Berserker - Berserker's Planet Part 2

"Because these are not real," said Athena firmly. "And shooting at them isn't real either." She chose a rifle and turned her back on Suorni to aim it down the range. Somewhere a scanner interpreted her posture as that of the ready hunter, and the scene before her came alive again with deliberate motion. A multmouthed creature bristling with heavy fur stalked toward them at a range of seventy meters. Athena fired, a small click was emitted by the rifle, which remained perfectly steady, and the beast flopped over in a graceful, almost stylized way, now wearing a spot of red light riveted near the middle of what should have been its spine. The indication was for a clean kill.

"Athena, I came along because you were coming, and I wanted to spend time with you, to get some things settled between us. That's why I had you get me invited. Also it was a chance to take a trip on a private s.p.a.ce yacht, something I'll probably never be able to do again. If I must hunt, to keep your lord and master upstairs happy, why then I'll do it. Or at least go through the motions of hunting."

"Carlos, you're always talking down Oscar to me, and it won't work. I think this is the one I'll carry."

She turned the rifle this way and that, looking at it critically.

"I wonder what the people living on Hunters' think about expeditions like ours."

"They're not being harmed, as far as I can see. I don't suppose they'll give a d.a.m.n, even if they know we're there, which they probably won't. We won't be hunting in an inhabited area, but in the north."

She sounded as if she knew what she was talking about, though she had probably only read the same s.h.i.+p's printout that Suomi had been studying. None of them except Schoenberg had been here before, and, when you thought about it, Schoenberg was really uncommunicative about his previous trip. With a few words he gave a.s.surance that they were all in for some marvelous sport, warned succinctly about certain dangers to be wary of-and that was about it. He might have been on Hunters' a number of times before. He might be three hundred years old or more; it was getting hard to tell these days, when an age of five hundred years was not unheard of. As long as the central nervous system held out other systems of the body could generally be maintained or replaced as needed.

Schoenberg's voice now sounded on the intercom. "We're coming into atmosphere soon, people.

Artificial gravity will be going off in another twenty minutes. Better secure your areas and settle in the lounge or in your staterooms."

"We hear you in the target range," Suomi answered. "We're on our way." He and Athena began to secure the rifles in the rack, and to make sure that nothing in the area was likely to fly around loose if the coming maneuvers in free gravity should become violent for any reason.

Seated a few minutes later in the lounge, Suomi watched the progress of their descent on the wall-sized screens. The planet, that had been hardly more than a star when last he observed its image, was now on top of them, or so it seemed. It grew further, eased around to a position below them as Schoenberg changed s.h.i.+p's att.i.tude, spread a cloud net to catchOrion , became a world with a horizon to hold them in. The blue-white sun grew yellowish as they began to see it from inside the planet's atmosphere.

The land below was high, rough country. Like most planets, Hunters' had an uninhabited look when seen from the upper air. Here the appearance persisted even when they had dropped to only a few kilometers'

alt.i.tude.

Schoenberg, alone in the control room, now took over control completely from the computers, guiding the s.h.i.+p manually, looking rapidly from one television screen to another. In the lounge they could watch him on the pa.s.senger's screen. Obviously traffic in the Hunterian atmosphere was practically non-existent and a mid-air collision nothing to be feared.

Now Schoenberg was following a river, actually skirting sometimes between the walls of its deep-cut canyon. Mountains rose and dipped beneathOrion as he veered away from the watercourse, steadily decreasing speed. At last a chalet-like structure, flanked by log outbuildings, the whole complex surrounded by a palisade, came into view at the head of a pa.s.s. There was a scarcity of level ground, but Schoenberg had no real trouble in lowering the s.h.i.+p onto the barren soil about fifty meters outside the stockade. From the spherical metal hull, thick landing struts moved out to take the s.h.i.+p's weight and hold her upright. There was a scarcely perceptible settling motion when the pilot cut the drive. The s.h.i.+p used the same silent forces for maneuvering in atmosphere as in s.p.a.ce-though caution was necessary when using them near a planet-sized ma.s.s-and it could be landed on any surface that would bear its weight.

Obviously their descent had been observed, for the drive was hardly off before people in drab clothes began to appear from a gate in the stockade. The arrival of a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p seemed to be an exciting event, but no more than that. The impromptu welcoming committee of six or eight showed no hesitancy in drawing near.

Once the s.h.i.+p was firmly down Schoenberg got out of his chair and headed for the main hatch, which, without formality, he at once opened wide to the planet's air, and pressed the b.u.t.ton to extrude a landing ramp. He and the others aboard had taken the routine immunological treatments before departure, and the s.h.i.+p had been gone over by his own medics to avoid carrying dangerous microorganisms to a planet with only a primitive medical technology.

The natives waited a few meters from the s.h.i.+p, the women wearing long gowns and heavy ap.r.o.ns, the men for the most part dressed in coveralls. A couple of them had primitive cutting or digging tools in hand.

One smiling young man, better dressed than the others, his boots just as heavy but fancier, and with a short sword in a decorated leather scabbard at his belt, stepped forward.

"Welcome, then." He spoke the common language with what seemed to Earth ears a heavy, but understandable, accent. "Now you are Mister Schoenberg, I recall."

"I am." Smiling and open in his manner, Schoenberg went down the ramp to shake hands. "And you are-Kestand, isn't it? Mikenas's younger brother?"

"Now that is right. I was just a small one last hunting season when you were here. Surprised you know me."

"Not at all. How's Mikenas?"

"He's fine. Out now tending stock."

The conversation went on about the state of affairs on the ranch or fiefdom or whatever it was that the absent Mikenas owned or ruled. Suomi and the other pa.s.sengers-all the girls were now dressed quite modestly-had come down from the lounge, but at a gesture from Schoenberg remained just inside the s.h.i.+p, enjoying the fresh alien air. Meanwhile the farm workers remained standing in a group outside.

These all appeared cheerful and more or less healthy, but might have been deaf and dumb. It was probably a decade and a half since any of them had had any news from the great interstellar civilization that networked the sky about them. They smiled at the visitors, but only Kestand spoke, and even he showed no inclination to ask how things were going, out among the stars.

It seemed that no introductions were going to be made. The whole thing had a clandestine air, like a smugglers' meeting. For a moment Suomi wondered-but the idea was ridiculous. A man of Schoenberg's wealth would not dabble in smuggling so directly if he decided to take it up.

Kestand was asking: "Have you been hunting yet?"

"No. I wanted to stop here first, and find out what's changed on the world since my last trip."

"Well." Kestand, not the most scintillating speaker Suomi had ever attended, began to expand his earlier reports on the local state of crops and weather and hunting. "Not real northern hunting, y'understand, I haven't been able to get away yet this season. Like to be on my way right now, but Mikenas left me in charge."

Schoenberg was listening patiently. Suomi, from clues dropped here and there, gathered that Mikenas and Schoenberg had gone north by s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p last hunting season and had enjoyed notable success.

Suomi's eyes kept coming back to the sword Kestand wore. The sheath was leather, looped onto the man's belt, and the hilt seemed to be plastic but of course was much more likely to be wood or bone; Suomi wished he knew more about primitive materials. Casting back through his life's memories-only about thirty years to be sure-he could not recall ever before seeing a man carrying a weapon for any non-symbolic purpose. Of course this sword might be only a badge of authority. It looked, though, as business-like as the hoe that one of the other men was holding.

The two-way conversation had veered to the governmental and religious changes that had taken place since the last northern hunting season. These were all obscure to Suomi, but Schoenberg seemed to understand.

"G.o.dsmountain has pretty well taken over, then," he mused, nodding his head as if at a suspicion confirmed. Then he asked: "Are they having the Tournament as planned this season?"

"Yes." Kestand looked up at the sun. "Should be starting in another two, three days. Byram of the Long Bridges, he's our local champion."

"Local?" Schoenberg looked thoughtful. "Isn't Long Bridges a good two hundred kilometers from here?"

"I tell you, this's a world Tournament. Each of the sixty-four districts is a big'un." Kestand shook his head. "I'd purely like to go."

"You would've gone, I bet, even rather than hunting, if Mikenas hadn't left you in charge here."

"No, oh nooo, there was no way. Tournament's private for the G.o.ds and priests. Even the earl couldn't get an invitation, and Byram is his bodyguard. Mikenas didn't even try."

Schoenberg frowned slightly, but did not pursue the matter of the Tournament any further. Suomi meanwhile was imagining a tournament of jousting, as in the old stories of Earth, men in full armor hurtling together on armored animals, trying to unseat each other with lances. But it couldn't be quite that; he recalled from his reading that there were no riding animals on Hunters'.

After a little more talk Schoenberg thanked his informant courteously and called up into the s.h.i.+p for them to hand him down a satchel from a locker near the hatch. "And two of those ingots that you'll find in the locker; bring them down also, would you, gentlemen?"

Suomi and De La Torre brought the desired items down the ramp. Setting the satchel at Kestand's feet, Schoenberg announced: "This is what I told Mikenas I'd bring him, power cells for lamps and a few medicines. Tell him I'm sorry I missed him; I'll stop again next season if all goes well. And here." He hefted the two ingots and handed them to the native. "For you. Good metal for points or blades. Have a good smith work it. Tell him to quench it in ice water. I guess you have no trouble getting that at this alt.i.tude."

"Why, I give you great thanks!" Kestand was obviously well pleased.

Once the ramp was retracted and the hatch closed, Schoenberg wasted little time in gettingOrion into the air again. He still held manual control, soaring up in a steep arc that gradually bent into a level flight toward the northwest.

His pa.s.sengers had come to the control room with him this time and sat or stood around, more or less looking over his shoulder. When they had leveled off, De La Torre asked: "Where to, fearless leader?

Shall we go and watch a few heads get broken?"

Schoenberg grunted. "Let's go hunting first, Gus. The man said two or three days before the Tournament starts. I'm anxious to get a little hunting in." This time he remembered to look around as a matter of form.

"How does that suit you people?"

The planet flowed south and east beneath them. The sun, turning blue-white again at this alt.i.tude, reversed its apparent daily motion proper for the season and also slid toward the east from the tearing high-Mach velocity of their flight. An indicator on the edge of a warning zone showed how the drive was laboring to move them at so high a velocity this close to the center of a planet-sized ma.s.s. Schoenberg was indeed impatient. He had run out force-baffles on the hull, Suomi noted, to dampen the sonic shock wave of their pa.s.sage, and they were too high to be seen from the ground with unaided eyes. No one in the lands below would be able to detect their pa.s.sage.

Celeste and Barbara soon retired to redecorate themselves in interstellar style. For the next several days the party would presumably be out of sight of Hunterian males who might be aroused or scandalized by the fas.h.i.+ons of the great world.

Athena, clinging to a stanchion behind Schoenberg's chair, remarked: "I wonder if there are other hunting parties here. Outworlders like us, I mean."

Schoenberg only shrugged. Suomi said: "I suppose there might be three or four. Not many can afford private s.p.a.ce travel, and also have the inclination to hunt."

De La Torre: "Since we all seem to have the inclination to hunt, it's lucky for us that we found Oscar."

Oscar had no comment. Suomi asked De La Torre: "Do you work for him, by the way? You've never told me."

"I have independent means, as they say. We met through business, about a year ago."

Schoenberg had gone a little higher to ease the strain on the drive. At this alt.i.tude the world called Hunters' almost seemed to have let go of the s.h.i.+p again. On several of the wall screens the terminator, boundary line between night and day, could be seen slanting across cloud cover athwart the invisible equator far to the south. The south pole, well out of sight around the curvature of the world, was more than halfway through its approximately seven standard years of uninterrupted sunlight. There the sun was a standard year past its closest approach to the zenith, and was now spiralling lower and ever lower in the sky, one turn with every Hunterian day, or one about every twenty standard hours.

A couple of standard years in the future the sun would set for its long night at the south pole and simultaneously rise above the horizon at the north pole. Right now the Hunterian arctic, locked in the last half of its long night, must look as lifeless as the surface of Pluto, buried under a vast freeze-out of a substantial portion of the planet's water. Up there the equinoctial dawn would bring the hunting season to its end; right now the season was at its height in the middle lat.i.tudes of the north, where the sun was just coming over the horizon, each day sweeping from east to west a little higher in the southern sky, bringing in the thaw. That region must be Schoenberg's destination.

They came down into a world of icy twilight, amid slopes of bare enduring rock and eroding, fantastic glaciers, all towering above valleys filled with rus.h.i.+ng water and greenly exploding life.

Schoenberg found a walkable part of the landscape in which to setOrion down and some solid level rock to bear her weight. This time, before opening the hatch, he took a rifle from the small rack set just inside, and held it ready in his hands. The opening of the hatch admitted a steady polyphonic roar of rus.h.i.+ng waters. Schoenberg drew a deep breath and stood in the opening, looking out. As on the earlier landing the others were behind him. Celeste and Barbara, not dressed for near-freezing weather, moved s.h.i.+vering to the rear. The air smelled of wetness and cold, of thawing time and alien life. The landscape stretched before them, too big and complex to be quickly taken in. The shadows of southern mountains reached up high on the mountains to the north.

They were going out right away; there were several standard hours of daylight remaining here.

Schoenberg began a routine check-out of arms and other equipment, and called for volunteers.

Athena announced at once that she was ready. De La Torre said that he would like to have a go. Suomi, too-not that he really intended to kill anything that did not attack him. He felt a genuine need to get out of the s.h.i.+p for a while. Though all the tricks of environmental psychology had been used in the interior design of theOrion to ameliorate the reality of confinement, the trip had still cooped up six people in a small s.p.a.ce for many weeks. Being aware of all the designer's tricks, Suomi was perhaps helped less than others by them. Barbara and Celeste elected not to try hunting today after Schoenberg had indicated he preferred it that way. He promised them a more peaceful picnic outing in the morning.

"We'll go in pairs, then," Schoenberg announced when everything was ready. "Gus, you've hunted before, but not on this planet. If I may suggest, you and Athena take a stroll down the valley there." It spread before them as they looked out from the hatch, beginning thirty or forty meters from the rocky level where the s.h.i.+p rested, plunging after about a kilometer and a half of gentle, green-clad slope into an ice-clogged canyon down whose center a new torrent had begun to carve its way. "Down there at the lower end, where it slopes off into the canyon, the vegetation may well be head-high. There should be twelve or thirteen species of large herbivores."

"In that little s.p.a.ce?" De La Torre interrupted.

"In that little s.p.a.ce." Now that he was going hunting, Schoenberg sounded more relaxed and happy than at any time on the trip before. "Life doesn't just thaw out here in the spring-it explodes. There'll be large predators in that valley too, or I miss my guess. You don't want to run into one an arm's length away, so better skirt the taller growth. Carlos and I are going to take the upper path." This climbed a rocky slope on the other side of the s.h.i.+p. Suomi, during their descent, had glimpsed higher meadows in that direction.

"We may find something really hungry up there, just out of a high cave and on its way down into the valleys for its first meal in a year or two."

Boots, warm clothing, weapons, communicators, a few emergency items-all in order. Suomi was the last to get down the ramp and crunch his new boots on Hunterian soil. Almost before his feet were off the ramp it began to fold up and retract. If the playgirls stayed inside with the hatch closed they would be perfectly safe until the men returned.

Athena and Gus waved and set off on the lower way, tendrils of gra.s.s-like groundcover whipping about their boots. "Lead on up the path," said Schoenberg, with an uphill gesture to Suomi. "I'm sure your nerves are okay-just a matter of principle that I don't like a novice hunter with a loaded firearm walking behind me, when something to shoot at may jump out ahead." The voice was charming if the words were not, and they were said with a happy and friendly look. All was right with Schoenberg at the moment, obviously; he was eager to get going.

There was not really a path to follow, of course, but Suomi moved on up the spine of hill that formed the natural route Schoenberg must have meant to indicate.

Suomi as he climbed was soon lost in admiration of the country around him. Wherever the melting away of the winter's ice had left a few square centimeters of soil exposed, rank vegetation had sprung up.

There were no tree-sized plants in evidence, nothing that seemed to have begun to grow more than a few days or weeks ago. In most places the gra.s.s- and vine-like things were no more than waist high, but frequently they grew so thickly that no glimpse of soil could be seen between the stems. The plants were striving madly, ruthlessly, for water and warmth and sunlight, leaping into growth, making what they could of the wet season before the long searing drought of summer began.

He paused, coming in sight of a meadow where man-sized creatures like giant slugs were moving, voraciously feeding on the plants, the wrinkles visibly stretching out of their grayish, hairless bodies.

"Rime-worms," said Schoenberg, who came up close behind him and disregarded the creatures after the first glance. "Look sharp now, there may be something after them."

"Do any of the larger forms freeze solidly through the night?"

"Biologists I've talked to say it's not possible.

But I don't think anyone knows for sure." Now that they had stopped, Schoenberg was studying the country with binoculars. They had put a little rocky bulge of hill between themselves and the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, and were now out of sight and sound of anything manmade save what they carried with them. The tracks they had left behind them in occasional patches of slush or muddy turf were the only signs of past human activity. The world around them had been made virgin by death and resurrection.

Suomi was studying the country too, but not with binoculars and not for game. The yellowed sun was skimming a low point in the mountainous horizon, and seemed on the point of setting; actually there must still be an hour or so of daylight left. On the other side of a wide valley a glacier groaned, shed a few tons of cornice, broke out with a clear new waterfall. The organ-notes of older cataracts held steady in the distance. Gradually, as Suomi began to comprehend the scene fully, as he got beyond the stage of simple elation at getting outdoors again, he realized that he had never before beheld a scene of nature so beautiful and awesome, nothing that even came close. Not even the wonders and terrors of s.p.a.ce, which, when they could be perceived at all, were beyond the scale and grasp of human appreciation. This thundering world of mountains and valleys, with its exploding life, was not beyond the human scale, not quite.

Schoenberg was less content with what he saw. Of predators he had evidently discovered no sign. "Let's move on a little," he said tersely, putting his binoculars away. Suomi led on again. When they had gone a few hundred meters more, Schoenberg called another halt, this time at the foot of a steep slope.

After another short session with the binoculars, Schoenberg pointed up the hill and said: "I'm going up there and have a look around. Let me do this alone, I want to be quiet and inconspicuous about it. Stay here, don't move around, keep your eyes open. There may be something on our trail, stalking us, and you may get a good shot just by waiting."

With a faint thrill of danger, small enough to be enjoyable, Suomi looked back along the way they had come. Nothing moved but the distant, harmless rime-worms. "All right."

He sat down and watched Schoenberg up the slope and out of sight over the top of it. He then swiveled around on his rocky seat, enjoying the absence of people in every direction. It was delightful to be alone, for the first time in-it seemed like the first time in his life. Isolation could be accomplished in the s.h.i.+p, of course, but the others' bodies and minds were always there, one was always aware of them only a few meters away. Suomi touched the communicator on his belt. The channels among hunters and between the hunters and the s.h.i.+p were alive but so far totally unused. Everyone was enjoying the physical and psychic separation.

Time pa.s.sed. Schoenberg was gone longer than Suomi had expected. A thin shadow came over the nearby scenery as the sun declined behind a distant rim of ice: Without preamble a magnificent glacier-beast appeared before Suomi's eyes, perhaps two hundred fifty meters off, across a gentle slope of detritus fallen from an extension of the slope at the foot of which Suomi waited. It was not the direction from which Schoenberg had thought a predator was likely to come, nor was the creature looking toward Suomi. It was facing downhill, turning its head back and forth. Suomi raised his binoculars, and recalled his reading. An excellent specimen, male, probably second-cycle, just awakened from the second hibernation of its life into its full prime of strength and ferocity. The hollowness of loins and ribs was visible despite the thickness of orange-yellow fur. It was rather larger than an Earthly tiger.

Suomi, without getting to his feet, raised his rifle in perfectly steady hands and aimed. He was only playing. He lowered the weapon again.

"Long shot for a beginner," said Schoenberg's voice from close behind him, a little way up the slope. The cataract-roar must swallow the voice before the beast could hear it, even as it had kept Suomi from hearing Schoenberg's approach among the rocks. "But a clean one. If you don't want to try it I'll have a crack."

Suomi knew without turning that Schoenberg would already be raising his rifle to take aim. Still without looking around, Suomi lifted his own weapon once more and fired (pop, a little louder than in the shooting gallery, and now at full power there was a perceptible kick), deliberately aiming ahead of the animal to frighten it away, blasting up a spray of ice. Catlike, the creature crouched, then turned toward the earthmen its alienly unreadable face. The men who lived on Hunters' were men of Earth in their ancestry and distant history; it was easy to forget how alien all the other life-forms here must be.

Now the glacier-beast was running, crossing the slope in great graceful catlike bounds. But it was not fleeing from the men as it should, as Suomi had unthinkingly a.s.sumed it must. In pure innocence of the powers it faced it was coming now to kill and eat him. Insane hunger drove it on. Its sprinting taloned feet hurled up rocks from the talus slope, mixed with a powdering of snow.

Shoot. Whether Schoenberg was calling out the word, or he himself, or whether it only hung thought-projected in the freezing, timeless air, Suomi did not know. He knew only that death was coming for him, visible, and incarnate, and his hands were good for nothing but dealing out symbols, manipulating writing instruments, paintbrushes, electronic styluses, making an impression on the world at second or third remove, and his muscles were paralyzed now and he was going to die. He could not move against the mindless certainty he saw in the animal's eyes, the certainty that he was meat.

Schoenberg's rifle sounded, a repet.i.tive, seemingly ineffectual popping not far from Suomi's right ear.

Invisible fists of G.o.d-like power slammed at the charging animal, met the beautiful energy of its charge with a greater, more brutal force. The force-blows tore out gobs of orange-yellow fur, and distorted the shapes of muscle and bone beneath. The huge body shed its grace and its momentum. Still it seemed to be trying to reach the men. Now its body broke open along a line of penetration wounds, spilling out insides like some red-stuffed toy. Clear in Suomi's vision was an open paw with knife-long claws, arching high on the end of a forelimb and then striking down into a puddle of slush not ten meters from his boots.

When the beast was still, Schoenberg put another shot carefully into the back of its head for good measure, then slung his rifle and got out his hologram camera. Then, after looking at the gory, broken body from several angles, he shook his head and put the camera away again. He spoke rea.s.suringly to Suomi, seeming not in the least surprised or upset by Suomi's behavior. He was offhandedly gracious when Suomi at last managed to stammer out a kind of thanks. And that in its way was the most contemptuous att.i.tude that Schoenberg could have taken.

IV.

Early on the morning of the Tournament's second day, Leros, the priest in charge, led the surviving thirty-two contestants on an easy march of some five kilometers, up from the flat land by the river where the first round had been fought to a much higher meadow resting in G.o.dsmountain's lap. At this new site an advance party of priests and workers were already at work, preparing a new fighting ring of cleared, hard-trodden earth, and a new field altar for the image of Thorun that was brought up on a cart just in front of Leros and the warriors. The slave-laborers were sweating, earning their rations today, for their numbers had been greatly reduced, many being sent to other projects. Only half the original number of warriors now required service, of course, and as always there was plenty of other labor to be performed in the citadel-city above and the tributary lands below.