worse than this, at hands that might be strange but were not metal.

  “Helen.” Sabel could not help but feel that he was pretending, acting, when he spoke the name. “Can you hear me? Understand?” He spoke in Standard; the meagre store of Dardanian that he had acquired from ancient recordings having completely deserted him for the moment. But he thought a Dardanian aristocrat should know enough Standard to grasp his meaning and the language had not changed enormously in the centuries since her entombment.

  “You’re safe now,” he assured her, on his spacesuited knees beside her bed. When a flicker in her eyes seemed to indicate relief, he went on: “The berserkers have been driven away.”

  Her lips parted slightly. They were full and perfect. But she did not speak. She raised herself a little, and moved to bare a shoulder and an arm from clinging foam.

  Nervously Sabel turned to the robot. If he was interpreting its indicators correctly, the patient was basically in quite good condition. To his not-really-expert eye the machine signalled that there were high drug levels in her bloodstream; high, but falling. Hardly surprising, in one just being roused from suspended animation.

  “There’s nothing to fear, Helen. Do you hear me? The berserkers have been beaten.” He didn’t want to tell her, not right away at least, that glorious Dardania was no more.

  She had attained almost a sitting position by now, leaning on the rich cushions of her couch. There was some relief in her eyes, yes, but uneasiness as well. And still she had not uttered a word.

  As Sabel understood it, people awakened from SA ought to have some light nourishment at once. He hastened to offer food and water both. Helen sampled what he gave her, first hesitantly, then with evident enjoyment.

  “Never mind, you don’t have to speak to me right away. The-war-is-over.” This last was in his best Dardanian, a few words of which were now belatedly willing to be recalled.

  “You-are-Helen.” At this he thought he saw agreement in her heavenly face. Back to Standard now. “I am Georgicus Sabel. Doctor of Cosmophysics, Master of … but what does all that matter of me, now? I have saved you. And that is all that counts.”

  She was smiling at him. And maybe after all this was a dream, no more …

  More foam was peeling, clotted, from her skin. Good God, what was she going to wear? He bumbled around, came up with a spare coverall. Behind his turned back he heard her climbing from the cushioned container, putting the garment on.

  What was this, clipped to his belt? The newly-charged video recorder, yes. It took him a little while to remember what he was doing with it. He must take it back to the lab, and make sure that the information on it was readable this time. After that, the berserker could be destroyed.

  He already had with him in camp tools that could break up metal, chemicals to dissolve it. But the berserker’s armor would be resistant, to put it mildly. And it must be very thoroughly destroyed, along with the rock that held it, so that no one should ever guess it had existed. It would take time to do that. And special equipment and supplies, which Sabel would have to return to the city to obtain.

  Three hours after she had wakened, Helen, dressed in a loose coverall, was sitting on cushions that Sabel had taken from her former couch and arranged on rock. She seemed content to simply sit and wait, watching her rescuer with flattering eyes, demanding nothing from him—except, as it soon turned out, his presence.

  Painstakingly he kept trying to explain to her that he had important things to do, that he was going to have to go out, leave her here by herself for a time.

  “I-must-go. I will come back. Soon.” There was no question of taking her along, no matter what. At the moment there was only one spacesuit.

  But, for whatever reason, she wouldn’t let him go. With obvious alarm, and pleading gestures, she put herself in front of the airlock to bar his way.

  “Helen. I really must. I—”

  She signed disagreement, violently.

  “But there is one berserker left, you see. We cannot be safe until it is—until—”

  Helen was smiling at him, a smile of more than gratitude. And now Sabel could no longer persuade himself that this was not a dream. With a sinuous movement of unmistakable invitation, the Queen of Love was holding out her arms …

  When he was thinking clearly and coolly once again, Sabel began again with patient explanations. “Helen. My darling. You see, I must go. To the city. To get some—”

  A great light of understanding, acquiescence, dawned in her lovely face.

  “There are some things I need, vitally. Then I swear I’ll come right back. Right straight back here. You want me to bring someone with me, is that it? I—”

  He was about to explain that he couldn’t do that just yet, but her renewed alarm indicated that that was the last thing she would ask.

  “All right, then. Fine. No one. I will bring a spare spacesuit … but that you are here will be my secret, our secret, for a while. Does that please you? Ah, my Queen!”

  At the joy he saw in Helen’s face, Sabel threw himself down to kiss her foot. “Mine alone!”

  He was putting on his helmet now. “I will return in less than a day. If possible. The chronometer is over here, you see? But if I should be longer than a day, don’t worry. There’s everything you’ll need, here in the shelter. I’ll do my best to hurry.”

  Her eyes blessed him.

  He had to turn back from the middle of the airlock, to pick up his video recording, almost forgotten.

  How, when it came time at last to take the Queen into the city, was he going to explain his long concealment of her? She was bound to tell others how many days she had been in that far tent. Somehow there had
to be a way around that problem. At the moment, though, he did not want to think about it. The Queen was his alone, and no one … but first, before anything else, the berserker had to be got rid of. No, before that even, he must see if its video data was good this time.

  Maybe Helen knew, Helen could tell him, where cached Dardanian treasure was waiting to be found …

  And she had taken him as lover, as casual bed-partner rather. Was that the truth of the private life and character of the great Queen, the symbol of chastity and honor and dedication to her people? Then no one, in the long run, would thank him for bringing her back to them.

  Trying to think ahead, Sabel could feel his life knotting into a singularity at no great distance in the future. Impossible to try to predict what lay beyond. It was worse than uncertain; it was opaque.

  This time his laboratory computer made no fuss about accepting the video records. It began to process them at once.

  At his private information station Sabel called for a printout of any official news announcements made by the Guardians or the city fathers during the time he had been gone. He learned that the entertainer Greta Thamar had been released under the guardianship of her court-appointed lawyer, after memory extraction. She was now in satisfactory condition in the civilian wing of the hospital.

  There was nothing else in the news about goodlife, or berserkers. And there had been no black-robed Guardians at Sabel’s door when he came in.

  DATING ANOMALY PRESENT was on the screen of Sabel’s laboratory computer the next time he looked at it.

  “Give details,” he commanded.

  RECORD GIVEN AS EPOCH 451st CENTURY IDENTIFIES WITH SPECTRUM OF RADIANT EPOCH 456th CENTURY, YEAR 23, DAY 152.

  “Let me see.”

  It was, as some part of Sabel’s mind already seemed to know, the segment that showed Helen on the inner surface of the Fortress, raising her arms ecstatically as in some strange rite. Or dance.

  The singularity in his future was hurtling toward him quickly now. “You say—you say that the spectrum in this record is identical with the one we recorded—what did you say? How long ago?”

  38 DAYS 11 HOURS, APPROXIMATELY 44 MINUTES.

  As soon as he had the destructive materials he needed loaded aboard the flyer, he headed at top speed back to base camp. He did not wait to obtain a spare spacesuit.

  Inside the tent, things were disarranged, as if Helen perhaps had been searching restlessly for something. Under the loose coverall her breast rose and fell rapidly, as if she had recently been working hard, or were in the grip of some intense emotion.

  She held out her arms to him, and put on a glittering smile.

  Sabel stopped just inside the airlock. He pulled his helmet off and faced her grimly. “Who are you?” he demanded.

  She winced, and tilted her head, but would not speak. She still held out her arms, and the glassy smile was still in place.

  “Who are you, I said?That hologram was made just thirty-eight days ago.”

  Helen’s face altered. The practiced expression was still fixed on it, but now a different light played on her features. The light came from outside the shelter, and it was moving toward them.

  There were four people out there, some with hand weapons leveled in Sabel’s direction. Through the plastic he could not tell at once if their suited figures were those of men or women. Two of them immediately came in through the airlock, while the other two remained outside, looking at the cargo Sabel had brought out on the flyer.

  “God damn, it took you long enough.” Helen’s lovely lips had formed some words at last.

  The man who entered first, gun drawn, ignored Sabel for the moment and inspected her with a sour grin. “I see you came through five days in the cooler in good shape.”

  “Easier than one day here with him—God damn.” Helen’s smile at Sabel had turned into an equally practiced snarl.

  The second man to enter the shelter stopped just inside the airlock. He stood there with a hand on the gun holstered at his belt, watching Sabel alertly.

  The first man now confidently holstered his weapon too, and concentrated his attention on Sabel. He was tall and bitter-faced, but he was no policeman. “I’m going to want to take a look inside your lab, and maybe get some things out. So hand over the key, or tell me the combination.”

  Sabel moistened his lips. “Who are you?” The words were not frightened, they were imperious with rage. “And who is this woman here?”

  “I advise you to control yourself. She’s been entertaining you, keeping you out of our way while we got a little surprise ready for the city. We each of us serve the Master in our own way … even you have already served. You provided the Master with enough power to call on us for help, some days ago … yes, what?” Inside his helmet he turned his head to look outside the shelter. “Out completely? Under its own power now? Excellent!”

  He faced back toward Sabel. “And who am I? Someone who will get the key to your laboratory from you, one way or another, you may be sure. We’ve been working on you a long time already, many days. We saw to it that poor Greta got a new roommate, as soon as you took up with her. Poor Greta never knew … you see, we thought we might need your flyer and this final cargo of tools and chemicals to get the Master out. As it turned out, we didn’t.”

  Helen, the woman Sabel had known as Helen, walked into his field of vision, turned her face to him as if to deliver a final taunt.

  What it might have been, he never knew. Her dark eyes widened, in a parody of fainting fright. In the next moment she was slumping to the ground.

  Sabel had a glimpse of the other, suited figures tumbling. Then a great soundless, invisible, cushioned club smote at his whole body. The impact had no direction, but there was no way to stand against it. His muscles quit on him, his nerves dissolved. The rocky ground beneath the shelter came up to catch his awkward fall with bruising force.

  Once down, it was impossible to move a hand or foot. He had to concentrate on simply trying to breathe.

  Presently he heard the airlock’s cycling sigh. To lift his head and look was more than he could do; in his field of vision there were only suited bodies, and the ground.

  Black boots, Guardian boots, trod to a halt close before his eyes. A hand gripped Sabel’s shoulder and turned him part way up. Gunavarman’s jovial eyes looked down at him for a triumphal moment before the Chief Deputy moved on.

  Other black boots shuffled about. “Yes, this one’s Helen Nadrad, all right—that’s the name she used whoring at the Parisian Alley, anyway. I expect we can come up with another name or two for her if we look offworld. Ready to talk to us, Helen? Not yet? You’ll be all right. Stunner wears off in an hour or so.”

  “Chief, I wonder what they expected to do with suspended animation gear? Well, we’ll find out.”

  Gunavarman now began a radio conference with some distant personage. Sabel, in his agony of trying to breathe, to move, to speak, could hear only snatches of the talk:

  “Holding meetings out here for some time, evidently … mining for berserker parts, probably … equipment … yes, Sire, the berserker recording was found in his laboratory this time … a publicity hologram of Helen Nadrad included in it, for some reason … yes, very shocking. But no doubt … we followed him out here just now. Joro, that’s the goodlife organizer we’ve been watching, is here … yes, Sire. Thank you very much. I will pass on your remarks to my people here.”

  In a moment more the radio conversation had been concluded. Gunavarman, in glowing triumph, was bending over Sabel once again. “Prize catch,” the Guardian murmured. “Something you’d like to say to me?”

  Sabel was staring at the collapsed figure of Joro. Inside an imperfectly closed pocket of the man’s spacesuit he could see a small, blood-red cylinder, a stub of cut wire protruding from one end.

  “Anything important, Doctor?”

  He tried, as never before. Only a few words. “Draw … your … weapons …”

  Gunavarman glance
d round at his people swarming outside the tent. He looked confidently amused. “Why?”

  Now through the rock beneath the groundsheet of his shelter Sabel could hear a subtly syncopated, buzzing vibration, drawing near.

  “Draw … your …”

  Not that he really thought the little handguns were likely to do them any good.

  WINGS OUT OF SHADOW

  As life may transmit evil, so machines of great power may hand on good.

  In Malori’s first and only combat mission the berserker came to him in the image of a priest of the sect into which Malori had been born on the planet Yaty. In a dreamlike vision that was the analogue of a very real combat he saw the robed figure standing tall in a deformed pulpit, eyes flaming with malevolence, lowering arms winglike with the robes they stretched. With their lowering, the lights of the universe were dimming outside the windows of stained glass and Malori was being damned.

  Even with his heart pounding under damnation’s terror Malori retained sufficient consciousness to remember the real nature of himself and of his adversary and that he was not powerless against him. His dream-feet walked him timelessly toward the pulpit and its demon-priest while all around him the stained glass windows burst, showering him with fragments of sick fear. He walked a crooked path, avoiding the places in the smooth floor where, with quick gestures, the priest created snarling, snapping stone mouths full of teeth. Malori seemed to have unlimited time to decide where to put his feet. Weapon,he thought, a surgeon instructing some invisible aide. Here—in my right hand.

  From those who had survived similar battles he had heard how the inhuman enemy appeared to each in different form, how each human must live the combat through in terms of a unique nightmare. To some a berserker came as a ravening beast, to others as devil or god or man. To still others it was some essence of terror that could never be faced or even seen. The combat was a nightmare experienced while the subconscious ruled, while the waking mind was suppressed by careful electrical pressures on the brain. Eyes and ears were padded shut so that the conscious mind might be more easily suppressed, the mouth plugged to save the tongue from being bitten, the nude body held immobile by the defensive fields that kept it whole against the thousands of gravities that came with each movement of the one-man ship while in combat mode. It was a nightmare from which mere terror could never wake one; waking came only when the fight was over, came only with death or victory or disengagement.