Horrible experiments had come into view, the most conspicuous of them mounted on a wall right at his elbow. Harry kept telling himself, over and over:This was once a man -part of a man"s rib cage, likely, straightened and flattened out to fit the mounting s.p.a.ce. Judging by the dark, coa.r.s.e hair, and the big bones that showed white where the raw edges of the piece were oozing blood, it could never have been part of a woman or a child.
Harry realized that he had stumbled and blasted his way into a berserker Trophy Room, the place where they studied their terrible opponent, the swarming, breeding badlife they could never fully understand . . .
This was the work to which the rogue was dedicated. It had already reminded him that it had a job to do, and it was tirelessly efficient in its work. It was not compelled to kill, no, only to study. Only to do this.
There were other trophies on adjoining walls, but he had no need to force himself to look at experiments the rogue must find intensely interesting. He must not allow himself to get sick as he walked between them, or even to be distracted. He had a job to do.
Since the rogue must consider the lives of its experimental subjects to be of great importance, sensitive material not to be casually wasted, it was not astonishing to discover that somewhere in or near its extensive laboratory the devilish machine would probably have acc.u.mulated some kind of collection of s.p.a.cesuits, of protection shaped and provisioned to match the Earth-descended body.
Harry"s spirits momentarily surged up. He told himself that it wouldn"t be h.o.a.rding suits unless it was h.o.a.rding prisoners too.
Here there was even a spare helmet that would fit Harry"s suit. He weighed it in his hand, then tossed it back into storage-if his current helmet was shot away, and somehow his head did not go with it, he would know where to come for yet another one.
Here was a bank of lockers, that would not have looked too out of place in a room adjoining some peaceful gymnasium on Earth or Esmerelda. The boarding machines that had pillaged ships for the life that they contained might well have also gathered up the means of keeping their new specimens alive.
Child-sized s.p.a.cesuits were rare, almost to the point of nonexistence, in military craft and installations.
But such gear was common enough in civilian ships, that also made use of cribs and other equipment designed for carrying infants around in conditions that required people to wear s.p.a.cesuits. There were boxlike carriers that could be pa.s.sed on from one human or robotic hand to another.
That compartments and containers would be not only closed but locked was perhaps the strongest evidence yet that other purposeful ent.i.ties, besides the rogue and its auxiliaries, moved with some freedom in these rooms. Harry shot away the lock on one of them, pulled the door open, and here indeed were suits.
Wrenching open more of the lockers, rifling them as fast as his armored hands could move, Harry reminded himself that by all reports Ethan as well as Becky had been encased in some kind of s.p.a.cesuit when the berserker boarding machines hauled them out of the boarded ship and into their own machine.
The same had been true of Winston Cheng"s great-grandson, whose suit just might conceivably be here, a special outfit recognizable by its design and dimensions.
He still had several lockers to go, when his sensitive airmikes picked up a faint sound from behind him.
Harry whirled, weapon ready to fire at the speed of thought. A long-haired, bearded man, his lean body stark naked and punctuated at wrists and ankles by what appeared to be some kind of inserted optelectronic terminals, came stumbling around a corner, only to brake to a stop, gesturing surrender, at the sight of Harry"s suited form.
Three steps behind the first man, a nude woman, hair long and matted, her limbs similarly marked or mutilated, came stumbling into view. Five or six more people in the same condition came tottering behind her. The connections on all their arms and legs, as if waiting for strings to be attached, gave them the look of crude ghastly puppets.
TWENTY-ONE.
The eyes of the first man to round the corner stayed fixed on Harry, and his hairy lips were stuttering, trying to form words. But it was as if he might have forgotten how. Just behind him, the first woman to appear had fallen to her knees, her arms outstretched in the general direction of their rescuer. Other members of the small group were stopping, paralyzed, as they came around a corner, all of them staring at Harry"s armored figure.
All the people Harry had seen so far were naked, and all were fitted with jacks or plugs already mortised into their bodies, in a way that left them free to move about, and seemed to be causing no serious pain or inconvenience. Harry a.s.sumed that the idea was to make it easier for the machine to follow reactions, and perhaps apply a stimulus now and then.
At last a few clear syllables spilled from the lead man"s mouth. "Who-? How-?"
Harry muttered something obscene and pointless. Then his airspeakers rasped out: "Who else is withyou ? How many people are locked up here?"
No one seemed able to give him a coherent answer. But one man finally came forward and got out a few words that made sense on a certain level. "I was betting it would be the s.p.a.ce Force who came for us.
That"s you, isn"t it? You"re not Templars, or local?"
By "local," of course, the man meant from the armed service of some solar system within a few light-years. Meanwhile an especially haggard-looking older woman had come to stand looking at Harry over the speaker"s shoulder. "Where are the others?" she demanded. "How many are with you?"
"I"m it, lady. The rescue party, the one-man gang. I did have some help getting here, but you wouldn"t believe me if I told you."
As Harry spoke he was pushing people out of his way, trying to see past them, looking back in the direction from which they were all coming. "I"ll answer questions later. Right now I"m looking for one special woman and one special child. Tell me, who else is here? This can"t be all of you."
The woman was staring past him in the opposite direction, back along the way Harry had come. She said: "I can"t believe you"re alone, we heard a lot of what sounded like fighting." Suddenly she seemed to remember her nudity, and tried to cover her body with her arms.
"Someone tell me, d.a.m.n it, is this all of you? Are there cells back that way? More people still locked up?" Harry had turned his suit lamp on again, and was using it to try to probe the more distant and shadowy reaches of the rogue"s domain.
Around him people were babbling, trying to convince themselves that they had been set free. Ignoring Harry"s questions, they started complaining not about the gruesome plugs that had been stuck in their arms and legs, but mostly about poor food and the conditions in their cells, as if Harry might be their cruise director. It was all noise that brought him no useful information. None of them seemed to have the faintest idea of the horror that had overtaken their fellow captives, disa.s.sembled into tapestries on a wall.
Precious seconds were sliding by. Before Harry could decide on his next move, the voice of the rogue was once more resounding in his helmet.
It seemed to have at least temporarily prevailed in the techno-battle, somehow wrested control of the channel that Harry"s radio was tuned to. It was speaking to him clearly, calm as ever. It started to give Harry the precise numbers that he had asked for.
He cut the berserker off. "Never mind the motherless body count. I want to seeall the people that you"re holding, with a priority on one woman and one child in particular. Get "em out here, right away."
"You will already have observed, Harry Silver, that there are certain units of life which cannot readily be moved."
"I don"t mean those." He couldn"t bring himself to contemplate the possibility that Becky and Ethan might already be hanging on a wall. He couldn"t ask this monster if among its decorations were two who had once been his woman and his child.
The rogue gave him an answer on the question he had been afraid to ask. "The two people you want are not here."
"Then where are they?"
"The life-unit Satranji claims to be holding your woman and your child as his prisoners. I have been unable to verify his claim. But he has vowed to turn them over to me as part of our agreement."
That was a stunner. Harry needed a moment to reorganize his thoughts. "How canhe be holding them?
Where? And where is he now?"
"I do not know." The rogue"s voice had taken on a new tone, odd for any machine, even odder for a berserker, suggesting that it viewed Harry with suspicion. As if it wasn"t sure he could be trusted with all these priceless materials. "As for the life-units you see before you, what will you do with them if I allow you to take them away? Few or none of them will be of any particular value to you, Harry Silver."
He made a savage gesture with his weapon, so that the bewildered folk around him, hearing only his end of the conversation, shrank back. His voice was hoa.r.s.e. "Few or none of them are carrying a carbine that can blow all this priceless machinery of yours into little atoms. Do what I tell you, you motherless junkpile!"
Now a couple of the people in Harry"s group, caught up in the time-honored tendency of victims to identify with their kidnapper, appeared to be losing some of their enthusiasm for freedom. One or two actually seemed on the verge of timidly retreating in the direction of their cells.
Harry snarled and waved the carbine. "Where the h.e.l.l do you think you"re going? Get back here. Then go take a walk around that other corner, way down there, and have a good look at what"s hanging on the wall."
People milled around, uncertain if he really wanted them to do that or not.
"Very well, Harry Silver," said the rogue"s voice smoothly. "You may remove my entire remaining stock of viable life-units. In return, I ask only that you help me to lure the one called Del Satranji into one of my cells. I find him very highly desirable as a subject of study."
"Just like me."
The rogue adopted a judicious tone. "True, there are resemblances, but notable differences as well. I do take a less conciliatory att.i.tude with Satranji, largely because he is not threatening my valuable equipment with an efficient weapon."
"And don"t forget who is."
"I forget nothing, Harry Silver. It is true that I find goodlife and badlife equally interesting. The contrast leads to a question that vitally concerns me: What is the best means of turning one into the other?"
It seemed to be stalling him, and he wasn"t going to allow it. "The question that better concern you is figuring out some way to get my woman and my child to safety. Then we can argue about all this. I"m not going to be distracted."
The berserker"s voice, no longer at a blasting volume, was not nearly as smooth and manlike as the a.s.sa.s.sin"s. But Harry began to think he could detect gradual improvement.
The rogue continued the process of feeding Harry bits and morsels of information, none of it immediately useful, while Harry worked his way cautiously back in the direction from which the prisoners had come.
The further he went, the more horror kept coming into view, walls and tables alive, or almost alive, with the rogue"s experiments on organs and tissues that Harry had to believe were human. The folk who had been let out of confinement followed him, naked pilgrims walking into territory where they had never been, reacting to the displays with muted horror, and in some cases with disbelief.
How long the rogue had been collecting prisoners, and where they had all come from, were matters to be discussed another day. Some of this previous crop of specimens had been taken carefully apart, and Harry had seen various segments of their bodies hooked up with an a.s.sortment of machines. In some of the disconnected portions, blood still flowed, impelled by cleverly designed pumps, nerves and muscles still went on about their business, responding to stimuli. There were muscles that spasmed, as if they might be in great pain, lacking any lungs or voices to scream it out.
The rogue gave the impression of being interested in the attention that Harry was paying to its collection.
"If you like, I can provide you with interesting data on each specimen."
Harry called the berserker a filthy name. "What I want is to see every motherless person that you"re holding who is still intact. Cough "em up, or I start shooting."
"The last of my viable specimens are now on their way to meet you. Meanwhile, I wish to know everything that you can tell me about the a.s.sa.s.sin machine. What has it promised you? Was it able to summon reinforcements before launching this attack?"
Harry struggled to get control of himself.
"Harry Silver, it was you who demanded to have speech with me."
Harry got himself under control. Now that he was negotiating with the enemy, it was only reasonable to expect that he would have to give something to get something. He told the rogue he couldn"t be sure about the reinforcements, but he supposed that the a.s.sa.s.sin had tried.
Here came another couple, man and woman, straggling down the corridor. By this time there were perhaps a dozen intact and living humans altogether, cl.u.s.tering around Harry. Since the tour on which he led them had given them a look at what was hanging on the walls, the idea of staying behind had been pretty much abandoned as an option.
Harry pointed, with a jerk of his carbine"s muzzle. "Show me the cells. I"ve got to try to see things for myself."
It took less than a minute to reach the place. The cells, or at least the ones that Harry got to see, were startlingly ordinary, with the appearance of bedrooms, comfortable if small. They were s.p.a.ced around a common room, where evidently the inmates had been allowed to meet and mingle. All the cells in this area were currently empty, with doors wide open, and there was evidence that their former occupants might have enjoyed, if that was the right word, good gravity, good air, even reasonable food.
Of course it was quite possible that what Harry saw here was only one colony, one branch of some elaborate system of prisons or laboratory cages. For all any of these people knew, there might be another branch, or a dozen more, dug into some lower level of the base.
One of the people stuttered out a kind of explanation. The rogue berserker had once explained that it wanted a lengthy period of study of certain life-units in something close to their normal environment before it began destructive testing. Previous studies had employed harsh treatment almost exclusively, and those had produced comparatively little in the way of useful results.
People were still pestering him. "How many ships are there in your task force?"
"Ninety-seven. Go away." He kept sweeping his gaze from side to side.Where the h.e.l.l were Ethan and Becky ?
"Ninety-seven?" The questioner blinked at him. "That seems a lot."
The prisoner who was gradually a.s.suming the role of group spokesman was at least paying some attention to Harry"s concern. "Look, sir, officer, whoever you are, the two people you describe aren"t here. No one like that has ever been here. Now, please, hadn"t we better get moving?"
Harry"s own thoughts had been coming around a hundred and eighty degrees, from being convinced that Becky and Ethan must be here, dead or alive, to a growing belief that the rogue had never had them.
Satranji in his recorded message had been telling the truth about the second kidnapping, but then he"d lied-the rogue had not yet taken delivery. The door of hope had come open just a crack, some pieces of the great puzzle were falling into place.
And then the rogue gave him a shock. "I have opened the last cell. Here are its tenants, two specimens answering your description."
Harry"s heart leaped up and settled back. Despite that, the two figures coming down the hall toward him, both of them as bare as all the others, were no particular surprise. The young woman striding forward, dragging an eight-year-old boy by one wrist, had to be Claudia Cheng in charge of little Winnie. Pale and gaunt and fragile-looking, the pair were still readily recognizable from their cavorting images in the old man"s office. They stood in contrast to the other prisoners by the fact of having no plugs inserted in their wrists and ankles.
Claudia Cheng appeared ready to accept the presence of an armed and armored man without marveling.
She came to stand directly in front of Harry. She seemed utterly indifferent to her own nudity, and almost unreasonably calm, as if she there had never been any doubt that someone would be coming for her. No doubt she found it irritating that it had taken so long.
"My grandfather"s finally ransomed us," she said, in the tone of one preparing to register complaints.
"He"s doing the best he can, lady." Harry nodded his helmet toward the corner where she had appeared.
"Is anyone else back there?"
"Anyone else? Not that I know of." Only now did the young woman seem to take full notice of the small crowd of her fellow prisoners. It was as if she had never seen them before. "Where did all these people come from? Look at their arms and legs. They"ve been hurt." There was disapproval in the observation, if no great sympathy. Meanwhile the others were staring back at Claudia, without recognition, not knowing what to make of her and the small boy clinging to her leg, in the manner of an even younger child.
She said to Harry: "The berserker said there were others, but it a.s.sured me we were going to be given special treatment. But that seemed only natural. I didn"t know-"
Interruption came blasting into Harry"s helmet, the rogue"s radio voice demanding to be told the exact current location of the life-unit called Winston Cheng.
Harry was certain that both berserkers must know enough of the shapes and sizes and markings of ED s.p.a.ceships to be able to identify Cheng"s yacht, and no doubt that vessel had now come on the scene.
He said: "Cheng"s probably right about where you think he is." There didn"t seem to be any point in trying to be cute.
Claudia Cheng, peeling little Winnie off her leg while still keeping a fierce grip on his arm, kept pestering Harry, trying to tell him how she had argued and pleaded with the rogue, promising that the family patriarch would give it much in return for their safe release. The implication seemed to be that next time someone should arrange to provide a better cla.s.s of kidnapper.
She wound up with: "What"s happening now? How soon can we get out of here?"
"Shut up," Harry advised. "I"m having a radio chat with the berserker."
"You are? My grandfather"s the one it really wants, isn"t he? Tell it that if it lets us go, my grandfather will arrange to meet it. He"ll give it anything it wants."
Harry shot back: "You"ll have to do your own negotiating, lady, after I"ve done mine."
The rogue"s voice had disappeared again, and he kept trying to reestablish contact. On the scale of ordinary, standard berserker values, it would be much better to terminate two young lives that still had ahead of them the possibility of reproducing, than one very old one that had probably lost whatever capacity it might have had to create yet more badlife, and was likely to die soon from natural causes.
Ordinarily a berserker would bargain only for that which it really wanted, something in tune with its basic programming, calling for the termination of all lives, everywhere. But in the rogue"s case that goal was beginning to seem uncertain. It seemed that berserker programming had mutated into something far less predictable.