Fred Saberhagen - Berserker 1967

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Fred Saberhagen - Berserker 1
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
WITHOUT A THOUGHT
GOODLIFE
PATRON OF THE ARTS
THE PEACEMAKER
STONE PLACE
WHAT T AND I DID
MR. JESTER
MASQUE OF THE RED SHIFT
SIGN OF THE WOLF
IN THE TEMPLE OF MARS
THE FACE OF THE DEEP
INTRODUCTION
I, third historian of the carmpan race, in gratitude to the Earth-descended
race for their defense of my world, set down here for them my fragmentary
vision of their great war against our common enemy.
The vision has been formed piece by piece through my contacts in past and
present time with the minds of men and of machines. In these minds alien to
me I often perceive what I cannot understand, yet what I see is true. And so
I have truly set down the acts and words of Earth-descended men great and
small and ordinary, the words and even the secret thoughts of your heroes and
your traitors.
Looking into the past I have seen how in the twentieth century of your
Christian calendar your forefathers on Earth first built radio detectors
capable of sounding the deeps of interstellar space. On the day when whispers
in our alien voices were first detected, straying in across the enormous
intervals, the universe of stars became real to all Earth's nations and all
her tribes.
They became aware of the real world surrounding them-a universe strange and
immense beyond thought, possibly hostile, surrounding and shrinking all
Earthmen alike. Like island savages just become aware of the great powers
existing on and beyond their ocean, your nations began-sullenly,
mistrustfully, almost against their will-to put aside their quarrels with one
another.
In the same century the men of old Earth took their first steps into space.
They studied our alien voices whenever they could hear us. And when the men
of old Earth began to travel faster than light, they followed our voices to
seek us out.
Your race and mine studied each other with eager science and with great
caution and courtesy. We Carmpan and our older friends are more passive than
you. We live in different environments and think mainly in different
directions. We posed no threat to Earth. We saw to it that Earthmen were not
crowded by our presence; physically and mentally they had to stretch to touch
us. Ours, all the skills of keeping peace. Alas, for the day unthinkable that
was to come, the day when we wished ourselves warlike!
You of Earth found uninhabited planets, where you could thrive in the warmth
of suns much like your own. In large colonies and small you scattered
yourselves across one segment of one arm of our slow-turning galaxy. To your
settlers and frontiersmen the galaxy began to seem a friendly place, rich in
worlds hanging ripe for your peaceful occupation.
The alien immensity surrounding you appeared to be not hostile after all.
Imagined threats had receded behind horizons of silence and vastness. And so
once more you allowed among yourselves the luxury of dangerous conflict,
carrying the threat of suicidal violence.
No enforceable law existed among the planets. On each of your scattered
colonies individual leaders maneuvered for personal power, distracting their
people with real or imagined dangers posed by other Earth-descended men.
All further exploration was delayed, in the very days when the new and
inexplicable radio voices were first heard drifting in from beyond your
frontiers, the strange soon-to-be-terrible voices that conversed only in
mathematics. Earth and Earth's colonies were divided each against all by
suspicion, and in mutual fear were rapidly training and arming for war.
And at this point the very readiness for violence that had sometimes so
nearly destroyed you, proved to be the means of life's survival. To us, the
Carmpan watchers, the withdrawn seers and touchers of minds, it appeared that
you had carried the crushing weight of war through all your history knowing
that it would at last be needed, that this hour would strike when nothing
less awful would serve.
When the hour struck and our enemy came without warning, you were ready with
swarming battlefleets. You were dispersed and dug in on scores of planets,
and heavily armed. Because you were, some of you and some of us are now alive.
Not all our Carmpan psychology, our logic and vision and subtlety, would have
availed us anything. The skills of peace and tolerance were useless, for our
enemy was not alive.
What is thought, that mechanism seems to bring it forth?
WITHOUT A THOUGHT
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.
One such machine could hang over a planet colonized by men and in two days
pound the surface into a lifeless cloud of dust and steam, a hundred miles
deep. This particular machine had already done just that.
It used no predictable tactics in its dedicated, unconscious war against
life. The ancient, unknown gamesmen 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 so was not even in
theory predictable by opposing brains, human or electronic.
Men called it a berserker.
Del Murray, sometime computer specialist, had called it other names than
that; but right now he was too busy to waste breath, as he moved in
staggering lunges around the little cabin of his one-man fighter, plugging in
replacement units for equipment damaged by the last near-miss of a berserker
missile. An animal resembling a large dog with an ape's forelegs moved around
the cabin too, carrying in its nearly human hands a supply of emergency
sealing patches. The cabin air was full of haze. Wherever movement of the
haze showed a leak to an unpressurized part of the hull, the dog-ape moved to
apply a patch.
"Hello, Foxglove!" the man shouted, hoping that his radio was again in
working order.
"Hello, Murray, this is Foxglove," said a sudden loud voice in the cabin.
"How far did you get?"
Del was too weary to show much relief that his communications were open
again. "I'll let you know in a minute. At least it's stopped shooting at me
for a while. Move, Newton." The alien animal, pet and ally, called an aiyan,
moved away from the man's feet and kept singlemindedly looking for leaks.
After another minute's work Del could strap his body into the deep-cushioned
command chair again, with something like an operational panel before him.
That last near-miss had sprayed the whole cabin with fine penetrating
splinters. It was remarkable that man and aiyan had come through unwounded.
His radar working again, Del could say: "I'm about ninety miles out from it,
Foxglove. On the opposite side from you." His present position was the one he
had been trying to achieve since the battle had begun.
The two Earth ships and the berserker were half a light year from the nearest
sun. The berserker could not leap out of normal space, toward the defenseless
colonies of the planets of that sun, while the two ships stayed close to it.
There were only two men aboard Foxglove. They had more machinery working for
them than did Del, but both manned ships were mites compared to their
opponent.
Del's radar showed him an ancient ruin of metal, not much smaller in cross
section than New Jersey. Men had blown holes in it the size of Manhattan
Island, and melted puddles of slag as big as lakes upon its surface.
But the berserker's power was still enormous. So far no man had fought it and
survived. Now, it could squash Del's little ship like a mosquito; it was
wasting its unpredictable subtlety on him. Yet there was a special taste of
terror in the very difference of it. Men could never frighten this enemy, as
it frightened them.
Earthmen's tactics, worked out from bitter experience against other
berserkers, called for a simultaneous attack by three ships. Foxglove and
Murray made two. A third was supposedly on the way, but still about eight
hours distant, moving at C-plus velocity, outside of normal space. Until it
arrived, Foxglove and Murray must hold the berserker at bay, while it brooded
unguessable schemes.
It might attack either ship at any moment, or it might seek to disengage. It
might wait hours for them to make the first move-though it would certainly
fight if the men attacked it. It had learned the language of Earth's
spacemen-it might try to talk with them. But always, ultimately, it would
seek to destroy them and every other living thing it met. That was the basic
command given it by the ancient warlords.
A thousand years ago, it would easily have swept ships of the type that now
opposed it from its path, whether they carried fusion missiles or not. Now,
it was in some electrical way conscious of its own weakening by accumulated
damage. And perhaps in long centuries of fighting its way across the galaxy
it had learned to be wary.
Now, quite suddenly, Del's detectors showed force fields forming in behind
his ship. Like the encircling arms of a huge bear they blocked his path away
from the enemy. He waited for some deadly blow, with his hand trembling over
the red button that would salvo his atomic missiles at the berserker-but if
he attacked alone, or even with Foxglove, the infernal machine would parry
their missiles, crush their ships, and go on to destroy another helpless
planet. Three ships were needed to attack. The red firing button was now only
a last desperate resort.
Del was reporting the force fields to Foxglove when he felt the first hint in
his mind of another attack.
"Newton!" he called sharply, leaving the radio connection with Foxglove open.
They would hear and understand what was going to happen.
The aiyan bounded instantly from its combat couch to stand before Del as if
hypnotized, all attention riveted on the man. Del had sometimes bragged:
"Show Newton a drawing of different-colored lights, convince him it
represents a particular control panel, and he'll push buttons or whatever you
tell him, until the real panel matches the drawing."
But no aiyan had the human ability to learn and to create on an abstract
level; which was why Del was now going to put Newton in command of his ship.
He switched off the ship's computers-they were going to be as useless as his
own brain under the attack he felt gathering-and said to Newton: "Situation
Zombie."
The animal responded instantly as it had been trained, seizing Del's hands
with firm insistence and dragging them one at a time down beside the command
chair to where the fetters had been installed.
Hard experience had taught men something about the berserkers' mind weapon,
although its principles of operation were still unknown. It was slow in its
onslaught, and its effects could not be steadily maintained for more than
about two hours, after which a berserker was evidently forced to turn it off
for an equal time. But while in effect, it robbed any human or electronic
brain of the ability to plan or to predict-and left it unconscious of its own
incapacity.
It seemed to Del that all this had happened before, maybe more than once.
Newton, that funny fellow, had gone too far with his pranks; he had abandoned
the little boxes of colored beads that were his favorite toys, and was moving
the controls around at the lighted panel. Unwilling to share the fun with
Del, he had tied the man to his chair somehow. Such behavior was really
intolerable, especially when there was supposed to be a battle in progress.
Del tried to pull his hands free, and called to Newton.
Newton whined earnestly, and stayed at the panel.
"Newt, you dog, come lemme loose. I know what I have to say: Four score and
seven... hey, Newt, where're your toys? Lemme see your pretty beads." There
were hundreds of tiny boxes of the varicolored beads, leftover trade goods
that Newton loved to sort out and handle. Del peered around the cabin,
chuckling a little at his own cleverness. He would get Newton distracted by
the beads, and then... the vague idea faded into other crackbrained
grotesqueries.
Newton whined now and then but stayed at the panel moving controls in the
long sequence he had been taught, taking the ship through the feinting,
evasive maneuvers that might fool a berserker into thinking it was still
competently manned. Newton never put a hand near the big red button. Only if
he felt deadly pain himself, or found a dead man in Del's chair, would he
reach for that.
"Ah, roger, Murray," said the radio from time to time, as if acknowledging a
message. Sometimes Foxglove added a few words or numbers that might have
meant something. Del wondered what the talking was about.
At last he understood that Foxglove was trying to help maintain the illusion
that there was still a competent brain in charge of Del's ship. The fear
reaction came when he began to realize that he had once again lived through
the effect of the mind weapon. The brooding berserker, half genius, half
idiot, had forborne to press the attack when success would have been
certain-perhaps deceived, perhaps following the strategy that avoided
predictability at almost any cost.
"Newton." The animal turned, hearing a change in his voice. Now Del could say
the words that would tell Newton it was safe to set his master free, a
sequence too long for anyone under the mind weapon to recite.
"-shall not perish from the earth," he finished. With a yelp of joy Newton
pulled the fetters from Del's hands. Del turned instantly to the radio.
"Effect has evidently been turned off, Foxglove," said Del's voice through
the speaker in the cabin of the larger ship.
The Commander let out a sigh. "He's back in control!"
The Second Officer-there was no third-said: "That means we've got some kind
of fighting chance, for the next two hours. I say let's attack now!"
The Commander shook his head, slowly but without hesitation. "With two ships,
we don't have any real chance. Less than four hours until Gizmo gets here. We
have to stall until then, if we want to win."
"It'll attack the next time it gets Del's mind scrambled! I don't think we
fooled it for a minute... we're out of range of the mind beam here, but Del
can't withdraw now. And we can't expect that aiyan to fight his ship for him.
We'll really have no chance, with Del gone."
The Commander's eyes moved ceaselessly over his panel. "We'll wait. We can't
be sure it'll attack the next time it puts the beam on him... "
The berserker spoke suddenly, its radioed voice plain in the cabins of both
ships: "I have a proposition for you, little ship." Its voice had a cracking,
adolescent quality, because it strung together words and syllables recorded
from the voices of human prisoners of both sexes and different ages. Bits of
human emotion, sorted and fixed like butterflies on pins, thought the
Commander. There was no reason to think it had kept the prisoners alive after
learning the language from them.
"Well?" Del's voice sounded tough and capable by comparison.
"I have invented a game which we will play," it said. "If you play well
enough, I will not kill you right away."
"Now I've heard everything," murmured the Second Officer.
After three thoughtful seconds the Commander slammed a fist on the arm of his
chair. "It means to test his learning ability, to run a continuous check on
his brain while it turns up the power of the mind beam and tries different
modulations. If it can make sure the mind beam is working, it'll attack
instantly. I'll bet my life on it. That's the game it's playing this time."
"I will think over your proposition," said Del's voice coolly.
The Commarder said: "It's in no hurry to start. It won't be able to turn on
the mind beam again for almost two hours."
"But we need another two hours beyond that."
Del's voice said: "Describe the game you want to play."
"It is a simplified version of the human game called checkers."
The Commander and the Second looked at each other, neither able to imagine
Newton able to play checkers. Nor could they doubt that Newton's failure
would kill them within a few hours, and leave another planet open to
destruction.
After a minute's silence, Del's voice asked: "What'll we use for a board?"
"We will radio our moves to one another," said the berserker equably. It went
on to describe a checkers-like game, played on a smaller board with less than
the normal number of pieces. There was nothing very profound about it; but,
of course, playing would seem to require a functional brain, human or
electronic, able to plan and to predict.
"If I agree to play," said Del slowly, "how'll we decide who gets to move
first?"
"He's trying to stall," said the Commander, gnawing a thumbnail. "We won't be
able to offer any advice, with that thing listening. Oh, stay sharp, Del boy!"
"To simplify matters," said the berserker, "I will move first in every game."
Del could look forward to another hour free of the mind weapon when he
finished rigging the checkerboard. When the pegged pieces were moved,
appropriate signals would be radioed to the berserker; lighted squares on the
board would show him where its pieces were moved. If it spoke to him while
the mind weapon was on, Del's voice would answer from a tape, which he had
stocked with vaguely aggressive phrases, such as: "Get on with the game," or
"Do you want to give up now?"
He hadn't told the enemy how far along he was with his preparations because
he was still busy with something the enemy must not know-the system that was
going to enable Newton to play a game of simplified checkers.
Del gave a soundless little laugh as he worked, and glanced over to where
Newton was lounging on his couch, clutching toys in his hands as if he drew
some comfort from them. This scheme was going to push the aiyan near the
limit of his ability, but Del saw no reason why it should fail.
Del had completely analyzed the miniature checker game, and diagrammed every
position that Newton could possibly face-playing only even-numbered moves,
thank the random berserker for that specification!-on small cards. Del had
discarded some lines of play that would arise from some poor early moves by
Newton, further simplifying his job. Now, on a card showing each possible
remaining position, Del indicated the best possible move with a drawn-in
arrow. Now he could quickly teach Newton to play the game by looking at the
appropriate card and making the move shown by the arrow-
"Oh, oh," said Del, as his hands stopped working and he stared into space.
Newton whined at the tone of his voice.
Once Del had sat at one board in a simultaneous chess exhibition, one of
sixty players opposing the world champion, Blankenship. Del had held his own
into the middle game. Then, when the great man paused again opposite his
board, Del had shoved a pawn forward, thinking he had reached an unassailable
position and could begin a counterattack. Blankenship had moved a rook to an
innocent-looking square and strolled on to the next board-and then Del had
seen the checkmate coming at him, four moves away but one move too late for
him to do anything about it.
The Commander suddenly said a foul phrase in a loud distinct voice. Such
conduct on his part was extremely rare, and the Second Officer looked round
in surprise. "What?"
"I think we've had it. "The Commander paused. "I hoped that Murray could set
up some kind of a system over there, so that Newton could play the game-or
appear to be playing it. But it won't work. Whatever system Newton plays by
rote will always have him making the same move in the same position. It may
be a perfect system-but a man doesn't play any game that way, damn it. He
makes mistakes, he changes strategy. Even in a game this simple there'll be
room for that. Most of all, a man learns a game as he plays it. He gets
better as he goes along. That's what'll give Newton away, and that's what our
bandit wants. It's probably heard about aiyans. Now as soon as it can be sure
it's facing a dumb animal over there, and not a man or computer... "
After a little while the Second Officer said: "I'm getting signals of their
moves. They've begun play. Maybe we should've rigged up a board so we could
follow along with the game."
"We better just be ready to go at it when the time comes." The Commander
looked hopelessly at his salvo button, and then at the clock that showed two
hours must pass before Gizmo could reasonably be hoped for.
Soon the Second Officer said: "That seems to be the end of the first game;
Del lost it, if I'm reading their scoreboard signal right." He paused. "Sir,
here's that signal we picked up the last time it turned the mind beam on. Del
must be starting to get it again."
There was nothing for the Commander to say. The two men waited silently for
the enemy's attack, hoping only that they could damage it in the seconds
before it would overwhelm them and kill them.
"He's playing the second game," said the Second Officer, puzzled. "And I just
heard him say `Let's get on with it.' "
"His voice could be recorded. He must have made some plan of play for Newton
to follow; but it won't fool the berserker for long. It can't."
Time crept unmeasurably past them.
The Second said: "He's lost the first four games. But he's not making the
same moves every time. I wish we'd made a board... "
"Shut up about the board! We'd be watching it instead of the panel. Now stay
alert, Mister."
After what seemed a long time, the Second said: "Well, I'll be!"
"What?"
"Our side got a draw in that game."
"Then the beam can't be on him. Are you sure... "
"It is! Look, here, the same indication we got last time. It's been on him
the better part of an hour now, and getting stronger."
The Commander stared in disbelief; but he knew and trusted his Second's
ability. And the panel indications were convincing. He said: "Then someone-or
something-with no functioning mind is learning how to play a game, over
there. Ha, ha," he added, as if trying to remember how to laugh.
The berserker won another game. Another draw. Another win for the enemy. Then
three drawn games in a row.
Once the Second Officer heard Del's voice ask coolly: "Do you want to give up
now?" On the next move he lost another game. But the following game ended in
another draw. Del was plainly taking more time than his opponent to move, but
not enough to make the enemy impatient.
"It's trying different modulations of the mind beam," said the Second. "And
it's got the power turned way up."
"Yeah," said the Commander. Several times he had almost tried to radio Del,
to say something that might keep the man's spirits up-and also to relieve his
own feverish inactivity, and to try to find out what could possibly be going
on. But he could not take the chance. Any interference might upset the
miracle.
He could not believe the inexplicable success could last, even when the
checker match turned gradually into an endless succession of drawn games
between two perfect players. Hours ago the Commander had said good-bye to
life and hope, and he still waited for the fatal moment.
And he waited.
"-not perish from the earth!" said Del Murray, and Newton's eager hands flew
to loose his right arm from its shackle.
A game, unfinished on the little board before him, had been abandoned seconds
earlier. The mind beam had been turned off at the same time, when Gizmo had
burst into normal space right in position and only five minutes late; and the
berserker had been forced to turn all its energies to meet the immediate
all-out attack of Gizmo and Foxglove.
Del saw his computers, recovering from the effect of the beam, lock his
aiming screen onto the berserker's scarred and bulging midsection, as he shot
his right arm forward, scattering pieces from the game board.
"Checkmate!" he roared out hoarsely, and brought his fist down on the big red
button.
"I'm glad it didn't want to play chess," Del said later, talking to the
Commander in Foxglove's cabin. "I could never have rigged that up."
The ports were cleared now, and the men could look out at the cloud of
expanding gas, still faintly luminous, that had been a berserker; metal
fire-purged of the legacy of ancient evil.
But the Commander was watching Del. "You got Newt to play by following
diagrams, I see that. But how could he learn the game?"
Del grinned. "He couldn't, but his toys could. Now wait before you slug me."
He called the aiyan to him and took a small box from the animal's hand. The
box rattled faintly as he held it up. On the cover was pasted a diagram of
one possible position in the simplified checker game, with a
different-colored arrow indicating each possible move of Del's pieces.
"It took a couple of hundred of these boxes," said Del. "This one was in the
group that Newt examined for the fourth move. When he found a box with a
diagram matching the position on the board, he picked the box up, pulled out
one of these beads from inside, without looking-that was the hardest part to
teach him in a hurry, by the way," said Del, demonstrating. "Ah, this one's
blue. That means, make the move indicated on the cover by a blue arrow. Now
the orange arrow leads to a poor position, see?" Del shook all the beads out
of the box into his hand. "No orange beads left; there were six of each color
when we started. But every time Newton drew a bead, he had orders to leave it
out of the box until the game was over. Then, if the scoreboard indicated a
loss for our side, he went back and threw away all the beads he had used. All
the bad moves were gradually eliminated. In a few hours, Newt and his boxes
learned to play the game perfectly."
"Well," said the Commander. He thought for a moment, then reached down to
scratch Newton behind the ears. "I never would have come up with that idea."
"I should have thought of it sooner. The basic idea's a couple of centuries
old. And computers are supposed to be my business."
摘要：

FredSaberhagen-Berserker1TableofContentsINTRODUCTIONWITHOUTATHOUGHTGOODLIFEPATRONOFTHEARTSTHEPEACEMAKERSTONEPLACEWHATTANDIDIDMR.JESTERMASQUEOFTHEREDSHIFTSIGNOFTHEWOLFINTHETEMPLEOFMARSTHEFACEOFTHEDEEPINTRODUCTIONI,thirdhistorianofthecarmpanrace,ingratitudetotheEarth-descendedracefortheirdefenseofmywo...

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