Berserker 08 - The Berserker Throne (Novel) by Fred Saberhagen

Author:Fred Saberhagen [Saberhagen, Fred]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Baen Publishing Enterprises
Published: 1985-05-01T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Within a few minutes after Harivarman had concluded his talk with the base commander in her staff car, he had arrived back at his house with Lescar. And as soon as he entered the house he found that now, in a kind of apparent time-reversal, the long-awaited summons to a conference with the commander had finally arrived.

The communication waiting for the Prince in the memory of his holostage was couched in the form of a courteous invitation: If the general would visit Commander Blenheim's personal office at his earliest convenience . . . He didn't bother to check the time the message had been received to see if she had sent it before she spoke to him. At least she hadn't called back to cancel it afterwards.

Approximately an hour after receiving the message, Prince Harivarman was standing in the commander's drab office—it was a temporary facility, for the wave of remodeling had evidently reached here too. The room was much more spartan than even a temporary base commander's office would have been in the ascendancy of Colonel Phocion. There were only two or three pieces of furniture, and the craggy face of the current Superior General of the Order glowering down from a holographic portrait on the wall. Harivarman had met the current SG several times, and there had been mutual respect.

As Harivarman entered, Anne Blenheim got up from behind what must also be her temporary desk, and came around it as if to meet him at close range. But there was hesitancy in her movement, and it stopped altogether before she had left the desk completely behind her.

Neither of them said anything until the door had been closed behind him, by the clerk who had shown him in.

With one hand still on her desk Anne Blenheim said: "They've come for you. As you predicted."

"And you've made your decision." He smiled; that she had hesitated just now made him confident as to what that decision was.

"And they want your man Lescar, too."

The Prince nodded. "Of course."

"And the recruit Chen Shizuoka—"

"My co-conspirator. Yes, of course."

"—and some other people too. All of them civilians."

"I see. And out of this list you are going to give them—?" Then, struck by a thought, he interrupted himself. "I suppose the list includes my wife as well?"

"It does now. They were somewhat surprised to find her here, but they put her on the list as soon as they learned she had come back to the Fortress."

Harivarman nodded. The yacht that Beatrix had come in was conspicuously visible, and naturally his enemies would have managed to find out who had been on it when it arrived.

Anne Blenheim drew a deep breath. "I hope to hear from the SG before I have to give them any final answer. It should really be his decision."

"But, as we know, it's quite likely that you are going to have to make it."

"Perhaps. Quite probably I will."

"Having made some difficult decisions of my own in my time, I sympathize." Harivarman paused again.

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