Brian Stableford - Asgard's Heart

He began to work his way up to the difficult questions.

“It wasn’t Tulyar, was it?”

“No,” I confirmed. “It wasn’t Tulyar, and it wasn’t Myrlin. Whatever their short-term plans may have been, they meant no good to your species or mine, or anything else that’s truly alive. I don’t know what it was that made them, but when it comes to the choice between our gods and theirs, it has to be ours that we go out to fight for. I’m certain of that, if nothing else.”

“How did you do it?” he asked. “How did you know what to do?”

“Physically,” I said, “I feel like half the man I used to be. Mentally, I fear that I may be a little bit more. The copy of my consciousness that the Nine launched into software space was somehow retranscribed into my own brain. It’s been through a lot, and it’s come every bit as close to extinction as my poor fleshly body, but it was strong enough, at the end, to carry another injection of programming into biocopy form—a set of instructions for moving the macroworld.

“The gods found themselves a hero, Nisreen. A demigod—whatever you care to call it. Believe me Nisreen, there’s a part of me that has seen things and been things nobody should be asked to see and be. The penalty of living in interesting times, I guess.”

I had a question of my own, though I didn’t really expect him to be able to answer it. “Is the colonel still alive?”

“Yes,” he said. More time must have passed than I thought. I must have been sitting still for several minutes— time for him to take a look.

“I don’t know how,” he went on, “but she’s still alive. I’m not sure she can survive for long, though, unless we can get help.”

“Help,” I said, “is not a problem. This is the real Centre of Asgard, and from this seat you can do anything, if you know how. The gods that the builders made to look after themselves and their creations can be summoned from the vasty deep and made to do our bidding. It’s all at our fingertips, now. If Susarma can be saved, she will be. You too. Even me—although it may take a long, long session in one of the Nine’s magic eggs. We’re going to live, Nisreen, thanks to you. If you hadn’t stopped Tulyar…”

“It wasn’t 994-Tulyar,” he said, with a sudden flare of wrathful indignation of which I would never have believed a Tetron capable. “It was something obscene. Something…”

He couldn’t even find words for it, and I realised belatedly how desperate had been the decision which he’d made. Reason had only been a part of it—and maybe, in the final analysis, not the most important part. The Tetrax identify with one another rather more closely than humans do. The brotherhood of man may be nine-tenths pretence, but the brotherhood of the Tetrax is something else. The thing that had stolen Tulyar’s body hadn’t killed Nisreen because it thought that it could recruit and use him the way it had recruited and used John Finn, but it had been wrong. As I looked at 673-Nisreen, I realised that even if I hadn’t managed to hit back—even if pseudo-Tulyar had managed to use the starlet’s power to destroy Asgard’s gods—the war wouldn’t have been over. Far from it. The Tetrax might still be primitive by comparison with the builders of Asgard, but they were on the side of life, and they would have entered the lists with every last atom of force at their disposal.

I knew that the war was still going on, throughout the universe, but I was hopeful.

It wasn’t just that we’d won our tiny little skirmish— there was more than that to help me to hope.

Whatever imagination it was had created the demons of Asgard had a hard fight on its hands if it intended to annihilate life itself, because life had men as well as gods, and hearts as well as minds, and its enemies had not.

I touched Susarma’s shoulder, very gently. She opened her eyes, and stared up at me stupidly. She didn’t know where she was; maybe she didn’t even know who she was.

“Sorry,” I whispered.

I let her look at me for a few seconds. Her brain had to start working in its own good time.

“Rousseau?” she said, very faintly. She smiled. Her mind was a million light-years away, and she was floating, high as a kite.

“I thought…” she began, and then stopped, probably thinking that she was about to say something silly.

“You thought right,” I told her, calmly. “We should both be dead. But the Nine fixed us up. We’re supermen, remember?”

She tried to sit up, but I put out my arm to restrain her. Her eyes widened as she felt the damage inside her. She was carved up more thoroughly than I was.

She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out. I had to guess what questions she probably had in mind.

“Help,” I said, “is on its way. The gods of Asgard are back in Valhalla. The power is back on in the levels. You and I are hurt pretty badly, but thanks to the Isthomi we can come through it. I’m not sure that we can stay conscious, but I know we aren’t going to die. The war within Asgard is over, save for a little mopping-up. 673-Nisreen is okay, and in better shape than either of us, except that he broke his arm again while saving my life.

“That’s the good news. The bad news is that we’re a million light years from home and we aren’t ever going to be able to go back. Maybe even that has its brighter side. If the Star Force still exists, you’re the grand commander—She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. I can’t think of anyone who could play the part better. It’s not inconceivable that you’re the only human female of child-bearing age on Asgard, but with Isthomi biotech to help us there’s no need for you to worry unduly about becoming the mother of the species—I dare say we could have a thousand kids without troubling ourselves with any greater intimacy than passing the test tube and arguing about what to call the brats.”

She wasn’t in any condition to laugh at the joke, and she looked more annoyed than amused. She wasn’t the maternal type.

“Did you get that bastard android?” she whispered.

“It wasn’t him,” I told her, dully. “It was some other bastard, just using him. He never really had a chance, did he? First the Salamandrans, then the evil masterminds of Anti-Life. Given the opportunity, he’d have been a better man than you or I, but he got all the rough deals that fate could find for him.”

“Did you get him?” She had a one-track mind.

“Yes,” I said. “No clever illusions this time. No mistakes. I blasted all hell out of him. You’d have been proud of me. I got Finn too. And the thing that was pretending to be Tulyar. I got them all, the Star Force way. No ifs and buts… just blood and guts.”

She looked up at me. There wasn’t a trace of hero-worship in her pale blue stare.

“As of now,” I told her, “I’ve resigned. You can keep the medal.”

She smiled faintly.

“You got to the Centre,” she said, “didn’t you?”

I looked around. The lights were back on in the levels, but not here. We were surrounded by darkness, dust, and the dead.

“I got to the Centre,” I agreed. “All the answers are here… and I have all the time in the world to find out what they are.”

It was true, in a way. Our friendly neighbourhood gods would be only too pleased to give me a more leisurely explanation of anything and everything, as soon as someone had put my intestines back together and I was fit to be told. I could have the unedited version of the history of the universe, and all the lessons in life-science I could possibly desire. All the secrets of Asgard the Ark, Asgard the Fortress, and Asgard the Universal Landscape Gardener would be mine for the asking.