Berserker Wars (Omnibus)

by Fred Saberhagen

  Tentatively he approached her, establishing his presence on holostage, in her room, at a time when she was alone and he could feel reasonably certain they were not going to be interrupted.

  He said: “Mistress, I think you know me.”

  She looked sharply at the unexpected intruder. “I know you are called Nick. Nicholas Hawksmoor. What do you want?”

  “Only to reassure you. I have the impression that you fear me, and I don’t know why. I want to promise you in the strongest terms that you have nothing to fear from me. Doing you any harm, even alarming you, would be the last thing in the world—”

  “Thank you, Nick, thank you. Was there anything else? If not, please let me alone.”

  “Yes, my lady. But if you would answer one question for me first?”

  “What is it?” Reluctantly.

  “I do not sleep, as I suppose you know. Yet there have been times—I suppose it has something to do with being reprogrammed—times when it has seemed to me that I have dreamed. Dreamed that I was in a body, and you were in a body too, and with me. I don’t know if you can tell me anything about these dreams of mine—if that is what they are—but I felt I had to say something to you about them.”

  The lady was staring at him in an entirely new way. “How very strange,” she breathed.

  “My lady?”

  “No, Nick, we have never been in bodies together. You have never had a body at all.”

  “I know that.”

  “But you do appear in certain of my dreams. Just as you say I have appeared in yours. Gods of all space, how I wish I could be rid of them!”

  Moments later, Hawksmoor withdrew, relieved that the lady did not seem to hate him, but otherwise no wiser than before.

  He found the thought of being subject to endless cycles of reprogramming somehow depressing, though it did seem to confer a kind of immortality.

  Nick, as far as he could remember, had never made a backup copy of himself, nor did he want to do so.

  But he was afraid that Dirac might well have copies of him.

  Havot told Prinsep and others the story of Nick1‘s rescue and recording of Dirac’s bride, and her subsequent restoration to the flesh, as he, Havot, had heard it from the lady herself.

  For Dirac, the confirmation of his bride’s death, like any other obstacle he had ever encountered, had evidently been only a temporary setback. In fact it was not really Genevieve herself he needed—though he had chosen his bride from several candidates because of her valuable qualities—but rather the power, the alliance, she represented. He refused to allow himself to be deprived of those advantages.

  Actually, before the Premier learned that a recording of the Lady Genevieve’s personality existed, he had already begun to calculate how closely an organically grown approximation would have to resemble his original bride to be acceptable politically.

  One thing was certain: by the time the battered flagship had arrived with its small band of refugee survivors, Dirac had been operating the artificial wombs intermittently for centuries. His first determined effort had been to duplicate his beloved—or to recover their child, as a first step in bringing back its mother. And fairly soon he had discovered that Nick1, with the help of Freya2, was conducting a very similar operation.

  After the treachery of Nick1 had come to light, and that unfortunate version of Hawksmoor had been reprogrammed into Nick2, Dirac had continued his own experiments, but now with different aims in mind.

  Zador and Hoveler agreed with Prinsep and his people in their doubts about Dirac’s version of what had happened to Sandy Kensing and the other men who had disappeared on the yacht.

  “Why such a delayed announcement of their deaths? Why the cleanup before anyone was notified?”

  Dirac on being confronted with these questions responded that he was not required to account to anyone for his decisions. But he denied that there was any real mystery.

  In general the Premier seemed rather surprisingly indifferent to reports of what had been happening back in civilization, even on the worlds he had once ruled. He seemed to choose to disbelieve whatever news he didn’t like. When he talked at all about the people he had formerly governed, he spoke as one assuming those folk—or their descendants—would still be eager to have him back, if they were given the choice.

  Dirac spoke calmly of how much he missed his homeworld and his people. But he did not seem to have any real wish to rejoin them.

  Prinsep thought he was gradually coming to understand the situation. Ever since the station had been isolated, centuries ago, Dirac had become increasingly the prisoner of his own mania for power. The tricks with the artificial wombs were a significant part of the story, but no more than a part. He had also read the labels on thousands of tiles, hatching one zygote after another, in an effort to recover, reconstitute, his lost beloved. Putting himself away in a guarded vault for years, sometimes decades, between hatchings of his latest experiments, thus preserving his relative youth, and avoiding long subjective waits to see how the latest specimen had turned out.

  Dirac would trust no human, and only one artifact, to stand guard over him while he slept his long sleeps.

  Only Loki, the specialist.

  And Prinsep felt sure there must be times when the Premier worried about Loki.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Nick3 had been summoned to see the boss, and now he was waiting for Loki to let him in.

  Hawksmoor had not come to the Premier’s private quarters in suit-form—in fact he had been ordered not to do so. Rather he tarried in electronic suspension, poised in certain delay circuits, anticipating the command that would allow him to appear upon the Premier’s holostage. Meanwhile he tried, with no success, to hold some conversation with Loki. Nick now perceived Loki as he usually did, only an ominous presence, rather like a heavy static charge on the verge of outbreak. Loki communicated orders or questions and listened to the replies, but that was all.

  Word from the boss came at last, and Nick, admitted to the inner sanctum, hovered optelectronically on a holostage close beside the master’s ordinary bed.

  Not far from the ordinary bed there was another. The Premier’d had his own private medirobot installed in this stateroom fairly early on in the voyage. The device sat there like an elaborate food freezer or a glassy coffin, overlooking the much more ordinary bed. Digits of information glowed in muted light from several panels on its sides. A bier surrounded, in Nick’s enhanced perception, by a ring of fire—a visual manifestation of the electronic being called Loki.

  Nick3, in the long moment before Dirac spoke to him, found himself wondering exactly what Dirac’s face must look like during those long stretches of time when it was frozen hard and solid. In a way Hawksmoor thought that his master’s countenance might look quite natural that way.

  Loki had already informed Nick that a woman was with Dirac, and Nick had speculated—uselessly, as far as provoking any reaction from Loki—as to who today’s visitor might be. Hawksmoor doubted very much that the Premier’s private caller was Dr. Zador, who loathed Dirac more with every passing year. And the Premier had as yet made no effort to get the female newcomer, Lieutenant Tongres, into his room and bed—he was intrigued by her, though. Nick felt sure of that.

  Today’s visitor turned out to be the Lady Genevieve, her attitude and her expression quite unhappy. And Hawksmoor felt sure, as soon as he got a look at the couple, that they had been arguing. It did not seem that the lady was here today for any purpose of romantic dalliance; both of the organic people were on their feet and fully dressed.

  The Lady Genevieve barely nodded in response to Hawksmoor’s formal greeting. The Premier too was ready to go straight to business. “Nick, I have a question for you. An important question.”

  “I’ll do my best, sir.”

  “I’m counting on that. I believe I can still safely count on that, although your predecessors both lied to me egregiously. You—Nick3, I mean—you haven’t been in existence long enough to b
e corrupted yet. Have you, Hawksmoor? D’you still want to keep that name, by the way?”

  “Yes sir, I’ll keep it. Unless there’s another name that you’d prefer I use.”

  “Let the name stand for now. Well, Nick? Here’s my question: Has my lovely wife here been granting her favors to any other man?”

  Nick was fully, terribly, aware of the lady’s pleading eyes, though he took care that the eyes of his own image should not be observed to turn toward her at this moment. He answered with restrained shock. “Sir, I have never seen a molecule of evidence to support any such—such—”

  “Oh, spare us, Hawksmoor, your imitation of a righteous pillar of the community. I swear, you’re blushing. I don’t know how you manage to acquire these routines. In fact there is much I don’t know how you manage to acquire.”

  “Sir, to the best of my knowledge the Lady Genevieve is completely innocent.”

  “Have you ever seen my wife alone with the man called Christopher Havot?”

  There had been a few totally innocent encounters, in corridors or other public places, as there would have been between any two organic folk aboard the station. Briskly and precisely Nick recounted the ones he had happened to witness, omitting any meetings that were not completely innocent.

  Dirac questioned him on details. It was futile, of course, for a man relying on a merely, purely organic brain to try to catch out an optelectronic intelligence in omissions or contradictions concerning details. Nick, when he chose to do so, could weave a seamless cloak of deception regarding such matters, and do it all in a moment.

  Presently Dirac seemed to realize this fact. He charged Nick with the responsibility of spying on Havot in the future, and soon after that dismissed him.

  Nick’s immediate reward from the lady, the last thing he saw as he vanished from the holostage, was a look of desperate gratitude.

  As he resumed his regular chores, Nick pondered his new assignment. He was quite willing to create trouble for Havot, but not at the price of causing the lady any embarrassment.

  Perhaps, he thought, his wisest course would be to warn Havot to stay away from her. Hoping to accomplish this indirectly, Nick sought out Commodore Prinsep.

  Prinsep appeared to take little notice of Nick’s indirect attempts to pass along a warning. The commodore had other things in mind. He tried to question Nick about the yacht’s defective drive and other matters.

  Nick thought he could be somewhat helpful in the matter of the drive. He remembered perfectly that three hundred years ago the yacht’s drive had been damaged in the fighting when Dirac’s little squadron of ships had caught up with the berserker and its captured station.

  “Are you sure, Nick?”

  “I have an excellent memory, Commodore,” Hawksmoor ironically reminded the organic man. But then Nick paused, vaguely wondering. The memory of how that damage had occurred was quite cool and unemotional, like something learned from a history tape.

  “What’s wrong, Nick?”

  Nick tried to explain.

  “Like something you learned from a tape, hey? Or, maybe, like something that never really happened, that was only programmed in?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know much about your programming, Nick. But I do know that the yacht’s drive shows no physical evidence of damage. Take a look for yourself next time you’re over there.”

  Nick went over to the Eidolon, and looked at the undamaged hardware, wondering. He no longer knew which fleshly people deserved his loyalty—if any of them did. But he was determined to do everything he could for Jenny.

  Brooding about the yacht’s drive, and about why he had been programmed with erroneous information, led Hawksmoor into fantasizing about finding a quick and easy way of restoring the machinery to full function, and then taking off in that vessel—with only himself and the Lady Genevieve aboard.

  * * *

  Nick3 in general disapproved of fantasies. He supposed he was subject to them only as a result of some stubborn defect in his programming. Experimenting with your will only in the privacy of your own mind was like fanning the air, shadowboxing. It accomplished nothing and proved nothing.

  Nick had already spent—wasted, as he saw the matter now—a great deal of time wondering how he had been able to manage the seemingly profound betrayals that, as the facts and his memory assured him, he had already accomplished.

  By now Nick3 had deduced that the long process of his betrayal of the Premier must have started when he—or rather his predecessor Nick1—had flown to the damaged courier to try to help the Lady Genevieve. Up to that point he had still been running firmly, or so he seemed to remember now, on the tracks of his programmed loyalty. His only objective in boarding the doomed vessel had been to save his employer’s lady any way he could.

  But no, any betrayal that had really happened must have started later. Because in fact his saving the lady, and his recording her mind and personality, had in the end been a benefit to Dirac. Suppose he had not interfered. Now Jenny would be really dead, just as her husband had long believed she was. How would the Premier have gained by that? He’d have lost her permanently. And the stretch of time she’d spent in optelectronic mode hadn’t caused Dirac any suffering—at least not until he had found out about it.

  Prinsep, following his talk with Nick, picked up Lieutenant Tongres and Ensign Dinant and went with Dr. Hoveler into a region of the laboratory they had not seen before, to inspect the site of the experiments and bioengineering projects Dirac had been and evidently still was conducting.

  Hoveler had been involved only intermittently in that work, and only reluctantly admitted his participation, because he had serious reservations about the morality of using the zygotes to grow new bodies in which to house old personalities. He served as a good if sometimes reluctant guide.

  Dirac, as Hoveler explained, had always felt himself perfectly justified in trying to recover his lost bride by whatever means were necessary. And other experiments had grown out of that.

  Hoveler introduced the new arrivals to Freya2, and explained to them how and why she had been created by Nick1.

  Freya appeared to her visitors on a holostage in the lab, using an image Nick had once suggested to her, that of the head of a handsome woman, her age indeterminate, long silvery-blond hair in motion as if some breeze were blowing through the optelectronic world in which Freya dwelt.

  After a brief exchange of pleasantries, Prinsep got down to business. “Freya, can you tell me what is commonly done with dead organic bodies, here on the station or on the yacht?”

  The imaged woman seemed serenely immune to surprise. “Ordinarily, Commodore, there are no dead bodies of any organic species. Such food products as meat and eggs are synthesized directly by the life-support machinery.”

  “I am thinking of the Solarian human species in particular. There must be experimental failures here in the laboratory. And lately there have also been dead adult human males.”

  “I store all such material for future use in genetic work. So far, the storage space available is more than adequate.”

  “Ah. And may we see what specimens you now have in storage? I am thinking particularly of adult humans.”

  “You may.” It was Freya’s business to answer questions.

  She directed the visitors to another alcove of the laboratory complex, where presently they stood gazing through glass at three human corpses. Freya said the service robots, instructed only to get rid of them, had brought them to her as organic debris. Hoveler instantly recognized Brabant’s body, and Prinsep and his shipmates identified Superintendent Gazin’s, which was marked with obvious gunshot wounds.

  The commodore stared blankly at the third body. “But who’s this fellow?”

  “It’s certainly not Sandy Kensing,” replied Hoveler, scowling. “I was expecting to see Kensing. But this definitely is someone else.”

  Freya told them: “Nick has identified this body as that of Fowler Aristov.”<
br />
  “Ah.” Prinsep nodded. “The would-be colonial mentor Havot evicted from the medirobot on the yacht.”

  The body of Sandy Kensing remained notably missing. Freya knew nothing of what might have happened to him, alive or dead.

  Nick, having noticed what the newcomers were doing, and growing curious, presently joined the group. His image, standing beside Freya’s on the ‘stage, confirmed the identity of Aristov. Before Nick’s latest reprogramming, he’d seen that face in one of the yacht’s medirobots—a memory, as clear and calm as that of the yacht’s damaged drive, assured him of the fact.

  Nick dropped out again at that point, but the tour proceeded. Soon Prinsep and his two aides, in the company of Nick3 as well as Freya2, were observing a developing female Solarian fetus, through the glass sides of an artificial womb.

  “Another body for Lady Genevieve?”

  Hoveler unhappily admitted that he didn’t know the purpose of this particular project, or even how many bioengineering projects might currently be running.

  Freya said firmly that she had been constrained not to discuss such matters in any depth, unless the Premier was present.

  A few minutes later, when the tour was over, Prinsep sought out Dirac, who seemed willing and even anxious to talk to him. The commodore discussed what he had seen in the lab. But he left out all mention of the three adult corpses.

  Dirac appeared eager to know what the commodore thought about the growth, the manipulation, of new human bodies.

  Actually the Premier felt a great urge to explain, to someone whose opinion he respected, the advantages of his gradually developed plan to cooperate with the berserker. Prinsep was undoubtedly the best candidate currently available.

  Dirac began by asking: “You disapprove of my efforts in bioengineering?”

  “I have some doubts about what I’ve seen so far.”

  “Commodore Prinsep, I would like to satisfy your doubts. The fact is, that since our isolation here, I have become intensely interested in truly fundamental questions.”