Asgard's Heart

13

I came out of the interface with the sensation of waking from a dreamless sleep. The filaments had already withdrawn from my flesh, and I was slumped in the chair.

Susarma Lear bent over me as soon as I opened my eyes, and for once her own eyes were warmed with faint concern. It seemed that she was getting to like me just a little, despite the fact that I was not cast in the Star Force’s best heroic mould.

“You okay, Rousseau?” she asked.

I breathed out, and felt the inside of my mouth with my tongue. It was a bit fuzzy, with the merest hint of an unpleasant taste.

“Sure I’m okay,” I told her. “You ever hear a document complain about being put through a photocopier?”

Her eyes hardened again. “You’re a real wit, Rousseau,” she said. “You know that?” I knew it, but it didn’t seem polite to agree, given that she sounded so unenthusiastic about it.

“How’s Myrlin?” I asked, peering round the edge of my hood at the other occupied chair. He was coming round too, and he put up a hand to signal that he was adequate to the task of getting up and getting ready for the next step in our campaign.

There was no rush; now that the Nine’s robot arms were programmed, they could put a new truck together more quickly than would have been humanly possible, but that still wasn’t quite the same as waving a magic wand and saying the word of power. In the real world, these things take time.

I got out of the chair and left the room, heading back home. I intended to use up a precious hour or so doing absolutely nothing—not even thinking, if I could possibly avoid it. I thought I could. I wasn’t keen on having company, but the colonel came with me. There were obviously things on her mind.

“I still don’t understand,” she said, “why the bastards didn’t call on me. They must have known what was happening, even if they couldn’t stop it themselves. I could have plugged Finn.”

I hadn’t had the time or the inclination to fill her in on the whole thing. Clearly, the Nine hadn’t taken pains to explain it to her either.

“It was a set-up,” I told her, tersely. “The Nine wanted them to take the truck. We think they might be able to lead us to the Centre. Whatever got into Tulyar’s brain during the software skirmishing seems to have sole tenancy now, and I guess it has a mission of its own to complete. It may not be entirely compos mentis, and there’s a chance that it isn’t very intelligent, but it does want to go somewhere. We’re going to follow it.”

“We?”

“You said you wanted to come. Changed your mind?”

“Hell, no. Anywhere out of here will look pretty good to me. But are you sure that you know what you’re doing?”

“No,” I said, succinctly. “But there’s nothing much to be gained by staying put, is there? I’d catch some sleep if I were you—in fact, if I were you, I’d consider myself very lucky to be able to catch some sleep without wondering if some clever nightmare might gobble me up and wake up in my place.”

She looked at me suspiciously. “You think you might end up like Tulyar? You’re afraid that something got into your head, too, and might be planning to take over?”

“So far,” I told her, “I feel as though I’m in sole charge. The Isthomi figure that I got some kind of donation—a weapon for my software self to use—but they think that its only function as far as I’m concerned is to feed information into my dreams. We’re hoping that the software which got to me was sent by the good guys, and that they’re gentlemanly enough not to do me any permanent damage—but there’s no way to be sure just yet.”

“If you turn into somebody else,” she said, with a less-than-wholehearted attempt at levity, “what would you like me to do about it? Should I shoot him?”

“Well,” I said, “I guess it all depends whether you like him better than me. But if you can stand him, I’d like you to look after him for me. Someday he might want to give my body back, and I’d rather it wasn’t all shot up.”

It says something for my state of mind that this faintly surreal conversation sounded perfectly normal. I wondered if I might already be losing my grip, and suppressed a small shudder as I remembered the bleak stare in 994-Tulyar’s eyes. If I ever looked like that, I’d try to avoid mirrors.

“Why do you think Tulyar—the thing that’s in Tulyar’s body—is heading for the Centre?” she asked. “If the easiest way to get there is the way your alter ego is going, through software space, why are the enemy trying to do things the other way about, sending their copy through real space?”

That was a good question, and I’d already asked it of the Nine. “We probably won’t know until we get there,” I said. “But the way the Isthomi have it figured, the builders were humanoid—pretty much like you and me, now that the Isthomi have massaged our quiet DNA into toughening up our bodies. They created artificial intelligences to control Asgard: man-made gods, much more powerful than themselves. Maybe they didn’t entirely trust the gods they made, or maybe they were fearful of exactly the kind of invasion they seem to have suffered, but for one reason or the other they may have reserved some key controls for purely mechanical operation. The Isthomi believe that there are some switches down there which can only be thrown by hand. Their guess is that when the invaders got the upper hand, the builders sealed off the Centre to protect those switches, and that it wasn’t until the moment of contact, when they made a biocopy of one of themselves in Tulyar’s brain, that the invaders finally got themselves a pair of hands—or, given Tulyar’s authority and the gullibility of the Scarida, several pairs of hands.”

She thought about it for a moment or two, and I could see that she didn’t like it. I could hardly blame her. It had far too many wild guesses in it to suit me.

“These hypothetical systems which need mechanical operation,” she said, testily. “What exactly would they be?”

I shrugged.

“Well,” she said, “they obviously don’t include the light-switch, do they?”

“Apparently not,” I said. “Unless Tulyar isn’t their only pair of hands. Maybe he’s got cleverer hands than the guys who switched off the lights. On the other hand…”

I stopped, wondering whether it was really worth going on with the game of make-believe.

“Go on,” she said, tiredly. She was obviously wondering the same thing, but she wasn’t about to leave the sentence dangling.

“On the other hand,” I went on, “It might have been the other side which switched out the lights. Maybe Tulyar’s gone to switch them back on.”

She studied my face carefully. We were out in the open again now, almost back on my own doorstep, and unless I invited her in the question-and-answer session was reaching its end. She had one last play to make.

“What you’re telling me,” she said, “is that you don’t really know which side we’re on. We don’t know who the invaders are, or what their purpose is, any more than we know who the builders are. And we have no way of knowing for sure which are the good guys and which are the bad guys.”

“That’s about the size of it,” I said. “We have to go after Tulyar with an open mind. The only problem is, I opened mine a bit too wide. I don’t know what the hell is happening in this goddamn war—but I’m no longer in a position to dodge the draft.”

She decided to let me go, and left me standing on my doorstep while she went on to her own little igloo, presumably intending to follow my advice and get some rest. But my plans to put in a little quiet time were not to be allowed to run smoothly. 673-Nisreen had been waiting for my return, and I could hardly shut the door in his face.

“Mr. Rousseau,” he said, in that scrupulously polite manner which brooked no opposition, “may I talk to you?”

“Sure,” I said, wearily. “What is it?” I didn’t invite him in, because I had a sneaking suspicion that it might be difficult to get rid of him. While we stood outside, I figured, it should be obvious to him that ours was to be just a passing encounter, not to be too long extended.

He was pretty quick on the uptake, and came straight to the point.

“I have received orders from 994-Tulyar,” he said. “They were delivered to me after he quit this level.”

“And what do the orders say?” I asked.

“That I am to do everything possible to detain you here, and to sabotage the Isthomi systems if I can.”

I raised my eyebrows. “I infer from the fact that you’re telling me this that you have no intention of carrying out the orders,” I said.

“The Isthomi have told me that 994-Tulyar has been taken over in some way by an alien personality. They say that you can confirm this.”

I nodded, slowly. “I think it’s true,” I said cautiously.

“In that case,” he said, “I would like to accompany you when you go in pursuit.”

I was astonished. High adventure wasn’t the Tetron style, and the Nine must have told him that he would probably be a lot safer here than down below.

“Why?” I asked.

“It is a matter of duty,” he said.

“I would have thought that your duty was here, looking after the rest of your people.”

His small dark eyes glistened in the faint light as he blinked. His wizened monkey-like face seemed strangely forlorn for a brief moment.

“I can do no ‘looking after,’ Mr. Rousseau, as I think you know. In other circumstances, it is true, the obligation placed upon me would be to learn everything I can from the Isthomi, which might be of value to my people, but I have thought about the way things stand, and I believe that a different course of action is demanded.”

“So you want to come with me—to the Centre.” I was still having difficulty believing it.

“If things remain as they are, Mr. Rousseau, I will never regain contact with my people. We are in the depths of the macroworld, surrounded by enemies. The only hope there seems to be for our salvation is that you, your brave colonel, and your giant friend will somehow find a way to rectify the power-loss. 994-Tulyar, or whatever alien entity now uses his body, may try to prevent you. It would not be honourable for me to stay here while you undertake such a mission. I must go with you.”

“673-Nisreen,” I said, hesitantly, “you’re a scientist, not a fighting man—not even a peace officer.”

“Are you a fighting man, Mr. Rousseau?”

It is sometimes necessary to come face-to-face with unpalatable truths. “I am now, Dr. Nisreen,” I said.

“We do not always have a choice in such matters,” he said, with the air of one who has made his point. “Do we, Mr. Rousseau?”

He was probably right. “Okay,” I said, with a shrug. “You’re in the team. But you have to remember that the game is likely to be played by barbarian rules. You don’t have any rank to pull just because you’re a Tetron.”

“I claim no debt from anyone,” he told me. “I think we are now in the fifth phase of history, and must set aside the old ways.”

He was talking about the theory of historical phases which the Tetrax had developed, in which Earth was stuck in the third phase, when power was based primarily in manufactured technology, while Tetra was in the fourth, where power was based in obligations of service—negotiated slavery, as humans tended to think of it. I nearly asked him what the basis of power was supposed to be in the new phase which he’d just invented, but as I opened my mouth to frame the question I realised that I didn’t have to. The power-base in phase five was inside the machines—it resided with man-made gods like the combatants in the battle of Asgard. 673-Nisreen had seen a vision of the future, and had glimpsed the deus ex machina that would put an effective end to the humanoid story. Maybe that was the real lesson that Asgard had to teach the ambitious galactics of the Milky Way: in the greater scheme of things, we were pretty small beer.

Aborting the question, I said instead: “You’d better get some sleep. We start as soon as we can, and if we have to run a gauntlet of killer machines like the ones which nearly wiped us out today, we aren’t going to have a very restful journey.”

He nodded, politely. “I fear that you are right, Mr. Rousseau,” he said. “I will bid you goodnight.”

I wasn’t so sure that Susarma Lear was going to thank me for adding a Tetron to the strength—even a Tetron who seemed infinitely less devious and dangerous than the late but not-yet-lamented 994-Tulyar. She didn’t like or trust the Tetrax, and she had every reason not to. But what the hell, I thought, it’s their universe too, and I guess he’s just as entitled to do his bit in the attempt to save it as anyone else.