Berserker Kill

by Fred Saberhagen

  Acting Supervisor Zador, a young woman rallying well from what must have been her considerable surprise at today’s dramatic intrusion, responded with a few facts clothed in some polite inanity. The lab’s visit here in the Imatran system had been scheduled for at least several standard months, perhaps a year or more.

  After confirming yet again that she had heard Lady Genevieve correctly, that she really planned to make a donation today, Dr.

  Zador hurriedly conferred with a couple of her more experienced human aides. Hoveler, being a bioengineer rather than a medic, was not among them. Then workers began moving purposefully about. The necessary technical arrangements were hurriedly begun offstage so that the distinguished visitor would not be subject to any avoidable inconveniences or delays.

  Meanwhile, a pair of junior lab workers standing not far behind Hoveler had begun to murmur to each other. They were not really including Hoveler in their conversation, but they spoke without caring whether he could hear them.

  One worker said, “Evidently their wedding went off as scheduled.” There had been some speculation among cynical observers of politics that the premier’s recent nuptials might not.

  “Yes! A considerable political event, if nothing else.”

  In contrast to the widespread doubts as to whether the abruptly arranged wedding would actually take place, there had been little or no question that its purpose was primarily political. The union of two dissimilar families, or perhaps more accurately, dynasties, had been a high-priority goal of certain factions, and anathema to others. Thus the haste with which the alliance had been concluded.

  One of the murmuring workers within Hoveler’s hearing now remarked that the dynastic couple had met each other for the first time only a few days before the ceremony.

  The colonizing project in which the research station played a substantial role had long been favored by Premier Dirac and by a majority of the factions upon which the Premier depended for political support. In fact there were many who called him the chief architect of the plan.

  Though this visit on a high political level had obviously taken Acting Supervisor Zador by surprise, she still managed to express her satisfaction with commendable coherence. Lady Genevieve’s donation would certainly increase the support offered in certain quarters for the workers here in the biolab- indeed, for the whole colonization project-even if, as Dr. Zador thoughtfully refrained from mentioning, the same act guaranteed opposition in other quarters.

  While the hasty preparations continued offstage for the actual donation, Lady Genevieve and the acting supervisor went on with their public chat. The visitor’s schedule in the Imatran system over the next few days-a schedule the publicist was even now making available to all, in the form of elegant printouts-was going to be a crowded one, and Lady Genevieve regretted that she would not be able to spend as much time as she would like aboard the station. Or at least that was the interpretation Hoveler put on her tired murmur, words now gradually fading toward inaudibility.

  Some of the lady’s aides were now trying unobtrusively to hurry the medics and the technicians along. Someone said that the small ship in which her party had arrived was standing by at the hatch where it had docked, and that the next stop on her itinerary was probably no more than an hour away.

  The lady herself did indeed look tired, thought Hoveler with growing sympathy; his considerable height allowed him to see her over the heads of most of the other people now crowding around.

  Still, she was maintaining her composure bravely, even when some delay in the technical arrangements prolonged the awkward pause which ensued after everything that needed saying had been said.

  Hoveler could understand why making the arrangements required a little time. Among the practical questions that had to be quickly answered was in which treatment room the donation was going to be accomplished, and which human surgeon was going to oversee the operation-the actual removal of the zygote from the uterus and its preservation undamaged were almost always accomplished by machine. Medirobot specialists, hardware vivified by expert and more-than-expert systems operating almost independently of direct human control, possessed a delicacy and sureness of touch superior to that of even the finest fleshly surgeon.

  Presently Hoveler noted that at least the treatment room, one of a row over at one side of the lab, had now been selected.

  When the door to the cubicle-sized chamber was briefly open, the saddle-like device, part of the medirobot specialist inside, was briefly visible.

  At last one of Dr. Zador’s aides timidly informed the lady that they were ready. The Premier’s young bride smiled a tired smile and announced that she was going to have to disappear briefly from public view. For a few minutes she would be accorded privacy with the machines, probably under the supervision of one carefully chosen human operator-very likely another task that would have to be assumed by the acting supervisor, for Dr. Zador appeared to be accompanying her.

  The distinguished visitor, being gently ushered along in the proper direction, which took her farther from the large door by which she had come into the lab, looked at the moment rather appealingly lost and bewildered. Hoveler, on hearing a faint murmur from some of his co-workers, knew that she was evoking feelings of protective pity in others besides himself.

  As Lady Genevieve disappeared inside the doorway, the PR

  people established themselves a few meters in front of that aperture and began to furnish commentary, explaining the need for future colonists. Their message of course was being recorded on the spot.

  Hoveler, shaking his head, once more seated himself at his workbench. But he could not free his mind of the outer world’s distractions and soon gave up any attempt at work until the lab should be cleared of visitors again.

  Leaning back in his chair, he smiled vaguely in the direction of the treatment room. He would have liked to assure this latest donor that the medical technicalities involved in the safe evolution of an early pregnancy were brief, and with the best people and equipment available, ought to be no worse than momentarily uncomfortable. But then she must already have been made well aware of those facts.

  In a very few minutes the technicalities had in fact been completed, evidently without incident, and Genevieve Sardou, the Premier’s no-doubt-beloved bride, emerged smiling, looking tired but well, from the private room.

  Dr. Zador had remained behind in the treatment room; Hoveler understood that she would still be communing with the machinery there to make sure that no last-moment glitches had developed.

  Meanwhile the eminent visitor herself, still smiling, wearing her neat white dress as if she had never taken it off, showed no signs that anything disagreeable had happened to her during the last few minutes. Already she was once more graciously discussing with some of the workers and the media people her reasons for being here. Much of what she now said, mostly in answer to questions, was a repetition of what she had said earlier.

  It seemed that the lady’s rather domineering publicist now decided to do a greater share of the talking, while Genevieve limited herself to trying to make the right sounds, trying to be agreeable. In that the Premier’s bride succeeded well enough, Hoveler thought. But, at least in the eyes of some observers, she could not help giving the impression of being lost.

  Then Hoveler the bioengineer, still watching, gradually changed his mind. Lost was probably the wrong word. Almost certainly out of her depth, perhaps out of her place. But far from helpless. And certainly attractive; yes, definitely that. Grace, femininity, were integral parts of Lady Genevieve. She was a young, physically small woman, with something elfin about her, her face and coloring showing a mixture of the races of old Earth, with Indonesian, if anything, predominant.

  And was she really pleased to be here? Really as delighted as she somewhat wearily claimed to be, at visiting what she could call without flattery the finest prenatal facility in this part of the Galaxy? Was the lady really as overjoyed as she said she was to be making this very hu
man contribution on behalf of her husband and herself?

  Well, perhaps. She was obviously intelligent, and Hoveler had somehow got the impression that she would not easily be bullied into doing anything she didn’t want to do. Perhaps the donation really resulted at least partly from a wish to be free of the responsibility of raising her own child.

  Now a murmur came drifting through the laboratory, a raising and swiveling of media devices, a general shifting of the immediate onlookers to gain a better point of view. Dr. Zador, still wearing her surgeon’s mask-that article was now chiefly symbolic; maybe one of the media people had asked her to put it on-was emerging from the treatment cubicle, smiling as she held up the hand-sized blue statglass tile that now presumably contained the latest colonist-or protocolonist, rather-encapsulated for viable long-term storage. The tile was basically a flat blue rectangle the size of a man’s palm, bearing narrow color-coded identification stripes. At the urging of the media people, Acting Supervisor Zador once more held the encapsulated specimen aloft-higher, this time-to be admired and recorded.

  And now, in seeming anticlimax, the station’s central communications facility was signaling discreetly for someone’s, anyone’s, attention. The signal was not attracting much notice, but it got Hoveler’s by means of a mellow audio pulsing through the nearest holostage, a device jutting up out of the deck like a flat-topped electronic tree stump. The bioengineer, looking around, found himself at the moment nearer than anyone else to the holostage. And no one else seemed exactly in a hurry to respond to the call.

  As soon as Hoveler answered, the electronic voice of Communications, one facet of the laboratory vessel’s own computerized intelligence, informed him politely that their most distinguished visitor, Lady Genevieve, had a personal message waiting.

  “Can it wait a little longer?”

  “I believe the call will be considered a very important one,”

  said the electronic voice. That modest stubbornness on the part of Communications somehow conveyed, to Hoveler at least, the suggestion that someone closely associated with the Premier Dirac, if not Dirac himself, was trying to get through.

  “Just a moment, then.” Putting on such authoritative bearing as he was able to summon up, and using his above-average size in as gentle a manner as was consistent with effectiveness, Hoveler worked his way through the jealously constricted little crowd to almost within reach of the lady; at this range he could convey the information without shouting it boorishly.

  The lady’s bright eyes turned directly, searchingly, on him for the first time as he spoke to her. Seen at close range, she was somehow more attractive. She murmured something soft to the effect that any direct message from her husband seemed unlikely; to her best knowledge the Premier was still light-years away.

  After making hasty excuses to the people in her immediate vicinity, she quickly moved the few steps to the nearest holostage.

  Hoveler watched as the machine suddenly displayed the head and shoulders, as real and solid in appearance as if the body itself were there, of a youngish, rather portly man dressed in space-crew togs, pilot’s insignia on his loose collar. The man’s eyes focused at once on the lady, and his head awarded her a jaunty nod. It was a gesture on the verge of arrogance.

  His voice rasped: “Nicholas Hawksmoor, architect and pilot, at your service, my lady.”

  The name was vaguely familiar to Hoveler. He had heard some passing mention of Hawksmoor and had the impression the man was some kind of special personal agent of Dirac’s, but Hoveler had never seen him before. His image on the holostage was rather handsome.

  From the look on Lady Genevieve’s face, it seemed that she too had little if any acquaintance with this fellow. And as if she too recognized only the name, she answered tentatively.

  Hoveler watched and listened, but no one else-except the lady herself, of course-was paying much attention to the conversation at the moment. Hawksmoor now conveyed in a few elegant phrases the fact that he had talked directly with her husband only a few days ago, more recently than she herself had seen the Premier, and that he was bringing her personal greetings from Dirac.

  “Well then, Nicholas Hawksmoor, I thank you. Was there anything else?”

  “Oh, from my point of view, my lady, a great deal else.” His tone was calm, impertinent. “Are you interested in architecture, by any chance?”

  Lady Genevieve blinked. “Only moderately, I suppose. Why?”

  “Only that I have come here to this system, at the Premier’s orders naturally, to study its existing architecture and ekistics. I hope to play a major role in the final design of the colonial vehicles when the great project really gets under way at last.”

  “How very important.”

  “Yes.” After chewing his lip thoughtfully for a moment, the pilot asked in a quieter voice, “You’ve heard the Premier speak of me?”

  “Yes,” Lady Genevieve answered vaguely. “Where are you now, Nick? I may call you Nick, may I not, as he does?”

  “Indeed you may, my lady.” Brashness had now entirely left his manner; it was as if an innate arrogance had now given way to some deeper feeling.

  Nick reported to the Lady Genevieve that he was even now at the controls of the small ship in which he customarily drove himself about and which he used in his work.

  Hoveler’s interest had been caught, naturally enough, by the lady when she first appeared, and now a more personal curiosity had been aroused as well. He was still watching. It did not occur to him-it seldom did-that it might be rude to stare. How interesting it was, the way this upstart Nicholas-whoever he was-and young Lady Genevieve were still looking into each other’s imaged eyes-as if both were aware that something had been born between the two of them.

  It was at this very moment that the sound of the first alarm reached the laboratory.

  Hoveler, with his natural gift or burden of intense concentration, was not really immediately aware of that distant clamor. The Lady Genevieve was scarcely conscious, either, of the new remote signal. For her it could have been only one more muted sound, blending into the almost alien but gentle audio background of this unfamiliar place. And the whole Imatran solar system was deemed secure, as people sometimes remarked, to the point of dullness. The first stage of an alert, at last in this part of the large station, had been tuned down to be really dangerously discreet.

  For the next minute it was possible for everyone else in the laboratory to disregard the warning entirely. Then, when people did begin to take notice, almost everyone considered the noise nothing more than a particularly ill-timed practice alert.

  In fact, as Hawksmoor realized well before almost anyone else, the signal they were hearing was a quite genuine warning of an oncoming attack. Even he did not realize at once that the signal was so tragically delayed that those hearing it would be able to do very little before the attacker arrived.

  “Excuse me,” said Nick to Lady Genevieve, not more than one second after the first bell sounded in the lab; before another second had passed, his image had flickered away.

  Heartbeats passed. The lady waited, wondering gently, and for the moment dully, what kind of problem had arisen on the young pilot’s ship to provoke such an abrupt exit on his part. For a moment or two her eyes, silently questioning, came back to Hoveler’s. He could see her visibly wondering whether to turn away from the holostage and get back to her duties of diplomacy.

  But very soon, not more than ten seconds after the first disregarded signal, a notably louder alarm kicked in, shattering the illusory peace and quiet.

  This was a sound that could not well be ignored. People were irritated, and at the same time were beginning to wake up.

  ” Is this a practice alert? What a time to choose for-”

  Hoveler heard someone else answer, someone who sounded quietly lost: “No. It’s not practice.”

  And a moment later, as if in affirmation, some kind of explosion in nearby space smote the solid outer hull of the station with a wave
front of radiation hard enough to ring the metal like a gong. Even the artificial gravity generators in the interior convulsed for a millisecond or two, making the laboratory deck lurch underfoot.

  Acting Supervisor Zador had turned to an intercom installation and was in communication with the station’s optoelectronic intelligence. Turning to her eminent visitor, eyes widened whitely around their irises of startling blue, she said, “That was a ship nearby being blown up. I’m afraid it was your ship. Your pilot must have undocked and pulled out when he saw…”

  Zador’s voice trailed off. The lady was only staring back at her, still smiling faintly, obviously not yet able to understand.

  Indeed, it seemed that no one in the lab could understand. The hideous truth could not instantly be accommodated by people who had such a press of other business in their lives to think about. Long seconds were needed for it to burrow into everyone’s awareness. When truth at last struck home, it provoked a collective frozen instant, the intake of deep breaths, then panic.

  A genuine attack, unheard of here in the Imatran system, was nevertheless roaring in, threatening the existence of everything that breathed.

  ” Berserkers!” A lone voice screamed out the terrible word.

  No, only one berserker. Moments later, the first official announcement, coming over loudspeakers in the artificially controlled tones of the station’s own unshakable Communications voice, made this distinction, as if in some strange electronic attempt to be reassuring.

  But to the listeners aboard the station, the number of times, the number of shapes in which death might be coming for them was only a very academic distinction indeed; the lab roiled in screaming panic.