Asgard's Heart (20 page)

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.

14

Freezing
fog closed in around the ship, so thick that I could hardly see the sluggish
waters lapping against the timbers of the hull. I had acquired a cloak to fold
about myself, black as night in colour, and when I pulled it tight it secured
such warmth within that the wind seemed to bite all the more fiercely into the
skin of my face.

"This is none of our doing," I said to the
woman who waited by my side, still nameless while I hesitated to think of her
as Athene. "What's happening?"

"It is the beginning," she said.
"Whatever forces are arrayed against us know that we have set forth. They
are trying to make themselves felt in the order which we are imposing on the
software space through which we move; they will soon begin their attempts to
disrupt our course."

I looked out into the grey mists, which swirled
eerily. It was as if the clouds which once had raced above our heads had slowed
in their paces, falling as they slowed. If we had tried to shape this world as
Midgard, home of men, then our enemies were trying now to draw us into Niflheim,
domain of the goddess Hel, for whom we name the place where the dead must go to
be punished for their sins. There were demons in those mists, and I could see
their faces, skull-faced and hollow-eyed as they struggled—fruitlessly as yet—to
make themselves coherent, to find the power to reach out and rake us with their
angry claws.

I knew that the creation-myths of the Norsemen
imagined that Niflheim had existed even before the earth—a world of fog and
shadows on the lip of the great abysm of space. But I could not remember how
the world which men would inhabit had been born from that formless chaos. I was
disturbingly aware of the fact that if that lesion in my memory was real, and
not merely a matter of my being temporarily unable to bring the matter to
mind, then this world might not know how its birth and maturation must proceed.

I played with the proposition that perhaps the god who
shaped the earth from which the human race emerged had only been attempting to
recall a dimly-remembered story, and that all the troubles which had plagued
mankind were the faults of his forgetfulness. I toyed with the notion that the
universe of infinite space from which I had come was itself only software space
within a machine of greater magnitude, its hard and unbreakable laws merely
the certainty of some finely-tuned intelligence which did not doubt the
propriety of its designs.

Here, though, playing with ideas might be dangerous,
and it was foolish of me to add to the unease I already felt.

I drew the collar of my cloak upwards, using its
warmth and softness to soothe my stinging cheeks and ears. Time passed, but its
passing seemed to leave little trace upon my memory, and I felt that I could
not reliably tell whether we had been sailing for hours or days. This was
dream-time, immune to measurement by clocks or by the beating of my silent
heart.

I had removed the quiver of arrows from my back, and
placed them beside the bow that rested on the wooden rail. The figures which
were carved in the wood of the balustrade were not pictures, nor the letters
of any alphabet which I knew, but I fancied them to be runes laying out some
powerful protective spell, so that this ill-fortressed deck might not easily be
stormed.

A more substantial shadow drifted from the mist high
above us, and swooped down, taking shape as a huge predatory bird, but it was
only a ghost—as I ducked beneath its course I felt no breeze as of a body
passing, and knew that there was as yet no danger in it. But from that moment
on, the higher fog seemed to fill with such raptorial shadows, which soared in
patient circles as if waiting for a solidity which they knew they must
ultimately discover. They seemed to suck the darkness from the swirling mists,
so that the background against which they moved grew gradually lighter, as
though there were a bright white sky behind the vaporous haze, struggling to
shine through.

Dare I wish for the glare of a bright sun
to melt these mists?
I
thought.
Should I chant some
magical verse to bid the fog begone?