“It is obvious that the Galaxy, the entire universe, will be better off when you are dead.”
Lee made no answer to that. Apparently none was required. The escort robot took Lee by the arm. Several seconds passed before he could be sure that it was not going to tear him apart, only convey him back to his fellows. On the way he began to sob. The session was over, and he was still alive.
In a time and place only ambiguously connected to the world of Lee’s experience, the Ninety-first Diplomat, in her capacity as historian, was making notes.
Evidence from a number of sources strongly suggested to the central processor that at the time of the berserker’s entrance on the scene, an outbreak of fighting had been imminent, between this system’s life units and those of another planetary group nearby, the latter being called Huvean.
Data kept flowing in. Information gleaned from other prisoners, and from intercepted messages, abundantly confirmed the likelihood of such a conflict. Immediately the machine began to plan how it might use the fact of this threatened war to its advantage.
More fundamentally, it labored to gather the knowledge of how widespread this type of life had become. Already it had discovered there were colonies of this same intelligent species in approximately a hundred solar systems. All of these had sprung from one swarming home world, known as Earth, somewhere out near the Galactic fringe. Exact coordinates for Earth were not immediately available.
If the samples of this species thus far encountered were truly typical, it promised to be a stubborn and difficult variety to root out.
The idea of instigating and promoting war among the different colonies assumed an increased importance in the onboard computers’ calculations.
The berserker understood about war, in all the special ways that a machine could understand a subject. Thousands of years ago, its organic creators had seen to that. And since then it had learned much, forgotten very little.
Having thoroughly sterilized one planet of this system’s infected pair, before departing from the system it would run another series of tests, just to be sure no trace of the infection had been missed, the berserker was now ready to move on to the next.
As soon as the massive death machine got under way again, it was bombarded with more messages from the local life units. The berserker recorded these automatically, in case some future development rendered them of interest; but for now, there was nothing worthy of the central processor’s attention.
Now the berserker became once more subject to sporadic attacks by certain remnants of the defeated fleet. It welcomed the tendency of these life units to hurl themselves at it, evidently without any planning or coordination, in their inadequate vessels. In this way it was able to kill them much more quickly and efficiently than it could have if it had been required to hunt them down.
Of course, when this system’s two heavily infected planets had been effectively rendered lifeless, the job would still, in a sense, only have begun. It would then be necessary to undertake a time-consuming search for traces of life on all the system’s other bodies. Experience warned that in any system where intelligent life units became dominant, they would leave their traces everywhere, excepting only the central sun itself.
At the moment, there was no need to expend any more resources on the world called Prairie.
On approaching the system’s second habitable world, the one called Timber by its billions of swarming badlife, the machine changed tactics. It had planned this change from the beginning, from the time of its discovery that this system contained two heavily infected planets.
Once more it strengthened its own defensive fields, and created multiple images of itself, in expectation of stubborn resistance, heavy fire from ground defenses that were probably similar to those on Prairie.
But here, instead of at once undertaking a mass sterilization, it prepared to land a reconnaissance force of a hundred or so fighting units. With victory in this system now all but mathematically certain, the berserker had determined to assign a high priority to the task of gaining as much knowledge, as rapidly as possible, of this highly resistant form of badlife.
It was time to test the reactions, discover the full range of capabilities, of this previously unknown form of badlife. If none of their hundred worlds and more were currently armed with better weapons than this local sample, some of them doubtless soon would be.
It was necessary to gather much more information about them.
The central processing circuits predicted, with a probability of ninety-four percent, that a protracted campaign, employing many cleansing units, was going to be required, to eradicate life from all the worlds this species had infected.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The narrow doorway of the small private elevator was standing open, brightly outlined in the gray wall. Murmuring a quick excuse to the executioner, Gregor moved rapidly to get aboard. When Huang Gun would have followed, the robot blocked his path. “Sir, the president does not wish to see you now.”
The man’s jaw dropped. “That is absurd! You must have misunderstood him.”
“No sir.”
Huang Gun would have sidestepped around the metal body, but Porphyry moved with smooth robotic patience to prevent him.
Waiting in the open elevator, Gregor saw the executioner come to a halt, staring at the machine incredulously. “You belong to me!”
“No longer, sir,” Random informed him sweetly. “My programming has been readjusted.”
“No one can do that!”
“The president has assumed the necessary authority. I am now assigned as escort and protector to Plenipotentiary Gregor.”
Looking confused and dazed, the executioner backed off a step or two. Porphyry immediately rejoined Gregor, sliding into the elevator so precisely that it even managed to avoid jostling him in the confined space. The number of people in the lobby was rapidly diminishing. As the door closed, Gregor’s last view of the executioner showed Huang Gun standing almost alone in a large, littered room. The noise of a mob, chanting something unintelligible, was coming from somewhere outside and in the background.
Following a zigzag shaft whose tortuous course had been blasted and melted out of solid rock, the little elevator jerked along its passage, down, sideways, down, sideways again in a different direction. The next leg of the journey carried them straight down, for what seemed a considerable distance. Gregor clung to one of the handgrips thoughtfully provided. Porphyry, effortlessly maintaining balance on two small metal feet, smiled an eternal smile, as if faithfully keeping some transcendent secret.
The elevator eased to a stop, and the door opened. Gregor had visited the deep shelter before, but never these particular rooms. He noted with vague foreboding that there were no human guards on duty at the entrance to what he assumed must be Belgola’s inner sanctum. Here another robot routinely searched all visitors.
It did not need to touch Gregor to discover what was in his side pocket. “Sir, in the deep shelter, firearms are not allowed in human hands.”
“Of course. I had forgotten I was carrying it.” Pulling out the pistol, he turned to give the weapon to Porphyry. “Hold this for me.”
“Yes sir.” The lifelike but unliving hand accepted the slim weight, and dropped it in Porphyry’s carrying pouch. Then the guardian allowed them to go forward.
It was hard to say what the next room had originally been intended for, but it had undergone conversion. It seemed half ultramodern laboratory, half entertainment center awash in computer-generated images, holographic illusions and decoration. The theme of the graphics tended to the mechanical and abstract. What Gregor could see of the solid reality beneath the display still had an unfinished look, with real cables and conduits crisscrossing overhead, connecting items of equipment. There seemed to be four or five ordinary robot servers present, at the moment all standing idle.
This looked like the place that appeared as background in Belgola’s weird interactive messages. Gregor had just confirmed
this for himself when a living figure, right hand extended, emerged from a field of illusion. The familiar voice said: “Gregor, old friend.”
“Mister President.”
Confronting the president face to face, clasping his hand in greeting, Gregor was staggered, horrified to see how drastically the man had been transformed.
Gregor’s face must have betrayed the horror he felt, but the president was oblivious. Belgola was crazily upbeat, launching at once into a catalogue of marvelous things he had just done, or was about to do. He seemed to think he had all basic problems solved. His movements were jerky and energetic. He snapped his fingers once, as if to say that whatever problems might remain were not worth worrying about. His once-plump body had lost weight, but his cheeks were still rounded. “I will soon be able to go to our people with a proclamation of victory.”
“I am glad to hear it,” was Gregor’s dazed response.
The president began to say something else, then stopped suddenly, looking at him. “You find me changed.”
“Yes sir, I certainly do.”
Belgola took that as a compliment. He gestured expansively. “The credit must go to Logos, of course, and his helpers … they have saved me, Gregor. I tell you they have saved me.”
Whenever Belgola moved abruptly, the holographic decoration trying to cling around his figure did not quite keep up. At intervals, amid lingering, swirling fringes of illusion, Gregor was able to see that there was something wrong with Belgola’s head.
“You’ve been injured, sir. How did that happen?”
“I stand and walk, I stand and walk, I balance as well as a robot does….” For a moment or two the president’s speech played with the lyrics of an old song, seemed about to turn into a rhythmic chant.
With a visible effort, he re-established control. “You see, Gregor, we recently experienced a crisis, in which I unwisely attempted to destroy myself.” Belgola raised a hand, and with thumb and forefinger, pointing at his own head, mimed a handgun’s action. At the same time, his lips quirked in a slight smile. “That was a mistake. But now, thanks to Logos, I am on the right path.”
“Destroy yourself,” Gregor echoed in a whisper. His lips were still moving, but he could find no more words to say. He had caught a closer glimpse of what had happened. Part of Belgola’s skull, a large part of the left side of his head, was starkly bald, ivory white and artificial.
The president was still talking. Almost orating. “…can thank my great machines for my survival. In more ways than one. I must thank them for having set my feet on the right path. It may be that no one else has a medirobot quite as good as mine.”
Gregor at last managed a coherent response. “What… sir, what is the current state of your health?”
“Never felt fitter in my life. Can assure you of that, old friend. Old rival, that too, hey? Hey?”
“Yes, sometimes your political rival, yes.” No more, though. Moving a half-step closer, getting a still better look, Gregor could see that the raw edges of the remaining scalp could not come close to covering the new ceramic dome that cupped over whatever was left of the president’s organic brain.
One of Belgola’s eyes was slowly shifting its aim, in a strong strabismus. Then with a jerk it came back to join its fellow in a steady regard of Gregor. The president said: “You are shocked at my appearance.”
“I, yes sir, frankly I am.”
“Augmented life support became necessary.” Gregor was listening more carefully now. In a way it sounded like Belgola’s voice, and in a way it didn’t. “Life enhancement, I should say. This is what it means to truly be alive.” His tone had gone flat, and hardly matched the words.
His body moved, but not always to any effective purpose. There were periods of several seconds in duration when the actions of the man’s arms and legs seemed natural.
After taking a turn around the room, the president, the president’s body, stood facing Gregor again.
The voice that came out of Belgola’s mouth said: “It is imperative that I soon address the people of the Twin Worlds. Of course the presentation will be technically augmented. People won’t see, this” An awkward gesture, one hand sweeping, finally bending back sharply at the wrist to point uncertainly at himself.
Uncertainty dominated. “Or … what do you think? …would it be wiser to show them everything, my whole achievement, all at once? For all of them, every one of us, must follow the same path, eventually.”
Gregor stretched out his own uncertain hand. “But are you, are you really?” What is the best way to ask a walking corpse if it thinks itself competent? Would be a tricky job under the best conditions. How should a practiced diplomat ask a man if he is really alive?
…if Belgola was still there at all, behind his perfectly organic eyes, eyes that seemed to be getting conflicting orders from an enhanced brain. The president was still speaking, too, a steady flow of words that sometimes seemed to be making sense.
Gregor took note, with horror, of how a trickle of blood came oozing a millimeter at a time out of one edge of the torn scalp, a tracery of bright scarlet against the bone white dome of the president’s new skull. Somewhere in there, clinging to old bone and nourished by old blood that might be coming through new pathways, what was left of the president’s brain must still be trying to keep itself alive.
Belgola sank down in a chair, and a machine came behind him, cauterizing, tidying the scalp, so that the bright blood was all gone, for now at least. The Oracle, Logosa machine of exotic appearance, was partially visible, taking over the conversation while the president stood glassy-eyed, swaying on his feet, looking every minute more like a corpse with Logos implacably ordering his lungs to keep on breathing.
Gregor at last found words of his own. “Sir, you do not look well. You do not sound right. I must insist you see a human physician.”
Belgola might not have heard. “But Logos, Gregor. Logos is the answer, and it will give the answers. When I speak to the people, all these details of my appearance will be smoothed away. In any case they do not matter do not matter do not matter.” His voice had suddenly fallen into a numb monotone. “All that matters is”
“Yes sir?”
One of the president’s eyes was studying the visitor thoughtfully. His voice had somewhat recovered. “Now we come to your case, Gregor.”
“Mine, sir?”
“You are an old man. In a few more years at most, in the ordinary course of nature, you will die. But I have good news for you.”
“We must all expect to die at some time, Mister President.”
“There you go wrong, friend Gregor. There is no need for death, no need at all. What has been done for me can be done for many. It can be done for you.”
Belgola, suddenly reanimated, standing energetically on his own two feet again, scooped up from somewhere a handful of incomprehensible hardware, and seemed to be offering it to Gregor.
The hand that held the material was quivering. “My techs are very good, they are of course all robots, what you need can be installed in no time. Figuratively, no time. Figures of speech are difficult. Eventually they will be done away with. In good time, a real production line. The creation of a new and superhuman race.”
“Thank you sir, but no. I respectfully decline the opportunity.”
“Not an option, Gregor. To show reluctance, yes reluctance, reluctance, there is repetition, repetition, minor flaw, reluctance only shows shows you do not understand.” The voice was really wrong. A single tear came trickling out of Belgola’s jittering left eye.
Gregor got to his feet and began to back away.
Belgola’s body shuffled after him. Shuffled first, then almost danced.
Somehow there was not as much space in this room of illusion as Gregor had at first thought. Soon the wired man had the plenipotentiary physically pinned in a corner, where Gregor thought he might have to try physical force to get away.
“I was first, into the circuit. Into the system. The
system into me. You shall be next. Then a few other chosen humans, if we choose carefully, may prove worthy of inclusion. Then all. Eventually, all all all.”
“I respectfully decline.” The words came out in a gasp.
“It’s an experience, Gregor. An experience that few or none have had before. To be at one with a quantum computer. Do you know … do you know…? But how could you possibly.”
The old man, mumbling disjointed arguments, stumbling back in sudden terror, repeated his refusal.
Belgola had paused in his advance, but not to listen to his potential victim’s protest. Rather, something had occurred to start him on what seemed to be a different subject. “Gregor, I think I can begin to see the meaning, the purpose, of this visitation.”
“By ‘visitation,’ sir, you mean my coming down into this shelter to?”
“No no. No no no no no. You do not matter do not matter. I speak of greater matters. The arrival in our solar system of the thing that kills … matters.”
Gregor could feel cold fingers trying to raise hair on the back of his neck. He started to edge a little sideways, hoping the movement would not be noticed. “And what about it, sir?”
A useless hope. Belgola was following him quickly, accurately, with a young man’s stride. It was hard for an elderly human to dodge a robot. The head might be shattered but the body worked. Programmed by Logos. “It’s an emissary from the universe.”
“Sir?”
“The universe is getting our attention, Gregor, as forcefully as possible. My Logos is a part of the same effort, of something much greater than itself. Greater than we can be, greater than we can make. Oh great great great. I don’t mean life, not life as we know it. But we are to have some share in its creation. Something…” The president fell silent. One eye still looked at Gregor, speculating.
Gregor eased a little closer to the door. A robot was standing there, right beside what seemed to be the only exit, and he could only hope it would not try to block his escape. He said: “Is this what your Ora … your Logos, has told you?”
Berserker Prime Page 17
