Asgard's Heart

by Brian Stableford

  It was a promise which I longed to believe, but the sea boiled up beneath us as if it were a cauldron brought hurriedly to the boil, and there came into our faces a howling tempestuous wind like the voice of a wrathful god, while the mist fell all about us cloyingly, as though precipitated from solution in the air. There seemed little doubt that our ridiculous vessel would be smashed into matchwood, and our own bodies torn apart by the fury of the storm.

  I could not stand before the forces that were beating and wrenching at me from all sides, and fell to my knees. But my hands gripped the rail all the tighter, and I ducked my head, trying to make myself tiny and huddle into the angle made by the deck and the balustrade.

  Once I could not see what was happening it did not feel so very awful, and the storm's power seemed much diminished. But still the ship was tossed about in both the vertical and horizontal dimensions, and still there was the sense of vaporous fingers clutching at me, first to tear and then to choke, and I knew that my sword was as impotent as my mere hands to turn them back. I stretched out my legs, trying to hook my feet into small gaps in the wooden face where they might help to anchor me. The bow and the quiver which I had not yet tried to use were pinned beneath me, their awkward shapes digging into my flesh as I tried to force myself down on to the deck.

  I could still see Myrlin clinging to the wheel, refusing to let his giant frame be cast down by the angry wind. I could not see the goddess, but as the moaning of the wind paused for a fleeting moment I heard her, screaming at the storm with all the wrath which she could rouse to meet it. She was not screaming wordlessly—nor, I quickly realised, was she screaming impotently. Although the wind's imperious howl tried hard to reassert itself when the brief pause was done, it could only enter into competition with her, and it seemed almost as if her voice now drew strength from the maelstrom of sound which whirled about us, as if the turbulence which was shaking the very foundations of the world added to her power instead of undermining it.

  I raised my head, gaining confidence that I did not need to shrivel myself up in search of a hidey-hole, wondering if I might not fight too, if only I had words to do it with. I opened my mouth, and found it full of rushing, strangling air, which drove from my mind any thought of trying to form a coherent sentence—but I would not be silenced, and I shouted against the wind with all my might.

  There was a brief moment when it seemed that the shout might empty my lungs and leave me helpless in the grip of the wind, helping it in its determination to choke me, but such sound as I produced seemed only to need a spark to set it alight before it grew of its own accord, plundering the force of the storm which tried to staunch it. There was a moment's struggle, a second's balance, and then I found the power to sustain the shout, to amplify it, and turn it into a cry of triumph, and I realised that Myrlin was shouting too, and that his stentorian voice was somehow adding its support to mine as we laid down a carpet of sound on which the goddess' words could dance . . . and the louder we shouted, the clearer her words became, and though they were in some primitive, forgotten language which I did not know, they had meaning enough to terrify the wind which had come to pluck us apart.

  There surged through me a sense of triumphant authority as I realised what power I had on which to draw. Magic was there to be worked, and although I had no knowledge of its working, the necessity which was the mother of improvisation could bring it forth. I could defend myself, not only with the curious weightless sword but with the sheer force of wishful thinking.

  For the first time in my life I felt truly free, a commander of circumstance.

  The boat plunged through the tiny eye of the storm, through the arch of rosy fire, and came out the other side, bursting from the thick and ruddy cloud into the thinner, sparkling mist once more.

  Water rained down upon us as we passed beneath the vortices which sucked the water up, but they could not close upon the sides of our craft, and could not break our oars—and the water was only water, which could not hurt us in the least.

  Our howls of wrath extended themselves into a long ululating cry of pure elation, and when I had come to my feet I saw that we were all three looking back at the dying thing behind us, whose fury seemed now only to be consuming itself, as the red that was not like blood faded to a pastel shade of rose, and finally evaporated in the silver mist.

  "Did I not tell you?" she called, when at last we stopped our yelling and drew breath. Her voice was cracked, and it was an effort for her now to speak, but the elation in her words was clear to be heard, and it was obvious that this was a conflict she was delighted to have won. We knew now that she had underestimated the enemy, but we had the compensating hope that we might have underestimated ourselves. She turned to face us, while I staggered to Myrlin's side, and we both leant on the wheel while we watched the storm expire in the bubbling waters far behind our stern.

  I gasped for breath, thinking to join in the round of mutual congratulation, when I saw the expression of joy which was in her eyes begin to die. She opened her mouth to say something more, and when no words came I knew that it was not simply shortness of breath that would not let them come.

  I turned, quickly, steadying myself upon the wheel, to look beyond the bows of the ship, at whatever terror now was to be thrust into our path.

  Had I never seen it before it would have been a dreadful sight, but it was something I knew from the dream I had had when concussion had freed that parasite which clung to the underside of my soul.

  Sailing directly toward us out of the mist was a ship four times the size of our own, which stood twice as high in the water, and looked as if it would break us in two if it could ram us squarely.

  Its hull was made from strangely-knotted strands whose nature and origin I could never have guessed, had I not had my dream—but in that dream I had not had to guess, and had known what it was.

  This was the ship of the dead, whose timbers were made from the fingernails of corpses, which had continued to grow long after the bodies were safe in their tombs, and whose fine white sails were woven from hair of the same strange kind. On the deck were its crew, who were made from the bare bones of the resurrected dead, all skeleton and sinew, eyeless, lipless, and heartless, yet bearing arms and fervent with the lust for life.

  To the horror of the sight itself was added a sudden thrill of panic, as I realised that here was a figment of my imagination, a nightmare based in the ancient stories I had recalled. Such images had been seized and appropriated, it seemed, by the tapeworm in my mind, and now they were accessible to the others, whose object was my destruction. A moment ago, I had felt such a power within me that I had almost reckoned myself a god. Now, I remembered all too well that in the riot of Gotterdammerung the gods had perished, wiped out by the giants and their macabre armies.

  Myrlin's huge hand cast me roughly aside as he sought to spin the wheel, but there was not a doubt in the world that he was already too late. Although he steered the ship into a turn as sharp as she could possibly take, all he could do was to make the collision a glancing one. Our gleaming spur barely had strength to scratch the hull of the other vessel, and although the gorgon's head which was mounted on our prow stared with baleful eyes at the host assembled in its bows, the enemy warriors had no eyes of their own by which her power could be known.

  And as the honest timbers of the one ship grated harshly against the eerie fabric of the other, those skeletal warriors were already swinging onsropes of silvery hair, pouring like a troop of horrid insects on to the deck of our small, frail craft.

  17

  It took some thirteen hours of driving through the dead world to reach the next drop-point. I hoped that it would take us a long way down, because the horizontal sort of journey was no fun, and didn't take us a single centimetre closer to where we wanted to be. If we had to drive a thousand kilometres sideways just to reach a point which would only let us go a couple of kilometres downwards, the journey to the centre was going to be a very long one, and we'd all b
e old before we got there.

  I had been nursing the hope that whatever was inside Tulyar's head knew the location of a dropshaft which could take us all the way down in one long, slow fall, but I'd been around Asgard too long to take it for granted that there was any through road from top to bottom, or even from middle to bottom. I knew that we had to be prepared to drive sideways across three or four more habitats, maybe for quite some distance. If the deck was really stacked against us, it might be ten or twenty, or a couple of hundred.

  I wondered whether the thing which had taken over Tulyar's body had undisputed sovereignty by now, or whether the Tetron was still in there, conscious of what was happening, struggling to recover the empire of his own soul. It was a morbid preoccupation, because I had no way to be certain that I wasn't destined for the same kind of fate. At any moment, I might cease to be me, and become a warrior in some aeons-old conflict whose nature we had hardly begun to understand. To make myself feel better I imagined

  John Finn having to sit next to the pseudo-Tulyar, maybe realising by now that he'd been played for a sucker, and that even the Star Force would have looked after him better than the regiment in which he was now enlisted. I couldn't find it in my heart to feel sorry for him—it was easier to ill- wish him with the thought that he had amply deserved the very worst fate which could possibly befall him.

  Eventually, we came to the wall where both the tyre- tracks and the olfactory trace disappeared as if by magic. From where I sat the wall looked smooth enough, but there had to be a doorway there—an airlock guarding a shaft which was probably evacuated.

  It was time for the clever suitcase to do her bit. She was hooked into the transporter's systems by means of half a dozen leads; under her guidance the truck now began to extrude similar feelers from some secret place beneath its central headlight. I watched with some fascination as the feelers began to explore the wall, invading invisible seams and searching out hidden mechanisms. I have no idea what they did, or how, but it only took a few minutes. There was a sudden drain on the power-unit, and a section of wall retreated from the rest, and then slid sideways, after the usual fashion of Asgardian doors. As I had anticipated, there was a big airlock backed by a second door. The lock was only just big enough to take the transporter, and I couldn't help wondering what would happen if and when we found a doorway that was too small for it to go through. Urania had assured me that we had more economical transporters stored somewhere in the back, but I hadn't seen them.

  Once we were inside the lock Clio closed the doors behind us, and set off the command sequence which would open the inner door. Urania confirmed that there was, as expected, no air in the shaft. At least some of the levels which it served must have reducing atmospheres. The shaft was easily wide enough to take the truck, but there was no platform on to which we could drive it.

  "Well," I said, drily, "We could hardly expect them to send it back up for us, could we?"

  "Can we call it back?" asked Susarma. "How long will it take?"

  Urania's nimble fingers tapped away at the keys on the outside of her small, square sister. Clio had no screen to display words, but she was communicating with Urania somehow.

  "We cannot bring the platform back," she said, calmly. "It has been immobilised."

  I felt a bad mood creeping up on me.

  "Can she tell how deep the shaft is?" I asked.

  "Yes. It extends downwards for twenty-five kilometres."

  It wasn't as big a drop as I had hoped; it was still one very tiny step toward the Centre, even if it did take us down further than the Nine's robots had ever gone before. On the other hand, even that tiny step would be a giant leap for a man—and when he reached the bottom, the impact would reduce him to a very thin smear.

  I had learned by now not to underestimate the Nine. They were used to this kind of problem.

  "How do we make a new platform?" asked Myrlin.

  "No need," said Urania, simply. "We will descend by the usual method."

  "What's the usual method?" asked Susarma, with a certain wariness in her voice.

  The usual method of descent into a lower level for humanoid scavengers operating in the upmost four levels had involved the rigging of a block-and-tackle and climbing down a rope. She'd seen that for herself when we followed

  Myrlin down Saul Lyndrach's dropshaft. But we were talking about a hole that was twenty-five kilometres deep, and it didn't take a mathematical genius to figure out that we'd need a hell of a lot of very strong cable to lower an armoured truck that far.

  "I guess we walk," I said. "The way climbers go up and down chimneys. Brace ourselves inside the shaft, and let ourselves down, slowly." I saw the expression of horror flit across Susarma's face, and quickly added: "Not us as in you and me—the entire package. The truck can put out limbs as well as feelers. How many?"

  "Eight," replied Urania. "Four will hold us at any one time, while the remaining four seek a lower hold. But they will not have to brace us; the limbs are flexible, and can use organic adhesives to bond us momentarily to this kind of surface, and dissolve the bond with equal ease. Even so, it will be a long climb, and not so very comfortable."

  "Think of it as a new experience," I said to Susarma. "We can be the first humans ever to get seasick while descending a drainpipe in the belly of a robot spider."

  "You must try to rest, Mr. Rousseau," said the scion, solicitously. "There is nothing you need to do. Clio and I will manage the descent. You should rest too, Colonel Lear."

  It sounded like a good idea. I was all in favour of new experiences, but somehow I didn't passionately want to be in the cab when the truck moved into the shaft. I was happy to believe that its extruded "legs" could secure us safely, but it was the kind of belief that might not be able to quell the anxieties triggered by one's sense of sight. I could easily imagine my stomach turning over as we were picked up and drawn inexorably into position above that twenty-five kilometre drop. Anyway, I was hungry and thirsty.

  There was just about room to stand up in the back of the truck, but if three or four people tried to move around all at once, the crowding quickly became absurd. There were four narrow bunks, two on either side, and as soon as I had a tube of food-concentrate and a bladder-pack of something to drink, I eased myself into the upper left. Susarma took the upper right, and Nisreen, who had been dozing in the lower right, went forward into the cab to join Myrlin and the Nine's two ill-matched daughters.

  I looked across at Susarma as I chewed my way through the flavoured concentrate. It didn't taste any better than Tetron-manufactured manna, but it didn't taste any worse either, and it was what I was used to. The colonel, to judge by her long-suffering expression, was still accustomed to food that did more favours for her palate. I sympathised, thinking how awful it would be if every single meal I ate conjured up memories of some long-ago feast the like of which I was unlikely ever to taste again.

  "Does it strike you, Rousseau, that we're a trifle redundant here?" she said.

  "I don't think it would constitute a fatal breakdown of Star Force discipline if you were to call me Mike," I told her. "I tell everyone to do it, but no one takes a blind bit of notice. You have to expect formality from Tetrax, I guess, but you could surely make an exception."

  "Why break a habit just to pretend we know one another?" she countered. "Hell, Rousseau, I don't know the first thing about you, for all the time I've been forced to spend in your company. Anyway, what I mean is, it seems to me that this fancy robot truck could do the job all on its own. It doesn't need us to drive it, or to shoot its guns—that goddamn suitcase could do it all, couldn't it? Even if the levers we finally have to pull are mechanical, the suitcase and the furry

  hermaphrodite could do the job. Why are we here, Rousseau?"

  It didn't seem to be worth pursuing the matter of my name, or even following up her point about how well we could claim to know one another.

  "We're here," I said, "because the Isthomi find this whole situation just a
s puzzling as we do. They don't know what the hell to expect in the lower depths, but there is one fact about Asgard—and, for that matter, about the universe—which leads them to harbour the suspicion that we poor creatures of flesh and blood must, in the final analysis, be good for something."

  "I'll make a deal," she said. "I'll try to remember to call you Mike if you promise not to conduct conversations as though they were guessing games. Never mind the buildup—just skip to the punch line."

  "The Isthomi," I said, in a faintly injured tone, "are very clever. They're also very handy. They seem to be superior to us in every way—which is why we occasionally get this feeling of redundancy. But what Asgard is mostly full of. . . and what the galaxy beyond Asgard's walls seems to be mostly full of ... is beings like us. What the Isthomi can't understand is why, if beings like themselves are so bloody clever, the universe isn't full of them. They keep looking over their shoulders in the hope of catching a glimpse of their Achilles heel. Maybe they already got shot there a couple of times, during their contacts with whatever is loose in Asgard's software space.

  "The Isthomi are so powerful that they seem to us to be godlike, but they aren't really gods. They're vulnerable in all kinds of ways. We blasted our way through the hostile hardware that came after us, but that wasn't the real war. It was just a throwaway move. We may yet have to withstand an attack much more insidious than the fireworks which were left to entertain us at the bottom of the first shaft—an attack by hostile software. Every time Clio puts out feelers to pick a lock for us she could open herself up to the kind of devastation the Nine suffered when they went exploring in the heart of Asgard's software space. When it comes to the crunch, there might be no one left to carry this fight forward except the likes of you and me. So look after that Scarid crash-gun you've taken to wearing—one day soon. . . ."

  I was forced to pause in my melodramatic discourse because the truck lurched, and I had to brace myself against the ceiling of my bunk space as we wobbled drunkenly. It seemed that we were under way, and that the mechanical precision of the bendy legs which were walking us down the shaft was by no means perfect. I sighed, unable to fancy my chances of getting a good night's sleep. I wasn't sure that I wanted one, anyhow—I was still apprehensive about dreaming, and the fact that the biocopy foisted on my brain had now been recopied into something more like its natural form in harness with my alter ego didn't affect the fact that it was still lurking in the shadows of my soul.