Frost and Fire Read online

  “I’ll just cut over to the other computer and bring it in on this screen.”

  Moments later, a view of the killing machine hovered before them. He punched up the legend, displaying all the specs his ship’s scanning equipment had been able to ascertain.

  She studied the display for perhaps a minute, scrolling the legend. “It lied.”

  “In what respects?” he asked.

  “Here, here, and here,” she stated, pointing at features on the face of the berserker. “And here—” She indicated a part of the legend covering arms estimations.

  Dorphy and MacFarland entered the cabin while she was talking.

  “It lied when it said that it possesses only superior weapons and is in an overkill situation with respect to us. Those look like small-weapon mountings.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  “It is probably capable of very selective firing—highly accurate, minimally destructive. It should be capable of destroying us with a high probability of leaving the artifact intact.”

  “Why should it lie?” he asked.

  “I wonder—” she said, gnawing her thumbnail again.

  MacFarland cleared his throat.

  “We heard the whole exchange,” he began, “and we’ve been talking it over.”

  Wade turned his head and regarded him.

  “Yes?”

  “We think we ought to give it what it wants and run for it.”

  “You believe that goodlife crap? It’ll blast us as we go.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “There’re plenty of precedents. They do have the option of classifying you that way, and they will make a deal if there’s something they really want.”

  “Dorphy,” Wade asked, “did you get that message off to Corlano?”

  The smaller man nodded.

  “Good. If for no other reason, Corlano is why we’re going to wait here. It could take a while for those smaller units it was talking about to get here. Every hour we gain in waiting is another hour for them to bolster their defenses.”

  “I can see that—” Dorphy began.

  “… But there’s sure death for us at the end of the waiting,” MacFarland continued for him, “and this looks like a genuine way out. I sympathize with Corlano as much as you do, but us dying isn’t going to help. You know the place is not strongly defended. Whether we buy them a little extra time or not, they’ll still go under.”

  “You don’t really know that,” Wade said. “Some seemingly weak worlds have beaten off some very heavy attacks in the past. And even the berserker said it—our few lives are insignificant next to an entire inhabited world.”

  “Well, I’m talking probabilities, and I didn’t come in on this venture to be a martyr. I was willing to take my chances with criminal justice, but not with death.”

  “How do you feel about it, Dorphy?” Wade asked.

  Dorphy licked his lips and looked away.

  “I’m with MacFarland,” he said softly.

  Wade turned to Juna.

  “I say we wait,” she said.

  “Well, then, that makes two of us,” Wade observed.

  “She doesn’t have a vote,” MacFarland stated. “She’s just a passenger.”

  “It’s her life, too,” Wade answered. “She has a say.”

  “She doesn’t want to give it that damned machine!” MacFarland shot back. “She wants to sit here and play with it while everything goes up in flames! What’s she got to lose? She’s dying anyway and—”

  Wade snarled and rose to his feet.

  “The discussion is ended. We stay.”

  “The vote was a tie—at most.”

  “I am assuming full command here, and I say that’s the way it’s going to be.”

  MacFarland laughed.

  “Full command! This is a lousy smuggling run, not the service you got busted out of, Wade. You can’t command any—”

  Wade hit him, twice in the stomach and a left cross to the jaw.

  MacFarland went down, doubled forward, and began gasping. Wade regarded him, considered his size. If he gets up within the next ten seconds this is going to be rough, he decided.

  But MacFarland raised a hand only to rub his jaw. He said, “Damn!” softly and shook his head to clear it. “You didn’t have to do that, Wade.”

  “I thought I did.”

  MacFarland shrugged and rose to one knee.

  “Okay, you’ve got your command,” he said. “But I still think that you’re making a big mistake.”

  “I’ll call you next time there’s something to discuss,” Wade told him.

  Dorphy reached to help him to his feet, but the larger man shook off his hand.

  Wade glanced at Juna. She looked paler than usual, her eyes brighter. She stood before the hatchway to the opened lock as if to defend the passage.

  “I’m going to take a shower and lie down,” MacFarland said.

  “Good.”

  Juna moved forward as the two men left the room. She took hold of Wade’s arm.

  “It lied,” she said again softly. “Do you understand? It could blast us and recover the machine, but it doesn’t want to.”

  “No,” Wade said. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s almost as if it’s afraid of the thing.”

  “Berserkers do not know fear.”

  “All right. I was anthropomorphizing. It’s as if it were under some constraint regarding it. I think we’ve got something very special here, something that creates an unusual problem for the berserker.”

  “What could it be?”

  “I don’t know. But there may be some way to find out, if you can just get me enough time. Stall for as long as you can.”

  He nodded slowly and seated himself. His heart was racing.

  “You said that about half of its memory was shot.” “It’s a guess, but yes. And I’m going to try to reconstruct it from what’s there.” “How?”

  She crossed to the computer.

  “I’m going to program this thing for an ultrahigh-speed form of Wiener analysis of what’s left in there. It’s a powerful nonlinear method for dealing with the very high noise levels we’re facing. But it’s going to have to make some astronomical computations for a system like this. We’ll have to patch in the others, maybe even pull some of the cargo. I don’t know how long this is going to take or even if it will really work.” She began to sound out of breath. “But we might be able to reconstruct what’s missing and restore it. That’s why I need all the time you can get me,” she finished.

  “I’ll try. You go ahead. And—” “I know,” she said, coughing. “Thanks.” “I’ll bring you something to eat while you work.” “In my cabin,” she said, “in the top drawer, bedside table—there are three small bottles of pills. Bring them and some water instead.” “Right.”

  He departed. On the way, he stopped in his cabin to fetch a handgun he kept in his dresser, the only weapon aboard the ship. He searched the drawers several times but could not locate it. He cursed softly and went to Juna’s cabin for her medicine.

  The berserker maintained its distance and speculated while it waited. It had conceded some information in order to explain the proposed trade-off. Still, it could do no harm to remind Captain Kelman of the seriousness of his position. It might even produce a faster decision. Accordingly, the hydraulics hummed, and surface hatches were opened to extrude additional weapon mounts. Firing pieces were shifted to occupy these and were targeted upon the small vessel. Most were too heavy to take out to the ship without damaging its companion. Their mere display, though, might be sufficiently demoralizing.

  Wade watched Juna work. While the hatch could be secured, there were several other locations within the ship from which it could be opened remotely. So he had tucked a pry bar behind his belt and kept an eye on the open hatch. It had seemed the most that he could do, short of forcing a confrontation that might go either way.

  Periodically, he would throw the vo
ice-mode switch and listen to that thing ramble, sometimes in Solarian, sometimes in the odd alien tongue that still sounded somehow familiar. He mused upon it. Something was trying to surface. She had been right about it, but—

  The intercom buzzed. Dorphy.

  “Our hour is up. It wants to talk to you again,” he said. “Wade, it’s pointing more weapons at us.”

  “Switch it in,” he replied. He paused, then, “Hello?” he said.

  “Captain Kelman, the hour has run out,” came the now-familiar voice. “Tell me your decision.”

  “We have not reached one yet,” he answered. “We are divided on this matter. We need more time to discuss it further.”

  “How much time?”

  “I don’t know. Several hours at least.”

  “Very well. I will communicate with you every hour for the next three hours. If you have not reached a decision during that time, I will have to reconsider my offer to categorize you as a goodlife.”

  “We are hurrying,” Wade said.

  “I will call you in an hour.”

  “Wade,” Dorphy said at transmission’s end, “all those new weapons are pointed right at us. I think it’s getting ready to blast us if you don’t give it what it wants.”

  “I don’t think so,” Wade said. “Anyhow, we’ve got some time now.”

  “For what? A few hours isn’t going to change anything.”

  “I’ll tell you in a few hours,” Wade said. “How’s MacFarland?”

  “He’s okay.”

  “Good.”

  He broke the connection.

  “Hell,” he said then.

  He wanted a drink, but he didn’t want to muddy his thinking. He had been close to something.

  He returned to Juna and the console.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “Everything’s in place, and I’m running it now,” she said.

  “How soon till you know whether it’s working?”

  “Hard to tell.”

  He threw the voice-mode switch again.

  “Qwibbian-qwibbian-kel,” it said. “Qwibbian-qwib-bian-kel, maks qwibbian. Qwibbian-qwibbian-kel.”

  “I wonder what that could mean,” he said.

  “It’s a recurring phrase, or word—or whole sentence. A pattern analysis I ran a while back made me think that it might be its name for itself.”

  “It has a certain lilt to it.”

  He began humming. Then whistling and tapping his fingers on the side of the console in accompaniment.

  “That’s it!” he announced suddenly. “It was the right place, but it was the wrong place.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “I have to check to be sure,” he said. “Hold the fort. Ill be back.”

  He hurried off.

  “The right place but the wrong place,” emerged from the speaker. “How can that be? Contradiction.”

  “You’re coming together again!” she said.

  “I—regain,” came the reply, after a time.

  “Let us talk while the process goes on,” she suggested.

  “Yes,” it answered, and then it lapsed again into rambling amid bursts of static.

  Dr. Juna Bayel crouched in the lavatory cubicle and vomited. Afterward, she ground the heels of her hands into her eye sockets and tried to breathe deeply to overcome the dizziness and the shaking. When her stomach had settled sufficiently, she took a double dose of her medicine. It was a risk, but she had no real choice. She could not afford one of her spells now. A heavy dose might head it off. She clenched her teeth and her fists and waited.

  Wade Kelman received the berserker’s call at the end of the hour and talked it into another hour’s grace. The killing machine was much more belligerent this time.

  Dorphy radioed the berserker after he heard the latest transmission and offered to make a deal. The berserker accepted immediately.

  The berserker retracted all but the four original gun mounts facing the ship. It did not wish to back down even to this extent, but Dorphy’s call had given it an appropriate-seeming reason. Actually, it could not dismiss the possibility that showing the additional weapons might have been responsible for the increased electrical activity it now detected. The directive still cautioned wariness and was now indicating nonprovocation as well.

  Who hath drawn the circuit for the lion?

  “Qwibbian,” said the artifact.

  Juna sat, pale, before the console. The past hour had added years to her face. There was fresh grime on her coveralls. When Wade entered, he halted and stared.

  “What’s wrong?” he said. “You look—”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, it isn’t. I know you’re sick. We’re going to have to—”

  “It’s really okay,” she said. “It’s passing. Let it be. I’ll be all right.”

  He nodded and advanced again, displaying a small recorder in his left hand.

  “I’ve got it,” he said then. “Listen to this.”

  He turned on the recorder. A series of clicks and moans emerged. It ran for about a quarter-minute and stopped.

  “Play it again, Wade,” she said, and she smiled at him weakly as she threw the voice-mode switch.

  He complied.

  “Translate,” she said when it was over.

  “Take the—untranslatable—to the—untranslatable— and transform it upward,” came the voice of the artifact through the speaker.

  “Thanks,” she said. “You were right.”

  “You know where I found it?” he asked.

  “On the Carmpan tapes.”

  “Yes, but it’s not Builder-talk.”

  “I know that.”

  “And you also know what it is?”

  She nodded. “It is the language spoken by the Builders’ enemies—the Red Race—against whom the berserkers were unleashed. There is a little segment showing the round red people shouting a slogan or a prayer or something. Maybe it’s even a Builder propaganda tape. It came from that, didn’t it?”

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  She patted the console.

  “Qwib-qwib here is getting back on his mental feet. He’s even helping now. He’s very good at self-repair, now that the process has been initiated. We have been talking for a while, and I’m finally beginning to understand.”

  She coughed, a deep, racking thing that brought tears to her eyes. “Would you get me a glass of water?”

  “Sure.”

  He crossed the cabin and fetched it.

  “We have made an enormously important find,” she said as she sipped it. “It was good that the others kept you from cutting it loose.”

  MacFarland and Dorphy entered the cabin. MacFarland held Wade’s pistol and pointed it at him.

  “Cut it loose,” he said.

  “No,” Wade answered.

  “Then Dorphy will do it while I keep you covered. Suit up, Dorphy, and get a torch.”

  “You don’t know what you’re doing,” Wade said. “Juna was just telling me—”

  MacFarland fired. The projectile ricocheted about the cabin, finally dropping to the floor in the far corner.

  “Mac, you’re crazy!” Wade said. “You could just as easily hit yourself if you do that again.”

  “Don’t move! Okay. That was stupid, but now I know better. The next one goes into your shoulder or your leg. I mean it. You understand?”

  “Yes, damn it! But we can’t just cut that thing loose now. It’s almost repaired, and we know where it’s from, Juna says—”

  “I don’t care about any of that. Two-thirds of it belong to Dorphy and me, and we’re jettisoning our share right now. If your third goes along, that’s tough. The berserker assures us that’s all it wants. It’ll let us go then. I believe it.”

  “Look, Mac. Anything a berserker wants that badly is something we shouldn’t give it. I think I can talk it into giving us even more time.”

  MacFarland shook his head.

  Dorphy finished sui
ting up and took a cutting torch from a rack. As he headed for the open lock, Juna said, “Wait. If you cycle the lock, you’ll cut the cable. It’ll sever the connection to Qwib-qwib’s brain.”

  “I’m sorry, Doctor,” MacFarland said. “But we’re in a hurry.”

  From the console then came the words: “Our association is to be terminated?”

  “I’m afraid so,” she answered. “I am sorry that I could not finish.”

  “Do not. The process continues. I have assimilated the program and now use it myself. A most useful process.”

  Dorphy entered the lock.

  “I have one question, Juna, before good-bye,” it said.

  “Yes? What is it?” she asked.

  The lock began cycling closed, and Dorphy was already raising the torch to burn through the welds.

  “My vocabulary is still incomplete. What does qwibbian mean in your language?”

  The cycling lock struck the cable and severed it as she spoke; so she did not know whether it heard her say the word berserker.

  Wade and MacFarland both turned.

  “What did you say?” Wade asked.

  She repeated it.

  “You’re not making sense,” he said. “First you said that it wasn’t. Now—”

  “Do you want to talk about words or machines?” she asked.

  “Go ahead. You talk. I’ll listen.”

  She sighed deeply and took another drink of water.

  “I got the story from Qwib-qwib in pieces,” she began.

  “I had to fill in some gaps with conjectures, but everything seemed to follow. Ages ago, the Builders apparently fought a war with the Red Race, who proved tougher than expected. So the Builders hit them with their ultimate weapon—the self-replicating killing machines we call berserkers.”

  “That seems the standard story.”

  “The Red Race went under,” she continued. “They were totally destroyed—but only after a terrific struggle. In the final days of the war, they tried all sorts of things, but by then it was a case of too little, too late. They were overwhelmed. They actually even tried something I had always wondered about—something no Solarian world would now dare to attempt, with all the restrictions on research along those lines, with all the paranoia.”

  She paused for another sip.

  “They built their own berserkers,” she went on then, “but not like the originals. They developed a killing machine that would attack only berserkers—an antiberserker berserker—for the defense of their home planet. But there were too few of them. They put them all on the line, around their world, and apparently they did a creditable job—they had something involving short jumps into and out of other spaces going for them. But they were vastly outnumbered in that last great mass attack. Ultimately, all of them fell.”