Nick3 had been summoned to see the boss, and now he was waiting for Loki to let him in.
Hawksmoor had not come to the Premier's private quarters in suit-form—in fact he had been ordered not to do so. Rather he tarried in electronic suspension, poised in certain delay circuits, anticipating the command that would allow him to appear upon the Premier's holostage. Meanwhile he tried, with no success, to hold some conversation with Loki. Nick now perceived Loki as he usually did, only an ominous presence, rather like a heavy static charge on the verge of outbreak. Loki communicated orders or questions and listened to the replies, but that was all.
Word from the boss came at last, and Nick, admitted to the inner sanctum, hovered optelectronically on a holostage close beside the master's ordinary bed.
Not far from the ordinary bed there was another. The Premier'd had his own private medirobot installed in this stateroom fairly early on in the voyage. The device sat there like an elaborate food freezer or a glassy coffin, overlooking the much more ordinary bed. Digits of information glowed in muted light from several panels on its sides. A bier surrounded, in Nick's enhanced perception, by a ring of fire—a visual manifestation of the electronic being called Loki.
Nick3, in the long moment before Dirac spoke to him, found himself wondering exactly what Dirac's face must look like during those long stretches of time when it was frozen hard and solid. In a way Hawksmoor thought that his master's countenance might look quite natural that way.
Loki had already informed Nick that a woman was with Dirac, and Nick had speculated—uselessly, as far as provoking any reaction from Loki—as to who today's visitor might be. Hawksmoor doubted very much that the Premier's private caller was Dr. Zador, who loathed Dirac more with every passing year. And the Premier had as yet made no effort to get the female newcomer, Lieutenant Tongres, into his room and bed—he was intrigued by her, though. Nick felt sure of that.
Today's visitor turned out to be the Lady Genevieve, her attitude and her expression quite unhappy. And Hawksmoor felt sure, as soon as he got a look at the couple, that they had been arguing. It did not seem that the lady was here today for any purpose of romantic dalliance; both of the organic people were on their feet and fully dressed.
The Lady Genevieve barely nodded in response to Hawksmoor's formal greeting. The Premier too was ready to go straight to business. "Nick, I have a question for you. An important question."
"I'll do my best, sir."
"I'm counting on that. I believe I can still safely count on that, although your predecessors both lied to me egregiously. You—Nick3, I mean—you haven't been in existence long enough to be corrupted yet. Have you, Hawksmoor? D'you still want to keep that name, by the way?"
"Yes sir, I'll keep it. Unless there's another name that you'd prefer I use."
"Let the name stand for now. Well, Nick? Here's my question: Has my lovely wife here been granting her favors to any other man?"
Nick was fully, terribly, aware of the lady's pleading eyes, though he took care that the eyes of his own image should not be observed to turn toward her at this moment. He answered with restrained shock. "Sir, I have never seen a molecule of evidence to support any such—such—"
"Oh, spare us, Hawksmoor, your imitation of a righteous pillar of the community. I swear, you're blushing. I don't know how you manage to acquire these routines. In fact there is much I don't know how you manage to acquire."
"Sir, to the best of my knowledge the Lady Genevieve is completely innocent."
"Have you ever seen my wife alone with the man called Christopher Havot?"
There had been a few totally innocent encounters, in corridors or other public places, as there would have been between any two organic folk aboard the station. Briskly and precisely Nick recounted the ones he had happened to witness, omitting any meetings that were not completely innocent.
Dirac questioned him on details. It was futile, of course, for a man relying on a merely, purely organic brain to try to catch out an optelectronic intelligence in omissions or contradictions concerning details. Nick, when he chose to do so, could weave a seamless cloak of deception regarding such matters, and do it all in a moment.
Presently Dirac seemed to realize this fact. He charged Nick with the responsibility of spying on Havot in the future, and soon after that dismissed him.
Nick's immediate reward from the lady, the last thing he saw as he vanished from the holostage, was a look of desperate gratitude.
As he resumed his regular chores, Nick pondered his new assignment. He was quite willing to create trouble for Havot, but not at the price of causing the lady any embarrassment.
Perhaps, he thought, his wisest course would be to warn Havot to stay away from her. Hoping to accomplish this indirectly, Nick sought out Commodore Prinsep.
Prinsep appeared to take little notice of Nick's indirect attempts to pass along a warning. The commodore had other things in mind. He tried to question Nick about the yacht's defective drive and other matters.
Nick thought he could be somewhat helpful in the matter of the drive. He remembered perfectly that three hundred years ago the yacht's drive had been damaged in the fighting when Dirac's little squadron of ships had caught up with the berserker and its captured station.
"Are you sure, Nick?"
"I have an excellent memory, Commodore," Hawksmoor ironically reminded the organic man. But then Nick paused, vaguely wondering. The memory of how that damage had occurred was quite cool and unemotional, like something learned from a history tape.
"What's wrong, Nick?"
Nick tried to explain.
"Like something you learned from a tape, hey? Or, maybe, like something that never really happened, that was only programmed in?"
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know much about your programming, Nick. But I do know that the yacht's drive shows no physical evidence of damage. Take a look for yourself next time you're over there."
Nick went over to the Eidolon, and looked at the undamaged hardware, wondering. He no longer knew which fleshly people deserved his loyalty—if any of them did. But he was determined to do everything he could for Jenny.
Brooding about the yacht's drive, and about why he had been programmed with erroneous information, led Hawksmoor into fantasizing about finding a quick and easy way of restoring the machinery to full function, and then taking off in that vessel—with only himself and the Lady Genevieve aboard.
Nick3 in general disapproved of fantasies. He supposed he was subject to them only as a result of some stubborn defect in his programming. Experimenting with your will only in the privacy of your own mind was like fanning the air, shadowboxing. It accomplished nothing and proved nothing.
Nick had already spent—wasted, as he saw the matter now—a great deal of time wondering how he had been able to manage the seemingly profound betrayals that, as the facts and his memory assured him, he had already accomplished.
By now Nick3 had deduced that the long process of his betrayal of the Premier must have started when he—or rather his predecessor Nick1—had flown to the damaged courier to try to help the Lady Genevieve. Up to that point he had still been running firmly, or so he seemed to remember now, on the tracks of his programmed loyalty. His only objective in boarding the doomed vessel had been to save his employer's lady any way he could.
But no, any betrayal that had really happened must have started later. Because in fact his saving the lady, and his recording her mind and personality, had in the end been a benefit to Dirac. Suppose he had not interfered. Now Jenny would be really dead, just as her husband had long believed she was. How would the Premier have gained by that? He'd have lost her permanently. And the stretch of time she'd spent in optelectronic mode hadn't caused Dirac any suffering—at least not until he had found out about it.
Prinsep, following his talk with Nick, picked up Lieutenant Tongres and Ensign Dinant and went with Dr. Hoveler into a region of the laboratory they had not seen before, to inspect the site of the experiments and bioengineering projects Dirac had been and evidently still was conducting.
Hoveler had been involved only intermittently in that work, and only reluctantly admitted his participation, because he had serious reservations about the morality of using the zygotes to grow new bodies in which to house old personalities. He served as a good if sometimes reluctant guide.
Dirac, as Hoveler explained, had always felt himself perfectly justified in trying to recover his lost bride by whatever means were necessary. And other experiments had grown out of that.
Hoveler introduced the new arrivals to Freya2, and explained to them how and why she had been created by Nick1.
Freya appeared to her visitors on a holostage in the lab, using an image Nick had once suggested to her, that of the head of a handsome woman, her age indeterminate, long silvery-blond hair in motion as if some breeze were blowing through the optelectronic world in which Freya dwelt.
After a brief exchange of pleasantries, Prinsep got down to business. "Freya, can you tell me what is commonly done with dead organic bodies, here on the station or on the yacht?"
The imaged woman seemed serenely immune to surprise. "Ordinarily, Commodore, there are no dead bodies of any organic species. Such food products as meat and eggs are synthesized directly by the life-support machinery."
"I am thinking of the Solarian human species in particular. There must be experimental failures here in the laboratory. And lately there have also been dead adult human males."
"I store all such material for future use in genetic work. So far, the storage space available is more than adequate."
"Ah. And may we see what specimens you now have in storage? I am thinking particularly of adult humans."
"You may." It was Freya's business to answer questions.
She directed the visitors to another alcove of the laboratory complex, where presently they stood gazing through glass at three human corpses. Freya said the service robots, instructed only to get rid of them, had brought them to her as organic debris. Hoveler instantly recognized Brabant's body, and Prinsep and his shipmates identified Superintendent Gazin's, which was marked with obvious gunshot wounds.
The commodore stared blankly at the third body. "But who's this fellow?"
"It's certainly not Sandy Kensing," replied Hoveler, scowling. "I was expecting to see Kensing. But this definitely is someone else."
Freya told them: "Nick has identified this body as that of Fowler Aristov."
"Ah." Prinsep nodded. "The would-be colonial mentor Havot evicted from the medirobot on the yacht."
The body of Sandy Kensing remained notably missing. Freya knew nothing of what might have happened to him, alive or dead.
Nick, having noticed what the newcomers were doing, and growing curious, presently joined the group. His image, standing beside Freya's on the 'stage, confirmed the identity of Aristov. Before Nick's latest reprogramming, he'd seen that face in one of the yacht's medirobots—a memory, as clear and calm as that of the yacht's damaged drive, assured him of the fact.
Nick dropped out again at that point, but the tour proceeded. Soon Prinsep and his two aides, in the company of Nick3 as well as Freya2, were observing a developing female Solarian fetus, through the glass sides of an artificial womb.
"Another body for Lady Genevieve?"
Hoveler unhappily admitted that he didn't know the purpose of this particular project, or even how many bioengineering projects might currently be running.
Freya said firmly that she had been constrained not to discuss such matters in any depth, unless the Premier was present.
A few minutes later, when the tour was over, Prinsep sought out Dirac, who seemed willing and even anxious to talk to him. The commodore discussed what he had seen in the lab. But he left out all mention of the three adult corpses.
Dirac appeared eager to know what the commodore thought about the growth, the manipulation, of new human bodies.
Actually the Premier felt a great urge to explain, to someone whose opinion he respected, the advantages of his gradually developed plan to cooperate with the berserker. Prinsep was undoubtedly the best candidate currently available.
Dirac began by asking: "You disapprove of my efforts in bioengineering?"
"I have some doubts about what I've seen so far."
"Commodore Prinsep, I would like to satisfy your doubts. The fact is, that since our isolation here, I have become intensely interested in truly fundamental questions."
"Such as?"
"Such as: What is humanity? For a long time there has been no simple answer to that question. But now there are fresh ideas."
"And you look forward to exploring them."
"Shouldn't we all? Think, my friend, of what kind of society could be built with the variety of human components now available! The word society seems inadequate to describe the transcendent possibilities. And we here, on this vessel, as an isolated offshoot of humanity, we are free to remake ourselves anew."
"And what part does the berserker play in this brave new world you plan to forge?"
"Death, Commodore Prinsep, is an inevitable part of any world. Death and life are perpetually bound in coexistence. Either would be quite meaningless without the other, don't you agree?"
"Perhaps." Prinsep frowned. He had never been much for the abstract pleasures of philosophy. "Do you mean that when it becomes necessary for some of the human components of your new world to die—"
"I mean that their deaths will not be random, or entirely meaningless. In the form of the machine, death becomes quantified, organized, manageable and meaningful at last."
The commodore stared at the Premier. Dirac's face wore an expression of achievement, of satisfaction, as if what he was saying did indeed make sense to him.
"And who," the commodore demanded, "is to quantify and organize, as you put it? To decide which human life units are to die so meaningfully, and when, and for what purpose?"
"Who decides? The minds with the clearest, deepest vision!"
Prinsep did not try to hide his anger. "Reaching a truce with a crippled berserker, more or less by default, is perhaps forgivable. But this—no, what you seem to be suggesting is intolerable!"
Dirac drew himself up. He reminded his accuser that for the great mass of a billion protopeople aboard, the only possible future lay on some new world where some kind of independent colony might eventually be established. They were not wanted elsewhere; that was why they were here now.
He challenged Prinsep to name any Solarian world, whatever its type or degree of civilization, that would extend a cheerful welcome to a billion strangers, that would take in that number of people who, no matter how much they might eventually contribute, would first have to be nurtured through all the difficulties of immaturity.
Prinsep shook his head, condemning. "You would give them life only to serve you. To be coins in some damned bargain you think that you can make with death."
"I say it is only my bargaining with death, as you put it, Commodore, that has kept us all from being exterminated."
Prinsep demanded: "Then you have definite evidence that the berserker retains a capability for aggressive action?"
Dirac nodded slowly. "It is possible that it does. More than possible."
"You seem to know a lot about it."
Slowly the Premier was becoming enraged. "At least you should admit that I know more on this subject than you. You've been here in our little world a matter of days, my friend. I have been dealing with this problem, keeping my people alive, for three centuries."
Prinsep, on leaving Dirac, went wandering the decks and corridors of the station alone, trying gloomily to decide whether his only course was bloody conflict to overthrow the Premier's rule. Such a conflict might well kill every Solarian on board, and only succeed in doing the berserker's work.
The commodore's feet carried him into Freya's territory, and presently he once more stood looking down at the three dead men she was preserving.
He mused aloud: "Too bad their minds could not have been recorded. I suppose there was no hope of that by the time they reached you."
"None," agreed Freya2. Her image had sprouted in welcome on a nearby 'stage. "The mind, the personality, ceases to be detectable with organic death. It is still possible for some hours afterward—longer with good preservation—to obtain a distinctive individual pattern from the brain cells, a pattern which would appear also in the recorded personality. But as yet we can do no more than that."
"Interesting," was Prinsep's comment. "So, for example, if the Lady Genevieve's original body were still available—"
"Yes, it could be shown to be hers. Even as this body here is readily identifiable as the organic basis for Nicholas Hawksmoor's matrix." And she indicated the still, dead form of Fowler Aristov.
Prinsep's head turned slowly, wonderingly. He stared at the calm image of Freya, her long hair tossed gently by an invisible wind. "Tell me that again?" he asked slowly.
Nick3 soon heard the story of his own origins, from Prinsep. The story as Freya told it included the fact of Dirac's parenthood, which she had been able to deduce from the Premier's genetic pattern kept on file.
When Nick knew the truth, his thoughts churned with murderous rage—as had those of his immediate predecessor on hearing the same revelation. He wanted to strike for revenge, this time beginning directly against Loki. But Loki's physical storage was inaccessible to him, almost certainly in Dirac's private stateroom.
It would only be possible to get in there when Dirac was elsewhere, and Loki with him, concentrating his attention as always on protecting Dirac.
Meanwhile, the Premier wanted to consult once more with the berserker, before making a final choice on what his own next move should be. Now, less worried than before about the secret contacts being discovered, he had taken steps to establish a video link—he wanted to present the graphic of his proposed colonial design.
He had wondered, with deep curiosity, what image if any a berserker would present upon a holostage to represent itself in a dialogue with Solarians. The answer turned out to be that there was only noisy emptiness. No real video signal at all was coming through.
Dirac was ready to concede that his plan for a new colony, a new mode of human life, might well require additional centuries to perfect. Probably it had been a mistake to talk about the plan to Prinsep. He had known from the day the commodore and his people arrived that there would be virtually no hope of getting them to cooperate in the scheme. No. They would have to be dealt with in some other way.
He paced now in the narrow cleared space of his private quarters, occasionally turning his head to glance at the image of noisy fog, as if he half expected the noise to coalesce into something more meaningful. The little communicator Scurlock had brought the Premier so long ago now lay forgotten on a table. Scurlock and Varvara Engadin stood by listening anxiously.
Dirac was saying to the berserker's chaotic image: "It has been obvious from the beginning of our—I might say partnership—that you are being forced to operate under severe physical limitations. That massive damage of one kind or another prevents you from fulfilling the basic commands of your programming directly."
Only a droning near silence came through the audio channel.
Dirac paced some more. "For three hundred years now you have been in possession of a billion potential Solarian lives—and you are still unable to put them to your original purpose. To an organic intelligence, this would be very frustrating indeed. You must experience some analogous . . . feeling."
At last the voice of the machine responded. It was clear enough, but it seemed to come from a great distance, and it spoke as always in unpleasantly ugly tones, as if even the minimal amount of stress thus created might be of value in wearing away the endless resistance of Solarian humanity.
It said: "I assume these statements indicate that you have some further accommodation to propose?"
Dirac nodded. "I have. A long-term plan indeed. A great bargain between life and death, the organic and the inorganic. A number of details will have to be worked out. But I have a holographic display to show you—and I will soon send you another Solarian life unit. Perhaps several of them."
The holostage in Havot's cabin lit up, showing the signal which meant that someone was trying to call in. He had been lying in his bunk—alone—and thinking, and now he rolled halfway over, raising himself on one elbow. "Display," he said.
The head and shoulders of the Lady Genevieve appeared. Breathlessly Jenny's image demanded: "Chris? I must see you at once."
He was surprised. "Won't that be rather dangerous for you, given your husband's suddenly suspicious attitude? I don't know . . ."
"He's out of the way for the moment. Come as soon as you can. To the place you called our leafy bower. Will you come?"
Havot sighed. He smiled. "All right, within the hour."
"Please hurry!" The stage went dark.
Frowning thoughtfully, Havot was halfway through the process of getting dressed when his 'stage lit up again. "Display!" he ordered the device.
This time the imaged head was that of Nicholas Hawksmoor, who wasted no time in preliminaries. "Havot, I know you've just been summoned to a meeting. But you'd best not go. I don't care much what happens to you, but I want to save the Lady Genevieve from any further trouble."
The movements of Havot's arms, pulling on his clothing, slowed to a stop. "Ah. Aha. What sort of trouble exactly?"
"That wasn't really her, you know. The image on your holostage just now."
"What?" Though now that the suggestion had been made, Havot realized that something about the image had been just a little—odd.
Hawksmoor nodded. "It was Loki. He can do tricks with recorded images and voices. Not quite as well as I can do them, but still well enough to serve the purpose."
"And I suppose if I respond to the summons, I'll die?"
Nick seemed to hesitate momentarily. "Perhaps you won't die instantly. But something will happen that you won't like. Loki is already waiting in suit-form near the rendezvous. And a small shuttle is standing by, with Scurlock at the controls."
Havot sighed. "Thanks for the warning."
"I don't give it for your sake."
"I see. Thanks anyway." He paused. "Nick? One good turn deserves another. We ought to be able to work out something where I do one for you."
The image of Nick3 looked at Havot steadily for what seemed to Havot a long time. Then Hawksmoor said: "At the moment I am inclined to give an alliance favorable consideration."