Brian Stableford: Asgard's Conquerors

“I believe she mentioned that fact,” I said sourly.

I figured that I had every right to be sour. I hadn’t thought Susarma Lear mean-spirited enough to pull a trick like this, after we had parted on fairly good terms. I didn’t doubt for a moment that she could get away with it, though.

Why in the world, I wondered, had she posted wanted notices on me? Could she possibly have found out that I’d kept secret what I knew about Myrlin still being alive?

I thought guiltily about the incriminating memoirs sitting on the shelf in my disc-store, and began to regret having recorded them.

Microworlds don’t actually have jails, so where I ended up was an ordinary crew cabin with a special lock. It had the usual fittings—a bunk and a pocket-sized bathroom, a food-dispenser, and a set of screens. I soon found out that the screens had a security block on them. I could dial up videos of old movies or library teletext, but I couldn’t make personal telephone calls. I was being held incommunicado.

That seemed to me to be adding insult to injury, so instead of meekly sitting down I tried to get a line to the outside world. I started out by requesting a lawyer, but the system wouldn’t let me through, so I tried for a doctor. When the software queried my symptoms, I convinced it that I might well have a broken jaw. It’s easy to lie to artificial intelligences, once you can persuade them to take notice of you at all. Within ten minutes, the doctor duly arrived.

“I’m Mariyo Kimura,” she said, reaching out to take hold of my chin. “And this jaw isn’t broken.”

“Really?” I said. “You don’t know how glad I am to hear that. It hurts like hell.”

I could tell that she didn’t believe me.

“Look,” I said, “I’m sorry there isn’t an emergency, but I did need to talk to someone. I’ve been cooped up in a tiny starship all on my own for the best part of a year, and the first human being I came into contact with tried to smash me into insensibility. Then they threw me in here, seemingly with every intention of leaving me to rot. In my book, that’s cruel and inhumane treatment. I don’t know what passes for law around this place, but perhaps you could advise me on what it has to say about my position. I did try to get hold of a lawyer.”

“Goodfellow doesn’t have any lawyers,” said Dr. Kimura. “We don’t need them.”

“You have a platoon of Star Force troopers. Do you need them?”

She had opened her bag and she was dabbing something from a bottle onto a wad of cotton wool. She pushed me back so that I sat down on the bunk. I knew it was going to sting— it’s a medical tradition that goes back centuries. When she touched it to my jaw, though, I took the pain like a man.

“Mr. Rousseau,” she said, “I don’t know exactly what you’ve done, or why Lieutenant Kramin was ordered to arrest you on arrival here. I don’t really approve of the way that you were lured here under false pretences, nor of Trooper Blackledge knocking you down. But you must try to understand our situation. While you’ve been out of the system we’ve been fighting a long war. Salamandran warships invaded system space no less than forty times. Way out here, we were always a target for occupation, or for destruction. Most of us have been here for the whole ten years of the shooting match—it’s our home, and transport within the system hasn’t been easy. One missile is all that it would have taken to blow Goodfellow into smithereens, and we’ve been very happy to play host to a Star Force defence- system. You’ll not find any sympathy here for Star Force deserters.”

“Would it affect your attitude to know that I’m innocent?”

“Of course. But that remains to be proven, doesn’t it?”

“That’s why I need some kind of legal representation. The Star Force is carrying on some kind of weird vendetta against me. I need an advocate from outside, not their court-appointed defender. I’m not a deserter.”

No reaction showed in her features as she studied me with her dark eyes. She was very small—no more than a metre sixty-five—and she wasn’t looking down from any great height even though I was sitting and she was standing.

“No?” she queried. “Just what did you do during the war, Mr. Rousseau?”

It was a dirty question. What was I supposed to have done—rush home and enlist the minute I heard that serious hostilities had broken out? I didn’t ask. The answer would probably be yes.

On Asgard, the war had always seemed like a distant affair, and it had been all too easy in that cosmopolitan setting to fall in with the Tetron way of looking at things. In the eyes of the Tetrax, Earthmen and Salamandrans were two gangs of barbarians who ought to know better.

“I need to tell someone my side of the story,” I insisted, politely but firmly.

She threw the cotton-wool into the waste-disposal, and sealed up her bag.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she promised. “But I really don’t think it will do you any good.”

I had an ominous suspicion that she was right.

Dr. Kimura’s intercession on my behalf brought results of a kind. She must have gone straight to the top, because my next visitor was one of the microworld’s top men. His name was Ayub Khan. He was tall and handsome, with a casual grace about his movements. I got the feeling that he’d have been a top man wherever he was, on a microworld or a whole planet.

“I’m very sorry,” he told me, with apparent sincerity, “that we must welcome you to the solar system in this manner. We appreciate that you have spent a long time in, as it were, solitary confinement, and it is most unfortunate that you should be subjected to more of the same on an involuntary basis. But our hands are tied. The Star Force claim jurisdiction in this matter, and their case is compelling.”

“I was drafted on Asgard after being wrongly convicted of a crime,” I told him, already knowing that it was hopeless. “My services were about to be sold, under a slave contract, to the people who framed me. Eventually, the truth came out, and under Tetron law, the contract I signed under duress became illegal. The Star Force complied with the Tetron directive, and I obtained legitimate discharge papers. I’m not a deserter; they have no right to arrest me.”

Khan shrugged.

“Tetron law does not apply here, Mr. Rousseau. The case must be tried according to UN law. I am certain that the court martial will take into account all the relevant information.”

“Do they shoot deserters nowadays?” I asked him.

“Very rarely,” he assured me. “In the majority of cases, returned deserters simply have to serve out their time in a penal battalion.”

“Great,” I said bitterly.

“Hostilities have ceased,” he pointed out, “but there’s still a great deal of work for the Star Force to do. An interstellar war leaves an unimaginable amount of mess. Our colonies will need rebuilding—and we have to take care of the surviving Salamandrans too. Even in a penal battalion, you’d be doing vital and valuable work.”

I couldn’t derive much consolation from these helpful observations.

“Mr. Rousseau,” he said, kindly, “we are entirely happy for you to consider yourself a guest of Goodfellow, in spite of your awkward circumstances. We will make no charge for your food or for the use you might make of our information networks. But the law binds us as it binds you, and we must work within the constraints of the situation.”

He reminded me very strongly of my last jailer, 69-Aquila, who had also been scrupulously polite.

“I’m grateful,” I said insincerely. “I would like to ask a couple of questions, if I may. I understand that the Star Force had been told that I was heading for the system, and a general instruction had apparently been issued to apprehend me. Is that right?”