Asgard's Heart

by Brian Stableford

  There were several Scarid soldiers making a show of patrolling the streets, carrying the weapons they'd brought down with them when they came to negotiate a treaty with 994-Tulyar. They looked a little glazed, as one might expect of men who'd just come through an unexpected battle, but they also looked a little bit pleased with themselves. It wasn't hard to guess why. They were fighting men who'd recently been humiliated by the cunning of the Tetrax, forced to accept that their glorious empire was impotent to deal with the real universe. They'd come down here to learn their lesson from the all-wise and non-violent conquerors, but when the attack had come, it had been they and not the Tetrax who'd known how to react. They'd been able to put up something of a fight, and were proud of that.

  As I looked around at the shards of the robots which had served as the assault force, I quickly realised that the Scarid soldiers couldn't have contributed much to their actual defeat—those which had been stopped by firepower had been hit by missiles much bigger than the ones the Scarida had in their popguns. Some looked as if they had blown themselves to smithereens, probably because something had been done to their internal software that had fatally disrupted their power-plants. It was the Nine who'd done all the hard work, despite their peaceful inclinations.

  We tried to find some task with which we could usefully occupy ourselves, but the urgent work was virtually complete, and the less vital clearing up could safely be left to the Nine's robot servitors. I looked around for someone I knew, but the only person I recognised was an ashen-faced

  Jacinthe Siani. I didn't particularly want to talk to her, but she obviously thought that it was a time for old grudges to be set aside. She came over.

  "What happened?" she said. "I thought the war was over."

  "That was the war between the Scarida and the inhabitants of Skychain City," I told her, drily. "This seems to be a war of much greater magnitude, fought by armies more peculiar than the ones we galactic innocents are used to. I doubt that there'll be any further call for your services as a traitor."

  She didn't seem inclined to trade insults. She was frightened, and she seemed rather forlorn. She was human enough, and beautiful enough, to have made weaker men than me feel sorry for her, but I had no difficulty in resisting the urge to put my arm around her shoulder. She'd done me too many bad turns, and no favours at all.

  "The sooner I can get back to the surface the better," she said. "I don't like it down here."

  "It's a long, long way to the surface," said Susarma Lear, who had even less sympathy for the Kythnan woman than I did. "And the elevators are out. I don't think any of us will be going home for quite a while."

  Jacinthe clearly hadn't thought of that. She looked at me forlornly with her big dark eyes, genuinely pathetic.

  "It's a disappointing universe, isn't it?" I said. The words didn't come out quite as cruelly as I intended them. When it came to it, I just hadn't got the heart to turn the knife in the wound.

  Jacinthe turned disconsolately away, and wandered off in the direction of the battered dome that was all the home she had left.

  I went to look more carefully at one of the disabled robots.

  It didn't much resemble the giant mantis that had come after me—it was more like a bipedal armadillo, with guns instead of arms. It seemed to me to be rather crudely- designed, as killing-machines went. This hadn't been a subtle attack, or a particularly well-prepared one. I inferred that the sudden hotting up of the war had taken the opposing forces somewhat by surprise. No doubt they were improvising as best they could, but they didn't seem to have had much time to prepare for the battle they'd just fought.

  I asked one of the scions about the casualty figures. She didn't have an exact count, but she told me that more than three-quarters of the Scarid contingent had been killed or seriously injured, and that half of the Tetrax were dead. I asked about 994-Tulyar, but all she could say was that he wasn't among the casualties they'd collected.

  "Did they get Finn?" asked Susarma Lear, and when the scion told her that Finn was still unhurt she said: "Pity." I knew how she felt.

  Someone else had seen us, and came over to talk; the scion went on her way. I didn't recognise the newcomer immediately—it's not that all Tetrax look alike, but it does take an effort of mind to pay attention to their distinguishing characteristics instead of the mere fact of their obvious alienness.

  "Mr. Rousseau?" he said, uncertainly. He obviously had the same difficulty with human faces.

  I realised belatedly who he was. "673-Nisreen?" I countered. For the first time, I felt a small thrill of relief. Here was one survivor I could be glad to greet.

  He gave me a slight bow. "I arrived here only a few hours ago," he said. "I know almost nothing of the situation. But I am unable to locate 994-Tulyar, and if he is not found—or if he is found to be dead—I shall be in effective authority over the remaining Tetrax here. I have spoken to the entities that you call the Nine, and they have told me that it may be some time before they can restore communication with the upper levels. I am, as you know, a biologist, and although I have been an ambassador of sorts to your own species, I am not at all sure where my responsibility now lies. I cannot tell what ends we might work toward, or what means we might employ in the hope of their attainment. It is said that you have a special intimacy with the curious intelligences that are native to this level, and you have been here longer than anyone else that I might consult. Will you advise me, Mr. Rousseau, as to what you think will happen now, and what we should do?"

  I'd never been asked for advice by a Tetron, and had never expected to be. 994-Tulyar would never have condescended to ask me the time of day. In the one substantial conversation I'd previously had with Nisreen he'd seemed as patronising as any of his race, but I'd obviously made a favourable impression on him. The only problem was that I didn't know what advice I could give him. I thought fast, trying to come up with something that might justify his trust.

  "The first thing the Isthomi will need to do," I improvised, "is to organise some kind of defensive strategy in case this happens again. I don't know who it was that sent those murder-machines against us, but we'd be foolish to assume that they've shot their bolt. The Nine know relatively little about weaponry. Scarid weapons are fairly crude, and your scientists may have more useful expertise—you'd better find out what help you can offer to the Isthomi in that regard."

  Nisreen nodded. "I see," he said. Then he waited— obviously I'd only whetted his appetite for more.

  "The Nine already have a lot of problems on their plate," I said. "As you probably know, they've suffered a couple of disasters of a less crude nature. Now the attackers have switched off the power supply to the entire macroworld, the Nine will want to find out very quickly who they are and how they can be stopped. The people who stand to suffer most in the short term are the Scarida— you'll have to talk to whoever's left in charge of their team, to impress upon him that their interests and ours are identical. We don't want them deciding to do something silly, and we'll certainly need their fighting men if there's another attack."

  He nodded again, but didn't even bother to provide a verbal prompt. He just waited for more. He was certainly expecting a lot from a mere barbarian. I decided, albeit a little reluctantly, to tell him about my plans.

  "The Nine have been building a robot vehicle for me," I told him. "It's designed to cross more or less any terrain, even through a reducing atmosphere. I intend to take it down through the levels, relying on the Nine to find me a route. We need to find out what's happening down there— and whether we can do anything about it. If turning the power off was as simple as throwing a switch, then it can probably be turned on again with equal ease, and if one side in this war had a pressing reason for wanting it switched off, the other side will presumably want to switch it back on again. If the people fighting this war thought that the Isthomi were impotent to intervene, they probably wouldn't have tried to destroy them—which implies that there's something we can do, even if we
can't quite figure out what it is."

  I could tell from his expression that this wasn't quite the kind of advice which he had in mind, so I stopped. There really didn't seem to be anything else I could say. I decided that there was no point in bringing up the Nine's other bright idea about sending a task-force of personality-copies through software space. I still didn't like the idea very much, and I wasn't at all sure that I was prepared to volunteer.

  "I'm sorry, Nisreen," I finished, "but I can't tell you what you ought to do. If there's a role for you to play in all this, you'll have to work it out for yourself."

  Nisreen studied me carefully, his face quite inscrutable. "I am indebted to you, Mr. Rousseau," he said. "We all face a difficult time now, and I must undertake to make what contribution I can, as my duty demands. I will talk with you again, if I may. But may I ask one more question?"

  "Go ahead," I said, generously.

  "We once discussed, very briefly, various hypotheses regarding the possible nature of Asgard and its relation to the many star-worlds which support humanoid life. Can you tell me which hypothesis you now consider to be the most likely?"

  It was a very good question.

  "When I talked to you last," I said, hesitantly, "I suggested that Asgard, or something like it, might have been the common point of origin of the gene-systems which are scattered around the galactic arm—that the builders of Asgard had been behind the seeding of the star-worlds which produced the galactic community. The other hypothesis which I had in mind was that its task might be to gather genes from star-worlds, using the habitats in the levels to store and transport them. I can't say that I'm any nearer to deciding whether either or both of those speculations is true—but I have to admit that every day that passes seems to lend more credence to an idea that Colonel Lear favours: that Asgard is some kind of fortress, heavily armed and armoured to protect the life-systems to which it plays host against some hostile and destructive agency. If that's true, it seems to have already come near to failure in that purpose, and to be getting nearer all the time.

  "In fact, if Asgard is a fortress, it looks very much as if the fortress has been breached, and that the entire macroworld is in danger—and not just from the slow death that will follow the power failure. We must at least consider the possibility that if this war is being waged by invaders of Asgard against its defenders, their objective might be its total destruction."

  I could tell that I'd impressed him. He looked very serious indeed—as well he might, considering that I'd just suggested to him that if the mysterious battle raging around us were to be won by the wrong side, ten thousand life-systems might be blown to atoms.

  The Tetrax had always posed as great believers in the brotherhood of humanoid races, and were never slow to preach to others the doctrine that truly civilized people outgrew the folly of war. I had always had my doubts as to whether the likes of 994-Tulyar really believed that, but 673-Nisreen seemed less of a hypocrite. For him, the thought that the godlike beings who had built Asgard were involved in the kind of war where multiple genocide might qualify as a minor incident must be a very shocking one.

  As I had said to Jacinthe Siani, it was beginning to look as if we were inhabitants of a rather disappointing universe.

  9

  My own room was mercifully undamaged, and I was glad to be able to retreat into it at last. I removed my bloodstained shirt as carefully as I could, and inspected the damage with the aid of a couple of mirrors. The cuts seemed superficial, and were already on the mend—I obviously healed quickly now that the Isthomi had tuned up my body. I knew, though, that it was no good being potentially immortal if I persisted in such hazardous activities as standing next to explosions and playing hunt-the-human with fire-spitting dragons. What it would take to kill me, I didn't know, but I didn't particularly want to test myself to the limit.

  I asked the dispenser to give me something for my headache, and was pleased that it was still capable of obliging me, even though the something was only aspirin.

  Then I sat down on my bed, and relaxed for a little while.

  A little chime sounded, but it wasn't the door or the phone. It was the Nine's discreet request for permission to ennoble my walls with their active presence.

  "Okay," I said, tiredly. "I'm decent." It was a slight exaggeration, but I knew that the Nine didn't care.

  They presented me with the customary female image, but she was standing, and she was wearing the Star Force uniform. It would have been in keeping with the propriety of the moment if she'd had a regulation flame-pistol in her belt, but even the Nine weren't prepared to go that far for the sake of mere appearances.

  "I haven't made up my mind yet," I told her. "And although it probably testifies to the limitations of my imagination, I actually care far more about what's going to happen to this sad bundle of meaty bones than the heroic exploits of any non-carbon copy of its animating spirit."

  "I would like you to tell me about the dream," she said calmly.

  "The dream?"

  "When you were unconscious in the aftermath of the incident in the garden you had a dream."

  "Is it important?"

  "I believe so. It is the means by which the biocopy in your brain is making itself known to you. The imagery is undoubtedly borrowed—much as the image which I present to you now is borrowed—but there seems to be a serious attempt at communication going on . . . perhaps a desperate one."

  I told her as much as I could remember. She winkled out a few extra details by shrewd cross-examination. I was glad I'd had the aspirin.

  "The core of the dream," she assured me, "is the series of images which you saw in approaching its climax. The wolf-pack; the diseased world-tree; the ship of the dead; the traitor; the fiery army; the bridge; the face of a god."

  "I don't think it means anything in particular," I told her. "I know where it comes from. It's part of another myth-set from my homeworld—the set from which we borrowed the name Asgard. The things I saw were all part of the build-up to Gotterdammerung . . . the twilight of the gods. It's not unnatural that I should try to represent a war inside Asgard in those terms: the gods versus the giants in the ultimate conflict. How else could I try to get to grips with what's happening here? It all comes out of something I read once, just like Medusa."

  "There is no way that the biocopy can make itself known to you save by exploiting the meaning of your own ideas," she told me. "It must speak to you by means of an imagistic vocabulary which you already know. It cannot invent—it can only select, and inform by selection. This notion of an ultimate war between humanoid gods and giants might be an invention of your own mind, but it must also be information given to you by the new programme that has colonised your brain. We must treat it as a message, and try to understand what it is trying to tell us."

  I shrugged. "Okay," I said. "There's a war going on. How does it help us to characterise the sides as gods and giants? Does it tell us which side is which? Does it tell us who's trying to destroy us, and why? And does it tell us what we're supposed to be doing about it?"

  "Perhaps it does," she replied with infuriating persistence, "if we can read the imagery correctly."

  "Read on, then," I said impatiently.

  "The primary personalities involved in this conflict are not humanoids," she said. "In fact, they are not organic beings at all. They are artificial machine-intelligences—akin to ourselves, but more complex and more powerful. The organic beings which created the Nine were making machine-minds in the image of their own personalities. The machine-intelligences engaged in this war were designed for different and more ambitious purposes. Some, we must presume, were designed to operate and control the macroworld—these are the entities that are represented in your dream as the gods of Asgard. The others, we suspect, must have been created for the specific purpose of attacking the macroworld and destroying its gods— these are the beings that are represented in your dream by the giants. They may not actually be intelligent—perhaps they are
destructive automata akin to the things you call tapeworms— but they seem to be capable of wreaking considerable havoc.

  "If we are to take the imagery seriously, the plight of the gods is desperate—the forces which are attempting to destroy them are pressing forward their attack. That attack threatens all the organic life in Asgard—represented by the world-tree of your dream—but some organic life-forms may have become instruments of the attackers—that is what is signified by the image of the traitor. Somehow, there is a vital function to be served by organic entities, although we cannot be sure whether that function is to be served by actual organic entities or by software personas which mimic them. That there is a heroic role to be played we are convinced, but where and how it must be acted out, we are not certain."

  It was one hell of a story, but it seemed to me to be reading an awful lot into a dream. I had the uncomfortable suspicion that whatever I'd dreamed, the Nine would have been able to find a similar story in it.

  "I don't know," I said, dubiously. "It would be more convincing if the supposed gods had managed to leave their message in Myrlin's brain as well as mine—or Tulyar's. Has Tulyar turned up, by the way?"

  "No," replied the avatar of Athene. "We are unable to locate him."

  All of a sudden, that sounded rather ominous. Even with most of their peripheral systems switched off, the Nine should have been able to locate a Tetron, living or dead, if he were somewhere in their worldlet. I remembered that although the Nine had been unable to find any evidence that any alien software had been rudely injected into Myrlin's brain, they had been more cautious in passing judgment on Tulyar.

  "What do you deduce from that?" I asked, anxiously.