Asgard's Secret

29

We saw another predator when we stopped to rest, but this one didn’t attack. It looked at us from a distance, and went away. Maybe it was because we were between the rails, outside its territory—or maybe it just had a slightly smarter way of operating than the first one I’d met. We saw other animals, too, but mostly just their rear ends as they disappeared from view.

“I hope we reach the terminus soon,” I said. “All this walking is just using up time. It wasn’t supposed to be like this—the big discovery was supposed to have a lot more immediacy than this.”

“We’ll get there,” he assured me.

“Is that just self-reassurance, or do you know something I don’t?” I asked.

“How could I possibly know anything you don’t?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know how much the Salamandrans knew about Asgard, or what they might have piped into your brain while you were growing in that tank. Susarma Lear wondered whether you might have an objective in mind—a specific reason for coming here.”

“I told you what the reason was,” he reminded me. “I knew there weren’t many humans—and that the Tetrax are biotech-minded.”

“The galaxy is full of places with no humans at all,” I pointed out. “And there are a lot more Tetrax on the Tetron homeworld than there are here. If you want your story to ring true, you might want to modify that particular part of it.”

I couldn’t see much of his face behind the plate in his helmet, except for his outsized nose, but I knew that he was looking at me long and hard.

“Okay,” he said, eventually. “I told you the truth, but not the whole truth. I didn’t know anything about the programme of which I was a part when I was liberated. I thought I really was a prisoner of war. When my liberators first became suspicious that something odd had been going on, they didn’t figure out immediately that I was part of it. They asked for my help trying to figure it out, because I’d been on the spot. Local knowledge, you see. I tried to help them, as best I could. Why shouldn’t I? I began to realise what I was before they did—not long before, but long enough to give me an advantage. I think I found out quite a bit more than they did—which is how I know that I’m no threat, although they’re not so sure. I also found out that the Salamandrans had to buy in technics to help them get the programme started.”

“Tetron technics?”

“I don’t know. Not from the Tetron homeworld, that’s for sure.”

“From Asgard? You’re saying that the Salamandrans bought bootleg military biotech from Asgard?”

“I can’t be certain,” he admitted, “but I saw documents and equipment marked with a symbol shaped like this”—he drew a picture in the empty air with the forefinger of his right gauntlet—“and Asgard was named as a port of departure. It might have been a cover story of some kind, but I didn’t have any other leads. Once I’d found out all I could about Asgard, it seemed at least plausible that it might have been something excavated from the levels.”

“I could see how you might jump to that conclusion,” I said, thoughtfully. “If so, I bet the scavenger who found it was paid a pittance for the discovery. If someone’s bootlegging local technics, it needn’t necessarily be the Tetrax… and if Tetrax are involved, they might not be operating with the blessing of their own people. Black marketeering of every kind is rife in Skychain City, and it isn’t all run by the vormyr.”

“It doesn’t really matter any more,” he said, “but it seemed to be a potentially-sensitive item of information. I didn’t want to mention it, until…”

“Until you realised that I needed more convincing of your absolute honesty. I’m flattered. After all, while you have the guns and I don’t, my opinion of your honesty doesn’t matter much, does it?”

He didn’t give the flame-pistol back. I hadn’t supposed that he would.

“We’d better move on,” he said. “We won’t get to the terminus by sitting still.”

It was fine by me; I was feeling a little better. We set off along the track yet again.

“There’s energy to spare here,” I observed, after we’d gone a little way further. “The ecosystem may seem degenerate, and the artefacts we’ve seen so far are definitely long past their period of use, but there’s no obvious reason why evolution shouldn’t be progressive. Given that this is an artificial habitat—a big cage, in essence—the fact that the power’s still switched on means that things really ought to be working according to plan. I can’t believe that this is anybody’s plan, but it’s certainly not a plan that went awry millions of years ago. The humanoids who lived here must have suffered a fairly recent catastrophe. It’s possible, I suppose, that the heat fuelling the ecosystem is leaking in from other levels, rather than actually being laid on, but that’s not the kind of situation that could have endured for millions of years either. Are you following all this?”

“I understand what you’re saying,” he confirmed, “but it’s not the most urgent matter on my mind.”

“No, it’s not,” I admitted. “Okay, what do you want to talk about, Mr. Myrlin? Is it Mr. Myrlin, or is Myrlin your first name?”

“It’s my surname,” he said. “At least, it’s the surname the Salamandrans made up for me. My forenames are supposed to be Alexander James. I don’t really feel comfortable with them, now that I know the memories associated with them are fake.”

“But you’re content with Myrlin?”

“With a ‘y,’ ” he reminded me. “Or maybe a ‘why not’? Everybody needs a name, Mr. Rousseau.”

“You can call me Mike,” I said, generously.

“I’m not a magician,” he told me. “I’m not a monster either. It’s just a name, and I’m just a human being, like you.”

He was protesting too much, but who could blame him?

“It’s okay,” I assured him. “I’m not the one you need to convince.”

“The horizon’s getting brighter,” he said. “I can’t see any buildings yet, but I think we’re getting close.”

He was right. The “sky” was definitely brighter in the direction we were headed. Given the closeness of the horizon, the brightly-lit region couldn’t be far away. I increased my stride, although I couldn’t match his. He moved ahead of me effortlessly enough.

I wondered if I ought to change the radio channel while he was distracted, to make contact with the star-captain and reassure her that I was still okay—but I’d have had to explain why I’d been out of contact for so long, and where I was, and what I was doing…

All in all, it seemed simpler just to keep going. After all, in spite of what Myrlin had said a few minutes ago, the only thing that really mattered was the mystery of Asgard. It might not be the most urgent matter on his mind, but it was still the most urgent on mine.

As he drew further ahead, I tried to break into a run, but the cold-suit wasn’t built for it. He had the longer legs, so he was the one who came in sight of the city first—but I got there as soon as I could.

I was hoping for something that would really bend my mind, but I knew that I would be over-optimistic to expect it. I’d seen enough of the habitat to be pretty certain that we weren’t about to meet the humanoids who had built Asgard, or any equally exciting alternative.

The city was decaying. Like everything else in the ecosystem, it seemed to have been deteriorating for a long time, though not for millions of years. Walls were crumbling; doorways yawned; the streets were overgrown and littered. The one thing untouched by the effects of long neglect was the system of lights; no frail bioluminescence had ever held domain over this place; it was illuminated by countless incandescent bulbs, each one the size of a humanoid head. Whatever repair system had been entrusted with the job of keeping the network in good order was obviously fully functional.

What the light displayed to us, though, was quite the opposite.

There was no need for us to mount an assiduous search for the inhabitants of the city; they came to us, like night-flying insects drawn to a flame. The metaphor is more appropriate than it may seem, because there was nothing in their eyes to suggest that they were moved by an active curiosity. Their vacant expressions suggested that they were indeed being drawn by some inner impulse that they neither understood nor cared to suppress.

They were humanoid, but on a scale that I hadn’t seen among all the starfaring races represented on Asgard. Those who seemed to be fully-grown were no taller than the average human child of ten or eleven, and much more lightly built. They weren’t just thin; they were bony, as if they ought to have been carrying far more flesh than they actually were. Their silvery-grey skin was wrinkled, so that even the faces of the smallest ones—children, I assumed— seemed irredeemably ancient. They were clothed, but the majority wore little more than filthy loincloths. Even the most extravagantly dressed had only knee-length trousers and threadbare waistcoats without buttons or hooks.

They were drawn to us, but not all the way. They came to stand and stare, but they kept their distance. Because we were walking along the street, they formed up to either side of us in two long ranks. Not one of them was carrying anything—neither a weapon, nor a tool, nor a toy. There was no evidence that any of them had been doing anything when the news of our arrival began to spread. There had been no work going on, and no play either, so far as I could tell.

They jostled for position in their discreet fashion, but not violently. None spoke to us, and none made any gesture of greeting. They just watched us—and those we had passed by fell into step behind us, following us at a distance of eight or ten metres.

Myrlin said nothing, so I figured that it was up to me. I caught up with him easily enough now that he’d slowed down, and raised my arms. I gestured theatrically. “Can anybody talk?” I asked—in parole, although I knew perfectly well that none of them would have been able to understand it even if they could hear me; it just seemed more appropriate than English.

They didn’t react to the pantomime, let alone reply. I was at a loss.