Berserker Attack

by Fred Saberhagen

  “Tell me, what is it you wish to see Brother Jovann about?” Saile inquired magisterially, clasping his hands with dignity across his belly.

  They clamored piteously, all at once, until he had to speak sharply to get them to talk one at a time and make sense. Then he heard that, for several days past, a great wolf had been terrorizing their little village. The monstrous beast had killed cattle and even—they swore it! —uprooted crops. The peasants were all talking at once again, and Saile was not sure if they said a child had been devoured, or if a herd boy had fallen and broken his arm, trying to get away from the wolf. In any case, the villagers were desperate. Men scarcely dared to work their fields. They were isolated, and very poor, with no powerful patron to give them aid of any kind, save only the Holy One Himself! And now the saintly Jovann, who must and would do something! They were utterly desperate!

  Brother Saile nodded. In his manner there showed sympathy mixed with reluctance. “And you say your village is several miles distant? In the hills, yes. Well—we shall see. I will do my best for you. Come with me and I will put your case before good Brother Jovann.”

  With a puzzled Will now walking beside him, Vincento entered the cathedral once more and made the best speed that he could down the nave. Back at the monastery, Rudd had chosen this time to bother him with warnings and complaints about the scarcity of food for the beasts. And when he had disentangled himself from that, his old legs had rebelled against climbing the hill a second time, even with Will’s help. Now as Vincento hurried, wheezing for breath, back to his still-swinging pendulum, more than an hour had passed since he had first set the bob in motion.

  For a few seconds he only stared in thoughtful silence at what had happened since his departure. The tiny battlement of sand had been demolished by continuous notches, up to the point where the pendulum’s turning plane had left it behind altogether. That plane had by now inched clockwise through ten or twelve degrees of arc.

  “Will, you’ve helped me in the workship. Now this is another such case, where you must follow my orders precisely.”

  “Aye, master.”

  “First, keep in mind that you are not to stop the swinging of this cable here or disturb it in any way. Understood?”

  “Aye.”

  “Good. Now I want you to climb; there seem to be ladders and platforms enough for you to go up all the way. I want to discover how this swinging cable is mounted, what holds it at the top. Look at it until you can make me a sketch, you have a fair hand at drawing.”

  “Aye, I understand, sir.” Will craned his neck unhappily. “It’s longish bit o’ climbin’, though.”

  “Yes, yes, a coin for you when you’re down. Another when you’ve given me a good sketch. Take your time now, and use your eyes. And remember, do not disturb the cable’s swing.”

  Derron had made only moderate progress toward getting the bonds loosened from his wrists when he heard clumsier feet than the berserker’s climbing toward him. Between the ladder’s uprights Will’s honest face came into view,, then predictably registered shock.

  “… Bandit!” Derron spat, when his hands had been cut free and he could rid himself of the gag. “Must’ve been hiding in here somewhere … forced me up here and tied me up.”

  “Robbed ye, hey?” Will was awed. “Just one of ‘em?”

  “Yes, just one. Uh … I didn’t have any valuables with me, really. Took the wedge from around my neck.”

  “That’s fearsome. One o’ them lone rogues, hey?” Wondering and sympathetic, Will shook his head. “Likely he’d a’ slit your throat, sir, but didn’t want to do no real sacrilege. Think he might still be here about?”

  “No, no, I’m sure he was running away. Long gone by this time.”

  Will went on shaking his head. “Well, You’d better liven up your limbs, sir, before you starts to climb down. I’m going on up, bit of a job to do for master.”

  “Job?”

  “Aye.” Will was already climbing again, seemingly meaning to go right on up into the spire.

  Still on all fours, Derron peered down over the edge of the platform. Vincento’s ginger-colored hair marked a toy figure more than a hundred feet below. Down there the mysteriously moving cable ended in a dot, a ball of some kind that was tracing back and forth with sedate regularity. Derron had seen a pendulum of this size and shape before, somewhere. It had been used as a demonstration of …

  Derron’s muscles locked, after a moment in which he had been near falling over the platform’s edge. He had suddenly realized what Vincento was looking at, what Vincento doubtless had been studying for most of the time Derron had been held captive. On old Earth they had honored its earliest known inventor by naming it the Foucault pendulum.

  “Honorable Vincento!”

  Vincento looked around in surprise and annoyance to discover the young man, Alzay or Valzay or whatever his name was, hurrying toward Vincento in obvious agitation, having evidently just descended from the tiny coiled stair where Will had begun his climb.

  Valzay came hurrying up as if bringing the most vital news, though when he arrived all he had to relate was some imbecilic story about a bandit. Valzay’s eyes were looking sharply at the sawhorses and planks and the little wall of sand, even as he spouted pestiferous wordage that threatened to tangle Vincento’s thoughts.

  Vincento interrupted him. “Young man, I suggest you give your recital to the soldiers.” Then he turned his back on the intruder. Now. If it was not the cable untwisting, and if it proved to be not some trick of the mounting above—then what? Certainly the bones of the cathedral were not creeping counterclockwise. But yet… His mind strained forward, sounding unknown depths… .

  “I see, Messire Vincento, that you have already discovered my little surprise.” Derron saw very clearly how the game was certain to go, how it perhaps had gone already. But he also saw one desperate gamble that was still open to him and he seized the chance.

  “Your—little—surprise?” Vincento’s voice became very deliberate. His brows knit as if presaging thunder, while he turned slowly back to face Derron. “Then it was you who sent that rascally friar to me in the night?”

  The detail of the friar was confirmation, if any was needed, of what the berserker planned. “It was I who arranged this!” Derron gestured with proprietary pride at the pendulum. “I must confess, sir, that I have really been here for several days; at first in the company of some friends, who aided me in this construction.”

  It was a big lie that Derron was improvising, and one that would not stand investigation. But if it had the initial impact that he hoped it would, Vincento would never want to investigate.

  As he told the silent, grim old man how he and his imaginary aides had installed the pendulum, Derron visualized the berserker here at work, catlike, monkeylike, devilish, arranging mounting and cable and weight in order that …

  “… you see before you, Messire Vincento, a firm proof of the rotation of the globe!”

  There was a startled gleam in the old eyes, but no real surprise. Beyond a doubt the desperate gamble had been justified. Now, to see if it could be won. Vincento had become a waiting statue, mouth twisted, eyes unblinking.

  Derron spoke on. “Of course, I have followed your example, distinguished sir, and that of several of our contemporaries, in protecting rightful claim to this discovery while still keeping it secret for my own advantage in further research. To this end I have sent to several distinguished persons, in several parts of the world, anagram messages which encode a description of this experiment.

  “This to keep the secret yet awhile was, as I say, my plan. But when word reached me of your present—difficulties—I found I could not stand idly by.”

  Vincento had not yet moved. “A proof of our globe’s rotation, you say.” The tone was flat, suspended.

  “Ah, forgive me! I had not thought an explanation in detail would be—um. You see, the plane of the pendulum does not rotate, it is our globe that rotates beneath it.” Derro
n hesitated briefly—it was just occurring to Valzay that old Vincento had most likely become just a little slow, a trifle senile. Derron put on what he hoped looked like a faintly indulgent smile and spoke on, more slowly and distinctly. “At the poles of the world, such a device as this would trace daily a full circle of three hundred and sixty degrees. At the equator it would appear not to rotate at all.” Speeding up gradually, he poured in merciless detail his three and a half centuries’ advantage in accumulated knowledge. “Between these extremes, the rate of rotation is proportional to the latitude; here, it is about ten degrees per hour. And since we are in the northern hemisphere, the direction of apparent rotation is clockwise. …”

  From high above, Will was shouting down to his master, “She be mounted free to turn any way, but there be nothing turning her!”

  Vincento shouted up, “Come down!”

  “… bit more study if ‘ee wants a sketch—“

  “Come down!” The thick lips spat it out.

  Derron kept the pressure on as best he could, switching the emphasis now to relentless generosity. “My only wish, of course, is to help you, sir. I have put aside thoughts of personal advantage to come to your rescue. In bygone days you have accomplished very substantial things, very substantial, and you must not now be cast aside. My lance is at your disposal; I will gladly repeat this demonstration of my discovery for the authorities in the Holy City, so that the entire world may witness—“

  “Enough! I have no need of help!” Vincento made the last word an obscenity. “You will not—meddle—in—my— affairs. Not in the least degree!”

  In his contempt and wrath the old man became a towering figure. Derron found himself physically retreating— even as he realized that he had won his gamble, that Vincento’s pride was indeed as monumental as his genius.

  The outburst of proud anger was short-lived. Derron ceased retreating and stood in silence as Vincento, shrinking once more under his burdens of age and weariness and fear, shot him a parting look of hate and turned away. Now Vincento would never use the Foucault proof, nor believe it, nor even investigate in that direction. He would force the whole thing from his mind if he could. The smallness and jealousy that were leading Vincento on to trial and humiliation existed not only in other men, but in himself.

  Derron knew from history that at his trial Vincento would not only recant, he would go beyond what his judges asked or wanted of him and offer to write a new pamphlet, proving that the sun did after all fly in a circle around the world of men.

  My only wish is to help you, sir. Vincento’s shuffling figure dwindled at last to the end of the nave, and at last the door boomed shut behind him. Exhausted, Derron sagged against a column, hearing now in the silence the pendulum’s unperturbed repeated hiss. Will came scrambling down the stair to scowl uncomprehendingly at him and then hurry on after his master.

  And now even Vincento’s tragedy could be forgotten for the moment. Real victory and real hope were powerful stimulants. They gave Derron energy enough to hurry out of the cathedral by a side door and go skipping down a steep stair that led directly to the monastery. If the berserker had not also smashed the backup communication hidden in his staff, he could transmit the joy of victory at once to all the Modern world.

  The enemy had not bothered with anything in his cell. As he hurried toward it along the vaulted passage, an emergency summons from Operations began to throb in the bone behind his ear.

  Brother Saile was puffing, though he had certainly been making no effort to hurry. The narrow cattle path the friars were following went mostly up and down hill, winding its way through scrubby bushes and thin woods. Saile was actually hanging back, and trying, with almost every labored breath, to discourage Brother Jovann from going on.

  “I thought—to have said a few prayers in the village— would have been sufficient. These peasants, as you know— are often foolish. They may have—greatly exaggerated— the depredations of this—supposed wolf.”

  “Then my own peasant foolishness is not likely to cause any harm,” said Jovann, leading on implacably. They were miles from the cathedral now, deep in the wolfs supposed domain. Their peasant supplicants and guides had turned back through fear a quarter of a mile earlier.

  “I spoke too harshly of them. May the Holy One forgive me.” Saile wheezed to the top of a hill and gathered breath for readier speech on the descent. “Now, if this one beast has really caused in a few days all the death and damage attributed to it, or even half so much, it would be utter folly for us to approach it, unarmed as we are. It is not that I doubt for an instant the inscrutable wisdom of Providence that can cause a fish to leap for joy after you have released it, nor do I doubt the story that is told of the gentle little birds listening to your preaching. But a wolf, and especially such a wolf as this, is quite another …”

  Brother Jovann did not appear to be listening very closely. He had paused briefly to follow with his eyes a train of scavenger insects, which crossed the path and vanished into the brush. Then he went on, more slowly, until a similar file appeared a little farther along the trail. There Brother Jovann turned aside and walked noisily into the brush, leading his companion toward the spot where it seemed the two lines of insects must intersect.

  Staff in hand, Derron made the best cross-country time he could, running fifty steps and walking fifty.

  “Odegard!” Time Ops had cried out. “There’s another lifeline just as vital as Vincento’s right there with you. Or he was with you. Now he and one of the others have moved out a couple of miles; they’re about to leave the safety zone. You’ve got to get there and protect him somehow. The berserker will have him cold if it’s out there waiting!”

  And of course it would be out there, in ambush or pursuit. The attack on Vincento had been in deadly earnest, as the first punch in any good one-two should be. But it was the second punch that was really expected to get through and do the damage. And humanity had been left wide open for this one.

  Running fifty steps, walking fifty, Derron steadily covered ground along the bearing Operations had given him. He asked, “Just who am I looking for?”

  And when they told him, he thought he should have guessed the name, should have been alerted by his first look into that loving face.

  In the midst of the thicket there had been havoc. It had happened days ago, for the tree branches that had been broken were now quite dead. And though the insects were still busy amid the wreckage of bone and gray fur on the ground, there was no longer much for them to scavenge.

  “This was a very big wolf,” said Brother Jovann thoughtfully, bending to pick up a piece of jawbone. The bone had been shattered by some violent blow, but this fragment still contained teeth of impressive size.

  “Very big, certainly,” agreed Brother Saile, though he knew little about wolves and had no wish to learn any more. He kept looking about him nervously. The sun was slanting into late afternoon, and to Saile the forest seemed ominously still.

  Jovann was musing aloud. “Now, what manner of creature can it be that deals thus with a big male wolf? Even as I in my greed have sometimes dealt with the bones of a little roast fowl … but no, these bones have not been gnawed for nourishment. Only broken, and broken again, as if by some creature more wantonly savage than any wolf.”

  The name of Brother Jovann symbolized gentleness and love to Modern historians as well as laymen, to skeptics as well as the orthodox temple-members who venerated him as a saint. Like Vincento, St. Jovann had become a towering folk figure, only half-understood.

  “We’re just this hour catching on to Jovann’s practical importance,” said Time Ops’ voice in Derron’s head, as

  Derron ran. “With Vincento stabilized, and all our observers concentrated on the area you’re in, we’re getting a better look at it than ever before. Historically, Jovann’s lifeline goes on about fifteen years from your point, and all along the way it radiates support to other lines. What has been described as ‘good-turn-a-day stuff.’ The
n these other lines tend to radiate life support in turn, and the process propagates on up through history. Our best judgment now is that the disarmament treaty three hundred years after Jovann’s death will fall through, and that an international nuclear war will wipe out our civilization in pre-Modern times, if St. Jovann is terminated at your point.”

  When Time Ops paused, a girl’s voice came in briskly. “A new report for Colonel Odegard.”

  Walking again, Derron asked, “Lisa?”

  She hesitated for just an instant, then continued, business first. “Colonel, the lifeline that was described to you earlier as having an embryonic appearance is moving out of the safety zone after the other two. It seems to be traveling at a high rate of speed, faster than a man or a load-beast can run. We can give no explanation of this. Also, you’re to bear five degrees left.”

  “Understand.” Derron turned five degrees left, as near as he could judge. He was getting out of the lowlands now, and there was a little less mud to impede his progress. “Lisa?”

  “Derron, they let me come on because I said I’d tend strictly to business.”

  “Understand. You do that.” He judged he had walked fifty steps and began to run once more, his breath immediately turning into gasps. “I just want to say—I wish—you were carrying my baby.”

  There was a small, completely feminine sound. But when Lisa’s voice came back on intelligibly, it was cool again, with more bearing corrections to be given.

  * * *

  From the corner of his eye Brother Saile caught the distant moving of something running toward them through the trees and brush. He turned, squinting under the afternoon sun, and with surprise at his own relative calm he saw that their search for the wolf had come to an end. Wolf? The thing approaching should perhaps be called monster or demon instead, but he could not doubt it was the creature that had spread terror among the peasants, come now to find the men who dared to search for it.