Brian Stableford - Asgard's Secret

Saul had died at approximately eleven twenty that morning, while I was still secure in my cell. Myrlin had logged out of lock five in my truck at eleven ninety-four. According to the Tetron medical examiner, Saul must have been unconscious for several Tetron units before he died. He’d lost a lot of blood. He had, apparently, been tortured for some considerable time over a period of days. He had several broken fingers and numerous electrical burns. Although he would have been able to control the pain to some degree by virtue of his internal technology, it would still have been an extremely unpleasant experience.

In the opinion of the medical examiner, the person or persons who had inflicted Saul’s injuries had not been trying to kill him—in fact, he or they had been trying to keep him alive. The process must have begun, he deduced, on the same day that Saul had accepted responsibility for Myrlin the Homeless Android, probably within sixty Tetron units.

Before lapsing into unconsciousness for the last time, however, Saul—or someone with a very similar voice, in possession of all the necessary identification codes—had used my phone to make a series of purchases, including an outsized cold-suit and enough supplies to stock my truck for a couple of hundred days. In so doing, he had used up every last vestige of his—by which I mean Saul’s—remaining credit. The goods had been delivered to the lockup where my truck was kept.

In the course of making these calls, Saul—or the person pretending to be him—had not requested medical assistance, but he—or the person pretending to be him—had taken the trouble to leave a message for me inscribed, in English, on the answerphone’s display screen.

Dear Mike, it read,

We have no idea where you are and can’t ask your permission, but we need a truck badly and we can’t get to mine. After we’re gone, though, mine is yours and you should have no difficulty getting to it. It’s a fair trade, I think—maybe a little more than fair, to compensate for the inconvenience. All the best, Saul.

“Does that count as a will?” I asked the peace-officer. “No,” he told me. “It would not matter, in any case. I shall be forced to impound the vehicle in question, on the grounds that it may contain relevant evidence. Do you know where it is?”

“No,” I said. “Don’t you?”

“Mr. Lyndrach’s personal records have been erased. We will doubtless locate it in due course.”

“As a matter of interest,” I said, “what kind of gun was used to shoot the other seven victims?”

The Tetron hesitated, but he must have known that it would be on the evening news. “They were not shot to death,” he admitted. “The immediate causes of death were various, but they all had numerous broken bones, caused by their being struck very powerfully with blunt instruments— or, in some instances, hurled with considerable force into solid walls.”

“Right,” I said. “A very violent person, Amara Guur. Very violent indeed.”

My room still seemed very crowded after the Tetrax had gone, although Susarma Lear’s men had waited patiently outside until the coast was clear. Crucero and his companions had returned to the fold some time ago. I hadn’t heard the lieutenant make his report, but I had no difficulty imagining its contents. The Tetrax did not anticipate apprehending Myrlin any time soon. They could probably track his progress by means of one of their communication satellites, if they could identify his truck—although there were certain to be others making their way over the surface that would make identification difficult—but they had no intention of chasing him. They would wait until he returned to Skychain City and arrest him then.

Susarma Lear wasn’t convinced, but she checked with me before taking any further action. “Surely they’ll change their minds now that he’s wanted for murder?” she said.

“He isn’t wanted for murder,” I told her. “He’s just a potential witness. Even if he were, they wouldn’t try to pursue him. It would be pointless. While he’s on the surface he’s visible—don’t be fooled by that bullshit about not being able to identify him—but as soon as he goes down to level one he’s out of reach. They’ll wait for him to come back, confident in the assumption that he’ll have to, sooner or later. There’s nowhere else for him to go. If he doesn’t come back… then they’ll stop worrying about it.”

She didn’t like it, but she could see the logic of it. “Well,” she said, “at least you must be keen to catch him now.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because he killed your friend,” she said. “Surely you didn’t believe what you told the gorilla about this Guur character having done it?”

“Amara Guur did kill Saul,” I told her. “Even the Tetrax must have figured that out by now. Myrlin killed the seven guys who were busy torturing him—not, alas, before they’d gone over the top and left him beyond help. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t actually fill me with indignation. You might call it murder, but I call it heroism.”

Her stare wasn’t quite as wrathful as before, but I figured that was because she was getting tired. She must have had a very long and trying day. “How do you know?” she said, eventually.

“Elementary logic,” I said. “Saul went to the C.R.E. to ask for a loan, just as I did—but he had better bait. He knew the location of a doorway down into level five, maybe further down than that. Unfortunately, rumours of doorways down to five are a dime a dozen in these parts. Saul’s neither a fool nor a con man, but when a proposition like that goes before a committee there’s bound to be some idiot who’ll throw a spanner in the works. Somebody there knew Saul well enough to know that he was absolutely reliable, but getting the right decision through the committee would have needed someone much tougher than Myrlin the Superandroid. Guur knew a good thing when he heard the rumour, though, and he went after Saul.

“Unfortunately for Guur, Saul wasn’t alone when the kidnappers turned up, so they had to snatch Myrlin too. Whether they threatened him with fancy blasters like yours or shot him with anaesthetic darts I don’t know, but they made the mistake of keeping him alive, in case he knew anything useful.

“One way or another, Myrlin got his chance to fight back—too late to save Saul, alas. By the time he’d slaughtered the bad guys and got Saul out, Saul must have figured that he wasn’t going to make it, even with the aid of Tetron medicare. He had no idea that I was in jail, so he told the android to come to me for help. Saul and I had reciprocal agreements about making use of one another’s stuff if things went bad. He knew that Guur would have a heavy guard on his truck, but not on mine. I don’t know whether he made the calls himself or gave Myrlin his codes, but that doesn’t matter. Myrlin should have called an ambulance as soon as he got Saul out of Guur’s clutches, even if Saul told him not to—but he’s a stranger here, and Saul was probably insistent about the necessity of his making a clean getaway. Saul’s one remaining ambition must have been to make absolutely sure that Amara Guur didn’t get the big prize.”

The star-captain shook her head wearily. “Jesus, Russell,” she said. “What kind of madhouse is this?”

“Actually, it’s Rousseau,” I said. “As in Jean-Jacques.”

She looked at me uncomprehendingly.

“Du contrat social,” I said, helpfully. “ Discours sur les sciences et les arts. That Rousseau. Not Russell.” I could tell that it meant nothing to her; the French was just so much gibberish to her uneducated ears, and eighteenth-century philosophy obviously wasn’t numbered among her personal interests. But she did catch on to the fact that she’d got my name wrong.