Short Fiction Complete

by Fred Saberhagen

  Besides the cultists killed inside the ship or executed by Leros later, at least a score of people, most of them people who had never even known of the berserker’s existence, had died in the cataclysm. But still Suomi slept well, for millions of innocent folk across the planet lived and breathed.

  “So, Oscar has explained it all to me, finally,” Athena announced. “They promised him a chance, a fighting chance, to get at the berserker and destroy it if he cooperated.”

  “He believed that?”

  “He says he knows it was a terribly small chance, but there wasn’t any better one. They wouldn’t let him get on the ship at all. He just had to sit in-a cell and answer questions for Andreas and Lachaise. And the berserker too, it talked to him directly somehow.”

  “I see.” Suomi sipped at his golden goblet of fermented milk. Maybe the stuff made Schoenberg sick, but he had found that his stomach could handle it without difficulty, and he had grown to like the taste.

  Athena was looking at him almost dreamily across the little table. “I haven’t really had a chance to tell you what I think, Carlos,” she said now in a soft, low voice. “It was such a simple idea. Oh, of course I mean simple in the sense of something classical, elegant. And brilliant.”

  “Hm?”

  “The way you used your recordings of Karlsen’s voice, and won the battle.”

  “Oh, well. That was simple, to splice together recorded words to make some phrases that a berserker ought to find appropriately threatening. The main thing was that the berserker should identify his voice and so take the strongest, most violent action if could to kill him, forgetting everything else, be perfectly willing to destroy itself in the process.”

  “But to conceive of it was brilliant, and to do it required courage.”

  “Well. When I heard that its servants were asking about Karlsen, for no apparent reason, the idea struck me that we might be dealing with one of those assassin machines, a berserker that had been programmed specifically to go after Karlsen. Even if it was only an ordinary berserker—ha, what am I SAYING?—Karlsen’s destruction would rate as a very high priority in its programming, probably higher than depopulating a minor world. I gambled that it would just forget its other plans and wreck the ship, that it would just take it as probable that Karlsen was somehow hiding on Orion with a secret landing party.”

  “That sounds insane.” Then, flustered, Athena tried to modify the implied criticism. “I mean—”

  “It does sound insane. But, as I understand it, predicting human behavior has never been the berserkers’ strong point. Maybe it thought Andreas had betrayed it after all.”

  THE god Thorun incarnate, who had been Thomas the Grabber, strolled majestically into the courtyard at its other end, trailed by priests and a sculptor who was making sketches for a new spearcarrying statue. Suomi rose slightly from his chair and made a little bow in Thorun’s direction. Thorun answered with a smile and a courteous nod.

  Carlos and Thomas understood each other surprisingly well. The people had to be reassured, society supported, through a time of crisis. Did Leros and the other devout leaders really believe that a god and a demigod now walked among them? Apparently they did, at least in one compartment of their minds, and at least as long as such belief suited their needs. And perhaps in one sense it was the truth that Karlsen still walked here.

  Perhaps, also, the sandy-haired man now known as Giles the Chancellor, who was Thorun’s constant companion and adviser, was to a great degree responsible for the relative smoothness with which the society of Godsmountain had weathered the upheavals of the past few days. Alas for the Brotherhood. Well, thought Suomi, likely a world with the Brotherhood victorious would have been no better than Godsmountain’s world was going to be without its secret demon.

  There was Schoenberg now, walking near his wrecked ship. Barbara Hurtado was at his side listening to him as he pointed out features of the rubble-clearing system the slaves were following. It was a result of his expert analysis of the problem. He had been talking about it yesterday with Suomi. There, where Schoenberg was now pointing, was the place where the mathematically proven plan of greatest efficiency called for all the debris to be piled. Schoenberg had come near being killed as a collaborator by Leros and the winning faction, but intervention by the demigod Karlsen had saved his life and restored his freedom.

  After what had happened to Celeste Servetus and Gus De La Torre—their mutilated bodies had been found atop a small mountain of human and animal bones in a secret charnel-pit far beneath the Temple—Suomi could not blame Schoenberg or anyone else for collaboration. Schoenberg had told him of the tale of ruthless Earthmen who were going to come looking to avenge him, a tale that, alas, had been nothing but pure bluff. Suomi, though, still had the feeling that Schoenberg was leaving something out, that more than passed between him and Andreas than he was willing to recount.

  Let it lie. The ship had been irreparably damaged, and the surviving members of the hunting expedition were going to have to coexist on this planet, in all likelihood, for an indeterminate number of standard years, until some other ship just happened by.

  Athena took a sip of cool water from her fine goblet, and Suomi drank some more fermented milk from his. She had spent the period of crisis locked in her private room and unmolested—maybe she would have been the next day’s sacrifice—until the ship crashed and the Temple was knocked down about her ears. Even then she was only shaken up. She, the independent, self-sufficient woman, and by chance she had been forced to sit by passively like some ancient heroine while men fought all around her.

  “What are your plans, Carl?”

  “I suspect the citizens here will sooner or later get tired of having the demigod Karlsen around, and I just hope it doesn’t happen before a ship shows up. I think he’ll maintain a low profile, as they say, until then.”

  “No, I mean Carl Suomi’s plans.”

  “Well.” Suddenly he wondered if any of the Hunterians, before the crisis, had heard her call him Carl, as she frequently did. He wondered if that might have contributed to his being so fortunately misidentified. Never mind.

  Well. Only a few days ago Carlos Suomi’s plans for his future would definitely have included Athena. But that was before he had seen her so avidly viewing men killing each other.

  No. Sorry. Of course he himself had now killed more people than she had even seen die—yet in a real sense he was still a pacifist, more so than ever in fact, and she was not. That was show he saw the matter, anyway.

  Barbara, now. She was still standing beside Schoenberg as he lectured her, but she looked over from time to time toward the place where Suomi sat. Suomi wanted nice things to happen to Barbara. Last night she had shared his bed. The two of them had laughed about their minor injuries, comparing bruises. But . . . a playgirl. No. His life would go on just about the same if he never saw Barbara again.

  What, then, were his plans, as Athena put it? Well, there were plenty of other fish splashing in the seas of Earth, or even, if he could be allowed a mangled metaphor, living demure and veiled behind their white walls here on Godsmountain. He still wanted a woman, and in more ways than one.

  Schoenberg was not pointing up into the sky. Would his rubble pile grow that tall? Then Barbara leaped with excitement, and Suomi looked up and saw the ship.

  Next thing they were all running, shouting, looking for the emergency radios that Schoenberg had insisted on getting from the Orion and keeping handy. Some trying-to-be-helpful Hunterian had misplaced the radios. Never mind. The ship lowered rapidly, drawn by the beacon-like appearance of the city atop the mountain, and Orion already sitting there. A silvery sphere, similar in every way to Schoenberg’s craft. With wild waves Earthmen and Hunterians beckoned it to land on a cleared spot amid the rubble.

  Landing struts out and down, drive off, hatch open, landing ramp extruded. A tall man emerging, with the pallor of one probably raised under a dome on Venus, his long mustache waxed and shaped in the form
the Earth-descended Venerians frequently affected. Reassured by numerous signs of friendly welcome, he strode halfway down the ramp, putting on sunglasses against the Hunterian noon. “How do, folks, Steve Kemalchek, Venus. Say, what happened here, an earthquake?”

  Thorun and the High Priest Leros were still deciding which of them should make the official welcoming speech. Suomi moved a little closer to the ramp and said informally: “Something like that. But things are under control now.” The man looked relieved on hearing the familiar accents of an Earthman’s speech. “You’re from Earth, right? That’s your ship. Get any hunting in yet? I’ve just been up north, got a stack of trophy ’grams in there . . . show you later.” He lowered his voice to a more confidential tone. “And, say, is that Tournament everything I’ve heard it is? Going on right now, ain’t it? Isn’t this the place?”

  LIFE FORCE

  When Death has become the Final Arbiter, the ultimate weapon is

  HOBSON looked up at the bright blue sky of Earth. In days gone by he had always managed to see in it a kind of hope. Seeing no hope in it now. he brought his mind back to business and tried for the third time that day to get his talent working. The moment of mental relaxation had helped. At last he was able to get started. The part of his mind that did such things reached ahead, while Hobson plodded on near the center of the column of irregular infantry.

  An area of land about two miles across, and lying a mile or so ahead of the column, stood out from its surroundings like an island. Luxuriantly green with normal spring vegetation, the tract contrasted sharply with the background of irradiated and diseased countryside that had once been northern Illinois. There were many other such islands in the world. Hobson could see several to the right or left of where he marched. But the one ahead was unusually large and well preserved; also, it occupied a strategic spot overlooking a highway junction and a river. So the place was now the target of Hobson’s probing mind and the objective of this two-hundred-man force of New American infantry. In command was “Colonel”—Hobson always remembered to include the quotation marks in his thoughts—LaPorte.

  Hobson could tell that approximately a hundred human souls occupied the island ahead. He could not tell what they were seeing or saying or planning, but he knew they were there and what emotions they felt. Right now, obviously, they were unaware of the approaching attackers, for their emotional average was biased at a level of secure calm so high as to be almost unknown in Hobson’s world.

  Up near the point of the column, waiting for news from his pet psi-man, LaPorte turned his head to look back impatiently. Since the war everyone had begun to take for granted the existence of wild talents like those of Hobson. Their owners generally lacked the intangibles needed for leadership, but they could be sure of a relatively safe and respected place in any organization.

  His own skin was not much. Still, it was about all that counted with Hobson any more. To protect it, he stayed with New America.

  But—New America! Every time Hobson thought of the name, he wanted to spit. In his opinion a better name would be New Third Reich. And if he spoke that latter name aloud, no doubt LaPorte and the rest of the leaders would take it as a compliment. They were a gang of determined cutthroats who, during the past year, had begun to extend their power across the sector that had once been called the Middle West—an area still under threat of attack from the remnants of the Asiatic forces scattered over the west coast and the Rocky Mountains.

  So when Hobson could not keep himself completely from thinking, what he did think was bitter. Some few men must always, at any cost, indulge their predilections for fighting and haling—even now when so few people are left anywhere. And folks like me. talented or not. are drugged helplessly along, trying to survive . . .

  Aware of LaPorte’s restless gaze, Hobson wiped his brain clean of distractions, willed it to fullest sensitivity. It registered that in the lush target area, the hundred inhabitants still seemed unaware that twice their number of armed desperadoes were trudging toward them along this once roaring superhighway where grass now grew through cracks in the slab. They were peaceful, up ahead. Optimistic. Hobson wondered briefly if a religious ceremony were in progress; but he received no emanations of exaltation, no unison of feeling. It was just that the average levels of cheer and hope remained high.

  LaPorte looked around again. With a pang of nervous self-contempt, Hobson walked faster, to reach the head of the column. He passed between ragged tiles of men in whom he rarely could detect fears or hopes above the animal level. Men armed with weapons ranging from the carbines of the late lamented United States Army down to pitchforks and butcher knives. Men who wore as their uniform a look of savagery. Men out for booty and women. Men who did not much like Hobson but wanted to have him around and fought to keep him alive—because of the insurance he gave against dreaded ambush. Their heads turned with interest as he hurried forward past them to make his report.

  The colonel had left his self-designed insignia of rank well back within the already subjugated territory; less danger, that way, of being assassinated by some countryside lout. He was a fairly large man, bigger than Hobson, with glasses and an habitually mild look. You might take him for a storekeeper or a clerk until you listened to him talk for a while.

  AS HOBSON opened his mouth to report, he felt individual patterns of surprise and alarm coming from up ahead, as if the New American scouts had made contact with local look-outs. When LaPorte heard Hobson’s information, the colonel waved his column off the highway to a halt. Within a minute, the scouts’ arm-waves from ahead confirmed the contact.

  LaPorte thought over what Hobson told him. “Only about a hundred of ’em, hey? All right, we proceed as planned.”

  Hobson hoped that the locals had a dozen machine-guns and would fight like fanatics. He could tell that many of them were women and children, and he knew what would happen if New America carried the day.

  The sound of a shot rose from the island’s near edge. “Missed,” Hobson muttered. He had felt the nearly simultaneous start of three hundred people but no individual shock of pain or impact.

  LaPorte now signaled for a cautious advance. Moving forward at the colonel’s side, through the scanty cover of some roadside weed-mutation, Hobson walked erect. Lately he was not much afraid of bullets. But he was still afraid of New America. If he tried to betray them, or tried to run away and was caught . . . Hobson trembled, remembering past victims of LaPorte’s vengeance.

  Perhaps more than he hated LaPorte, Hobson hated himself—abhorred himself for what he had become. This self-loathing was growing every day. Hobson feared that soon it might be strong enough to turn some awful balance inside him.

  The attacking formation crept toward the wooded island, moving along the stunted hedgerows and eroded gullies of this once fertile country. A belt of land around the island was normal enough for cultivation. Hobson saw rows of corn sprouting there. A scout crawled back out of the quiet woods to find the colonel. “Looks like they’re pulling back. Chief. Wanta go straight on in?”

  LaPorte turned to Hobson. “What are they up to?”

  Hobson reached for the natives. He could not find the courage to try to save them with a lie; he hoped that somehow they might save themselves. “They’re withdrawing, all right . . . but I don’t think they mean to run very far. It’s funny, they don’t seem to expect any fighting, either. It’s as if they felt protected in some way.”

  “They don’t mean to fight? Good. Push on, then,” the colonel ordered. “Maybe they’re some religious nuts.” The colonel had once conquered a convent in Wisconsin.

  The people ahead did not feel more or less religious than average to Hobson. But he did not comment. For some reason this tiny rebellion of withheld advice only made him hate himself all the more.

  If only his kind of “talent,” as it was popularly called, could be used to kill! He would get rid of LaPorte and anyone like him within striking distance. Hobson did believe that ultimately evolution might
bring psi to effectiveness as a weapon, and maybe in the not too distant future. After all, mutation was sure ! to continue at a high rate. There was plenty of radiation about, left over from the cataclysmic wars. And the early rays in less than a generation had produced ten thousand persons with acute psi powers for each one such person known before the wars.

  The so-called talent had been analyzed to a degree, though science and research were little practiced these days. Something about a sixth sense, something theorized to tuned in on other people’s brain waves or other electromagnetic emanations. Its efficacy diminished sharply with distance, of course. But it was pretty useful to pick up emotions, on the basis of which predictions of behavior often could be made. Actual thoughts remained difficult to read except as they affected emotional states. A receptor rather than a projecting mechanism, it gave to some talented ones nevertheless the power to slightly move very small objects reposing a few feet away. That phenomenon fortified Hobson’s belief that some day the psi talent might develop into a forceful means of defense or offense. So far, nothing of the sort had happened. Hobson felt helpless and hopeless.

  THE invaders had reached the island. They spread cautiously through its woods. There was no opposition, no sight or sound of the local population. Here and there stretched empty slit trenches and deserted strong points; with a few firearms these people could have put up a good tight. But Hobson sensed they had only moved off deeper among the trees. There they waited, and felt—almost safe.

  The village lay well within the island beside a small stream. The huts, mostly of concrete block and banked-up earth, had rifle slits for defense, but they were unmanned. Walks and vegetable gardens filled the spaces among the huts. The locals had built well and tended carefully—but had abandoned everything immediately to the invaders.