Brian Stableford - Asgard's Secret

“Jesus, Rousseau” she said scrupulously, “we’ve got more important things to worry about than how you spell your name. So where do you fit in?”

It was a good question. Why, given that he must already have had Saul Lyndrach safe in his evil clutches—or so he must have assumed—had Amara Guur bothered to send Heleb and Lema to my apartment to make me a polite offer? And why, after a few more hours had elapsed but long before Myrlin had run amok, had he decided that the polite offer had been too tentative and that more extreme measures were required?

“Saul wasn’t giving in,” I said. “Maybe Guur figured that the only way to put pressure on a man like him was by threatening his friends.”

“That doesn’t sound very convincing,” she observed accurately.

“You haven’t actually told me yet what your interest in Myrlin is,” I countered.

Her tone frosted over. “In the Star Force, Trooper Rousseau , it’s the officers who ask the questions.”

I decided to be generous and forgive her; it was, after all, only a few hours since she’d saved my life. “No problem,” I said, stoutly. “But we all need something to eat. I’m not sure my kitchen can cater for this many—might I suggest that you send your loyal lieutenant out for a takeaway?”

She didn’t like my tone, but she saw the merit in the suggestion, and she was still leaning over backwards to be diplomatic—by her meagre standards—because I was the one with all the local knowledge she needed so badly.

She sent the sergeant out to buy some food, with a couple of men to help him carry it. I didn’t have enough chairs for the rest of us to sit down, but the troopers were obviously used to roughing it. They made no objection when the star-captain and I sat down on the bed.

“Fire away,” I said.

She frowned at my choice of words, but she had more important things on her mind than criticising my sense of humour.

“What are these levels you keep talking about?” was the star-captain’s first question.

I was mildly astonished. I knew that she’d only arrived on Asgard that day, but I’d assumed that she must know something about it. I’d assumed, in fact, that everyone in the universe must know something about Asgard, even if they had been busy for most of their adult lives fighting an interstellar war.

“This is an artefact, not a planet,” I said. “It might have a planet inside it, but all the bits we have access to are artificial. The outer surface is a shell—one of a series of shells nested one inside another like the layers of an onion. Nobody knows how many shells there are. The levels are the spaces between them, which are fitted out as sets of habitats—four or five to a level—with seemingly independent ecospheres. The differences between them are subtle, but they seem to fill a similar spectrum to that of so-called Gaia-clone ecospheres… the worlds in which humanoids live. We know of hundreds of negotiable portals down to level one; they’re easy enough to find. We know of a dozen that give access to level two, and a handful that let us down to three and four—but the further down you go, the more difficult it is to explore further. They’re very, very cold. People lived there once, but they all went away.”

“Where to?” she wanted to know.

“Opinions differ. Some think they went lower down, sealing themselves in against whatever catastrophe devastated the upper layers. Some think they went outwards, maybe to colonize all the gaiaformable worlds in the galactic arm— which would make them the ancestors of the present galactic so-called civilization.”

“How long ago did all this happen?”

“Again, opinions differ. The evidence seems to be ambiguous, although you’d have to ask a C.R.E. scientist for details. Millions of years ago, at least—maybe hundreds of millions, or billions.”

“And you say it’s got a planet inside it?”

“No, I said that it might have a planet inside it. It’s possible that there are only half a dozen shells, built as a succession of platforms on a natural surface. On the other hand, it might be shells all the way down to the centre… well, not all the way down, because that would be impossible. Maybe there’s a core of molten iron, as there would be at the centre of a planet. Maybe there’s some kind of giant fusion reactor—a starlet. That would make the megastructure into a kind of multiple Dyson sphere. Nobody knows, although everyone is trying to find out. In the meantime, we search the habitats on the accessible levels for clues, and for new technologies. The Tetrax are very interested in the spectrum of humanoid technologies. Even when they already have gadgets of their own for doing the same jobs, they like to study all the different ways there are of doing things. They’re very big on matters of technological style. That’s why they’re interested in your cargo, I presume.”

“I see,” she said. She didn’t. My explanation had been the barest thumbnail sketch; I’d hardly scratched the surface of the fabulous enigma that was Asgard.

The food arrived then, so we took a break. It didn’t last long. She was still avid to get on, even though she seemed to have accepted the fact that it was now too late to do anything before morning. I was tired, and so were her men, but she had far too much agitation churning in her skull to allow her to think of sleep just yet. Her men made themselves as comfortable as they could on the floor, where there was just enough space for them all to lie down, given a certain amount of geometrical ingenuity, but she and I kept going.

“So you’ve been out into these levels before—dozens of times, or hundreds?” she asked me, still trying to grasp the situation into which she’d rushed.

“Must be nearly a hundred by now,” I confirmed. “I’ve been here a long time. Mickey Finn and I were among the first humans to get here. It seemed like a big adventure. It was a big adventure. Those were the glory days of star travel—I guess things must have changed a great deal since the war broke out.”

“That’s good,” she said. “We’re going to need an experienced man. We’ll be depending on you, Rousseau. The Star Force will be depending on you. The human race will be depending on you. So how soon can we get started? And when I say how soon } I want to take your first estimate, cut it in half, and then shave a bit more off.”

“I don’t have a truck any more,” I pointed out, a trifle disingenuously. “Even if I did, I couldn’t track Myrlin over the surface. The Tetrax might be willing—and they’re certainly able—to tell you where he is until he goes down to level one, but after that, it’d be hopeless.”

“We’ll have to take him out from space, then,” she said. “We can do that.”

“No you can’t,” I told her. “The Tetrax won’t permit that. They might help you to chase him, but shooting at the surface from orbit is absolutely out of the question.”

“Nothing is absolutely out of the question,” she assured me, “but we need to stay on the right side of the Tetrax if we can. So we get them to help us track him. We chase him. We follow him down into the levels. What next? And I don’t want to hear the word can’t.”

“What do you expect me to do—follow his footprints in the snow?”

“If that’s what’s necessary,” she said. “And don’t ever lie to me again, Trooper Rousseau. I don’t like it. Believe me, now you’re in the Star Force, you don’t want to get on the wrong side of your commanding officer. How soon can we get the truck ready to depart?”

She was crazy, but she wasn’t a fool. I saw my mistake immediately. I’d told the Tetron peace-officer that I didn’t know where Saul’s truck was, but I’d told her en passant that he and I had had a reciprocal arrangement. He’d had the codes necessary to get into my apartment and secure my keys. I had the codes necessary to get into his and secure his.