Berserker Attack Read online

  Then, captured gun in hand, Mitch hurried on to Hemphill’s door. It slid open before he could pound on it, and closed again as soon as he had jumped inside.

  A dead black-uniform sat leaning against the wall, unseeing eyes aimed at Mitch, bullet-holes patterned across his chest.

  “Welcome,” said Hemphill drily. He stood with his left hand on an elaborate control console that had been raised from a place of concealment inside the huge desk. In his right hand a machine pistol hung casually. “It seems we face greater difficulties than we expected.”

  Lucinda sat in the darkened cabin that was Jor’s hiding place, watching him eat. Immediately after his escape she had started roaming the ship’s passages, looking for him, whispering his name, until at last he had answered her. Since then she had been smuggling him food and drink.

  He was older than she had thought at first glance; a man of about her own age, with tiny lines at the corners of his suspicious eyes. Paradoxically, the more she helped him, the more suspicious his eyes became.

  Now he paused in his eating to ask: “What do you plan to do when we reach Nogara, and a hundred men come aboard to search for me? They’ll soon find me, then.”

  She wanted to tell Jor about Hemphill’s plan for rescuing Karlsen. Once Johann Karlsen was aboard, no one on this ship would have to fear Nogara, or so she felt. But just because Jor still seemed suspicious of her, she hesitated to trust him with a secret.

  “You knew you’d be caught eventually,” she countered. “So why did you run away?”

  “You don’t know what it’s like, being their prisoner.”

  “I do know.”

  He ignored her contradiction. “They trained me to fight in the arena with the others. And then they singled me out, and began to train me for something even worse. Now they flick a switch somewhere, and I start to kill, like a berserker.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He closed his eyes, his food forgotten. “I think there’s a man they want me to assassinate. Every day or so they put me in the temple of Mars and drive me mad, and then the image of this man is always sent to me. Always it’s the same face and uniform. And I must destroy the image, with a sword or a gun or with my hands. I have no choice when they flip that switch, no control over myself. They’ve hollowed me out and filled me up with their own madness. They’re madmen. I think they go into the temple themselves, and turn the foul madness on, and wallow in it, before their idol.”

  He had never said so much to her in one speech before. She was not sure how much of it was true, but she felt he believed it all. She reached for his hand.

  “Jor, I do know something about them. That’s why I’ve helped you. And I’ve seen other men who were really brainwashed. They haven’t really destroyed you, you’ll be all right again someday.”

  “They want me to look normal.” He opened his eyes, which were still suspicious. “Why are you on this ship, anyway?”

  “Because.” She looked into the past. “Two years ago I met a man called Johann Karlsen. Yes, the one everyone knows of. I spent about ten minutes with him … if he’s still alive, he’s certainly forgotten me, but I fell in love with him.”

  “In love!” Jor snorted, and began to pick his teeth.

  Or I thought I fell in love, she said to herself. Watching Jor now, understanding and forgiving his sullen mistrust, she realized she was no longer able to visualize Karlsen’s face clearly.

  Something triggered Jor’s taut nerves, and he jumped up to peek out of the cabin into the passage. “What’s that noise? Hear? It sounds like fighting.”

  “So.” Hemphill’s voice was grimmer than usual. “The surviving crewmen are barricaded in their quarters, surrounded and under attack. The damned berserker-lovers hold the bridge, and the engine room. In fact they hold the ship, except for this.” He patted the console that he had raised from concealment inside Nogara’s innocent-looking desk. “I know Felipe Nogara, and I thought he’d have a master control in his cabin, and when I saw all the police I thought I might possibly need it. That’s why I quartered myself in here.”

  “What all does it control?” Mitch asked, wiping his hands. He had just dragged the dead man into a closet. Katsulos should have known better than to send only one against the High Admiral.

  “I believe it will override any control on the bridge or in the engine room. With it I can open or close most of the doors and hatches on the ship. And there seem to be scanners hidden in a hundred places, connected to this little viewscreen. The berserker-lovers aren’t going anywhere with this ship until they’ve done a lot of rewiring or gotten us out of this cabin.”

  “I don’t suppose we’re going anywhere either,” said Mitch. “Have you any idea what’s happened to Lucy?”

  “No. She and that man Jor may be free, and they may do us some good, but we can’t count on it. Spain, look here.” Hemphill pointed to the little screen. “This is a view inside the guardroom and prison, under the arena’s seats. If all those individual cells are occupied, there must be about forty men in there.”

  “That’s an idea. They may be trained fighters, and they’ll certainly have no love for the black uniforms.”

  “I could talk to them from here,” Hemphill mused. “But how can we free them and arm them? I can’t control their individual cell doors, though I can keep the enemy locked out of that area, at least for a while. Tell me, how did the fighting start? What set it off?”

  Mitch told Hemphill what he knew. “It’s almost funny. The cultists have the same idea you have, of taking this ship out to the hypermass and going after Karlsen. Only of course they want to give him to the berserkers.” He shook his head. “I suppose Katsulos hand-picked cultists from among the police for this mission. There must be more of them around than any of us thought.”

  Hemphill only shrugged. Maybe he understood fairly well those fanatics out there whose polarity happened to be opposite from his own.

  Lucinda would not leave Jor now, nor let him leave her. Like hunted animals they made their way through the corridors, which she knew well from her days of restless walking. She guided him around the sounds of fighting to where he wanted to go.

  He peered around the last corner, and brought his head back to whisper: “There’s no one at the guardroom door.”

  “But how will you get in? And some of the vultures may be inside, and you’re not armed.”

  He laughed soundlessly. “What have I to lose? My life?” He moved on around the corner.

  Mitch’s fingers suddenly dug into Hemphill’s arm. “Look! Jor’s there, with the same idea you had. Open the door for him, quick!”

  Most of the painted panels had been removed from the interior walls of the temple of Mars. Two black-uniformed men were at work upon the mechanism thus revealed, while Katsulos sat at the altar, watching Jor’s progress through his own secret scanners. When he saw Jor and Lucinda being let into the guardroom, Katsulos pounced.

  “Quick, turn on the beam and focus on him. Boil his brain with it! He’ll kill everyone in there, and then we can take our time with the others.”

  Katsulos’ two assistants hurried to obey, arranging cables and a directional antenna. One asked: “He’s the one you were training to assassinate Hemphill?”

  “Yes. His brain rhythms are on the chart. Focus on him quickly!”

  “Set them free and arm them!” Hemphill’s image shouted, from a guardroom viewscreen. “You men there! Fight with us and I promise to take you to freedom when the ship is ours; and I promise we’ll take Johann Karlsen with us, if he’s alive.”

  There was a roar from the cells at the offer of freedom, and another roar at Karlsen’s name. “With him, we’d go on to Esteel itself!” one prisoner shouted.

  When the beam from the temple of Mars struck downward, it went unfelt by everyone but Jor. The others in the guardroom had not been conditioned by repeated treatments, and the heat of their emotions was already high.

  Just as Jor picked up the keys that
would open the cells, the beam hit him. He knew what was happening, but there was nothing he could do about it. In a paroxysm of rage he dropped the keys, and grabbed an automatic weapon from the arms rack. He fired at once, shattering Hemphill’s image from the viewscreen.

  With the fragment of his mind that was still his own, Jor felt despair like that of a drowning man. He knew he was not going to be able to resist what was coming next.

  When Jor fired at the viewscreen, Lucinda understood what was being done to him.

  “Jor, no!” She fell to her knees before him. The face of Mars looked down at her, frightening beyond anything she had ever seen. But she cried out to Mars: “Jor, stop! I love you!”

  Mars laughed at her love, or tried to laugh. But Mars could not quite manage to point the weapon at her. Jor was trying to come back into his own face again, now coming back halfway, struggling terribly.

  “And you love me, Jor. I know. Even if they force you to kill me, remember I know that.”

  Jor, clinging to his fragment of sanity, felt a healing power come to him, setting itself against the power of Mars. In his mind danced the pictures he had once glimpsed inside the temple of Venus. Of course! There must be a countering projector in there, and someone had managed to turn it on.

  He made the finest effort he could imagine. And then, with Lucinda before him, he made a finer effort still.

  He came above his red rage like a swimmer surfacing, lungs bursting, from a drowning sea. He looked down at his hands, at the gun they held. He forced his fingers to begin opening. Mars still shouted at him, louder and louder, but Venus’ power grew stronger still. His hands opened and the weapon fell.

  Once the gladiators had been freed and armed the fight was soon over, though not one of the cultists even tried to surrender. Katsulos and the two with him him fought to the last from inside the temple of Mars, with the hate projector at maximum power, and the recorded chanting voices roaring out their song. Perhaps Katsulos still hoped to drive his enemies to acts of self-destructive rage, or perhaps he had the projector on as an act of worship.

  Whatever his reasons, the three inside the temple absorbed the full effect themselves. Mitch had seen bad things before, but when he at last broke open the temple door, he had to turn away for a moment.

  Hemphill showed only satisfaction at seeing how the worship of Mars had culminated aboard Nirvana II. “Let’s see to the bridge and the engine room first. Then we can get this mess cleaned up and be on our way.”

  Mitch was glad to follow, but he was detained for a moment by Jor.

  “Was it you who managed to turn on the counter-projector? If it was, I owe you much more than my life.”

  Mitch looked at him blankly. “Counter-projector? What’re you talking about?”

  “But there must have been …”

  When the others had hurried away, Jor remained in the arena, looking in awe at the thin walls of the temple of Venus, where no projector could be hidden. Then a girl’s voice called, and Jor too hurried out.

  There was a half minute of silence in the arena.

  “Emergency condition concluded,” said the voice of the intercom station, to the rows of empty seats. “Ship’s records returning to normal operation. Last question asked concerned basis of temple designs. Chaucer’s verse relevant to temple of Venus follows, in original language:

  “I recche nat if it may bettre be

  To have victorie of them, or they of me

  So that I have myne lady in myne armes.

  For though so be that Mars is god of Armes,

  Your vertu is so great in hevene above

  That, if yow list, I shall wel have my love …”

  Venus smiled, half-risen from her glittering waves.

  BROTHER BERSERKER

  The barefoot man in the gray friar’s habit reached the top of a rise and paused, taking a look at the country ahead of him. In that direction, the paved road he was following continued to run almost straight under a leaden sky, humping over one gentle hill after another, cutting through scrubby woods and untended fields. The stones of this road had been laid down in the days of glory of the great Continental Empire; there was not much else in the world that had survived the centuries between then and now.

  From where the friar stood, the road appeared to be aimed at a slender tower, a sharp and lonely temple spire, gray and vague in the day’s dull light, which rose from an unseen base at some miles’ distance. The friar had walked with that spire in sight for half a day already, but his goal still lay far beyond.

  The friar was of medium height and wiry build. His appearance seemed to have little relation to his age; he might have been anywhere between twenty and forty. His scantily bearded face was tired now, and his gray robe was spotted with mud of darker gray. Here along the shoulders of the road the fields were all ankle-deep in mud, and they showed no sign of having been plowed or planted this spring or last.

  “Oh, Holy One, I thank you again that I have had this pavement to follow for so much of my journey,” the friar murmured, as he started forward again. The soles of his feet looked as scarred and tough as those of well-used hiking boots.

  Except for the distant spire, the only sign of any recent human presence in this unpromising landscape was a heap of low, ruined walls at roadside just ahead. Only the fact of ruin was recent; the walls themselves were old and might have been a part of a caravanserai or military post in the days of the Empire’s strength. But last month or last tenday a new war had passed this way, dissolving one more building into raw tumbled stones. What was left of the structure looked as if it might be going to sink without a trace into the mud, even before the spring grass could start to grow around the foundations.

  The friar sat down on the remnant of the old wall, resting from his journey and looking with minor sadness at the minor destruction about him. After a bit, in the manner of one who cannot sit entirely still for very long, he leaned over and took one of the fallen stones in his lean strong hands. Looking at the stone with what might have been a mason’s practiced eye, he fitted it deftly into a notch in the stump of wall and sat back to study the effect.

  A distant hail made him raise his head and look back along the way he had come. Another lone figure, dressed in a habit much like his own, was hastening toward him, waving both arms for attention.

  The first friar’s thin face lighted gently at the prospect of company. He returned the wave and waited, forgetting his little game of masonry. Soon he got to his feet.

  Presently the approaching figure resolved itself into a man of middle height, who was almost stout and who had recently been clean-shaven. “Glory to the Holy One, revered Brother!” puffed this newcomer, as he arrived at last within easy talking distance.

  “Glory to His name.” The bearded friar’s voice was warm but unremarkable.

  The portly one, a man of about thirty, seated himself heavily on the low wall, wiped at his face, and inquired anxiously, “Are you, as I think, Brother Jovann of Ernard?”

  “That is my name.”

  “Now may the Holy One be praised!” The heavier man made a wedge-sign with his hands and rolled his eyes heavenward. “My name is Saile, brother. Now may the Holy One be praised, say I—“

  “So be it.”

  “—for He has led me in mysterious ways to reach your side! And many more shall follow. Brother Jovann, men will flock to you from the four corners of the world, for the fame of your heroic virtue has spread far, to the land of Mosnar, or so I have heard, and even to the lands of the infidel. And here in our own land—even at this moment, in the isolated villages of these remote hills—some of the most backward peasants are aware of your passage.”

  “I fear my many faults are also known hereabouts, for I was born not far away.”

  “Ah, Brother Jovann, you are overly modest. During my arduous struggles to reach your side, I have heard again and again of your holy exploits.”

  Brother Jovann, his face showing some concern, sat down o
n the wall again. “Why have you struggled, as you say, to reach my side?”

  “Ahh.” What a struggle it had been, said Saile’s headshake. “The flame of my determination was first kindled several months ago, when I was told by unimpeachable sources, eyewitnesses, how, when you were with the army of the Faithful in the field, you dared to leave the sheltering ranks, to cross no-man’s-land into the very jaws of the infidel; there to enter the tent of the arch-infidel himself and preach to him the truth of our Holy Temple!”

  “And to fail to convert him.” Jovann nodded sadly. “You do well to remind me of my failure, for I am prone to the sin of pride.”

  “Ah.” Saile lost headway, but only for a moment. “It was, as I say, upon hearing of that exploit, Brother Jovann, that it became my own most humble wish, my most burning and holy ambition, to seek you out, to be among the very first to join your order.” Saile’s eyebrows went up questioningly. “Ah, it is true, then, that you are on your way to Empire City even now, to petition our most holy Vicar Nabur for permission to found a new religious order?”

  The thin friar’s eyes looked toward the spire in the distance. “Once, Brother, God called me to rebuild fallen temples with stone and brick. Now, as you say, I am called to rebuild with men.” His attention came back to Brother Saile, and he was smiling. “As for your becoming a member of the new order when it is formed, why, I can say nothing yet of that. But if you should choose to walk with me to Empire City, I will be happy for your company.”

  Saile jumped to his feet, to bob up and down with bowing. “It is I who am most happy and most honored, Brother Jovann!”

  Saile prolonged his thanks as the two men walked on together. He had then commented at some length on the unpleasant prospect of yet more rain falling and was discoursing on the problem of where, in this deserted-looking land, two mendicant friars might hope to obtain their next meal, when there occurred a distraction.