Brian Stableford - Asgard's Heart

He paused. It would have been a good time to slip in a few clever questions, and my condition was becoming more infuriating by the minute. I remembered only too clearly, now, what the invader had said about Tulyar’s mission— and what he had said about the willingness of the gods of Asgard to see the macroworld destroyed rather than lose possession of it. It was a point regarding which I would have liked to seek some reassurance.

“We still may need your help,” he said, soberly. “The contest is not yet ended, and there are moves which might still be made. I am sorry for the pain and difficulty which you have so far suffered, and sorry that there may be more yet to come. We do not like to use you in this fashion, without your being able to understand what we are doing, or how, or why, but we sincerely believe that you would consent, if you could understand what it is that we require of you. Our purpose is the salvation of the macroworld— and the preservation of your community of worlds.

“What I will do now is to take you from this place to another—into the very heart of Asgard’s software space, where my kind is now recovering its dominion. The journey should not be very hazardous, but we dare not underestimate our enemy’s ability to hit back. Then, we will do what we can to remake you, before the time arrives when we must make what use of you we can. We will reconstruct you—and though we will make of you, as we did before, an instrument, we will nevertheless preserve for you the persona which is your essential self. Be patient, I beg of you. We must go now, but as we go, I will try to offer you as much of an explanation as I can, and as much of an explanation as I think you can understand.”

With that, he reached out a gnarled but sturdy hand, and gently pried me loose from the stone hand that held me.

I wished fervently that I could speak, or make some sign to say that there was indeed a great deal more that I wanted to know—a great deal more that I wanted explained. What I wanted more than anything else in the world just then was to be able to ask questions—not just because there was so much I wanted to be told, but also because I wanted some way to test what he was going to tell me. After all, he said he was on the side of the angels, and he was doing his very best to act like a good guy, but how did I really know that I could trust him?

It was all very well for him to say flattering things about my courage and powers of endurance. I had been exerting them mainly on my own behalf. Sure, I wanted Asgard to be saved. I wanted the lights switched on again and everything returned to what passed for normal in these parts. But in view of the deceptions to which I had already been subject, how could I be certain that it was this masquerader and his pals who had that end in view? How could I be certain that they weren’t the ones who wanted the macroworld blown to smithereens?

If I was going to be used yet again, as a go-between who didn’t even understand my own make-up, I wanted to be sure that I wasn’t going to be the Judas Goat who would lead my other self and all his allies to the slaughter.

But I couldn’t be sure.

I couldn’t be sure of anything.

In the meantime, the thing that was wearing the face of my late, lamented friend tucked my gorgon’s head beneath his phantom arm, and strolled off into a gathering mist of pure confusion.

I dreamed that my body was wrapped around by snakes, whose warm polished scales slid over my skin as they writhed and coiled around me. I was not squeezed by the coils, for these were not constrictors bent on crushing me to death, but I was held tight, unable to move. I could see their eyes glowing in the darkness, and where their heads touched me I could feel the slick forked tongues caressing me… tasting me…

That dream dissolved, and took me back to one which had visited me before:

My dream of Creation, in which the life born in the great gas-clouds which drifted in interstellar space still poured into those tiny lighted wells which were solar systems, enfolding those tiny fragments of supernova debris which were planets, finding niches in the dense atmospheres of gas-giants and the oceans of water-worlds.

The cosmos was so vast that all the matter which was in it was no more than a storm of dust blown about by uncaring energy-winds, and the molecules of life such a tiny fraction of matter that all life—all that great universal ecocloud—was no more than a haunting phantom or shadow, tenuous and precarious. And then there came again that other: the thing which was not life yet threatened life, which I could not quite bring into my framework of understanding.

This time, my perspective continued to alter, so that I lost sight of the ocean of stars which was the visible universe, and saw instead the molecules of life engaged in the game of evolution, building themselves into more complex cells, and then into multi-cellular beings, adding new orders of magnitude to their complexity. Now I saw the pattern of life, as it extended through the vast expanding universe of space, as if it were a prodigious tree spreading its roots and branches wherever there was room for them to go, producing gorgeous flowers and fruits wherever they touched a world which provided the vital elementary seeds around which such flowers and fruits might flourish. I saw Earth as one such fruit, Tetra as another, and all the galaxies as branches bearing flowers and fruit in abundance: fruit glowing with internal light, while the flowers sang and filled infinity with their scent.

As well as its flowers and its fruits, the tree was swarming with commensal creatures of every kind—with insects and birds, frogs, and tunneling worms. Though many of these were parasites which took their sustenance from the tree and left damage in their wake, they were no real threat to the continued existence and health of the tree, and I knew that what damage they did was only part of a continuing process of death and transfiguration, wherein a kind of balance was sustained.

But then I saw that there was another kind of blight in the tree—a canker which reached out its desiccating grip wherever it could to turn the flowers leprously white and shrivel the fruit into dry husks. Many of the canker’s instruments mimicked the population of the tree, appearing as tiny parasites—whatever kind of force this was, it could produce pseudo-life of its own, but in so doing it denied the possibility of balance and of permanence, for this blight was something which could only destroy or be destroyed. It permitted only two ends—either the blight would be obliterated, or the tree would die. This was true of the whole, and of each and every part that the blight had reached. There were many branches yet untouched—their flowers beautiful and fresh, their fruits luscious and sweet—but there were many that had already withered, and others where resistance held the canker’s instruments in check. Ultimately, the fate of the entire tree was at stake, and any one of these tiny battles might prove crucial to the destiny of the whole…

Then I woke up again, with the desperately tired feeling that it had all happened before, and would all happen again. I was no longer master inside my own skull, and every time the fragile hold of consciousness was shaken loose, my imagination was up for grabs, ready to be shot full of whatever psychic propaganda was coded into the rogue software that was gradually increasing its authority within my brain.

And yet, I was still me. My essential self hadn’t been blighted or damaged at all.

At least, not yet. There was no way of knowing how long a thing like the one which had taken over Tulyar might lie dormant, if it was prepared to bide its time.