Asgard's Secret

33

The gun that was being fired wasn’t a flame-pistol, nor even a needier. It was an old-fashioned crash-gun blasting away on automatic, sending out a veritable hail of bullets.

The moment the gunfire stopped, the insects started. When we had first heard them, they had obviously been in their restful mood—now, they were panicked. The bull-roarer sound was amplified a thousand times, into an appalling screech, which went on and on and on.

I clasped my hands to my eardrums, trying to keep out the dreadful noise, and Amara Guur did the same, although the needier was still tightly clutched in the fingers of his right hand. I tried to move back into the corridor from which we had come, but I hit the solid wall, and when I half-turned in surprise, I found that the portal was no longer there. The grey wall was solid and seamless, enclosing us.

We huddled against the smooth surface until the sound died away, the crescendo easing down until the former level of sound was restored. Only then was it possible to speak.

“That way,” said Guur, gutturally. He pointed away to the right, in the direction from which the noise of gunfire had come.

There was a narrow curved pathway running along the edge of the wall, where the plants did not quite extend themselves to the boundary of their allotted space. It was easy enough to follow, and we followed it at a run.

A hundred metres or so round the curve we found a nearly-naked Spirellan and a scantily-clad Kythnan female crouching over a bloodstained body. The body was wearing dark underclothes of a kind I had seen before—under a Star Force uniform. The Kythnan was Jacinthe Siani; I jumped immediately to the conclusion that the Spirellan, who was still holding a handgun pointed at the dead man, was my old acquaintance Heleb.

While Guur and I approached from one direction, two more vormyr were approaching from the other. I suspected that the trouble I was in had just become five times worse.

I went quickly to the dead man. It was Khalekhan—he had taken three shots in the chest and had almost been cut in half. He was holding a flame-pistol, which hadn’t been fired. I didn’t even reach for it, but Heleb grabbed me round the neck with a hairy arm, and held me tight until one of the newcomers had appropriated it. When he let me go, I remained kneeling, but I turned away from the body to look up at my captors.

“That is one of the persons who ambushed us,” said Heleb. “I saw him—just before those robots swarmed all over us.” I knew it was a case of mistaken identity, but I wasn’t about to say so.

“Was he alone?” growled Amara Guur. He sounded uncertain, perhaps because he hadn’t seen anyone at the ambush, but I knew that he could put two and two together once he realised the flame-pistols were Star Force weapons, not at all in the style of our present captors.

Heleb hesitated before he said: “I think so.”

“You think so!”

Heleb cringed before Guur’s obvious wrath. It takes a lot to make a Spirellan cringe. No human could ever achieve such an effect.

“I didn’t see anyone else,” the Kythnan put in.

Guur looked at the gun in Heleb’s hand. “How many shots do you have left?” he demanded.

Heleb released the clip from the butt of the gun and checked it. “Three,” he said. He didn’t sound very happy about it, and I could understand why. Nobody had anything on but the underclothes they’d been wearing beneath their cold-suits. The bastards who were keeping tabs on us had left several of us with guns, but they hadn’t provided any extra ammunition. Heleb had sprayed a dozen shots around when he’d let fly at Khalekhan, probably because he was habitually over-generous in the violence department. Now, he had only three bullets left.

He could do arithmetic too, if forced, and his counting must have told him that there might be three more starship troopers lurking in the bushes, plus one extra-large android.

I looked around at the shattered and wounded blossoms that had been blasted apart by the shots that had missed their target. Several of them were leaking viscous brown sap, and looked for all the world as if they were bleeding. One of the insect-like things had copped it too; its insides had been spread all over a net of green-and-purple leaves, grey and brown and sticky. The creature’s exoskeleton was more leathery than chitinous; only its six legs were rigid. The legs were still moving, jerkily, in the grip of some autonomic reflex, but while I watched they gradually slowed down.

It was fairly clear that the chances of our all getting together and declaring a truce until our present predicament could be sorted out were pretty damn slim. The star-captain wasn’t a forgiving sort, and one of her boys had just been killed. I could imagine how angry that would make her, even though Heleb was only getting his own back for what had happened up on three.

I realised, uncomfortably, that I was in a very unenviable situation. I was in the hands of the wrong party: a captive, or a hostage. I didn’t know why the mysterious observers had cast me in that role—because they had sure as hell given me to Amara Guur by arranging things the way they had—but I had no illusions about how difficult it was going to be to play the part.

“It doesn’t matter whether he was alone or not,” said Guur, pensively. “If the other humans are here, they must have heard the shots, and that racket which the shots provoked. But there are only three soldiers, and they seem as anxious to destroy the android as we are. Even if they have guns, we are stronger. We are five, and now that we have the flame-pistol, we are all armed.”

I checked his arithmetic, and was unsurprised to find it sound. Both of the vormyr who had come from the other direction had been holding needlers. One of them now passed the flame-gun to Heleb, who gave his own pistol to Jacinthe Siani. Clearly, she was counted among the combat troops, though it was equally clear that she was considered to be expendable. She didn’t protest the allocation, even though it was hot-headed Heleb who had left the gun dangerously undersupplied with firepower.

I came slowly to my feet. Guur guided me up against the grey wall, and stared into my eyes once again.

“Kill him!” said Heleb.

“Be quiet!” retorted Guur, in no mood to be told what to do. “Heleb, you will move along the wall a little way, in the direction from which we came. Have your gun ready. Seviir—guard the other approach. Kaat—watch the jungle.”

He paused while they moved to obey. Then he relaxed a little.

“Why are we here, Mr. Rousseau?” he asked quietly.

I didn’t imagine that he wanted a discussion on matters of metaphysical philosophy. His concerns were more immediate.

“They’re watching us,” I told him. “We can’t see them, but I’ll lay odds that they can see everything we do. Maybe they can eavesdrop on our thoughts—I don’t know. They want to see how we react, and I think your Spirellan friend may already have disappointed them.”

Guur drew his lips back from his teeth. He really did look half-wolf, half-crocodile, and his breath was worse now than it had been before.

“I don’t think we have many secrets,” he said. “You have small bruises on your neck, Mr. Rousseau, and so have I. My kind has a better sense of time than yours, and I know that twelve days have passed since I was captured. They have had time to examine us very thoroughly, and may have methods of examination better than any we know. Do you not agree?”

“It seems that way,” I conceded. He was ugly and evil-minded, but he was no fool.

“When you assume that they will be disappointed to see us fight,” he went on, “do you take it for granted that they are leaf-eaters, like the Tetrax?”

I gathered that he didn’t think too much of leaf-eaters. I resolved to remember that if ever I wanted to drive a vormyran wild with fury, that was probably the insult that would do it.

“I don’t know what they eat,” I replied. “But think of it this way: the inhabitants of Asgard probably didn’t know that their world had been discovered by people from elsewhere; they might not even have realised that the universe outside Asgard was inhabited. If you suddenly discovered that the outer layers of the big onion where you’d been hiding for millions of years had been invaded by inquisitive outsiders, what kind of people would you like them to be?”

He replied with a phrase in what I could only presume was his native tongue.

When I looked at him blankly, he translated. “It means,” he said, “ ‘things edible.’ Prey.”

“People aren’t prey,” I told him.

“vormyr have no word for ‘people,’ ” he told me. “We have a word for predators and a word for prey. Humanoids fit into one category or the other, as do all animal species.”

“You can’t operate that way in a civilized community,” I informed him, piously.

“So the Tetrax say,” he sneered. “Like all leaf-eaters, they practice the ethics of the herd: the ethics of cowardice, the denial of life and strength. There are two kinds of being, human. There are those whose way it is to eat, and those whose way it is to be eaten. The true law demands loyalty to the tribe, respect for fellow predators and the careful control of those to be eaten. We are prudent predators, human, but we never forget what we are. We move quietly and stealthily among the herds of the Tetrax and their kind, because herds of leaf-eaters can be very dangerous—but we know who we are. We never forget the true way of being, the true civilization.”

I had always assumed that gangsters were naturally stupid, and that those galactic races which preserved the morals of crocodiles were essentially simple-minded. Amara Guur clearly didn’t see things the same way. I’d always resented the fact that the Tetrax considered humans as barbaric as the vormyr, because I’d always considered it obvious that, whereas the vormyr really were barbaric, humans weren’t so bad; the vormyr obviously had a very different view of the matter—they presumably felt insulted to be put in the same category as us.

“That’s stupid,” I told him. “You can’t decide whether you owe someone moral consideration on the basis of what he eats; you have to do it on the basis of intelligence.”

I knew as soon as I’d said it that he wouldn’t be at all impressed. I could even think of several arguments he might use in response. After all, you could argue that what we are and how we think is very largely determined by what we eat. Maybe I could see both sides of the argument, because I was an unrepentant omnivore. But he didn’t want to continue the discussion at that level. To him, it was perfectly obvious that the opinions of any lousy bunch of leaf-eaters didn’t matter a damn, and his kind had retained that conviction even while they coexisted with dozens of herbivorous species in the galactic community.

No wonder, I thought, they get on so well with the Spirellans. No wonder everyone else hates their guts. No wonder they’ve established their own delinquent subculture in Skychain City.

I recalled that Sleaths were vegetarian. It no longer seemed surprising that they’d murder a man just to put me in the frame. To Guur, it wasn’t really murder, because a Sleath wasn’t worth an atom of moral consideration. I wondered what he thought of me.

“I suppose you think the ones who are watching us are good predators,” I said. “That they put us in this cage to see how good we are.”

Guur turned away, looking first at Khalekhan’s dead body, then at the luscious flowers of the forest.

“No,” he said, sadly. “They are leaf-eaters. I would like to think otherwise, but everything tells me it is so.”

“Everything?”

“Armour,” he said. “Armour is the investment of leaf-eaters. The predator is quick and sleek—his weapons are offensive. None but they who feed on seed and branch would armour a world as this one is armoured, and hide themselves as these ones hide. These are not hunters; they are those who would grow fat. Like the Tetrax, they would make their food in machines, dead and bland, vile and unclean. The universe is full of herds, who do not like the ones who truly live. But the law bids predators be prudent. The predator is clever, the predator deceives. The ethics of the herd preserve the herd, but only until the day when the hunter comes. This herd already knows what we are, and what we can do—it does not fear us, but it fears what we are. It fears the hunters who are still to come.”

“You could lay down your arms,” I suggested, “and try to soothe those fears a little.”

I knew it was useless. A real leaf-eater suggestion. He didn’t care what the watchers would think of him. He was a predator.

“The predator is clever,” I repeated subvocally. “The predator deceives. Like hell.”

“The star-captain’s a predator too,” I told him. “She just got back from wiping out an entire world. I couldn’t say for sure, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the Salamandrans were meat-eaters too. I may look like a leaf-eater, but the Star Force are right at the top of the food chain—take my word for it.”

He was still staring into my eyes, though his pupils had shrunk now to thin vertical slits, so that his eyes were a dark orange from rim to rim, like angry flames.

“Your kind is confused,” he told me. “You feel the strength of the true law, and yet you capitulate with the ethics of the herd. You seek a balance that cannot exist, and it weakens you. Your kind does not know whether it is a tribe or a herd, and I can use that. When the star-captain sees that I have you, she will hesitate. She will try to bargain for your life, and she will lose her own life in consequence of that hesitation.”

I thought he was probably wrong, but I didn’t know whether that was anything to be glad about. In fact, I didn’t know how to react at all, and in that uncertainty I suppose his point was proved. I was confused all right.

I salved my conscience by wondering whether that confusion was really such a bad thing. I remembered the Tetron theory of history that 69-Aquila had described to me, and wondered how it accommodated the kind of interspecific psychological differences that meant so much to Amara Guur. For all that they were leaf-eaters by nature, the Tetrax seemed predatory enough in their sanctioning of slavery and their notions of obligation. Behind their herdlike ethics there was real power and real strength.

Omnivores of the universe unite! I thought. Let’s show the hunters just how double-faced we can be!

“Someone moving,” hissed Jacinthe Siani, close to Amara Guur’s pointed ear.

The vormyran turned, quickly. He grabbed me by the arm, and pulled me away from the wall. He pushed me into a position between himself and the flowery forest.

“You will be my shield,” he murmured. “Keep perfectly still, and be silent. While you are useful, I will let you live. The prudent predator never kills without purpose.”

This ambiguous promise did not seem to me to be at all encouraging.

“Guur!” called a female voice from the jungle. “I want to talk!”

“I agree entirely,” Amara Guur called back. “We are very sorry about the unfortunate accident, which occurred when my foolish friend was overtaken by panic. We must all work together now. Please come forward.”

I glanced from side to side. The vormyran called Kaat was to one side of me, Jacinthe Siani to the other. Neither Heleb nor the other vormyran was visible now—they had each moved surreptitiously into the thick undergrowth.

If I had been a braver man, I dare say that I would have shouted out to tell the star-captain that she was being invited into the jaws of a trap. As it was, I simply could not find a voice.

I watched Susarma Lear—apparently unarmed—step into a small open space between two of the great coloured flowers, and my heart sank as I wondered whether this curious garden might rather be a kind of arena, where the emperors of Asgard staged their circuses. It was pretty obvious now just who the lions were—and I couldn’t help fearing that the poor benighted Christians might be unable to put up any kind of resistance at all.