Part 3 (1/2)
”Good.”
Let The People build their fire, then, and let the berserker be drawn by it. It would find the band as well protected as they would ever be.
From a pouch of some kind of tough skin, one of the old women produced a bundle of bark, which she unwrapped to reveal a smoldering center. With incantations and a judicious use of wood chips, she soon had the watchfire blazing. Its upper tongues reached high and bright against the fast-dimming sky.
The band filed into the cave, the slave-unit last to enter, right after Matt. Just inside the L-bend of the entrance, Derron sat his proxy, leaning against the wall, and relaxed his arms with a great sigh. He was ready for a rest. In spite of the servo a.s.sists, he had had a lot of exercise.
He had no sooner relaxed a notch than the night outside erupted without warning into battle. There was the crackle and slam of laser flame, the clang and squeal and crunch of armored bodies meeting. The people in the cave jumped as one person to their feet.
In the flickering reflections of laser light, Derron could see Matt with his bow ready, facing the entrance, while the other adults looked for rocks to throw. In the rear of the cave the boy Dart had scrambled up to a perch from which he could look out of the high small window. The laser light was bright on his awed face.
And then the lights went out. The flas.h.i.+ng and cras.h.i.+ng outside ended as abruptly as it had begun.
Silence and darkness stretched on in a deathlike numbness.
”Operations? Operations? What's going on outside? What happened?”
”Oh, my G.o.d, Odegard!” The voice was too shaken for him to identify. ”Scratch two slave-units.
Odegard, that-that d.a.m.ned thing's reflexes are just too good-”
The watchfire came exploding suddenly into the cave, transformed by the kick of a steel-clawed foot into a hail of sparks and brands that bounced back from the curving wall of stone just opposite the narrow entrance and became a thousand scattered dying eyes on the cave floor. The berserker would be trying to flush its game, to see if there was a second exit through which the humans could try to run. It must know that the crippled slave-unit was inside the cave, but by now the berserker's cold computer-brain must have learned contempt for all that the android slaves of Time Operations could do against it. For, once it was satisfied that there was no way for its prey to escape, it tried to walk right in.
There came a heavy grating sound; the cave mouth had proved just a bit too narrow for the machine to enter.
”Odegard, we've got a dozen arrows ready to drop to your unit now. Shaped charges in the points, set to fire on contact.”
”Arrows?I said grenades! I told you we've got only one bow here, and there's no room for-” In midsentence Derron realized that the high little window in the rear of the cave might make an excellent archery port. ”Send us arrows, then. Send something, quick!”
”We're dropping the arrows now. Odegard, we have a relief operator standing by in another master-unit, so we can switch if you need relief.”
”Never mind that. I'm used to working this broken-backed thing by now, and he isn't.”
The berserker was raising a h.e.l.lish racket, sc.r.a.ping and hammering at the stubborn bulge of rock that was keeping it from its prey. When a signal in his helmet told Derron that the arrows had arrived, he lost no time in using the slave's hands to open the door in its metal bosom. With a bank of awed faces turned to watch in the gloom, the slave-unit reached into its own metal heart to pull out a dozen shafts, which it then held out to Matt.
From the manner of their appearance it was plain they were no ordinary arrows, and in the present situation there could be no doubt what their purpose must be. Matt delayed only a moment, holding the weapons with reverence, to make a sort of bow to the slave; and then he dashed to the rear of the cave and scrambled up to the window.
That window hole would have provided him with a fine safe spot to shoot from, had the enemy possessed no projective weapons. But since the enemy was laser-armed, it would be the slave-unit's job to draw fire on itself and keep the berserker as busy as possible.
Hoping devoutly that Matt was an excellent shot, Derron inched his crippled metal body up to the very corner of the L-bend. He could feel the berserker's blows jarring through the rock he leaned against; he thought that if he reached around the corner he could touch it. Derron waited, looking back into the cave; and when he saw Matt nock the first magic arrow to his bow, he went out around the corner with as quick a movement as he could manage on his hands.
And he nearly fell on his face, for the berserker was out of reach, having just backed away to take a fresh run at the cave entrance. This maneuver made it quicker with its laser than Derron was with his. The slave's armor glowed, but still held, while Derron scrambled forward, firing back. If the berserker saw Matt in his window it ignored him, thinking arrows meant nothing.
The first one struck the monster on the shoulder of one foreleg, the wooden shaft spinning viciously away while the head vanished in a momentary little fireball. The explosion left a fist-sized hole.
The machine lurched off balance even as its laser flicked toward Matt, and the beam did no more than set fire to the bush atop the little cliff. Derron was still scrambling toward the berserker as best he could, holding his own laser on it like a spotlight, gouging the beam into the shoulder wound. Matt popped up bravely and shot his second arrow as accurately as the first, hitting the berserker square in the side, so the punch of the shaped charge staggered it on its three legs. And then its laser was gone, for Derron had lurched close enough to swing a heavy metal fist and close up the projector-eye for good.
With that, the wrestling match was on again. For a moment Derron thought that this time he had a chance, for the strength of the slave's two arms more than equaled that of the berserker's one usable foreleg. But the enemy's reflexes were still better than human. In a matter of seconds Derron was once more barely hanging on, while the world spun around him. And then again he was thrown.
He grabbed at the legs that trampled him, trying to hang on somehow, to immobilize the berserker as a target. A stamping blow smashed his own laser. What was delaying the arrows?
The berserker was still too big, too strong, too quick, for the crippled slave to handle. Derron clung to one leg, but the other two functional limbs kept on stomping like pile drivers, tearing with their steel claws. There went one of the slave's useless feet, ripped clean off. The metal man was going to be pulled to pieces.Where were the arrows?
And then the arrows came. Derron had one glimpse of a hurtling human body above him as Matt leaped directly into the fight, brandis.h.i.+ng a cl.u.s.ter in each hand. Yelling, seeming to fly like some storm G.o.d of legend, he stabbed his bolts against the enemy's back.
Only a hint of lightning showed outside the berserker's body. The thunder was all deep inside, an explosion that made both machines bounce. And, with that, the fight was over.
Derron dragged the wrecked and overheated slave-unit shuddering out from under the ma.s.s of glowing, twisting, spitting metal that had been the enemy. Then, exhausted, he rested the slave on its elbows. In the wavering glow of the gutted berserker machine, he saw Dart come running from the cave. Tears streaked the boy's face; in his hand was Matt's bow, the broken string dangling. And after Dart the rest of The People came running from the cave to gather around something that lay motionless on the ground.
Derron made the slave sit up. Matt lay dead where the enemy's last convulsion had thrown him. His belly was torn open, his hands charred, his face smashed out of shape-then the eyes opened in that ruined face. Matt's chest heaved for a shaky breath, and he shuddered and went on breathing.
The women wailed, and some of the men began a kind of slow song. Everyone made way as Derron crawled his battered proxy to Matt's side and lifted him as gently as he could. Matt was too far gone to wince at a few more minor burns from the touch of the slave's hot metal.
”Good work, Odegard.” Colonel Borss's voice had regained strength. ”Good work, you've wrapped the operation up. We'll drop you a medikit to use on that fellow; his lifeline could be important.”
”He's in too bad shape for that, sir. You'll have to lift him with me.”
”Would like to help, of course, but I'm afraid that's not in the regulations. . . .” The colonel's voice faded in hesitation.
”His lifeline is breaking here, Colonel, no matter what we do. He won it for us, and now his guts are hanging out.”
”Um. All right, all right. Stand by while we readjust for his ma.s.s.”
The People were standing in an awed ring around the slave-unit and its dying burden. The scene would probably be a.s.similated into one of the historical myths, thought Derron. Perhaps the story of the dying hero and the stone-man would be found some day among the earliest writings of Sirgol. Myths were tough bottles; they could hold many kinds of wine.
Up at the mouth of the cave the oldest woman was having trouble with her tinder as she tried to get the watchfire started again. A young girl who was helping grew impatient, and she grabbed up a dried branch and ran down to the glowing sh.e.l.l of the berserker. From that heat she kindled her brand; waving the flame to keep it bright, she moved back up the hill in a kind of dance.
And then Derron was sitting in a fading circle of light on the dark floor of Operations Stage Three. Two men were running toward him with a stretcher. He opened his metal arms to let the medics take Matt and then turned his head inside his helmet and found the master power switch with his teeth.
He let the end-of-mission checklist go hang. In a matter of seconds he had extricated himself from the master-unit and was pus.h.i.+ng his way past the first people coming toward him with congratulations. In his sweated leotard he hurried downstairs from the catwalk and made his way through the throng of technicians, operators, medics, and miscellaneous celebrants who were already crowding the floor of the stage. He reached Matt just as the medics were raising the stretcher that held him. Wet cloths had been draped over the wounded man's protruding intestines, and an intravenous had already been started.
Matt's eyes were open, though of course they were stupid with shock. To Matt, Derron could be no more than another strange being among many; but Derron was one who walked beside him in human contact, gripping his forearm above his burned hand, until consciousness faded away.
As the stretcher moved toward the hospital, something like a procession gathered behind it. As if a public announcement had been broadcast ahead, the word was spreading that for the first time a man had been brought up from the deep past. When they brought Matt into the emergency room it was only natural that Lisa, like everyone else in the hospital who had the chance, should come hurrying to see him.
”He's lost,” she murmured, looking down at the swollen face, the eyelids now and then flickering open.
”Oh, so lost and alone. I know the feeling.” She turned anxiously to a doctor. ”He'll live now, won't he?
He's going to be all right?”
The doctor smiled faintly. ”If they're breathing when we get 'em this far, we usually save 'em.”
Trustingly Lisa sighed in immediate deep relief. Her concern for the stranger was natural and kind.