Berserker - Berserker Base Part 6

"How many protests is this ayway?" Pat said. "A million? Two million?"

"Two hundred and eighty-one," Gemma said.

"This will be Protest Number Two Hundred Eighty-three, darling," the computer said. "What t.i.tle do you wish to give this protest, you cute thing?"

"t.i.tle it: Refusal to Cooperate," Gemma said grimly.

Pat put on his flight shortcoat, stuck a portable voice-terminal in the pocket, and then stood and watched Gemma at the terminal. She had stopped talking and was frowning. Even frowning, she was beautiful, which was good because she was usually frowning at him. He told himself it was because an ICLU natives representative was not supposed to smile at the Adamant engineer who was mining the planet out from under those natives, especially with the Cotabote on her neck all the time. When he wasn't furious with her, he felt sorry for her, having to live in the Cotabote village and put up with them twenty-six hours a day.

"Give me a listing of all the protests filed this month," she said, and frowned at the screen some more.

"What's the matter?" Pat said. "You lose a protest?"

"No," she said, "I've got an extra one. You've been locking the door when you leave the office, haven't you?"

"I'm surprised you didn't accuse me of erasing a protest. Yes, of course, I lock it. It's keyed to my voice.

So's the computer. You probably just forgot one. Admit it. I do that to you."

"Do what?"

"Make you forget what you're doing. You're crazy about me. You just won't admit it."

"Read me the t.i.tles of those protests," she said. "Without any 'sweethearts,' please."

"If that's the way you want it, honey," the computer said. "Refusal to Cooperate, Refusal to Cooperate, Endangering Lives, Refusal to Cooperate, Threatening the Cotabote, Refusal..."

Patrick leaned down and said, "Shut up," into the voice-terminal.

"Come with me," he said.

"What?" she said, and looked up at him, still frowning.

"Come up in the harpy with me."

"I can't," she said. "The Cotabote wouldn't like it."

"Of course they wouldn't like it. When do they ever like anything? Come anyway."

"But they already think..." she said, and stopped. She turned her head away. Pat bent closer.

"Is this how you talk Devil out of his...o...b..tal survey?" a suddenly present Scamballah asked. "I sent you here to file a protest, not to flirt with the Adamant representative. I've told you over and over again he's just waiting for a chance to vile you."

As if they weren't belligerent, spiteful, and evil-minded, the Cotabote were also sneaky, and Scamballah was the worst. Pat called her Sc.u.mbag the day she started calling him Devil, but he wished he'd named her Skulk. She had come up the steps to the office on the outside of the railing so she wouldn't be seen and had been clinging there next to the door for who knows how long. Now she climbed over it and came into the office with her youngest daughter, shaking a spongy-looking finger at Gemma.

"I'm filing the protest, Scambalah," Gemma said.

"Oh, yes, you're filing it," she said, shaking her mushroom-colored finger right in Gemma's face. Gemma ought to reach over and bite it off, Pat thought. "I told you to find out what he was up to, but did you?

Oh, no. You're filing a protest. And while you're sitting there he's walking out the door. Did you tell him it was ruining the nematej?"

Sc.u.mbag's daughter had come over to stand by Gemma. She slack her finger in her mouth and then used it to draw on the terminal screen.

"Gemma told me," Pat said. "I thought the Cotabote considered the nematej a noxious weed.''

"I wanna picture," Sc.u.mbag's daughter whined. "Make her make a picture." She stomped her feet. "I wanna picture now."

Gemma typed up a picture, apparently not trusting her own voice to ask the computer anything.

"Not that picture!" she wailed.. "I want a different picture!"

"The Cotabote will decide what is and is not a weed, and not you," Scamballah said. "You, Devil, are only the Adamant engineer. In our contract, it states clearly that you will not harm our crops or our village."

The Cotabote loved quoting their beloved contract, which Pat had never seen. He had heard'it was a doozy, though. Sc.u.mbag's daughter began punching b.u.t.tons wildly on the computer keyboard.

"I haven't hurt your crops or your village, and I haven't done anything to the nematej either. Yet."

"A threat!" Scamballah shrieked. "He threatened me. You heard that, Gemenca. He threatened me. File a protest!"

He wondered exactly how she was supposed to do that with that imbecilie brat beating the keyboard senseless.

"Scamballah," Gemma said calmly. "I'm sure he didn't mean..."

"That's right. Take his side. I knew he'd corrupt you. We forbid the orbital survey. Tell him that, Gemenca." She waved an arm at Gemma. "You're our representative. Tell him."

"I have told him..." Gemma began.

"And I told her to keep her nose out of Adamant's business," Pat said. He s.n.a.t.c.hed up his acceleration helmet. "She's not going with me, and that's final."

Scamballah whirled to glare at Gemma. "You weren't supposed to tell him you were going with him. Oh, I knew I shouldn't let you come alone. I've seen the way you look at him! You wanted to be alone with him, didn't you? Filthy! Filthy!"

Scamballah's daughter had given up on the keyboard and was standing on the computer. She pulled down a mine mask from the wall. Pat took it away from her.

"Alone with me? Ha. She wanted to spy on my orbital survey, and I said, over my dead body."

Scamballah's daughter wailed.

"You will take her!" Sc.u.mbag shrieked. "I say you will! We'll file a protest."

"Scamballah," Gemma said. "Don't listen to him. He's..."

Sc.u.mbag's daughter was reaching for the energy rifles on the wall above the masks.

"I'm going," Pat said. "You can file your protest when I get back." He picked up the command core to the harpy and the extra helmet, and opened the door. "Everybody out. Now."

"You can't force us out of your office!" Sc.u.mbag said, but she grabbed her daughter by the neck and dragged her down the steps, still bellowing.

Gemma was still standing by the computer.

"You, too," he said, and handed her the helmet. She wouldn't take it. She walked past him, out the door, and down the steps.

Pat shut the door and stomped out to the ramp of the harpy, nearly tripping over a heap of smash leaves and nematej branches the Cotabote had left as offerings. They were either terrified of or fascinated by machines, Pat had not been able to figure out which, and were constantly leaving them presents or sacrifices. Probably not sacrifices, since he felt human sacrifice would be more in line with the way the Cotabote thought, which, considering Scamballah's daughter, might not be a half bad idea.

He turned at the top of the ramp, trying to gauge if Gemma was close enough to grab. She was. "I won't take her, Sc.u.mbag, and that's final," he said.

"You will or I'll tear up our contract!"

Pat tried to look like that had made an impression on him. "Get in," he said gruffly, and yanked Gemma up and into the harpy.

"Shut the door," he told the computer. The ramp retracted and the door slid shut. Pat tossed Gemma her helmet and went forward to insert the command core into the harpy's drive computer. Scamballah started banging on the door.

"Hurry,"' Gemma said, pulling on a flightcoat.

Pat looked up at her in surprise. "What did you say?"

"Nothing," she said.

"Strap yourself in," he said, and slid into the pilot's seat. "We're going up fast."

He hit the ground-jets hard. Sc.u.mbag and her daughter backed up to a respectful distance. He eased the harpy out of the clearing and took her straight up.

There was a lot of junk orbiting Botea, all of it Adamant's: the infrascopes, mappers, and geos for the mines, the big relay that sent Gemma's protests plodding across the Galaxy to Candlestone and then on to Adamant, and the various defense satellites. Botea had two orbital atomic guns and a.s.sorted 15-T and 8-T exploders, all aimed at anybody who tried to steal Botea's precious IIIB diamonds. The selectively conductive crystals, the only thing kilolayered computer chips could be made from, were found on other planets, but always halfway to the core and in nearly diamond-hard newkimberlite deposits. On Botea they were practically lying in heaps on the ground. Well, not quite, but only a little way down in veins of soft yellow coal, and nothing standing in the way of getting them out except some soft deposits of coal the worms could chew their way through. And of course the Cotabote. The planet's defenses were really intended for pirates or small independent fighters, not an armored a.r.s.enal like a berserker was supposed to be, but at least they were there.

Pat stayed clear of the mine field of satellites and set a lower orbit that would keep him close enough to do visuals on everything without putting him on a collision course. He had taken off far too fast, which meant he had a lot of correcting to do, and it was a good fifteen minutes before he and the computer got the harpy into the orbit he wanted. He told the computer to run a check on all defense satellites with orders for the computer to tell him when the atomic gun came into line-of-sight, and hoped Gemma wouldn't realize that wasn't part of his usual routine.

She had taken off her acceleration helmet and was hunched forward so she could see Botea out the tiny forward viewport.

"It's pretty, isn't it?" he said. Botea was covered with clouds, which was good because the swamps and smash fields were a nasty green even from this distance. At least you couldn't smell them up here, Pat thought. "Aren't you glad I suggested you come with me?"

"Suggested?" she said, trying to get out of her straps. "You practically kidnapped me!"

"Kidnapped you?" he said. He unhooked his straps and latched onto one of the overhead skyhooks: "All I did was use a little reverse psychology on old Sc.u.mbag."

"You shouldn't call her that. She'll probably file a protest."

"Then I'll file one over her calling me Devil. And don't tell me she can't p.r.o.nounce it. She knows exactly what she's doing."

Gemma still didn't have her straps free. "You still shouldn't antagonize them. Adamant could..."

"Could what?" he said. He bent over to help her with her straps. "They haven't answered any of the Cotabote's two hundred and eighty-three protests in over two years, have they?"

"Two hundred and eighty-one," Gemma, said, and frowned again. Pat got her straps unhooked, and she drifted straight into his arms. He put his free hand around her waist.

"Well, well, so Sc.u.mbag was right," he said. "You were just waiting for your chance to be alone with me."

"The Cotabote think..." she said, and he waited for her to wriggle out of his arms, but she didn't. She suddenly smiled al him. "You really handled the whole thing very well. Maybe you should be the ICLU representative. You have a real gift for making people do what you want."

"I do?" he said, and let go of the skyhook so he could put his other arm around her. "Does that include you?"

"I..." She grabbed for a skyhook and used it to give herself a push that brought him up smartly against the bulkhead.

"Sorry," she said. "I'm not used to no gravity." She turned and looked out the side port. "Is that one of the infrascopes you're supposed to be checking on?"

He hand-over-handed himself till he was right behind her. "Which one?" he said and put his hand over hers to make sure she stayed on the skyhook this time.

"That spiky one," she said.

He fiddled with the controls to get her a larger image. "This port's equipped with telescopics." He put his other hand on her shoulder and turned her to face him. "It sends me weather reports. It lets me know when there's a storm brewing."

"Oh," she said, a little breathlessly. "What's the weather like now?"

"Right now," he said, and put his hand under her chin, "I'd say the outlook is very favorable."

"Atomic gun's coming up," the computer said.

"You have great timing," Pat said. "I'll be right back," he said to Gemma and worked his way back to the computer. The terminal screen was still blank, and he couldn't see anything in the forward port either.

"Where's the gun?" he said.

"Is that it?" Gemma said from the side port. She was fiddling with the telescopic controls. "The big black thing out there?"

"What big black thing?" Pat said. "I don't see anything.

You've probably got the telescopics showing you a speck of dirt."

"It's not a speck of dirt," Gemma said, "It's right there." She pointed. "A long way out, And down, I mean, not on the plane of the ecliptic."

"Give me a wide, range," Pat told the computer. "Everything for a thousand kilometers. And a hundred and eighty degrees." It did.

"Can you see it now?" Gemma said.

"Yes," Pat said. "I see it." He lurched for the skyhook. "Get away from the window."

"It's huge," Gemma said. "What is it? An infrascope?"

He tackled her, and they tumbled over against the opposite bulkhead.

"I don't know what you think you're doing," Gemma said angrily from underneath him.

"It's a berserker," Pat said.

'"A berserker?" she said. She grabbed for a skyhook and pulled herself up to face him. "A berserker?"

she whispered. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure," he said.