The Berserker Throne

by Fred Saberhagen

  The

  Berserker Throne

  Fred Saberhagen

  Chapter 1

  Around the green and lovely world called Salutai, the sky was clear of terror, as it had been now for many years. Today the planet’s dayside sky was almost clear of clouds as well, and at midday the face of the land beneath it blazed with the thousand colors of midsummer flowers.

  It was the Holiday of Life today on Salutai, the planet’s greatest yearly festival, and at the meridian of noon the central procession of the festival was passing through small town streets strewn with fresh-cut blooms.

  Through this particular small town ran many canals. They were clean, open waterways, and almost as numerous as the streets. And today in the canals as in the streets of Salutai the masses of summer blooms were prodigally distributed, those on the water floating and drifting in the controlled current. The streets and canal banks and buildings of the town under the noonday sun echoed with celebration, with ten kinds of music all being played and sung at the same time. The buildings, streets, canals, as well as the people in them and on them and the living plants that made archways above, were all mad with decorations.

  At the center of the slow-moving ceremonial procession crept the broad, low, bubble-domed groundcar in which the Empress of the Eight Worlds was riding. The parade extending ahead of her car and behind it was not really very long, but it took its time, so that everyone in the town who wanted to see the procession and the Empress at close range had a good chance to do so. And there were many, in this town and across the planet, who did want to see. The crowds, here on Salutai composed exclusively of Earth-descended humans, cried the name of their Empress in several languages, and some of the people in the crowd waved petitions and raised banners and placards, promoting one cause or another, as her clear-topped groundcar crept past.

  Though the procession was not moving with much speed, neither was the town large. The sun of Salutai was still very nearly directly overhead when the central groundcar and its escort of marchers and other vehicles emerged from the confinement of the old town’s narrow streets, and entered abruptly into a countryside that was approximately half in well-managed cultivation, half still in what looked like virgin wilderness.

  As the short parade left the last of the hard-paved streets behind, the crowds surrounding it grew no less, but rather greater. Here, amid a vast, parklike expanse that provided more room in which to assemble, a larger throng was waiting. This crowd was made up partly of government workers and dependents drafted into action and tubed out from the nearby capital city; still, most of the people had come here freely, to cheer a monarch popular enough to draw spontaneous affection from many of her people.

  Here a substantial minority of the crowd had in mind other things besides the offer of uncritical affection. Live news coverage of the procession was notably absent, but still there were occasional protests. Whenever these protestors and placard-bearers grew too numerous or noisy, security people in uniform and out appeared in sudden concentration, moving to break up the gatherings as gently and as quietly as possible. There were no injuries. The people of Salutai knew a long tradition of courtesy, and they were almost universally unused to the organization of violence, at least against their fellow humans and fellow citizens.

  Now, still surrounded by flowers, and by a slow wave of noise that was still predominantly happy, the procession paused on the bank of a broad, open canal. Amid a suddenly increased presence of uniformed security forces, the Empress, still tall and regal despite her advanced age, stood up out of her low car, and amid much ceremonious escort walked down a few steps to a dock. There she stepped aboard a heavily decorated pleasure-barge that waited to receive her, rising and falling gently amid the floating drifts of flowers.

  She had to delay briefly then, looking back toward shore, to give her attention to a delegation of school-children who were about to present her with a special bouquet.

  To a young man who was watching from the top of a small hill a hundred meters distant, amid the scalloped outer fringes of the crowd, the whole scene, of applauding throngs, welcoming children, and the endless visual bombardment of blossoms, made a very pretty picture indeed.

  The young man’s name was Chen Shizuoka, and with his curly dark hair surrounding an almost angelic face he looked very earnest and nervous at the moment, more so than those around him. He said to his companion: “Listen to them. They still love her.”

  The two of them, Chen and the young woman who was standing with him, had been waiting for several hours on the hilltop, along with a handful of other people who had with foresight chosen this place for the clear view that it was certain to provide of the Empress and the parade. For the last few minutes Chen and his companion, whose name was Hana Calderon, had been watching intently the stately and joyful approach of the procession. Chen loved the Empress, as did so many of her people, and he would have liked to be able to get closer to her now, near enough to cry out some heartfelt personal greeting, and perhaps even to meet her eyes. But today he had a duty that precluded the gratification of any such personal wish.

  Hana Calderon was not really so young as Chen; at the moment she looked quieter, less nervous, and somehow more effective. She raised a hand and brushed back straight black hair from dark oriental eyes, narrowed now in calculation.

  “I think,” she said, her tone suggesting that she was mildly chiding the young man but being careful how she went about it, “that what most of them are really cheering is the Holiday of Life.”

  As if by reflex Chen glanced up at the clear terrorless sky, from which it was always possible—and this year perhaps more probable than last—that terror might come again.

  “I suppose,” he said to his companion, avoiding argument as usual, “that feelings are strong again this year. With the news.”

  Hana Calderon nodded, moving her chiseled classical profile up and down without turning the gaze of her dark eyes away from the Empress’s barge. The presentation of the special bouquet had just been completed, and the vessel was now almost ready to carry the Empress out on the next, waterborne leg of her progress.

  The young woman said in an abstracted voice: “I suppose they are.” Then, still not looking away from the barge, she reached out a hand to touch Chen. In a suddenly crisp tone, she added: “Are you ready?”

  Chen Shizuoka’s right hand had been for a long time ready in his inner pocket, gripping a small plastic object. It seemed to him that his fingers had been clutching that object for an eternity. “Ready.”

  “Then let it go. Now!” The words were an order, given sharply and decisively, though Hana’s voice was too low for anyone else standing nearby to hear her through the noise of the surrounding crowd.

  A hundred meters downhill from where they stood, the barge was just getting into motion. Chen Shizuoka withdrew the tiny device he had been gripping, and with a different pressure of his fingers activated it. A signal even subtler than most electronic emanations was sent forth.

  From among the tight-packed crowd below, there rose up sudden screams.

  Don’t be afraid! Chen wanted to reassure them. He knew how harmless the large inflatable devices were that now came popping up out of the canal, in front of and around the barge that bore the Empress. The great rough shapes, surfacing like huge gray hippopotami of old Earth, were blocking the decorated barge completely. The devices, inflating themselves at Chen’s signal, were all moored to the bottom of the canal so as not to be easily pushed out of the way. As large as hippos, they were of various shapes, all intended to represent particular models of berserkers, but in no more than a clumsy cartoon fashion. Chen himself had insisted on that point, so that not even a single startled child in the crowd shou
ld be able to mistake them for the terrible reality. What the planners of the demonstration hoped to create in their audience was thought, not terror.

  A considerable amount of work had gone into fabricating the inflatable devices, and the effort and strain of planting them secretly in the canal had been, Chen thought when he looked back on it, more than he ever wanted to go through again. Not that he would have refused to do it all again, and more, if he thought that doing so would get the Prince recalled to power, and some of those who currently served the Empress in high places exiled in his stead.

  Up out of the water the odd shapes came, shiny-wet and dark and in the cartoon crudity of their forms unmistakable as to what they were supposed to represent. One after another in rapid succession broke the surface, the swift bobbing lunges of their rising pushing aside the drowning masses of flowers.

  The crowds near the canal were in great turmoil.

  “It’s working,” Chen crooned softly, happily to the young woman at his side, not turning his head to look at her. “It’s going to do the job.”

  Suddenly there were sharp thrumming sounds from below, and more yells, and an even greater turmoil among the crowd, the start of real panic. Some of the more trigger-happy security people had pulled out handguns and were actually opening fire, with devastating effect upon harmless inflated plastic. Chen, with sudden helpless concern, as if he had seen a distant child toying with a dangerous weapon, recalled how there had been hurt feelings among the populace, injured protests at the mere announcement that this time when the Empress traveled among her people she was going to be accompanied by a strong security contingent.

  And the many citizens who had protested the security arrangements had been right, Chen thought, there were the supposed protectors now, blasting away with guns and endangering lives. It was not as if they could really believe that they were confronted with a plot to hurt the Empress. No one was going to do that; not to the Empress; certainly not here on her home world of Salutai.

  The brief outburst of gunfire ceased, evidently on some order, as abruptly as it had started. But the uproar and panic in the surrounding crowd continued at an alarming pitch. Looking downhill, Chen observed that some of the clumsy-looking waterborne devices had been destroyed. But enough of them remained in place to at least impede the forward movement of the barge. A dozen in all of the inflatable things had been put into position—Chen could still remember the feel of the bottom mud, the taste it gave the water when it was stirred up, the thrill of terror recurring each time there was some alarm and he and the others thought that they had been discovered at their task.

  Some of the placards borne by the ugly gray shapes had not yet been blasted into illegibility. One of them read: THE ENEMY IS NOT DESTROYED. And another: RECALL PRINCE HARIVARMAN.

  “Let’s get going,” said Hana Calderon suddenly, speaking quietly into Chen’s ear. He nodded once, and with that they separated, with nothing more in the way of farewell than one last glance of triumph exchanged. Except for the unexpected outbreak of gunfire, and the resulting panic—maybe someone really had been hurt; Chen certainly hoped not—everything was going smoothly, according to the carefully rehearsed plan. No one in that crowd below would be able to ignore their message. Everyone would carry it home and talk about it. Approvingly or disapprovingly, they would be forced to think about it. And eventually, inevitably, it would be accepted. Because it was the truth.

  Chen turned away from Hana and from the scene below. Without either delay or haste he started walking his own planned path down the side of the hill away from the canal and the confusion around the barge. He didn’t look for Hana, but he knew she would be making a similar withdrawal, moving on a diverging course. He would meet her later, in the city. No one appeared to take any particular notice of him as he retreated. He dropped his plastic control device into a trash disposal in passing. He felt certain already that their getaway was going to be as successful as all the other previously successful steps in the elaborate plan.

  Even now, out of direct sight of the demonstration that his hands had triggered, Chen could hear in the crowd’s roar behind him the kind of impact their show had achieved. At least as great as anything he had dared to hope for. Now from the same direction sounded sharp reports, what must be the sound of more inflated dummies being shot to fragments. And the roar of the crowd went up again.

  His imitation berserkers would shortly be destroyed, but no one of the thousands who had been here today would be able to ignore or forget the messages that they had carried.

  Chen listened carefully as he retreated, savoring the crowd noise behind him. It was fading gradually as he moved away, and now for some reason it held more anger and fear than he had imagined there would be—because of the actions of the security people, he supposed, and who could blame the crowd for that?

  Some fifty meters down the hill, moving amid a slowly growing crowd of other people who had prudently or timidly decided to be somewhere else, Chen came to an inconspicuously parked groundcycle. When he straddled the machine it started quietly, and within moments it was bearing him at a greatly increased speed away from the tumult and the crowds.

  He had less than a kilometer to travel on the cycle, traversing a network of smooth pathways that laced the lovely countryside, before he reached a subway station whose entrance was almost hidden, set into the side of a flowered embankment. He abandoned the cycle outside the station, confident that a confederate would take it away later so it would not be traced to him. Once underground, Chen was able almost at once to board a swift tubetrain that brought him in a few minutes underneath the capital city.

  Disembarking from the train, riding a stair to ground level, into the usual swarm of people at one of the central metropolitan stations, Chen felt a wave of bleak reaction as he melded himself into the population of the streets. It was almost a sense of disappointment at the ease of his and his friends’ success. It seemed in a way unfair, as if the security people had never had a chance of stopping the demonstration, or of catching up with him or Hana afterward; now all was, would be, anticlimax.

  Of course, most of the other members of Chen’s protest group had kept telling him all along that the demonstration would be a great success. Hana had certainly been confident, and he himself had really expected nothing less than success. . . .

  The plan now called for him to go home, that is to return to the student’s room where he lived alone, and there await developments. But there was no particular hurry about his getting to his room. Chen delayed, watching a public newscast that was evidently running somewhat behind events, for it showed nothing about a demonstration interrupting the progress of the Empress. He moved on to a favorite bookstore, dallied there a little longer, then walked on unhurriedly. If he ever should be questioned, for any reason, about his whereabouts today, he’d have an answer: Why yes, he had been out there, watching the parade. When things started to get noisy and rowdy, and he heard actual shots, he had simply decided that it was time to leave.

  Chen passed another public newscast, and dawdled before the elevated holostage long enough to be sure that the news still contained no mention of the demonstration; by now, he felt sure, that omission must be deliberate. On Salutai such blatantly direct government control was unheard of, even in these times; the situation made him uneasy.

  When Chen reached the street where he lodged, and approached the block on which his room was located, his uneasiness led him to look about him with unwonted caution. He saw with a sinking sensation, but somehow no real surprise, that there were security people here, cruising in their cars, two or three cars of them at least, observing. He had learned to recognize the type of unmarked groundcar that they favored. They appeared to be trying to make themselves inconspicuous, but there they were.

  Something had gone wrong after all. He could not help believing that they were here waiting for him to show up. The sinking feeling was becoming a steady sickness in his gut.

  Chen stepped aro
und a corner into a cross street. He paused in the doorway of an apartment building, and stood pondering what to do next.

  He leaned out of the doorway to look back along the way that he had come, and the sound numbed him for an instant with its sudden shock, a frightening impact against the wall immediately beside his head, as if an invisible rock from some invisible catapult had struck there. There was another component to the sound too, a sharp thrum, a louder echo of the police weapons at the demonstration, much louder and closer than he had heard them from the hill. This came from a rooftop or an upper window across the street. Someone over there was shooting at him, shooting to kill.

  In sudden cold terror Chen dodged out of the doorway, heading down the street in a fast zigzag walk, the movement blending him at once into the flow of other hurrying pedestrians. Still his whole back felt tensed and swollen, one enormous muscle tightening uselessly against the killing blow that was to come any second. The sky that had been free of terror an hour ago had turned now to blue ice closing him in.

  Now he thought that one of the unmarked cars of the security people was keeping pace with him along the street. He dodged quickly into a smaller side passage for pedestrians, leaving the vehicle behind.

  He fled through the complex and crowded heart of the city, heading instinctively for areas where the congestion would be greater. Once, then twice, he dared to hope that he had shaken his pursuers off. But each time, even before hope could really establish itself, he saw that such was not the case. They had perhaps lost sight of him for the moment, but he knew they must be everywhere, in vehicles and afoot, in uniform and in civilian clothes. Anyone who glanced at him might be Security . . . and Chen had to assume that they were all after him.

  Organize a simple demonstration, just a demonstration, and they hunted you like this. Tried to kill you on sight, out of hand . . . it was a bad dream, and he was caught up in it, and there was no use hoping to be saved by any rules of sanity and logic.