Brian Stableford - Asgard's Heart

Under other circumstances, I might have devoted a little time to a more detailed consideration of the pollution of my dreams, but as soon as I opened my eyes such minor anxieties were displaced by more urgent concerns.

I realised that the nightmare about the snakes had considerable foundation in reality. I was trussed up tight by some kind of thick, sticky thread, wound so thoroughly about me that I was encased in a virtual cocoon, with only my head sticking out at the top. I struggled to free myself, but my arms were pinned against my side, unable to move. As I kicked against the confining bonds I found that my thighs were just as firmly held, but that I could wiggle my feet. My whole body swung as I tried unsuccessfully to bend at the waist, and I deduced that I must be suspended from above by a number of threads. I had the small consolation of being right way up, but that was the only blessing I could count in a dire situation, apart from the fact that I was still alive.

I tried desperately to shift my fingers, and contrived some small movement, but they were spread out and bound to my thighs. I must have dropped the needier, and could not tell whether I had ever managed to fire it.

My headlight was still working, and I could turn my head enough to play its beam around my gloomy surroundings. I found that I was inside some kind of chamber whose walls were dense thickets of grey, leafless branches. It seemed to be roughly spherical, but there were a number of thick threads running across the cavity, apparently rigid. These were coated in what looked like dried glue, which was occasionally gathered into globules shaped like drips that had solidified just before they began to fall.

The bottom part of the spherical enclosure was heaped with big white things like elongated footballs a metre long and as thick as a man’s thigh. The heap was partly covered by great gobs of slimy stuff. They looked to me like eggs, and I shuddered to think what manner of hungry offspring might be destined to hatch out of them.

Suspended from the roof of the chamber by strands of the dried gluey stuff were a number of neatly-wrapped packages which—I realised—must look pretty much like me. Like me they all had heads poking out at the top, but none of the heads was remotely humanoid. Every one of them was probably some kind of giant insect, but like the moths on the bottommost level of outer Asgard they didn’t have compound eyes, and that gave them something of the appearance of nocturnal mammals. Though their jaws and palps and antennae were arthropodan, their eyes were big and wide and innocent. Like me, these other prisoners were still alive—their antennae and their mouth-parts moved as though they were engaged in a sign-language conversation. Some, at least, stared at me while I stared at them, and they seemed—though it was surely an illusion—to pity me in my awful plight.

We were all installed in some kind of larder. We were fresh meat laid in to feed the babies that would soon emerge from the enormous eggs.

Whatever had come after us as we tried to fly down to the shell surrounding Asgard’s starlet had obviously caught me. It had brought me back to its nest. I wondered whether I ought to be grateful that it hadn’t simply torn me apart. Then I wondered how long it was likely to be before its eggs started hatching, and how long it was likely to take the larvae to devour me if they started with my feet and worked upwards. Then I remembered the difficulty the tentacled slugs up above had had when they had tried to unwrap their prey, and I wondered how long it would take these things to chew through the super-tough plastic in which I was encased.

I realised, with a small frisson of fear, that the life-support system hooked into the flesh of my neck could keep me alive for a long time, even if something was slowly eating me.

Then, belatedly, I wondered what had happened to the rest of our little party.

“Hey,” I said, tentatively, into the microphone. “Is anybody there?”

“Rousseau!” came the explosive reply. There was only one voice, and it was Susarma Lear’s.

“Susarma?” I echoed. “What happened to the others?”

“Jesus!” she said, “I thought you were all dead. What the hell are you playing at, Rousseau? Where are you?”

“I only just woke up,” I told her, in an aggrieved tone. “As to where I am, I wish I knew. But I’m in terrible trouble. Whatever grabbed me trussed me up like a mummy, and I’m hanging here in what looks horribly like a larder.”

“Can you see any of the others?” she demanded.

I took another careful look at my companions, but all the ones I could see were definitely non-humanoid.

“Not unless there’s someone directly behind me,” I said. “I can’t crane my neck that far. Where are you?”

Before she could reply, there was the sound of a long, sleepy groan. I knew it wasn’t her, and it didn’t sound like Myrlin or Urania.

“Nisreen?” I said. “Nisreen, is that you?”

There was a slight pause. Then he answered. “Mr. Rousseau?”

“Where are you, Nisreen?” I asked.

There was another pause before he said: “I am immobilised. I think I am hanging in mid-air. I can see several creatures whose heads resemble moths or beetles, wrapped up as I am in…”

“Shit,” said the colonel, interrupting him. “That means I have two of you to look for, and I don’t even know where to start. Talk about hunting needles in haystacks. I need that damned brainbox, but I haven’t heard a peep from Urania or Myrlin.”

“You’re free, then?” I said. It was hopeful news, though it was no guarantee of my salvation.

“Yeah,” she said. “Thing grabbed me. I would have blasted it but it had hold of me and I didn’t fancy joining it in free fall. I played dead until it landed—then I filled the bastard full of needles. I’m in the crown of some incredibly massive tree—must be a couple of miles high, as near as I can tell. My wings got damaged and I don’t dare to try to fly. There’s more light here than I could have guessed when we were looking down before the jump—glow-worms of some kind are here, there, and everywhere, and the trees seem to produce light themselves. I can see hundreds of the damn things in every direction, but the forest isn’t so densely packed that I can walk from the branches of one tree into the branches of another. It’s going to take me half a day to get down to the floor, unless I take a risk and jump, and I don’t know which way to go to look for either of you.”

It didn’t sound promising.

“Myrlin?” I said, hopefully. “Urania? Is anyone there?” If they’d been able to speak, they would have spoken already, and I knew it. Suddenly I felt horribly alone.

“A couple of other things have come after me, but they’re very slow,” said Susarma. “I figure I can make it down to the ground. But I can’t see anything that looks like a helmet-light, and I’m not sure I’d be able to tell it from the glow-worms if you were within sight.”

“Unfortunately,” I said, drily, “I’m pretty sure that we aren’t. I’m inside something that probably looks like a giant pumpkin from the outside. Nisreen is presumably in another one of the same kind. But we could be twenty or thirty kilometres away as easily as right next door.”

“Well what the hell am I supposed to do, Rousseau?” She sounded very annoyed, but I knew that it was just a cover-up. Really, she was feeling utterly and completely helpless.

“I don’t know,” I said, feebly. “I just don’t know.”

“It would seem,” said 673-Nisreen, “that I have little chance of extricating myself from the bonds which confine me.”

“In that case,” said Susarma, with a sigh, “we’re in trouble.”