Brother Assassin

by Fred Saberhagen

  “Well.” Derron assumed some of the professional historian’s manner, which he had never had much chance to display. “Our sun looks much like any other G-type star that has an Earth-type planet. But in our case appearances are deceiving. Oh, in ordinary human life, time is the same as elsewhere. And interstellar ships that travel faster than light can enter and leave our system—if they take precautions.

  “The first starship to arrive here was an explorer from Earth. Her crew, of course, had no way of knowing about our tricky space-time. While approaching an uninhabited Sirgol, their ship accidentally dropped back through about twenty thousand years—an accident that could have happened nowhere else in the known universe.

  “Only on Sirgol is time travel possible, and then only under certain conditions. One of these conditions seems to be that anyone who goes back more than about five hundred years undergoes enough mental devolution to wipe his memory out. That is what happened to the Earthmen on the explorer. Her crew became the First Men—and the First Women, too, of course—of our mythology. After dropping twenty thousand years, they must have had no memories left at all. They must have crawled around like babies after their ship landed itself.”

  “How could they ever have survived?”

  “We don’t really know. Instinct—and luck. The grace of God, religious people say. We can’t get a look at the First Men, even with spy devices, and fortunately the berserkers can’t reach them either. The first humans on the planet, of course, form an evolutionary peduncle, a true new beginning. And as such they tend to be invisible, unfindable from the future, no matter what techniques are employed.”

  “I thought evolution was just a matter of random mutations, some of which work out and some don’t.” Lisa nibbled at a sweet roll, listening carefully.

  “There’s a good deal more than that involved. You see, matter has organizational energies, as well as the more obvious kinds. The movement of all matter through time is toward greater complexity, raising level after level of organization higher and higher above chaos—the human brain supposedly represents one of the peaks, to date, of this process. Or this is the optimistic view most scientists say they hold. … It doesn’t seem to include the berserkers. Anyway, where was I?”

  “The First People had landed.”

  “Oh, yes. Well, they kept on surviving, somehow, and multiplying. Over thousands of years they built up civilizations from scratch. When the second exploring ship from Earth arrived here, about ten years Earth-time after the first, we had achieved a planetwide government and were just getting started on space travel ourselves. In fact, the second Earth ship was attracted by signals from some of our early interplanetary probes. The crew of the second ship approached more cautiously than the first ship had, realized they were facing a tricky patch of space-time, and landed successfully.

  “Pretty soon the men from Earth had figured out what had happened to the crew of the first ship and were saluting us as their descendants. They also brought us warning of the berserkers. Took some of our people to other systems and gave them a glimpse of what the war against the machines was like. Of course, the people of Earth and other worlds were pleased to have four hundred million new allies, and they deluged us with advice on planet weapons and fortifications, and we spent the next eight years getting ready to defend ourselves. And then about a year ago the berserker fleet came. End of lesson, end of history.”

  Lisa did not seem dismayed by the end of history. She drank some of the so-called juice as if she liked it. “What do you do now, Derron?”

  “Oh, various odd jobs in Time Operations. You see, the berserker offensive in present-time is stalled. They can’t pry us out of these deep caves and they can’t build themselves a base on the planet, or even hold a beachhead on the surface, while we’re here. They’ve discovered the time travel bit, so of course now they’re using it to try and get at us through our past. In their first attack along that line they tried to slaughter everything alive, in true berserker style, but we stopped that rather easily. So their next attempt will probably be more subtle. They’ll kill some important individual or do something else to delay some vital step in our history. Perhaps the invention of the wheel or something like that. Then succeeding steps in our development will automatically be delayed. We’d be in the Middle Ages, perhaps, when the second explorer from Earth arrived. No radio signals to guide the Earthmen to us. Or, if they found us anyway, we’d have no technological base and no modern industry to build ourselves defenses. Earth and other planets have enough trouble defending themselves. Therefore we’d be unprotected when the berserkers came.

  Therefore today no stubborn resistance from the caves—we’d all be either dead or nonexistent; it’s a nice philosophical problem.”

  “Oh! But you’ll be able to stop their time attacks. I’m sure you will!”

  Pour out what bitter hopelessness you might, there was nothing left at last to do with this woman but smile at her and wish her well, and Derron found himself smiling, after two or three false starts. Then he glanced at the version of Time he wore on his wrist. “If it all depends on me, I guess I’d better go and start my day’s heroic fighting.”

  Today the briefing officer for Derron’s sentry shift was Colonel Borss, who as usual handled the job with the somber expectancy of a scriptural prophet.

  “As we all know, yesterday’s defensive action was a tactical success,” the colonel admitted to begin with. In the semidarkness of the briefing room, his pointer skipped across the glowing symbols on the huge display he had prepared. Then Derron, seated near the front, could see the colonel smile as he continued. “But, strategically speaking, we must admit that the situation has somewhat deteriorated.”

  It soon became evident that the cause of the colonel’s gloomy smile was the existence of the enemy staging area, still not accurately located but known to be somewhere more than twenty-one thousand years down. “After the enemy has made three more sorties up from there, three more breakthroughs into real-time, we’ll have three vectors to trace back, enough to give us a positive fix on his staging area. We’ll smash it with a few missiles, and that will kill his entire Time Operations program.”

  The colonel paused before delivering his punch line, “Of course, we have first to deal with the little problem of repelling three more attacks.”

  The audience of junior officers dutifully made faint sounds of laughter. Colonel Borss switched his display screen to show a glowing, treelike shape, which the labels showed to be a type of graph of human history on Sirgol.

  He tapped with his pointer far down on the tree’s trunk, where it was still a slender shoot growing up out of question marks. “We rather expect that the first of the three attacks will fall here. Somewhere near the First Men.”

  Matt, sometimes also called Lion Hunter, felt the afternoon sun warm on his bare shoulders as he turned away from the last familiar landmarks, putting behind him the territory in which he had lived all his twenty-five years.

  To get a better view of the land ahead, into which he and the rest of The People were fleeing, he climbed up onto a shoulder-high rock that stood beside the faint game trail they were following. The little band of The People, now no more in number than a man’s fingers and toes, went shuffling past Matt at a steady pace, walking in a thin and wide-spaced file. They were of all ages. Such garments as they wore were of bark or leather, and aside from their scanty clothing they had little enough to burden them. On this journey no one was hanging back, no one trying to argue the others into stopping or turning around.

  The landscape wavered with the spirits of heat. From atop the rock Matt could see swamps ahead, and barren hills. Nothing very inviting. There might be strange dangers as well as familiar ones in this unfamiliar land, but everyone had agreed in council that nothing they might encounter could be as terrible as that from which they fled—the new beasts, lions with flesh of shiny stone, lions who could not be hurt by the stones or arrows of men, who came killing by day and
night, who could kill with only a glance of their fiery eyes.

  In the past two days, ten of The People had been slain by the stone-lions. And the survivors had been able to do nothing but hide, hardly daring even to look for puddles from which to drink or to pull up roots to eat.

  Slung over Matt’s shoulder was the only bow now left to the survivors of The People. The other bows had been burnt up or broken, along with the men who had tried to use them in defense against the stone-lions. Tomorrow, Matt thought, he would try hunting meat in the new country. No one was carrying any food. Some of the young ones wailed now and then with hunger, until the women pinched their noses and mouths to keep them quiet.

  The file of The People had passed Matt now. As he ran his eye along the line of familiar backs, he found their number one short. He was frowning as he hopped down from his rock.

  A few strides brought him up to those in the rear of the march. “Where is Dart?” he asked. It was not that Matt had any idea of controlling the comings and goings of the members of the band, though he more than anyone else was their leader. It was simply that he wanted to know everything that was going on, with the stone-lions behind them and an unknown land ahead.

  Dart was an orphan, but he was now too big to be considered a child any longer, and so none of the other adults were especially concerned.

  “He kept saying how hungry he was,” a woman said. “And then a little while ago, when you were in the rear, he ran on toward those swampy woods ahead. I suppose looking for food.”

  Derron was just buying Lisa some lunch—from the automat in the patients’ lounge, since she was still in the hospital under observation—when the public address speakers began to broadcast a list of Time Operations men who were to report for duty at once. He heard his name included.

  He scooped up a sandwich to eat as he ran and bade Lisa a hasty good-bye. Quick as he was, most of the group of twenty-four men were already assembled when he reached the room to which they had been summoned. Colonel Borss was pacing back and forth impatiently, discouraging questions.

  Soon after Derron’s arrival, the last man on the list came in, and the colonel could begin.

  “Gentlemen, the first assault has come, just about as predicted. The keyhole has not yet been pinpointed, but it’s approximately three hundred years after the most probable time of the First Men.

  “As in the previous attack, we are faced with six enemy machines breaking into real-time. But in this case the machines are not fliers, or at least they seem not to be operating in an airborne mode. They are probably antipersonnel devices that move on legs or rollers; certainly they will be invulnerable to any means of self-defense possessed by the Neolithic population.

  “We anticipate great difficulty in finding the keyhole, because the destructive changes caused directly by this attack are quantitatively much less than those we saw last time. This time the berserkers are evidently concentrating on some historically important small group or individual. Just who in the invaded area is so important, we don’t know yet, but we will. Any questions on what I’ve said so far?— Then here’s Colonel Nilos, to brief you on your part in our planned countermeasures.”

  Nilos, an earnest young man with a rasping voice, came straight to the point. “You twenty-four men all have high scores in training on the master-slave androids. No one has had any real combat experience with them yet, but you soon will. I’m authorized to tell you that you’re relieved of all other duties as of now.”

  Well, I wanted a transfer, thought Derron, leaning back in his chair with a mental shrug. Around him the reactions ranged from joy to dismay, voiced in muted exclamations. The other men were all non-coms or junior officers like himself, drawn from various sections in Operations. He knew a few of them, but only slightly.

  The murmurings of pleasure or distress at the change of duty and the imminence of combat continued as the two dozen men were conducted to a nearby ready room, where they were left to wait idly for some minutes; and as they were taken by elevator down to Operations Stage Three, on the lowest and most heavily defended level yet excavated.

  Stage Three, a great echoing cave the size of a large aircraft hangar, was spanned by a catwalk at a good distance above the floor. From this catwalk, looking like space suits on puppet strings, were suspended the two dozen master-units that Derron and the other operators were to wear. On the floor below the masters, in a neat corresponding rank, stood their slaves, the metal bodies taller and broader than those of men, so that they dwarfed the technicians who now labored at giving them the final touches of combat readiness.

  In small rooms at the side of Stage Three, the operators were given individual briefings, shown maps of the terrain where they were to be dropped, and provided with an outline of the scanty information available on the Neolithic semi-nomads they were to protect. Then, after a last brief medical check, the operators dressed in leotards and marched up onto the catwalk.

  At this point the word was passed down from high authority to hold everything. For a few moments no one seemed to know the cause of the delay; then a huge screen at one side of the stage lit up, filled by the image of the bald massive head of the Planetary Commander himself.

  “Men …” boomed the familiar amplified voice. Then there was a pause as the image frowned off-camera. “What’s that?” it shouted after a moment. “Operations has them waiting for me? Tell him to get on with the job! I can give pep talks anytime! What does he think—“

  The Planetary Commander’s voice continued to rise, but then was cut off along with his picture. Derron was left with the impression that Number One still had a lot to say, and, indifferent as Derron was to the progress of his own military career, he was glad it was not being said to him.

  The activity in Stage Three promptly got underway again. A pair of technicians came to help Derron into his assigned master-unit, which was a process like climbing down into a heavy diving suit suspended on cables. The master was an enormously awkward thing to wear until the servo power was turned on. Then the thick body and heavy limbs at once became delicately responsive to their wearer’s slightest movement.

  “Slave power coming on,” said a voice in Derron’s helmet. And a moment later it seemed to all his senses that he had been transported from the master down into the body of the slave-unit standing beneath it on the floor. As the control of its movements passed over to him, the slave started gradually to lean to one side, and he moved its foot to maintain balance as naturally as he moved his own. Tilting back his head, he could look up through the slave’s eyes to see the master-unit, with himself inside, maintaining the same attitude on its complex suspension.

  “Form a file for launching,” was the next command in his helmet. The slaves’ metal feet echoed on the hard floor of the cavernous chamber as the squad of them faced left into line. Human technicians, who seemed suddenly to have shrunk, scurried to get out of the way. At the head of the line of metal men the floor of the stage blossomed out suddenly into a bright mercurial disk.

  “… four, three, two, one, launch!”

  With immense and easy power the line of tall bodies ran toward the circle on the dark floor, disappearing in turn as they reached it. The figure ahead of Derron jumped and vanished. Then he himself, in proxy, leaped out over the silvery spot.

  His metal feet came down on grass, and he staggered briefly on uneven ground. He was standing in shadowy daylight in the midst of a leafy forest.

  He checked a compass set in the slave’s wrist and then moved at once to a place from which he could get a good look at the sun. It was low in the western sky, which indicated that he had missed his planned moment of arrival by some hours—if not by days or months or years. He reported the apparent error at once, subvocalizing to keep the slave’s speaker silent.

  “Start coursing then, Odegard,” said one of the controllers. “We’ll try to get a fix on you.”

  “Understand.”

  Derron began to walk a spiral path through the woods. Whi
le he did this he kept alert for any sign of the enemy or of the people he had been sent to protect. But the main purpose of this coursing maneuver was to splash up a few waves—to create disturbances in the historical positionings of the plant and animal lifelines about him, disturbances that a skilled sentry some twenty thousand years in the future would hopefully be able to see and pinpoint.

  After Derron had walked in a gradually widening spiral for some ten minutes, alarming perhaps a hundred small animals, crushing perhaps a thousand unseen insects underfoot, and bruising uncountable leaves of grass and tree, the impersonal controller’s voice spoke again.

  “All right, Odegard, we’ve got you spotted. You’re slightly off spatially, but in the right direction to let you catch up with your people. You’ll need to do some catching up because you’re between four and five hours late. The sun’s going down, right?”

  “It is.”

  “All right, then, bear about two hundred degrees from magnetic north. If you walk that course for a quarter of an hour you should be very near your people.”

  “Understand.” Instead of having a chance to scout the area before his people walked through it, he would just be hurrying to catch them before something else caught them. Derron started off at a brisk pace, checking his compass regularly to keep the slave going in a straight line. Ahead of him, the wooded land sloped gradually downward into a swampy area. Beyond the farther edge of swamp, several hundred meters from his present position, there rose low rocky hills.

  “Odegard, we’re getting indications of another disturbing factor, right there on top of you. Sorry we can’t give you a good bearing on it. It’s almost certainly one of the berserkers.”

  “Understand.” This kind of work was more to Derron’s taste than being immobilized in a sentry’s chair; but still the weight of forty million lives was back on his neck again, as deadly as ever.

  Some minutes passed. Derron’s progress had slowed, for he was having to keep a lookout in all directions while planning a good path for the heavy slave-unit to take through the marshy ground. And then all at once he heard trouble, plain and unmistakable—it sounded like a child screaming in terror.