Harry was still listening intently. But though he was reasonably warm now and his mind actually felt a little clearer, he was having trouble grasping the relevance of the assassin's story. Maybe, he thought, he had missed some vital point.
When the not-quite-human voice paused again in its recitation, he stepped in with a comment. "All very interesting. But a while back you told me that you want my help."
"That is so."
"Are we coming to some kind of a connection, between that fact and this tale of a rogue machine—the peculiar berserker that definitely isn't you?"
"We are indeed."
Harry grunted. His legs were feeling better, and he was sure that he would be able to get up on his feet if he made the effort. But what would he do after that?
The assassin had fallen silent and seemed to be looking over Harry's shoulder. He turned to see that Dorijen had come back with a kitchen cup that he could hope was filled with water, holding the heavy cup precariously in her remaining two fingers and thumb. The thirst he had been struggling to deal with rose up fiercely, and he grabbed the cup from the robot and gulped its water, liquid life.
Meanwhile Dorry stood back, watching with her remaining clouded eye, offering no comment. Harry tossed the cup aside.
The berserker, ignoring Dorijen's presence, said to him: "You are of special value to me, Harry Silver, as you know. What you have not known until now is that you are also special to the rogue."
There was a silence. Then Harry choked out the words: "It wants me because it already has my family? The idea is that it finds family connections interesting, because it has some—some question about human genetics, or social relationships—"
"I have told you everything I know about your family. The rogue did not mention them. Instead it gave a different reason for being keen to study you. It is because you have been for many years so successful in resisting death."
Yes, of course, his name had been on that damned list. The proof was sitting right in front of him. Harry Silver got the idea. The same people that berserker command wanted most to kill represented the very type of specimens that the rogue most desired to have for its calculated plan of research.
Reading, among many other things, the smaller machine's "wanted poster" describing Harry, the rogue told the assassin it was unable to pass on any helpful information regarding Harry's whereabouts—if it had really possessed any such information, it had chosen not to divulge it.
Harry said to the assassin: "How do you know all this?"
"Because during our meeting the rogue openly expressed to me its need for specimens of your type. This expression was so strong as to take the form of an attempt to countermand my own built-in programming: When Harry Silver is found, he must not be killed at once. The evil bioprogramming of this unit must be preserved, and some arrangement must be made for this particular life-unit to come into my possession. An issue of vitally important research is at stake." The assassin paused there.
Harry said: "I see. Or I think I see. How were you supposed to deliver me, and where?"
"The rogue specified coordinates for a rendezvous between one of its auxiliary units and one of mine—of course it did not trust me with the knowledge of where its secret base would be. Perhaps at that time it had not settled on a location." The assassin had explained that it was not compelled to accept orders from any unit not above it in its own branch of the chain of command. But it had promised to pass on, to the machines that were, the rogue's suggestion for preserving Harry's life.
"But now you know where its base is."
"Yes, thanks to your hard work, Harry Silver, and that of your colleagues. I have gleaned the information from the data banks aboard this base. The chosen planetoid occupies a zone of relative stability within the Gravel Pit. It is probable that several thousand standard years will pass before it is destroyed by natural causes."
"But we also know that just getting to it will be a job."
"Indeed."
The zone of stability was surrounded, enveloped and concealed, practically buried, in a whirling, well-nigh eternal avalanche of other rocks in greater and lesser orbits. A sizable minority still revolved retrograde around the system's central star. Collisions, ricocheting and flying fragments, were a constant hazard in this young system. The rogue did confidently compute that it could defend itself against flying rocks.
"Obviously you intend to go there."
"I do."
"But you are not following the rogue's command to turn me over."
"On the contrary, Harry Silver, I intend to follow it to the letter. But not—how do you say?—not in spirit."
At the end of their chance encounter the two killing machines had separated, the assassin to continue its search for Harry, while the rogue concentrated first on finding a place where it might hide and work in safety, and then on obtaining the specimens needed for its work. From that moment on, there had been two berserkers stalking Harry Silver . . .
When the rogue berserker, escaping from the base where it had been created, undertook its first c-plus jump and entered flightspace, the assassin continued with its explanation to Harry, it had set its course for the best refuge that the limited information in its data banks could suggest—information that may have been extracted, by one means or another, from the human brain of one of its original experimental subjects.
The voice of the assassin had fallen silent. Clearly it was waiting for Harry's response.
Listening, he had let himself slump backward. Now, moving slowly and creakily, he regained his feet. The thing that sat in front of him made no objection. He could move his arms and legs freely, but he couldn't think of any way of moving them that was going to do him any good.
Shivering as the great cold of death came to reclaim possession of the lifeless wanderworld, Harry found himself certain—it was as if he had known it all along—that Becky and Ethan had not been chosen for kidnapping by sheer coincidence. Doc had been right. It could have been that the rogue, demented even for a berserker, brewing schemes in its sanctuary down there in the heart of the Gravel Pit, had sought them out just because they were some essential part of Harry Silver . . . but how could the isolated rogue have found out where they were, and where they were going to be?
From somewhere off to Harry's right, just outside of his field of vision, a familiar soft voice ventured: "May I speak now?"
"Soon," said the assassin, without even looking, as far as Harry could tell, in Dorijen's direction.
It seemed to be waiting for Harry to say something.
He asked it: "That is the story?"
"Those are the essentials, up to now, of the chain of events that you must understand, if you are to furnish me the intelligent help that I require."
Harry nodded slowly. He studied the machine in front of him, certain that it was going to kill him just as soon as his name had worked its way back to the top of its list of priorities.
In its half-familiar voice it prodded him: "Have you grasped the situation?"
"I don't know. Maybe I have. What difference does it make, since you're about to kill me anyway?" Harry swung his arms. "I'm cold, do you suppose you could warm it up a bit in here?"
"I can increase the air temperature by a few degrees, if that will help you to think more clearly. Pressure and oxygen content are already nominal for human requirements."
And, by all the gods, he thought he could start to feel the difference in the air almost at once. The battered base's life support systems must be functioning, and the assassin, or one of the assassin's subunits, must already have taken over their control.
"All right. Thanks." Harry drew a deep breath. "Let me remind you once more, you said a while back that you need my help. Tell me exactly what you want me to do—and then tell me just what good I'm going to get out of it."
"You will not be required to harm any living thing, if that is your concern."
"That's one of 'em."
"As I have explained, my only goal is to destroy the rogue machine. Since it is stronger than I am, by a majority of the most important measurements, trickery will be essential."
"In my experience it often helps."
"My plan requires your willing assistance. If you choose to help me, and survive the conflict, life and freedom will be yours. The odds of your survival are difficult to calculate, but I think they can be no worse than twenty-five percent. Is that what you wish to hear?"
"Music to my ears."
The lenses on its awful head—little things he supposed were functioning as lenses—were looking at him blankly.
Harry made a sound, half grunt, half sigh. "I'm saying that I approve. Even a one-out-of-four chance of survival would be great." He drew a deep breath. "But there's something I want even more than my own life and freedom. If you can give it to me—we have a deal.
"If you can't—well, from my point of view what's about to happen will just be a fight between two damned berserkers. I'd love to be alive to watch it, but if I have to settle for being dead, that's all right too. Frankly, I hope you kill each other off."
He paused there. The machine just sat where it was, cross-legged on the deck, as if confident that Harry would have still more to say. Its mismatched metal hands that could pull a man apart like paper were resting idle in its halfway human lap. Evidently it was in no tremendous hurry. Probably, Harry thought, it was being so patient because it had other preparations for its next attack going on in the background. Things that it knew were going to take a little time, since it was a bit shorthanded, and it wouldn't or couldn't move against the rogue until all of the things were ready.
Harry took the plunge, and told it: "It comes back to the two life-units, my wife and son, that we talked about earlier. I would gain their survival and freedom, even before my own."
"I have told you that I do not know—"
"Yeah, yeah. You have no clue to where my people are. But just in case they do show up. A few days ago I was perfectly sure that both of them were dead—-and very likely they are. But now I can see two other possibilities. One of them—it's been with me all along, but I've been afraid to think about it—is that they still live, if you can call it that, as prisoners of this rogue machine."
The assassin had already covered that ground, at least to its own satisfaction. "And the second possibility?"
"Like the Galactic coordinates you wouldn't give me, it doesn't really matter for the purposes of this discussion."
The berserker got smoothly to its feet, standing just a little taller than Harry, even with Harry's feet in the suit's thick-soled boots. It said: "I must be the judge of that."
Harry sighed. "All right. Why not?"
He had a little more to say to the machine, while it stood listening.
When he had finished, it said to him: "Harry Silver, we are agreed."
The voice of Dorijen interjected immediately: "May I speak now?"
Harry turned and looked at the tame machine. "Go ahead," he told it. The berserker made no objection.
Dorijen's voice was as cool and bright as ever. "I must begin by warning you, Mister Silver, that you have just committed a serious crime by volunteering to help a berserker. My programming compels me to arrest you on a charge of goodlife activity, and at the first opportunity report your action to the proper authorities."
"Yeah, I understand. You do that. Now that I'm under arrest, what was that other matter you were trying to tell me about?"
Dorry's voice became a monotone. "I am the bearer of a personal message, its content remaining unknown to me before it is delivered. It is addressed to Harry Silver from Del Satranji. My programming compels me to pass it on."
Suddenly Harry's mouth was very dry. "Tell me."
"Message begins: 'Hello you smart motherless bastard. I just wanted you to know, before you die, that I was the one who wrecked your life.'"