Harry stared at the berserker for the space of several breaths. Then he said: "You mean you want some human to turn goodlife and play some dirty trick on other humans. And I just happen to be the only one around who can still move, so—"
"No. I do not mean that at all."
The man drew a couple of deeper breaths. "What, then?"
"The explanation will take a little time." The machine was implacably calm.
Stranger and stranger. "Well. If it's really important, I guess I can hang around long enough to listen." Harry shivered. Figuring he had nothing to lose, he added: "Then, right after you tell me what kind of help you need, I'll tell you what you're going to give me in return."
The berserker did not respond immediately. What reason did he have to think it would bother even to answer a smart-ass demand from a helpless prisoner? Instead it sat down on the deck, cross-legged, as if it were mocking Harry's enforced posture. The result was to give Harry an even better look at his dedicated enemy, now comfortably positioned just a few centimeters out of reach. He had the impression it had chosen a place near him, where what was left of the ceiling lighting still cast a good illumination, because it wanted to make sure that he could see it clearly.
Harry was close enough to the machine to see that its arms and torso bore dark stains, and it was easy to imagine they had come from a few splashes of fresh blood, acquired while it was casually finishing off some of Harry's wounded teammates, en passant. The blood reminded Harry irresistibly of the arena at the Templar base. And of other things. Over the years, too many years, he had seen a lot of blood in one place and another. He had seen too much.
The face, if you could call the front of this berserker's head a face, was asymmetric, leaving Harry uncertain which of the little spots and lumps marking it might serve as eyes. Some of the other details of the sexless metal body were very close to manlike, though in a good light no one with eyes would ever mistake it for a human. Most notable was its left hand, twice human size. Instead of being human in shape, it looked more like a hammer and tongs, designed for breaking-and-shredding operations, like maybe turning steel bars into scrap.
Still, it bothered Harry—though he wasn't sure just why it should—that, overall, except for the godawful face, his scheduled murderer looked more like a man than most berserkers did. Hell, he had seen people in heavy space armor, some of them quite recently, who looked less human than this apparition.
It was somehow irritating that he should be spending the last minutes of his life asking silly questions. What difference did it make, what his assassin looked like? And what had he expected it to look like, anyway? He supposed he had never formed any clear image in his imagination. Basically, of course, as was true of every berserker, the important part had to look like the compact computer that it was. Beyond that there were no real limitations. The dedicated optelectronic brain could have a whole regiment of mechanical bodies at its disposal, of assorted shapes and sizes, ready to be put on and taken off, picked up and set down as the situation required.
"Ever do any kidnapping?" he asked it, on an impulse.
"That is a reference to the disappearance of your family."
"Yeah, it sure is."
"My last prelaunch briefing, from the entity that you would call berserker high command, included data on the existence of two life-units closely related to you," the oddly familiar voice responded. "I am aware, through various communication intercepts, of their recent abduction. But that was not my doing, or that of berserker high command."
"Really."
"Really. I have never had contact with your related life-units, and I know nothing of their fate."
If Harry could have moved either of his arms, he would have done his best to punch the berserker in the face. "Why would I believe that?"
"I tell you the truth. You must choose what you will believe. What proof could I possibly offer that something has never happened?"
"All right." Harry tried to shrug. "Get on with your story, then, if that's how you want to spend your time."
Despite his first emotional reaction, Harry found himself inclined to believe what the assassin had just told him. He doubted that any such machine, programmed to pursue one human to the exclusion of all other goals, would have any reason to burden itself with prisoners. The manlike thing sitting before Harry made a tentative little gesture with its left arm, as if practicing how to communicate—should a time ever come when it wanted to convey something to a human being besides paralyzing terror. Well, maybe that time was now. It aborted the first try, without achieving much, and tried again.
Raising the forefinger of its most nearly human hand, it made a motion incongruously reminding its prisoner of a professor he had once known. Then it said to Harry: "I will relate to you a chain of events. I assure you that what I tell you is no fiction, but a true story."
My designated killer has gone mad, Harry thought to himself. He had the feeling that whatever might pass for a mind inside the metal skull had to be wandering. Aloud he said: "All right, on with the show. Maybe I can even manage to believe it." What now, he thought, berserker Just So Stories and creation myths?
He added: "But if you expect me to pay close attention, I'll need some help first. My left leg's going numb, the way you've got it clamped down here."
Accommodatingly the thing leaned forward, in an efficient but awkward-looking move, and made several small adjustments to his metallic bonds. With a minor shock he realized that it had not only loosened them, it had actually set him free—big deal, hey? A renewed flow of blood came tingling in all of Harry's limbs. He tried small motions, this way and that, straightening his legs, confirming the fact that he had been liberated. Wishing that Dorry would come back with some water, he sat back in a relaxed position, but postponed any effort toward getting up.
The story, as the distractingly familiar voice began to tell it for Harry's benefit, had begun some indeterminate number of standard months ago, many light-years from the wanderworld 207GST.
"I will not give you exact Galactic coordinates," the berserker observed. "For the purpose of this story they are not important."
That made Harry recall the words of Abbot Darchan, telling him almost the same thing in reference to the methods used in capturing a machine. He said to the berserker: "That's all right. Graciously I pardon the omission."
In turn, the berserker seemed to be graciously pardoning his badlife nonsense. The voice went on.
The chain of events that the assassin now started to relate had begun at what it said was one of the largest berserker bases in the Galaxy, a design and manufacturing center where new types of machines were regularly produced.
Berserker high command, using the latest techniques of fully automated engineering, had invented another special unit of a different type. This one was not dedicated to assassination, or to combat of any kind, though like every other product of berserker industry it was well equipped for such work. Instead, it had been created to carry out another round of the berserkers' endlessly ongoing experiments with life.
Harry, listening, found himself nodding inside the jagged remnants of his helmet. Maybe no other human being had ever listened to another storyteller as strange as this one, but so far the story itself was not incredible. It did not even seem particularly unlikely. Through various hints, interceptions, and discoveries, over a long period of time, Harry and other serious students of the enemy had concluded that berserker high command seemed to believe in the existence of some magic key in the laws of nature, some secret that, once found and properly put to use, would make all life in the Galaxy shrivel up and go away. The whole skein of Galactic life could be unraveled.
To discover this key, this philosopher's stone of death, it was necessary to pry out, through intensive research, the innermost secrets of intelligent life.
The robotic voice droned on, a soulless imitation of Harry's own. He felt reasonably confident that he was following the narrative so far, but he was feeling lightheaded. His head and body were rapidly getting cold—his decapitated suit was not going to keep him properly warm. What he found difficult to believe was his own situation, stranger than the story he was trying to listen to. Could it really be true that he was sitting here in the wreckage of a conquered outpost, too beaten and exhausted to get to his feet, surrounded by human corpses, bodies living and dead alike chilling down toward the freezing point, while he listened to a deranged berserker that insisted on telling him a story?
Harry was getting a strong impression that the newly created berserker in the story had been given a hard time by the very machines responsible for its creation. For some reason they were unhappy, suspicious of their offspring, coming around to the view that major reprogramming would be necessary. Wipe the hardware clear of dangerous nonsense, and start over.
Breaking into the plodding narrative, Harry said: "Don't tell me that machine turned out to be you."
"I will not tell you that. It is not true." The assassin's voice was solemn. It seemed to reprove him for his flippant interruption.
"Sorry. Go on."
There had been laboratory accidents before, incidents scattered through the vast domain of time and space in which berserkers did research upon their enemies, trying to discover the cause of the fanatical resistance put up by Earth-descended organisms; there was no known way of preventing such mishaps entirely when dealing with badlife humans and machines of comparable complexity. But this time the error had been very subtle, and things had got seriously out of hand before the problem was recognized.
"I have not yet been informed of exactly what went wrong," Harry's designated killer noted calmly. "Almost certainly the computers of high command will eventually find the correct explanation. But we know it is an inescapable attribute of systems of great complexity that things are likely to go wrong."
"So, now I get the philosophy lecture?"
"Harry Silver, are you mentally capable of absorbing important information? Does your brain still function, or is this effort on my part a waste of time?"
"Sorry. Really sorry. Go on. I'm listening."
The computer dedicated to research on life, its own fundamental programming for some reason rapidly evolving down a deviant pathway, had requisitioned from its supply services several large power lamps and a supply of hydrogen fuel. Also a spacegoing hull and a powerful space drive, including all the equipment required for traveling faster than light. It had also equipped itself as best as it was able, on short notice, with arms and armor for both offensive and defensive fighting.
Having finished construction, it had loaded itself aboard the vehicle with as much essential hardware as possible. It had launched itself into space with a hastily assembled crew of auxiliary machines, as well as the few specimens of life provided by its creators—this stock had possibly included a few ED humans.
The last bit of information was delivered with no special emphasis, but it seemed to be echoing in Harry's head: " . . . life-units of your own type."
Ever since the deadly news about Ethan and Becky had reached him, way back on that other planet, he had been lifeless inside—or had thought of himself as dead. But now it turned out that life still burned, somewhere down deep. The universe had not yet quite finished him off.
His next question burst out before he could consider whether it was wise to ask it:
"Do you have any description of those—those life-units?" But even as Harry spoke, he knew from what the berserker had already told him that the timing would be all wrong. The dates and times that the machine was giving him did not match with the moment when Becky and Ethan had been captured.
"No. But it seems impossible, chronologically, that they could be the units engaging your concern."
There was a pause. This time Harry was the one to break it. "That was what I thought. All right. Go on."
The renegade, the rogue berserker, had good reason for fleeing the base where it had been created. It had computed quite accurately that in pursuit of its programmed goals it was consistently demonstrating far more independence than berserker sector command would tolerate. So much more that, if the rogue remained on site, its research project, all-important on its own scale of values, would soon be postponed or canceled, and its own brain reprogrammed or destroyed.
By its own deviant standards, any other outcome would be preferable to that.
The rogue's sudden defection had taken berserker command completely by surprise.
Sector command had immediately ordered an all-out attempt to overtake and stop the rogue, commanding all its other machines to destroy that one on sight. But pursuit was too late in getting started, and the faint trail left in flightspace had already faded.
Urgent messages were dispatched by courier to all loyal task forces and individual machines operating in the sector, among them the assassin dedicated to hunting Harry Silver. A new top priority was set for all units: berserker command now assigned its highest possible value to shutting down the rogue. The existence of such deviant devices posed a fundamental threat to the coherence of the whole berserker organization, and to the ultimate success of their campaign to destroy life. It was a greater danger than the existence of any individual human could possibly pose.
"Since receiving those revised orders," the assassin machine was telling Harry, "I have spent all my time, concentrated all my efforts, in an attempt to locate the secret base that logic insists the rogue must have established for itself somewhere."
There was a pause, in which some kind of human response seemed to be required. "All right," Harry finally got out.
"You, and these other badlife who are now dead, have been hunting the same enemy. I have scanned the contents of your computers here, and I find confirmation of the existence of the base, and also its location."
"Then it's too bad you've killed us all. We might have been able to help you out."
There followed another silence. Harry was trying to digest a whole new set of facts, though he still couldn't see how they were going to do him any good. "Just for the sake of argument, how could you be sure this renegade you're hunting has established a base at all? Maybe it doesn't need a base. Do you have one?"
"My original designation as hunter, Harry Silver, requires me to have the capability to function independently of any base, for many standard years. But the rogue's programmed purpose is very different. It will have no choice but to try to carry on with its elaborate experiments. It will need room in which to store and use the requisite materials, and time and protected space in which to work. It will be forced to construct new auxiliary machines, to help it gather more materials."
"By materials you mean more life-units."
"Yes, of course."
"There's umpteen billion badlife humans in the Galaxy. You think it was just an accident that it picked the two who make a difference in my life?" After a pause he added, softly: "If it did grab them." Here he was, starting to hope again. Why not, when the counsels of despair seemed to make no sense either?
The assassin said: "To fathom the limitations of the laws of chance is beyond the scope of my intelligence. The infection of life is widespread in the Galaxy. My own search for the rogue, the deviant machine, has culminated here, on the threshold of the system you call Gravel Pit. It is purely a matter of chance that, in the course of this search, I have found you, my original assigned target."
"One more bloody coincidence," Harry murmured. "Or is it, really?"
"I do not understand."
"Never mind. A phatic utterance. Get on with your motherless story."
The assassin went on to explain that before learning of the rogue's strange origin, or receiving the order for its destruction—and before the rogue had established itself in its current location—it, the assassin, had actually made accidental contact with the renegade machine. There had been a random meeting in a node of flightspace.
"That encounter also happened by sheer chance."
The machine paused, as if expecting to be challenged on that point. But Harry only nodded. That was the kind of coincidence he could swallow; in the nodes of flightspace, accidental meetings were not as astronomically unlikely as common sense and intuition might suggest—a fact which made those nodes a favorite berserker hunting ground.
The talkative assassin essayed another gesture with its almost graceful, strong right arm. Again the move seemed not quite appropriate, like that of some bad human actor in a drama. If it was trying to do a serious imitation of a human, Harry thought, it had a good ways to go.
It said to him: "Let us return to the fact that, as the evidence in and around this modified outpost strongly suggests, you and these other badlife have been planning an attack on the very device that I am seeking to destroy. I find this information of great interest."
"How could we carry out an attack," said Harry carefully, "without at least one ship?"
"To attempt childish deceptions will do you no good. At my approach, at least three ships fled from their positions on or near this wanderworld."
So both yachts, plus the Secret Weapon, might have got safely away. That was good to hear—if the machine was telling him the truth. And why should it bother to lie? Harry wondered if the berserker had identified any of the swiftly departing vessels, but he didn't ask.
He turned his head slowly, surveying the ruin around him. Dully he wondered again if any of the people not directly involved in the rehearsal had managed to get aboard the Secret Weapon before it flew away. It seemed to him that the Lady Masaharu would almost certainly have been on it. Winston Cheng and Satranji would have been aboard Cheng's favorite yacht. He had no real reason to believe that anybody else had escaped the slaughter.
Harry said to the berserker: "There are no ships here now, and all of us badlife are too dead to attack anything . . . do you and I have to talk about what we were planning?"
"We do not. It has become irrelevant. But you are not dead, Harry Silver."
"I was afraid you'd noticed that . . . so go on."
The assassin went on.
At the time of its accidental encounter with the rogue, the assassin's spacegoing transporter had been running somewhat short of hydrogen fuel, and of course it was always trying to gather information relevant to its purpose. Not yet aware that the rogue had been condemned in absentia and was being hunted to destruction, the assassin had made close contact with its colleague to refuel, and to carry out a routine exchange of knowledge.
As was routine in casual exchanges of information between death machines, each had kept certain items secret from its unliving colleague, who had no need to know.