"An important message for you, life-unit Harivarman." It was of course the controller speaking.
Harivarman stood up. "See that this little welding job is finished. I'll hear the message elsewhere."
The procession was a small one, moving first under the grayish interior sky that held the Radiant, and then turning down into the airless regions, out of sight of any sky at all. It consisted of two human beings, both garbed in heavy combat armor, who rode together in a commandeered flyer, and two berserker machines that alternately paced or glided beside the humans in their vehicle.
Lescar was occupying the right front seat of the flyer, riding beside the Prince who sat at the controls. For the first long minutes of the journey, neither man had anything to say.
When Lescar spoke at last, his voice was weary. It sounded even in his own ears like the voice of someone ready to give up, as if his body and his mind were numb. He didn't want to sound like that. It was a matter of pride, which sometimes seemed to be all he had left. "Where exactly are we going, Your Honor? Would it make any sense for us to be going now back to the place where you—performed your research?"
Harivarman sounded tired too, drained of emotion. "All I'm doing right now is following the controller. It says it'll take me directly to the people who have just landed. Sounds like more dragoons, from the description it gives of them."
It seemed odd to Lescar that his master would want to go directly to confront more dragoons, but the servant did not consider it his place to comment on anything so obvious. There were other points, though . . . "Your Honor? I dislike to bother you with questions."
"Go ahead."
"Our latest domicile. Even a bigger house than the last . . ."
" . . . even though there are now only two of us. Yes, what about it?"
"Why, Your Honor, were there so many suits of heavy combat armor stored in a basement locker? There were few enough other furnishings of any kind, and the house had not been occupied recently."
His master, face obscured by moving shadows, gave him a quick look. "The place was some old Templar officers' quarters, evidently, and lucky for us . . . what's that trying to come on the screen?"
The small communicator on the panel in front of them had lit up, and a moment later it presented the face of Commander Anne Blenheim. Somehow, for the moment, the channel was free of static.
"Harivarman. There you are." The commander paused for a moment, as if she were now uncertain what to say with the momentary chance to talk. "Have you any knowledge of what's happened to the grand marshall—?"
"Beraton is dead. Captain Lergov can be picked up when you get around to it." The Prince tersely specified the location. "Send some people with tools. He's welded into a sort of cage. I thought that would keep him out of trouble for a while."
Anne Blenheim was ready to say more, but the conversation was broken off, by blast after blast of recurrent noise.
"Your Honor, I recognize this corridor. We do appear to be going to your research site."
"So we do." And the Prince sounded uncharacteristically, fatalistically calm. They were already very close to the place, and the controller could hardly have brought them along this path by chance.
"Your old field workshop, Your Honor . . ." Then Lescar stiffened. "There's someone inside." There were lights glowing within the plastic bubble, though it was not inflated and the walls sagged limply. Through them a lone figure could be seen moving about.
"I think I can guess who it is."
The figure came now from inside the shelter to stand in its doorway, limned by the interior lights. It too was wearing combat armor. Lescar squinted, trying to recognize the make of armor, the small painted insignia, and the face inside the helmet. The armor was not Templar, of that much he could be certain.
As Harivarman eased their vehicle to a stop at a distance of ten meters or so from the shelter, Lescar caught sight of the small one-seater combat ship parked, almost wedged in a corridor, at a little distance on the shelter's other side. It was not a craft with interstellar capability, but it could fight powerfully at close range.
"Who can it be, Your Honor?"
"I expect it's Prime Minister Roquelaure."
Lescar couldn't tell if his master was serious or not.
Without saying anything further, the Prince reached up and closed and sealed his helmet, which he had been wearing open. Lescar silently followed suit.
Then Harivarman was the first to break radio silence. He spoke again, in words that were obviously not directed at Lescar beside him: "You are a little earlier than I feared you might be, Prime Minister. Waiting for your arrival was becoming something of a strain."
"Ah." The voice that answered was well known in all the Eight Worlds and beyond, instantly recognizable. "Thank you. I naturally got here as fast as I could when the courier ship reached my little squadron. Fortunately we were on maneuvers in what turned out to be an ideal place to get the news. Everyone must be ready to respond instantly when there's word of a berserker attack. Everyone, of course, but goodlife." The figure in the doorway made a small mocking bow.
"Or even goodlife, sometimes."
"Ah. Can it be then that you have grasped something of the truth?" The figure in the doorway of the temporary shelter shifted its position, standing now in such a way that its face became partially visible through the helmet faceplate. The prime minister's physical trademarks—Lescar had seen him before, at a distance—were a wild shock of hair that for many decades had been just touched with distinguished gray, a nobly chiseled profile, a tall spare frame. He was naturally elegant, as the Prince was not.
"I think I have by now grasped something of the truth," the Prince replied. "Are you ready, then, for me to know it all?"
The flyer was still drifting lightly in the corridor, with the two powerful machines that were its escort maintaining themselves at a little distance from it, one on each side.
If Roquelaure was in the least perturbed by the arrival of his enemy with an escort of berserkers, he was doing a marvelous job of concealing the fact. "Yes, I should say that the time has now arrived for you to know the whole truth . . . I've just been looking over your diggings here, General. Fascinating. And I rather expected you'd be along. With metallic companions."
"Ah? And still you came unaccompanied to meet me?"
"Yes." The figure in the doorway still seemed perfectly at ease. "You see, a lot of people—most of the Imperial Guard included—might have a hard time dealing with certain aspects of the truth that I wanted to discuss with you."
"I can well believe that."
"So, I left my soldiers back with my two ships. Where we landed, a couple of kilometers from here. They have things to do there to keep them busy. And they admire my almost foolhardy courage in coming here without their protection. Actually what I really wanted was this little talk with you alone. Lescar is there with you, of course—how are you, Lescar?—but he doesn't count."
The Prince said: "Speaking of little talks, I've just been having one with Captain Lergov."
"My dear man. I thought you said you were concerned with truth."
"I believe I heard some of it from him, this time. The Templars are going to hear it too."
The prospect of revelations by Lergov seemed to have no more effect on the prime minister than did the presence of berserkers. Roquelaure only shook his head inside his helmet. "Ah, truth. A chancy business, trying to deal with that."
* * *
In another large airless chamber half a kilometer away, Chen Shizuoka was watching Colonel Phocion patch another communications connection into another utility box. The journey to this point from the interior had seemed a long one to Chen, though in fact it had taken only minutes.
The self-propelled gun, here with them in near-weightlessness, was clinging to a wall nearby.
Phocion had stopped frequently en route, at each stop using his old base commander's key, gaining secret access to the various communications networks of the Fortress. He kept looking as they progressed for traces of berserkers or other people in areas nearby.
This time his caution was rewarded.
Beatrix moved closer, watching with the men as a picture appeared. The colonel had managed to get a remote video pickup working in an area ahead of them, where preliminary readings had indicated there was activity.
"It's Harry," she breathed, as the picture steadied. "Harry, and . . . ahh."
* * *
Harivarman ordered the controller to send its companion machine scouting, to check whether Roquelaure had really come here unguarded and alone.
"Affirmative," the controller replied, after the other machine had been gone for a couple of minutes, searching the nearest other rooms and corridors.
The Prince said: "You appear to take your status as my captive quite calmly, Roquelaure. Are you so sure I won't give the word to my machines and have you pulled to pieces?"
"I'm not sure what word you will give them. Are you sure of the result?"
"Yes, I think so. I've had some time to get used to it, watching berserkers operate at close range, having their power at my command. Have you ever tried to imagine, Roquelaure, what it would mean to a man to have the berserkers' control code in his hands?"
"Oh, I have tried to imagine that, yes. I too enjoy power, you know. Though perhaps my imagination is not as fertile as yours, Prince. Anyone would be able to make certain deductions about you, though. Anyone who saw you come here escorted by berserkers. And I suppose that you have been holding the surviving inhabitants of the Fortress hostage until you are somehow provided with a getaway ship."
"It would seem that I can now count a prime minister among my hostages."
"It might seem so to you. But in reality, it is not so at all." The prime minister turned his head calmly to one side, looking directly at the controller. "Your berserkers are not going to harm me. Because, you see, I am not here at all. It is a mere phantom that discourses with you. The real, historical meeting between us is coming a little later, in an hour or so. I am going to catch you without your escort then and kill you, earning the cheers of billions of people by eliminating the despised arch-goodlife. Meanwhile my men will be defeating the berserkers and driving them off, saving the precious population."
"I see. I hadn't realized all that . . . but did I understand the first part correctly? At the moment, you are not here?"
"That is correct."
Prince Harivarman shook his head. "My eyes and instruments assure me that the image of a somewhat overly handsome assassin before me is not a creation of holography. So explain that claim to me, if you will."
"Tut. You could be sued for that, calling me an assassin. You seem to be projecting all your own little flaws upon me . . . I mean that my presence here, tolerated by the machines escorting you, is going to be invisible to history—because only I will survive to tell humanity about this talk that we are having. This moment of history is going to be exactly what I say it is. No more and no less."
"Oh indeed?" Harivarman sounded as confident as ever, but suddenly very curious. "And how do you plan to accomplish that? What bluff is this?"
"No bluff at all, my dear Prince." Roquelaure gestured offhandedly at the controller. "How long would you say our friend here, and its auxiliary machines, have been on the Fortress?"
"I have seen evidence that they have been here for several centuries. They were even filmed with dust—"
"No. Not at all. There you are wrong. Dust can be arranged. Several months is much more like it."
Harivarman smiled slightly. He raised his control device near the window at his side. "You have carried off some amazing bluffs in your career. But not this time. Can you see this? What would you say this is?"
"Tell me. I want to hear you tell me."
"Very well. Suppose I tell you that I have here the control code for the berserkers?"
"I would say that you are making a false claim—as you have often done. You are not only goodlife, and an assassin, but a fraud!"
"I can demonstrate the fact."
"Oh indeed? Can you? I look forward to witnessing the attempt."
Harivarman thumbed his device. At the same time he spoke in a changed, commanding voice. "Controller, seize that man. Do not kill him, but bring him here, closer to my vehicle, away from his own."
It was a direct order, if Lescar had ever heard one.
The controller ignored it. The tall metal shape, still incongruously trailing cable-ends, was clinging to a wall approximately equidistant from Harivarman and the prime minister. And it did not move a centimeter.
The Prince triggered his device again and again. "Seize him! I order you!"
The controller turned another one of its lenses toward the Prince's vehicle. But it did nothing else.
Roquelaure had begun to laugh when the Prince's first order was ignored. He was still laughing. It was a very confident and a very ugly sound.
The Prince slowly lowered his hand, the radio device still in it. He sat there, his helmet shadowing his face from Lescar's gaze. When his voice came into Lescar's headphones again it sounded more numb, more utterly defeated, than Lescar had ever heard it sound before. "But . . . it worked. I found them . . . I opened the controller unit . . ."
Lescar bent over his seat, hands raised to his own faceplate. But that did not shut out their enemy's laughter, or their enemy's voice. Those came through inexorably.
When he could stop laughing, the prime minister said: "Do I need to explain to you what the real controlling code is? Even berserkers can be—well, no, unlike humans they cannot be corrupted. Unlike people, they remain forever true to their basic drive. But they are honestly, openly, ready to be bought."
"You've bought them, then . . . there's only one kind of coin they'll accept."
"Of course. They have an apt term for it themselves: life-units. For a rather large number of human life-units, scheduled for future delivery, I have actually concluded the bargain that the bad side of your own nature was finally able to wrestle your better nature into making. After I'm Emperor, they can have Torbas . . . it can be arranged. It'll never be anything but a poor and unprofitable world anyway."