life-unit Nogara.”
So long as it had asked only about a dead man, Holt had given the berserker straight answers, not wanting to be tripped up in a useless lie. But a flagship was a different matter, and now he hesitated. Still, there was little he could say about Nirvana if he wanted to. And he and his fellow prisoners had had no chance to agree on any plan for deceiving the berserker; certainly it must be listening to everything they said in the lifeboat.
“I’ve never seen the Nirvana,” he answered truthfully. “Logic tells me it must be a strong ship, since the highest human leaders travel on it.” There was no harm in telling the machine what it could certainly deduce for itself.
A door opened suddenly, and Holt started in surprise as a strange man entered the interrogation chamber. Then he saw that it was not a man, but some creation of the berserker. Perhaps its flesh was plastic, perhaps some product of tissue culture.
“In, are you Captain Holt?” asked the figure. There was no gross flaw in it, but a ship camouflaged with the greatest skill looks like nothing so much as a ship that has been camouflaged.
When Holt was silent, the figure asked: “What’s wrong?”
Its speech alone would have given it away, to an intelligent human who listened carefully.
“You’re not a man,” Holt told it.
The figure sat down and went limp.
The berserker explained: “You see I am not capable of making an imitation life-unit that will be accepted by real ones face to face. Therefore I require that you, a real life-unit, help me make certain of Karlsen’s death.”
Holt said nothing.
“I am a special device,” the berserker said, “built by the berserkers with one prime goal, to bring about with certainty Karlsen’s death. If you help me prove him dead, I will willingly free you and the other life-units I now hold. If you refuse to help, all of you will receive the most unpleasant stimuli until you change your mind.”
Holt did not believe that it would ever willingly set them free. But he had nothing to lose by talking, and he might at least gain for himself and the others a death free of most unpleasant stimuli. Berserkers preferred to be efficient killers, not sadists.
“What sort of help do you want from me?” Holt asked.
“When I have finished building myself into the courier we are going on to Nirvana, where you will deliver your prisoners. I have read the orders. After being interviewed by the human leaders on Nirvana, the prisoners are to be taken on to Esteel for confinement. Is it not so?”
“It is.”
The door opened again, and Janda shuffled in, bent and bemused.
“Can’t you spare this man any more questioning?’ Holt asked the berserker. “He can’t help you in any way.”
There was only silence. Holt waited uneasily. At last, looking at Janda, he realized that something about the outlaw had changed. The tears had stopped flowing from his right eye. When Holt saw this he felt a mounting horror that he could not have explained, as if his subconscious already knew what the berserker was going to say next.
“What was bone in this life-unit is now metal,” the berserker said. “Where blood flowed, now preservatives are pumped. Inside the skull I have placed a computer, and in the eyes are cameras to gather the evidence I must have on Karlsen. To match the behavior or a brainwashed man is within my capability.”
“I do not hate you,” Lucinda said to the berserker when it had her alone for interrogation. “You are an accident, like a planet-quake, like a pellet of dust hitting a ship near light-speed. Nogara and his people are the ones I hate. If his brother was not dead I would kill him with my own hands and willingly bring you his body.”
“Courier Captain? This is Governor Mical, speaking for the High Lord Nogara. Bring your two prisoners over to Nirvana at once.”
“At once, sir,” Holt acknowledged.
After coming out of C-plus travel within sight of Nirvana, the assassin-machine had taken Holt and Lucinda from the lifeboat. Then it had let the boat, with Holt’s crew still on it, drift out between the two ships, as if men were using it to check the courier’s field. The men on the boat were to be the berserker’s hostages, and its shield if it was discovered. And by leaving them there, it doubtless wanted to make more credible the prospect of their eventual release.
Holt had not known how to tell Lucinda of her brother’s fate, but at last he had managed somehow. She had wept for a minute, and then she had become very calm.
Now the berserker put Holt and Lucinda into a launch for the trip to Nirvana. The machine that had been Lucinda’s brother was aboard the launch already, waiting, slumped and broken-looking as the man had been in the last days of his life.
When she saw that figure, Lucinda stopped. Then in a clear voice she said: “Machine, I wish to thank you. You have done my brother a kindness no human would do for him. I think I would have found a way to kill him myself before his enemies could torture him any more.”
The Nirvana’s airlock was strongly armored, and equipped with automated defenses that would have repelled a rush of boarding machines, just as Nirvana’s beams and missiles would have beaten off any heavy-weapons attack a courier, or a dozen couriers, could launch. The berserker had foreseen all this.
An officer welcomed Holt aboard. “This way, Captain. We’re all waiting.”
“All?”
The officer had the well-fed, comfortable look that came with safe and easy duty. His eyes were busy appraising Lucinda. “There’s a celebration under way in the Great Hall. Your prisoners’ arrival has been much anticipated.”
Music throbbed in the Great Hall, and dancers writhed in costumes more obscene than any nakedness. From a table running almost the length of the Hall, serving machines were clearing the remnants of a feast. In a thronelike chair behind the center of the table sat the High Lord Nogara, a rich cloak thrown over his shoulders, pale wine before him in a crystal goblet. Forty or fifty revelers flanked him at the long table, men and women and a few of whose sex Holt could not at once be sure. All were drinking and laughing, and some were donning masks and costumes, making ready for further celebration.
Heads turned at Holt’s entrance, and a moment of silence was followed by a cheer. In all the eyes and faces turned now toward his prisoners, Holt could see nothing like pity.
“Welcome, Captain,” said Nogara in a pleasant voice, when Holt had remembered to bow. “Is there news from Flamland?”
“None of great importance, sir.”
A puffy-faced man who sat at Nogara’s right hand leaned forward on the table. “No doubt there is great mourning for the late governor?”
“Of course, sir.” Holt recognized Mical. “And much anticipation of the new.”
Mical leaned back in his chair, smiling cynically. “I’m sure the rebellious population is eager for my arrival. Girl, were you eager to meet me? Come, pretty one, round the table, here to me.” As Lucinda slowly obeyed, Mical gestured to the serving devices. “Robots, set a chair for the man—there, in the center of the floor. Captain, you may return to your ship.”
Felipe Nogara was steadily regarding the manacled figure of his old enemy Janda, and what Nogara might be thinking was hard to say. But he seemed content to let Mical give what orders pleased him.
“Sir,” said Holt to Mical. “I would like to see—the remains of Johann Karlsen.”
That drew the attention of Nogara, who nodded. A serving machine drew back sable draperies, revealing an alcove in one end of the Hall. In the alcove, before a huge viewport, rested the coffin.
Holt was not particularly surprised; on many planets it was the custom to feast in the presence of the dead. After bowing to Nogara he turned and saluted and walked toward the alcove. Behind him he heard the shuffle and clack of Janda’s manacled movement, and held his breath. A muttering passed along the table, and then a sudden quieting in which even the throbbing music ceased. Probably Nogara had gestured permission for Janda’s walk, wanting to see what the brainwashed man would do.
Holt reached the coffin and stood over it. He hardly saw the frozen face inside it, or the blur of the hypermass outside the port. He hardly heard the whispers and giggles of the revelers. The only picture clear in his mind showed the faces of his crew as they waited helpless in the grip of the berserker.
