ELEVEN

The small, unarmed starship hurtling toward the Twin Worlds system had been under way for only a few standard days, and by any measurement taken in normal space-time would still be more than twenty light-years from its destination. But it was, of course, traveling in flightspace, and those on board estimated their time of arrival at only a few hours in the future.

Fewer than a dozen human passengers, all but one of them Earth-descended, rode the ship. In the onboard compartments currently occupied by the ED, statglass viewports remained tuned to opacity against the eye-watering, nerve-grating irrelevance of flight-space outside.

In only one compartment were the ports cleared, not because its occupant enjoyed the view of what was passing, but because she was indifferent to it. The single Carmpan passenger, whose ancestors had never breathed the air of Earth, had senses that could bridge the unimaginable void of twenty light-years. She could experience intensely, though at a distance, the horror of space battle, the massacre on Prairie and the fighting on Timber, the magnification of every human emotion brought about by war.

The Carmpan had assumed for the purposes of this mission the name of Ninety-first Diplomat, and for the comfort of everyone concerned she had been assigned a small private cabin, in which she spent most of her time. Her cabin's lighting, adjusted for her comfort, would have been somewhat unfriendly to Earth-descended eyes. The components of the atmosphere and the strength of artificial gravity had also been slightly tweaked.

Ninety-first Diplomat was in her tidy quarters, busy writing at a low table. Being a historian, as well as something of a diplomat, she was hard at work in the former capacity. Work was a means of distracting herself from the horror that she could sense ahead of her in space and time, the great atrocity hurtling toward her at many times the velocity of light.

Her sturdy Carmpan body, more rectangular than cylindrical, clad and decorated with various small harnesses and pouches, was resting easily in its normal stance, with the long dimension horizontal. The highest part of her anatomy, the curved ridge of her back, was no more than a meter from the deck.

The appendage by which Ninety-first Diplomat controlled her writing instrument was not really a hand, or at least could not have been recognized as such by any Earth-descended anatomist. A close observer, had there been one, would have marked long thoughtful moments when the writing instrument was being held by nothing physical at all.

The words that flowed from the instrument onto a kind of parchment were born in spurts, with pauses of silent, painful effort in between.

Standard years would pass before they were eventually translated into the most common Earth-descended tongue:

"The machine was a vast fortress, containing no life, set by its long-dead masters to destroy anything that lived. It and many others like it were the inheritance of Earth from some war fought between unknown interstellar empires, in some time that could hardly be connected with any Earthly calendar...

The Carmpan was dimly aware, around a bulge of time that did not entirely obscure her vision, of that future translator's thoughts and problems. But under current circumstances such relatively small concerns were of but passing interest.

Vaguely, when she chose to focus her attention on them, the Carmpan was also aware of her ED shipmates. Most of them were currently gathered in another, notably larger, compartment of this peaceful starship, just a few meters distant beyond steel bulkheads and cushioned doors. They were just as comfortable in their environment as the Carmpan was in hers, being immersed in light and gravity best suited to their eyes and bones. Half a dozen Earth-descended humans, each representing a different branch of the colonial efforts of old Earth, were raising their voices, trying to outtalk each other in brisk debate.

Unhappy beings! the Carmpan lady thought. All of them were still blissfully unaware of the slaughter of their fellow Earth-descended humans, even now in progress at their destination. Still, all were fearful of finding trouble when they reached the system called Twin Worlds. To try to avoid that trouble was the purpose of this voyage. They would not be greatly surprised, though certainly horrified, if on arrival they discovered that their efforts were too little and too late, and war had broken out between Twin Worlds and Huvea.

Not one of them dreamed that the horror actually awaiting them could be worse than that.

In their hearts all of the Earth-descended truly believed that they had mentally prepared themselves for war; but in truth they were not nearly ready for what they were actually going to find.

The Carmpan sighed, it was a very Earth-voiced sound, and pushed her writing implement away. A moment later, the cabin door chimed softly, signaling that someone outside asked admittance.

The senior member of the ED diplomatic gathering had come down the short corridor, to tap gently on a certain door, the one bearing the Carmpan insignia, along with the small, clearly printed warning about a different environment inside.

The Lady Constance, the elder stateswoman from Earth itself, was courteously received. On entering the cabin, squinting in the odd light, Lady Constance averted her gaze uncomfortably from the cleared port, looking off into one corner of the room. She was privately ashamed of the secret revulsion she always felt when in the actual physical presence of her respected colleague. It was unpleasant to look at flightspace outside the port, and in her case tended to bring on spacesickness, but the lady found it even more unsettling to look directly at the Carmpan.

It was hard to locate the Carmpan face, and it was probably better to assume that it did not exist, or that the person to whom you spoke perpetually had her back turned, that being her own idea of politeness.

Formal and routine greetings were exchanged. In response to the gestures of Earth-descended hands, small tentacles waved in pairs above a roughly rectangular torso, supported on at least eight, the number sometimes varied, small legs. "Slow and squarish," were the words most often used to describe the body. People from other branches of humanity generally had great difficulty in distinguishing Carmpan female from male.

Ninety-first Diplomat had already decided that there would be no point in giving her shipmates advance warning of the staggering shock that waited for them at Twin Worlds. She was having enough difficulty in trying to come to terms with that event herself.

More importantly, this disaster required her to make the necessary preparations for a Prophecy of Probability. Sheer decency, as her branch of galactic humanity saw that virtue, would soon require her to make one, whatever the personal cost might be.

"Are you joining us for dinner?" her visitor asked, in innocent ignorance of any greater events impending. One meal shared daily among the branches of Galactic humanity had come to be the custom on this journey. Joint gatherings, in which the light and air were modulated to compromise settings, were mildly uncomfortable for everyone involved. But no one had proposed they be abandoned.

"Thank you. I will be pleased to do so." After a moment's thought, the Carmpan added: "You will be interested to know that a Prophecy of Probability lies in the near future."

The visitor was no longer squinting, as the ship's interior environmental controls had already automatically adjusted the light at one end of the room for the comfort of her eyes.

"This is exciting news," the woman from Earth cautiously observed.

"I supposed it would be."

"Perhaps I should consider it disturbing news as well. May I ask why we are to be honored with a Prophecy?"

"May I decline to answer?"

"Of course, if that seems best to you."

The visitor, who knew more than most other Earth-descended humans did about the Carmpan, was much impressed. But she would not pursue the matter, knowing it would almost certainly be futile to do so.

The truth was that Ninety-first Diplomat judged it distinctly possible that, should the captain of the peaceful starship hear such a warning and believe it, he was fully capable of abandoning his mission, turning his ship around, and heading for safety at one of the many neutral ports available. Ninety-first Diplomat would have been personally relieved to avoid danger by such means, but she could not permit it to happen. Rather she was compelled to go on.

"Until dinner, then,"

"Until dinner." Ninety-first Diplomat had her special place reserved at table, her special food provided. For an hour or so, the difference in ship's atmosphere and gravity would matter little.

When the door had closed behind her visitor, and the lighting and ventilation had readjusted themselves for her maximum comfort, she once more applied herself to the task of writing.

The subject of her writing was, thank all the gods, not with her in the ship.

"...it used no predictable tactics in its dedicated, unconscious war against life. The ancient, unknown games-men had built it as a random factor, to be loosed in the enemy's territory to do what damage it might. Men thought its plan of battle was chosen by the random disintegrations of atoms in a block of some long-lived isotope buried deep inside it, and was not even in theory predictable by opposing brains, human or electronic.

"When it began to attack the Earth-descended humans, they called it a berserker."

It was as if the word itself had served as some kind of occult key. The tendrils of Ninety-first Diplomat's far-reaching, remote perception had entered the domain of a mind that was not organic. The jarring impact of an intelligence so permeated with death came upon the Carmpan like a seizure:

Dimly she was able to perceive what the quantum computer, optelectronic berserker brain was "thinking" as it pondered the worlds it had just discovered, and the intelligent life units that called themselves the Earth-descended.

At times in their long, long past, this machine and others of its kind had encountered other life units that were basically similar to these. Most of them had resisted destruction, some more capably than these, but in the end their resistance had made no difference, all the different variations had proven susceptible to being satisfactorily healed of the disease of life.

In recent hours the killing machine had thoroughly examined one or more captured robots, of the type constructed on the scale and in the likeness of the local life units, and had disassembled one into its component parts, down to the microscopic scale. But it had found nothing of great interest in the design or the materials.

But the presence of such a unit stirred interest in the berserker's planning circuits. Endlessly, tirelessly, as they had uncounted times before, when a similar situation had arisen in other solar systems, these subsidiary modules raised the possibility of imitating the imitation.

The plan, well within the capabilities of the onboard workshops, would be using the captured robot as template and model to craft a berserker machine so closely resembling the native life units that they would have difficulty distinguishing it from one of their own kind.

But the suggestion was rejected by the central planning circuits, as it had been uncounted times during the machine's earlier history. Deep in the berserker's fundamental programming were commands, biases solidly built in, that prevented it from attempting the direct imitation of any kind of life. Even the voices that it generated to speak to the living enemy must be, by a branch of the same prohibition, clearly distinguishable from the natural models.

Why this prohibition should have been so firmly established in the time of the shadowy Builders was a question only briefly touched on by the central processor, touched on and almost instantly put aside. The dictates of programming at that level were never to be questioned. Things must be this way because they must.

Meanwhile, the physical task currently at hand, that of expunging the last traces of the life-infection from the world called Prairie, had settled into a phase of pure routine. An easy computation predicted that the work should be entirely accomplished within another standard day. The process no longer required any quick decisions, or computations that were other than routine. Central planning was free to devote its full capacity to other matters.

Thousands of years ago, the berserker had learned that intelligent planet-dwelling life units, when faced with serious threats from space, tended to burrow down into bedrock, creating deep shelters for themselves. On no planet had the berserker ever encountered any shelter that had proven deep enough, well fortified enough, to save its occupants.

Certainly the caves in which this system's life units had tried to hide themselves were flawed and inadequate, as were their heavy defensive weapons. Such deficiencies in design spoke of a drastic lack of recent experience in war. The absence of previous damage on the planet confirmed the fact.

Well before its arrival in this solar system, over a period of time equal to several Earthly months, the berserker had been studying stray communication signals from the swarming billions of units that constituted this infection.

The inhabitants of this odd system of twin life-infected worlds had been slow to recognize the true nature of their attacker, and many of them had evidently not done so yet. Yet they had been as ready as they could be, to the best of their limited abilities, to repel some kind of an attack.

The existence of a single battle fleet in local space argued strongly that the life units dwelling on these two in-system planets had not been about to engage in war against each other. It was rarely possible to be absolutely certain in such matters, but the probability of such an intramural conflict here had to be considered low.

One of the first things it had learned about this system, in its routine process of intercepting local messages and interrogating its first batch of local prisoners, was the fact that the dominant life units here were poised on the brink of war with life units dwelling in another solar system.

Ninety-first Diplomat was struggling to regain her mental and physical balance. The overwhelming ambiance of death, though still light-years away in space, had stunned her mind, so that her body rolled and slid away from her writing table and across the compact cabin's deck.

Subtle sensors conveyed to those outside the cabin the fact that not all was well within. Summoned by a horrified Lady Constance, several more of their ED colleagues had entered the cabin. All were concerned, and some of them were on the point of dragging Ninety-first Diplomat to the onboard medirobot.

With the last lingering echoes of the contact still reverberating in her brain, she roused herself in time to keep them from doing that.

Thousands of standard years ago, at a time and in a calendar that could hardly be connected with any Earth-descended record keeping, in a part of the galaxy that could never be clearly seen from Earth, the berserker's builders had taught it something of the science and art called history, as practiced by the intelligent forms of organic life.

Three of its current harvest of ten living prisoners had grown talkative in their fear, giving the impression of cooperating fully in their private interrogations. The three were being considered as possible volunteer goodlife, but the central processor would not make that decision for some time. Meanwhile the possibly useful three were still being confined with the other members of their group, and treated no differently.

What the berserker had heard from its prisoners, and deduced from their behavior, confirmed what it had already learned from messages intercepted in space: The life units of this system were poised on the very brink of war with those of another solar system that they called Huvean, it was even possible that hostilities had already begun.

The berserker hoped to find some way to turn this division among its enemies to its advantage.

It would be well, as usual when confronted by resistance, to have in readiness an alternative plan, one that did not depend entirely on the use of overwhelming force. The berserker's own capacity to absorb punishment and continue functioning was very large, but it was not infinite. Another battle like the one it had just been through might strain its powers of self-repair beyond their limits.

Emotionlessly the central processor took note of the fact that some of the damage it had sustained since entering this system, particularly from the heavy ground weapons of the world called Prairie, had been more severe than first diagnosed. Inner shielding of the interstellar drive had been seriously compromised.

Sheer size of course brought considerable advantages, particularly in battle. But it also created a tendency to certain weaknesses. For one thing, the tasks of maintenance were multiplied; there was never a time when all units/modules were performing at peak efficiency. Even now, certain segments within its own volume were ominously close to being cut off from communication with the central processor.

There was also the consideration that the berserker's drive had been damaged in the last clash, that it might no longer be able to travel faster than light. If it set out for a home base for refitting, it might not reach its goal for many centuries, if at all.

Such unfavorable reports from its damage control units raised an important question which would soon have to be decided: Once this system had been thoroughly cleansed of organic life, what next? Should the berserker interrupt its methodical search for the life-disease through its assigned territory to seek out one of the repair bases established for its kind? Its data banks held, in coded form, the locations of more than one such facility; but the nearest of them was very far away.

The alternative would be to press on and complete the essential task in this system, then seek out another life-infected planetary group, the one called Huvea was certainly only a few light-years distant, and there begin anew the disinfecting process, advancing it as far as possible before its own aging machinery succumbed to some combination of old damage and fresh resistance.

The berserker had not yet made a final calculation as to which choice ought to be more productive for the cause of death. Which would be more likely to prolong its own existence was not a factor in the calculation.

Meanwhile, its routine tasks here were being efficiently accomplished. Practice makes perfect. Over thousands of standard years, a routine of sterilization of life-infected planets had been developed, and gradually perfected. In this case there seemed to be no cause to depart from the basic procedure. Small units, virtually unarmed, were sent down to gather samples of Prairie's newly transformed atmosphere, beginning at high altitudes and extending down to what had formerly been sea level, and was now a satisfyingly sterile domain of mud, magma, and pulverized rock. Gigantic storms of lightning and torrential rain, weather no longer heard or seen by any living organism, were already beginning to rage along the blurring interface between atmosphere and land.

The samples so carefully gathered were tested just as meticulously for surviving microorganisms, and for chemical traces indicative of still existing life. Incidentally, the results of the tests confirmed that what had locally been considered deep, safe shelters were every bit as ineffective as the berserker had assumed.

Among many other questions considered by the machine's central processor was one of naming. Quickly scanning through what it had learned of Earth-descended history, through the medium of prisoners and a captured small library, it considered the explanation of the name by which these life units had begun to call it.

The term "berserker" had originally been applied to members of these life units' own race, fearless warriors who were ready to regard their own injuries and death as incidental, provided they could get on as far as possible with the business of killing. It matched closely the names that other forms of breathing badlife had used.

Insofar as the name might have the potential to spread terror among the current population, and weaken their ability to resist, the berserker considered it a good choice.

Briefly the berserker considered whether it might even be worthwhile to grant those who called it by that name an extension of their evil lives, to give them a chance to dispatch messages, in which the terrible name would be invoked, to life units on the remaining in-system world, and to other Earth-descended colonies light-years away.

Ultimately it decided that the possible advantage to be gained by demoralizing its opponents would not outweigh the certain loss, in terms of extended life for certain difficult units.

That reward, of extended life, would be offered to only a few, who, by willingly helping the machine's project, earned the status of goodlife.

Slowly, Ninety-first Diplomat was coming back to consciousness. She had a lot of writing still to do, before she faced directly the horror that lay ahead.