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 assumed 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 with you? 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 Space 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, damn 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, disassembled 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 see all 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 can he 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 hoarse. "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 hell 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 attitude 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 assassin'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 assortment 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 assassin 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 assassin 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, clustering 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 spaced 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 hell were Ethan and Becky?
"Ninety-seven?" The questioner blinked at him. "That seems a lot."
The prisoner who was gradually assuming 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 assured 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 spaceships 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 class 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.
Harry turned down his airmikes to shut out most of the groaning and crying around him, along with the highbred complaints of Claudia Cheng.
As soon as the rogue came back on radio he said to it: "You understand that these are not the two people I'm looking for?"
"You have made that plain. I am still intermittently in contact with the life-unit Satranji. He is providing no new information that would be of interest to you."
"You're stalling me, you bloody junkpile. I won't have it." Harry tilted up the muzzle of his carbine and blasted another twenty kilograms or so of delicate machinery, far enough away from all the naked people that none should be hit by flying fragments. He had no idea if it was anything of great importance to the rogue or not, but he could hope.
The rogue's response came in a tone of what sounded like philosophical detachment. "I had already computed such a reaction on your part was highly probable."
Before Harry could decide what to do next, the deck beneath his feet and the walls around him vibrated with some kind of explosion, or heavy impact, much more violent than anything else Harry had felt or heard since his arrival.
The small huddle of naked refugees screamed, and some of them tried to crawl under machinery in search of shelter.
Harry brushed away clutching arms, and demanded of the world: "What in hell was that?"
The rogue had a calm answer ready. "An ED vessel identifiable as Ship of Dreams, the property of Winston Cheng Enterprises, has crash-landed at the other end of this installation, only about forty meters from the point where you entered. The damage to my structure is unimportant, that to the vessel is moderate. It will be no longer spaceworthy. Can you explain this event?"
Harry hesitated momentarily. Then he said: "Partly. I'll tell you this much right away: There won't be any landing party coming off that one to attack you. They had nothing like that on board. Now you tell me something I can use."
The rogue said: "You will doubtless find the following information useful: The machine you have allied yourself with is a dedicated assassin, designed to have you, the individual Harry Silver, as its specific target. It will spare you only as long as you are useful."
"Something I can use, I said!" He called the voice in his helmet a filthy name. "That information isn't news at all." With words, and a few violent gestures, Harry started to get the people around him moving, toward the room where he had earlier discovered spacesuits.
Before the rogue had framed an answer, there came a second crash, on the same scale of violence as the first. Harry in his heavy armor was staggered, clutched at a nearby wall to keep from going down.
A moment later Harry raised his head. Unprotected and unarmed humans were scattered all around him, trying to regain their feet. All had fallen except little Winnie, who had reestablished his clinging hold, this time on Harry's armored bulk. No one was seriously hurt, but he was going to have to try to get them all into suits and helmets. Yeah, in his spare time.
"Well?" he demanded on radio.
The rogue was of course unflappable. "A second object has just crash-landed, close beside the first. It, too, has sustained moderate damage. In this case I can make no certain identification. It might be an auxiliary of the assassin, except that certain subtle anomalies suggest a badlife attempt at deception."
Suddenly the machine was roaring at Harry again. It reported that strange fighting machines, obviously the slave-tools of badlife, were pouring out of the most recent arrival, hurling themselves into the ongoing battle . . .
Harry raised his free hand, the one not cradling the carbine, uselessly to the side of his helmet. "Go easy on my ears, you motherless, bloody . . ."
Several moments passed before he could communicate coherently again. "Tell me if I'm wrong: this new hardware's neither on your side or the assassin's. I'll bet it's just waded in and is crunching both."
"It is attempting to do so, so far without notable success." The rogue did not sound much concerned. Of course it never did, apart from turning up or down the volume—as if, he thought, it were groping for ways to generate, or at least simulate, appropriate emotions.
Meanwhile, the little knot of human escapees clustering around Harry kept breaking apart, dissolving into individuals who tried to run away, then finding nowhere to run and coming together again, surrounding their lone rescuer.
Overriding outside management, gesturing fiercely at the naked people to let him alone for just a minute, he succeeded in establishing mental control of the volume in his helmet and turning it down. "I passed through a locker room full of spacesuits, rogue. Let's start getting these people into them."
"I do not object."
"You'd better not."
"In truth, Harry Silver, I allow you to have your way because I am gleaning a wealth of data on human behavior from this series of events. Also I approve your equipping my valuable specimens with protection."
"They're no more your bloody specimens, goddam it! You said you were giving them to me."
"That is still conditional upon your cooperation." The voice in Harry's helmet said: "Whatever the assassin machine has promised you, I will give more. Explain to me the nature of this deceptive device, or ship, whose arrival caused the second impact."
"If you mean what you say about giving me more, we've got a deal. Between you and my designated murderer, I'd rather be fighting on your side. But before I answer more questions, before I even stop trying to shoot your guts out, I want my people back. As soon as you show me convincing evidence that my two have been sent out of your reach, and the assassin's reach, that they're safely on their way to some badlife port or base—then I will help you in your fight."
Harry was damned if he could see how any berserker locked in a battle for survival was really going to take time out to pack two living prisoners—assuming it had been lying and really had them—away to safety. That might be impossible even if it tried. But he could think of no better way to proceed with negotiations.
The rogue said: "Having survived the first surprise attack, Harry Silver, l am going to win this fight."
"All right, maybe you are—if you get the right help at the right time. So?"
"Obviously I will then need to reestablish my research facility in a different place, much more distant from berserker command. Disposing of your assigned assassin will not solve your fundamental problem, nor will it solve mine. You and I have this in common: berserker command will be all the more determined to hunt us both down and wipe us out."
"Go on."
"From now on, Harry Silver, you can best protect your beloved life-units by distancing yourself from them. Therefore you would be well advised to accept the invitation I now offer: after they are sent to safety, or are confirmed dead, you should come with me when I seek to relocate. Together the two of us will have marvelous adventures."
"Adventures! If you think—" Harry choked and spluttered.
"What I think, Harry Silver, is that I have begun to understand you. You are like other life-units, in that what you say you want and what you really want may not be the same thing."
One of the naked strangers was grabbing at Harry's arm, imploring him to do something. Whatever it was, Harry couldn't listen to it. He shoved the stranger away, the unclad body backpedalling to sprawl on a flat deck.
To the rogue he snarled: "So find my woman and my boy, and get them to safety."
"I calculate that to find them, we must induce the life-unit Satranji to cooperate." The rogue's continued calm, no hint in the voice of breathlessness or even excitement, tended to make the conversation seem unreal.
"Then we'll do that. Can you get him in here somehow? He must have been aboard the Ship of Dreams, probably piloting. Put him here in front of me, and we'll find out what he knows."
"That may be possible. I have established communication with the life-unit Satranji, who was aboard the first vehicle to crash into my structure."
"I want to establish communication with him too. But not just yet."
"I find that interesting," the rogue assured him.
Meanwhile the group had been moving on. The little mob of freed prisoners had followed Harry as far as the chamber he thought of as the locker room. Here he had started helping them get into spacesuits. He was relieved to find that there seemed to be enough suits to go around, with a few left over—just in case someone else showed up.
Whatever locks Harry had not earlier shot away were now standing open, courtesy of the rogue, as Harry supposed. While he began helping people into suits, the rogue relayed what it said was Satranji's latest communication.
"He observes that a battle is in progress here, and demands that I give him an explanation. So far I have provided none."
"What about the other people who were with him? Are they still in Cheng's yacht?"
"He says nothing about other life-units, and I can spare none of my units to look for them. I have assured my prize goodlife of my great concern for his welfare, and advised him on how to avoid the regions of bitterest fighting here on the ground.
"Of course, Harry Silver, I would be pleased if the life-unit Satranji could effectively fight off the assassin's units for me. Like you, the Satranji-unit carried a moderately effective weapon, but like all life-forms he is very slow. If he is caught up in the firefight now taking place, I expect he will be promptly cured of life, his potential usefulness as a vehicle of discovery in my laboratory entirely wasted. Besides that, in combat how is he to distinguish the assassin's machinery from mine?" There was a pause, suggesting thoughtful humanity. "How are you to do so, if it comes to that?"
Harry said: "Get me my wife and son, and I'll figure out some way. You're right, nothing Satranji can do is going to tip the balance in this fight. So quit stalling. Find out where my two people are. What's the son of a snake done with them?"
"The life-unit Satranji has never told me that." There was a brief pause. "He is steadily making his way in this direction, and is currently about two hundred meters from your location. With my help he has bypassed the zone of hard current fighting. He repeats that he is mystified by the fierce fighting, and again demands to be told what is going on."
"But he doesn't have my people with him."
"Certainly not. Of course his first purpose in this reconnaissance is to determine whether I am likely to survive this battle which he finds so puzzling, and his second to discover the nature of my chief attacker. He still knows nothing of my rogue status, and is astonished by the number and quality of machines attacking me. He cannot tell their origin."
Harry, carbine ready, was walking again, with a different gait, on the move in the direction where Satranji was supposed to be. The refugees would have to get themselves into suits as best they could. He was thinking that it wouldn't do to kill the bastard on sight, not until there was some information about Ethan and Becky. He said: "Tell him the attacking machines are secret weapons, made by the designer of the Secret Weapon."
"I do not understand."
"He will, and he'll believe it. It may satisfy him for the moment. Tell him!"
Half a minute later the assassin's voice was back: "He accepts the answer, and speaks with confidence of soon being able to turn over to me the two life-units he has promised. Of course that cannot be possible, unless the units in question are already somewhere nearby."
Harry was grimacing, shaking his head. "They can't be aboard the Secret Weapon. That's just not possible. Are you telling me he's got Becky and Ethan somehow hidden on Cheng's yacht? That's not possible either."
The assassin said: "I know very little about the yacht. But the life-unit Satranji is in possession of another vessel, besides the Ship of Dreams."
"Another ship. Where? What are you talking about?"
"I loaned him a small ship in the early stage of our collaboration, and it has been an essential tool." The rogue went on to describe how, in the course of its relationship with Satranji, it had given him a small vessel called the Chewing Pod, that it had captured in an earlier raid. Since then Satranji had evidently succeeded in keeping it hidden from all his human associates.
Harry listened, pondering, while the rogue explained. There was no reason why Satranji could not have another small ship under his control, running it on autopilot somewhere in relatively nearby space. He could have it following the Ship of Dreams. As pilot of the yacht, he would probably have been able to keep to himself the fact that it was being followed.
Harry couldn't remember the Chewing Pod's name being on the official roster of missing ships—but that was a long list, and it was a long time since he had looked at it.
There came a lull in the fighting, with the rogue refraining for the moment from counterattack, while it tried to achieve the arrangement of life-units it wanted. The assassin's machines were maneuvering for position. The rogue reported that the berserker-bashers deployed from the Secret Weapon had proven inadequate for the job, and all or almost all of them were already reduced to junk. To anyone just arriving on the scene the battle might well seem to have concluded. The noise level had dropped to near silence.
"What do you intend to do, Harry Silver, when you confront the life-unit Satranji?"
"That can wait. Right now all I want to do is get around him, past him, and find my people, if they're somehow stuck on one of these damned ships. I'll demonstrate my intentions toward that rat-turd when the time comes. If it comes. Are you trying to keep the two of us apart?"
The rogue had no immediate answer to that. All of Harry's little band of refugees had got themselves into suits. All had their helmets on and sealed, but, fortunately or unfortunately, Harry's was still the only radio that was functioning at all. As if he had given them orders, they were all following him in the direction of the docks, moving toward the damaged ships that offered the only possible means of escape.
Satranji was calling in to the rogue again, and this time it allowed Harry to listen in. It seemed that the goodlife man continually wanted to reassure himself that his giant partner was still functioning, and had at least a good chance of coming out on top in the current fight.
Harry prompted: "Tell him you want some solid evidence that the two specimens connected to me are still alive and in good condition."
"He has already assured me that they are."
"Glad to hear it. But none of your units have actually seen them."
"That is correct."
"Again, ask him who was on the ship with him. The ship that brought him here."
Harry's talk with the rogue was interrupted by another fierce outbreak of machine-on-machine violence, so for a few minutes at least the humans on board were relatively free to communicate with each other, and to some extent do what they would.
Except that just standing upright was something of a problem.
Satranji was back on radio, telling the rogue that the latest outbreak of fighting had forced him to retreat for a short distance and take shelter. But he was not going back to his ship, and would not bring his prisoners aboard the base, until he had satisfied himself as to just what was going on.
Then he does have them. Or at least he's still claiming to. Harry, listening in silence, kept reminding himself that nothing the man said could be taken at face value.
He also kept wondering what had happened to Cheng and Masaharu.