Asgard's Heart

5

Although the gravity was low, I wasn’t exactly feather-light, and I hit the plants with a lot of momentum. But the tangled branches turned out to be so tightly interwoven that I didn’t get stuck—in fact, they were so rubbery that I bounced. I was able to roll forward as I hit them so that I was tumbling like an acrobat as I continued on my ungainly way.

Shards of the broken wall were flying everywhere, showering the bell-like flowers and lacerating their petals. I felt a prickling sensation in my back accompanying the sensation of being hit by the shock-wave, and knew that I’d been cut in a dozen places. The rolling probably didn’t help, but at least I didn’t drive anything between my ribs to administer a fatal stab in the back.

The noise was tremendous—the big flightless insects that roamed this overgrown wilderness always screamed with panic when they were disturbed, and they were certainly disturbed now. I felt them struggling to get out of the way as I landed on a softer spot, crushing the vegetation down upon them.

When I stopped rolling I was sprawled on hands and knees shaded by a huge palmate leaf. I came to my feet as quickly as I could and looked back at the spot from which I’d been hurled. What kind of petard had been used to blast the hole I couldn’t imagine, but I saw immediately that it hadn’t been quite big enough, because the thing which was struggling to get through wasn’t finding it at all easy.

It wasn’t immediately obvious whether it was a living creature or an artefact. In a bizarre fashion it didn’t seem completely out of place in this world of enormous insects and elephantine flowers because if it resembled anything I could put a name to, it looked like an immense praying mantis, with great long legs, a small head carried high, and groping arms, though the “hands” on the end of the arms looked like a cross between a crab’s pincers and one of the articulated graspers they put on robots designed to explore places where no human being can go.

It seemed to be made of metal and plastic, but its joints were as flexible as the joints of a living creature, and the way that the head was moving from side to side as it tried to get its legs through the jagged split in the wall was surely suggestive of something searching for a sight of its prey. The head could swivel through three hundred and sixty degrees, and it was mounted with four shiny black lenses which probably gave it vision in depth in all directions. It also had a rigid proboscis that looked ominously like the barrel of a gun.

But it didn’t have vision in depth in all directions for long, because Susarma Lear had been far enough away on the curving path to be shielded from the blast, and she already had the Scarid crash gun in her hand. Whether it was a lucky shot or whether she’d been practising I didn’t know, but the first bullet she fired hit one of those black lenses smack in the centre, and blew it to smithereens.

One of those grasping hands immediately reached for her, striking with awesome speed. I had the uncomfortable feeling that if it had grabbed her it could have broken her in two with its clutch, but the act of turning sideways jammed the thing firmly in the narrow fissure through which it was trying to haul its ungainly body, and when the pincers clicked shut at the limit of the arm’s expansion, she was all of ten centimetres out of reach. The monster spat fire, dragon-fashion, revealing that its proboscis was some kind of flamer, but the firebolt missed by a couple of metres.

Anyone with an ordinary capacity for fear would have run like hell, but the colonel was anything but ordinary. She watched the groping hand close and withdraw, not moving her feet at all, and as soon as she had the space she put her gun-hand forward again, supporting it at the elbow with her left, and took a quick but careful sight of that wheel-mounted head.

Her second bullet hit the skull-cap a mere half-centimetre away from the rim of a second eye, and ricocheted harmlessly away. I couldn’t hear her because of the cacophonous complaints of the insects, but I saw her lips move and I could easily imagine the manner of her cursing.

I saw—as she must have seen—that the colossal mantis had taken advantage of the miss to haul a bit more of its bulk through the scissored cleft in the wall, and that it only needed one last wriggle to get its entire carcass into the garden. I think I shouted at her to run, but there was no way she could hear me. As usual, it was an utterly futile gesture, because she was undoubtedly better at judging these circumstances than I was, and she wasn’t about to hang around for the next flame-bolt or the next attempted snatch at her midriff. She was already backing away, although she had the gun raised, anxious to try a third shot if she could balance herself—the Scarid gun wasn’t an easy weapon to use because of the recoil kick.

While I was watching, fearful for her life, I’d carelessly forgotten my own troubles, and it was with a sense of desperate astonishment that I noticed the second arm flashing out in my direction, ambitious to grab my shoulder and pluck me out of my hidey-hole in the bushes. Even with its eyes at seventy-five-percent strength, the monster was obviously capable of paying attention to two targets at once.

I ducked, wishing fervently that for once my reflexes wouldn’t let me down—I had long ago come to the conclusion that I was at the end of the queue when instincts were handed out, and that the stupid set I’d been born with was absolutely not to be trusted. But my luck was still holding; like Susarma, I was just out of reach, and the mechanical grab went back empty-handed.

Knowing only too well that it would get me next time, I turned and ran. A purple flower to my left suddenly turned into a firework, and I knew that the head was pointing my way now. Panic spurred me on, but running wasn’t easy. The plants were just too tightly-packed, and even though their stems and branches weren’t woody at all, they were still capable of getting in the way.

There was only one thing I could do, and that was to dive down to the region where the insects lived, beneath the lowest leaves. There was a narrow space down there where even a man might crawl, if he’d a mind to. Doing snake-imitations is not usually my kind of thing, but when death is only a few metres away you have to improvise as best you can.

Flattening myself out, I tried to pull myself along with my arms and scramble with my feet, almost as though I was pretending to swim. It was pretty crowded at ground level, because the entire space was seething with panic-stricken insects that didn’t know which way to run, but were totally committed to the project of getting somewhere fast. They were still shrieking their hymn of complaint from all sides. I hated the noise, but I could sympathise with the way they felt.

As I did my silly parody of the breast-stroke I could feel the muscles in my back protesting. I could feel the stickiness of my shirt, but couldn’t make a guess as to how badly I was bleeding. I took a little comfort from knowing that the Isthomi were top-flight medical men when it came to repairing bodies and making people immortal, and that they’d already made me a promise that they’d wrought some considerable improvements in the quality of my flesh, but as the pain built to an excruciating level that comfort seemed to fade away.

It faded away even further when the question rose belatedly in my mind as to why there was an enormous mechanical praying mantis trying to destroy me in the Isthomi’s own back garden. The fact that it had been able to make its grand entrance at all suggested that something was yet again amiss in the state of Isthomia. If it was not, the Nine would surely have managed to give us a little notice of impending danger, even if they didn’t have the heavy metal to nip it in the bud.

As I continued crawling, I began to feel that I was in a uniquely awkward situation. I had no idea where I was going, and no way of knowing whether the monster mantis was right on my heels. I had no weapon of my own and was well and truly separated from Susarma Lear. The indigenous insects didn’t seem to want me in their underworld, and didn’t seem to want to get out of my way to ease my passage. Fortunately, I had every reason to think that they were not given to biting, stinging, or otherwise being nasty, though the repulsiveness of their touch made their company quite unpleasant enough. I imagined that they were tolerated in this garish scheme of things because they pollinated the flowers, but I couldn’t help feeling that a tastefully designed and suitably-programmed robot could have done the job more economically.

I got to a place where even the space beneath the foliage became unbearably constricted, occupied by a tangle of what looked to me like surface-lying adventitious roots. They fanned out from a central stem, and I had moved into a closed V-shaped space, cornering myself. I had no alternative but to stand up, and was glad to find that the leaves above my head were fern-like, and that they parted easily. Unfortunately, their delicacy was compensated by profusion, and when I was drawn up to my full height they were still clustered above my head. When I looked up I could catch a glimmer of light filtering through the translucent foliage, but could see almost nothing.

The insects were quieter now, and when I rose to my feet the ones I had been disturbing with my snake-act decided that I was no longer a threat to their sanity and well-being. They gradually ceased their awful keening. I was able to stand still and listen.

I didn’t know what kind of sound would be made by a mantis-dragon stomping through a giant’s garden, but I figured that its progress would probably alarm the insects just as much as mine, and once I had ascertained that there was no cacophonous whistling in the neighbourhood, I came to the conclusion that I was relatively safe.

Because I wanted to see where I was, I decided to climb a tree. This wasn’t easy, because there were no authentic trees in the place—merely overgrown bushes with limp branches. Nevertheless, the topmost parts of the canopy, which extended all of ten metres into the air to bask in the glow of the fifteen-metre ceiling, were borne aloft by relatively sturdy stems, and I was able to pick my way through the ferny stuff to a stem bearing a particularly solid leaf.

There was an insufficiency of decent footholds, and the stem swayed alarmingly when I shifted my weight. The pain in my wounded back didn’t help, either, and I had a fearsome headache caused by a combination of Shockwave concussion and screeching insects. But I managed to climb, drawing on those hidden resources of strength that our bodies prudently save for moments of terrorized hyperactivity.

When I got to a reasonable vantage point, with my feet on one leaf-stem and my hands clutching another, balanced as safely as I was able, I looked around—and promptly wished that I hadn’t.

Big the monster mantis might be, but it obviously wasn’t very heavy. Its great long legs were protruding in every direction—I could count ten of them now I could see the thing in all its hideous glory—and it was moving three or four of them at a time, finding new purchase wherever it could. It was coming over the top of the canopy, and it was already turning from its previous path to head straight for me, having caught a glimpse of me with its three remaining eyes the moment I stuck my head out into the open.

I wasted no time in clambering down—I jumped, half-falling and half-sliding through the thick vegetation. But with the ground still cluttered by the root-ridges there was no way I could hug the turf and crawl, so I ended up in a furtive crouch, trying to step over the ridges as fast as I possibly could, hoping to reach a space which I could share with the inhospitable insects.

One of the great pincers smashed down beside me, trying to stab rather than to grab, missing me by a margin that was far too small for comfort. There was a tearing sound from above as the other grabber began tearing at the foliage, trying to get a sight of me. I jinked to the left, then to the right, trying to confuse any extrapolation of my path its mechanical brain might be making, but it obviously got another brief sight of me because the hand came groping through the vegetation again, closing with a vicious snap no more than a dozen centimetres from my left ear.

The insect chorus was in full swing again now, filling my ears with raw sound lacking even that elementary aesthetic propriety that one might imaginatively credit to the last trump.

I stumbled over a root, but thrust myself instantly to my feet again, and ran on as fast as my feet could carry me across such disadvantageous territory. The arm reached out for me just once more, unsuccessfully, and then I suddenly found myself confronting an open space—a clearing where the only things which grew were no higher than the top of my boot. It was star-shaped, and maybe twenty or thirty metres across. When I saw it my heart leapt, as I realised that here was somewhere I could really run, but almost immediately it sank again as I realised that it was somewhere that the gargantuan predator could see me clearly as I ran, and get a clear shot with its flamer.

It was too late to change my mind—my legs had already carried me out into the open—but in trying belatedly to alter the direction of my charge I turned my ankle, and fell, rolling as I did so to look back at the thing which was looming far above me, its head seeming tiny now because it was so high, its legs lashing out in search of purchase so that it could anchor itself for one final, fatal grab.

I saw its swiveling head rotate and stop, so that two good eyes stared down at me, and I saw the barrel of the proboscis come into line as the arms pulled back, ready to thrust.

And then the thing stiffened, as though struck rigid by some inner convulsion. A curious shiver passed along its body, and then it collapsed, falling all in a heap like an unreasonably complicated puppet whose strings had been simultaneously sheared.

I shielded my face as it fell, and ducked towards the ground because I feared that it would fall on top of me and crush me, but its loathsome head came down to one side, missing me by a metre or more. I stood up again, and looked around—feeling slightly foolish, although I didn’t know why.

Myrlin was standing on the far side of the clearing, with something on his shoulder that looked like a bazooka with a slender, solid barrel. Susarma Lear was by his side, looking uncannily neat and trim. She was still holding the crash-gun in her hand, and she used it to beckon me urgently.

“Come on, Rousseau!” she yelled, audible even above the sound of the insects. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”

I picked myself up, knowing that I was filthy, ragged, and bloodstained, feeling as if I had just been stamped on by a giant boot. I limped across the open ground. The news that my life no longer seemed to be in imminent danger must have been transmitted to my hormone system, because all the adrenaline seemed to drain away, and my limping gait became a drunken stagger. I felt as though my legs had turned to rubber.

Incongruously, I fell over. I remember thinking, dimly but clinically, that I must have lost a lot of blood.

Myrlin shrugged the silent weapon from his shoulder and let it drop. He took three titanic strides forward and picked me up as though I were a rag doll. Then he threw me over his shoulder where the weapon had rested, and set off at a run.

Inexpressibly glad that someone else had finally taken responsibility for my poor battered body, I thankfully blacked out.