Asgard's Heart

38

I touched Susarma’s shoulder, very gently. She opened her eyes, and stared up at me stupidly. She didn’t know where she was; maybe she didn’t even know who she was.

“Sorry,” I whispered.

I let her look at me for a few seconds. Her brain had to start working in its own good time.

“Rousseau?” she said, very faintly. She smiled. Her mind was a million light-years away, and she was floating, high as a kite.

“I thought…” she began, and then stopped, probably thinking that she was about to say something silly.

“You thought right,” I told her, calmly. “We should both be dead. But the Nine fixed us up. We’re supermen, remember?”

She tried to sit up, but I put out my arm to restrain her. Her eyes widened as she felt the damage inside her. She was carved up more thoroughly than I was.

She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out. I had to guess what questions she probably had in mind.

“Help,” I said, “is on its way. The gods of Asgard are back in Valhalla. The power is back on in the levels. You and I are hurt pretty badly, but thanks to the Isthomi we can come through it. I’m not sure that we can stay conscious, but I know we aren’t going to die. The war within Asgard is over, save for a little mopping-up. 673-Nisreen is okay, and in better shape than either of us, except that he broke his arm again while saving my life.

“That’s the good news. The bad news is that we’re a million light years from home and we aren’t ever going to be able to go back. Maybe even that has its brighter side. If the Star Force still exists, you’re the grand commander—She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. I can’t think of anyone who could play the part better. It’s not inconceivable that you’re the only human female of child-bearing age on Asgard, but with Isthomi biotech to help us there’s no need for you to worry unduly about becoming the mother of the species—I dare say we could have a thousand kids without troubling ourselves with any greater intimacy than passing the test tube and arguing about what to call the brats.”

She wasn’t in any condition to laugh at the joke, and she looked more annoyed than amused. She wasn’t the maternal type.

“Did you get that bastard android?” she whispered.

“It wasn’t him,” I told her, dully. “It was some other bastard, just using him. He never really had a chance, did he? First the Salamandrans, then the evil masterminds of Anti-Life. Given the opportunity, he’d have been a better man than you or I, but he got all the rough deals that fate could find for him.”

“Did you get him?” She had a one-track mind.

“Yes,” I said. “No clever illusions this time. No mistakes. I blasted all hell out of him. You’d have been proud of me. I got Finn too. And the thing that was pretending to be Tulyar. I got them all, the Star Force way. No ifs and buts… just blood and guts.”

She looked up at me. There wasn’t a trace of hero-worship in her pale blue stare.

“As of now,” I told her, “I’ve resigned. You can keep the medal.”

She smiled faintly.

“You got to the Centre,” she said, “didn’t you?”

I looked around. The lights were back on in the levels, but not here. We were surrounded by darkness, dust, and the dead.

“I got to the Centre,” I agreed. “All the answers are here… and I have all the time in the world to find out what they are.”

It was true, in a way. Our friendly neighbourhood gods would be only too pleased to give me a more leisurely explanation of anything and everything, as soon as someone had put my intestines back together and I was fit to be told. I could have the unedited version of the history of the universe, and all the lessons in life-science I could possibly desire. All the secrets of Asgard the Ark, Asgard the Fortress, and Asgard the Universal Landscape Gardener would be mine for the asking.

I could have long conversations with any god I cared to name, and share classes with Athene of the Isthomi.

Magnifique.

Something deep inside me echoed my ironic cheer. I was not the man I used to be, and I knew that what was lurking now in the darker recesses of my brain might yet trouble my dreams far more than any scary vision of Medusa, even though it was really only me.

Only me!

I had a lot of finding out still to do, and I knew only too well that although my perilous journey to the Centre of Asgard was over, my journey into the depths of my own being had hardly even begun.