Havot was on a high, far removed from any care about what might be going to happen two hours from now, or three.
It was going to be damned interesting to see what happened next. On top of everything else, it gave him a kick to realize that by shooting down two berserkers he had now achieved heroic status in the eyes of his shipmates. Even Superintendent Gazin seemed to be impressed. Doubtless there were any number of planets where he'd be nominated for great honorsprovided all the identities he'd had before that of Christopher Havot could be wiped away, and provided he and any of his shipmates did manage to survive.
At least any charge of goodlife activity would now look utterly ridiculous. And as for Havot's inner demonswhatever mesmerized pledge he might once have been coerced into making to the bad machines, he didn't belong in that category now.
The commodore, though, was not entirely taken in. Havot thought he could tell by the way the man sometimes looked at him.
To hell with it. He, Havot, was not going to hurt Commodore Prinsep; being around him was too much fun.
And Havot understood, too, whenever he stopped to really think about it, that if he should survive and return to what people called civilization, someone might propose him for a medal, but they'd bring it to him in a cell. He could not actually expect any kind of pardon. No human society tolerated the kind of things he'd done. But what the hell. He hadn't lost anything by getting free back at the spaceport, and at the moment he was content to ride the wave, to see what the universe put up to amuse him in the next hour or so.
Meanwhile, Christopher Havot was enjoying the way his shipmates looked at him. Sheer survival had now become the sole concern of all the flagship's remaining survivors, and under these conditions he was a good man to have around.
For the time being, at least. He understood quite well how swiftly attitudes could change.
After a short pause for rest and reorganization, he followed Prinsep to the flight deckwhich was badly shot up, like every other part of the flagshipand into one of the two still-functional lifeboats.
The two men in the lifeboat, and the people they'd left on the flagship, all kept casting nervous looks in the direction of the huge berserkeror the seeming hulk that had once been a berserker. That mountainous, half-mangled mass of metal still gave no sign of life. If it was tracking the little lifeboat now beginning to move toward the yacht, they could not tell.
The name of the vessel they were approaching, Eidolon, was clearly visible as Prinsep and Havot in their tiny craft drew near. Dirac's antique yacht was not all that much smaller than the battered flagship, but both were dwarfed by the berserker.
In the middle of their passage in the lifeboat there came a strange silent moment in which the two men exchanged glances in a way that seemed to indicate some mutual understanding. Havot could see fear in Prinsep's eyes, but since the battle had begun he himself had experienced no fear at all. It was usually this way for Havot when he got into something genuinely exciting. He was eager to do this thing for its own sake, to go forward, to go and see whatever there was to see aboard the seemingly lifeless yacht. Active danger lured him on, as always. And there was also the reluctance to die passively. If there was any way out of this situation, it would be found only by going forward.
On impulse he said: "I'm glad you picked me to come along, Commodore."
Prinsep nodded slowly. "I rather thought you might enjoy it. And you're good with weapons. Better than any of the rest of us."
Havot tried to look modest.
"Sorry about Becky. I know the two of you were close."
Havot felt uncomfortable.
The commodore checked to make sure that for the moment they were securely alone, maintaining radio silence with regard to the outside world. Then he added quietly: "No, I'm not worried that you're going to murder me, Havot."
"What?"
"Not yet, at least. First, I can see you've decided to sign on with me, as it were, and second, the chances are that both of us are soon going to be dead anyway. But right now we make a great team, you and I. And I don't care what you did before you got on my ship, and I don't want to know."
"Murder, Commodore?" But even as he said the words, he knew they sounded false; he wasn't capable just now of uttering them with the proper shocked surprise. He supposed his heart just wasn't in the effort of trying to fool Commodore Prinsep, who kept looking at him steadily.
Getting the little lifeboat next to the yacht and selecting one of the yacht's airlocks presented no particular problem. The yacht routinely accepted docking.
Moments later, Havot and Prinsep, both with weapons ready, were standing inside the yacht's airlock, and its outer door had closed behind them, shutting them in, and now the inner door was opening. Here ought to be the trap, or the first trap. When the door opens, a berserker will be crouched there, ready to kill
But the inner door slid out of their way routinely, very quietly, and there was nothing. Only the prosaic corridor extending to right and left, adequately lighted, properly atmosphered according to the visitors' suit gauges, oriented by normal shipboard gravity.
A few minutes later, having made a good start on exploring the yacht, Prinsep and Havot had found nothing to indicate that it was not really deserted, peacefully abandoned, as forsaken as might be expected in the case of a ship last heard from three hundred years ago.
At least the vessel on first inspection gave evidence of having been completely lifeless for a long time, though the Eidolon's life-support systems were still functional.
That was puzzling, in a way, as Prinsep murmured to his companion. The yacht's own brain might have been expected to shut down life support when it became apparent after some substantial length of time that nobody was using it. But that evidently hadn't happened. Which suggested that someoneor somethingmight have told the yacht's brain not to do that.
Ship's Systems responded promptly to routine checkout commands when Prinsep tried them. It told the newcomers: "Drive inoperable," but could give no explanation.
Prinsep sighed.
The ship responded promptly to his next questions, about the location and availability of medirobots, showing how to reach them from the explorers' present location.
As they moved about the yacht, both Havot and Prinsep noticed certain old signs of combat damage.
The hangar deck was as deserted as the rest of the ship, empty of all small vessels.
Soon the two explorers found their way to the yacht's control room, without provoking any berserker counterattack, or, indeed, discovering any signs of berserkers' presence. At this point Prinsep, risking the division of his modest search party, dispatched Havot to seek out the medirobots, to confirm by direct inspection that such units were available on board.
Meanwhile the commodore himself stayed in the control room, and started checking out its systems. He totally ignored the possibility of booby trapsthings were too desperate to worry about thatand concentrated on trying to start up the drive and weapons systems.
Havot gave brief consideration to the idea of quietly disobeying the commodore's order, lurking around the control room instead, protecting Prinsep, waiting to see if a berserker indeed appeared as soon as the two of them had separated. It would be fun to ambush another of the deadly machines. But just waiting for a berserker seemed too passive a course. Still, he took his time about making his way through the large, unfamiliar vessel. He moved alertly but not hesitantly, feeling intensely alive. He would play this game at his own pace, in his own way.
As if his indifference were paying off, the directions given by the ship's brain proved correct. Be ready for tricks and you didn't get them. Havot easily found his way to a narrow corridor housing the medirobot berths. There were five of the devices, like fancy coffins, each clearly marked with the Galactic emergency symbols.
Havot observed with mild surprise that one medirobot was currently occupied. Stepping close, he saw that it was doing duty as an SA device. He gazed briefly at the indistinct image of a frozen face, Solarian and male, directly visible behind statglass. Then he called up and read the legend, a plethora of detail regarding one Fowler Aristov, a youthful man who three hundred years ago had evidently volunteered to spend his life nurturing innocent young colonists as part of some grandiose pioneering scheme hatched by the Sardou Foundation. Whatever that had been.
"Knock, knock, Fowler Aristov. Time to get up. You haven't paid your rent," said Havot, taking care not to transmit his words anywhere. Even as he spoke, his gauntleted fingers were locating, arming, and activating the EMERGENCY REVIVAL control. Muted lights within and around the occupied coffin immediately indicated that things were happening. Time for Fowler Aristov to rise and shine; the commodore wanted to put someone else in this nice comfortable bed; and Havot, for the time being at least, was backing the commodore all the way.
It occurred to him to wonder whether after three hundred years these medirobots were still fully functional. He'd warm them up, get them ready for the commodore's people. Hitching his weapon into a differentbut still handyposition, Havot went down the row, calling upon each unit for a checkout. Indicators showed that the special berths were all in good shape, the currently vacant ones ready to receive patients. Presumably the one currently occupied would be available in a matter of minutes. It was common practice to make such units interchangeably useable for suspended animationin therapeutic use, hopeless cases were generally shunted by the robot into the SA mode, pending the availability of superior medical help or at least an organic decision maker.
Warily trying out the yacht's intercom, Havot communicated with Prinsep in the control room. The commodore sounded faintly surprised to hear from himand very tired. He wasn't having any luck in getting the yacht's drive up and running.
Havot soon made his way uneventfully back to the control room, where the commodore, a study in exhaustion slumped in a command chair, looked up at him.
"Damn. Whatever's wrong with this drive, it's going to take some work, if there's any chance at all to get it goingbut you say at least the medirobots are operational?"
"Yes."
"How many of them?"
"Five."
"Too bad there's not eight. But at least we can get our five worst cases into care as quickly as possible. Let's call up Tongres and Dinant, and get them started ferrying people over here."
Sandy Kensing was slowly coming up out of deep SA sleep. It was different from the arousal from ordinary sleep, vaguely like recovering from a long illnessonly fasterand vaguely like being drugged. Over the last four or five subjective years of Kensing's life the sensation had come to be familiar to him, and he recognized it at once.
The gossamer threads of some glorious dream had just begun to weave themselves together, as part of the sensation of being drugged, when they were brutally torn apart. The dream had had to do with Annie and him. In it they were, for once, both out of the deep freeze at the same time, and Dirac was going to let them go, somehow send them home . . .
But already the dream was gone. Kensing was on the biostation, where he had been for too many years, for what seemed like eternity. Where he was always going to be.
Still on the biostation, in his usual SA unit. And a big man, graying, powerfully built, was bending over Kensing's coffin. "Time to get up, kid," he urged in his rasping voice.
"What?" Kensing still lay there in his glassy box, half dazed. "Give me a few minutes."
"No. Wake up now." The big man was relentless. "You're the defense-systems expert, and I want to talk to you before I go waking the boss. He's very touchy about being got up. But we've got information that someone's moving around on the yacht."
The temporary disorientation attendant upon revival from SA sleep was passing quickly. Sandy Kensing was sitting up in his glassy coffin, remembering.
"How many years this time?" he demanded of Dirac's bodyguard, Brabant. At the moment, with mind and eyes a little foggy still, asking was still easier than looking at the indicators for himself.
The graying man didn't look any older than Kensing remembered him. But Brabant himself had doubtless spent most of the interval asleep. He answered: "How many years have you been out? Shade under five. Not very long."
Kensing nodded. That would make the total length of this damned voyageif this ordeal could be called a voyagestill only a little over three centuries. He himself had not spent more than four or five years out of those three centuries awake and active, metabolizing and aging. But subjectively he thought that he could feel every second of them, and more.
"What's up?" His coffin lid had now retracted itself all the way, and Sandy Kensing moved his legs and started to get up. "I want a shower."
"Shower later." Brabant moved back a couple of steps to give him room. "Right now I need a consultation. Someone's visiting the yacht. Someone, or something."
Naked, Kensing climbed out of his coffin, reaching to accept the clothing offered by an attendant service robot. Automatically his eyes sought the other medirobots nearby, in which several of his shipmates lay temporarily entombed. Not Dirac, of course. The Premier, damn him, took his rest imperiously apart.
In that one, there, lay Annie. The readouts on that unit all looked normaland that was as close as he was going to be allowed to get to Annie now.
On the way to the flight deck, where they would board a shuttle for the short trip to the yacht, Kensing asked: "Who's on the yacht?"
Brabant looked at him morosely. "That's what we're going to find out. If anyone's really there. Nick got me up, with some half-assed story about intruders, and the first thing I did was come to get you. I'm having a little trouble communicating with Nick."
"Oh?"
"He's probably over there on the yacht now. But I want to see for myself what's going on, and I want you to back me up."
Meanwhile, Commodore Prinsep was temporarily abandoning the yacht's control room, shifting his efforts to other areas of the ship. He was determined to wake up its drive and weapons systems, if at all possible.
It would be a hideous disappointment after discovering this ship, seemingly miraculously intact, to be denied its use as a means of escape.
As for the yacht's weapons, the indications were that firepower still remained; but Prinsep was not about to risk arousing the berserker with a live test.
Superintendent Gazin of the Humanity Office had slipped without protest into the role of ordinary spaceman, at least for the time being. He and the two active survivors of Prinsep's crew, Lieutenant Tongres and Ensign Dinant, were taking turns watching the berserker, making as sure as possible that the enigmatic mass at the head of the small procession was still completely quiet.
Seen from this closeberserker and yacht were less than a kilometer apartthat mass was big enough to stop a Solarian's thought processes altogether, if he allowed himself to think of it as a berserker. Its hull, rugose with damage, bulged out on all sides past the considerable bulk of the captive bioresearch station.
The lifeboat carrying the badly wounded people from the Symmetry had now docked successfully with the yacht, and Prinsep led his troops in their effort to stretcher the five worst cases in through airlock and corridors and lodge them in the yacht's five medirobots. He was pleased to find that Havot had the quintet of devices all checked out, warmed up, and ready.
Havot acknowledged the commodore's commendation with a dreamy smile. "What next, sir?"
"Next, you and I go to check out the research station. Dinant, you and the superintendent hang around here and keep an eye on our people. Tongres, go to the control room and take a look at the drive on this bird. Possibly I missed something."
No one questioned the implicit decision to abandon the flagship. The risks of returning to that vessel were steadily mounting, as the Symmetry telemetered indications that a killing explosion threatened at any moment.
Despite their growing weariness, Havot and the commodore soon reembarked in their lifeboat and headed for the research station. As they approached within a few meters of the station's outer hull, their instruments allowed them to observe closely the binding web of forcefields connecting the station with the giant berserker. But the towing field was discontinuous, leaving large areas of the station's hull readily accessible. The two explorers had no trouble in locating a suitable airlock and docking their lifeboat.
Brabant and Sandy Kensing, approaching the yacht, observed the flagshipobviously Solarian military, and looking very seriously damagedjust beyond it. And there was some movement of lifeboats between the two large ships.
"Not a false alarm, then. We've really got visitors." Kensing paused, knowing a feeling of mingled awe and hope. He looked at the bodyguard. "You didn't wake the Premier yet?"
"No." Brabant hesitated marginally. "I don't know if Nick has or not. Or if Loki would let him. Anyway, I got my orders not to wake him unless it's something I can't deal withbut in this case I better."
Kensing said nothing. It would be fine with him if Dirac was allowed to sleep on through all eternity.
Brabant, opening a tight communication beam to the station, roused Loki, and debated briefly with his optelectronic counterpart. Brabant's temper had been aroused before he felt satisfied that the guardian program was really going to initiate the hour-long process of waking Premier Dirac from his self-scheduled slumber.
"Now," said Brabant to Kensing, "you and I are going to see what's really going on. So we can let the boss know as soon as possible." He eased forward on the little shuttle's drive.
As far as they could tell, none of the small handful of people plying between the mysterious, damaged warship and the yacht had yet sighted Brabant and Kensing's small craft. "Must be intent on their work, whatever it is they're doing."
Soon Kensing and Brabant had docked against the Eidolon, on the far side from the hatches where the boats from the strange ship had attached themselves.
Once inside the yacht, Brabant paused near the airlock to open one of the ship's lockers and take out a holstered sidearm that he attached to his belt. "You'd better wait here, Kensing. I want to take a look at these people, see what they're up to." The bodyguard hesitated marginally, then gestured at the arms locker. "Maybe you'd better put on a gun too, just in case."
So, Sandy thought, you're going to trust me with a weapon? But of course the answer was yes. Brabant, and Scurlock, and Dirac himself, would know that Kensing could be trustedas long as Annie lay in suspended animation, effectively the Premier's hostage.
Kensing helped himself to one of the handguns in the locker, and then with a silent wave saw Brabant off on his reconnoitering mission.
A few seconds later, Kensing followed. Entranced by the prospect of seeing new Solarian faces for the first time in three hundred years, he was not going to wait.
He hadn't gone far before he tensed and stopped. Someone in space armornot Brabant, he hadn't been wearing armorwas walking down a side passage toward him.
Then Kensing relaxed, recognizing the insignia, twin antique towers of masonry painted on the armored torso. It was only Nicholas Hawksmoor, in suit-form.
Even after all these years, looking in through the blank faceplate, seeing only the empty helmet, gave Kensing an unsettled feeling. He said: "Nick, I hear there are strange people on this ship."
"Yes," said the airspeakers of Nick's suit. His voice, as always, sounded very human. The suit came to a stop near Kensing. Its speakers said nothing more.
"You've changed, Nick," Kensing remarked impulsively.
"Yes, I have, haven't I? But people always change, don't they?"
"Yes, of course."
"But you meant something more. How have I changed, specifically?"
"Oh. I suppose all I meant waswell, thinking back to before you were reprogrammedthen you weredifferent."
"That seems a tautology, Sandy."
"Yes." Kensing considered that it probably wouldn't be wise to encourage Nick to ponder his own history. At least it could be dangerous.
But now the subject had been raised, Nick was not disposed to let it drop. "How have I changed? I'm really interested."
"Oh . . . I think you were more independent several years ago."
"Was that why I was reprogrammed? I was too independent? You know, I'm certain large chunks of my memory were taken out."
"You'll have to ask our master about that. No one's ever told me the details. But obviously you were reprogrammed about four years agoin my subjective time, that is. Just about the time the Premier announced that Lady Genevieve had been found and was rejoining us."
"I wonder if there was a connection?" Hawksmoor sounded innocently puzzled.
Kensing said nothing.
"I'll ask the Premier sometime," Nick decided. "He's not awake right now."
"He soon will be. I think Brabant has argued Loki into getting the old man out of his box."
Nick seemed to have mixed feelings about that, because his suit turned this way, turned that way, shook its empty helmet. "He doesn't want to be awakened, ever, unless something we can't handle should come up."
"That's what Brabant said . . . so, who are these people coming aboard the yacht? Their own ship looks all shot up."
"I noticed that, of course. But I don't know who they are. All the organic humans I know are in their assigned placesexcept one."
"Oh? Who's that?"
Hawksmoor sounded uncharacteristically uncertain. "I had thought his name was Fowler Aristov, but now I'm not sure of his identity. I'm not sure of what to do."
"Where is he now?"
Nick's suit raised an arm and pointed down the corridor.
Kensing started that way, turned back. "Coming?"
"Not now. You go and look. See what you think. I'll join you later."
Moments after that, Kensing was near the place where the medirobots were installed, when he heard someone call his name.
"Sandy?" The word was spoken in a soft, incredulous whisper. The voice, coming from somewhere behind Kensing's left shoulder, startled him so that he spun round.
A white-faced figure, wearing common shipboard-issue shirt and trousers and sandals like Kensing's own, was advancing toward him out of a softly lit side passage. The form was that of a young man, backlit by ambient illumination so that Kensing could not at first get a good look at the face. But the more he did see of the young man's face as he approached, the crazier it seemed. Because this looked likelike
But it couldn't be
"Sandy?" And now the voice, a sound from the dim past, was thoroughly recognizable. "Sandy, is Dad here? What's going on?I know this is his yacht. I woke up here an hour ago, lying in a medirobot"
Kensing took a step closer to the tottering figure. Softly, incredulously, he whispered: "Mike? Michael Sardou?"
Going aboard the bioresearch station with Commodore Prinsep, prowling and exploring, Havot happened to be the one to make the first historic contact with one of the long-term residents.
Advancing cautiously through one of the biostation's corridors, a passage astonishingly almost choked by a mass of semicultivated greenery, he encountered a woman who was proceeding cautiously toward him. The look on her face suggested that she was expecting to encounter something out of the ordinary.
Her small body was glad in casual shipboard garb. She was youthful in appearance, with coppery-brown curls framing pretty, vaguely Indonesian features.
On catching sight of Havot, an armored figure pushing his way through vines and stalks, the young woman stopped, staring at him in pure, open wonder. "Who are you?" she demanded. "And bearing weapons? Why? What?"
"Only a poor shipwrecked mariner, ma'am." He gave a little helmet nod by way of bow. "And who are you?" Although Havot, who in his spare time on the voyage had studied the history of Dirac and his times, felt fairly certain that he had already identified this woman from her pictures.
She confirmed his recognition in a kind of automatic whisper, as if she were still shocked by his very presence. "I am the Lady Genevieve, wife of the Supreme Premier, Dirac Sardou."
It was only a few seconds later when Commodore Prinsep, advancing cautiously in stable artificial gravity, through air as goodif somewhat oddly scented due to the prolific greeneryas that he'd ever breathed on any other ship, rounded a corner and, to his considerable surprise, encountered Havot speaking with Lady Genevieve.
Shortly thereafter the threesome were joined by Dirac, a living, reasonably healthy, and unmistakably recognizable Premier.
Clad in a self-designed uniform of sparkling elegance, but blinking and rubbing his eyes as if he'd just been wakened, the Premier spoke imperiously to the newcomers, in his eloquent actor's bass. "You won't need your weapons, gentlemen, I assure you."
Prinsep allowed the muzzle of his carbine, which was already low, to droop still farther; but Havot still held his in a position from which it could be leveled in a fraction of a second.
And Havot, now finding himself confronted by creatures of flesh and blood rather than metal, moved one hand casually on his weapon's stock, unobtrusively detuning the output control to razor-beam setting, for greater effectiveness against a softer target.
The imperious man, having verbally dismissed the weapons, now ignored them. As if he found the newcomers' silence offensive, he snapped at them: "Probably you can recognize me as Dirac Sardou? Or am I overestimating my historical durability after this length of time? In any case, you have the advantage of me."
The commodore, in a voice dominated by fatigue, introduced himself. "And this is Mr. Havot."
Conversation proceeded slowly. Dirac explained that he had been asleep when the newcomers unexpectedly arrived. "Rather a deep sleep, gentlemen. One needs perhaps an hour for full recovery, before one can function as one would like. But come, I am forgetting my hospitality. It's been rather a long time since we've had visitors."
Other denizens of the station now began to appear. As Prinsep and Havot later realized, these were only people Dirac now wanted awake, including Varvara Engadin and a man called Scurlock. Scurlock mentioned his companion Carol, who evidently slept on, as did Drs. Hoveler and Zador. Men named Brabant and Kensing were absent somewhere at the moment.
None of the long-term inhabitants who appeared looked anywhere near three hundred years old, and Prinsep commented on the fact.
The Premier explained tersely. "We have a great many SA units available, and we've been taking advantage of them, relying a great deal on our nonorganic people to stand watch."
Prinsep was not interested in nonorganics at the moment. He said: "I hope you have at least three ready to be used."
"Sir?"
"The SA units you mentioned. I have wounded who need them badly. We went aboard the yacht firstfound five medirobots there and filled them up. But three more of my crew still need help as soon as we can get it for them."
Dirac's countenance had suddenly assumed a strange expression. "One of those units on the yacht was occupied," he pronounced in a changed voice.
Frowning at the solemnity of this objection, seeing that it must be taken seriously, Prinsep turned to his companion. "Havot?"
The young man nodded casually. "True, one of the machines had a tenant. A would-be colonist, as his label described him. I turned him out to make room for our wounded."
Dirac stared at Havot for several seconds, as if he were deeply interested; perhaps almost as much in Havot as in what these intruders might have done on the yacht. Then he asked: "Where is he now? The one you turned out?"
Havot shrugged.
For a moment, Havot thought, something quietly murderous looked out at him from the cave of Dirac's eyesas if perhaps it had been three centuries since anyone had treated any of the Premier's demanding questions quite so casually. Well, well.
Prinsep hastily stepped in, offering to communicate with the people he had left on the yacht. He would ask them to look out for "what's his name?"
The Premier looked at him thoughtfully. "Fowler Aristov. Thank you for your concern, but I believe some of my own people are on that vessel now. You may summon yours to join us here." It sounded like a command. "Now, if you will excuse me, I think I had better go over to the Eidolon myself."
"Certainly, Premier Dirac. But before you go, let me repeat that three more of my people coming from the yacht will need intensive care."
Dirac, already stalking away, snapped over his shoulder orders for his associates to take care of whatever number of blasted wounded might arrive, and to see that Dr. Zador was awakened. Then he was gone.
The tall, disheveled man named Scurlock, under the beaming supervision of the Lady Genevieve, hastened to assure the new arrivals that the station offered more than enough medirobots to care for all of Prinsep's wounded.
The commodore rejoiced to hear it. But he suggested rather firmly that the injured he had already installed in units on the yacht be allowed to remain there. "Moving them again would certainly be traumatic. Unless there is some compelling reason?"
Lady Genevieve was soothing. "I expect Premier Dirac will have no objection."
Scurlock also assured the newcomers that live medical help in the person of Dr. Zador would be available in about an hour. The process of her awakening, he said, had already been begun.
The necessity of dealing with recently wounded people naturally led to the discussion of berserkers, and this to description of the brisk fight the newcomers had just been through.
With sudden apprehension, Scurlock asked: "I take it, Commodore, you have not engaged in any hostilities with the machine? I mean the one we're attached to?"
Prinsep blinked. "No. You sound concerned. So this giant berserker may still be active?"
"I should think we have very little to worry about in that regard. But with berserkers one can never be sure, can one?"
"I suppose not. No, a few hours ago we found ourselves pitted against a different enemy. A more modern force." And Prinsep briefly outlined recent events, beginning with the latest raid on Imatra.
Dinant and Tongres, and the three severely wounded crew people still in their care, soon joined the group on the station. They had lost track of Superintendent Gazin, they said, somewhere on the yacht, and hadn't wanted to delay their passage to search for him.
Havot, though now weighed down by a leaden weariness, retained the curiosity to ask: "Lady Genevieve, we'll all be interested in hearing how you personally managed to survive."
"Survive, young man?"
"Your first encounter with the berserker, back in the Imatran system. Historians are almost unanimously agreed that you died then." And he favored the lady with his most winning and seductive smile.
Seated in one of the spare cabins on the yacht, Mike Sardou was telling his old friend Sandy Kensing how he had very recently awakened, to his own intense astonishment, in the glassy coffin of an operational SA device here on his father's yacht. He didn't know how he'd come to be there or who had given the order to revive him. He didn't know how long he'd been there, until Sandy broke the news.
Michael related now how, as his mind had cleared fully, he'd prudently kept out of sight of Prinsep's people, while watching them bring their seriously wounded aboard and start putting them into the medirobots.
Here was evidence that some kind of battle was going on, or had recently been concluded. Mike couldn't recognize any of the people, or even the space armor they were wearing.
Nor could he guess what connection they had with his own predicament. But Mike strongly suspected that his fatheror some faction among his father's supportershad put him in the coffin, under a false identity, in an effort to get rid of him. Alternatively, he might for all he knew have been kidnapped by some of the Premier's enemies.
Kensing asked: "Does the name 'Fowler Aristov' mean anything to you?"
"That's the name that was on my SA unit. Beyond that, no, I never" Mike broke off. Someone was coming down the corridor.
In a moment Nicholas Hawksmoor, still in suit-form, had appeared in the half-open doorway.
Kensing quickly performed the necessary introduction. Hawksmoor with his encyclopedic memory had already recognized the Premier's son, the image of whose face showed up in a thousand records of one kind or another.
But all the records to which Nick had access also agreed that young Mike had gone off on some kind of a long trip, only vaguely specified, three hundred years ago. His confirmed presence aboard the Eidolon was contradictory and astounding.
At first Nick was suspicious of the contradiction in his records. "You're Mike Sardou?"
"Yes." Warily.
The wariness existed on both sides. "What're you doing here? Your father told me, told everyone, that you had gone off traveling."
"If my father really said that, then obviously my father lied."
Nick didn't answer.
Mike went on: "Damned if I know what I'm doing here; I mean, I'm not surprised to find myself here on the yacht, because the last thing I can recall is going to bed in my stateroom . . . where are we, by the way? Where in space?"
It took the others a couple of minutes to bring him up to date on events, after which there was a pause while Mike tried to digest the information. Then Nick demanded: "Can you think of any reason why you should have been put to sleep, under the name of Fowler Aristov, three hundred years ago?"
Mike looked at them, his first stunned incomprehension swiftly turning into rage. "Yes, I can think of a reasonof a man who thought he had reasons, and who would have stopped at nothingmy father. Oh, damn him. Damn him!"
Nick's helmet nodded. "I can believe that, yes. You've been . . . reprogrammed, in a way. As I have. By the same man. Our father. I acknowledge him as my creator too, you see . . ."
Nick paused, lifting, turning his empty helmet to reposition the airmikes, in an eerie semblance of a human tilting his head to listen. In a moment the others heard the footsteps too.
Brabant arrived, to stand in the doorway looking at them all in indecisive anger.
Mike recognized him immediately. "Brabant, what is this?"
"Kid, I think you just got a little too big for your britches, is what it is. The old man doesn't put up with any back talk. You should've known that."
"So he did this to me." There was a seething, quiet rage behind the words, reminding all the others of the Old Man himself.
Brabant looked around at the others, then back at Mike. "If you hadn't been his son, he would've wiped you out, instead of saving you here. But he doesn't put up with any crap, from you or anyone else."
Nick said: "Our father puts up with nothing from anyone. He always gets what he wants."
Brabant's expression altered profoundly. "So, you've figured it out."
There was silence for a moment.
The bodyguard, sensing a crisis but uncertain of its exact nature, went on: "What the hell, kid? It could be worse. Part of you's had fun for three hundred years, being an architect and a pilot on the old man's staff. And the other part's had a nice long peaceful nap. Maybe the old man will let you reintegrate sometime."
Brabant's voice trailed off as it came home to him the way the other three were looking at him.
"We hadn't figured it out," said Kensing slowly. "Not quite. But we have now. Dirac recorded him. Recorded his own son, and then reprogrammed him, to make him what he wanteda useful, obedient architect and pilot."
"All of you," said a new, unfamiliar voice. "Stay where you are."
All four turned to see a stranger in an armored suit, aiming at them a weapon usually effective only against hard surfaces. Superintendent Gazin, suspicious, as always, of goodlife.
On the station variegated greenery, grown from odd stocks of potential colonial materials, much of it deliberately mutated, had over the centuries overgrown rooms and corridors, almost a whole deck, not originally intended as gardens. Vines twisted around doors, groped blindly for controls, tested the seals of hatches. Already, as a result of neglect, the growth was hiding some things, keeping others from working properly.
Dirac's lady and his aide Scurlock were smoothly cooperative in the effort to care for Prinsep's wounded, and quite properly concerned. Soon the Lady Genevieve, with the air of a gracious monarch, assigned the commodore and his surviving shipmates a corridor of cabins on the station.
There were a good many cabins and staterooms waiting to be used. Overcrowding had not been a problem, even if, as some remarks by the old inhabitants suggested, the Lady Genevieve had not been the only person bornor rebornhere in the last three hundred years.
As soon as the commodore's bleary eyes had seen to it that all of his wounded were receiving the best treatment available, and that the handful of his people who were suffering from nothing worse than exhaustion were as well off as seemed possible under the circumstances, he considered giving in to his own need for rest. But for the time being he still struggled to stay awake.
Privately Prinsep now at least half suspected all of these long-term survivors, or at least Dirac, of having become some exotic kind of goodlife. But he didn't want to voice his suspicions until he could talk them over with his own trusted peoplethe remnant he had left.
With this in mind the commodore, struggling yet a little longer to keep awake, warned Dirac's contemporaries that there was a good possibility of continued danger from the pack of bandits he and his people had just been fighting.
The commodore worriedly renewed his inquiry: "I take it your berserker here hasn't made any aggressive moves toward you lately?"
"It has not," Scurlock reassured him. "I think we may assume our ancient foe poses no immediate threat. We've had no trouble with it for a long time. But if you were planningsome aggressive move toward itI'd advise caution."
"Aggressive moves on our part were a possibility as long as we had our flagship. But now . . . unfortunately, as you can see, we are here in the character of refugees rather than rescuers. At the moment we find ourselves needing help rather than offering protection. Of course, we do bring certain weapons and equipment that you may have been lacking. If there is anything that we can do . . ."
"There's no hurry, after three centuriescan it really have been that long? We must begin by offering what we can in the way of hospitality."
Sounding urbane and eminently reasonable, Scurlock, after checking with Lady Genevieve, commanded the still-working service robots to bring refreshment for everyone.
Gradually the story of the past three centuries aboard began to be told by the long-term residentsor enough interesting fragments to make it possible to start trying to guess the pattern of the whole.
And now Prinsep, though almost asleep on his feet and about to retire to his room, inquired with anxious delicacy about food; he was visibly relieved to hear that that area of life support was still in excellent condition.
Prinsep, divesting himself of armor in his newly assigned cabin, on the verge of letting himself give way to exhaustion, in turn warned the best available approximation of a trusted aideHavot had to play the rolethat they would have to watch out for Dirac.
They were talking through the coded communication still available in their helmets.
"You want me to watch out for him?" Havot nodded. "I was about to suggest the same thing myself."
"I see signs that he's a dangerous man, Havotis that really your name, by the way?" Then the commodore shook his head. He shed the last bit of his armor and in his underwear reeled toward his bed, speaking uncoded words in air. "Sorry, I'm getting punchy. No matter. Yes, I want you to do the watching-out."
"You still trust me, then."
"Oh yes. Actually there are some matters, Christopheris that really your name?in which I trust you profoundly."
Havot thought it over. "You know, Commodore . . . ?"
But the commodore was sound asleep.