Brian Stableford - Asgard's Heart

Somehow, that particular enigma seemed much less important now. The problem was not to interpret Asgard, but to save it.

We moved more slowly now than we had before, taking shorter strides. I tried to keep one eye on Susarma’s headlight, and the other on the rubbish which threatened to trip me up, with occasional glances into the gloom ahead, to make certain that nothing nasty was looming up there.

We had been on the move for about half an hour—just long enough to enable me to get thoroughly relaxed, when things began to happen again, and to happen all too quickly.

There was a sudden blaze of light from somewhere up ahead of me, which burst upon my retina like a bomb and blinded me. I knew that I was an easy target, and I let my brief Star Force training take over, diving away to my right to get behind one of the platform-wombs. A powerful beam of light chased me as I dived, and I didn’t hang about when I landed—rolling and keeping low, I wriggled away through the wreckage of machinery, trying to lose myself among the shadows.

I heard the crash-gun fire, and one beam of light disappeared—but then I realised that there were at least three.

I heard another gun go off—a needier spitting its tiny slivers of metal. The crash-gun boomed again.

Then there was silence. I tried desperately hard to locate some movement around the lights, hungry for a target.

And then I heard something very strange.

“Oh shit,” said Susarma’s voice. “I almost… Why the hell didn’t you…”

She didn’t sound angry—but she did sound very surprised. And her voice was cut off with a sudden, sickening abruptness, swallowed up by the brief growl of a needier.

I knew that someone had shot her.

But why, if she’d seen the other coming, hadn’t she shot first? Had she thought it was me?

I ducked down beneath one of the pillars, trying to hide as best I could, and trying furiously to think. Clio couldn’t hear us; Susarma Lear was down; 673-Nisreen didn’t even have a gun. It was all down to me, and I didn’t have a clue what was happening. I tried to look over the top of the plastic bubble, hoping that my eyes were ready to see, but in the glare of whatever light it was that promptly picked me out, I could see nothing but a vast shadow heading towards me. The shadow had a headlamp just like mine, and mine must have got in his eyes just as his got in mine, though they were feeble enough by comparison with the spotlight.

I didn’t have any trouble recognising him. I couldn’t see his face, but I would have known his bulk anywhere.

It was Myrlin—who was not, after all, being digested in some hideous insect’s stomach, but looming above me like a great big bear. I had half raised the needier, but I stopped myself from shooting, and remembered far too late what Susarma Lear had been saying when she was taken out. Enlightenment didn’t save me.

It was Myrlin’s body, but it wasn’t Myrlin’s mind. As he shot me in the belly, and sent my body hurtling backwards to collide with one of the platforms, I reflected that the Isthomi had made a bad mistake in judging that Myrlin hadn’t taken aboard any mysterious software during that fateful moment of contact. And so had I.

Whatever had got into Tulyar had got into him, too. It had simply lain dormant, biding its time—and by that strategy, had won the game.

We were all down, all dying… and the starlet was probably all set to go nova.

There was a voice, although there was no image of a speaker. I still had no sense of sight, and I did not think that the voice was really heard. It was more like a spoken thought inside my mind, though it was not my thought.

We have re-established full contact with the starshell, whispered the disembodied voice. Its own systems are virtually inert; the greater part of its software space is devastated; and its defences still prevent our moving any machine with substantial intelligent software into its actual space. But we do have eyes there, thanks to the Isthomi. And there is one move which may yet work. We are preparing.

I had the opportunity, at last, to ask a question.

What am I? I was surprised by the frailty of my own thought-voice.

There is no time, Mr. Rousseau, the voice replied. Believe me, there simply is no time. You know who you are, and there is nothing to be gained from a discussion of the nature of things. It is not that we wish to use you as a mere tool, understanding nothing, but the Tetron is within minutes of destroying us all. The crisis is upon us now, and desperation urges us on. Watch!

Suddenly, there was light, and it was as if I could see, though I still had no sense of possessing a body, and the sight which I had was not the sight of human eyes. It was more like an image transmitted by a camera—transmitted into the depths of my consciousness, upon the screen of my imagination.

I could see a room, where several figures stood. One stood alone, while three others watched him, two before him and one to the side. The viewpoint from which I seemed to be looking was somewhat above them, looking down from the side of the lone man confronted by the two, over the shoulder of the third.

The lone figure was 673-Nisreen. Directly in front of him was a second Tetron—or, to be strictly accurate, a second person inhabiting a Tetron body. That was 994-Tulyar. Beside Tulyar stood Myrlin, and the one whose back was to me was John Finn.

But where am I? I thought. Where are Urania and Susarma Lear?

“I don’t understand,” Nisreen was saying, in parole. Obviously, we had come in on the middle of a conversation.

“You cannot be expected to understand,” Tulyar told him, in that soft, dead voice that had given me the creeps when I first heard it on the Nine’s home level. “All will be explained, in time, but for now, there is urgent work to be done, and it is simply a matter of duty. The starlet is nearly ready; the power build-up in its peripheral systems is becoming critical.”

I saw Nisreen look around, angry with confusion. “What is happening?” he asked. “Do you intend to destroy the macroworld?”

“Certainly not,” said the thing in Tulyar’s body. “Did Rousseau tell you that was what we intended? Is that how he persuaded you to join in this pursuit?”

Nisreen did not reply. The thing that was using Tulyar’s body had much better control of it now than when I had last seen it—in a former incarnation. Now it was no longer tongue-tied, and no longer had that manic stare, it could pass for a Tetron. It was even talking about duty. I could sense Nisreen’s uncertainty—the self-doubt which must be telling him that perhaps, after all, he had been wrong.

I realised, though, that one of those present had that zombie-like manner which I had once seen in Tulyar’s behaviour. I remembered the earlier voice, murmuring away to me while I was carried through a cloud. It had spoken of humanoids infected by enemy programmes— humanoids, in the plural.

“No, 673-Nisreen,” said the pseudo-Tulyar, “we do not intend to destroy the macroworld. It is we who intend to save it, and to save thousands of our brethren with it. The macroworld might have destroyed itself, if the power buildup within the starshell’s peripheral system had been allowed to continue, but we are here to prevent that happening. You should be thankful that your human friends finally met their match—had they succeeded in killing us all, Asgard might well have been doomed.”

“What is your ultimate purpose?” asked Nisreen uncertainly.

“We intend to return power to the macroworld. In fact, we intend to flood Asgard’s systems with power. We will send such a blast of energy into the labyrinth that it will devastate every system through which it passes—a tidal surge of power, which will destroy the godlike beings who have opposed us in this long and bitter war. But you need not fear for our fellow humanoids; they are not the target of the assault. Some will undoubtedly be inconvenienced. A few may die as an indirect result of our action, but they will be innocent bystanders. Our real enemies are entities of a different kind. It is the artificial intelligences created by those who built Asgard—the gods which they made to guide the destinies of their creation—that we must annihilate. From here, you see, we can direct the power-surge exactly as we wish, protecting those systems that we control and destroying those that we do not. We will certainly injure the macroworld slightly, and life in some of its artificial habitats will never be quite the same, but we shall do as little harm to your kind and mine as we can. We aim to preserve life— and to preserve ourselves. If our enemies were in our place, it is by no means certain that they would act as kindly.”