Asgard's Heart

by Brian Stableford

  "Jesus, Rousseau," said the voice at the other end. "You're supposed to be an officer in the Star Force. Why the hell are you asleep at this hour?"

  "Time," I said, "is purely relative. "What you call 'this hour' can be any damn hour we care to call it. What do you want, Susarma?"

  "For a start," she replied, "I want you to call me 'Colonel.' Also, I would like to invite you to accompany me on a little walk in the garden."

  I opened my eyes then and held the phone away from my face, staring at it as one tends to stare at an object that has unexpectedly started behaving in a perverse manner.

  "You want me to come for a walk in the garden?" I asked guardedly.

  "That's what I said," she confirmed. She sounded slightly bad-tempered, but there was nothing unusual about that. What was unusual was that she was talking about gardens as if I was supposed to know what she meant. I thought about it for a moment, and had little difficulty figuring out which garden she meant, but couldn't for the life of me fathom out her reasons for wanting me to go there. One thing was certain though, and that was the fact that she must have a reason. She was not normally given to circumlocution or to guessing games.

  Something was obviously wrong. I wondered whether it was the same kind of something wrong that I had already encountered, or an entirely unconnected kind of something wrong. Troubles seem never to come singly.

  "Okay," I said, in an off-hand manner. "The garden. Give me twenty minutes to wake up, and I'll be there."

  I was proud of myself for giving no more than the slightest indication that I'd had difficulty working out what she meant, and I further demonstrated my initiative by waiting until I had showered and breakfasted, and was well away from my room, before asking the Isthomi if they could get me to the enclosed region which they'd used as an arena on my first visit to this level, to stage the big fight between the Star Force and Amara Guur's mobsters, and to fake Myrlin's death by fire at the less-than-tender hands of Susarma Lear.

  The Isthomi opened up one of their convenient doorways into the hidden recesses of their world, and laid on a robot car which whizzed me away through curving tunnels at breathtaking pace. It was a longer journey than I expected—although it had never before occurred to me to wonder whether the maze in which my last adventure had taken place was geographically close to the essentially- similar one in which I'd found myself on the earlier occasion. I had nothing to do during the journey but worry about the speed at which I was traveling, and wish that it didn't seem quite so much like a kind of repeating nightmare I'd suffered from in my youth—a stereotyped dream from which most

  microworlders are said to suffer.

  Eventually, the car stopped and another doorway opened up beside me, through which I stepped into a hothouse world of gigantic flowers, vivid in hue and sharply scented. They presented a riot of colour—mostly purples and golds in this particular spot, which was dominated by a single vast bush, whose branches were tangled into an inextricable mess, and whose convolvuline blossoms looked like a scene from a surreal bell-factory. Given the host of mythological references that every waking moment now evoked, I could hardly help thinking of the bush as a Gordian knot, though it would have taken a much mightier hand than mine to slash it with a massive sword.

  "Colonel Lear!" I called, mindful of her instruction that military protocol was still to be observed between us. I looked in either direction along the grey wall that curved away to my left and right, with a thin green verge which could serve as a path, if only I knew which way to go.

  The door by which I had been admitted had closed silently and seamlessly behind me, but now another opened, a dozen metres away, and Susarma Lear stepped through. She was, as always, wearing her Star Force uniform, the black cloth contrasting in a remarkably pleasing fashion with the dazzling shock of blonde hair surrounding her face. She was also wearing a sidearm—one of the guns she'd taken from the Scarida when she'd come to my rescue while I was making my painful contact with the gods of Asgard.

  The way she was holding her stern jaw made me wince. It wasn't hard to believe that the icy stare in her bright blue eyes could turn men into stone.

  "Hello, Rousseau," she said, soberly. "Thanks for being so quick on the uptake."

  "I deduce," I said—having had time to think about it— "that some unkind person has taken advantage of the fact that the Isthomi granted our request for personal privacy, and has surreptitiously bugged our rooms."

  "That's right," she confirmed.

  "Finn again?"

  "I assume that he's involved. 994-Tulyar is behind it, of course."

  "Why?"

  "If you mean, why are they doing it, it's probably because they're a bunch of scheming bastards to whom low cunning comes naturally. But I don't like it. I don't know what kind of game Tulyar's playing, but I think it's something I ought to find out about."

  "Why did you want me to come all the way out here so you could tell me about it?"

  "I don't know where else they've distributed their little listening devices. Since the Tetrax from the prison camp came down here with the Scarid delegation, the entire level is lousy with people I don't like and don't trust. The only other authentic human here is Finn—and he's got the kind of coat that's ready cut for turning at the slightest provocation. It looks to me like you and me against the universe, Rousseau, and this is the only place down here that none of the other guys have been."

  She hadn't included Myrlin in her list of potential enemies, nor had she included him while numbering the tiny clique that knew about this little Eden. I gathered that she still had him on her list of unmentionable topics, even though she'd made no attempt to wipe him out for a second time.

  "So this is a council of war?" I said.

  "If you like," she said. "I never expected to end up in a situation where the only person I could trust is you, but that's where I am now. Read this."

  She drew a flimsy out of her pocket and passed it over to me. I scanned it quickly. It was in English, and was signed by Valdavia, the diplomat who's been sent out from the solar system aboard Leopard Shark to represent the UN in negotiations with the Tetrax. The document was an order to Colonel Susarma Lear to return as soon as possible to Skychain City. It was embellished with firm statements to the effect that in the meantime she was still to consider herself, and all her subordinates, to be under the orders of 994- Tulyar, and that she was to co-operate in every possible way with the Tetrax. It did not say in so many words that Valdavia knew how cynically the Tetrax had used us to spread their plague for them, but he was obviously assuming that we might have fallen out with Tulyar, and was telling us in no uncertain terms that we were not to take offense at what had happened.

  "He's got a hope!" I muttered. "The Scarida have been telling us for days that the chaos caused by that damned influenza makes it impossible to transport anyone up or down above level fifty-two."

  "They got that down," she pointed out, drily. "And they also brought down a group of top-flight Tetron scientists. Mostly electronics men, plus a couple of bioscientists. They arrived during the night. Our old friend 673-Nisreen is one of them. The Tetrax used us as weapons of war, but now it seems that we're definitely surplus to requirements. They want us out."

  "Not exactly," I said. "They want you out. There's no mention of your bringing me with you—or Finn for that matter. I have a nasty suspicion that Tulyar might have other plans for me, and that I won't like them one little bit."

  "What do you mean?" she asked.

  It wasn't necessary to tell her about Medusa. "I'm the one who made the contact with whatever godling kicked the shit out of the Nine," I pointed out. "Tulyar can't begin to understand the situation which is now unfolding, and there's nothing a Tetron high-number man hates worse than not understanding. What's more, the fact that he can't understand doesn't affect his ardent desire to control things. I think he's almost as far out of his depth here as the Scarid commanders, and I have a feeling that, for all his velvety Tetron m
anners, he might react to being out of his depth in much the same panicky fashion. One thing I'm sure of—he means me no good. I never thought I'd say this, Colonel, but I think I'm going to miss you."

  "Like hell you are," she said. "I'm not going."

  I was mildly surprised. I knew how seriously she took the Star Force, and I couldn't quite see her in the role of mutineer.

  "Do you have a choice?" I asked, raising the paper slightly.

  "Valdavia doesn't understand the situation," she said. "My duty is to protect the interests of the human race, and if I can make a better estimate of what those interests are than he can, I'm the one whose obligation it is to make policy."

  "What policy did you have in mind?" I asked. I remembered, without much enthusiasm, her approach to the problem of finding Myrlin when she'd first arrived on Asgard. She had been making her own policy then, and she hadn't impressed me with her style. In fact, she'd shown all the sensitivity and diplomatic flair of a wolverine.

  "That's a little hard to say," she retorted, "unless I have rather more information at my disposal. You're the one who knows more than the rest of us, Rousseau. As I said, I never expected to get to the point where you were the only person I could trust, but here we are. What do you think we should do?"

  I was less surprised than I might have been a day earlier. After all, I'd already been presented with evidence that the Age of Miracles had dawned again. Unfortunately, I didn't have any pat answer ready to hand.

  "That's a difficult question," I parried.

  "Well," she said testily, "if it was an easy one, I sure as hell wouldn't have to ask you, would I?"

  I suppose it was a compliment of sorts, though she hadn't quite intended it that way.

  "I think you ought to know," I said, after a brief pause for consideration, "that the situation may be a lot more complicated than you suppose. It seems that while I was interfaced with the Isthomi, and they were involved in some kind of life-or-death struggle, something got into me. Something may have got into Myrlin and Tulyar, too. I think something's happening deep inside Asgard which makes the Scarid invasion look like a very trivial nuisance. The macroworld itself might be in danger—I can't say for sure. One thing I am sure of, though, is that if the beings we're involved with now are determined to make pawns of us, we could be in for a far rougher ride than the Tetrax gave us when they hired us as catspaws. There's no way out for me— I'm in too deep—but if you aim to come out of this mess alive, you might be better off obeying this order and getting the hell out of Asgard. You'd be safer out of the system."

  She looked at me with an expression that was far less easy to read than those which the Nine's simulacrum had worn.

  "You're going to try to make a run for the Centre," she said, "aren't you?"

  "Yes I am," I told her. "I guess I've been here too long— I've made myself a thoroughgoing sucker for the big mystery. Anyhow, I don't want to consign myself entirely to 994- Tulyar's tender care. If I need any other reasons, I also suspect that whatever's got into me isn't going to let me rest unless I do try to get to the heart of the matter."

  "You were planning to go alone?"

  There was no point in dissembling. "Actually," I said, "I was hoping to take Myrlin. I figured he's the only one I can trust to the hilt. I think some of the scions will come, too. I did intend to ask you, because I figured we might need your firepower, but I wasn't sure you'd be willing. I've asked the Isthomi to build me a vehicle—a robot on wheels, capable of taking me safely through the levels. They've started work already."

  "You hadn't bothered to take into account, I suppose, that you're a star-captain in the Star Force, and that I'm your commanding officer?"

  "I guess I'm a deserter through and through," I confessed—not without a pang of uneasiness. "But I was going to tell you."

  "Jesus!" she said, with more tiredness in her voice than disgust. "What the hell did I ever do to deserve this command? Poor Serne got blasted, and all I have left is you and that creep Finn. We might be standing on the very spot where Khalekhan got killed in action, you realise that? Where you go, I go. All the way. Got that?"

  I found that my mouth was a little bit more open than it should have been, though not so much that you could say that my jaw had dropped.

  "You want to go to the Centre?" I said.

  "I think that if you have to go, you surely need someone to look after you. You're not exactly my idea of a hero,

  Rousseau. Anyhow, running away to the surface would look like cowardice in the face of the enemy, and that's not my style. We'll go to the Centre, Rousseau—the Star Force way."

  I wondered which of us was volunteering for the mission; everything seemed slightly cock-eyed, if not entirely upside down. But what can you expect, when you go through the looking-glass into the magic world? I had my reservations about the Star Force way, but it was a way that had saved my neck before.

  "994-Tulyar's not going to like it when you tell him you're not going up," I said.

  "The hell with 994-Tulyar," she retorted. "In fact, the hell with Tetra and everything it ever spawned. From now on, the ambassadors of the galactic community are you and me, and whatever treasure we find at the bottom of the hole belongs to humankind. When were you thinking of starting out?"

  "The robot should be nearly ready," I told her. "The main problem is knowing which way to go. We've got no map of the levels. The Nine have thrown out a few dark hints about there being more than one way to get to the Centre, but they haven't explained exactly what they mean. I'm hoping they'll be able to figure out a way to guide us, but. ..."

  I never got the chance to discuss the doubts and uncertainties of the matter. The wall behind me exploded, and the Shockwave hurled me head over heels into the meshes of the Gordian knot.

  5

  Although the gravity was low, I wasn't exactly feather-light, and I hit the plants with a lot of momentum. But the tangled branches turned out to be so tightly interwoven that I didn't get stuck—in fact, they were so rubbery that I bounced. I was able to roll forward as I hit them so that I was tumbling like an acrobat as I continued on my ungainly way.

  Shards of the broken wall were flying everywhere, showering the bell-like flowers and lacerating their petals. I felt a prickling sensation in my back accompanying the sensation of being hit by the shock-wave, and knew that I'd been cut in a dozen places. The rolling probably didn't help, but at least I didn't drive anything between my ribs to administer a fatal stab in the back.

  The noise was tremendous—the big flightless insects that roamed this overgrown wilderness always screamed with panic when they were disturbed, and they were certainly disturbed now. I felt them struggling to get out of the way as I landed on a softer spot, crushing the vegetation down upon them.

  When I stopped rolling I was sprawled on hands and knees shaded by a huge palmate leaf. I came to my feet as quickly as I could and looked back at the spot from which I'd been hurled. What kind of petard had been used to blast the hole I couldn't imagine, but I saw immediately that it hadn't been quite big enough, because the thing which was struggling to get through wasn't finding it at all easy.

  It wasn't immediately obvious whether it was a living creature or an artefact. In a bizarre fashion it didn't seem completely out of place in this world of enormous insects and elephantine flowers because if it resembled anything I could put a name to, it looked like an immense praying mantis, with great long legs, a small head carried high, and groping arms, though the "hands" on the end of the arms looked like a cross between a crab's pincers and one of the articulated graspers they put on robots designed to explore places where no human being can go.

  It seemed to be made of metal and plastic, but its joints were as flexible as the joints of a living creature, and the way that the head was moving from side to side as it tried to get its legs through the jagged split in the wall was surely suggestive of something searching for a sight of its prey. The head could swivel through three hundred and sixty
degrees, and it was mounted with four shiny black lenses which probably gave it vision in depth in all directions. It also had a rigid proboscis that looked ominously like the barrel of a gun.

  But it didn't have vision in depth in all directions for long, because Susarma Lear had been far enough away on the curving path to be shielded from the blast, and she already had the Scarid crash gun in her hand. Whether it was a lucky shot or whether she'd been practising I didn't know, but the first bullet she fired hit one of those black lenses smack in the centre, and blew it to smithereens.

  One of those grasping hands immediately reached for her, striking with awesome speed. I had the uncomfortable feeling that if it had grabbed her it could have broken her in two with its clutch, but the act of turning sideways jammed the thing firmly in the narrow fissure through which it was trying to haul its ungainly body, and when the pincers clicked shut at the limit of the arm's expansion, she was all of ten centimetres out of reach. The monster spat fire, dragon-fashion, revealing that its proboscis was some kind of flamer, but the firebolt missed by a couple of metres.

  Anyone with an ordinary capacity for fear would have run like hell, but the colonel was anything but ordinary. She watched the groping hand close and withdraw, not moving her feet at all, and as soon as she had the space she put her gun-hand forward again, supporting it at the elbow with her left, and took a quick but careful sight of that wheel- mounted head.

  Her second bullet hit the skull-cap a mere half-centimetre away from the rim of a second eye, and ricocheted harmlessly away. I couldn't hear her because of the cacophonous complaints of the insects, but I saw her lips move and I could easily imagine the manner of her cursing.

  I saw—as she must have seen—that the colossal mantis had taken advantage of the miss to haul a bit more of its bulk through the scissored cleft in the wall, and that it only needed one last wriggle to get its entire carcass into the garden. I think I shouted at her to run, but there was no way she could hear me. As usual, it was an utterly futile gesture, because she was undoubtedly better at judging these circumstances than I was, and she wasn't about to hang around for the next flame-bolt or the next attempted snatch at her midriff. She was already backing away, although she had the gun raised, anxious to try a third shot if she could balance herself—the Scarid gun wasn't an easy weapon to use because of the recoil kick.