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is the descendant of Life, and feeds on Life as is his right. And we who give
ourselves to any of his units become immortal in him, though our flesh perish
at his touch!"
"I've heard there were men who prayed to berserkers," said Mitch. "Somehow I
never expected to meet one." Faintly in the distance he heard a man shouting,
and feet pounding down a corridor. Suddenly he wondered if he, or Katsulos,
was more likely to receive reinforcement.
"Soon we will be everywhere," said Katsulos loudly."We are here now, and we
are seizing this ship. We will use it to save the unit of our god orbiting
the hypermass. And we will give the badlife Karlsen to Mars, and we will give
ourselves. And through Mars we will live forever!"
He looked into Mitch's face and started to draw his gun, just as Mitch hurled
himself forward.
Katsulos tried to spin away, Mitch failed to get a solid grip on him, and
both men fell sprawling. Mitch saw the gun muzzle swing round on him, and
dived desperately for shelter behind a row of seats. Splinters flew around
him as the gun blasted. In an instant he was moving again, in a crouching run
that carried him into the temple of Venus by one door and out by another.
Before Katsulos could sight at him for another shot, Mitch had leaped down an
exit stairway, out of the arena.
As he emerged into a corridor, he heard gunfire from the direction of the
crew's quarters. He went the other way, heading for Hemphill's cabin. At a
turn in the passage a black uniform stepped out to bar his way, aiming a
pistol. Mitch charged without hesitation, taking the policeman by surprise.
The gun fired as Mitch knocked it aside, and then his rush bowled the
black-uniform over. Mitch sat on the man and clobbered him with fists and
elbows until he was quiet.
Then, captured gun in hand, Mitch hurried on to Hemphill's door. It slid open
before he could pound on it, and closed again as soon as he had jumped inside.
A dead black-uniform sat leaning against the wall, unseeing eyes aimed at
Mitch, bullet-holes patterned across his chest.
"Welcome," said Hemphill drily. He stood with his left hand on an elaborate
control console that had been raised from a place of concealment inside the
huge desk. In his right hand a machine pistol hung casually. "It seems we
face greater difficulties than we expected."
Lucinda sat in the darkened cabin that was Jor's hiding place, watching him
eat. Immediately after his escape she had started roaming the ship's
passages, looking for him, whispering his name, until at last he had answered
her. Since then she had been smuggling him food and drink.
He was older than she had thought at first glance; a man of about her own
age, with tiny lines at the corners of his suspicious eyes. Paradoxically,
the more she helped him, the more suspicious his eyes became.
Now he paused in his eating to ask: "What do you plan to do when we reach
Nogara, and a hundred men come aboard to search for me? They'll soon find me,
then."
She wanted to tell Jor about Hemphill's plan for rescuing Karlsen. Once
Johann Karlsen was aboard, no one on this ship would have to fear Nogara, or
so she felt. But just because Jor still seemed suspicious of her, she
hesitated to trust him with a secret.
"You knew you'd be caught eventually," she countered. "So why did you run
away?"
"You don't know what it's like, being their prisoner."
"I do know."
He ignored her contradiction. "They trained me to fight in the arena with the
others. And then they singled me out, and began to train me for something
even worse. Now they flick a switch somewhere, and I start to kill, like a
berserker."
"What do you mean?"
He closed his eyes, his food forgotten. "I think there's a man they want me
to assassinate. Every day or so they put me in the temple of Mars and drive
me mad, and then the image of this man is always sent to me. Always it's the
same face and uniform. And I must destroy the image, with a sword or a gun or
with my hands. I have no choice when they flip that switch, no control over
myself. They've hollowed me out and filled me up with their own madness.
They're madmen. I think they go into the temple themselves, and turn the foul
madness on, and wallow in it, before their idol."
He had never said so much to her in one speech before. She was not sure how
much of it was true, but she felt he believed it all. She reached for his
hand.
"Jor, I do know something about them. That's why I've helped you. And I've
seen other men who were really brainwashed. They haven't really destroyed
you, you'll be all right again someday."
"They want me to look normal." He opened his eyes, which were still
suspicious."Why are you on this ship, anyway?"
"Because." She looked into the past. "Two years ago I met a man called Johann
Karlsen. Yes, the one everyone knows of. I spent about ten minutes with
him... if he's still alive, he's certainly forgotten me, but I fell in love
with him."
"In love!" Jor snorted, and began to pick his teeth.
Or I thought I fell in love, she said to herself. Watching Jor now,
understanding and forgiving his sullen mistrust, she realized she was no
longer able to visualize Karlsen's face clearly.
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