Brian Stableford - Asgard's Heart

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Acclaimed science fiction author Brian Stableford (
,
) returns with the final book in his trilogy about a planet that contains thousands of worlds inside it—and the one man who will do anything to penetrate its secrets. The conflict between the Isthomi and Scarid races and the surface dwellers of Asgard had come to a halt, but not an end. Forces are at work on all sides to attempt to gain the upper hand in the struggle to control Asgard, for control of Asgard’s heart could mean total power over the planet itself, and all who live in it. At the middle of the struggle is Michael Rousseau, who must penetrate the very core of the planet itself—both in reality and in another dimension altogether—to save Asgard and all who dwell in it, before it’s too late.
This is a major revision of 1990 novel
.

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When I could see again, I thought I was right back to square one, because the thing that had me in its grip now was the monster that had pursued the nest-robber in that lunatic helter-skelter dive. I could see all of its hairy spiderlike head, which had black eye-spots here there and everywhere, and vast hairy mouth-parts. It clutched me tightly between two foreshortened forelimbs, with four great fingery tentacles wrapped tightly around my trussed-up torso.

“Rousseau!” complained my two-man audience, avid for news. “What’s happening?”

“I fell out of the frying pan,” I yelled—not knowing quite why I was yelling—"and now I’m in the fire!”

And then, abruptly, my stomach turned over again. It wasn’t because we had changed direction again, but because we had actually stopped. We were quite still, not because we were hovering, but because we had landed. Beyond the ugly head I could see the edges of the vast wings, which were vibrating gently. I tried to crane my neck around, to see if we were on the ground, or merely perched on a branch, but I couldn’t turn far enough.

I looked up into that huge unfathomable face, wondering which of those many eyes were focused on me. I didn’t know whether or not dinnertime had finally arrived, or whether the monster was just taking a breather before flying back up to return me to the larder, but I was just about past caring. It didn’t really seem to matter much any more.

The tentacles placed me very carefully on the ground, feet downwards, but didn’t let go. If they had, I’d have fallen over. Then something very weird snaked round the side of the monstrous head, and poked at me. It was long and thin and silvery, and for a moment I couldn’t for the life of me imagine what it might be. Then it began to slice through the threads that bound me, neatly and with awesome efficiency.

“Zut!” I whispered, in sheer amazement. “I think the bastard’s friendly!”

“What?” said Susarma Lear. She wasn’t shouting any more, and neither was Nisreen.

“I think I made it,” I told them, realising as I was cleverly released from my uncomfortable confinement that I really had made it. The pursuer that had pounced on the nest-robber hadn’t been an outraged victim of theft—it had been a would-be rescuer. No doubt it had been a predator among predators when first it got involved in the little melodrama, but it must have been the one predator that was taken completely by surprise by its prey. This beastie had managed to snatch the agile box which was carrying the Nine’s most versatile daughter, and instead of a square meal it had bought itself an artificial parasite which had run half a hundred synthetic nerve-lines through its chitinous hide to hijack its entire nervous system. The stupid monster had never had much of a mind of its own, but now it was under the dominion of a brain far superior to any other in this entire ecosystem.

Within a couple of minutes I was free, though the circulation to my feet had been inhibited and I found myself temporarily unable to stand up. I sat down on a woody ridge of some kind, and rubbed my ankles enthusiastically.

I explained to Susarma Lear and Myrlin what had happened, and told them to find a safe place to wait. “She’s got some way of homing in on us,” I said. “She can hear us even though she can’t talk back. She’s still in control of the situation. The monster’s taking off again now, Nisreen—I think it’ll come after you, this time. Don’t panic when you see it. Just let it bring you down. In no time at all, we’ll all be together again. We made it. It was a close one, but I think we made it! Hell and damnation, I think we’ve made it!”

My exultation died as quickly as it had come when I remembered, suddenly, that some of us hadn’t made it. Urania, who had been carrying Clio when she jumped, hadn’t been as lucky as me. Whatever had grabbed her had been looking for an instant meal instead of something to save for the little ones. Even Myrlin, whose giant size had presumably made him the tastiest morsel of us all, had found his fighting prowess inadequate to the slaying of such dragons as inhabited this vile region of Asgard’s inner space.

I looked around then, more soberly. I could still savour the triumphant sensation of having reached the legendary Centre, but there was a bitter undertaste that spoiled the experience. I also looked around for a place to hide. The flying spider which had Clio’s brain-box perched on its back couldn’t stick around to look after me, because it had more urgent work to do. It had saved me from two nasty fates, but there might be any number of greedy things lurking in the woods at ground zero, and I hadn’t so much as a dagger with which to defend myself.

There wasn’t much in the way of undergrowth down on the forest floor, and there didn’t seem to be anything too big or too terrible wandering around between the radiating root-ridges of the trees, which extended in every direction, fusing together wherever they met. The impression I got when I shone my light around was that the actual surface of the starshell was covered in a deep carpet of woody tissue, interrupted by very many pits and crevices of unknown depth.

I found a flat place that was as far from holes and cracks as I could manage, and crouched down, trying to keep a lookout in every direction. What I would do if anything hungry and vicious emerged from one of the pits I wasn’t entirely sure, but I was certainly ready to fight. Having come this far, I wasn’t about to be intimidated by any humble vermin from the local Underworld.

I waited patiently for the party to be reassembled. Although we had lost Myrlin and Urania, Clio was still in the game, fighting with all her electronic might. Even if 994-Tulyar and John Finn had made it past the flying nightmares, we were still four-to-two superior, and we had the cleverest player on the field. We still had to find a doorway into the starshell, but in the space of half an hour I’d come all the way back to the land of the living, having earlier been written off as so much sandwich meat stored in readiness for a birthday party. I felt as though I was on a miraculous winning-streak.

The Centre of Asgard, where the answers to all the puzzles in the universe were waiting to be discovered, seemed to be mine to possess, and I was irrationally convinced that nothing could stop me now.

34

I fell into a kind of trance while we moved through the mist. I could no longer see or hear, and the thoughts with which I laboured to maintain my stream of consciousness were fragile and sluggish. I could readily believe that I was dead, as something wearing the appearance of Amara Guur had told me I was. I could accept that this was only a kind of afterlife: a slow shriveling of consciousness, an evaporation of the human spirit.

Whatever power I had possessed to force that which was outside of me to conform to my expectations of space and matter was gone now. I was no longer conscious of my own medusal form, and could not feel the slithering of the snakes upon my head. I struggled against the apparent erosion of my being. Although I could no longer see, I tried to picture things in my mind’s eye. I was sure that my companion was still there, still engaged in the business of transporting me through Asgard’s software space, and I tried to reconstruct his image in the inner space of my soul. I reconstructed him as Saul Lyndrach, but then I realised that Saul was only an appearance that he had worn, based in a whim of my expectations. I tried to picture the entity differently, then, as a valkyrie carrying my packaged soul to the Valhalla in which it was destined to rest, awaiting the possibility of some enigmatic rebirth into the grey matter of a living brain. I did not doubt that I had earned my place in the paradise of warriors; although I had been an instrument rather than a mover in all that had passed since I had been so strangely born from the grey matter of my prototype, I had surely shown an abundance of courage.

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