Brian Stableford - Asgard's Secret

I did as I was told.

“I’m on,” I said, to let him know I’d done it.

“Mr. Rousseau, I presume,” he said, with the easy confidence of a man who’d just mounted a successful ambush. He must have seen me coming from a long way off. I hadn’t even seen the buildings.

“You can call me Mike,” I said. “Welcome to Asgard. I did come to see you the day after you landed, to apologise for my churlishness—but events had moved on. I seem to have caused us both a certain amount of trouble.”

I could see him now, after a fashion—or his suit, at least. He was enormous, but not beyond the bounds of everyday possibility. The suit-manufacturer had been able to supply him out of stock, albeit with a unit that might have sat in the storeroom for a long time if he hadn’t come along when he did.

“That’s all right,” he said. “I’m used to trouble. I’m sorry about your truck—and the body in your bed. I should have called for medical help as soon as I got Saul out, but I had no idea who my enemies were—and nor had Saul. He thought the Tetrax had tipped off Amara Guur.”

“Somebody did,” I agreed. “I can’t believe that it was a Tetron—but the inner workings of the C.R.E. are a mystery to me.”

“Do you know what happened back in Skychain City?” he asked.

“Not for certain. The story, as I see it, is that Guur’s men came to snatch Saul and found you there too—asleep, I presume. They took you both along, and put you on ice while they chatted to Saul. They had the notebook but couldn’t read it. Balidar told them that I might be able to. They checked, just in case—and when they couldn’t break Saul, they launched plan B. It had almost paid off when the Star Force arrived. By that time, you’d broken loose and indulged in a little payback—but Saul was past saving so you went on your way. Guur gave us the notebook. We followed you. He followed us. Did I miss anything? Can I sit down, by the way? I had a cat-nap, but I’m exhausted.”

“Go ahead,” he said. “How did you find me?”

“I didn’t,” I said, surprised. “When the star-captain and her men picked a fight with a giant amoeba I took the opportunity to run. When I got out of the swamp I found the tracks. I followed them. I guess you did the same.”

“How many Star Force men are guarding the dropshaft?”

“Only one, at present,” I said. “There’s another on the surface. Amara Guur could have passed the first without any trouble, if he wanted to, but getting past the second will be a different matter. The warship must be able to shuttle more men down if the need arises, though, and if Guur did pick a fight with the man they left on the surface to watch the hole, they’d interpret that as need—and the Tetrax would probably agree. Why? Were you thinking of going back?”

“I’m not thinking of taking off my helmet just yet,” he said. “As you’ve doubtless ascertained, the air here has enough oxygen in it to be breathable, but the biotoxin assay doesn’t look promising.”

“I hadn’t quite got around to that kind of routine labour,” I confessed. “The star-captain was in a hurry.”

“So I heard. I was able to listen in on you as soon as you reached the bottom of the dropshaft.”

“Really? You should have said something.”

“I didn’t know whether you’d be able to get a fix on me if I started transmitting. The risk didn’t seem worthwhile.”

“It was probably a wise decision,” I confirmed. “The star-captain wasn’t in a negotiating mood.”

“How much did she tell you?” he wanted to know.

“That you’re an android manufactured by the Salamandrans, for reasons shrouded in the deepest military secrecy. She seems to feel that you’re a threat to the human race, but she wasn’t at liberty to tell me why. My orders were to shoot first and not to expect any answers to any questions that I might care to ask, before or after. I never intended to carry them out—it’s not my style. Still—you’re safe now. There’s only the two of us left down here, and you have both guns.”

“If only that were true,” he said.

It took me a moment or two to figure out what he meant. I ought to have realised when he told me to change channels when I switched the radio on. I was very tired.

“One of them’s still alive?” I guessed.

“They’re all still alive.”

“Well, praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. The damn thing must have flowed right over them. Its juices couldn’t pick a hole in their cold-suits. I should have known that. It was all the screaming… I bet they’re as embarrassed as all hell about that.”

“They’ve put it behind them,” Myrlin said, drily. “I shouldn’t have told you that, I suppose. Now you can let them listen in on us, if you care to—but you’d have worked it out anyway, wouldn’t you?”

“I’d prefer to keep things simple,” I told him. “Anyway, I’m a deserter now. I suppose the star-captain is more than a little annoyed about that.”

“She certainly is.”

“So we’re in the same boat now, aren’t we?” He was way too paranoid to believe it, but I felt that I had to try.

“I prefer to keep things simple myself,” he told me. “If I shot you, I’d have one thing less to worry about.”

“True,” I admitted. “Why didn’t you?”

“Because the time will come, sooner or later, when the air will have to be tested. No biospectral analysis is ever as good as a clinical trial.”

“You want me to take my helmet off?”

“Not yet,” he said. “First, I want to find out where the tracks go. There might be other alternatives. Humanoids lived here once. They still might, even though the trains stopped running. If they’re in contact with other levels… with the builders themselves… That’s enough rest for now. Get up.”

I didn’t argue. I got up, and we moved out of the shadows into the permanent twilight. He looked just as big out in the open, but he wasn’t really a giant. He was just a very big humanoid—the kind of humanoid a genetic engineer might design if he’d been asked to provide a blueprint for a warrior, and hadn’t quite caught on to the fact that the last few hundred years of progress had rendered that kind of physical power redundant. Nowadays, war is all about the kind of hardware you can carry; weaklings can be supermen too.

Unfortunately, he had two guns and I had none.

I walked ahead of him, following the tracks as I had before, fighting to stay alert.

“If Guur’s men were able to get past the Star Force rearguard,” he said, “would they be able to find us?”

“I doubt it,” I said. “They might be able to find the star-captain—Guur’s Kythnan femme fatale almost certainly bugged her hair. They bugged the book too, but I left that behind. I think I’m clean, but it’s not impossible that I picked up some traceable contamination from it.”

“Is that why they gave it to you?”

“Maybe. On the other hand, they’d run out of time. Plan B had gone up in smoke, and they were desperate. They had to get things moving somehow. For a Salamandran android, you speak very good English.”

“I was well-educated,” he said. “It was an unorthodox process, but highly effective. They’d never tried it before, of course, so whoever designed the technics deserves congratulation. Can we stick to more pressing matters, for the time being? How many men does Guur have? How dangerous are they?”

“Not many,” I told him. “A dozen, maybe—but that’s the number he’ll have started out with when he arrived at the hole on the surface. If he tries to fight his way past Crucero, he’ll take casualties. Then again, they’re petty gangsters, not down-level men. He probably has a couple of scavengers with him, acting as guides, but you killed at least one of those when you broke Saul out. He might have lost some men just following the trail down to four. Why didn’t you put that flamer further along the corridor, where it would have roasted at least one of us when it went off?”