Brian Stableford - Asgard's Heart

At least, I was then.

“But what happens to me?” I asked stubbornly. “This flesh and blood thing with a sore back and a growing anxiety about the dangers of going to sleep?”

It is possible,” she said, “that the ultimate fate of your fleshly self might depend on the success of your copy in making contact with the masters of the macroworld. But in any case, the plans which you have made may proceed as you wish.”

I had already guessed that she was going to say something like that. Think of it not as losing a body, but gaining a soul.

I felt a pressing need to stall her, and perhaps to be on my own for a few minutes, to give the matter further thought, though I could see no alternative but to bow to the pressure of inevitability. I could have told her to switch herself off, but for some reason I didn’t want to have to stare at the blank wall where she’d recently been.

“Are you sure you can make me tough enough to get by?” I asked her. “To judge by what I’ve just seen, software is very easy to kill.”

“The weapon which you saw Myrlin use is one which can only be fired from real space,” she said. “The entities which inhabit software space are by no means toothless, but they will not be able to project disruptive programming into you quite as easily as that.”

Which didn’t mean, I noted, that they couldn’t shoot destructive programming into my software self—only that they’d find it difficult.

“Is there a constructive version of the weapon?” I asked her—on the spur of the moment, because the thought had only just occurred to me. “Can you transmit programmes through the air with a magic bazooka, instead of having to use wires the way our mysterious friends did when they injected Medusa into my brain?”

“In theory, yes,” she said. “But it is difficult in the extreme. The receiving matrix, whether organic or inorganic, would have to be very hospitable to the incoming programme—otherwise the effect would be purely disruptive. An alien programme really needs a physical bridge of some kind, like the artificial synapses that were in place during your contact, if it is to be efficiently intruded.”

It was interesting as a hypothetical question, but it didn’t really connect up with the immediate problem, which was to reconcile my reluctant mind to the prospect of a peculiar duplication.

“I need some fresh air,” I told her. It was a stupid thing to say, because the air outside my igloo was not in any way fresher than the air within—I just felt that I needed to get outside.

It turned out to be a stupid thing to do, too, because no sooner had I opened the door than John Finn stuck the business end of a needier into my windpipe and told me that if I didn’t do exactly as he said various vital parts of my fleshy self would be scattered hither and yon amidst all the unpleasant debris which already littered the area.

“Look, John,” I said, patiently. “I’m aware of the fact that you have a little learning difficulty, but even you must remember that we’ve been through all this before. If you wanted to exercise your death-wish, you could have done it this morning.”

“Personally,” he said, “I’d just as soon kill you, but I’m assured that for some stupid reason you’re considered to be quite valuable. No other hostage will do as well. Just behave yourself, and your freaky friends in the walls will make sure that no harm will come to you. No mindscramblers, no clever tricks at all—they’ll just give us what we want, rather than risk any harm coming to you. See?”

“What do you want?” I asked, flatly.

“We want to get the hell out of here before those killing machines come back. We want that armoured truck the magic Muses have been building for you.”

While he talked he urged me into action. He came round behind me but he kept the needier jammed into my neck, so that if anything unexpected happened he could blow my brains out without any delay at all. I allowed him to shove me where he wanted me to go.

“Whose bright idea was this?” I asked.

“Just keep walking,” he told me. The light was still gloomy, and there appeared to be nobody else about, but once we were away from the domes a couple of other armed men fell into step with us. I wasn’t in the least surprised to see that they were Scarid soldiers. They were the only people around who were stupid enough not to realise that they were safer behind the Isthomi’s defences, and that once outside them there’d be no way of getting all the way back up to level fifty-two.

“You were bloody lucky to get away last time,” I told him in a low voice. “The colonel’s been regretting that she didn’t shoot you ever since. She’ll be ever so grateful for a second chance.”

“She isn’t going to get it,” he said optimistically.

There was a car waiting for us in one of the Nine’s labyrinthine tunnel-systems, and I gathered that one of Finn’s friends had already made it clear to the Nine exactly what they wanted done. The Nine had apparently decided to play ball. I could only assume that they really did consider me a uniquely valuable asset, and were prepared to hand over the robot transporter rather than risk my being damaged. It also occurred to me, though, that the Nine seemed to have lost interest in the transporter and in the possibility of getting my fleshly self to the Centre by conventional means. So much for my plans going forward as I had intended.

“I suppose I should have asked the Nine to take care of that bug you planted,” I remarked, as I took my place in the front seat of the car. “You’d never have figured out that I was so important to the Nine if you hadn’t listened in.”

He sat directly behind me, never relaxing the pressure of the gun on my skin. It reminded me very strongly of the first time I had visited this level, when Amara Guur had treated me in exactly the same fashion. The Nine had supplied Guur with a weapon that wouldn’t fire, looking after me even though I wasn’t nearly as valuable then as I seemed to be now. It would be too much to hope, though, that the weapon which Finn had now was useless. Someone had probably tried it out during the morning’s skirmish.

Another Scarid came out of the shadows to join us in the car, making three in all; they seemed desperately morose. They were all officers, but none of them seemed to be assuming command. I was puzzled, because I couldn’t see why they’d consent to taking orders from a jerk like Finn. I could understand how they might feel very much out of their depth, and how eager they must be to get home. I also knew how this kind of strong-arm tactic was very much their way of doing things—but it still didn’t add up that they would turn in their hour of need to a no-hoper like Finn.

My puzzlement increased when a fourth figure came towards us from the direction of the village. It was Jacinthe Siani. She, of all people, should have known better than to get involved in this, but she was under Scarid orders now, and they probably hadn’t given her a choice. She took her place behind me.

“If you try to take the transporter out,” I said, speaking in parole rather than English so that the Scarids could understand, “you’ll very likely run into more of those things that attacked us. The Nine have defences now—here you’re safe. You could be going to your deaths if you try to go up through the levels, even if you can figure out a route.”

“Shut up, Rousseau,” said Finn, also in parole. “We know what we’re doing.”

I shut up. After all, I told myself, why the hell should I care if John Finn and a bunch of Scarids wanted to get themselves killed? There was no reason at all—except that I didn’t want them to take my transporter. If I was ever going to get to the Centre, I’d need it.