Asgard's Conquerors

2

It took nearly two days to get to the microworld, with the stresser working very gently indeed. You have to be very careful when you’re around large lumps of mass, and you can’t wormhole short distances.

On the way in my software and the microworld’s software continued to exchange friendly chitchat, but voice contact wasn’t possible while the stresser was functioning. By the time it was possible to start a dialogue, it didn’t seem to be worth bothering, because I’d be meeting my hosts face to face soon enough.

So I let the machines negotiate the tedious details of the docking while I cleaned myself up and unpacked my best clothes. I put a thinfilm overall over the top so I wouldn’t get smeared climbing through the umbilical to the docking- bay. Civilization is supposed to have left dirt behind in the Earth’s gravity-well, but you know how things are.

I squirmed my way through the umbilical, thinking how good it would be to feel the grip of a good spin again. When I came out the other end into the docking bay I was contentedly looking forward to basking in the sensation of fake gravity. The bay, of course, was at the hub of the station and wasn’t spinning, but I knew that the reassuring pull would be only a short distance away.

There was no one in the docking bay, which was unusually crowded with equipment. As well as the usual lockers there were several big steel drums about a metre-and-a-half high and a metre in diameter, with dials and warning notices jostling for space around knots of feeder-pipe connections. I didn’t pay them much attention, but made directly for the hatchway that led to the ladder that would take me out into the station’s living quarters. I knew that the microworlders would have someone waiting for me at the end of the spur.

I was so preoccupied with the sensations associated with slowly gaining weight as I climbed “down” the ladder that I didn’t immediately notice, when I got to the other end and came through the hatchway, that the welcoming party wasn’t quite what I had expected.

It took me a second or two to get my up and down properly sorted out, and then I began reaching for the seal on my overall as I looked around for a friendly face.

There were several faces, but they weren’t very friendly. I felt a sinking sensation as I realised that the faces were all attached to bodies wearing Star Force uniforms, and the sinking got worse when I noticed belatedly that one of them—a lieutenant—was pointing a gun at me.

Merde, I thought. I think I’ve been here before.

Looking down the wrong end of a Star Force weapon is one of those experiences you never want to repeat.

Reflexively, although I’d no real intention of doing anything as absurd as making a run for it, I turned back to the hatch through which I’d just come. A trooper had already moved round behind me to block the way, and as my eyes met his he launched a punch at my head. I was too slow, and too unaccustomed to the new gee-force, to dodge. I took it on the jaw, and it lifted me off my feet, sending me sprawling in an untidy heap at the lieutenant’s feet. It’s slightly easier to take a thump like that in low-gee than in the depths of a real gravity well, but that doesn’t make it pleasant. The punch hurt, and the hurt was compounded with humiliation. I wanted to hit back, but the muzzle of the lieutenant’s gun was now only a couple of centimetres away from the end of my nose.

“Blackledge,” drawled the officer, “you shouldn’t have done that. Nobody told you to hit him.”

“No sir,” said Trooper Blackledge, and added in a stage whisper: “Bastard!”

It was obvious that he wasn’t talking about the lieutenant.

“Michael Rousseau,” said the lieutenant, calmly. “I arrest you on a charge of desertion from the United Nations Star Force. You will be held in safe custody on Goodfellow pending the arrival of the Star Force cruiser Leopard Sharks when a lawyer will be appointed to defend you and a court martial will be held, according to the provisions of emergency martial law. Your ship is hereby impounded, and is subject to confiscation, according to the provisions of that same legislation.”

I was still down, half-kneeling and half-sitting. Absurdly, all I could think of to say was that Leopard Shark was a really stupid name for a warship.

I didn’t say it.

I also didn’t bother to tell them that they wouldn’t find it easy to impound my ship. Her inner airlock was programmed to check the retinal pattern of anyone trying to get in, even if they could produce the right passwords.

“On your feet,” said the lieutenant. He pointed the gun away from me, obviously having had his fill of melodrama for the time being.

I got to my feet, touching the tender spot on my jaw. The punch hadn’t drawn blood, but I suspected that I was going to have one hell of a bruise.

“I don’t suppose you’d be interested in seeing my discharge papers?” I inquired. “They bear the signature of one Star-Captain Susarma Lear—almost illegible, I fear, but quite legitimate.”

The lieutenant gave me a stony smile. “Every station in the system has been alerted to arrest you,” he said. “We knew you were coming back here—you’d have been better to stay out on the fringe, with all your alien friends. And you’d better know that if there’s one thing you can do that will make people like you any less, it’s to insult Star-Captain Lear. Star-Captain Lear is a hero.”

“I believe she mentioned that fact,” I said sourly.

I figured that I had every right to be sour. I hadn’t thought Susarma Lear mean-spirited enough to pull a trick like this, after we had parted on fairly good terms. I didn’t doubt for a moment that she could get away with it, though.

Why in the world, I wondered, had she posted wanted notices on me? Could she possibly have found out that I’d kept secret what I knew about Myrlin still being alive?

I thought guiltily about the incriminating memoirs sitting on the shelf in my disc-store, and began to regret having recorded them.

Microworlds don’t actually have jails, so where I ended up was an ordinary crew cabin with a special lock. It had the usual fittings—a bunk and a pocket-sized bathroom, a food-dispenser, and a set of screens. I soon found out that the screens had a security block on them. I could dial up videos of old movies or library teletext, but I couldn’t make personal telephone calls. I was being held incommunicado.

That seemed to me to be adding insult to injury, so instead of meekly sitting down I tried to get a line to the outside world. I started out by requesting a lawyer, but the system wouldn’t let me through, so I tried for a doctor. When the software queried my symptoms, I convinced it that I might well have a broken jaw. It’s easy to lie to artificial intelligences, once you can persuade them to take notice of you at all. Within ten minutes, the doctor duly arrived.

“I’m Mariyo Kimura,” she said, reaching out to take hold of my chin. “And this jaw isn’t broken.”

“Really?” I said. “You don’t know how glad I am to hear that. It hurts like hell.”

I could tell that she didn’t believe me.

“Look,” I said, “I’m sorry there isn’t an emergency, but I did need to talk to someone. I’ve been cooped up in a tiny starship all on my own for the best part of a year, and the first human being I came into contact with tried to smash me into insensibility. Then they threw me in here, seemingly with every intention of leaving me to rot. In my book, that’s cruel and inhumane treatment. I don’t know what passes for law around this place, but perhaps you could advise me on what it has to say about my position. I did try to get hold of a lawyer.”

“Goodfellow doesn’t have any lawyers,” said Dr. Kimura. “We don’t need them.”

“You have a platoon of Star Force troopers. Do you need them?”

She had opened her bag and she was dabbing something from a bottle onto a wad of cotton wool. She pushed me back so that I sat down on the bunk. I knew it was going to sting— it’s a medical tradition that goes back centuries. When she touched it to my jaw, though, I took the pain like a man.

“Mr. Rousseau,” she said, “I don’t know exactly what you’ve done, or why Lieutenant Kramin was ordered to arrest you on arrival here. I don’t really approve of the way that you were lured here under false pretences, nor of Trooper Blackledge knocking you down. But you must try to understand our situation. While you’ve been out of the system we’ve been fighting a long war. Salamandran warships invaded system space no less than forty times. Way out here, we were always a target for occupation, or for destruction. Most of us have been here for the whole ten years of the shooting match—it’s our home, and transport within the system hasn’t been easy. One missile is all that it would have taken to blow Goodfellow into smithereens, and we’ve been very happy to play host to a Star Force defence- system. You’ll not find any sympathy here for Star Force deserters.”

“Would it affect your attitude to know that I’m innocent?”

“Of course. But that remains to be proven, doesn’t it?”

“That’s why I need some kind of legal representation. The Star Force is carrying on some kind of weird vendetta against me. I need an advocate from outside, not their court-appointed defender. I’m not a deserter.”

No reaction showed in her features as she studied me with her dark eyes. She was very small—no more than a metre sixty-five—and she wasn’t looking down from any great height even though I was sitting and she was standing.

“No?” she queried. “Just what did you do during the war, Mr. Rousseau?”

It was a dirty question. What was I supposed to have done—rush home and enlist the minute I heard that serious hostilities had broken out? I didn’t ask. The answer would probably be yes.

On Asgard, the war had always seemed like a distant affair, and it had been all too easy in that cosmopolitan setting to fall in with the Tetron way of looking at things. In the eyes of the Tetrax, Earthmen and Salamandrans were two gangs of barbarians who ought to know better.

“I need to tell someone my side of the story,” I insisted, politely but firmly.

She threw the cotton-wool into the waste-disposal, and sealed up her bag.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she promised. “But I really don’t think it will do you any good.”

I had an ominous suspicion that she was right.