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and nonorganic there is no reason why we cannot coexist."
And it had added: "We have computed a new truth at last; we, whom you call berserkers and death
machines, are as alive as you are."
Gift was too disgusted to comment.
But Flower insisted, without being able to say how she knew, that the story was perfectly true.
She brought up one point that he really couldn't argue with: The other side of the coin of human
involvement with berserkers was that some people regarded the death machines with a hatred so intense
as to close their eyes and ears to argument or demonstration of any kind. The Templars, the kind of
people who would join the Templars, were an obvious example.
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"There are people like that," said Flower. The tone of her voice suggested that she might be speaking of
the damned.
Gift volunteered suddenly: "I once knew a man like that. His name was Traskeluk. He told me his father
had served in the Templars."
"Who was he?"
Nifty, who had been suddenly caught up in a vision of deep space and bloodstained armor, came to
himself with a start. Then he shrugged. "Man I used to know," he repeated.
"One of your shipmates, I bet."
"Flo, you were just talking about people who won't listen to arguments. Let me tell you, there are certain
other humans, who while not necessarily hardcore goodlife, who really nurse a hatred of their own
race why I don't know and they are willing to transfer their loyalty to anything they can think of as a
promising alternative. Cats and dogs and even bugs, in some cases."
Flower didn't have anything to say to that.
TWELVE
Nifty Gift felt heartily weary of the war, and more than ready to get away from it. Of course getting away
wasn't going to be easy, especially not for him, the way his luck had now begun to turn. Maybe in some
other galaxy (if anyone ever figured out how to drive a ship across the void between) escape to a
peaceful paradise could be possible. But if there were habitable planets in that other place, then there
would be people, and most likely berserkers too. Gift had no scientific basis for this conclusion, but given
the nastiness of the universe in general, he had no doubt that it was so.
At least, much thanks to any gods who might exist, thanks to his own fine combat record and the
kindness of Mother R, he wasn't going to have to go out in space and confront berserkers any more.
To one like Nifty Gift, who had spent most of the last couple of standard years in quarters on Uhao, the
changes that had taken place on this world over the last few months were obvious. Now Gift and
Flower, traveling, strolling, boating, and loafing their way around some of the remoter portions of this
paradise planet, saw that the facts of life and death, had been brought home to everyone: Berserkers
were no longer only a remote terror, directly affecting only distant sectors. The danger, the terror, had
moved closer with a leap of sobering dimensions, closer than ever before.
Not that there was panic. But wherever there were people, there was a certain tension, at an energizing
level, in the air. Also there was a tendency to blame anything that went wrong upon the war. Shelters
were being constructed, dug out of planetary rock on a massive scale, and some existing underground
works, deep mines and such, were being adapted as emergency shelters. Now on Uhao, holographic
posters, bearing patriotic urgings, were everywhere in the cities, and at a few spots in the countryside.
There were several versions of the posters; in the most popular, what was supposed to be a berserker
machine, portrayed as all angles and shadows, reached out with wicked-looking prongs to impale a
screaming mother and her helpless infant. Well, maybe some of the bad machines did actually look like
that. And any lady who met one would have plenty to scream about.
Flower looked scornfully at these posters every time she saw one. She didn't talk about them, but
sometimes she bit her lip as if in an effort to restrain some withering comment.
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Some tension and posters, yes, but still, as Gift took note, there was no visible panic among the natives.
Solarians seemed to be basically confident beings, and things were not that bad yet. The effects of the big
raid, a couple of months ago, had been felt almost entirely over on the other side of the planet.
A person who wanted to find something to worry about, beyond the bald fact that the berserkers were
out to kill everyone, would say that the greater danger was still complacency. Popular sports and other
entertainment were flourishing along their usual course without a pause; our people fighting at the front, in
their ships and in the colonies, wanted it that way. Or so the claim was made, and no one argued. The
great majority seemed to be going about their business very much as before. The truth, as it was now
revealed, was that they genuinely had confidence in their government, despite all their earlier willingness
to complain about it, and believed in their military leaders as well. Since he'd last walked the surface of
this planet a few months back, in a change that seemed to Spacer Gift paradoxical, those complaints had
almost vanished.
Gradually, as the days of their journeying together passed, the realization crept up on Nifty Gift that
Flower was to some degree sympathetic to the berserker cause. Or at least she had some idea that it
was clever to sound like it. In fact, he supposed, she just didn't know what the hell she was talking about.
He warned her a couple of times that she could get in trouble that way, but she didn't seem to care.
Well, to hell with it. He didn't want to think about her problems. He had more than enough of his own.
And mostly the two of them got on well enough, and were able to find plenty of pleasant things to talk
about.
They were lying in bed, talking. "Sometimes I think, Nifty "
"That's a mistake."
"What?" Looking at him blankly, she didn't get it. There were a lot of things she didn't get.
"Never mind."
His companion frowned, making her moist, red lower lip protrude in a way that had impressed him, from [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]