Rogue Berserker

by Fred Saberhagen

  “Harry, I intend to have you as a member of that team. In fact, you may be its key component.”

  “No, thanks.”

  His prompt refusal made very little impression. “I haven’t finished. What I could discover of your official record is impressive, and your reputation, among those who know about such things, even more so.”

  “I would have thought that certain parts of my official record might disqualify me.”

  “Not from this job.”

  The impossibly luxurious chair seemed finally to have decided just what support Harry’s body needed. At least it had stopped violating his personal privacy in subtly suggestive ways. He was turning the plain-looking ring round on his little finger. When he spoke, there was still no enthusiasm in his voice. It was as if he were simply going down a required checklist. “I take it you’ve already called the Space Force.”

  “That, naturally, is the first place I turned. I spoke to a general who told me, in effect, that the chance of any berserker captives being recovered alive, especially after the lapse of so many days, was simply much too small to justify the expenditure of time and wealth in such an enterprise, not to mention the severe risk to people and ships. Though the Force of course sympathizes with my loss, they have their own methods and timetables for fighting berserkers, et cetera, et cetera.”

  Harry was still waiting. The Lady Masaharu, now primly seated in what appeared to be a perfectly ordinary chair, was listening patiently, her face revealing nothing.

  Winston Cheng drew a deep breath. “I’ll anticipate your next question, Harry, and tell you I’ve also communicated with the Templars, at a very high level in their chain of command. Of course they too gave me their sympathy—though I thought they were just a little chilly—and expressed a hope that in the future something might be done about this particular enemy. They saw no possibility of dispatching any expedition to the Gravel Pit in the near future, because they assume the two missing people must have been killed—or effectively turned into something less than human—many days ago.

  “They also tell me that Templar resources are already stretched too thin. To be fair, I must admit they’re probably telling the truth in that regard.”

  Harry was silently trying to remember certain rumors that he had heard, to the effect that Winston Cheng and Templars had a long-standing feud in progress. On the question of what exactly had brought the feud about, the rumors disagreed. He saw no point in bringing up that subject now.

  He sat still, having reached a kind of truce with his chair. The old man was physically closing in on him, walking slowly toward him, eyes fixed in an unwavering stare.

  “Now I’m coming to you, Harry. To you and a few others, as I said—all carefully chosen men and women, some of whom you may know. I realize it’s taking time, precious time, to do things this way, but we must make our very best effort if we are to have any chance of success at all.

  “I said before that we’re going to have a better chance than people realize. When you’re signed on, you’ll see who the rest of my crew are, and I think you’ll be impressed.

  “In my offer to you, I mean just what I said in my message. Give me an honest, all-out effort, and I’ll buy you the ship you want—or, if you prefer, and are willing to wait, have it built to your specs. On top of that, if our effort succeeds—by that I mean if we can get at least one of my people out alive—I’ll throw in a good bonus. Let me emphasize, a good one.

  “It would be foolish to try to minimize the danger of this expedition, but if you’re killed, I, or my estate, will send that bonus to your heirs. Of course we can put this all in writing, if you like.”

  There was silence for three or four breaths. Harry could feel sympathy with Templars or anyone else who felt themselves stretched thin.

  Winston Cheng was silent too, having stopped his steady advance. He was skillfully not pushing Harry, not trying to hurry him, but waiting. He had even turned his head away. The romping, gentle game his two heirs played had started up again, and it was as if he drew some kind of nourishment from watching their bright insubstantial images.

  At last Harry said: “I repeat, Mister Cheng, I’m sorry about your loss. I really am. And I’d give a lot to have the kind of ship you’re offering. But the neatest, sharpest vessel in the Galaxy won’t do me a bit of good if I’m dead.”

  The Lady Masaharu got to her feet and turned her back to Harry. Behind her back, the long-nailed fingers of her clasped hands made a knot.

  Winston Cheng did not even blink, much less turn away. He seemed neither surprised nor angered. He was facing Harry again, hands casually in the side pockets of his jacket, listening calmly, waiting to hear more.

  Harry went on. “What it comes down to is, you’re planning a private-enterprise kind of raid on a berserker base.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m planning, yes.”

  “Let’s consider that for a minute. No one has ever seen this supposed berserker installation, no robot scouts have taken pictures of it.”

  “That’s quite true. Unfortunately.”

  “We don’t have any idea of its size or strength, or where it might be, maybe within a billion kilometers, inside this Gravel Pit system. We don’t even know for sure that it’s there at all. The berserker could have started out on a course directly toward that system and later changed directions.”

  “An accurate appraisal of the situation, as far as it goes—proceed, Harry.”

  “All right. Suppose it is there. Berserker ground installations come in a variety of sizes and configurations. Whether they’re big or small, I assure you nobody’s ever yet run into one that’s weak. Launching an expedition against a base of unknown size and strength is a job for a major task force, including several battleships—not a couple of armed yachts and maybe a secret weapon. And you say the only two organizations in the Galaxy who could put a real task force together have already told you that in this case they don’t want to try.”

  “And so—?”

  “So. My answer has to be the same as theirs. I’m just not sorry enough for your troubles, or hungry enough for a ship, to throw my life away, signing on for the kind of thing you’re talking about.” To himself Harry thought: My wife would kill me if I did.

  Aloud, he rephrased the silent thought: “I’ve got a family too, who are kind of depending on me.”

  Winston Cheng was still not astonished—or even much surprised, it would appear—by the flat rejection. It was hard to tell if Harry’s announcement of a family of his own was something the old man had expected or not. His voice had softened somewhat. “Is that so? Where are they?”

  “On Esmerelda. We’ve lived there a few years now.” Then Harry shook his head. “Hell, that’s not quite right. They’ve lived there. I drop in from time to time, when I’m not out on a job.”

  The woman, poker-faced again, had turned back to face the boss and his visitor.

  Winston Cheng was nodding thoughtfully. Some of the intensity had faded from his voice. He seemed not so much discouraged as philosophical, almost as if he had expected Harry to refuse. Not that he gave any impression of giving up. He said: “Esmerelda’s a pretty place. I’ve been there.” And after a moment the old man asked: “Got a picture, Harry?”

  “Matter of fact, I do.” Harry reached into a pocket, drew out a small cube, and squeezed its sides. Beside his chair, two glowing images popped into existence, solid-looking, life-sized and standing upright.

  Not nearly as elaborate a display as Winston Cheng’s, whose two lost souls were once more moving gracefully in the background. But Harry’s show was not bad either. A slender, young-looking woman with blond hair, dressed in a silvery but simple gown, sat in a plain chair holding hands with a five-year-old boy who stood beside her, wearing only shorts.

  The two of them were gazing at each other as if they shared a happy secret. The boy’s hair matched his mother’s in curliness if not in color, and he had a lot of Harry’s face, though fortunately not
the broken nose. Every time Harry looked at his family it bothered him a little that Becky had subtly enhanced her image. She was trying to improve, as she thought, her appearance—but she didn’t need to do that.

  Winston Cheng was silent, gazing at the display. He stood regarding it somewhat longer than Harry had expected.

  “My congratulations,” the old man said at last, convincingly.

  “Thanks.”

  Winston Cheng sighed. “How about a drink? You look like a drinking man to me.”

  “Don’t mind if I do. Scotch, if you’ve got it.”

  “I think we might manage that.”

  * * *

  It was the woman and not a robot who poured the drinks in an adjoining room, a smaller chamber that reeked less of power. The Lady Masaharu performed the task efficiently, silently declining to take even a symbolic few drops for herself. When she sat down it was again at a little distance from the men, as if once more determined to stay apart from their confrontation but remain available if needed.

  Winston Cheng, sitting on a plain chair, nursing his own glass of fine amber liquid, made it plain he had not yet given up on Harry. He resumed the campaign by drawing Harry out on the subject of what details he would like in the next ship that he owned. Then he made sure Harry understood that the very vessel he was describing now lay within his grasp.

  Cheng was too shrewd a salesman to belabor this particular prospect with talk of money, money, money. He had not got to where he was by so seriously misjudging the people he was trying to persuade. Instead, he expanded on how well his two yachts were going to be armed—intriguingly avoided even mentioning the secret weapon again—and offered to clear up any other misunderstandings that might help to change Harry’s mind.

  When these efforts failed to sell the customer, he perceptively abstained from what would certainly have been an unproductive effort at the hard sell, and graciously offered Harry a ride to anywhere in the charted portion of the Galaxy he would like to go.

  Winston Cheng’s expression had changed into a faint, sad smile. “Having practically kidnapped you to get you here, I figure I owe you that much. What’ll it be—Esmerelda?”

  That was tempting. Really tempting—but no. Harry would accept a return ride back to Cascadia, where the Cheng courier had picked him up, but he didn’t want to be under any obligations.

  In this room he had gratefully chosen a plain chair too. “Thanks anyway, Mister Cheng. Just take me back to where you found me, I’ve got some unfinished business there regarding a leased ship.”

  “There’ll be a little something for you when you get on the courier.”

  Harry raised his voice a little. “Thanks, Mister Cheng, but I can’t—”

  “No no. Nothing like that. My parting gift consists of nothing more than a prepaid courier message capsule. Just in case you change your mind.”

  “I won’t. But thanks.”

  And a liveried, blank-eyed robot servant came to show Harry out. The last impression he took with him of the magnificent apartment and its occupants was the woman’s face, her pale eyes regarding him with an absolutely unreadable expression.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Several weeks had passed since his grim and unproductive visit with Winston Cheng, and three days since his encounter with Paddy. Harry was up early in yet another cheap hotel room, greeting a late, modestly spectacular sunrise on yet another world. This planet was more thickly populated than Cascadia and, according to the latest crime statistics, less marred by strong-arm robbery. At least he thought the local sunrise modestly spectacular, because it had hues and shadings, and a way of seeming to stick to the horizon, that he found unfamiliar.

  The billions of stars in the ten percent or so of the Galaxy so far more or less explored by Earth-descended humans were known to support hundreds of very Earth-like planets, with new ones frequently turning up. The philosophers among Harry’s restless ED race, as well as those from branches of Galactic humanity less devoted to physical exploration, endlessly debated the reason for this profusion of comfortable places. Some thought it was due to sheer blind luck, the vagaries of quantum fluctuation from which the Universe had been born, while others saw commendable foresight on the part of the universal Designer. Either way, one consequence of such a respectable number of very similar worlds was that Earth-descended human travelers sometimes tended to lose track of just where they were.

  Having redeemed a somewhat restless night with a reasonably good breakfast, Earth-descended Harry this morning was pondering whether he should try to make one more run with his leased ship, carrying a partial cargo that at best could be only marginally profitable, and might actually lose money—or if it would be better to formally terminate the lease and just leave the vessel sitting where she sat.

  He was practically certain that he could get some kind of a piloting job before too long—and also pretty sure that it would not be the kind of job that he enjoyed. Nor would it allow him to get home anytime in the near future.

  Thinking back to his meeting with Cheng, he was reflecting on his own state of mind, then and now. Harry wanted to find out if he was really tempted, on any level, to change his mind and accept the old man’s offer. Of course it might already be too late to do that. But the sheer, out-and-out craziness of the plan made it dangerously attractive to some part of Harry’s nature. If only …

  But no. Forget it, he warned himself sternly. Let him sign up for any such scheme, and Becky would certainly kill him, if somehow the Gravel Pit’s berserkers—if any were lurking there—and its chaotic flying rocks failed to do a thorough job.

  Harry hated to admit it to himself, but there were moments when it seemed to him that what he needed was not really a ship at all but just a ticket home. If a powerful genie were to appear at such a moment, offering to grant him just one wish, he might burn that wish—or three wishes, if they came in package deals—simply to get back to Becky and Ethan.

  He sighed. None of this was getting him anywhere with his immediate problem, which was what to do about the leased ship. Trying to make up his mind on that boring subject, he walked half a kilometer to the spaceport. On arrival he stood on the ramp, regarding from a little distance the undistinguished and unprofitable mass of metal, basically a blunt cone, as big as several houses, standing on its base. Nothing wrong with it, really, as a means of transportation. It was good enough to haul people and modest loads of freight from here to there among the stars. But that was about it.

  Actually Harry was glad this pile of mediocre technology didn’t belong to him. It was somewhat bigger than his old Witch, but nowhere near in the same class for performance—or for comfort, either.

  … someone was calling his name.

  Turning, he looked a hundred meters or so across the flat and level ramp, to see a couple of men approaching steadily on foot. One of them was wearing spacefarer’s garb, the other some kind of local uniform. The spaceman, to Harry’s surprise, soon came into focus as Hank Aragon, an old friend and former Space Force officer. Aragon was raising an arm in salute, hailing Harry.

  Harry grinned and waved in answer. The grin faded slowly when he saw the look on his friend’s face as he drew near. Both Aragon and the uniformed stranger, who did not appear to be a cop, looked seriously grim. The stranger was wiping sweat from his face, though the morning was brisk.

  The first thing that Hank Aragon said was: “We’ve been trying to find you for a while. This fellow’s with the Port Authority.”

  “Hello.” By now Harry’s smile had faded entirely, and he could feel the beginning of an inward chill. “What is it?”

  The two men, taking turns, were explaining that they had traced Harry’s whereabouts through the police record of his fight with the robot.

  So?

  “Harry.” Aragon’s voice was that of a man who didn’t know how to say what he had to say, but was compelled to make a stab at it anyway. Finally the words came out. “It’s your family.”

  “What?�
� No. Anything else but that.

  “It came in the official courier, coded, but thoroughly verified, I hate like hell to say. Someone’s trying to keep it quiet at the other end, and the newsorgs don’t seem to have it yet, but there’s no doubt … your wife and son … they’ve been caught, taken. By berserkers.”

  Harry had been trying to brace himself, to take the bad news of some kind of accident, but not this. This was simply crazy. He felt an impulse to lash out, to knock some of the big white ugly teeth right out of Hank Aragon’s mouth, because the man must have gone insane, trying to make up a joke on such a subject. But at the same time, Harry knew he wasn’t going to hit anyone.

  Now they were telling him irrelevancies. The bad news had been transmitted through the local Space Force office. The story sounded to Harry like some crazy kind of demonic echo. Harry’s own wife and child had joined the small roster of berserker captives, the only other members being Winston Cheng’s two relatives. But nobody now was mentioning Claudia Cheng and her son. Evidently the news of that kidnapping was still being suppressed, despite the fact that leaders of both the Force and the Templars had been told early on about Cheng’s loss.

  Harry had to hear the story of his own disaster a few more times, the impossible truth phrased in a couple of different ways, before it truly started to sink in. Then it was as if he’d had an arm or leg suddenly hacked off, the deadly shock that drained your life before the true pain started. His core vitality seemed suddenly to have been exhausted.

  Now Harry’s informants were telling him, as if it mattered, as if anything could matter, how the people at Space Force sector headquarters had been unable to come up with more than a few isolated records of anything like these bizarre captures happening before, to anyone, anywhere in the Galaxy. Berserkers killed—that was what they did, the task the damned machines had been created to perform. They had no craving to kidnap victims, and they never did—except on very rare occasions and to serve some special purpose.