Brian Stableford - Asgard's Heart

It didn’t take long to get to the manufactory where the Nine had been putting the robot together. It was even less well-lit than the residential area, and it seemed unnaturally still and silent. All the mechanical arms projecting from the walls were idle, mostly drawn back and folded. The transporter stood in lonely isolation in the middle of an open space. It seemed to be finished, and it had the special gleam of something brand new and never used. It was much bigger than the truck I’d used for work on the surface, but it didn’t look so very different. Most of its elaborations were internal—although it did have a turret on top with three different guns mounted on it.

“We’re going to drive to a certain place,” Finn told me, “where we have a couple of friends waiting. Then we’re going to give you something to hold—it’ll be a bomb, but don’t worry about it going off, because I’ll have the detonator safe about my person. Once we’re out of the habitat, with Asgard’s nice thick walls separating us, we’ll be safe, and so will the bomb. We’ll never see one another again.”

I reflected that it wasn’t all bad news.

Finn and I climbed into the front seat of the transporter, while the Scarids got into the cab behind us. There was a set of manual controls, although the robot was really intended to drive itself, or to interface with another silicon-based intelligence. The manual controls had been designed with a human driver in mind, though, and followed a common stereotype. I had no difficulty in starting up and driving off into the tunnel ahead. It was only just wide enough to accommodate us, but there was no problem in following it. I didn’t have to make any turnings—the Nine had obviously been apprised already of the destination that Finn had in mind, and they were happy to open up a route that would take us directly there.

There didn’t seem to be any point in further exercising my limited powers of persuasion, so I did exactly what Finn wanted me to do, taking comfort from the fact that I was probably driving him to the doorstep of his appointment with death.

When we stopped, I couldn’t see anything much outside except for a circular space with an empty shaft above it. I assumed that it was a platform that could lift the truck up to the next level—maybe several levels.

We remained in the cab while Finn carefully taped a cylindrical object to the part of my back that was most difficult for my hands to reach. It was no bigger than Myrlin’s thumb, but if it really was an explosive device—and I was quite prepared to believe that it was—it could do a lot of damage.

Finally, Finn ordered me to step out on to the platform. It wasn’t until I got down that I saw the other waiting figures, away to the rear. They came slowly forward, and I got two shocks, the bigger one hard on the heels of the smaller.

The first shock was that they weren’t the Scarid soldiers I had been expecting—they were Tetrax. The second shock was that the one who led them out was 994-Tulyar. I knew him well enough to be sure that I could recognise his features, even though he had an expression on his face that I had never seen before. He looked at me with glittering eyes that somehow caught the light shining from the walls. With the empty, unlit shaft above me, I felt as though I were standing in a pool of darkness.

“They told me you were missing,” I said to him. When he made no reply, I realised that something was very wrong. I wondered briefly whether I could possibly have made a mistake in identification, but I knew in my heart that I hadn’t. This was Tulyar—or, perhaps, had been Tulyar. I wondered whether the folklore of the Tetrax featured such beings as zombies.

He still didn’t say anything. He just stared at me, with what seemed to be an animosity beyond my understanding. But then he glanced sideways, quickly and furtively, and I felt a sudden flood of relief. I was sure that he wanted to kill me, but he knew that if he did, the Nine would strike back at him.

I realised that there was more to this crazy affair than the feeble-minded desire of a handful of Scarid bully-boys to get back home. Finn wasn’t just trying to escape. He was playing the mercenary again, figuring that he might get a greater reward from a grateful Tetron high-number man than he could expect from Star Force justice or the hospitality of the Isthomi.

I looked sideways at one of the Scarid officers. “You think this guy is going to take you to meet your ancestors, don’t you?” I said, with faint disgust. “You don’t intend to go up—you’re going down.”

“Shut up, Rousseau,” said Finn, unceremoniously. He took the gun-barrel away from my neck for the first time. “Get over there, out of the way.”

“John,” I said, feeling at least a quantum of genuine concern for him. “It’s not Tulyar. I know it looks like Tulyar, but he wouldn’t pull a stunt like this. Something else has colonised his brain—it got into him when he tried to interface with the Nine and got caught up in their close encounter with something dangerous. He’s been taken over— possessed by some software demon.”

It was no good. Finn and the Scarids wouldn’t believe me, and I couldn’t really blame them. They didn’t know about Medusa’s head, and they couldn’t begin to understand what kind of war was being waged inside Asgard. 994-Tulyar didn’t move or speak. He just waited. I wondered if I could appeal to his better nature, thinking that perhaps the real Tulyar was still in there somewhere, still potentially able to speak or think or act if only he could figure out the way.

“Tulyar?” I said. “Do you know what’s happening to you?”

It was a stupid question. This wasn’t just a misguided Tetron following some suggestion that had come to him in a dream; it was another kind of person entirely. Whatever had intruded upon the Tetron’s mind had done a far more comprehensive wrecking job than the thing that had got into mine. Assuming that what was in me wasn’t just a delayed-action seed of destruction, I was a lucky man. Looking at Tulyar, or what had once been Tulyar, gave me a little more confidence in the supposition that I had been drafted to the side of the angels.

“Do as you’re told, Rousseau,” said Finn coldly, his voice grating with evident strain. “Just get out of the way, and everybody will be safe and sound.”

Uncomfortably aware of the thing taped to my back, I moved away from the circular platform and into the mouth of the tunnel through which I’d brought the truck. My gaze flicked over the three Scarids and the two other Tetrax— neither of whom, I was oddly glad to see, was 673-Nisreen. They were all showing signs of anxiety, but they all seemed committed. I knew how sensitive the Scarida were about the question of their hypothetical ancestors, who had supposedly laid on the power that had recently been switched off, for the benefits and greater glory of the Scarid empire. I knew, too, how strong the Tetrax were on matters of obligation, and how nearly impossible it would be for men placed under Tulyar’s orders to defy him, even though they could plainly see that there was something very weird about him.

“Let them go, John,” I said to my fellow human, figuring that the brotherhood of man ought to count for something. “ Stay here.”

His reply was brief and obscene. He’d never liked me, and that dislike had got in the way of his common sense on more than one occasion.

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” I said, looking now at Jacinthe Siani.

“Do you?” she countered. “Does any of us?”

There wasn’t time to have a debate about it. The Scarids were already loading themselves into the rear part of the cab, and whatever it was that was wearing Tulyar’s body followed them. The remaining Tetrax got into the front seat, while Finn went last of all. The door shut behind them.