Man Vs Machine

by Greenberg, Martin H.

  “And having learned such secrets as they chose to reveal,” Vivian said, her tone mocking, “how am I supposed to make any use of it when I would be the berserkers’ prisoner?”

  “You are the one who created Lancelot,” Brother Angel said. “I am sure you would find a way, even if it took you decades to do so. I am sure you would find a way.”

  He turned then and walked from the lab in a swirl of his brown monk’s robes. The door slid shut behind him with a marked thump. For a moment, Vivian contemplated calling General Gosnick and reporting what Brother Angel had said to her. Then she shrugged.

  If she did that, she would need to explain why she had not confessed having a relatively long conversation with the death machine. Of course it was quite possible that Brother Angel had already reported her, or was even now about to do so. Or . . .

  Lost in speculation, Vivian finished dissecting the serbot berserker, but even as her hands moved and her mouth dictated details to be recorded, her mind could not let go of what Brother Angel had said.

  Suppose, just for the sake of argument, she adopted the brother’s wild suggestion. Conservative General Gosnick would be as likely to grant permission as he would to turn into a butterfly, and more than three days were bound to pass before any new orders could arrive from anywhere outside the Lake system.

  She would need to keep her decision to play double-agent to herself, but she could find a way to counterfeit her death. There were those damaged fighters . . . She often test-piloted something she had repaired. More or less regular practice during most of her long life had made her as good a pilot as most who followed the profession.

  She could fly a fighter out toward the asteroid belt between Lake and the sixth planet. The berserkers must be out there somewhere, monitoring communications. She could send some tight-beam signal on ahead, let them know she was coming. She could go out far enough that one of the minor bodies would occlude the base’s clear view of her. Observers at Lake Moon would see an explosion, that’s all.

  Once she had faked her death and made some deal that would assure the base’s safety, she could enter into that fascinating research project. The berserkers should be aware that creative humans could not be tortured into creating. Lake Moon’s few hundred life-units, preserved only for as long as the berserkers needed Vivian, would not be too much for them to barter to assure her faithful service. Indeed, those lives on Lake Moon could be used as hostages against her good behavior.

  Couldn’t they? Yes. She could make it work.

  Then, when she had the answer as to why berserkers could not counterfeit humans, well, by then she surely would have gained insight as to how humanity might permanently defeat the berserkers. As Brother Angel had said, perhaps she could even find a way to escape, even if that escape was decades in the arranging.

  Another supreme challenge.

  “Decades,” the voice in her mind said, “during which more humans would die because you were not here on Lake Moon designing weapons and armor and spacecraft for them.”

  “Perhaps that would be best,” Vivian retorted. “The berserkers may be right in one thing. Perhaps more Life has died trying not to be sterilized than would have died if we had just rolled over and submitted at the start. How many colonies have been founded, only to be discovered by the berserkers and destroyed? How many babies born to become soldiers? In working to preserve, as I thought, Life, perhaps I have indeed been a servant of death.”

  Variations on this internal debate continued as Vivian’s three days of grace became two, became one. Her friends and neighbors did not trouble her. Her near brush with the berserker was reason enough for silence and a need for thought. If Brother Angel smiled a trace knowingly when their paths met in the refectory or one of the public gardens, Vivian ignored him.

  On her last day of grace, Vivian had an epiphany of sorts. She was in a private garden, alone but for Brother Angel, who had taken to being inconveniently present.

  “I wonder,” Vivian said, “if the Builders felt as I do now?”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “You heard the berserker call me a servant of death although all along I thought I was serving the purpose of life. What if the Builders felt the same way? We know little of why the Builders went to war with the Red Race, but whatever the reason, they clearly felt that the Red Race was not just something they needed to conquer, but something they needed to destroy. Why else than because the Builders felt that the Red Race was a threat to life—if not Life as we think of it, then at least of life as they valued and knew it.”

  “So they created the ultimate killing machines,” Brother Angel said, “to serve Life.”

  “Yes,” Vivian said. “And then perhaps they realized that they had gone too far, that they had become what they themselves feared. Most humans view the destruction of the Builders by the berserkers as a great irony—a sword turning in the warrior’s hand. What if it wasn’t that at all? What if the Builders themselves removed the restraining codes, turned their own weapons upon themselves as penance for what they had done?”

  Brother Angel seemed torn between horror and fascination. “It seems,” he murmured finally, “it seems, in a way, quite fitting.”

  “I thought that you would find it so.”

  “Eh?” He turned his wandering gaze more nearly in her direction.

  “Brother Angel, I find myself unable to believe that the berserkers’ emissary was able to accomplish its mission here—locating this secret base, acquiring access codes, even learning precisely what model of serbot is common on Lake Moon—without considerable help from some source already on the base.”

  Brother Angel watched and waited, not moving a muscle.

  Vivian went on. “The more I considered the matter, the more likely it seemed to me that this source was you.”

  Brother Angel protested. “More than a third of Lake Moon’s inhabitants would know those things. The access codes would be the only difficulty, and even those could be gotten with little effort.”

  “But you covered for me, Brother Angel. Would you have done so just to turn me double agent? I think not. I don’t think your wandering eyes and ears were what enabled you to eavesdrop. I think you were there all along, tracking your mechanical ally, making sure no one interfered before it had the opportunity to make its proposal.”

  “You know my war record,” Brother Angel protested.

  “Remember,” Vivian said. “I know your history. I know how many of your closest friends were killed in the battle where you yourself were so gravely wounded. I wonder how much of your mind’s refusal to interface with the prosthetic enhancements we have built for you is related to your guilt that you survived when so many others died. I think your sympathies changed then. Why continue to fight Death, when Death is inevitable?”

  Vivian turned toward a viewport that showed the complex dance of the immediate solar system. Somewhere out there, undetected yet, but certainly there, the berserkers must be approaching.

  “I think that when the berserker hinted that I was dissatisfied with my place here at Lake Moon, with what I have achieved, it was speaking your thoughts, your unhappiness. I chose to come to this isolated place, to work in secret. You must feel yourself exiled by your injuries. Even so, you and I have much in common in the difficult choices we must make.”

  “So you are not planning to make accusations against me? You intend to accept the berserker’s offer?” Brother Angel said eagerly.

  “Yes. And I will do more than that. I will give you and your masters Lancelot.”

  Vivian, followed closely by Brother Angel, went to her lab. She entered and locked the door snugly behind them.

  The lab could be sealed, for her experiments were not to be lightly interrupted, and so she knew their privacy was secure.

  Vivian stripped to the skin.

  The attention of her visitor seemed to remain focused elsewhere.

  In a long life, she had reshaped her physical appearance so ofte
n that she no longer remembered what she had looked like at birth. Her hair had been every, and sometimes all, the colors of the rainbow. Her skin and eye colors had run through all those known to humanity, and some only imagined. She had been both full-figured and elfin slim. She had even managed find means to create the illusion of height or of relative shortness.

  Now she looked at her current form and bid it fond farewell. Donning a long-sleeved coverall, Vivian went to a safe dug into one of the lab’s inner walls. Only she and the locking mechanism knew the combination, and the lock seemed almost surprised to be asked to open after so many years of holding closed.

  From the safe, Vivian drew the only remaining copy of her greatest failure—her greatest success—the complex array of force fields and transdimensional interlays that was called Lancelot. In the safe there was also a rack upon which Lancelot could be assembled and calibrated. Vivian set this up, her fingers remembering the complex joins she thought she might have forgotten. Then she set Lancelot upon it and touched her index finger to an activation pad. Something like light, although it extended into ranges where the human eye could not see, flowed through the fields.

  Activated, Lancelot did not in the least resemble familiar battle armor. It did not resemble the interstellar fighter she had proposed to the Templars. There had been some problem about that, she recalled, problems that had faded when she had demonstrated what Lancelot could do. New problems had arisen though, problems that had finally led to the project’s termination and the destruction of all copies of the device but this one.

  Vivian knew that she could wear Lancelot for a time before the stress grew too great for her to bear. Within that time she should have achieved her goal. The berserkers were out there, and Lancelot would carry her to them.

  “Brother Angel,” she said, “put one of the spare suits of battle armor on.”

  “Why?”

  “You must come with me. You overheard what the berserker said to me aloud, but did you hear its final orders?”

  Brother Angel’s expression showed uncertainty, and Vivian pressed her advantage.

  “It told me that you were to come with me. They have need of you, of the complex information about the Templar organization you have gathered.”

  “It is time for me to give my report,” Brother Angel said, moving toward the locker where the armor was stowed with almost indecent haste.

  “That must be so,” Vivian said.

  Swiftly, she donned the various pieces of Lancelot’s insubstantial armor. As each piece interfaced with her body, her awareness swelled. Lancelot had the capacity to maintain her body far more efficiently than did any space suit or set of battle armor. She ceased to breathe and did not notice. A slight pressure from her bladder vanished. A sensation of hunger was satisfied. A headache she had not known plagued her was treated.

  As the demands of her physical body were quieted, Vivian’s thinking became clearer, every iota of her mental capacity available to her now. She needed this, for even as Lancelot dealt with her physical needs, it expanded her capacity to sense what was around her. She became aware of the microbes dancing in the air, breeding in the damp of her discarded clothing. She could feel the throb of the power systems that fed the needs of Lake Moon Base. If she tried, she could detect individuals.

  Brother Angel’s heart rate was up, but his adrenal levels marked his excitement. In a physical therapy lab, General Gosnick paused in the midst of exercises meant to adjust his nervous system to his new legs. A report had come from the base command center. He listened, and his heart rate spiked, his breathing came fast.

  Vivian knew it was time for her to go.

  Her lab possessed its own airlock, another of those many conveniences meant to facilitate her work. She opened it with a thought, doing her best to shut down distractions generated by the increasing awareness of her Lancelot-stimulated senses. This level of stimulation had driven many a talented pilot into insanity. She could handle it . . . for now.

  Vivian moved toward the airlock, her gait smooth and her feet no longer touching the floor. Had there been any present to see, they would not have seen a woman in the most powerful weapons system ever created, but a creature strange and fey, an angel or a winged titan, robed in light and power.

  “Come with me, Brother Angel,” she said. “Lancelot can easily carry us both.”

  When he came to her, Vivian commanded Lancelot to cast a shield over Brother Angel, so that his presence would be undetectable. She reached out with enhanced senses and set a delay on flight decks and weaponry. Pursuit too soon would only endanger the pursuers to no good end, and she did not care to be distracted by the need to prevent injury from the base’s guns.

  As they were passing through the airlock, Vivian stopped fighting the flood of information Lancelot was feeding her. She let the many individual lives residing in the base flood through her. She gloried in their complexity and diversity. Rather than overwhelming her, the tsunami of Life gave her strength, and Vivian moved into the coldness of the airless void, strengthened and firmer in her purpose.

  Servant of death? Perhaps.

  She no longer needed any communications channel to know what was flowing through the electronic network within Lake Moon Base.

  The general as saying to an aide, “. . . but we have bigger problems than one scientist gone absent without leave. Long range sensors detect berserker activity two planets out and now approaching rapidly. They must have been shielding themselves behind the planets. Comet Tremaine has been messing up our data field in that direction for months. They took advantage of it.”

  This is not a drill! Berserkers sighted approaching this base. All hands to battle stations. Repeat! This is not a drill.

  Vivian was aware of communications on the base as she might have been aware of a fly settling on her arm while she was engrossed with some bit of technical analysis. She registered it, calculated what it would mean to her current course of action, and increased her speed. She wanted to reach the berserkers before the first wave of fighters could be scrambled.

  Vivian sped on through space, Lancelot carrying her and her passenger at speeds so swift that light bent around her, and she felt the illusion of wind in her hair.

  Three berserkers were approaching. They had reached the regions between the sixth planet and the asteroid belt. Two were the equivalent of small, fast fighters. The third was a larger model, a transport capable of interstellar flight, also capable of causing a considerable amount of destruction.

  Though Lancelot, Vivian reached out and examined the approaching ships. Doubtless the transport contained some chamber meant to carry her if she agreed to accept the berserker’s tempting offer.

  The transport, then, was where she should direct her attentions. The fighters were between her and it, moving at astonishing speeds.

  Wrapped within Lancelot, spreading her wings on the stellar winds, Vivian thought she knew something of the pleasure the berserkers must take in the freedom non-life gave them. Then she remembered that non-life did not feel pleasure and thought she understood a little better why the efforts to craft android berserkers had failed again and again.

  I could do it, she thought. I could succeed as no one else has managed to succeed. First, though, the transport. That is the way out-system.

  Lancelot brought her in. She traded steps with the hail of asteroids that wove a swiftly moving dance through this part of the Pinball System. Vivian knew she was showing off, but certainly there was no better time to do so.

  Neither the fighters nor the transport had chosen to dance with the asteroids, instead rising and going above the band in which competing stronger and weaker gravity fields had oriented the asteroids. The berserkers slowed as they became aware of Vivian and Lancelot, and she felt the vibrating force as countless energy weapons targeted her.

  There was interest, but she did not sense the surge that would precede a release of death dealing energy. She felt herself being scanned and was flattered whe
n defensive screens snapped into place on all three vessels.

  The transport said, “You have come, and you have brought Lancelot.”

  “I come only on conditions,” Vivian replied. “Not one living thing, from the tiniest microbe to the most complex conglomeration of living cells—in short, nothing at all is to be slain. Not now, and not for as long as I am in the service of the berserkers.”

  “We were prepared,” the transport replied, “for some such condition. I am authorized to make such an agreement. I am not authorized to extend that protection elsewhere.”

  “I understand. If you know my history, this base has been my home for over a century now. Those lifeforms I personally value are there.”

  “You do realize,” the berserker said, “that your fullest cooperation will be needed for us to override our programing and preserve these life-units.”

  “I do indeed. They are hostages against my acting against your interests.”

  Communication with the transport required only the smallest fragment of Vivian’s Lancelot-augmented attention.

  The time had come to act, for Lancelot had carried Vivian here much more swiftly than any fighter could fly. Vivian snaked her awareness along the channel the berserker transport was using to address her. She felt the whisper of its command to the two fighters. They were to defend herself and the transport, but they were not to attack unless the situation changed.

  Vivian smiled a thin smile, and reached out through Lancelot. She let her awareness become something fluid and deadly, a static that seeped like poison into the berserker transport’s electronic veins. This poison was created to slow processing, to numb awareness, to give her merely human self a chance to operate a little faster than berserkers, which moved as swiftly as the will of their complex electronic brains.

  She guided the infection so that it flowed along with commands into the fighters, and when she was sure that the poison had taken hold but that the berserkers had not yet detected their impediment, she struck out with a sword shaped from the glowing force fields of Lancelot’s self.