Asgard's Heart

by Brian Stableford

  "We do not always have a choice in such matters," he said, with the air of one who has made his point. "Do we, Mr. Rousseau?"

  He was probably right. "Okay," I said, with a shrug. "You're in the team. But you have to remember that the game is likely to be played by barbarian rules. You don't have any rank to pull just because you're a Tetron."

  "I claim no debt from anyone," he told me. "I think we are now in the fifth phase of history, and must set aside the old ways."

  He was talking about the theory of historical phases which the Tetrax had developed, in which Earth was stuck in the third phase, when power was based primarily in manufactured technology, while Tetra was in the fourth, where power was based in obligations of service—negotiated slavery, as humans tended to think of it. I nearly asked him what the basis of power was supposed to be in the new phase which he'd just invented, but as I opened my mouth to frame the question I realised that I didn't have to. The power-base in phase five was inside the machines—it resided with man-made gods like the combatants in the battle of Asgard. 673-Nisreen had seen a vision of the future, and had glimpsed the deus ex machina that would put an effective end to the humanoid story. Maybe that was the real lesson that Asgard had to teach the ambitious galactics of the Milky Way: in the greater scheme of things, we were pretty small beer.

  Aborting the question, I said instead: "You'd better get some sleep. We start as soon as we can, and if we have to run a gauntlet of killer machines like the ones which nearly wiped us out today, we aren't going to have a very restful journey."

  He nodded, politely. "I fear that you are right, Mr. Rousseau," he said. "I will bid you goodnight."

  I wasn't so sure that Susarma Lear was going to thank me for adding a Tetron to the strength—even a Tetron who seemed infinitely less devious and dangerous than the late but not-yet-lamented 994-Tulyar. She didn't like or trust the Tetrax, and she had every reason not to. But what the hell, I thought, it's their universe too, and I guess he's just as entitled to do his bit in the attempt to save it as anyone else.

  14

  Freezing fog closed in around the ship, so thick that I could hardly see the sluggish waters lapping against the timbers of the hull. I had acquired a cloak to fold about myself, black as night in colour, and when I pulled it tight it secured such warmth within that the wind seemed to bite all the more fiercely into the skin of my face.

  "This is none of our doing," I said to the woman who waited by my side, still nameless while I hesitated to think of her as Athene. "What's happening?"

  "It is the beginning," she said. "Whatever forces are arrayed against us know that we have set forth. They are trying to make themselves felt in the order which we are imposing on the software space through which we move; they will soon begin their attempts to disrupt our course."

  I looked out into the grey mists, which swirled eerily. It was as if the clouds which once had raced above our heads had slowed in their paces, falling as they slowed. If we had tried to shape this world as Midgard, home of men, then our enemies were trying now to draw us into Niflheim, domain of the goddess Hel, for whom we name the place where the dead must go to be punished for their sins. There were demons in those mists, and I could see their faces, skull-faced and hollow-eyed as they struggled—fruitlessly as yet—to make themselves coherent, to find the power to reach out and rake us with their angry claws.

  I knew that the creation-myths of the Norsemen imagined that Niflheim had existed even before the earth—a world of fog and shadows on the lip of the great abysm of space. But I could not remember how the world which men would inhabit had been born from that formless chaos. I was disturbingly aware of the fact that if that lesion in my memory was real, and not merely a matter of my being temporarily unable to bring the matter to mind, then this world might not know how its birth and maturation must proceed.

  I played with the proposition that perhaps the god who shaped the earth from which the human race emerged had only been attempting to recall a dimly-remembered story, and that all the troubles which had plagued mankind were the faults of his forgetfulness. I toyed with the notion that the universe of infinite space from which I had come was itself only software space within a machine of greater magnitude, its hard and unbreakable laws merely the certainty of some finely-tuned intelligence which did not doubt the propriety of its designs.

  Here, though, playing with ideas might be dangerous, and it was foolish of me to add to the unease I already felt.

  I drew the collar of my cloak upwards, using its warmth and softness to soothe my stinging cheeks and ears. Time passed, but its passing seemed to leave little trace upon my memory, and I felt that I could not reliably tell whether we had been sailing for hours or days. This was dream-time, immune to measurement by clocks or by the beating of my silent heart.

  I had removed the quiver of arrows from my back, and placed them beside the bow that rested on the wooden rail. The figures which were carved in the wood of the balustrade were not pictures, nor the letters of any alphabet which I knew, but I fancied them to be runes laying out some powerful protective spell, so that this ill-fortressed deck might not easily be stormed.

  A more substantial shadow drifted from the mist high above us, and swooped down, taking shape as a huge predatory bird, but it was only a ghost—as I ducked beneath its course I felt no breeze as of a body passing, and knew that there was as yet no danger in it. But from that moment on, the higher fog seemed to fill with such raptorial shadows, which soared in patient circles as if waiting for a solidity which they knew they must ultimately discover. They seemed to suck the darkness from the swirling mists, so that the background against which they moved grew gradually lighter, as though there were a bright white sky behind the vaporous haze, struggling to shine through.

  Dare I wish for the glare of a bright sun to melt these mists? I thought. Should I chant some magical verse to bid the fog begone?

  I did not try it; not because I was certain that it would not work, but rather that I was afraid that it would not work to our advantage. We had set out beneath a dull and sullen sky, perhaps for adequate reason, and I knew enough of the perils of magic to know that a foolish spell must always rebound upon its user.

  The plash of the invisible oars could still be heard as they dipped into the water to haul us across its surface. I wondered whether there were fish in the sea which saw us as a marvelous many-legged insect scudding across the surface, but it was not a cheering thought.

  Myrlin was standing at the wheel, holding it loosely, while the woman looked on. I did not know whether the wheel was such as to need a man to guard it, or whether the rudder moved with the same innate intelligence as the oars; I fancied, though, that Myrlin felt better having the semblance of a job to do. I went to stand beside him, taking my bow and arrows from the side of the ship to the bulwark's

  ledge that formed the front-facing wall of our platform.

  "It seems that they are becoming more distinct," he said, glancing upward at the circling shadows. He sounded uneasy; no doubt he would rather postpone our first moment of real danger for as long as possible, though when it came it would immediately banish any sensation of having been delayed. I turned to our companion, goddess in mortal guise, to study her as she stared up into the sky, with an expression of considerable vexation.

  "Too soon," she murmured, and seeing me looking in her direction, added: "Do not worry, I beg of you. If they begin to come through now, they will be very weak. Our world will not be breached so easily."

  As if to contradict her, another shadow swooped at her, zooming from the heights like a black eagle, claws extended to tear and rend. She could not help but draw her face away, and put up a defending arm, while the folds of her dark cloak fell momentarily away from her golden armour.

  Whether the hand made contact with the shadow-thing it was difficult to say, but she sustained no hurt from it and the bird-demon soared away again, impotent still.

  It was obvious that the next swoop
might not be so impotent, so dense were the shadows now becoming, so fast and furious in their flight. I drew my sword, and threw back the cloak, determined to hide from the cold no longer.

  As if glad to meet my challenge, three of the shadows dived at once, hurtling towards me with wing-tips drawn back. I watched the heads of the creatures, and saw their bird-like faces dissolve, to be replaced by features far more humanoid, save for pointed teeth behind gaping lips. Their great claws thrust out before them seemed to grow as they drew near.

  I slashed with the sword, finding it remarkably easy to wield. For a moment, I had the sensation that the blade itself was only shadow, not substantial at all, and feared that it could not disturb the attack of the harpies, but the lack of apparent weight was no reflection of a lack of effective substance.

  The single sweep of the sword cut through all three of the bird-demons, and it was they who lacked the substance to interrupt its passing. It cut through them as if they were no less vaporous than the clammy mist, but as it did it tore them savagely, so that their forms were shattered, dissolving into blood-red clouds. They had no momentum to carry through their thrust—the sword caught them and hurled them away, scarlet-and-black shreds that had lost all semblance of what they had tried to be. They disappeared over the parapet, on a downward-looping trajectory, but there was no sound of any splash as they hit the waves.

  There surged through me a feeling of such power that I felt momentarily giddy. The casual ease of the victory imparted such a sense of exultation that I could revel in the sensation of being a person of great substance . . . one who would never need to yield to the monsters of the night. Though reason told me that this was the merest of beginnings, and the most derisory of all the tests which were to come, still I felt indomitable, as though I knew for the first time in my existence what it might mean to be a hero. I still felt as though I might be drunk, but this was the glorious intoxication of triumph and exultation.

  Without meaning to, I followed the course of the shattered bird-things, moving over to the side of the ship and placing my left hand on the parapet while I peered into the thicker mists which hid the sea.

  I could see no more than I could hear, and the broken things were utterly gone in the confusion, but while my hand rested on the parapet something long and black snaked out of the murk as though it came from beneath the belly of the ship, and wrapped itself around my wrist.

  It had the texture of something very soft and slimy, and yet it tightened in a muscular fashion once it had me in its grip. It put me in mind of the head of a great leech, and I half-expected to feel the bite of something acid as it tried to draw my blood. My reaction was one of instinctive horror, and I tried to pull my hand away with a convulsive jerk— but that was exactly the wrong thing to do. It was as though the strength of my backward thrust was immediately reflected in the body of the thing itself, as though my action had added to its own capacity for elastic reaction. As my arm reached the full measure of my jerking pull, it was suddenly wrenched back again, with such force that I nearly overbalanced.

  In that moment, I think, there was a real danger that our defences might be breached by the enemy's first hopeful foray. I could have tripped, felled by my own unreadiness and clumsiness, and if I had been dragged over the edge of the parapet and down into the turbulent waters, the shock of immersion would surely have driven all sense from my mind and left me at the mercy of whatever half-formed sea- monsters were nascent there.

  But I did not fall; my reflexes, however untrained or doubtfully adapted, caught me up and steadied me, while the sword in my right hand cut downwards, almost of its own accord, and sheared through the black tentacle as though it were hardly there.

  Again there was a stain as if of blood upon the mist, but then the loop which wound around my wrist dissolved into the icy air, and the rest of the thing was gone into the waters.

  "Too soon it may be," I shouted to my companions, though there was not sound enough to require me to raise my voice, "but it will not stop them. They are at us, and I do not believe that they will give us pause to rest."

  She did not need the warning. Her slender sword was in her hand, and Myrlin came back from his senseless duty at the wheel, with his own weapons ready. He towered above me by a full head and more, and as he whirled his blade about his head, slashing at the demons of the air who came at him with many ugly faces and countless thrusting talons, he seemed closer kin to god or titan than to mankind.

  More of the black things curled on to the deck, some climbing in sinuous fashion, others striking like whiplashes. I swung the sword back and forth, cutting through them as fast as they reached for me, and though one touched my ankle it had not the time to curl around it.

  On the deck below us, the automata came to life at last, and with their own weapons drawn began to fight against shadows raised as though from the sea itself—vague things with dog-like heads and arms like huge apes, which reached for them in ponderous fashion.

  The skirmish seemed to last for some while, but it quickly became obvious that these lumpish things had no more power to hurt our defenders than the bird-demons and the slimy ropes had to carry us away. When that fact became clear within my mind, it seemed that the knowledge itself was enough to put an end to the episode. One moment the demonic birds were crowding around us as thickly as they could; the next they were gone into the mists, flown away to leave the lowering sky much brighter than it had been before they filled it.

  I took this as a good sign, until I saw the expression on my female companion's face, and knew that this was not the way she had hoped that things would go.

  "They know we are here," she said, "and are prepared to test us. I had hoped to find less quickness of reaction, and I know now that we have more to fight than mere automata. There is a mind in this, and I cannot tell how clever it will prove. I fear that we may have underestimated their capacity to deal with such as we."

  "Well then," I said, "we must hope that they in their turn will underestimate our capacity to deal with such as they."

  As I said it, the mist seemed to darken again, and renew its iciness, making me shiver even within my cloak. Hero though I was, armed and aided by gods, I felt a chill course through me, which promised me an abundance of pain and anguish in time to come.

  15

  There were five of us in the truck—or six, if we counted non-humanoids. That was one more than was specified in our original plans—but I thought we'd be able to cope, given that the truck we were chasing had eight aboard. As I had anticipated, the admission of 673-Nisreen to our company met with the unequivocal disapproval of Susarma Lear, who was still nursing an altogether reasonable suspicion of the probable perfidy of all members of the Tetron species, but by the time she realised he'd been added to our strength his position was a fait accompli. She had no opportunity to start an argument about it.

  The scion who had been appointed to come with us was quite indistinguishable, in my eyes, from all her fellows. She suggested that we should address her as Urania-3, but there didn't seem to be any point in retaining the number, so I promptly abandoned it.

  The sixth member of our expedition might also have been reckoned to be a scion, though it (or "she," as consistency demanded that I think of her) wasn't any kind of organic entity. At rest she looked not unlike a suitcase, but she was studded with connect-points for all kinds of leads: metal, glassfibre, and organic, and she could extrude pseudopods of all these kinds in order to hook herself up to virtually any kind of system she was likely to meet. If necessary, she could slide artificial neurons into humanoid flesh, just like the hoods of the chairs the Isthomi used for interfacing with us, but she was equally at home interfacing with the

  systems of the robot transporter.

  Her main purpose, to my mind, would be to help us open the many doorways that must undoubtedly lie between ourselves and the lowest levels of the macroworld, at least some of which would presumably need external supplies of power because they h
ad no stored potential of their own and could no longer draw upon the great network. I had no doubt, though, that she thought of herself as the real guide and leader of the expedition—a far more powerful and more versatile incarnation of the Nine than Urania. She had no voice of her own, but Urania told us that we could refer to her, if we wished, by the name Clio-14. Again, I promptly forgot the number, and I had some difficulty at first in thinking of her by name, given that she was so very different in form from the furry humanoid Clios I had known.

  By the time we had loaded extra power cells and the various kinds of equipment which either the Nine or I considered potentially useful, the free space aboard the truck was getting very cluttered. Anyone who was not in the cab had only two choices—they could sit in the gun-turret or lie down in the narrow bunk-space. To begin with, the colonel took the turret while Myrlin, Urania, and Clio shared the front seat with me and Nisreen lurked in the rear.

  "Are you sure you can handle the guns?" I asked Susarma, before she went up.

  "They're guns, Rousseau," she informed me with vitriolic contempt. "Given that the original plan was that you should be able to shoot them, I don't think I'll have much difficulty, do you? Are you sure that you can drive the bloody truck?"

  It wasn't quite like that. The original plan had been that the intelligent suitcase, hooked into the robot's systems, could do the driving and man the guns, both at the same time. Needless to say, the robot had external sensors that could function far better as eyes than our real eyes peering through windows. Both sets of manual controls had been intended as back-ups. Susarma Lear still hadn't cultivated the correct frame of mind for dealing with the Isthomi. I didn't try to explain, because Clio had been quite willing to share control of the guns with the colonel, on the grounds that reflexes trained by the Star Force might easily outperform her own mechanical responses in a tough combat situation. Beyond the Nine's protective barriers, there might be all kinds of electronic highwaymen lying in wait for us—and our recent experiences suggested that it might not be so easy getting past them. A dozen mechanical mantises would be no mean opponents.