The Ultimate Enemy

by Fred Saberhagen

  Other traffic, scanty all during his flight, had now vanished altogether. The lane he was following branched, and Sabel turned left, adhering to his usual route. If anyone should be watching him today, no deviation from his usual procedure would be observed. Not yet, anyway. Later … later he would make very sure that nobody was watching.

  Here came a landmark on his right. Through another shaft piercing the Fortress a wand of the Radiant’s light fell straight to the outer surface, where part of it was caught by the ruined framework of an auxiliary spaceport, long since closed. In that permanent radiance the old beams glowed like twisted night-flowers, catching at the light before it fell away to vanish invisibly and forever among the stars.

  Just before he reached this unintended beacon, Sabel turned sharply again, switching on his bright running lights as he did so. Now he had entered a vast battle-crack in the stone and metal of the Fortress’s surface, a dark uncharted wound that in Dardanian times had been partially repaired by a frail-looking spiderwork of metal beams. Familiar with the way, Sabel steered busily, choosing the proper passage amid obstacles. Now the stars were dropping out of view behind him. His route led him up again, into the lightless ruined passages where nothing seemed to have changed since Helen died.

  Another minute of flight through twisting ways, some of them designed and others accidental. Then, obeying a sudden impulse, Sabel braked his flyer to a hovering halt. In the remote past this passage had been air-filled, the monumental length and breadth of it well suited for mass ceremony. Dardanian pictures and glyphs filled great portions of its long walls. Sabel had looked at them a hundred times before, but now he swung his suited figure out of the flyer’s airless cab and walked close to the wall, moving buoyantly in the light gravity, as if to inspect them once again. This was an ideal spot to see if anyone was really following him. Not that he had any logical reason to think that someone was. But the feeling was strong that he could not afford to take a chance.

  As often before, another feeling grew when he stood here in the silence and darkness that were broken only by his own presence and that of his machines. Helen herself was near. In Sabel’s earlier years there had been something religious in this experience. Now … but it was still somehow comforting.

  He waited, listening, thinking. Helen’s was not the only presence near, of course. On three or four occasions at least during the past ten years (there might have been more that Sabel had never heard about) explorers had discovered substantial concentrations of berserker wreckage out in these almost abandoned regions. Each time Sabel had heard of such a find being reported to the Guardians, he had promptly petitioned them to be allowed to examine the materials, or at least to be shown a summary of whatever information the Guardians might manage to extract. His pleas had vanished into the bureaucratic maw. Gradually he had come to understand that they would never tell him anything about berserkers. The Guardians were jealous of his relative success and fame. Besides, their supposed job of protecting humanity on the Fortress now actually gave them almost nothing to do. A few newly-discovered berserker parts could be parlayed into endless hours of technical and administrative work. Just keeping secrets could be made into a job, and they were not about to share any secrets with outsiders.

  But, once Sabel had become interested in berserkers as a possible source of data on the Radiant, he found ways to begin a study of them. His study was at first bookish and indirect, but it advanced; there was always more information available on a given subject than a censor realized, and a true scholar knew how to find it out.

  And Sabel came also to distrust the Guardians’ competence in the scholarly aspects of their own field. Even if they had finally agreed to share their findings with him, he thought their pick-axe methods unlikely to extract from a berserker’s memory anything of value. They had refused of course to tell him what their methods were, but he could not imagine them doing anything imaginatively.

  Secure in his own space helmet, he whispered now to himself: “If I want useful data from my own computer, I don’t tear it apart. I communicate with it instead.”

  Cold silence and darkness around him, and nothing more. He remounted his flyer and drove on. Shortly he came to where the great corridor was broken by a battle-damage crevice, barely wide enough for his small vehicle, and he turned slowly, maneuvering his way in. Now he must go slowly, despite the number of times that he had traveled this route before. After several hundred meters of jockeying his way along, his headlights picked up his semi-permanent base camp structure in a widening of the passageway ahead. It looked half bubble, half spiderweb, a tentlike thing whose walls hung slackly now but were inflatable with atmosphere. Next to it he had dug out of the stone wall a niche just big enough to park his flyer in. The walls of the niche were lightly marked now from his previous parkings. He eased in now, set down gently, and cut power.

  On this trip he was not going to bother to inflate his shelter; he was not going to be out here long enough to occupy it. Instead he began at once to unload from the flyer what he needed, securing things to his backpack as he took them down. The idea that he was being followed now seemed so improbable that he gave it no more thought. As soon as he had all he wanted on his back, he set off on foot down one of the branching crevices that radiated from the nexus where he had placed his camp.

  He paused once, after several meters, listening intently. Not now for nonexistent spies who might after all be following. For something active ahead. Suppose it had, somehow, after all, got itself free … but there was no possibility. He was carrying most of its brain with him right now. Around him, only the silence of ages, and the utter cold. The cold could not pierce his suit. The silence, though …

  The berserker was exactly as he had left it, days ago. It was partially entombed, caught like some giant mechanical insect in opaque amber. Elephant-sized metal shoulders and a ruined head protruded from a bank of centuries-old slag. Fierce weaponry must have melted the rock, doubtless at the time of the Templars’ reconquest of the Fortress, more than a hundred years ago.

  Sabel when he came upon it for the first time understood at once that the berserker’s brain might well still be functional. He knew too that there might be destructor devices still working, built into the berserker to prevent just such an analysis of captured units as he was suddenly determined to attempt. Yet he had nerved himself to go to work on the partially shattered braincase that protruded from the passage wall almost like a mounted trophy head. Looking back now, Sabel was somewhat aghast at the risks he had taken. But he had gone ahead. If there were any destructors, they had not fired. And it appeared to him now that he had won.

  He took the cesium slug out of his pocket and put it into a tool that stripped it of statglass film and held it ready for the correct moment in the reconstruction process. And the reconstruction went smoothly and quickly, the whole process taking no more than minutes. Aside from the insertion of the slug it was mainly a matter of reconnecting subsystems and of attaching a portable power supply that Sabel now unhooked from his belt; it would give the berserker no more power than might be needed for memory and communication.

  Yet, as soon as power was supplied, one of the thin limb stumps that protruded from the rock surface began to vibrate, with a syncopated buzzing. It must be trying to move.

  Sabel had involuntarily backed up a step; yet reason told him that his enemy was effectively powerless to harm him. He approached again, and plugged a communications cord into a jack he had installed. When he spoke to it, it was in continuation of the dialogue in the laboratory.

  “Now you are constrained, as you put it, to answer whatever questions I may ask.” Whether it was going to answer truthfully or not was something he^ could not yet tell.

  It now answered him in its own voice, cracked, queer, inhuman. “Now I am constrained.”

  Relief and triumph compounded were so strong that Sabel had to chuckle. The thing sounded so immutably certain of what it said, even as it had sounded certain s
aying the exact opposite back in the lab.

  Balancing buoyantly on his toes in the light gravity, he asked it: “How long ago were you damaged, and stuck here in the rock?”

  “My timers have been out of operation.”

  That sounded reasonable. “At some time before you were damaged, though, some visual observations of the Radiant probably became stored somehow in your memory banks. You know what I am talking about from our conversation in the laboratory. Remember that I will be able to extract useful information from even the most casual, incidental video records, provided they were made in Radiant light when you were active.”

  “I remember.” And as the berserker spoke there came faintly to Sabel’s ears a grinding, straining sound, conducted through his boots from somewhere under the chaotic surface of once-molten rock.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded sharply. God knew what weapons it had been equipped with, what potential powers it still had.

  Blandly the berserker answered: “Trying to reestablish function in my internal power supply.”

  “You will cease that effort at once! The supply I have connected is sufficient.”

  “Order acknowledged.” And at once the grinding stopped.

  Sabel fumbled around, having a hard time trying to make a simple connection with another small device that he removed from his suit’s belt. If only he did not tend to sweat so much. “Now. I have here a recorder. You will play into it all the video records you have that might be useful to me in my research on the Radiant’s spectrum. Do not erase any records from your own banks. I may want to get at them again later.”

  “Order acknowledged.” In exactly the same cracked tones as before.

  Sabel got the connection made at last. Then he crouched there, waiting for what seemed endless time, until his recorder signalled that the data flow had ceased.

  And back in his lab, hours later, Sabel sat glaring destruction at the inoffensive stonework of the wall. His gaze was angled downward, in the direction of his unseen opponent, as if his anger could pierce and blast through the kilometers of rock.

  The recorder had been filled with garbage. With nonsense. Virtually no better than noise. His own computer was still trying to unscramble the hopeless mess, but it seemed the enemy had succeeded in … still, perhaps it had not been a ploy of the berserker’s at all. Only, perhaps, some kind of trouble with the coupling of the recorder input to …

  He had, he remembered distinctly, told the berserker what the input requirements of the recorder were. But he had not explicitly ordered it to meet them. And he could not remember that it had ever said it would.

  Bad, Sabel. A bad mistake to make in dealing with any kind of a machine. With a berserker…

  A communicator made a melodious sound. A moment later, its screen brought Guardian Gunavarman’s face and voice into the lab.

  “Dr. Sabel, will your laboratory be in shape for a personal inspection by the Potentate three hours from now?”

  “I—I—yes, it will. In fact, I will be most honored,” he remembered to add, in afterthought.

  “Good. Excellent. You may expect the security party a few minutes before that time.”

  As soon as the connection had been broken, Sabel looked around. He was in fact almost ready to be inspected. Some innocuous experiments were in place to be looked at and discussed. Almost everything that might possibly be incriminating had been got out of the way. Everything, in fact, except … he pulled the small recorder cartridge from his computer and juggled it briefly in his hand. The chance was doubtless small that any of his impending visitors would examine or play the cartridge, and smaller still that they might recognize the source of information on it if they did. Yet in Sabel’s heart of hearts he was not so sure that the Guardians could be depended upon to be incompetent. And there was no reason for him to take even a small chance. There were, there had to be, a thousand public places where one might secrete an object as small as this. Where no one would notice it until it was retrieved … there were of course the public storage facilities, on the far side of the Fortress, near the spaceport.

  To get to any point in the Fortress served by the public transportation network took only a few minutes. He had to switch from moving slidewalk to high-speed elevator in a plaza that fronted on the entertainment district, and as he crossed the plaza his eye was caught by a glowing red sign a hundred meters or so down the mall: Contrat Rouge.

  His phantom followers were at his back again, and to try to make them vanish he passed the elevator entrance as if that had not been his goal at all. He was not wearing his blue habit today, and as he entered the entertainment mall none of the few people who were about seemed to take notice of him.

  A notice board outside the Contrat Rouge informed Sabel in glowing letters that the next scheduled dance performance was several hours away. It might be expected that he would know that, had he really started out with the goal of seeing her perform. Sabel turned and looked around, trying to decide what to do next. There were not many people in sight. But too many for him to decide if any of them might really have been following him.

  Now the doorman was starting to take notice of him. So Sabel approached the man, clearing his throat. “I was looking for Greta Thamar?”

  Tall and with a bitter face, the attendant looked as Sabel imagined a policeman ought to look. “Girls aren’t in yet.”

  “She lives somewhere nearby, though?”

  “Try public info.”

  And perhaps the man was somewhat surprised to see that that was what Sabel, going to a nearby booth, actually did next. The automated information service unhesitatingly printed out Greta’s address listing for him, and Sabel was momentarily surprised: he had pictured her as beseiged by men who saw her on stage, having to struggle for even a minimum of privacy. But then he saw a stage name printed out in parentheses beside her own; those inquiring for her under the stage name would doubtless be given no information except perhaps the time of the next performance. And the doorman? He doubtless gave the same two answers to the same two questions a dozen times a day, and made no effort to keep track of names.

  As Sabel had surmised, the apartment was not far away. It looked quite modest from the outside. A girl’s voice, not Greta’s, answered when he spoke into the intercom at the door. He felt irritated that they were probably not going to be able to be alone.

  A moment later the door opened. Improbable blond hair framed a face of lovely ebony above a dancer’s body. “I’m Greta’s new roommate. She ought to be back in a few minutes.” The girl gave Sabel an almost-amused appraisal. “I was just going out myself. But you can come in and wait for her if you like.”

  “I…yes, thank you. “Whatever happened, he wouldn’t be able to stay long. He had to leave himself plenty of time to get rid of the recorder cartridge somewhere and get back to the lab. But certainly there were at least a few minutes to spare.

  He watched the blond dancer out of sight. Sometime, perhaps … Then, left alone, he turned to a half-shaded window through which he could see a large part of the nearby plaza. Still there was no one in sight who looked to Sabel as if they might be following him. He moved from the window to stand in front of a cheap table. If he left before seeing Greta, should he leave her a note? And what ought he to say?

  His personal communicator beeped at his belt. When he raised it to his face he found Chief Deputy Gunavarman looking out at him from the tiny screen.

  “Doctor Sabel, I had expected you would be in your laboratory now. Please get back to it as soon as possible; the Potentate’s visit has been moved up by about two hours. Where are you now?”

  “I … ah .. .” What might be visible in Gunavarman’s screen? “The entertainment district.”

  The chronic appearance of good humor in the Guardian’s face underwent a subtle shift; perhaps now there was something of genuine amusement in it. “It shouldn’t take you long to get back, then. Please hurry. Shall I send an escort?”

  “No. Not nec
essary. Yes. At once.” Then they were waiting for him at the lab. It was even possible that they could meet him right outside this apartment’s door. As Sabel reholstered his communicator, he looked around him with quick calculation. There. Low down on one wall was a small ventilation grill of plastic, not much broader than his open hand. It was a type in common use within the Fortress. Sabel crouched down. The plastic bent springily in his strong fingers, easing out of its socket. He slid the recorder into the dark space behind, remembering to wipe it free of fingerprints first.

  The Potentate’s visit to the lab went well. It took longer than Sabel had expected, and he was complimented on his work, at least some of which the’ great leader seemed to understand. It wasn’t until next morning, when Sabel was wondering how soon he ought to call on Greta again, that he heard during a chance encounter with a colleague that some unnamed young woman in the entertainment district had been arrested.

  Possession of a restricted device, that was the charge. The first such arrest in years, and though no official announcement had yet been made, the Fortress was buzzing with the event, probably in several versions. The wording of the charge meant t’lat the accused was at least suspected of actual contact with a berserker; it was the same one, technically, that would have been placed against Sabel if his secret activities had been discovered. And it was the more serious form of goodlife activity, the less serious consisting in forming clubs or cells of conspiracy, of sympathy to the enemy, perhaps having no real contact with berserkers.

  Always in the past when he had heard of the recovery of any sort of berserker hardware, Sabel had called Gunavarman, to ask to be allowed to take part in the investigation. He dared not make an exception this time.

  “Yes, Doctor,” said the Guardian’s voice from a small screen. “A restricted device is in our hands today. Why do you ask?”