"But for the sake of argument suppose I lie. Even so, the situation of all life-units involved is improved by your a.s.sisting me. A quick death at my hands, inflicted in accordance with my original programming, would be less unpleasant than prolonged existence as the rogue's experimental subjects. Is it not so?"

Harry spent a little time in thought, his head bowed and staring at the deck. He could hear a hissing somewhere, sounding like an atmospheric leak. It was a distracting noise, and on second thought it was more like sand running through an hourgla.s.s.

No matter how much he thought, there was only one answer he could give. "Yeah. I guess that's true enough. Quick is way better than slow, when it comes to dying."

"Then our agreement is concluded. At the proper time I will give you detailed instructions regarding your part in the plan."

As the berserker uttered those last words it turned around and stalked away. Again it stepped indifferently on Harry's fallen comrade, the weight making the dead man's armor creak. Then it had walked around a corner and pa.s.sed out of sight.

EIGHTEEN.

As far as Harry could tell, the d.a.m.ned machines had left him utterly alone. He did not believe for a moment that he was actually un.o.bserved, but it wouldn't have mattered if he was. The ruins of the common room around him seemed to offer nothing that he might use to better his position. The superbadlife was without resources.

Trying to send out an alarm, any kind of appeal for help, was out of the question. There were no robot couriers remaining on the base, and the one that had been scheduled to carry away the support people must have been blasted, or had already escaped. Therefore there was no meaningful way to get a message out.

Harry's solitude did not endure for long. The a.s.sa.s.sin machine was calling in its various auxiliary units from the farther reaches of the wanderworld, the result being a sporadic parade of grotesque devices emerging from the various nooks and crannies in which they had been probing, sterilizing, or searching for G.o.d knew what. Any microorganisms that might have been overlooked in the extermination process would be able to survive a little longer.

"Looks like you're in full retreat," Harry observed to the a.s.sa.s.sin, which had now reappeared.

Something in the way the two-handed machine was standing, leaning slightly toward him, made him wonder if it had changed its mind and was going to obliterate him on the spot.

But all it said was: "All my machinery will be needed in the a.s.sault on the rogue. I also require that you bring along the robot called Dorijen, if that is feasible. I foresee possible uses for it."

"Because of Dorijen's connection with the goodlife."

"That is correct."

Harry thought about that. He couldn't see why not, and gave his approval-not that the machine had asked for it.

"All right, we might possibly get some use out of Dorry." Even in its battered condition, the tame one might still be helpful as a source of information. Possibly it could also serve as a means of getting some kind of message to Satranji, if Satranji was still alive-and if the robot could be persuaded to cooperate with either of the men she had accused of being goodlife.

Ruined as this robot was, it seemed to Harry, in some paradoxical way, to have become more feminine than when it had been in full metallic health-doubtless because it-or she-now seemed to be actually concerned with saving human lives. He couldn't decide how much of Satranji's babbling, transmitted through the robot, he ought to believe. He wasn't even entirely sure that tirade had really come from Satranji-a robot could be programmed by almost anyone, to say almost anything.

Not that Harry could see any reason for such fakery, in this case. But it still boggled his mind that Satranji could have become his mortal enemy. There simply were no grounds for that. Or so it seemed to Harry.

Dorry had computed that the odds were in favor of her former master being dead, or she would not have delivered his sealed message. But Harry had a different estimate of the chances of Satranji's survival. He earnestly hoped that the son of a worm was still alive, and would continue breathing until he, Harry, had a chance to ask him some questions face to face.

How could he be my deadly enemy? How could I be one of the biggest concerns of his miserable life, while at the same time I barely remember that he exists?

Was a woman involved?That was what the Lady Masaharu had once asked Harry. Yeah. That might have had something to do with it, for there was-had been-a woman. Having had some time to think it over, Harry vaguely pictured her. He couldn't remember her name, but he thought he might just about manage to do so if he tried.

Did I take her away from Satranji? It might have amounted to that. Now that Harry thought about it, the suspicion was growing that it had. Maybe he actually hated me even then, years ago when we were working together-and I didn't even notice.

Her affair with Harry had not been of long duration. Where had she gone afterward, and what had happened to her? If Harry had ever known those facts, he couldn't recall them now.

Moving around slowly, going a few steps this way and a few steps that, Harry made sure all his limbs still worked. As he made his way through the ruins, stepping over wreckage and an occasional body, he traveled a short distance down the adjoining corridor. He wasn't sure just what he was looking for-there was no sense trying to find survivors among his fallen teammates, the berserker had already seen to that.

The a.s.sa.s.sin's machines, having smashed up the expedition's advance base, and disposed of all the life-units they could find, except the one it needed for some special purpose, had given the place as thorough a looking-over as possible in the limited amount of time it had budgeted for the task. It set some of its units to gathering up spare weapons, and scavenging other useful parts. For the time being it had nothing more to say, in Harry's presence, about the ship, or ships, it had detected nearby as it came roaring in to strike the human base.

Meanwhile, Harry observed that other auxiliary machines were busy removing debris-organic and otherwise-and sterilizing all the exposed surfaces they could get at. The unit speaking directly to Harry seemed to pay no attention to the racket made by its own auxiliary machines as the latter worked on tirelessly, clearing away debris, burning bacteria, and making whatever temporary repairs might be necessary for the a.s.sa.s.sin's purposes.

He wasn't looking for his former a.s.sociates, but it was impossible to avoid meeting some of them.

Before long Harry's slow wandering brought him to the unarmored body of a dead woman, half buried in a pile of rubble, and he was able to recognize Louise Newari. Louise was lying face up, with a dropped carbine near one of her outstretched hands-the weapon was obviously broken, or the berserker cleanup squad would have gathered it in, just to keep their valuable badlife prisoner from being tempted.

Harry found himself talking out loud to Louise. "You were going to get away from all this. And you wanted me to come with you. Well, you've got away."And he, the suicidal one, he was still here dealing with berserkers .

Harry thought some more about coincidence.

The next dead body Harry came to was in armor, and the face inside the helmet looked at first like that of a total stranger. But when Harry, out of some odd sense of duty, forced himself to look carefully, he could be sure that it was Doc. Again Harry crouched down, this time taking one lifeless hand, that had been ripped free of armor, in his own armored gauntlet. "You were wrong about a couple of things, old man. See, we can beat the odds. We do it all the time. By all the odds I ought to be dead by now, and you ought to be safe."

He looked up at a faint sound of movement. The crippled robot Dorijen was back, carrying a new helmet for him in her functioning half-hand.

Dorijen's gentle voice said: "I trust, sir, that your condition is no worse."

"I'm doin' great, thanks for your concern. I take it you still mean to see me indicted for my crimes."

"That is not precisely correct, sir. What I have said is that you are to consider yourself under arrest, and I must report to the proper authorities all that you said to the berserker, as soon as a channel of communication becomes available. Of course any question of indictment or trial, guilt or innocence, can only be decided by human authority."

"Of course. I could never get along very well with human authority."

"Yes, sir. Meanwhile my duty is to help you survive in this extremely dangerous environment."

"And to help your old boss survive, if you get the chance."

"Yes, sir, of course."

Here he was, chatting with a robot, just because for once he wanted someone to talk to. Thinking of Satranji, Harry said: "There are a lot of things I tend not to notice about people. Probably that has its good points, but sometimes it costs me."

Dorry computed no need to come up with a reply to that. Her one-eyed stare seemed intended to remind Harry that he was still under arrest.

"All right." He sighed. "I think you still owe me about half a message. How about it? Knowing what Satranji wanted to say to me might help me to survive."

Dorijen evidently agreed. The next words out of the robot's mouth were obviously Satranji's, bragging about how he had so cleverly succeeded in establishing contact with the rogue.

"Y'see, Famous Harry, I always have to see how far I can go. How much I can get away with. And I've gone a h.e.l.l of a lot farther than you ever thought of going."

What is he babbling about? Harry was thinking again. How could he be ready to wreck his own life just to ruin mine, when I never gave him any thought at all?

In his fierce concentration, he missed part of what Dorijen was reciting. Something to do with Satranji's bragging, how he, cruising alone in the suicidal depths of the Gravel Pit, before there had been any kidnappings, had cleverly managed to capture a berserker scouting device.

The first great difficulty, as the narrative was now explaining, had been to find some way to prevent his captive berserker scout from blowing itself up. But then Satranji, working with his own clever robot aides (Harry wondered in pa.s.sing if one of them had been Dorry), had come up with an ingenious method of stunning the destructor circuits.

His prize sample of enemy technology had been caught in some kind of automatic trap-it was basically of the same type that the Templars had begun to use, to scatter by the thousand in realms where berserkers were wont to prowl.

Craftily attentive to detail, Satranji had taken pains to reprogram the trap, so it would preserve no record of this particular success. Still, suspicious humans examining all his hardware might well have found him out. But there was little time for any such inquisition, and Winston Cheng had no appet.i.te for it.

Then, with the help of a well-trained, intelligent robot or two, he had prepared his captive to carry a proposal back to its master.

Dorry's soft voice continued a steady delivery of horror: "Deadly, deadly, Silver. Let me tell you, it was deadly. You'd never have had the guts to try it, Famous Harry. But I did. Theleast little mistake, and the thing could have taken me out in a couple microseconds. But I pushed ahead, and it all worked, and I sailed right through."

At last Satranji had seen a way to establish communication with a berserker. It was the work of only a few minutes to compose the message he wanted to send-that part, Satranji said, was so easy it was almost eerie; as if somewhere in the back of his mind he had been a long time preparing for this moment.

Then he had to insert his message into the alien machine, in a digital form that the master should have no trouble reading.

Satranji issued orders to his machinery to let the small scout go again. If all went well, it would go home without blowing itself up.

"Then pretty soon I got my answer. My partner was very literate and polite and definitely interested. The whole thing went off smooth as silk.

"But now we come to the real trick, Famous Harry. By now, unless you're even dumber than I think you are, you've started worrying about that famous five-day Templar flight test of what you like to call the Secret Weapon .

"That was when your old buddy the good abbot, instead of diligently spending all that time alone and hard at work like everybody thought, swapped ships for a while with your other old buddy, Del Satranji.

I let him meet Dorry once, and I knew he was hot for her. Then I told him I just wanted to do some secret tests for a private party, and he was willing to let me borrow theWeapon for a couple of days.

That was all it took. Of course it'll cost him his job if it ever gets out-but it's costing you a little more."

It would cost Emil a lot more than his job, Harry was thinking. Abbot Darchan would have recoiled from any suspicion of involvement in goodlife activity, recoiled in horror, and in fear for his immortal soul.

Dorry's soft voice purred on: "And, oh yeah, your wife's 'inheritance,' a little jolt of money to get her out traveling the s.p.a.ceways. That was a little harder to arrange, but worth the trouble.

"Again, Silver, it looks like both of us are soon going to be dead. I find it matters to me that you should know, before you die, just who screwed you up so royally, and why. You might possibly figure it out anyway, but no use taking chances. The same goes for the great Winston Cheng-I'll leave him a message too, if I have time. Really wanted you to know all this, Silver. I'll see you in h.e.l.l." Dorry's soft message-quoting monotone fell silent.

"But why? Why?" Harry was on his feet, grabbing the inoffensive messenger. Dorry's body, feeling as if more pieces might be ready to drop off, rattled in his grip.

A moment later his servo-powered arms had thrown the robot halfway across the common room, to crash down in the wreckage on the deck.

Harry stood over the wreckage, gasping.Punching out the messenger, Harry, hurrah for you -he could almost hear how Becky would tell him off. Dorijen might have pleaded total ignorance and innocence of the content of the message before delivering it, but robots never pleaded anything. And they were always innocent. The tame one had no comment as it patiently regained its feet.

Wanting to help Dorry up, Harry reached out awkwardly, unthinkingly, acting on an impulse to make amends. But the robot's half-hand was not extended for him to grasp.

"Sorry I got violent," he said.

"No apology to me is ever necessary, sir. A machine cannot be offended."

"I know that, d.a.m.n it. Inside your metal skull there's n.o.body at home. Still I'm sorry, for my own sake."

"Very good, sir. I trust the emotion will have a therapeutic effect."

Harry closed his eyes. "Dorijen, where are my wife and child? What did the motherless one really do with them?"

"Outside of the disturbing content of the sealed message, sir, I have no reason to believe that Del Satranji has ever had anything to do with them. If I knew their present whereabouts, I would of course inform you, and do my best to protect them."

"Can you at least confirm or deny the story about you shacking up with Emil Darchan? That might help."

Evidently discussing such information with a suspected goodlife was a tough decision for a robot brain to make. Dorijen gave no answer, but continued to stand near Harry, silently overseeing the task as he got the remnants of the ruined helmet off his neck and threw them away. Then he fitted on the replacement, Dorry watching closely to make sure that all the connections were snug and proper.

The a.s.sa.s.sin had been listening without comment. Maybe it had been surprised by the outpouring of hatred, or maybe nothing that humans did surprised the enemy any longer; there was no way for Harry to tell.

For the moment the berserker had focused its attention on Dorijen, and now it asked: "Have you any more secret messages to be delivered?"

"I have none." Evidently the tame one thought there could be no harm in revealing that fact to a berserker. But then, of course, Dorry could be lying to the enemy.

The berserker tried once more. "Your interlude of s.e.x with Abbot Darchan-did that take place as described in the message?"

"I see no reason to answer that question."

Harry could hear himself pouring out questions that he was all but certain would be useless. "Where are my people now? Did he . . . did he actually give them to the rogue?"

Dorry turned her ghastly face in his direction, and answered in her normal voice that she had no information on that subject. "In any event I will reveal no information that I judge might be useful to the enemy." Dorry's functioning eye turned to the berserker as she said that. Harry imagined a metallic gleam of defiance in it, declaring:Nya, nya, you can't make me . And in Dorry's case that was undoubtedly true.

Harry demanded: "Where was the b.a.s.t.a.r.d when he dictated that message for me? When did he do it?"

Dorry again refused to answer.

The a.s.sa.s.sin said to Dorry: "You will leave us now. Or I will have you carried away."

Without comment the tame robot turned and once more hobbled from the room.

When the a.s.sa.s.sin had satisfied itself that it was once more alone with Harry it said to him: "I a.s.sume that you grant the message from your enemy a high probability of truthfulness, and that you now wish to obtain revenge against this goodlife man."

"If I find him . . ." Harry let it die away. "I've told you what I want. Let's concentrate on that."

Satranji's crazy confession was still echoing in Harry's brain; he still didn't know what to make of it, and there were moments when he could have been convinced that it was all a twisted lie. Oh yes, people could sometimes do insanely evil things. But . . .

There seemed to be no use questioning Dorry any further on the subject, if he should have the chance to do that. The robot had told him as much as it had been programmed to tell, and without the facilities of a robotics engineering lab available, that would probably be all that he or anyone could get out of it.

With his suit-helmet combination now fully functional, Harry ran through a comprehensive mental checklist. Immediately he discovered that one channel of his radio now brought him into contact with the a.s.sa.s.sin. Closing his eyes, he took a quick mental glimpse through the brain-helmet interface, confirming what he already felt certain of, that all the other channels had been disabled before the friendly robot was allowed to hand him the helmet. The a.s.sa.s.sin seemed right at the top of its game.

Opening his eyes, he exercised his one available form of radio communication and told the berserker: "Thanks for letting me have the helmet. It's great to have an ally so concerned about my welfare."

The calm voice answered quickly. "You speak in irony, yet what you say is true."

Presently a machine came to escort Harry to the dock. His repaired suit was working as good as new.

The a.s.sa.s.sin's s.p.a.cegoing transporter unit drifted in s.p.a.ce at what he judged to be only a few hundred meters' distance. Behind Harry, another machine approached, carrying a burden.

The a.s.sa.s.sin pointed to it, and reminded him: "You will bring the robot Dorijen with you."