torpedo, an infernal machine that seemed to know how the ship was designed, a moving atomic pile that had burned its way through the High Commander’s quarters and almost to the bridge before it could be stopped and quenched.
The sight of battle damage here should have warned Mitch. But he hadn’t been able to think. Shock and drugs kept him from thinking or feeling much of anything now, but he could see her face, looking as it had in the gray deadly place from which he had rescued her.
Rescued.
“I am a weak and foolish man,” Karlsen was saying. “But I have never been your enemy. Are you mine?”
“No. You forgave all your enemies. Got rid of them. Now you won’t have any, for a while. Galactic hero. But, I don’t envy you.”
“No. God rest her.” But Karlsen’s face was still alive, under all the grief and weariness. Only death could finally crush this man. He gave the ghost of a smile. “And now, the second part of the prophecy, hey? I am to be defeated, and to die owning nothing. As if a man could die any other way.”
“Karlsen, you’re all right. I think you may survive your own success. Die in peace, someday, still hoping for your Believers’ heaven.”
“The day I die—” Karlsen turned his head slowly, seeing all the people around him. “I’ll remember this day. This glory, this victory for all men. “ Under the weariness and grief he still had his tremendous assurance—not of being right, Mitch thought now, but of being committed to right.
“Poet, when you are able, come and work for me.”
“Someday, maybe. Now I can live on the battle bounty. And I have work. If they can’t grow back my hand— why, I can write with one.” Mitch was suddenly very tired.
A hand touched his good shoulder. A voice said: “God be with you.” Johann Karlsen moved on.
Mitch wanted only to rest. Then, to his work. The world was bad, and all men were fools—but there were men who would not be crushed. And that was a thing worth telling.
WHAT T AND I DID
My first awareness is of location. I am in a large conical room inside some vast vehicle, hurtling through space. The world is familiar to me, though I am new.
“He’s awake!” says a black-haired young woman, watching me with frightened eyes. Half a dozen people in disheveled clothing, the three men, long unshaven, gather slowly in my field of vision.
My field of vision? My left hand comes up to feel about my face, and its fingers find my left eye covered with a patch.
“Don’t disturb that!” says the tallest of the men. Probably he was once a distinguished figure. He speaks sharply, yet there is still a certain diffidence in his manner, as if I am a person of importance. But I am only . . . who?
“What’s happened?” I ask. My tongue has trouble finding even the simplest words. My right arm lies at my side as if forgotten, but it stirs at my thought, and with its help I raise myself to a sitting position, provoking an onrush of pain through my head, and dizziness.
Two of the women back away from me. A stout young man puts a protective arm around each of them. These people are familiar to me, but I cannot find their names.
“You’d better take it easy,” says the tallest man. His hands, a doctor’s, touch my head and my pulse, and ease me back onto the padded table.
Now I see that two tall humanoid robots stand flanking me. I expect that at any moment the doctor will order them to wheel me away to my hospital room. Still, I know better. This is no hospital. The truth will be terrible when I remember it.
“How do you feel?” asks the third man, an oldster, coming forward to bend over me.
“All right. I guess.” My speech comes only in poor fragments. “What’s happened?”
“There was a battle,” says the doctor. “You were hurt, but I’ve saved your life.”
“Well. Good.” My pain and dizziness are subsiding.
In a satisfied tone the doctor says: “It’s to be expected that you’ll have difficulty speaking. Here, try to read this.”
He holds up a card, marked with neat rows of what I suppose are letters or numerals. I see plainly the shapes of the symbols, but they mean nothing to me, nothing at all.
“No,” I say finally, closing my eye and lying back. I feel plainly that everyone here is hostile to me. Why?
I persist: “What’s happened?”
“We’re all prisoners, here inside the machine,” says the old man’s voice. “Do you remember that much?”
“Yes.” I nod, remembering. But details are very hazy. I ask: “My name?”
The old man chuckles drily, sounding relieved. “Why not Thad—for Thaddeus?”
“Thad?” questions the doctor. I open my eye again. Power and confidence are growing in the doctor; because of something I have done, or have not done? “Your name is Thad,” he tells me.
“We’re prisoners?” I question him. “Of a machine?”
“Of a berserker machine.” He sighs. “Does that mean anything to you?”
Deep in my mind, it means something that will not bear looking at. I am spared; I sleep.
When I awake again, I feel stronger. The table is gone, and I recline on the soft floor of this cabin or cell, this white cone-shaped place of imprisonment. The two robots still stand by me, why I do not know.
“Atsog!” I cry aloud, suddenly remembering more. I had happened to be on the planet Atsog when the berserkers attacked. The seven of us here were carried out of a deep shelter, with others, by the raiding machines. The memory is vague and jumbled, but totally horrible.
“He’s awake!” says someone again. Again the women shrink from me. The old man raises his quivering head to look, from where he and the doctor seem to be in conference. The stout young man jumps to his feet, facing me, fists clenched, as if I had threatened him.
“How are you, Thad?” the doctor calls. After a moment’s glance my way, he answers himself: “He’s all right. One of you girls help him with some food. Or you, Halsted.”
“Help him? God!” The black-haired girl flattens herself against the wall, as far from me as possible. The other two women crouch washing someone’s garment in our prison sink. They only look at me and turn back to their washing.
My head is not bandaged for nothing. I must be truly hideous, my face must be monstrously deformed, for three women to look so pitilessly at me.
The doctor is impatient. “Someone feed him, it must be done.”
“He’ll get no help from me,” says the stout young man. “There are limits.”
The black-haired girl begins to move across the chamber toward me, everyone watching her.
“You would?” the young man marvels to her, and shakes his head.
She moves slowly, as if she finds walking painful. Doubtless she too was injured in the battle; there are old healing bruises on her face. She kneels beside me, and guides my left hand to help me eat, and gives me water. My right side is not paralyzed, but somehow unresponsive.
When the doctor comes close again, I say: “My eye. Can it see?”
He is quick to push my fingers away from the eyepatch. “For the present, you must use only your left eye. You’ve undergone brain surgery. If you take off that patch now, the consequences could be disastrous, let me warn you.”
