Brian Stableford - Asgard's Heart

“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.

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.