Asgard's Conquerors

29

In order to go through the narrow corridors we had to string ourselves out somewhat. Thalia-7 and Calliope-4 walked together in the lead, with the Scarid officer and one of his bully boys behind them, guns in a threatening position. Then there was me, with John Finn sticking close, still getting a kick out of being able to hold the gun on me. Two more Scarid soldiers brought up the rear—there had been further reinforcements waiting outside the igloo. Another two remained outside, theoretically protecting the expedition’s rear.

As we marched through the maze I kept expecting the walls on either side to come alive, wresting control of the situation from our captors with a mindscrambling flourish that would be as contemptuously easy as taking candy from a baby. But nothing happened, and the doubts continued to creep up on me. Somewhere up ahead were Myrlin and 994-Tulyar, but I had no idea whether they’d been warned about what was happening. Were the Nine just sitting back, like the audience at a play, waiting to see who would get shot?

Once, as we passed a dark side-corridor, I considered making a break, but Finn was too close to me, and too obviously ready to punish any indiscretion. In any case, I had no place to go.

The walls on either side of us stayed black. There was not a flicker of a ghost. The life that was within them was quite invisible, and was seemingly content to remain in hiding. Confidently and without hesitation the two scions led us through the maze. I could see that the man with pale blue eyes was becoming just a trifle worried, as it dawned on him that he’d never be able to find his way out unaided. Twice he lifted his radio to his lips, to contact the men outside, making sure that he was still in touch. I still couldn’t decide whether or not Finn’s story about the evacuated shaft and the explosives was anything more than a desperately inspired piece of stupid bluff, but the officer was taking it seriously enough to take pains about his presumed ability to send a signal to tell his men to arm the bombs.

I figured that the Nine could blank out his communications any time they wanted to, so that if it came to the crunch the message couldn’t be sent, but there was still that edge of doubt. Nothing was happening, and I couldn’t understand why. Gods and aliens move in mysterious ways, so the proverbs assure us.

I sought reassurance in telling myself, facetiously, that one would naturally expect the Nine Muses to have an acute sense of dramatic tension and suspense. There are times, though, when I don’t find my own sense of humour very funny.

Finally, we reached Thalia and Calliope’s intended destination. A hole opened in the wall, with a sufficiently magical flourish to make Sky-blue start with surprise, and we were able to pass through into a cornerless chamber whose ceiling was glowing with faint pearly light.

Thalia and Calliope went on through, but the Scarid officer hung back, eyeing the mysterious portal. In the end, he stepped through it, but he told the two soldiers who were bringing up the rear to stay outside and stand guard. That meant there were only three guns inside with us, but the odds were still far too high for me to want to try anything. I didn’t think the scions were the types to be relied upon in that kind of fight. If Serne and Susarma Lear had been along, it would have been a different matter.

There were no sensory deprivation tanks here, but there were three “chairs” hemmed in by all kinds of electronic hardware. They looked to me like the kind of chairs that medics use to take electroencephalographic readings and conduct SQUID brain-probes, or in full-scale biofeedback training. They had trailing nests of tentacular wires, like the ones that had sent superfine threads burrowing into my head while I was inside the egg.

I guessed that these were sophisticated interfaces by which conscious humanoids could hook themselves up to the Nine’s main systems. They were probably the means by which the scions communed most intimately with their parent software personalities, and the means by which the Nine could enter into frank and full discussions with Myrlin, 994-Tulyar, and any other volunteers.

Myrlin and 994-Tulyar were already there, comfortably ensconced in the chairs. They didn’t move or open their eyes when we entered, and even when I touched Myrlin on the arm he gave no sign at all that he knew I was there.

That was the point at which I began to get very worried, having realised at last that something was badly wrong, and that the silence of the Nine was not simply a manifestation of their patience and curiosity.

Sky-blue didn’t like the set-up one little bit, to judge by the expression on his face. I could see the expression quite clearly, because the room was well-lit by comparison with the gloomy corridor. The walls were screen-like, but they were solid grey. There was no console in front of the chairs to control their operation. It was all inside the big hoods into which the would-be communicants had to put their heads. The Scarid had never seen anything like it, but he too was beginning to realise that Myrlin and Tulyar were too quiet for their own good.

I stood back as the blond-haired officer came to stand by Myrlin, reaching out to touch him on the arm just as I had. I looked at Calliope, but her eyes were fixed upon the face of her sister. They wore very similar expressions, and it was an expression which spoke volumes, even upon an alien face. It was not a startled look, but a look which told us all that something they had already begun to fear was now self- evident in all its tragedy.

If I had any lingering doubts, that look dispelled them. I had been coasting on all kinds of false assumptions. Something bad had happened—not something trivial and absurd, like the invasion of the habitat by the Scarid officer and his gun-toting comedians, but something truly desperate.

Ignoring Finn, I took Myrlin’s burly wrist in my hand, and felt for a pulse. His body wasn’t cold, but I couldn’t find any evidence of a heartbeat. When I lifted his eyelid I could see only the white.

I went to Tulyar. I didn’t know what kind of crucial tests you can apply to figure out whether or not a Tetron is dead, but he had no discernible pulse either. I looked back at Myrlin, remembering that this was the guy who’d promised me only a couple of hours before that I was as immortal as he was.

“What happened?” I asked Thalia-7.

She shook her head, to signify that she didn’t know.

“What’s going on here?” demanded Sky-blue.

To him, she said: “I think the Nine are not here.”

He couldn’t begin to understand what those few words implied. The nature of the Nine was way beyond the scope of his imagination. He still expected some bad-tempered authority figure like Sigor Dyan to emerge from hiding and say “What can I do for you boys?” The fact that Myrlin and Tulyar were probably dead was something he could take in, but the fact that something had zapped the Nine—and what that implied about the nature and power of the something— was just so much noise to him.

I looked around at the grey walls. Dead? I wondered. Can it really all be dead? Not just a set of persons but an entire world?

“I want to know what’s going on!” said Sky-blue. I almost expected to see him stamp his foot in petulant rage.

“Our hosts are indisposed,” I told him. “They were already injured by something they made contact with—something at the Centre. I can’t believe that they tried again, so it must be the other way around. It must have come after them! Maybe it came to destroy them. Maybe it was only doing what they tried to do . . . trying to make contact. The Nine aren’t here but. ...” I looked around those still, silent walls, expecting that any second they would burst into furious life. “. . . Maybe somebody is,” I finished, in a rather hushed tone. “Maybe somebody is.”

Sky-blue’s reaction was almost pitiful in its stupidity. He took three strides over to me and pistol-whipped me across the face. I rode with the blow, but it still hurt a lot. That right-hand side of my jaw seemed to be attracting so much violence I wondered if it had some kind of target painted on it.

“If you don’t start talking sense,” he said, “I’m going to get rough.”

Thalia and Calliope looked shocked and pained by this outburst, and they moved even closer together than they already were. They weren’t being much help. I wasn’t entirely surprised. Solitude was threatening them now in a way it never had before. The possible extinction of their parent personalities was probably the most hideous thing imaginable, from their point of view.

I was tempted to advise retreat—to tell the moronic barbarians that they were inside the body of something alien and unknown, which might well mean them harm, and that if they could even begin to understand what was happening they wouldn’t stop running until they were back home . . . and then some.

But that would be silly. If the Nine’s systems really had been taken over by an alien persona of some kind, there was no way we could escape. If it had only been a destructive blast, wiping out the life of the systems entirely, there was no need.

I looked at the third chair—the empty interface. There might well be one way to find out. I looked again at the scions, and saw that they too were eyeing the chair, with no great enthusiasm.

By now, John Finn thought he had worked out what was going on. He took it upon himself to explain to his friends what the score was.

“The way I figure it,” he said, “the computers were running the show. The machines were the ones in charge here, and these furry freaks are the hired help. The Tetron was making a deal when something crazy happened. Something else got into the machines—something that could hurt them. It looks as if the artificial intelligences have been ripped up, and these two got hurt in the crossfire. Rousseau thinks it’s still in there. God only knows whether or not he’s right. It might all be play-acting, but I don’t think so. I think maybe we’d better get out of here.”

Sky-blue looked at him frostily, and didn’t budge an inch. Being only a soldier in his kind of army was ninety- nine percent courage and only one percent brains. I think he’d been accidentally short-changed on the intellectual side.

Unfortunately, he was obviously having great difficulty figuring out an alternative course of action.

“This is all a trick!” he said, eventually.

It was a nice idea. I wished I could believe it, but it was too much even for Finn, who seemed to be an expert at believing whatever happened to be convenient at the time.

The Scarid pointed at the empty chair. “Is this a device for talking to these machines?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. “Sit down, and they’ll shout directly into your brain, without bothering with your ears—if they can still talk at all. You could be in line for a medal here. It might be posthumous, of course, but all the best-earned medals are.” I nodded at the ominously still figures of Myrlin and 994-Tulyar.

Unfortunately, I must have expressed myself rather badly. He thought I was trying to be nasty. It’s always dangerous to try sarcasm on aliens—even aliens who look like Neanderthal men. Either they don’t understand it, or they take it in entirely the wrong spirit. He still wanted to believe that it was all a trick, and he didn’t like the idea that I was treating him with undue contempt. At that moment, I think, he was feeling just as badly disposed toward me as Finn.

“Very well,” he said. “You will please try it first.”

Finn actually laughed.

I spread my arms wide. “Why don’t you just shoot me?” I said. It was bravado based on desperation. I wanted to be out of the limelight, back on the sidelines where I belonged. But there was no one else handy to take over centre stage. Myrlin was kaput and if Susarma Lear was still alive she was slumbering in her sensory-deprivation tank, missing out on all the fun.

“If you don’t sit in that chair,” said the man with the pale eyes, “I will shoot you. You may be certain of that.”

It was plain that he had had enough of me. He didn’t even think that I was useful any more.

“Ah, what the hell,” I said, bitterly. “I thought I was dead anyway, last time you bastards had me in your clutches. All this is so much borrowed time.”

I certainly wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of shooting me, and I didn’t want to wait for John Finn to volunteer to help him. Myrlin and Tulyar looked to be peaceful enough, and there was no sign that they’d died painfully. I even began to reassure myself that I wasn’t at all sure that they were dead. If I was lucky, I would sit in the chair, activate the electronics, and nothing would happen: nothing at all.

I did glance briefly at Thalia and Calliope. Neither of them rushed forward to volunteer to take my place, but they did look concerned for me. They were hoping I’d be lucky, too.

I guess there’s luck and there’s luck. Of course I didn’t die—the “of course” relating to your point of view rather than mine—but what happened was a very long way from being nothing.

The moment I sat down, before I could even begin to look for an activation-switch, I was engaged. The machine didn’t need my help to come alive: it was ready and waiting. The neuron-worms began to burrow into the flesh of my scalp, searching for the axon-threads by which they could link up to my central nervous system. It was the first time I’d ever been conscious when such a thing happened, and it set up waves of rebellious nausea in my stomach. The sensation of being invaded like that is one of the most unpleasant I know, though it doesn’t hurt at all. It doesn’t even tickle.

What happens afterwards, of course, can hurt, maybe worse than any pain that could ever reach you in the natural way, sparked off in your nerves by injury.

I was already gritting my teeth against the pain that I feared, but what came made any such feeble reaction quite irrelevant. I felt my head tearing apart, my thoughts shredded by a searing blast of pure agony, and I screamed.

To make things worse—there’s always some silly little thing which can make even the most horrible experience still worse—the last thing I heard before I lost contact with that reality was the sound of a gunshot.