Authors: Brian Stableford
When I woke up again I felt anything but
good. My stomach was queasy, my head was spinning and I had a dreadful metallic
taste in my mouth. My eyelids felt as if they were glued down and the muscles
in my legs were aching.
Nevertheless, I managed
to sit up, and after a while I opened my eyes, blinking in order to clear my
vision.
I was still in the
same place. The sky had stopped flickering, and was now presenting a
reasonable simulation of twilight. Some of the lights were on, but most were
off. The forest was still, and very quiet. I could still smell smoke, but the
odour was faint and distant.
Susarma Lear was
stretched out on a gigantic leaf, her head cradled by a purple flower. She was
quite unconscious, and made no response at all when I shook her sleeve.
I looked at the
patch of open ground where Myrlin's body should have been lying.
The body wasn't
there.
Nor was the patch
of ground.
I wasn't altogether
surprised. Dazed as I was, I remembered seeing the body flicker before I went
out for the count, and the suspicion must have been born in my mind at that
moment that all was definitely not as it seemed.
I checked Jacinthe
Siani, who responded no better to my half-hearted attempt to rouse her than the
star-captain had. I could also see Seme, similarly dead to the world, though
not actually deceased.
I coughed a few
times, trying to get the awful taste out of my mouth, and then leaned against
the wall, trying to draw strength from its cool solidity.
Myrlin came out of
the bushes. He was dressed exactly as he had been when I had seen him shot
down, but his big hairy torso was quite intact, and though the dim light made
him seem a little greyer than I remembered him, he looked a good deal healthier
than I did.
It was the first
time I'd been able to get a good look at his face, without an obscuring visor.
His features weren't rugged at all. He was round-faced with skin that looked
very soft. He was like a vastly overgrown baby, except for the big nose.
"Hello, Mr.
Rousseau," he said softly.
"That damned
lion," I said, with a certain amount of irritation. "You weren't
testing
me.
You were testing the illusion."
"They weren't
entirely sure that it would work," he said. "It's a new trick they
worked out specially for the occasion. You had me worried when you seemed to
have it figured out, but I thought it went well enough. I think it worked on
the star-captain. She'll be quite convinced that she killed me. A cathartic
experience, I'm sure. She's been under a lot of stress."
"The others
are really dead, though."
"Oh yes,"
he said, mildly. "Amara Guur and his men are really dead. She
knows
they're dead—and that will help to convince her that I'm dead too, should she
begin to doubt it. I didn't have any qualms about letting them die—they
tortured Saul Lyndrach, and caused his death. They'd have killed me too, if it
hadn't been for the fact that the tranquillisers they pumped into me weren't as
effective as they expected. There are advantages in being a giant."
"You
orchestrated the whole thing?"
"Mostly. I didn't
have a completely free hand. They went along with most of what I suggested."
"They?"
"The people
who live here. They seem to be a little shy—I haven't actually met them in the
flesh yet. But they have very sophisticated machines."
I shook my head,
still trying to get back the good feeling I'd had when I woke up only a couple
of hours before. An awful lot had happened during those brief hours.
"Is the fire
out?" I asked, deliberately choosing a question of marginal relevance. I didn't
feel up to asking the big ones yet.
"Yes. It
didn't do too much damage. It can all be repaired."
"That's a
relief." The sarcasm wasn't really called for, but I figured that I might
be excused.
There was a pause,
while Myrlin looked down at the prostrate star-captain, who had a more peaceful
expression on her face now than I'd ever seen there before.
"I don't think
they actually believed me," said Myrlin.
"What didn't
they believe?" I countered.
"They didn't
believe that everyone would start trying to kill one another. They didn't
believe that you could all wake up in this bizarre situation, and promptly
start figuring out how to stage a massacre."
"Some people
have no imagination," I observed drily.
"They don't do
any killing themselves," he said. "I suspect they don't do much
dying either. They seem to have their world and their lives pretty much under
control."
"Bully for
them," I said. "How is it, exactly, that
you
seem to be the
one calling the shots around here?"
"I made a deal
with them."
"So I gather.
But what made them strike a deal with you?
Why not the star-captain? Why not Amara
Guur? Why not me?"
"My interests
and theirs appear to coincide," he said. "I need a
home ... a life ...
a place to belong. I was
more than ready to volunteer to stay here, and help them out."
"Help them out
with what? Their world and their lives are under control, remember?"
"They need
time to think, Mr. Rousseau. Time to decide what to do—about the
universe."
"About the
universe?" I had the feeling that I was getting out of my philosophical
depth. It was all becoming a little too surreal.
"They didn't
know the universe existed," he told me. "They thought Asgard was all
that there was . . . layer upon layer,
ad infinitum.
Now,
they have to come to terms with the idea of the surface ... of infinite space .
. . they have to figure out what it all means, in terms of who they might be,
and where they might be, and why."
"They're not
the builders, then? They didn't make Asgard and they don't know what it's
for?"
"No. They're
not the builders. They know a little bit about a few hundreds of levels, but
they're no wiser about what's in the centre than you are. They don't seem to do
a lot of exploring themselves, but they do have robots. They'd never been up
Saul's dropshaft before, though. They had no idea what was up on three. Now
they know about the cold levels . . . about the galactic community . . . about
Tetrax and vormyr and the human/Salamandran war. I get the impression that
they're a little anxious about it all. I suspect that they're not very
aggressive, and that they think what just happened here is rather
horrible."
I thought it was
rather horrible myself, but I didn't bother to say so.
"So you're
going to stay and teach them about the universe," I said, instead. I smiled
sardonically, because it was, in its way, a wonderful irony. He was newborn,
and all that he knew about the universe, and about humanoidkind, had been
pumped into him by some kind of machine. He wasn't
real.
Maybe that was
why these mysterious underworld- dwellers liked him so much.
"Why'd you
stage the bloodbath?" I asked him. "Why not simply have your friends
put Guur and his bully boys in cold storage? They must have given us a pretty
thorough going- over while they had us in their clutches for twelve whole days.
They didn't have to wake anyone up at all. They could have used us as founts of
information about the universe, then thrown us out with the garbage, if they
wanted to."
"I thought
you'd like to go back, Mr Rousseau. I wanted to do you a good turn. The
star-captain too, perverse as it may seem. I don't really have anything against
her, you understand. She couldn't help but see things the way she did."
"You steered
me straight into Amara Guur," I pointed out. "He could have killed me
any time."
Myrlin picked
something up from the ground. It was the needier that Seme had given to me so
that I could wave it at Jacinthe Siani. I assumed that it must have been the
one which Guur had carried. He pointed it at the sky, and pressed the trigger.
Nothing happened.
"It's not
loaded," I said.
"It's
loaded," he said. "It just isn't capable of firing."
Strangely, I felt
bitterly disappointed. A little while ago, I'd done the only heroic thing which
I'd ever done in my entire life. I'd pulled off a real
coup,
turning the tables on one of the most evil bastards in the known universe—but
his gun had already been fixed. The poor fool hadn't had a chance. All the
heroics suddenly seemed very silly.
"The gun that
killed Khalekhan wasn't useless," I pointed out coldly.
"Khalekhan was
a casualty," he said. "As Guur pointed out, it was a stupid
misjudgement on Heleb's part. He was a combat soldier. I didn't have anything
against him, but I'm not about to cry over his passing. It was part of the
price that had to be paid, if any of you were to go back to the surface. You're
the only one I'd care to trust, Mr. Rousseau, and I'd be careful even then.
The bloodbath wasn't entirely my idea; as I said, the people I'm with now
weren't entirely convinced, despite what they distilled from your software
while you were asleep, what kind of beings we really are. Now they know. But I did
help them plan it all, and I was ready and willing for people to be killed. I was
also quite prepared to be unsporting, and give Amara Guur a disabled gun. I guess
I'm no better than the rest of you—a pretty good imitation of humankind,
wouldn't you say?"
Too
goody
I'd have said.
"Why did they
agree to let me go, if they're as anxious as you say?" I inquired.
"Why are they letting you tell me all this?"
"They don't
particularly want to keep you. They know that the secret of the dropshaft can't
be contained indefinitely, given that you left the notebook on the surface.
They don't see any harm in letting you out. Of course, you'll never find the
way down here again. They'll block the way permanently. The Tetrax can have the
levels all the way down to the bottom of Saul's shaft, but that's the floor so
far as they're concerned—until they learn a great deal more about how the
native technics work.
"As for this
little conversation—I suppose it might be seen as self-indulgence on my part.
But there is a utilitarian aspect to it. You'd have realised that I wasn't
dead. You were the only one who could figure it out, but after the lion, I was
sure that you would guess what had happened. I don't think you'd ever have
managed to convince the star- captain, even if you'd tried, because she wants
me to be dead so very badly. But I'd rather you didn't even try to convince
her. I'd rather you let her go on believing what she believes, quite
unchallenged. I'd rather you were a coconspirator, Mr. Rousseau. I want you to
be on my side. You
are
on my side, aren't you, Mr Rousseau?"
I looked at him
tiredly. "You can call me Mike," I said, with a slight croak in my
voice.
"That's what I
thought," he said. "And you do want to return to the surface, don't
you? To claim your big reward? To be the man who found the way to more than a
hundred new levels?"
I hesitated for a
moment. But then I nodded. "Yes I do," I said.
"That's what I
thought. I'm sorry."
"Sorry?"
"Sorry you
can't stay. I think I might get the bigger rewards."
"Like
what?"
"Immortality .
. . that sort of thing. As I said, I haven't even met my hosts in the flesh
yet, but I get the idea that they're very clever people. Very clever
indeed."
There wasn't much
to say in reply to that.
Another thought
struck me, though I didn't voice it. These people didn't know what was in the
centre—they had no more idea about who built Asgard than I did—but if anyone
could find out, they could. They were threatening to make sure that the Tetrax
never would, but now
they
knew about the universe, their own curiosity was sure to
have been stimulated. I was being turned back from
my
journey to the
centre, but Myrlin was only just starting his. He had every chance of getting
there, whether he became immortal or not.
I wondered whether
I could revoke my hasty decision to return. I wondered whether I, too, might
strike a bargain with these desperately shy, fabulously clever folk. But they
hadn't taken the trouble to ask me. They hadn't even bothered to open up a
conversation with me. Whatever their probes had extracted from my numbed brain
during those twelve days that I had lain on their dissecting slabs, it hadn't
made them want to talk to me. They obviously chose their friends with the
utmost care. They were quite possibly the worst snobs in the whole of Creation.
"Why are
things so bad in the upper levels?" I asked him, suddenly anxious that the
interview was coming to its end before I had asked any of the important
questions. "Why were the top levels evacuated? Why has the one we came
down been allowed to run wild? Why have its people degenerated?"