Shiva in Steel

by Fred Saberhagen

  Meanwhile, Sniffer stood by, some accident of its programming causing it to give a fair imitation of a faithful dog, alert and ready to do its master's bidding. Harry squinted at the robot, but had nothing to say to it-that'd be the day, when he started socializing with machines-beyond erasing from its memory the records of its work since arriving on Hyperborea; and in another minute, the Sniffer was back in its usual place of storage.

  There was no reason at all to suppose that berserkers had had anything to do with killing Becky-they liked to fry their victims thoroughly, whether in armored suits or out, rip them to shreds, sterilize them, vaporize them, make sure that not even bacteria or viruses could remain alive. But Harry, now that numbness and grief had had their first innings with him, was still aware of a powerful urge to hit out, to strike back at something or someone. The damned machines would make a more satisfactory target than people, the people around him now, who'd had no more to do with killing her than the berserkers had. So if the Space Force wanted him to sign up for Marut's crazy mission, he was ready. As soon as he saw the commander again, he was going to tell her so. If they were taking his ship, they might as well have him, too.

  Listening to such scattered bits of enigmatic radio traffic as came drifting back from the berserker-hunters in their current scrap, Harry kept gritting his teeth, and knew that he was ready.

  Meanwhile, his ship's communication system kept on picking up odds and ends of human signals, drifting in from a few light-minutes away. These were messages exchanged among the ships that had gone out hunting berserkers, and between those ships and their base. Most of the traffic, of course, was in code that Harry's communicator couldn't read. But the relatively low number of messages, and a certain tone that he thought he could read between the lines of the few words that did come in the clear, suggested that some enemy had indeed been sighted, but things were going reasonably well.

  Harry found himself, in his imagination, taking the point of view of Captain Marut-there was no chance that anyone else would be in command out there. Now the skirmish, which had died down temporarily with the enemy in hiding, suddenly flared up again. Sitting with his eyes closed, he had the imagination and experience to make it quite convincing.

  Scraps of radio information suggested that the crew of one of the armed launches was attempting to position its craft in just the spot where the enemy, if startled into sudden withdrawal, would be likely to plunge into flightspace.

  Other devices were being tried. Marut was deploying the space equivalent of a barrage balloon-a kind of spreading-out device that extended mechanical or force-field tentacles for kilometers in many directions, presenting a deadly barrier against any ship or machine attempting to drop into flightspace. Just as deadly, in its own way, as a c-plus cannon. Even if it did not score a direct hit, it could fill a region, cubic kilometers, of space and/or of flightspace with a murderous barrier, shredding and pulverizing any ship or machine that tried to make a transition locally.

  Harry, listening in, could easily fill in the gaps from experience and imagination.

  Naturally, the berserker, outgunned as it was, wasn't being idle all this time. Now one of the Solarian patrol craft had been hit, Harry couldn't tell how badly, while making an all-out effort to stop the enemy. There were going to be more human casualties today, but Harry now got the impression that the berserker scout had definitely been stopped.

  "We think we killed it before it could get off a courier," said one clear voice. "But we can't be absolutely sure."

  After waiting for a few more minutes to make sure-with berserkers it was always necessary to make sure-Silver suddenly picked up a comparatively long exchange in clear text, strongly suggesting that the shooting was over; some kind of minor victory was implied. At the very least, no fresh disaster had befallen. All consistent with what Commander Normandy had told him when he called her in her office.

  What communications Harry could pick up from Marut suggested that the captain was actually a little disappointed that there was no other target around for his crew to shoot at. A listener got the impression that the little man would have liked to keep his little fleet in space for some gunnery practice, but knew he couldn't spare either the time or the resources for that.

  Marut was giving his ships, reluctantly it seemed, the order to return to base.

  Warily welcoming this kind of news, and having done all he could, for the time being, to advance the readiness of his own ship-not to mention his own personal fortunes-Harry shut things down, clamped on his helmet, and went out through the airlock. In a moment, he was bouncing, in a motion that must have made him look lighthearted, back to the base again.

  Then it occurred to him to wonder what he was waiting for; now that he'd decided, why put off action until he saw Claire Normandy again? The peak of combat urgency was well past, and she could afford to turn her attention elsewhere. Harry decided to call her right away and tell her he'd made up his mind.

  Hello, Commander." He paused, then took a shot. "Would you be in the computer room, by any chance?"

  Her expression altered subtly. "What do you mean? Has someone been talking to you about a computer room?"

  "Not at all-just putting two and two together. Anyway, I just called to offer congratulations. Looks like you can put today's action in the win column."

  "Thank you, Mr. Silver." Pause. "I suppose you've also arranged some way to listen in on our radio traffic?"

  "Just a little, here and there. Look, Commander, next time you people head out after the bad machines, I mean this Shiva, I'll come along."

  "I'm not personally heading out, Mr. Silver. As I suppose you realize, my job is here. Captain Marut will be in command of the revised task force, and I'm sure he'll welcome your participation." She paused momentarily. "May I ask what brought about this decision?"

  He shrugged. "I just wouldn't want to miss the chance. Especially now that my ship will have such a great new toy to shoot with. Where do I sign?"

  The commander's image looked at him curiously, but then accepted his change of mind unquestioningly. "I'll have a form for you to sign. See me anytime, Mr. Silver, and I'll take care of it."

  Trying to remember what model of holostage the commander had in her office, Harry supposed that probably a connection could be established that would allow him to sign up while remaining aboard his own ship. Transmit a binding signature. He was on the verge of suggesting that they complete the formalities that way-but then something, he wasn't sure what, held him back.

  SEVEN

  As soon as the technicians were relieved of their duties as gunners on base defense, they got back to work on what had been Harry's ship. They unlimbered all their exotic gear from a heavy hauler, and, yes, it looked like they were actually installing a c-plus cannon. Harry thought he could successfully resist the temptation to oversee their efforts, especially as he didn't understand half of what they were doing, and they tended to ignore his questions. And anyway, his assigned room aboard the base would be quieter.

  Yawning, he added up the number of hours that had passed since his arrival on Hyperborea. He'd slept only once in that interval and was overdue for some sack time. He returned to his quarters.

  Odd dreams were commonplace with Harry Silver, and now, as he drifted in the shadowy borderland of sleep, he had one involving Becky. He found himself standing, having no trouble staying alive without helmet or armor, amid the airless black rocks at the very place where Sniffer had found her body. But Becky and her suit were no longer there; there were only the massive rocks, and his robot dog, not really much like a dog, that came to stand beside him. Even as Harry understood that he was dreaming, he knew also that something important was waiting to be discovered. But he was afraid to find out what it might be.

  Harry had seen no reason to set a wake-up call, and he got in a good sleep of more than six hours. When he woke up, he lay for a few minutes reflecting on the fact that the deadline for intercepting Shiva was that much closer. A ne
w standard day had started, local time.

  As he showered and dressed, shaved, and ordered a minor hair trim from a machine in his private bath, the vague fear engendered by his dream hung with him, like the aftertaste of some unpleasant food. He got a change of clothing from his duffel bag and checked out what his room could offer in the way of laundry service.

  He continued to think things over while going to the mess hall for some breakfast, the one meal of his personal day he really hated skimping. Having been informed on awakening that a yellow alert was still in effect, he went in armor, carrying his helmet under his arm. Today he seemed to be in luck: real melons, which, he was told, were grown in a greenhouse established behind the kitchen; fishcakes so realistically constituted and gently seasoned that they might actually have come from the fresh-caught bodies of his favorite fish; hot tea, and bread still warm from the oven.

  A dozen other people were in the mess hall-to judge by their manner, a crew of some kind just coming off a shift of work. Not a flight crew, though. Again, Harry thought to himself that most of them looked like computer people, though he would have been hard put to describe the details that gave him that impression. Maybe it was a vague air of being nonmilitary, though in uniform. Their official insignia was unfamiliar and told him nothing helpful. He nodded a good morning, but stayed at his own table.

  One of the people paused at his table, long enough to exchange a few words. "Looks like there could be some more action soon."

  "Don't tell me any military secrets. I don't know if I'm cleared yet for classified information."

  Conversation over, Harry returned to his private thoughts.

  So. Five years ago, Becky had sent him a message. Hard copy, printed on real paper, exemplifying the kind of care that many people took with messages they thought of true importance. Of course the letter, dispatched by regular mail from the little settlement down on Good Intentions, had contained nothing that might incriminate either sender or receiver-except maybe by Kermandie rules. It had taken about a month to catch up with Harry on a distant world. Not a lengthy communication, but a reasonably upbeat one, full of vague talk about starting a new life, a feat he assumed Becky had intended to accomplish in some solar system other than this one. She hadn't specified where in the Galaxy she was going, no doubt because she didn't want an angry or a contrite Harry coming after her.

  Obviously, Becky hadn't disposed of her ship right there on Gee Eye, because she'd needed it for at least one more trip. She'd been heading out of this system, bound for her new world-wherever she thought that would be-when she stopped here on Hyperborea for the last time. Carrying the box of stuff and evidently intending to hide it in a secure place-maybe she was planning to write Harry another letter, later, telling him where it could be found.

  Coming to Hyperborea, she'd landed on what had then been an utterly barren rock, innocent of human habitation. Never dreaming that in a couple of years a swarm of engineers and a small army of their machines would be here, digging in to construct a Space Force base.

  Harry sighed. Maybe that was an accurate reconstruction of events-but not necessarily so. He could think of at least one alternate version, in which Becky had hidden the contraband in that deep crevice during some earlier visit to Hyperborea. And when she stopped here for the last time and was trapped, she'd' been on her way out of the system, intending first to retrieve the box, to take it with her…

  But hell, he supposed the details didn't matter now. However she got to Hyperborea on her last visit, whatever her reason for crawling around among these godforsaken rocks with the box in her hand, the massive walls had shifted on her and she'd been caught. Pure accident.

  All right. Accidents happened: Even smart people screwed up sometimes, or were overtaken by sheer bad luck. But whatever the actual details of the tragedy, what had become of Becky's ship? Now it was nowhere to be seen. And with all the Space Force activity here over the last few years, no object as large as a spaceship could possibly have escaped notice on a planetoid this small.

  Try once more. Suppose that shortly after her death, someone else had come along, happened upon an abandoned ship conveniently available, and had simply made off with it. That was a possibility. Otherwise, the Space Force base-builders would certainly have found it when they arrived to start construction.

  Maybe the Space Force had found it-and in that case, Becky's ship, which Harry remembered as being very similar to his own, was almost certainly still here on Hyperborea. It wasn't sitting out on the field, but it could be stored in one of the deep hangars-assuming it could have been brought in through the hangar doors, which were too tight for the Witch. But no, Harry realized abruptly, her ship couldn't be here, anywhere, or the commander would be trying to mobilize it, along with the Witch, for this upcoming maximum effort.

  Something in the back of his mind didn't want to leave the problem alone. Humoring the impulse, he tried once more. Suppose Becky hadn't been alone when she made her last stop on this rock. She'd had an unknown companion, or companions, who'd treacherously murdered her and then stolen her ship… but had left the valuable contraband behind. No. Damned unlikely.

  Every scenario Harry could think of was unconvincing, crippled by serious difficulties. At last he gave up-for the time being. Maybe his trouble was that he kept expecting everything to make sense, and the thing about real life was that it often didn't.

  After shoving his breakfast tray into the disposal slot and nodding a good day to his new acquaintances, Harry walked out of the mess hall wondering what to do with himself. But he wasn't the kind to wonder about such a thing for very long.

  There was a lounge, the kind of place that he preferred to think of as a tavern-the sign on the wall outside named it a Social Room-just down the corridor from the mess hall. The social room had the look of a place in which it would be possible, at most times, to buy drinks, with some emphasis on the kind that contained alcohol or other substances in common recreational use on one or more Solarian planets. Right now the facility was closed, no doubt because the yellow alert was still in effect. But that meant little to a man who knew how to persuade the standard-model robot bartenders to open up. In Harry's opinion, these robots were among the noblest servants of humanity, in spite of-or maybe because of-the fact that they were also fairly simple machinery. Harry had met their kind often enough before, in a great many similar facilities on a great many other planets.

  The service staff in this so-called social room, like most such machines, moved about on rollers, and none of them were any more anthropomorphic than they absolutely had to be to deal properly with such things as glasses, bottles, and various forms of payment. Berserkers sometimes tried, so far without success, to build imitations of the Solarian-human model, and so for centuries, humans had very rarely made any of their own machines resemble people.

  It wasn't hard for a man of Harry's experience to persuade the inanimate system manager that the last remnants of the alert had just been canceled. The door promptly opened and the lights came on and he walked in, seeing a wide choice of tables. Soon a statglass window, much like the one in the commander's office, cleared itself, offering a fine view of the landing field-not much out there at the moment to intrigue the tourist, owing to the paucity of ships. A waiter approached, moving on rollers in the form of a narrow pyramid of adult human height, gently swinging inhuman arms.

  Helmet detached and resting within easy reach on the table in front of him, Harry treated himself to one drink, and then another, thinking it would probably be a wise strategic move to conserve the bottle in his room as a reserve. He ordered up a bowl of pretzels to go along.

  Whoever had designed the room, if it could be called that, had tried, with some success, to imitate an Earthly garden. Stuff that looked like moss and short grass was growing over much of the floor. Out of the virtual scenery disguising one wall emerged a real, live babbling brook, only about a meter wide and no more than ankle-deep. The little stream curved and gently spl
ashed its way over and around some stones amid a profusion of real ferns and moss, along with a few un-Earthly plants, before vanishing into the base of another wall, with muted sound and a little drift of mist suggesting a waterfall just beyond.

  Looking into a nearby mirrored wall and crunching on a real pretzel, Harry asked himself aloud: "I wonder what the road to Good Intentions is paved with?"

  No one was around to hear the question except the robot bartender, and the machine, as its kind were wont to do, did its limited best to come up with a profound reply.

  "They say that of the road to hell." Its voice was clear enough, carrying to Harry's table from its source in another pyramid behind the bar, but no more human than its shape.

  Harry turned his head. "No, they don't," he corrected it sharply. "What they used to say was-oh hell, never mind." But then, even after saying that, he paused for a reply, and getting none, was irritated into trying once more. "You're not making much sense, barkeep. I was asking a question, and you took what I said to mean… never mind."

  There followed a silence, in which Harry felt like a fool, trying to start an argument with a thing. The robot had accepted his rebuke meekly-well actually, of course, it was only looking for clues in human behavior and responding to them as programmed. It would just as blandly have recited the multiplication table, or rolled over to his table and tried to tickle him, if someone had programmed it to do either of those things.

  Of course what it had actually been programmed to do, in its character of servant, was to remain silent when challenged verbally. It was supposed to maintain only a shadowy presence, projecting an air of quietly purposeful activity behind the bar, where its rounded, inhuman head slid back and forth as it went about its work. Well, that was how a good Solarian machine was expected to behave, anyway.