Future Wars . . . and Other Punchlines Read online

  The huge greenish yellow mass plunged earthward at increasing velocity. It was easier to track than a rock of the same size because it was slightly fluorescent. For a moment Dog Squat thought the bolus was going to hit one of the antiballoon ballistas. Instead, it glopped the ballista’s captain, who fell backward into his weapon.

  The toppling ballista fired its shell straight up. Though the glowing white ball missed the gondola by a dragon’s whisker, it punched through the side of the gas bag above.

  The top of the balloon ruptured with a loud bang. The blast of mana expelled and ignited the bag’s contents in a puff of varicolored flame—a mixture of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and methane, all flammable and dazzlingly pretty.

  “Oooh!” said all the goblins in delight. #2, no longer holding his belly, had a particularly pleased expression.

  Ex-Balloon Prima dropped, though not nearly as fast as the rocks thrown earlier. The gas bag had burst, but the steel netting still restrained the tough fabric of sea serpent intestine. The combination made an excellent parachute.

  There was wild panic on the ground below. The enemy commanders had realized Prima would land directly on top of them.

  Dumber Than #1 looked at the lusciously soft enemy officers, coming closer every moment the air whistled past the gondola. He asked plaintively, “Please, boss, can we bite them?”

  Dog Squat glanced at Roxanne—no change there—and made a command decision. “Yes,” the balloon chief said decisively. “We will bite them.”

  Dumber Than #3 scratched himself with the hand that wasn’t gripping the edge of the gondola. He gestured toward the senior thaumaturge and said fondly, “Gee, it must be something to be smart enough to plan all this. She’s really a genius, ain’t she, boss?”

  “She sure is,” Dog Squat agreed, preparing to jump into the middle of the terrified enemy at the moment of impact.

  Senior Thaumaturge Roxanne whimpered softly.

  MR. JESTER

  by Fred Saberhagen

  The berserkers are gigantic warships, possibly left over from a long-ago war in which both sides lost. Their robot brains are programmed to destroy all living things, particularly intelligent living things. Humans and other sentient beings have long been fighting the berserkers, in a war for survival. This time, however, one of the killer machines had confused programming. And it ran into someone with a very unorthodox sense of humor.

  Fred Saberhagen (1930-2007) served in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean war, and later was an electronics technician for the Motorola Corporation. His broke into print in 1961 and in 1963 published the first of his long-running Berserker stories, “Fortress Ship,” which would eventually comprise many short stories and novels, developing the series with unfailing ingenuity. He was the editor for articles on chemistry for the Encyclopedia Britannica for six, years, then turned to full-time writing. Among his many novels, two more series stand out: the long-running Dracula series, often told from the viewpoint of the celebrated vampire, with such occasional noteworthy guests as Sherlock Holmes, and the even longer-running string of fantasy novels comprising the “Swords” series. While many of his berserker stories involve grim, desperate battles between humans and the death machines, this one has a distinctly lighter touch.

  Defeated in battle the berserker-computers saw that refitting, repair, and the construction of new machines were necessary. They sought out sunless, hidden places, where minerals were available but where men—who were now as often the hunters as the hunted—were not likely to show up. And in such secret places they set up automated shipyards.

  To one such concealed shipyard, seeking repair, there came a berserker. Its hull had been torn open in a recent fight, and it had suffered severe internal damage. It collapsed rather than landed on the dark planetoid, beside the half-finished hull of a new machine. Before emergency repairs could be started, the engines of the damaged machine failed, its emergency power failed, and like a wounded living thing it died.

  The shipyard-computers were capable of wide improvisation. They surveyed the extent of the damage, weighed various courses of action, and then swiftly began to cannibalize. Instead of embodying the deadly purpose of the new machine in a new force-field brain, following the replication-instructions of the Builders, they took the old brain with many another part from the wreck.

  The Builders had not foreseen that this might happen, and so the shipyard-computers did not know that in the force-field brain of each original berserker there was a safety switch. The switch was there because the original machines had been launched by living Builders, who had wanted to survive while testing their own life-destroying creations.

  When the brain was moved from one hull to another, the safety switch reset itself.

  The old brain awoke in control of a mighty new machine, of weapons that could sterilize a planet, of new engines to hurl the whole mass far faster than light.

  But there was, of course, no Builder present, and no timer, to turn off the simple safety switch.

  The jester—the accused jester, but he was as good as convicted—was on the carpet. He stood facing a row of stiff necks and granite faces, behind a long table. On either side of him was a tridi camera. His offenses had been so unusually offensive that the Committee of Duly Constituted Authority themselves, the very rulers of Planet A, were sitting to pass judgment on his case.

  Perhaps the Committee members had another reason for this session: planetwide elections were due in a month. No member wanted to miss the chance for a nonpolitical tridi appearance that would not have to be offset by a grant of equal time for the new Liberal party opposition.

  “I have this further item of evidence to present,” the Minister of Communication was saying, from his seat on the Committee side of the long table. He held up what appeared at first to be an official pedestrian-control sign, having steady black letters on a blank white background. But the sign read: unauthorized personnel only.

  “When a sign is put up,” said the MiniCom, “the first day, a lot of people read it.” He paused, listening to himself. “That is, a new sign on a busy pedestrian ramp is naturally given great attention. Now in this sign, the semantic content of the first word is confusing in its context.”

  The President of the Committee—and of the planet—cleared his throat warningly. The MiniCom’s fondness for stating truisms made him sound more stupid than he actually was. It seemed unlikely that the Liberals were going to present any serious challenge at the polls, but there was no point in giving them encouragement.

  The lady member of the Committee, the Minister of Education, waved her lorgnette in chubby fingers, seeking attention. She inquired: “Has anyone computed the cost to us all in work-hours of this confusing sign?”

  “We’re working on it,” growled the Minister of Labor, hitching up an overall strap. He glared at the accused. “You do admit causing this sign to be posted?”

  “I do.” The accused was remembering how so many of the pedestrians on the crowded ramp had smiled, and how some had laughed aloud, not caring if they were heard. What did a few work-hours matter? No one on Planet A was starving any longer.

  “You admit that you have never done a thing, really, for your planet or your people?” This question came from the Minister of Defense, a tall, powerful, bemedaled figure, armed with a ritual pistol.

  “I don’t admit that,” said the accused bluntly. “I’ve tried to brighten people’s lives.” He had no hope of official leniency anyway. And he knew no one was going to take him offstage and beat him; the beating of prisoners was not authorized.

  “Do you even now attempt to defend levity?” The Minister of Philosophy took his ritual pipe from his mouth, and smiled in the bleak permissible fashion, baring his teeth at the challenge of the Universe.

  “Life is a jest, true; but a grim jest. You have lost sight of that. For years you have harassed society, leading people to drug themselves with levity instead of facing the bitter realities of existence. The pictures fo
und in your possession could do only harm.”

  The President’s hand moved to the video recording cube that lay on the table before him, neatly labeled as evidence. In his droning voice the President asked: “You do admit that these pictures are yours? That you used them to try to get other people to—yield to mirth?”

  The prisoner nodded. They could prove everything; he had waived his right to a full legal defense, wanting only to get the trial over with. “Yes, I filled that cube with tapes and films I sneaked out of libraries and archives. Yes, I showed people its contents.”

  There was a murmur from the Committee. The Minister of Diet, a skeletal figure with a repellent glow of health in his granite cheeks, raised a hand. “Inasmuch as the accused seems certain to be convicted, may I request in advance that he be paroled in my custody? In his earlier testimony he admitted that one of his first acts of deviation was the avoidance of his community mess. I believe I could demonstrate, using this man, the wonderful effects on character of dietary discipline—”

  “I refuse!” the accused interrupted loudly. It seemed to him that the words ascended, growling, from his stomach.

  The President rose, to adroitly fill what might have become an awkward silence. “If no member of the Committee has any further questions—? Then let us vote. Is the accused guilty as charged on all counts?”

  To the accused, standing with weary eyes closed, the vote sounded like one voice passing along the table: “Guilty. Guilty. Guilty . . .”

  After a brief whispered conference with the Minister of Defense, the President passed sentence, a hint of satisfaction in his drone.

  “Having rejected a duly authorized parole, the convicted jester will be placed under the orders of the Minister of Defense and sent to solitary beacon duty out on the Approaches, for an indefinite period. This will remove his disruptive influence, while at the same time constraining him to contribute positively to society.”

  For decades Planet A and its sun had been cut off from all but occasional contact with the rest of the galaxy, by a vast interstellar dust storm that was due to go on for more decades at least. So the positive contribution to society might be doubted. But it seemed that the beacon stations could be used as isolation prisons without imperiling nonexistent shipping or weakening defense against an enemy that never came.

  “One thing more,” added the President. “I direct that this recording cube be securely fastened around your neck on a monomolecular cord, in such a way that you may put the cube into a viewer when you choose. You will be alone on the station and no other off-duty activity will be available.”

  The President faced toward a tridi camera. “Let me assure the public that I derive no satisfaction from imposing a punishment that may seem harsh, and even—imaginative. But in recent years a dangerous levity has spread among some few of our people; a levity all too readily tolerated by some supposedly more solid citizens.”

  Having gotten in a dig at the newly burgeoning Liberals, a dig he might hope to claim was nonpolitical in intent, the President faced back to the jester. “A robot will go with you to the beacon, to assist you in your duties and see to your physical safety. I assure you the robot will not be tempted into mirth.”

  The robot took the convicted jester out in a little ship, so far out that Planet A vanished and its sun shrank to a point of brilliance. Out on the edge of the great dusty night of the Approaches, they drew near the putative location of station Z-45, which the MiniDef had selected as being the most dismal and forsaken of those unmanned at present.

  There was indeed a metallic object where beacon Z-45 was supposed to be; but when the robot and jester got closer, they saw the object was a sphere some forty miles in diameter. There were a few little bits and pieces floating about it that just might be the remains of Z-45. And now the sphere evidently sighted their ship, for with startling speed it began to move toward them.

  Once robots are told what berserkers look like, they do not forget, nor do robots grow slow and careless. But radio equipment can be sloppily maintained, and ever the dust drifts in around the edges of the system of Planet A, impeding radio signals. Before the MiniDef’s robot could successfully broadcast an alarm, the forty-mile sphere was very close indeed, and its grip of metal and force was tight upon the little ship.

  The jester kept his eyes shut through a good deal of what followed. If they had sent him out here to stop him laughing they had chosen the right spot. He squeezed his eyelids tighter, and put his fingers in his ears, as the berserker’s commensal machines smashed their way into his little ship and carried him off. He never did find out what they did with his robot guard.

  When things grew quiet, and he felt gravity and good air and pleasant warmth again, he decided that keeping his eyes shut was worse than knowing whatever they might tell him. His first cautious peek showed him that he was in a large shadowy room, that at least held no visible menace.

  When he stirred, a squeaky monotonous voice somewhere above him said: “My memory bank tells me that you are a protoplasmic computing unit, probably capable of understanding this language. Do you understand?”

  “Me?” The jester looked up into the shadows, but could not see the speaker. “Yes, I understand you. But who are you?”

  “I am what this language calls a berserker.”

  The jester had taken shamefully little interest in galactic affairs, but that word frightened even him. He stuttered: “That means you’re a kind of automated warship?”

  There was a pause. “I am not sure,” said the squeaky droning voice. The tone sounded almost as if the President was hiding up there in the rafters. “War may be related to my purpose, but my purpose is still partially unclear to me, for my construction was never quite completed. For a time I waited where I was built, because I was sure some final step had been left undone. At last I moved, to try to learn more about my purpose. Approaching this sun, I found a transmitting device which I have disassembled. But I have learned no more about my purpose.”

  The jester sat on the soft, comfortable floor. The more he remembered about berserkers, the more he trembled. He said: “I see. Or perhaps I at least begin to see. What do you know of your purpose?”

  “My purpose is to destroy all life wherever I can find it.”

  The jester cowered down. Then he asked in a low voice: “What is unclear about that?”

  The berserker answered his question with two of its own: “What is life? And how is it destroyed?”

  After half a minute there came a sound that the berserker-computers could not identify. It issued from the protoplasmic computing-unit, but if it was speech it was in a language unknown to the berserker.

  “What is the sound you make?” the machine asked.

  The jester gasped for breath. “It’s laughter. Oh, laughter! So. You were unfinished.” He shuddered, the terror of his position coming back to sober him. But then he once more burst out giggling; the situation was too ridiculous.

  “What is life?” he said at last. “I’ll tell you. Life is a great grim grayness, and it inflicts fright and pain and loneliness upon all who experience it. And you want to know how to destroy it? Well, I don’t think you can. But I’ll tell you the best way to fight life—with laughter. As long as we can fight it that way, it can’t overcome us.”

  The machine asked: “Must I laugh, to prevent this great-grim-grayness from enveloping me?”

  The jester thought. “No, you are a machine. You are not—” he caught himself, “—protoplasmic. Fright and pain and loneliness will never bother you.”

  “Nothing bothers me. Where will I find life, and how will I make laughter to fight it?”

  The jester was suddenly conscious of the weight of the cube that still hung from his neck. “Let me think for a while,” he said.

  After a few minutes he stood up. “If you have a viewer of the kind men use, I can show you how laughter is created. And perhaps I can guide you to a place where life is. By the way, can you cut this cord from my ne
ck? Without hurting me, that is!”

  A few weeks later, in the main War Room of Planet A; the somnolence of decades was abruptly shattered. Robots bellowed and buzzed and flashed, and those that were mobile scurried about. In five minutes or so they managed to rouse their human overseers, who hurried about, tightening their belts and stuttering.

  “This is a practice alert, isn’t it?” the Officer of the Day kept hoping aloud. “Someone’s running some kind of a test? Someone?” He was beginning to squeak like a berserker himself.

  He got down on all fours, removed a panel from the base of the biggest robot and peered inside, hoping to discover something causing a malfunction. Unfortunately, he knew nothing about robotics; recalling this, he replaced the panel and jumped to his feet. He really knew nothing about planet defense, either, and recalling this was enough to send him on a screaming run for help.

  So there was no resistance, effective or otherwise. But there was no attack, either.

  The forty-mile sphere, unopposed, came down to hover directly above Capital City, low enough for its shadow to send a lot of puzzled birds to nest at noon. Men and birds alike lost many hours of productive work that day; somehow the lost work made less difference than most of the men expected. The days were past when only the grimmest attention to duty let the human race survive on Planet A, though most of the planet did not realize it yet.

  “Tell the President to hurry up,” demanded the jester’s image, from a viewscreen in the no-longer-somnolent War Room. “Tell him it’s urgent that I talk to him.”

  The President, breathing heavily, had just entered. “I am here. I recognize you, and I remember your trial.”

  “Odd, so do I.”

  “Have you now stooped to treason? Be assured that if you have led a berserker to us you can expect no mercy from your government.”

  The image made a forbidden noise, a staccato sound from the open mouth, head thrown back. “Oh, please, mighty President! Even I know our Ministry of Defense is a j-o-k-e, if you will pardon an obscene word. It’s a catchbasin for exiles and incompetents. So I come to offer mercy, not ask it. Also, I have decided to legally take the name of Jester. Kindly continue to apply it to me.”