The machine clothed in Janda’s flesh came shuffling up beside him, and its eyes of glass stared down into those of ice. A photograph of retinal patterns taken back to the waiting berserker for comparison with old captured records would tell it that this man was really Karlsen.
A faint cry of anguish made Holt look back toward the long table, where he saw Lucinda pulling herself away from Mical’s clutching arm. Mical and his friends were laughing.
“No, Captain, I am no Karlsen,” Mical called down to him, seeing Holt’s expression. “And do you think I regret the difference? Johann’s prospects are not bright. He is rather bounded by a nutshell, and can no longer count himself king of infinite space!”
“Shakespeare!” cried a sycophant, showing appreciation of Mical’s literary erudition.
“Sir.” Holt took a step forward. “May I—may I now take the prisoners back to my ship?”
Mical misinterpreted Holt’s anxiety. “Oh, ho! I see you appreciate some of life’s finer things, Captain. But as you know, rank has its privileges. The girl stays here.”
He had expected them to hold on to Lucinda, and she was better here than with the berserker.
“Sir, then if—if the man alone can come with me. In a prison hospital on Esteel he may recover—”
“Captain.” Nogara’s voice was not loud, but it hushed the table. “Do not argue here.”
“No, sir.”
Mical shook his head. “My thoughts are not yet of mercy to my enemies, Captain. Whether they may soon turn in that direction—well, that depends.” He again reached out a leisurely arm to encircle Lucinda. “Do you know, Captain, that hatred is the true spice of love?”
Holt looked helplessly back at Nogara. Nogara’s cold eye said: One more word, courier, and you find yourself in the brig. I do not give two warnings.
If Holt cried berserker now, the thing in Janda’s shape might kill everyone in the Hall before it could be stopped. He knew it was listening to him, watching his movements.
“I—I am returning to my ship,” he stuttered. Nogara looked away, and no one else paid him much attention. “I will . . . return here . . . in a few hours perhaps. Certainly before I drive for Esteel.”
Holt’s voice trailed off as he saw that a group of the revelers had surrounded Janda. They had removed the manacles from the outlaw’s dead limbs, and were putting a horned helmet on his head, giving him a shield and a spear and a cloak of fur, equipage of an old Norse warrior of Earth—first to coin and bear the dread name of berserker.
“Observe, Captain,” mocked Mical’s voice. “At our masked ball we do not fear the fate of Prince Prospero. We willingly bring in the semblance of the terror outside!”
“Poe!” shouted the sycophant, in glee.
Prospero and Poe meant nothing to Holt, and Mical was disappointed.
“Leave us, Captain,” said Nogara, making a direct order of it.
“Leave, Captain Holt,” said Lucinda in a firm, clear voice. “We all know you wish to help those who stand in danger here. Lord Nogara, will Captain Holt be blamed in any way for what happens here when he has gone?”
There was a hint of puzzlement in Nogara’s clear eyes. But he shook his head slightly, granting the asked-for absolution.
And there was nothing for Holt to do but go back to the berserker to argue and plead with it for his crew. If it was patient, the evidence it sought might be forthcoming. If only the revelers would have mercy on the thing they thought was Janda.
Holt went out. It had never entered his burdened mind that Karlsen was only frozen.
Mical’s arm was about her hips as she stood beside his chair, and his voice purred up at her. “Why, how you tremble, pretty one . . . it moves me that such a pretty one as you should tremble at my touch, yes, it moves me deeply. Now, we are no longer enemies, are we? If we were, I should have to deal harshly with your brother.”
She had given Holt time to get clear of the Nirvana. Now she swung her arm with all her strength. The blow turned Mical’s head halfway round, and made his neat gray hair fly wildly.
There was a sudden hush in the Great Hall, and then a roar of laughter that reddened all of Mical’s face to match the handprint on his cheek. A man behind Lucinda grabbed her arms and pinned them. She relaxed until she felt his grip loosen slightly, and then she grabbed up a table knife. There was another burst of laughter as Mical ducked away and the man behind
Lucinda seized her again. Another man came to help him and the two of them, laughing, took away the knife and forced her to sit in a chair at Mical’s side.
When the governor spoke at last his voice quavered slightly, but it was low and almost calm.
“Bring the man closer,” he ordered. “Seat him there, just across the table from us.”
While his order was being carried out, Mical spoke to Lucinda in conversational tones. “It was my intent, of course, that your brother should be treated and allowed to recover.”
“Lying piece of filth,” she whispered, smiling.
Mical only smiled back. “Let us test the skill of my mind-control technicians,” he suggested. “I’ll wager no bonds will be needed to hold your brother in his chair, once I have done this.” He made a curious gesture over the table, toward the glassy eyes that looked out of Janda’s face. “So. But he will still be aware, with every nerve, of all that happens to him. You may be sure of that.”
She had planned and counted on something like this happening, but now she felt as if she was exhausted from breathing evil air. She was afraid of fainting, and at the same time wished that she could.
“Our guest is bored with his costume.” Mical looked up and down the table. “Who will be first to take a turn at entertaining him?”
There was a spattering of applause as a giggling effeminate arose from a nearby chair.
“Jamy is known for his inventiveness,” said Mical in pleasant tones to Lucinda. “I insist you watch closely, now. Chin up!”
On the other side of Mical, Felipe Nogara was losing his air of remoteness. As if reluctantly, he was being drawn to watch. In his bearing was a rising expectancy, winning out over disgust.
Jamy came giggling, holding a small jeweled knife.
“Not the eyes,” Mical cautioned. “There’ll be things I want him to see, later.”
“Oh, certainly!” Jamy twittered. He set the horned helmet gingerly aside, and wiped the touch of it from his fingers. “We’ll just start like this on one cheek, with a bit of skin—”
Jamy’s touch with the blade was gentle, but still too much for the dead flesh. At the first peeling tug, the whole lifeless mask fell red and wet from around the staring eyes, and the steel berserker-skull grinned out.
Lucinda had just time to see Jamy’s body flung across the Hall by a steel-boned arm before the men holding her let go and turned to flee for their lives, and she was able to duck under the table. Screaming bedlam broke loose, and in another moment the whole table went over with a crash before the berserker’s strength. The machine, finding itself discovered, thwarted in its primary function of getting away with the evidence on Karlsen, had reverted to the old berserker goal of simple slaughter. It killed efficiently. It moved through the Hall, squatting and hopping grotesquely, mowing its way with scythelike arms, harvesting howling panic into bundles of bloody stillness.
At the main door, fleeing people jammed one another into immobility, and the assassin worked methodically among them, mangling and slaying. Then it turned and came down the Hall again. It came to Lucinda, still kneeling where the table-tipping had exposed her; but the machine hesitated, recognizing her as a semi-partner in its prime function. In a moment it had dashed on after another target.
It was Nogara, swaying on his feet, his right arm hanging broken. He had come up with a heavy handgun from somewhere, and now he fired left-handed as the machine charged down the other side of the overturned table toward him. The gunblasts shattered Nogara’s friends and furniture but only grazed his moving target.
At last one shot hit home. The machine was wrecked, but its impetus carried it on to knock Nogara down again.
There was a shaky quiet in the Great Hall, which was wrecked as if by a bomb. Lucinda got unsteadily to her feet. The quiet began to give way to sobs and moans and gropings, everywhere, but no one else was standing.
She picked her way dazedly over to the smashed assassin-machine. She felt only a numbness, looking at the rags of clothing and flesh that still clung to its metal frame. Now in her mind she could see her brother’ s face as it once was, strong and smiling.
Now, there was something that mattered more than the dead, if she could only recall what it was—of course, the berserker’s hostages, the good kind spacemen. She could try to trade Karlsen’s body for them.
