Short Fiction Complete

by Fred Saberhagen

  The Great Hall was where Nogara met daily for feasting and pleasure with the forty or fifty people who were with him on Nirvana, as aides or crewmen or entertainers. But when he entered the Hall now he found it empty, save for one man who stood at attention beside a coffin.

  Johann Karlsen’s body and whatever remained of his life were sealed under the glass top of the heavy casket, which contained its own refrigeration and revival systems, controlled by a fiber-optic key theoretically impossible to duplicate. This key Nogara now demanded, with a gesture, from the courier captain.

  The captain had the key hung round his neck, and it took him a moment to pull the golden chain over his head and hand it to Nogara. It was another moment before he remembered to bow; he was a spaceman and not a courtier. Nogara ignored the lapse of courtesy. It was his governors and admirals who were re-instituting ceremonies of rank; he himself cared nothing about how subordinates gestured and postured, so long as they obeyed intelligently.

  Only now, with the key in his own hand, did Nogara look down at his frozen half-brother. The plotting doctors had shaved away Johann’s short beard, and his hair. His lips were marble pale, and his sightless open eyes were ice. But still the face above the folds of the draped and frozen sheet was undoubtedly Johann’s. There was something that would not freeze.

  “Leave me for a time,” Nogara said. He turned to face the end of the Great Hall and waited, looking out through the wide viewpoint to where the hypermass blurred space like a bad lens.

  When he heard the door ease shut behind the courier captain he turned back—and found himself facing the short figure of Oliver Mical, the man he had selected to replace Johann as governor on Flamland. Mical must have entered as the spaceman left, which Nogara thought might be taken as symbolic of something. Resting his hands familiarly on the coffin, Mical raised one graying eyebrow in his habitual expression of weary amusement. His rather puffy face twitched in an overcivilized smile.

  “How does Browning’s line go?”

  Mical mused, glancing down at Karlsen. “ ‘Doing the king’s work all the dim day long’—and now, this reward of virtue.”

  “Leave me,” said Nogara.

  Mical was in on the plot, as was hardly anyone else except the Flamland doctors. “I thought it best to appear to share your grief,” he said. Then he looked at Nogara and ceased to argue. He made a bow that was mild mockery when the two of them were alone, and walked briskly to the door. Again it closed.

  So, Johann. If you had plotted against me, I would have had you killed outright. But you were never a plotter, it was just that you served me too successfully, my enemies and friends alike began to love you too well. So here you are, my frozen conscience, the last conscience I’ll ever have. Sooner or later you would have become ambitious, so it was either do this to you or kill you.

  Now I’ll put you away safely, and maybe someday you’ll have another chance at life. It’s a strange thought that someday you may stand musing over my coffin as I now stand over yours. No doubt you’ll pray for what you think is my soul . . . I can’t do that for you, but I wish you sweet dreams. Dream of your Believers’ heaven, not of your hell.”

  Nogara imagined a brain at absolute zero, its neurons super-conducting, repeating one dream on and on and on. But that was nonsense.

  “I cannot risk my power, Johann.” This time he whispered the words aloud. “It was either this or have you killed.” He turned again to the wide viewport.

  II

  “I suppose Thirty-three’s gotten the body to Nogara already,” said the Second Officer of Esteeler Courier Thirty-four, looking at the bridge chronometer. “It must be nice to declare yourself an emperor or whatever, and have people hurl themselves all over the galaxy to do everything for you.”

  “Can’t be nice to have someone bring you your brother’s corpse,” said Captain Thurman Holt, studying his astrogational sphere. His ship’s C-plus drive was rapidly stretching a lot of time-like interval between itself and the Flamland system. Even if Holt was not enthusiastic about his mission, he was glad to be away from Flamland, where Mical’s political police were taking over.

  “I wonder,” said the Second, and chuckled.

  “What’s that mean?”

  The Second looked over both shoulders, out of habit formed on Flamland. “Have you heard this one?” he asked. “Nogara is God—but half of his spacemen are atheists.”

  Holt smiled, but only faintly. “He’s no mad tyrant, you know. Esteel’s not the worst-run government in the galaxy. Nice guys don’t put down rebellions.”

  “Karlsen did all right.”

  “That’s right, he did.”

  The Second grimaced. “Oh sure, Nogara could be worse, if you want to be serious about it. He’s a politician. But I just can’t stand that crew that’s accumulated around him the last few years. We’ve got an example on board now of what they do. If you want to know the truth I’m a little scared now that Karlsen’s dead.”

  “Well, we’ll soon see them.” Holt sighed, and stretched. “I’m going to look in on the prisoners. The bridge is yours, Second.”

  “I relieve you, sir. Do the man a favor and kill him, Thurm.”

  A minute later, looking through the spy-plate into the courier’s small brig, Holt could wish with honest compassion that his male prisoner was dead.

  He was an outlaw chieftain named Janda, and his capture had been the last success of Karlsen’s Flamland service, putting a virtual end to the rebellion. Janda had been a tall man, a brave rebel, and a brutal bandit. He had raided and fought against Nogara’s Esteeler empire until there was no hope left, and then he had surrendered to Karlsen.

  “My pride commands me to conquer my enemy,” Karlsen had written once, in what he thought was to be a private letter. “My honor forbids me to humble or hate my enemy.” But Mical’s political police operated with a different philosophy.

  The outlaw might still be longboned, but Holt had never seen him stand tall. The manacles still binding his wrists and ankles were of plastic and supposedly would not abrade human skin, but they served no sane purpose now and Holt would have removed them if he could.

  A stranger seeing the girl Lucinda who sat now at Janda’s side to feed him, might have supposed her to be his daughter. She was his sister, five years younger than he. She was also a girl of rare beauty, and perhaps Mical’s police had motives other than mercy in sending her to Nogara’s court unmarked and un-brain washed. It was rumored that the demand for certain kinds of entertainment was strong among the courtiers, and the turnover among the entertainers high.

  Holt had so far kept himself from believing such stories. He opened the brig now—he kept it locked only to prevent Janda’s straying out and falling childlike into an accident—and went in.

  When the girl Lucinda had first come aboard his ship her eyes had shown helpless hatred of every Esteeler. Holt had been gentle and as helpful as possible to her in the days since then, and there was not even dislike in the face she raised to him now—there was a hope which it seemed she had to share with someone.

  She said: “I think he spoke my name, a few minutes ago.”

  “Oh?” Holt bent to look more closely at Janda, and could see no change. The outlaw’s eyes still stared glassily, the right eye now and then dripping a tear that seemed to have no connection with any kind of emotion. Janda’s jaw was as slack as ever, and his whole body as awkwardly slumped.

  “Maybe—” Holt didn’t finish.

  “What?” She was almost eager.

  Gods of Space, he couldn’t let himself get involved with this girl. He almost wished to see hatred in her eyes again.

  “Maybe,” he said gently, “it will be better for your brother if he doesn’t make any recovery now. You know where he’s going.”

  Lucinda’s hope, such as it was, was shocked away by his words. She was silent, staring at her brother as if she saw something new.

  Holt’s wrist-intercom sounded.

  “Captain
here,” he acknowledged.

  “Sir, reporting a ship detected and calling us. Bearing five o’clock level to our course. Small and normal.”

  The last three words were the customary reassurance that a sighted ship was not possibly a berserker’s giant hull. Berserkers all looked much alike, and what Flamland outlaws were left had no deep space ships, so Holt had no reason to be cautious.

  He went casually back to the bridge and looked at the small shape on the detector screen. It was unfamiliar to him, but that was hardly surprising, as there were many shipyards orbiting many planets. Why, though, should any ship approach and hail him in deep space?

  Plague?

  “No, no plague,” answered a radio voice, through bursts of static, when he put the question to the stranger. The video signal from the other ship was also jumpy, making it hard to see the speaker’s face. “Caught a speck of dust on my last jump, and my fields are shaky. Will you take a few passengers aboard?”

  “Certainly.” For a ship on the brink of a C-plus jump to collide with the gravitation field of a sizable dust-speck was a rare accident, but not unheard-of; and it would explain the noisy communications. There was still nothing to alarm Holt.

  The stranger sent over a launch which clamped to the courier’s airlock. Wearing a smile of welcome for distressed passengers, Holt opened the lock. In the next moment he and the half-dozen men who made up his crew were caught helpless by an inrush of man-sized machines—they were a berserker’s boarding party, cold and ancient, merciless as nightmare.

  The machines seized the courier so swiftly and efficiently that no one could offer real resistance, but they did not immediately kill any of the humans. They tore the drive units from one of the lifeboats and herded Holt and his crew and his erstwhile prisoners into the boat.

  “It wasn’t a berserker on the screen, it wasn’t,” the Second Officer kept repeating to Holt. The humans sat side by side, jammed against one another in the small space. The machines were allowing them air and water and food, and had started to take them out one at a time for questioning.

  “I know, it didn’t look like one,” Holt answered. “The berserkers are probably forming themselves into new shapes, building themselves new weapons. That’s only logical, after the Stone Place. The only odd thing is that no one foresaw it.”

  A hatch clanged open, and a pair of roughly man-shaped machines entered the boat, picking their way precisely among the nine cramped humans until they reached the one they wanted.

  “No, he can’t talk!” Lucinda shrieked. “Don’t take him!”

  But the machines could not or would not hear her. They pulled Janda to his feet and marched him out. The girl followed, dragging at them, trying to argue with them. Holt could only scramble uselessly after her in the narrow space, afraid that one of the machines would turn and kill her. But they only kept her from following them out of the lifeboat, pushing her back from the hatch with metal hands as gently resistless as time. Then they were gone with Janda, and the hatch was closed again. Lucinda stood gazing at it blankly. She did not move when Holt put his arm around her.

  III

  After a timeless period of waiting, the humans saw the hatch open again. The machines were back, but they did not return Janda. Instead they had come to take Holt.

  Vibrations echoed through the courier’s hull; the machines seemed to be rebuilding her. In a small chamber sealed off by a new bulkhead from the rest of the ship, the berserker computer-brain had set up electronic eyes and ears and a speaker for itself, and here Holt was taken to be interrogated.

  Speaking with a collection of recorded human words, the berserker questioned Holt at great length. Almost every question concerned Johann Karlsen. It was known that the berserkers regarded Karlsen as their chief enemy, but this one seemed to be obsessed with him—and unwilling to believe that he was really dead.

  “I have captured your charts and astrogational settings,” the berserker reminded Holt. “I know your course is to Nirvana, where supposedly the non-functioning Karlsen has been taken. Describe this Nirvanaship used by the life-unit Nogara.”

  So long as it had asked only about a dead man, Holt had given the berserker straight answers, not wanting to be tripped up in a useless lie. But a flagship was a different matter, and now he hesitated. Still, there was little he could say about Nirvana if he wanted to. And he and his fellow prisoners had had no chance to agree on any plan for deceiving the berserker; certainly it must be listening to everything they said in the lifeboat.

  “I’ve never seen the Nirvana,” he answered truthfully. “But logic tells me it must be a strong ship, since the highest human leaders travel on it.” There was no harm in telling the machine what it could certainly deduce for itself.

  A door opened suddenly, and Holt stared in surprise as a strange man entered the interrogation chamber. Then he saw that it was not a man, but some creation of the berserker. Perhaps its flesh was plastic, perhaps some product of tissue-culture.

  “Hi, are you Captain Holt?” asked the figure. There was no gross flaw in it, but a ship camouflaged with the greatest skill looks like nothing so much as a ship that has been camouflaged.

  When Holt was silent, the figure asked: “What’s wrong?” Its speech alone would have given it away, to an intelligent human who listened carefully.

  “You’re not a man,” Holt told it.

  The figure sat down and went limp.

  The berserker explained: “You see I am not capable of making an imitation life-unit that will be accepted by real ones face to face. Therefore I require that you, a real life-unit, help me make certain of Karlsen’s death.”

  Holt said nothing.

  “I am a special device,” the berserker said, “built by the berserkers with one prime goal, to bring about with certainty Karlsen’s death. If you help me prove him dead, I will willingly free you and the other life-units I now hold. If you refuse to help, all of you will receive the most unpleasant stimuli until you change your mind.”

  Holt did not believe that it would ever willingly set them free. But he had nothing to lose by talking, and he might at least gain for himself and the others a death free of most unpleasant stimuli. Berserkers preferred to be efficient killers, not sadists, though during the long war they had become experts on the human nervous system.

  “What sort of help do you want from me?” Holt asked.

  “When I have finished building myself into this courier we are going on to Nirvana, where you will deliver your prisoners. I have read the orders. After being interviewed by the human leaders on Nirvana, the prisoners are to be taken on Esteel for confinement. Is it not so?”

  “It is.”

  The door opened again, and Janda shuffled in, bent and bemused.

  “Can’t you spare this man any more questioning?” Holt asked the berserker. “He can’t help you in any way.”

  There was only silence. Holt waited uneasily. At last, looking at Janda, he realized that something about the outlaw had changed. The tears had stopped flowing from his right eye.

  When Holt saw this he felt a mounting horror that he could not have explained, as if his subconscious already knew what the berserker was going to say next.

  “What was bone in this life-unit is now metal,” the berserker said. “Where blood flowed, now preservatives are pumped. Inside the skull I have placed a computer, and in the eyes are cameras to gather the evidence I must have on Karlsen. To match the behavior of a brainwashed man is within my capability.”

  “I do not hate you,” Lucinda said to the berserker when it had her alone for interrogation. “You are an accident, like a planet-quake, like a pellet of dust hitting a ship near light-speed. Nogara and his people are the ones I hate. If his brother was not dead I would kill him with my hands and willingly bring you his body.”

  “Courier Captain? This is Governor Mical, speaking for the High Lord Nogara. Bring your two prisoners over to Nirvana at once,” he ordered.

  “At once, sir.�
�

  After coming out of C-plus travel within sight of Nirvana, the assassinmachine had taken Holt and Lucinda from the lifeboat. Then it had let the boat, with Holt’s crew still on it, drift out between the two ships, as if men were using it to check the courier’s fields. The men on the boat were to be the berserker’s hostages, and its shield if it was discovered.

  And by leaving them there, it doubtless wanted to make more credible the prospect of their eventual release.

  Holt had not known how to tell Lucinda of her brother’s fate, but at last he had managed somehow. She had wept for a minute, and then she had become very calm.

  Now the berserker put Holt and Lucinda into the crystal globe that served it for a launch, for the trip to Nirvana. The machine that had been Lucinda’s brother was aboard the launch already, waiting, slumped and broken-looking as the man had actually been in the last days of his life.

  When she saw that figure, Lucinda stopped. Then in a clear voice she said: “Machine, I wish to thank you. You have done my brother a kindness no human would do for him. I think I would have found a way to kill him myself before his enemies could torture him any more.”

  IV

  The Nirvana’s airlock was strongly armored, and equipped with automated defenses that would have repelled a rush of boarding machines, just as Nirvana’s beams and missiles would have beaten off any heavy-weapons attack a courier, or a dozen couriers, could launch. The berserker had foreseen all this.

  An officer welcomed Holt aboard. “This way, Captain, we’re all waiting.”

  “All?”

  The officer had the well-fed, comfortable look that came with safe and easy duty. His eyes were busy appraising Lucinda. “There’s a celebration under way in the Great Hall. Your prisoners’ arrival has been much anticipated.”

  Music throbbed in the Great Hall, and dancers writhed in costumes more obscene than any nakedness. From a table running almost the length of the Hall, serving machines were clearing the remnants of what had been a feast. In a throne-like chair behind the center of the table sat the High Lord Nogara, a rich cloak thrown over his shoulders, pale wine before him in a crystal goblet. Forty or fifty revelers flanked him at the long table, men and women and a few of whose sex Holt could not at once be sure. All were drinking and laughing, and some were donning masks and costumes, making ready for further celebration.