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.I agreed, and have been studying him with great interest ever since then."Page 122ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html"That's not all you've been doing." Harry's voice was low, half choked."That son of a snake has arranged to supply you with life-units, people, for your work.""I must do my work, respected Harry Silver, even as you must do yours.But my workneed not consume any life-units to which you have a personal attachment.I am not compelled to kill humans, but only to study them.That is why I have become an outcast.Has your assassin told you otherwise?"It was hard to keep his breathing at a reasonable level.He must be careful not to hyperventilate."The message from Satranji told me that he has given you two people who are mine."The answer was immediate."If I had any of your people, Harry Silver, I would give them back.Deep computation assures me that you will make a more satisfactory partner than Satranji.Tell me what you want."Before Harry could say anything else, or begin to decide how much of this new information he should believe, radio static cut off the berserker's voice."Rogue?!Where the hell are you? Rogue, come back!"He kept shouting, but was denied an answer.Obviously the assassin was not done fighting.Sounds of fierce combat persisted, seeming to come entirely from the direction of the docks, where Harry had been put aground.The noises rose up steadily to form a violent background, echoing, reverberating, through the dome wall as well as the solid foundation of the chain of domes.The sensitivity of Harry's airmikes dulled, and radio static made frying noises, but there were no human cries or voices coming through on his communicator's single active channel.For a period of many seconds that soon stretched into minutes, this fight continued to be machine against machine.All the deadly devices in Harry's immediate vicinity had been knocked out, leaving only undefended tools and machinery, mostly unidentifiable—but there might come a time when he would have to be careful of what he shot.Harry wouldn't want to destroy the assassin's main brain just yet—he wanted the two berserkers to concentrate all their energies on trying to destroy each other.Meanwhile, he saw no reason to believe unquestioningly what the rogue told him, any more than he would credit the words of any other berserker.Harry had known of berserkers that provided themselves with duplicate, redundant brains, just in case some such major disaster happened.The plan would be to keep thedifferent modules as physically distant from each other as was practical.But at a time of great emergency, each could be calling on all the brainpower that it had available.* * *Harry knew people, instructors who specialized in working with the armored suits, who were fond of saying that a man who really knew how to use this kind of outfit could go dancing in it and never step on any feet but his own.Harry danced without a partner now.Looking about him, carbine set on alphatrigger as he darted as quickly as possible from one compartment to the next—blasting a door open when it closed in his way, and wrenching his armored body free when the next door came slamming just as he was in it—Harry saw that in the pursuit of its research goals, the rogue had put together a strange environment indeed.Parts of it were even beautiful in their own peculiar way.Rows of apparently useless rivets had been driven through a pillar that looked too fragile to support them, for no visible purpose other than decoration.Lights in one small alcove flickered on and off in hypnotic rhythm.This section of the rogue's stronghold was all light and air, with ample room Page 123ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlto move around in between the clumps of strangeness.The thing in charge might be trying to create an illusion that maybe, after all, conditions here were not too bad for human guests.Here were walls of solid masonry, with what appeared to be the roofs of low, one-story houses looming just beyond.Harry thought he could see ivy climbing on one wall.He got the impression that this had been built in deliberate imitation of ground-bound Earth-descended architecture, copied from some intercepted video.Not that he could have specified the style at the moment.Carbine in hand, Harry moved forward.Once he blasted another thing that moved and did not appear to be alive.That would give away his location, if his immediate enemy was currently in any doubt about it, but it might also serve to assure the rogue that he was still alive and armed, it could not forget him entirely while caught up in the intensity of its struggle with its former colleague.In addition there was the fact that just vaporizing more berserker metal provided a kind of satisfaction in itself.Harry fired again, at something that looked delicate and difficult to replace, blasting it to fragments.Still his radio was silent.Where had the rogue gone? If it was already dead, he feared that his own chances had died with it."Start talking to me again, damn it! If we can't do business, I'm going to blow your vitals out!" If only he could locate them.At least his voice was sounding better now.Maybe the damned rogue was trying to talk to him but couldn't.Possibly the assassin had already finished it off.Or the two of them had finished each other—but he couldn't be that lucky.There was no way he could tell.Here was a new doorway, and Harry entered a new chamber, with good ambient light—maybe the landlord had just forgotten to turn them off.On the other hand the superintendent of this laboratory might have some special reason for wanting to illuminate every corner, even during wartime.If the rogue was trying to suggest toHarry that it had nothing to hide, it was going to have to work a little harder at the task.For just a moment Harry was sure his time had come.He ducked and dodged aside, just as a small horde of man-sized machines, perhaps twelve or fifteen of them, fighter-shapes and worker-shapes all jumbled together, raced past him, rushing toward the fighting from what he thought of as the rear of the great building, the part he had not yet entered.Harry must have been seen by the machines, but he was totally ignored.Watch out, assassin—rogue reinforcements are on their way.And yes, three cheers for the assassin too, for enabling him, Harry, to have a few more minutes of pure freedom, here in the laboratory of the rogue mad scientist.To be fair, three cheers for the rogue as well, for giving the assassin a reason to keep Harry alive and bring him to the ball.He thought that one of those rushing past bore a strong resemblance to the assassin's own prime unit, the same one that had put on Harry's ring in a mad parody of betrothal.But the moving swarm was past him in the bad light before he could tell whether or not he was simply imagining the likeness.There came a burst of static in his helmet, and a strangled syllable of voice, as if one of the berserkers had made an effort to talk to him, but had been immediately cut off by the other.Harry could imagine them dueling over channels of communication; in such a struggle the advantage would seem to belong to the rogue, inside whose crystalline and metal guts Harry roamed, looking for lives to save and monsters he could kill.Harry moved forward again.* * *He traversed more doorways.Still there were no human beings in sight, no life Page 124ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlof any kind, or anything to signal unmistakably that life was present
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