Shiva in Steel

by Fred Saberhagen

  And Havot thought to himself, too bad that the woman was still alive, but there didn't seem to be any safe way of finishing her off now. One risk that was certainly not worth taking. And the situation was complicated by the fact that he couldn't be entirely sure that she could identify him as the one who'd shot her.

  That would make it all the more imperative to get away. Things got a little more urgent when you were facing a firing squad, not just a cell.

  "All right, Silver, let's talk business. You say you might be able to use a man with my experience. My own fundamental need is for a pilot. I've only tried once in my life to fly a real ship-and it didn't work for me. Maybe because my thoughts were… busy with other things." And Havot smiled his nice smile.

  "If you're flying a ship in combat, a clear mind is necessary, though not sufficient."

  On entering the social room, Harry went directly to the bright ruin that had once been a proud display behind the bar. It took a little searching to find the intact bottle that he wanted. Somehow, bottling the stuff in casually breakable material had come to be seen as a warrant for its authenticity.

  Havot brushed some debris off a table and sat down, opening a container of snacks-wild nuts, fresh and self-drying fruits-from the bioengineering labs.

  Harry soon joined him, bringing a couple of glasses and a bottle of Inca Pisco brandy, imported all the way from Earth.

  Havot, evidently craving something else, got up and went to look for it behind the bar. He carried his carbine with him, holding the weapon in a relaxed and expert way, but left his helmet on the table where Harry sat opening his bottle of brandy.

  Now that the shooting was over, or almost over, Harry could recognize the stages that people tended to go through after a fight. It was starting to feel safe to set his helmet and his weapons down out of reach, at least briefly. He allowed himself to put down his carbine, at just a little distance. And no one could drink with a helmet on.

  In another hour, the cleanup machines would be starting an enormous job. Before the day was over, people would probably be expected to pay for things they took.

  Fumbling with gauntleted fingers inside the belt pouch of his armored suit, Havot brought out some money and laid it on the bar. "Wouldn't feel right if I didn't pay." Then he came back to the table with his own bottle, some label Harry didn't recognize.

  Harry wondered just where and how the other had obtained the money. But he wasn't going to ask. Instead, he inquired: "Did the commander tell you about my downlock codes? They gave her engineers some trouble at the start."

  "No, she didn't mention anything like that." Havot poured stuff into his glass. "The codes must be pretty tough if they gave her people a hard time."

  "Oh, they're totally disabled now."

  "I see. Then your ship really is ready to go."

  "Right."

  Both men's helmets now were off, sitting on the table where they could be grabbed quickly should the need arise.

  "Here's to safe flight," Havot proposed, raising his glass.

  "I'll drink to that." Harry said. Then, as if merely continuing some unspoken chain of thought, he added: "But shooting down two people, just like that. Why do you do that kind of thing? It's not nice."

  The handsome face looked pained, though not terribly surprised. "Any man or woman who suggested I did that in your ship is crazy. It was probably a berserker, and if it was a human, it couldn't possibly have been me."

  "I look at it this way. If it was a human, it was someone who badly wanted a ship to get away in."

  Havot smiled. "I still want a ship-or a ride, rather. I'll make it worth your while to give me transportation."

  Harry didn't sound interested in discussing any deal. "Y'see-right after the shooting, someone tried to lift off in the Witch, and just made a hash of it. And you said just now that you had tried, once in your life, with a real pilot's helmet on. Now that didn't happen before you came to Hyperborea, did it? So it was today that you didn't do very well as a pilot. Not with your head full of all the garbage that seems to grow in there."

  Havot just sat where he was for a few seconds, shaking his head silently. It was impossible for Harry to tell whether he was denying the accusation, trying to shake the garbage loose, or simply marveling at the strangeness of things in general. At last Havot said: "Don't get me wrong, Silver, I'm no damned goodlife. But I'm glad the berserkers came."

  "I bet they love you, too."

  Havot tasted the stuff in his glass and smacked his lips appreciatively. "Why do you say a thing like that?" He had it down so well, the tone of sounding nobly injured.

  Harry said: "Berserkers don't insist on doing the killing themselves-as long as it gets done. Unlike crazy people, they get no personal kick out of it. All that matters to them is the final body count. So the more humans slaughter each other, the better berserkers like it-saves wear and tear on them."

  Havot didn't really seem to be listening. Staring into the distance, he took another sip of his drink and said: "But the truth is that berserkers are lucky for me. Always have been."

  "That's all right. Sometimes I think crazy people are lucky for me."

  "I'm glad to hear," said Havot, "that the autopilot on the Witch is now working just fine. Because that means I don't need a live pilot any longer. I do know that much about ships." Now he looked around, smiling. "Harry, it's really dangerous not to carry your weapon with you. No one's called off the alert yet. There could still be a berserker here-somewhere." And he knocked Harry's helmet off the table.

  Confronted by that quietly happy gaze, Harry, unarmed and helmetless, unable to protect his head or to radio for help, his own weapon hopelessly out of reach, jumped up and dodged and sprinted around a curving corner into the other wing of the social room. When he got there, he pressed his body back against the wall in what seemed a pathetic attempt to hide.

  But the look on his face wasn't pathetic, or even very scared. He said: "It won't work, you know."

  "Oh?" Havot had jumped up too, carbine in hand, and moved with long, purposeful strides, knee-deep in ferns, to cut the other off from the door leading to the corridor. Now Havot had reached the precisely correct spot to allow him to aim a neat shot into the corner, from a nice, convenient distance.

  "No it won't," said Harry. "While you were rooting around in the bottles back there, you left your helmet at the table, and I reached inside and got a good grip on a couple of things." He raised and wiggled ten servo-powered fingers. "Bent those things, just a little. Enough to screw up the whole system slightly-even the manual triggering on the hand-held unit. Your carbine won't work now. If you ever get back to your helmet, just feel with your hand inside it. Maybe you could tell what I did. It hardly shows."

  "Is that so? Then why are you trying to hide in the corner?" As Havot spoke, he raised his weapon, eyeing the helpless-looking figure before him. "Nice try, Harry," he added sarcastically. "Oh, very cool thinking."

  Then Havot tried his blink-trigger, and nothing happened. He groped for the manual trigger and tried that, with no more success.

  The gravity stuttered. Harry was ready for that, having seen it happen before in this room, but Havot wasn't. It only made him sway slightly on his feet, and did not shake his aim.

  Still, Harry just stood there calmly, as if they were getting ready to play some game. "Reason I'm back in this corner," he said, "is that I wanted you to come after me, and to stand just about where you-"

  At that moment, with the speed of a sprung trap, what felt like the grip of death itself locked onto Havot's left ankle. If not for the hardness and toughness of his armor, the bones of his leg and foot would have been crushed. Only one mode of death struck in this way, and immediately Havot's mind and body were mobilized for a maximum effort to survive. But he was tossed by a giant's strength, berserker's strength, his armored body flung spinning in the air before he could brace himself and exert the full power of his suit's servos. His eyes kept on blinking madly, even if he couldn'
t aim, but still his weapon refused to fire.

  Spinning flight ended in a sprawling crash, leaving Havot flat on his back on the uneven floor. In that instant, the fallen berserker, thrashing its one useful limb, dragging its crippled body along the deck, struck out once more with its one good gripper…

  Harry, advancing warily out of the corner of the room, could see that the berserker didn't have the best possible hold-but after a couple of seconds, it was apparent that the killing machine was going to manage quite satisfactorily with the one it had.

  The water in the brook flowed red.

  There was Havot's carbine-not in working order just now, and Harry let it lie. Edging sideways, he picked up his own functional weapon from where he'd earlier placed it, a little out of easy reach. Cautiously, he circled around until he could feel a chair behind his knees, and then he sat down with a slight shudder.

  The gravity stuttered again, and a great blood-tinged water bubble became briefly airborne before splashing back. The general shift of position caused by the stutter gave Harry a better look. The steel claw had Havot by the lower jaw, metal fingers rammed into his mouth, thumb forced in under his chin. A number of his white and shapely teeth were being scattered around, and no one was going to admire his beauty anymore.

  By now, Havot had got a two-handed, servo-powered grip on the steel arm that was killing him-but too late, too late. The berserker's fingers had already found a major blood vessel and were doubtless going for the spinal cord. Now the whole metal fist was forcing its way right down the throat. The dying man made noises for a little while, and kicked his legs, but soon was quiet.

  "You shot her down, you son of a bitch," Harry told him. He spoke almost conversationally-only a little short of breath. "Becky, and I don't know how many others. Just like nothing, you tried to kill her, and then you let her lie there."

  The deck beneath the lounge gave another little upward lurch, once more gentry tossing the two bodies so it looked like the dead man and his last antagonist were both trying to come to life. Then gravity held everything smoothly again. Tall ferns hid Havot and his killer and the curve of the small stream in which they lay.

  Drawing a deep breath, Harry Silver leaned back in his chair and ordered himself a drink, calling for Inca Pisco. Then he woke up and remembered that none of the waiters were ambulatory, and he got to his feet and searched for a bottle other than the one he'd offered to share with Havot.

  Just a minute later, two minutes ahead of the appointed time for her arrival, Becky came in and found him sitting there, glass in hand. Harry could hear the mop-up squad, murmuring on their radios at no great distance behind her.

  He raised his head. "You're looking good, kid. Still got the stuff?"

  "Sure I've got it." Becky patted a kind of saddlebag slung round her armor-suited shoulder. "Along with various of my own personal possessions. I discharged myself from the hospital, Harry. And I resigned my commission at the same time. I don't know if they heard me or not. They didn't seem to be paying attention."

  "That's how it was with me." Harry started to throw down his carbine, then decided he'd better hang on to it till they were safely aboard ship. Becky was carrying hers, too. "I guess they're too busy to pay attention. Let's go somewhere else." He wanted to get his woman out of the social room before she happened to discover what lay behind the ferns; she'd had enough unpleasantness to last for, a long time. "How about the two of us taking a little ride?"

  An hour later, the official mop-up squad, on making its careful way through the social room, discovered, with not much surprise, one more berserker to be finished off, and one more human victim. Parts of the former would be preserved, naturally, for the Trophy Room. It was with some relief that the squad leader reported that the escaped prisoner had now been located. Havot's weapon lay near his body, and evidently he'd shot the berserker at close range, but had carelessly taken off his helmet too soon, and the thing got him before it died.

  People on the station would still be going armed and armored for several more days at least, in case one more deadly machine might still be lurking somewhere.

  Commander Normandy, by this time somewhat groggy from lack of sleep, was distracted and stimulated by the news that a large, strong human fleet had just come roaring into the Hyperborean system. Evidently one of the ships in Marut's original task force had managed to get a courier off at the time of the ambush, with a message of disaster. But no one had known, until now, whether that courier managed to get through.

  By the way, Commander?" It was an admiral who asked the question, a couple of hours later. Claire had to keep reminding herself that this one was real.

  "Yes, sir?"

  "What happened to this Lieutenant Silver?"

  "I don't know, sir. I really haven't been making an effort to keep track." Under the circumstances, that was quite understandable.

  What had happened was that Harry Silver was in flight again, having sneaked a liftoff in his ship before anyone else thought if was ready. Ten minutes spent with his familiar pilot's helmet on had proven long enough to straighten out the thoughtware.

  Now, at a light-year's distance from Hyperborea, he and his companion could console themselves with the thought that it was only the Space Force after them now, and not berserkers. Harry knew they'd be after him for something, and had decided not to wait around to hear the specific charges. Probably not Havot-that would be charged to berserker action. But there was sure to be some legal tangle with regard to the Kermandie agent, Enomoto. And some Kermandie thugs might be after him as well.

  Well, Kermandie thugs would have good cause to be upset. He was determined to see to it that the relics of Hai San found their way into the hands of the rebels, who would know how to put them to good practical use-as psychological weapons, in rituals, and on display. And Harry had been telling the truth when he said he hoped to collect a good price for Hai San's relics-though not as much as the other side would have paid him, to make sure they were destroyed.

  When he raised the subject with Becky, she quickly came up with a corollary to the scheme of selling the relics to the rebels. "Harry, how would it be if we first contrived some fakes? Good enough so that the dictator's people would fork over a good price for 'em?"

  Harry stared at her with something approaching reverence. "Gee, we'll have to think about that. Hey, kid, I'm glad you're back."

  "Me too, Harry."

  And now he supposed he was a good bet to be charged with stealing the Space Force's c-plus cannon, which was still riding in his ship. Well, he didn't really want the damned thing, but getting rid of it in any kind of responsible fashion was going to be a job.

  "We'll have to be careful where we try to sell a thing like that," Becky mused wistfully.

  "We will indeed."

  After running for another couple of hours in hyperspace, Harry mentioned that he was considering doubling back, just enough to observe the Witch's trail for signs of a pursuit.

  Becky suggested that there would be no point in doing that. There was no need, because they had no doubt of what was happening.

  Harry Silver nodded slowly. "You're right, kid."

  The pursuit was on. Harry had known for a long time now that it was always on. That all you ought to ask of life was the chance to do some real good things before it finally caught up.