Berserker Wars (Omnibus)

by Fred Saberhagen

  Of course to the senior Humanity agent, and to the superintendent of the Office, the enhanced pictures of Havot on the Imatran surface looked pretty damned suspicious. Or so they claimed.

  “We’re trying to get a line on this man, and eventually we will—but right now communications throughout the system are pretty much in turmoil, as you might expect.”

  Havot felt comfortably confident that no local record of his presence at the spaceport, as a convicted murderer undergoing transportation, had survived the raid. Of course sooner or later, if he stayed around, his fingerprints or other ID were going to doom him.

  Meanwhile Commodore Prinsep and his staff were continuing their own study of the maddeningly enigmatic images of the attack, a study in which Havot’s individual conduct or fate played only a small part.

  During the last phase of the onslaught, a number of small berserker auxiliaries could be seen at various points on the Imatran surface. All the machines still fully functional were lashing about them with death rays and other weapons, laboring methodically at their endless task of sterilizing the universe.

  Someone, muttering in surprise, stopped the show, freezing the recorded berserkers temporarily in their tracks. “Back up, and let’s take a look at that again.” The recording was run back a few seconds and then restarted. It was no mistake, no glitch in the recording. All the berserkers of the landing party simultaneously dropped what they were doing—the machine that had been menacing Havot turned away in step with all the rest. And all of them went darting for their respective landing craft, the vehicles that had brought them to the surface.

  Plainly all the berserkers on the surface had begun to retreat at precisely the same time, within a fraction of a second.

  “This could have been the miracle that saved our friend Havot—yes, I would say that’s very likely. Just look at the timing here.”

  Prinsep, his attention called to the timing of the berserker retreat, was very much impressed.

  “Their motherships must have transmitted a recall signal, virtually simultaneously, to all their machines on the ground.”

  “Obviously. But the speed of the response by the landing devices suggests something more than an ordinary recall signal. I mean, this was something with a real priority.It stopped them all in their tracks!”

  “We haven’t been able to catch up with any such transmission, but you’re right. It must have been a command of the highest priority, overriding everything else, ordering all the landers in effect to drop whatever they were doing and come home to mother at once.”

  “As if their mothers were suddenly fearful of a trap?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Let’s not get into using the word ‘fear’ when we assign motives to berserkers. Their own survival in itself means absolutely nothing to them. The only real value they esteem is death. And observe that for whatever reason their motherships did not abandon their landing machines. They waited for every last one of them before heading out of the system.”

  “Right. I was about to comment that the damned pigs got every one of their fighting machines back on board, even those which had been seriously damaged, before they left.”

  “And that tells us—?”

  “It tells me that the berserkers expected to need all of their fighting strength whenever they got to wherever they were going next.”

  “Perhaps they pulled out because word had just reached them, of some new target—?”

  There was a muttering around the table, and a shuffling of imaged documents. “What target could possibly rate such a high priority that it would cause them to abandon this attack?”

  “Possibly it wasn’t another target at all, in that sense. Possibly the enemy hurried away to defend one of their own bases, some real nerve center, against some kind of threat?”

  “I don’t get it. Here’s a fleet fully engaged in an attack. How could they have suddenly discovered a new target while all their attention was focused on this one? Or how could they have learned that one of their own bases needed help? They didn’t receive any incoming message couriers while the fight was going on.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “None that we could detect.”

  “We’ve been looking pretty closely at these recordings, and they are pretty good; I think we’re about ready to rule out any additional radio signals of key importance—where would one come from? And we have to assume that we’d be able to detect the arrival of even a small courier.”

  “All right; but if we grant that, we seem to be forced to the conclusion that something the berserkers learned here, on Imatra, while the fighting was still in progress, forced them into a very abrupt and drastic change of plans.”

  “It does look that way. Something … but where on the planetoid did they learn anything? And what was it they learned?”

  No one could come up with an answer.

  Meanwhile the methodical electronic sieving of in-system space for useful signals continued. Gradually it became possible to rule out any chance that the berserkers, while in the midst of their attack, had received a communication from others of their kind elsewhere. In theory, radio and laser signals could not be entirely eliminated, but such means of communication were hopelessly slow over interstellar distances, though eminently useful near at hand. In any case there did not seem to have been any particularly interesting signals creeping through nearby space while the attack was going on.

  “Then what are we left with?”

  “All we can find out just reinforces the conclusion that the enemy, in the course of their raiding and ravaging the surface, discovered something on the planetoid.Something or some piece of information that they considered overwhelmingly important. So vital to their cause that responding to it in an appropriate way took precedence over everything else. Everything!”

  “A thing, or a piece of information. Such as what?”

  “Possibly something this man Havot passed to one of them. We really don’t know who he is.”

  “Bah. I can’t credit that. Why should a man spend an hour or more running away from a berserker if he intended passing it information? But then if it wasn’t something they somehow gained from Havot, what was it? I haven’t the faintest idea. Let’s run that last sequence again.”

  In the course of the next playback, one berserker lander in particular caught someone’s attention. This device, several kilometers from Havot’s position, appeared to have gone underground, the only instance of one of the marauders doing so.

  “What’s there? In that place where it went down?”

  Someone pulled up a diagram on holostage. “This map just says ‘archive.’”

  “See if we can find out something to clarify that.”

  The common information utility on Imatra was readily available, but it had been left in strands and fragments by the attack. At the moment it was not much good for answering even the simplest questions.

  “We’ll keep trying. Meanwhile let’s take another look at this recording.”

  Commodore Prinsep ordered an increased enhancement of the sequence of events from three minutes before to three minutes after the sudden berserker decision to withdraw. The job at this level of difficulty took several minutes for the computer to accomplish.

  When the computer’s organic masters looked at the latest, most intensely enhanced version, they saw the berserker landing device reemerge from underground to stand perfectly still for a moment facing its mothership at a distance of more than a kilometer—almost out of line-of-sight, around the sharp curvature of the small planetoid. The emergence of the unit from the archive came just a hair-trigger interval before the recall command was transmitted—time perhaps for a human being to shout a warning or draw a gun. Too swift a response to be accepted as purely coincidental, too slow to be merely routine. The berserker command computers had devoted a couple of seconds—for them a vast gulf of time—to calculation before making their decision to withdraw as rapidly as possible.

  Still
, the devastated Imatran information banks could not be induced to say anything more informative about the underground archive buried at that point on the planetoid’s surface.

  “Could just be a coincidence after all, this one unit coming up out of the ground just there, and then the recall being sent a few seconds later.”

  “I tend not to believe in coincidences.” Prinsep’s voice was for once not tentative. “I want to go down there as soon as possible, travel physically to the place where it says ‘archive,’ and take a first-hand look.”

  Within a couple of hours a group comprising most of the strategic planners, including key members of the commodore’s staff, had shuttled down to the Imatran surface. There they were soon crowded into a single much smaller vehicle, and headed for the location of the mysterious underground facility.

  The Carmpan had stayed aboard the flagship, but Havot had come down with the group—no one tried to stop him. And Becky Thanarat, of course, to keep an eye on him for the Humanity Office.

  Not much of any construction on the surface of Imatra had been left standing. But neither had all of the housing, all the conference centers and other public buildings, been totally obliterated. Here and there a few units even appeared intact. The remnant still standing included some relatively old, quaint-looking structures. Havot had heard that these had been designed to imitate certain buildings back on Earth, though most people who saw this fairly common style had no idea where it had originated. The majority of those who lived on or visited Imatra, like most Solarians across the settled Galaxy, had never been to Earth—unless colonists had come here directly from the original homeworld.

  Arriving at the spot in an antigrav flyer, the investigators, all wearing respirators, stood regarding the charred and shattered aperture, of a size to accommodate an ordinary stairway, which evidently led down to some kind of subterranean installation.

  None of the people present had been familiar with Imatra in its normal configuration; several had never set foot on it before. Nothing they were looking at now gave them any clue as to why the small berserker might have come to this place, or what it might have unearthed.

  “Just what was stored down there, anyway?”

  “One way to find out.”

  Fortunately several people had had the forethought to bring flashlights. The stone stairs themselves, and what could be seen of a door standing partially open at their foot, appeared to be essentially undamaged.

  “Let’s go down.”

  But one of the investigators dallied, standing at the head of the stair. Said she, frowning: “Something doesn’t feel right about this.”

  Whoever had started down the stairs now paused and turned. “What do you mean?”

  “Look, I’m a killer machine, standing right here, as the recording shows. I’ve come from that way.” A thumb over a shoulder indicated a direction. “Over there”—pointing in a different direction—“on ground level, readily accessible, I can see a house, looking undamaged. Over that way’s another one. So, do I take a shot at either building? Or do I rush over and check ‘em out, see if there’s anyone hiding inside? No. Instead I choose to blast open the door to this underground vault.”

  “Maybe the machine saw someone in the act of taking shelter down here. Or it somehow detected signs of life from underground. Heard breathing, or …”

  There seemed little point in continued speculation, when the truth might be readily available. In silence the little company started to file down the stairs. Then someone had a thought. “I’m not absolutely sure that our machines have checked this out yet, though they’ve covered most of the surface. Better watch out for booby traps.”

  On that suggestion the company retreated, promptly enough, back up the stairs, and a robot was summoned. None had been brought along, because all of the useful, versatile robots were extremely busy just now. But this group of investigators had high priority when they chose to assert it. Within a couple of minutes one of the busy machines now engaged in rehabilitating/decontaminating the nearby surface had been temporarily commandeered.

  It was a man-sized crawler with many useful limbs, and like other advanced robots built by the children of Earth, it possessed intelligence of a sort. But it also resembled its fellows in being anything but anthropomorphic in physical or intellectual design.

  Docilely the eight-limbed device received its orders, acknowledged them in its pleasing mechanical voice, and nimbly descended the stair.

  The doors at the bottom no longer offered any obstacle to entry. They appeared to have been blasted or broken by the berserker.

  The people waiting on the surface tuned in their wrist-video units and watched the pictures sent back by the investigating robot. Inside the first door below had been a stronger set, now also demolished.

  Beyond the shattered doors the remote video showed extensive ruin occupying a space the size of a small house. At first glance there was nothing particularly interesting about more piles of rubble. The underground vault showed no immediate sign of human or even animal casualties.

  Within a minute or two the robot, having stomped and vibrated its way backward and forward through the debris, pronounced the area free of booby traps.

  “Can we believe that?”

  “It would really be an oddity if the enemy had planted any such devices here. We haven’t found any elsewhere on the planetoid’s surface.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “I’d say so. If this had been an ordinary raid with landers, setting traps would have been their last step before withdrawing.”

  “Nothing ordinary about this operation. Everything seems to confirm the idea that once the damned machines decided to pull out, they were unwilling to delay their departure by a single second. Shall we go down?”

  Moments later the humans were gathered at the foot of the stairs, inside the broken doors, gazing directly at devastation in the brightness of the robot’s lights. From here it was easy to see that this was, or had been, an archive designed to hold physical samples—of something. It was a common way of insuring that electronic data would not be lost—keep copies disconnected, physically separated, from all electronic systems, preventing electronic accidents or vandalism.

  People who had brought their own lights flashed them around. The room had been arranged in narrow aisles between rows of tall cabinets. Enough of some of the cabinets had survived to show that each had many drawers, many if not all of the drawers subdivided into small compartments. Gingerly at first, then more freely, people picked up samples.

  “These are recordings. Mostly civic records of various kinds. Videos of meetings, celebrations … This was not meant to be a bombproof vault. There seems to have been no great effort made toward preserving these against accident or attack.”

  The drawers and cabinets held little boxes, for the most part made of ordinary plastic or metal or composite materials. At the request of one human investigator, the helpful robot plugged one of the records into its own thorax and played it. The robot’s upper surface became a simple holostage. The video with sound displayed people sitting around a table, what had to be a local Imatran council meeting of some kind. They were discussing the esthetics of a new spaceport.

  “Hardly news to shake the empire of death to its foundations. Can we be sure the berserker didn’t just come down here chasing someone?” He scraped a booted foot across the singed and littered floor. “A human body might have been completely—destroyed.”

  The robot, given new and more precise instructions, began at once to take samples from the new air, and from several of the scorched surfaces within the vault. Even before gathering its last sample, it assured its masters that analysis was proceeding without delay.

  While they were waiting for the results, someone said: “At least there doesn’t seem to have been anything as big as a cat or dog in here when the berserker roasted the place.”

  Within a minute the robot interrupted the humans’ conversation to assure them in its s
oft droning voice that it was highly unlikely any organic mass the size of a human body had recently been burned or fragmented in this room.

  The commodore sniffed disdainfully. “‘Fragmented’—yes, an evocative suggestion.”

  “Well? I think, sir, we can eliminate simple killing as that berserker’s purpose in coming down here.

  “But the course it followed over the surface, from its mothership to the entrance to this archive, suggests that it was making a beeline for this place.”

  Somebody commented on the diversity of information storage systems represented in the surviving drawers and cabinets. “Not everything here is standardized, far from it, though one can observe a long-term tendency in that direction. Some of these, perhaps most of them, seem to go back centuries.”

  “Presumably berserkers conduct intelligence operations just as we do. Any organization would want to learn about the way its enemies, in this case Solarian humans, store data.”

  “About all the damned machines could have gleaned by rummaging around down here is a history of the ways their enemies saved information a few hundred years ago—sorry, I just can’t see them being overwhelmingly interested. Not so fascinated that they’d break off a successful attack in progress, just to communicate the secret techniques of the Imatran archive a little more quickly to some hypothetical distant confederates of theirs.”

  “All right. Then if it wasn’t Imatra’s antique storage methods they found so fascinating, it must have been something else. How about the informationin one or more of these old files? Is that what set them roaring off at top speed, squeaking ‘Eureka!’ in a berserker voice?”

  “Is there any way we can find out just what, if anything, the machine actually removed from this room?”

  The discussion went on. Havot found himself being ignored for the time being; he had been all the help that he was going to be. He might be able to walk away unnoticed, hide himself and disappear. But what would he do then?

  Meanwhile, he was having no more luck than anyone else in figuring out why the berserkers should have been rooting around down in this cellar. He was trying to picture the machine that had almost killed him, reacting to something in its orders, in its programming, so that instead of seeking breathing victims it had come down here … but come down here to do what? Anyway, this machine had been a different one altogether.