Of Berserkers, Swords and Vampires

by Fred Saberhagen

  "No list of names of those aboard has been completed, Man." The timbre of the metal voice was meant to be masterly, and reassuring even when the words were not.

  Hagen looked around him at the surface of the city, the few spare towers and the multitudinous burrowed entrances. Over the whole nearby landscape more machines were racing to reach the ship with goods or perhaps even tourists who had somehow not gotten the warning in comfortable time, or who were at the last moment changing their minds about becoming settlers. Was not Ailanna frantically looking amid the burrows for Hagen, looking in vain as the last moments fell? It was against logic and sense that she should be, but he could not escape the feeling that she was. Nevertheless the doors on the ship were closed or closing now.

  "Take me aboard," he barked at the machine.

  "At once, Man." And they were already flying across the plain. Aboard ship, Hagen looked out of a port as they were hurled into the sky, then warped through the sideward modes of space, twisted out from under the falling veil before it could clamp its immovable knots about the atoms of the ship and passengers and hold them down forever. There was a last glimpse of the yellow plain, and then only strange flickers of light from the abnormal space they were traversing briefly, like a cloud.

  "That was exciting!" Out of nowhere Ailanna threw herself against him with a hug. "I was worried there, for a moment, that you'd been left behind." She was ready now to forgive him a flirtation with a girl of a hundred and thirty years ago. It was nice that he was forgiven, and Hagen patted her shoulder; but his eyes were still looking upward and outward, waiting for the stars.

  Martha

  It rained hard on Tuesday, and the Science Museum was not crowded. On my way to interview the director in his office, I saw a touring class of schoolchildren gathered around the newest exhibit, a very late-model computer. It had been given the name of Martha, an acronym constructed by some abbreviation of electronic terms. Martha was supposed to be capable of answering a very wide range of questions in all areas of human knowledge, even explaining some of the most abstruse scientific theories to the layman.

  "I understand the computer can even change its own design,"

  I commented, a bit later, talking to the director.

  He was proud. "Yes, theoretically. She hasn't done much rebuilding yet, except to design and print a few new logic circuits for herself."

  "You call the computer 'she,' then. Why?"

  "I do. Yes. Perhaps because she's still mysterious, even to the men who know her best." He chuckled, man-to-man.

  "What does it—or she—say to people? Or let me put it this way, what kind of questions does she get?"

  "Oh, there are some interesting conversations." He paused.

  "Martha allows each person about a minute at one of the phones, then asks him or her to move along. She has scanners and comparator circuits that can classify people by shape. She can conduct several conversations simultaneously, and she even uses simpler words when talking to children. We're quite proud of her."

  I was making notes. Maybe my editor would like one article on Martha and another on the museum in general. "What would you say was the most common question asked of the machine?"

  The director thought. "Well, people sometimes ask: 'Are you a girl in there?' At first Martha always answered 'No,' but lately she's begun to say: 'You've got me there.' That's not just a programmed response, either, which is what makes it remarkable. She's a smart little lady." He chuckled again. "Also, people sometimes want their fortunes told, which naturally is beyond even Martha's powers. Let me think. Oh yes, many people want her to multiply large numbers, or play tic-tac-toe on the electric board. She does those things perfectly, of course. She's brought a lot of people to the museum." On my way out I saw that the children had gone. For the moment I was alone with Martha in her room. The communicating phones hung unused on the elegant guardrail. I went over and picked up one of the phones, feeling just a little foolish.

  "Yes, sir," said the pleasant feminine voice in my ear, made up, I knew, of individually recorded words electronically strung together. "What can I do for you?"

  Inspiration came. "You ask me a question," I suggested. The pleasant voice repeated: "What can I do for you?"

  "I want you to ask me a question."

  "You are the first human being to ask me for a question. Now, this is the question I ask of you: What do you, as one human being, want from me?"

  I was momentarily stumped. "I don't know," I said finally. "The same as everyone else, I guess." I was wondering how to improve upon my answer when a sign lit up, reading:

  CLOSED TEMPORARILY FOR REPAIRS PARDON ME WHILE I POWDER MY NOSE

  The whimsy was not Martha's, but printed by human design on the glass over the light. If she turned the repair light on, those were the only words that she could show the world. Meanwhile, the phone I was holding went dead. As I moved away I thought I heard machinery starting up under the floor.

  Next day the director called to tell me that Martha was rebuilding herself. The day after that I went back to look. People were crowding up to the guardrail, around new panels which held rows of buttons. Each button, when pushed, produced noises, or colored lights, or impressive discharges of static electricity, among the complex new devices which had been added atop the machine. Through the telephone receivers a sexy voice answered every question with clearly spoken scraps of nonsense, studded with long technical words.

  Planeteer

  During the weeks that the starship Yuan Chwang had hovered in close observation of the new planet Aqua, ship's time had been jockeyed around to agree with the sun-time at the place chosen for first landing.

  Boris Brazil saw no evidence of sane thinking behind this procedure; it meant the planeteers' briefing for the big event was set for 0200, and he had to get up in what was effectively the middle of the night—a thing to which he had grown accustomed, but never expected to learn to enjoy. Leaving his tiny cabin in a state of disorder that might have infuriated an inspecting officer—had there been an inspecting officer aboard interested in the neatness of cabins—he set forth in search of chow.

  Brazil was tall and bony, resembling a blond young Abe Lincoln. He rubbed sleep from his eyes as his long legs carried him toward the mess hall. A distracting young squab from Computing sailed past him in the opposite direction, smiling.

  "Good luck," she said.

  "Is the coffee that bad?" It was the best facsimile of a joke he could think of this early.

  But the girl hadn't been talking about coffee. Chief Planeteer Sam Gates had picked Brazil to go along on the first landing attempt, he learned when he met Gates in the chow line. He saw by the small computer clipped to Sam's belt that the other man had been up early on his own, double-checking the crew chief and maintenance robots who were readying their scoutship. Brazil felt vaguely guilty—but not very. He might well have been just another body in the way.

  Sam Gates stood in the chow line swinging his arms and snapping his fingers, chewing his dark moustache as he usually did when nervous.

  "How's it look?" Brazil asked.

  "Oh, free and clear. Guess we'll have ground under our feet in a few hours."

  Most of the Yuan Chwang's twenty-four planeteers were in the chow line, with a fair number of people from other departments. The day's operation was going to be a big one for everybody. Trays loaded with synthetic ham, and a scrambled substance not preceded by chickens, Gates and Brazil found a table. Ten scoutships were going down today, though only one would attempt to land; most of the night shift from all departments seemed to think it was time for lunch. The mess was filling up quickly.

  "Here comes the alien," said Gates, gesturing with his fork. Brazil raised his eyes toward the tall turbaned man bearing a tray in their direction. "Hi, Chan. Pull up a a chair." Chandragupta was no more an alien here than any other Earthman; his job had earned him the nickname.

  "Good morning," said the Tribune with a smile, sitting down with Gates an
d Brazil. "I hope my people treat you well today." He had not yet seen one of "his people" and possibly never would; but from the moment high-altitude reconnaissance had established that intelligent life at an apparently primitive technological level existed on Aqua, his job had taken on substance. He was to represent the natives below in the councils aboard the Yuan Chwang, to argue at every turn for what he conceived to be their welfare, letting others worry about the scientific objectives that had brought the exploration ship so far from Earth, until he was satisfied that the natives needed no help or the mission was over.

  "No reason to expect any trouble," said Brazil. Then, wondering what reaction he might provoke from his messmates, he added:

  "This one looks fairly simple."

  "Except we know there are some kind of people down there," Gates said mildly. "And people are never as simple as you'd like them to be."

  "I wonder if they will need my help," said Chan, "and I wonder if I will be able to help them." The job of Tribune was a new one, really still experimental. "In a few hours perhaps I will know."

  "We're not trying to conquer them, you know," said Brazil, half amused and a little offended by Chan's eagerness to defend against his shipmates some people he had never seen.

  "Oh, I know. But we must be careful not to conquer them by accident, eh?"

  When Brazil got up to leave the mess, he could feel the eyes on his back, or thought he could. Here go the heroes, he thought. First landing. Hail, Hail.

  And deep inside he felt a pride and joy so fierce he was embarrassed to admit it to himself—to be one of the first Earthmen stepping onto this unknown world.

  Briefing was normal for a mission this size. The twenty planeteers who were going down into atmosphere, plus two reserve crews, slouched in their seats and scribbled notes and now and then whispered back and forth about business, concentrating so intently on the job at hand that an outsider might have thought them bored and distracted.

  Captain Dietrich, boss of the Yuan Chwang, mounted the low dais in the front of the briefing room. He was a rather small man, of mild and bookish appearance. After working with him for awhile, one tended to treat cautiously all small men of mild and bookish appearance.

  Tribune Chandragupta entered the briefing room through the rear door. The Captain eyed him thoughtfully. This was the first voyage on which he had been required to carry a Tribune; the idea had been born as a political move in the committee meetings of Earth Parliament, and had earned certain legislators reputations as defenders of liberty.

  Captain Dietrich had no detectable wish to conquer anyone, having of course passed the Space Force psych tests, and he was willing to give the Tribune system a trial. After all, he could always overrule the man, on condition he thought it necessary for the safety of members of the expedition—though he was the only one aboard who could do so. But it seemed to the Captain that this placing of a civilian official aboard his ship might be only the start of an effort by the groundbound government to encroach upon what he considered to be the domain of the Space Force. Every time he went home he heard complaints that the SF was growing too powerful and cost too much.

  "Militarism," they would say, over a drink or anywhere he met civilians. "We've just managed to really get away from all that on Earth, and now you want to start all over, on Mars and Ganymede and this new military base on Aldebaran 2."

  "The Martian colony is hardly a military base," he would remind them patiently. "It now has its own independent civilian government and sends representatives to Earth Parliament. The Space Force has practically pulled out of Mars altogether. Ganymede is a training base. Aldebaran 2 you're right about, mostly; and we do have other military bases."

  "Aha!" Now how do we know that none of these outlying bases or colonies will ever threaten Earth?"

  "Because all spaceships and strategic weapons are controlled by the SF, and the SF is controlled by the psych tests that screen people trying to enter it. Admittedly, no system is perfect, but what are our alternatives?"

  "We could cut down on this space exploration, maybe stop it altogether. It's devilish expensive, and there seems no hope it will ever relieve our crowding on Earth. What do we get out of it anyway that makes it really profitable?"

  "Well," Captain Dietrich might say, "since you talk of militarism, I will ignore the valuable knowledge we have gained by exploration and answer you in military terms. We have the ability to travel hundreds of light-years in a matter of months, and to melt any known planet in minutes, with one ship delivering one weapon. How many races do you think live in our galaxy with similar capabilities?"

  No Earthmen had met any but primitive aliens—yet. But people had begun to comprehend the magnitude of the galaxy, where man's hundred-light-year radius of domination gave him no more than a Jamestown Colony.

  "Assume a race with such capabilities," the captain might continue, "and with motivations we might not be able to understand, spreading out across the galaxy as we are. Would you rather have them discover our military base on Aldebaran this year, or find all humanity crowded on one unprotected Earth, perhaps the year after next?"

  Dietrich got a wide range of answers to this question. He himself would much prefer to meet the hypothetical advanced aliens a thousand light-years or more from Earth, with a number of large and effective military bases in between.

  But right now it was time for him to start briefing his planeteers, who probably knew as much about Aqua as he, who had never driven a scoutship into her upper atmosphere.

  "Gentlemen, we've found out a little about this planet, the only child of a Sol-type sun, after watching it for six weeks. One-pointone AU from its sun, gravity point-nine-five, diameter point-nine, eighty-five percent of surface is water. Oxy-nitrogen atmosphere, about five thousand meters equivalent. We won't try breathing it for some time yet. Full suits until further notice.

  "What land there is, is probably quite well populated with what we think are humanoids with a technical level probably nowhere higher than that of medieval Europe. Several rather large sailing ships have been spotted in coastal waters. There are only a couple of long paved roads, and none of the cities are electrically lit on nightside. We don't think anyone down there can have spotted us yet."

  Most of his audience looked back at him rather impatiently, as if to say: We know all this. We're the ones who found it out.

  But the captain wanted to make sure they had all the basic facts in proper focus. "Our mission is to make contact with the natives. To establish a temporary scientific base on the surface for seismic studies, biological studies, and so forth—and of course to learn what we can from and about the intelligent inhabitants."

  The captain raised his eyes and spoke as much to the Tribune as to his planeteers. "There seems very little chance of any permanent colony being established here, due to the native population on a very limited land area. This same factor would seem to preclude our establishing the temporary base in some remote area, without knowledge of the natives. So we will have to deal with them somehow from the start.

  "I've never believed in the god-from-the-sky approach, and as you know, SF policy is to avoid it if possible. It falsifies from the start a relationship that may become permanent, even if we now intend it to be temporary. And he who takes godhood upon himself is likely to have to spend more time at it than at the business for which he came, and to assume responsibility for far-reaching changes in the native history."

  The Captain paused, then looked at another man who stood waiting to speak, paper in hand. "Meteorology?"

  "Yes sir."

  On a wall appeared a photomap of the island that had been picked for the first landing attempt, an irregular shape of land about a hundred and fifty kilometers long by twenty wide. Air temperature at dawn in the landing area should be about fifty degrees F, the water a little cooler. There might be enough fog to aid the landing scoutship in an unseen descent.

  Meteorology also discussed atmospheric effects on communication
between scouts and the mother ship, and predicted the weather in the landing area for the next day. He paused to answer a couple of questions, and introduced Passive Detection.

  The PD man discussed Aqua's Van Allen belts, magnetic field, the variety and amount of solar radiation in nearby space, and that to be expected on the surface. He spoke of what the natives probably burned for heat and light in the nightside cities, and confirmed the apparent absence of any advanced technology.

  Biology was next, with a prediction that the island would show diverse and active life. It was near the tropics in the spring hemisphere, and green with vegetation. Scout photos showed no evidence of very large animals or plants. Some areas appeared to be under cultivation.

  Anthropology took the dais to speculate. The people of Aqua were thought to be humanoid, but in the photos anything as small as a man was at the very limit of visibility, and the estimate of the beings' appearance was based on lucky shots of dawn or dusk shadows striding gigantic across more or less level ground. There was some massive construction, probably of masonry, in the one sizable city on the island. A seawall and a couple of large structures had been built on a finger of land that protected the city's small harbor, where sailing ships were visible.

  Captain Dietrich came back to outline the patterns he wanted the non-landing scouts to fly. "The target island is pretty well isolated from the planet's main land areas, so if we put a base here it should have a minimal effect on native culture. Also, if we botch things up here, we may be able to move on and try again without the natives in the new spot having heard of us." He looked around at his men; the idea was strongly conveyed to them that the captain preferred they not botch things up. "Chan—anything you want to say? No? All right, board your scouts."

  Brazil strode beside Gates out the door in the rear of the briefing room, passing under the sign that read:

  MAYBE . . . ANYTHING

  Maybe they're real telepaths down there. Maybe they're a mighty race now retired from active competition and preferring the simple life. Maybe . . .