Asgard's Conquerors

14

Eventually, having removed my stolen uniform, they threw me into an ill-lit room with a table and a couple of chairs. They hadn’t handled me too roughly—somewhere along the line, I guess, they had found out that I hadn’t killed the man from whom I’d taken the uniform. They searched me, but I wasn’t carrying anything to give them a clue as to who I was or where I’d come from.

The questions finally began after an hour or so. I couldn’t tell whether the temporary chaos that I’d caused was still giving them trouble. A Tetron system wouldn’t have gone down in its entirety because of such a brutal assault, but I assumed that the Tetrax wouldn’t be keen to assist their unwelcome guests in the vexing task of putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. I knew that I would still be very unpopular, especially as I had struck at what they must consider a vital target.

Two men came in to do the interrogation—not because they intended to play good cop/bad cop, but because the one guy who could speak parole had to report everything back to the other, who didn’t. I didn’t mind that—it slowed things up. Despite the fact that the interrogation had to be conducted at a leisurely pace, though, the atmosphere was far from relaxed.

They obviously weren’t above a bit of calculated drama. Before they began, they threw the empty mud gun on the table, to show me that their clever little minds had at least taken step one in figuring out who I was, what I’d done, and to whom.

“What is your name?” asked the parole-speaker. He was about my age and height, with pale skin, very blond hair, and weak blue eyes. His companion was older, with white hair, but his eyes were a darker blue. I’d never seen Earth’s sea or its sky except on video, but I began thinking of them nevertheless as the man with sea-blue eyes and the man with sky-blue eyes. Otherwise, they might have been brothers.

“Jack Martin,” I replied, almost without thinking.

“And where do you live?”

“I used to live in a singlestack in the third sector, but I haven’t been home in a while.”

“Where have you been?”

“Down here. I figured after the tanks rolled in that I’d hide out.”

They both looked at me solemnly, but they didn’t immediately call me a liar.

“What is your job?” asked Sky-blue.

“I used to be a scavenger—I used to go down into levels three and four, hunting for artefacts. The bottom seems to have dropped out of the market, though. I don’t suppose you’ll be maintaining the Co-ordinated Research Establishment now that you’re in charge.”

As the blond man relayed this to his companion, they both remained very poker-faced. I didn’t know whether they could understand sarcasm. Almost all humanoid races have some such concept, but it’s difficult even for two humans from different cultural backgrounds to be sure when they meet it. Sea-blue took some flimsies from his pocket, and the two of them scanned the pages for a minute or two. I practised staying calm, reminding myself that the Star Force way was to maintain grace under pressure.

“Are you a human?” was the next question.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Your race is very like ours,” said Sky-blue, “but I am told that you come from a world very distant from here.”

“About a thousand light-years,” I told him. I didn’t suppose the term “light-year” would mean a lot to him, given that his kind must have had a very different idea of what the universe was like, but he didn’t query it. He must have heard it before.

“We have drawn up a list of all humans known to be resident in the city. There is no Jack Martin on the list.”

I met his eye steadily. “Nobody knows how many humans there are in the city, and nobody knows all their names. Scavengers come and go.”

Actually, the Tetrax probably knew exactly how many humans there were in Skychain City, and all their names, but I had to gamble that the invaders had not been given free access to Immigration Control’s data. They didn’t press the point. I began to feel more in control of the situation, though they were still frowning with displeasure.

“Why did you steal the uniform and destroy the computer?”

“I wanted to get into your stores here, and I had to create a diversion. I needed food, weapons, clothing. I was getting desperate. It’s not easy, living wild out there. A lot of the other people running around are pretty nasty characters— vormyr, Spirellans, and the like. I take it you’ve met the vormyr?”

They had a brief conference about that.

“Are there many others . . . living wild, as you put it?” asked the man with paler eyes.

“Hundreds, probably. The city sprawls over a big area down here, and there are many dark regions where the Tetrax hadn’t really got anything going. Plenty of places to hide.”

“Is that where the resistance to our occupation has its headquarters? Where sabotage is planned?”

“I doubt it,” I said, calmly. “I steer clear of other races. There’s a grave danger of being mistaken for one of you. They’d probably be just as enthusiastic to kill me as you are.”

After another brief exchange between themselves, they turned to stare balefully at me again. “We do indeed shoot saboteurs, Mr. Martin,” said the man with pale eyes. “In the past, we have treated members of your race generously. We believed—perhaps wrongly—that because your species is so very like our own, we might easily develop a sense of kinship. We have been told that the Tetrax are oppressive rulers, and that your species has no reason to feel loyalty to them. In spite of these assurances, humans have given us little real help—and now we find you trying to destroy the trains that carry our food. Can you give us one good reason why we should not execute you?”

It was nice to be given the chance, but I wasn’t entirely sure that I could.

“You came into the city shooting in all directions,” I told him. “I’ve heard rumours that you’re shipping people away to some kind of concentration camp way down below. Sure I hid out. If I’d been sure that you’d treat me well if I was useful to you, maybe I would have volunteered—but how could I be sure? I thought I’d try to make it on my own, at least for a while, and see how things turned out. I was doing what any one of you would have done in my situation. But if there is any help I can give you, I’d naturally prefer that to being shot.”

As I said it, I couldn’t help feeling that it was a weaker argument than I’d have liked to offer. But it was all that a Jack Martin could reasonably be expected to produce.

“Were you hiding in the hope that the Tetrax would launch some kind of counter-invasion?” asked my interlocutor.

“Not really,” I replied, laconically. “The Tetrax aren’t the type. They’ll try to talk you into being friends with them, and they’ll probably succeed. They talk everybody into being friends, in the end.”

“Do you have many friends among the Tetrax?”

“I don’t have many friends at all. I’m not a friendly person.”

I was trying to put on a show of being harmless and utterly insignificant, though I didn’t want them to be entirely convinced. It might have been the wrong tack— perhaps I should have been trying to worm my way into their affections by telling them how much I could do for them, but my reasoning was that it might only make them suspicious. I wanted them to make me some kind of offer. I had a suspicion they might, on account of what I’d seen in the warehouse. They were obviously shopping for collaborators among the races who looked most like them—exhibiting a kind of chauvinism that the Tetrax would undoubtedly have considered barbaric. I wondered what that implied about the variety of races in the levels below.

Meanwhile, Sky-blue and Sea-blue were having another conference. They didn’t seem to be entirely in harmony. From what little I’d seen, the invaders certainly seemed to be a quarrelsome lot.

“This gun is of human manufacture?” asked Sky-blue, when the quiet row was over.

“That’s right,” I said.

“It does not kill.”

“It doesn’t kill people with our kind of metabolism. Some of the more peculiar races react badly to the anaesthetic.”

“Although you did not kill the officers you shot,” said the blond-haired man, carefully, “you are still guilty of a crime which carries the death-penalty. Under our law, I should have you shot.”

I was grateful to note the word “should.”

“Well,” I said, with the air of one determined to be brave at all costs, “it was difficult to see much future anyway. I knew the risk I was taking. Cest la vie” The last, of course, I said in French. He asked me to explain it, and I did. When he reported back to his companion, I thought the white-haired man seemed to be impressed by my fatalism. I began to congratulate myself, unobtrusively, on having laid down some good bait. I daren’t get confident, though— there was always a chance that they’d take me at my word and shoot me.

The man with the darker eyes delivered quite a long speech in his native language, while his companion just nodded and made affirmative grunts. Then Sky-blue turned to me, and said: “This is a very strange place to us, with many strange people. We understand that your invasion of our world was carried out in ignorance, and we have been restrained in trying to counter it. The Tetrax and all the other races from the star-worlds must accept, though, that Asgard—as you call it—is ours, and that we are prepared to defend it. We intend to establish friendly relations with the races of the galaxy, if we can. We will need assistance in order to do this. Although you have committed a crime against us, we are prepared to be lenient. If you co-operate with us to the full, you will not be shot. But I warn you that we expect you to help us to the best of your ability, in order to cancel out your evil actions. Do you agree?”

“Why not?” I said lightly. “Certainly I agree.”

“Do you know how to repair the damage that you have done?”

“Not entirely,” I said. “But I’ve been using Tetron technics routinely for several years, and I’m not stupid. I can help you get to grips with the city and its systems, and I know the Tetrax well enough to help you deal with them.”

“We are already finding ways to make the Tetrax tell us what we need to know,” he said, in tight-lipped fashion. I guessed that to mean that they were sick of being gentle and were adopting more violent means of interrogation. The Tetrax feel pain like everyone else, and it could only be a matter of time before the invaders began to get on top of the situation here. I wondered if the Tetrax planned to react to save their people from being maimed or executed, or whether their notion of the individual’s duty to his fellows was powerful enough to let them sit back and continue to attempt to make friendly contact through diplomatic channels. I didn’t know the answer.

“The first thing we require of you,” said the man with blond hair, “is that you should answer many more questions that we have. We are confronting a situation that is new to us. Nothing in our previous experience prepared us for what we have found in this city, and what we now know to exist beyond the dome. We know that we have much to learn, and there is much that you can teach us. But I warn you that our patience is now worn thin. We do not care very much whether you live or die, and if we find that you are not helping us to the very best of your ability, we will shoot you. We have many other people to help us, and the more we learn from them, the less useful you will become. Do you understand that?”

“I understand,” I said, flatly. “But I answer questions better when I’m not so hungry.”

He wasn’t entirely pleased by the tone of my voice, but his displeasure was tempered by understanding, and I thought I had just about won my case.

“You are hungry, and would like to eat?”

“Yes I am,” I told him. It was perhaps the first entirely honest thing I had said.

“Then I will take you to a place where we can eat. There you will meet some of the other people who are helping us. Afterwards, you will begin the work of repaying us for our generosity.”

The man with sky-blue eyes stood up, and spoke for a couple of minutes to the white-haired man, who remained seated. Then, having apparently obtained approval for his proposals, he gestured to indicate that I should precede him to the door.

When I opened it, I found myself looking down the guns of a couple of guards, and I stood back to let my inquisitor pass. He spoke to them, and they relaxed, but they didn’t put the guns away. They fell into step behind us as we went along the corridor.

The electric lighting system the invaders had rigged up here was makeshift, and the light was much yellower than the brilliant white favoured by the Tetrax. I looked up at the bulbs strung on a cable pinned to the ceiling, and the man with sky-blue eyes took it as a criticism.

“It is very poor,” he admitted. “But these are the disconnected levels, where we cannot use the power-systems left to us by our ancestors. Very regrettable. You will find things very different closer to the Centre, where the ancestors’ power is the motor of our civilization.”

I would have liked to continue that conversation, because there were at least as many questions that I wanted to ask him as he wanted to ask me, but we were already arriving at a larger room kitted out as a refectory, with a dozen long tables and hundreds of folding chairs. It was very noisy— the room was full of invader troopers. I guessed that they must be eating in shifts. Hot food was being dished out from big tureens—flavoured manna with a few trimmings that presumably made it seem a little more like the stuff their mothers used to cook for them.

The odour of the food made my mouth water furiously. Tetron cuisine never had that effect on me, even when I was pretty hungry, and it seemed grounds for concluding that the invaders really did have a great deal in common, both physically and biochemically, with my own kind. I hadn’t had a decent meal since leaving Leopard Shark, and although a cold-suit will feed you, it can’t satisfy your aesthetic sensibilities. I could feel my stomach muscles churning in anticipation, though I knew I’d have to take it easy until I got back into the habit of eating.

The crowd was so big, and my mind was so preoccupied, that although I saw the group of Kythnans sitting at one of the tables I didn’t really pay them much attention until one of them suddenly stood up. She stared at me, and I looked at her dazedly, not really knowing what was happening until the accusing finger was pointed. She took the man with the sky-blue eyes by the elbow, and guided him away from me, talking furiously into his ear in a low voice.

I just stood still, knowing that there was nothing else I could do. The muzzles of the guards’ guns swung once again to point at my chest, and I knew that yet again my luck had turned completely arse over tit.

The Kythnan woman was Jacinthe Siani—a ready-made collaborator if ever there was one—and she knew only too well who I really was. She might also know that I’d left Asgard before the invasion, and that my presence here now was a real twenty-four carat surprise.

The sky-blue eyes no longer seemed weak as they fixed me with an astonished gaze when the hurried whispering was over. They seemed very, very hard.

“Well, Mr. Rousseau,” said Jacinthe Siani, vindictively. “This time, it seems, my evidence hasn’t acquitted you.”

“No need to be so smug about it,” I told her, with as much bravado as I could muster. “I don’t think I can give you much of a character reference, either.”

But I couldn’t conceal the fact that I was very frightened indeed. All that trust which I had carefully built up was smashed to smithereens, and it now looked odds-on that I was scheduled to be shot—or worse.