himself. “That is, a new sign on a busy pedestrian ramp is naturally given great attention. Now in this sign, the semantic content of the first word is confusing in its context.”
The President of the Committee—and of the planet—cleared his throat warningly. The MiniCom’s fondness for stating truisms made him sound more stupid than he actually was. It seemed unlikely that the Liberals were going to present any serious challenge at the polls, but there was no point in giving them encouragement.
The lady member of the Committee, the Minister of Education, waved her lorgnette in chubby fingers, seeking attention. She inquired: “Has anyone computed the cost to us all in work-hours of this confusing sign?”
“We’re working on it,” growled the Minister of Labor, hitching up an overall strap. He glared at the accused. “You do admit causing this sign to be posted?”
“I do.” The accused was remembering how so many of the pedestrians on the crowded ramp had smiled, and how some had laughed aloud, not caring if they were heard. What did a few work-hours matter? No one on Planet A was starving any longer.
“You admit that you have never done a thing, really, for your planet or your people?” This question came from the Minister of Defense, a tall, powerful, bemedaled figure, armed with a ritual pistol.
“I don’t admit that,” said the accused bluntly. “I’ve tried to brighten people’s lives.” He had no hope of official leniency anyway. And he knew no one was going to take him offstage and beat him; the beating of prisoners was not authorized.
“Do you even now attempt to defend levity?” The Minister of Philosophy took his ritual pipe from his mouth, and smiled in the bleak permissible fashion, baring his teeth at the challenge of the Universe. “Life is a jest, true; but a grim jest. You have lost sight of that. For years you have harassed society, leading people to drug themselves with levity instead of facing the bitter realities of existence. The pictures found in your possession could do only harm.”
The President’s hand moved to the video recording cube that lay on the table before him, neatly labeled as evidence. In his droning voice the President asked: “You do admit that these pictures are yours? That you used them to try to get other people to—yield to mirth?”
The prisoner nodded. They could prove everything; he had waived his right to a full legal defense, wanting only to get the trial over with. “Yes, I filled that cube with tapes and films I sneaked out of libraries and archives. Yes, I showed people its contents.”
There was a murmur from the Committee. The Minister of Diet, a skeletal figure with a repellent glow of health in his granite cheeks, raised a hand. “Inasmuch as the accused seems certain to be convicted, may I request in advance that he be paroled in my custody? In his earlier testimony he admitted that one of his first acts of deviation was the avoidance of his community mess. I believe I could demonstrate, using this man, the wonderful effects on character of dietary discipline—”
“I refuse!” the accused interrupted loudly. It seemed to him that the words ascended, growling, from his stomach.
The President rose, to adroitly fill what might have become an awkward silence. “If no member of the Committee has any further questions—? Then let us vote. Is the accused guilty as charged on all counts?”
To the accused, standing with weary eyes closed, the vote sounded like one voice passing along the table: “Guilty. Guilty. Guilty . . . ”
After a brief whispered conference with the Minister of Defense, the President passed sentence, a hint of satisfaction in his drone.
“Having rejected a duly authorized parole, the convicted jester will be placed under the orders of the Minister of Defense and sent to solitary beacon duty out on the Approaches, for an indefinite period. This will remove his disruptive influence, while at the same time constraining him to contribute positively to society.”
For decades Planet A and its sun had been cut off from all but occasional contact with the rest of the galaxy, by a vast interstellar dust storm that was due to go on for more decades at least. So the positive contribution to society might be doubted. But it seemed that the beacon stations could be used as isolation prisons without imperiling nonexistent shipping or weakening defense against an enemy that never came.
“One thing more,” added the President. “I direct that this recording cube be securely fastened around your neck on a monomolecular cord, in such a way that you may put the cube into a viewer when you choose. You will be alone on the station and no other off-duty activity will be available.”
The President faced toward a tridi camera. “Let me assure the public that I derive no satisfaction from imposing a punishment that may seem harsh, and even—imaginative. But in recent years a dangerous levity has spread among some few of our people; a levity all too readily tolerated by some supposedly more solid citizens.”
Having gotten in a dig at the newly burgeoning Liberals, a dig he might hope to claim was nonpolitical in intent, the President faced back to the jester. “A robot will go with you to the beacon, to assist you in your duties and see to your physical safety. I assure you the robot will not be tempted into mirth.”
The robot took the convicted jester out in a little ship, so far out that Planet A vanished and its sun shrank to a point of brilliance. Out on the edge of the great dusty night of the Approaches, they drew near the putative location of station Z-45, which the MiniDef had selected as being the most dismal and forsaken of those unmanned at present.
There was indeed a metallic object where beacon Z-45 was supposed to be; but when the robot and jester got closer, they saw the object was a sphere some forty miles in diameter. There were a few little bits and pieces floating about it that just might be the remains of Z-45. And now the sphere evidently sighted their ship, for with startling speed it began to move toward them.
Once robots are told what berserkers look like, they do not forget, nor do robots grow slow and careless. But radio equipment can be sloppily maintained, and ever the dust drifts in around the edges of the system of Planet A, impeding radio signals. Before the MiniDef’s robot could successfully broadcast an alarm, the forty-mile sphere was very close indeed, and its grip of metal and force was tight upon the little ship.
The jester kept his eyes shut through a good deal of what followed. If they had sent him out here to stop him laughing they had chosen the right spot. He squeezed his eyelids tighter, and put his fingers in his ears, as the berserker’s commensal machines smashed their way into his little ship and carried him off. He never did find out what they did with his robot guard.
When things grew quiet, and he felt gravity and good air and pleasant warmth again, he decided that keeping his eyes shut was worse than knowing whatever they might tell him. His first cautious peek showed him that he was in a large shadowy room, that at least held no visible menace.
When he stirred, a squeaky monotonous voice somewhere above him said: “My memory bank tells me that you are a protoplasmic computing unit, probably capable of understanding this language. Do you understand?”
“Me?” The jester looked up into the shadows, but could not see the speaker. “Yes, I understand you. But who are you?”
“I am what this language calls a berserker.”
The jester had taken shamefully little interest in galactic affairs, but that word frightened even him. He stuttered: “That means you’re a kind of automated warship?”
There was a pause. “I am not sure,” said the squeaky, droning voice. The tone sounded almost as if the President was hiding up there in the rafters. “War may be related to my purpose, but my purpose is still partially unclear to me, for my construction was never quite completed. For a time I waited where I was built, because I was sure some final step had been left undone. At last I moved, to try to learn more about my purpose. Approaching this sun, I found a transmitting device which I have disassembled. But I have learned no more about my purpose.”
The jester sat on the soft, comfortable floor. The more he remembered about berserkers, the more he trembled. He said: “I see. Or perhaps I at least begin to see. What do you know of your purpose?”
“My purpose is to destroy all life wherever I can find it.”
The jester cowered down. Then he asked in a low voice: “What is unclear about that?”
The berserker answered his question with two of its own: “What is life? And how is it destroyed?”
After half a minute there came a sound that the berserker computers could not identify. It issued from the protoplasmic computing-unit, but if it was speech it was in a language unknown to the berserker.
“What is the sound you make?” the machine asked.
The jester gasped for breath. “It’s laughter. Oh, laughter! So. You were unfinished.” He shuddered, the terror
