Asgard's Conquerors

by Brian Stableford

  "A certain talent for learning languages. Perhaps, though, you do not mean the question personally—perhaps you are asking what brought my people to this environment?"

  "It would be interesting to know," I answered.

  "Initially," he said, "the need to discover more space than was provided for us in our original habitat came from simple population pressure. Our habitat was some thirty million square kilometres in extent, but there were no significant checks on our population growth. We do not know how many of us there were originally—not very many, perhaps—but by the time we discovered a way to penetrate other environments there were six billion of us, and we faced the prospect of doubling our population again in the space of a man's lifetime. For most of our history—I should say prehistory, as we had no written records for what must have been the greater part of our time here—we took our environment for granted. Only in recent lifetimes have we begun the business of learning to exploit the technologies that lie behind it.

  "We thought that we were making very rapid progress as we moved up and down from our native level. We found no other inhabited level as advanced as our own, and we found many levels effectively uninhabited. Levels like this one posed severe problems in downward expansion. There are others like it beneath us. It seemed easier and more rewarding to go upwards, until we met the cold levels. It looked as if they would be an insurmountable barrier, until we found the lower levels of your city. It seemed to us a very welcome loophole—we could not know until we had already committed our forces what unwelcome revelations awaited us there."

  He paused, expectantly. I didn't like to disappoint him, so I took up the threads of the argument. "So you discovered that you weren't the lords of Creation after all," I said. "And now you don't know what to do."

  "We are . . . undecided," he admitted. He seemed to be waiting for me to respond further, and I decided there was no harm in it.

  "At a guess," I said, "you don't know much about Asgard, let alone the universe. You have no idea how you got here. When your great-grandfathers first began to find out what kind of world they were in, they naturally assumed that it was all built for them, laid on for the convenience of their expanding population. They credited it to their own ancestors. Your expeditions and conquests might have made some of you sceptical, but there was nothing to overturn your faith in your own position of privilege . . . until you moved into Skychain City. You went in expecting to make mincemeat of a few other barbarians living parasitically on the technology of the ancients, and suddenly realised that it was an entirely different kettle of fish. Must have been a shock."

  "Kettle of fish" didn't translate too well into parole, but he got the drift.

  "You're a perceptive man, Mr. Rousseau," he said. He seemed genuinely pleased. Perhaps he'd been starved of intellectual conversation because Alex Sovorov and the Tetrax wouldn't talk to him.

  "Why don't you negotiate with the Tetrax?" I asked him, bluntly. "They're not given to grandiose gestures of revenge. They'd forgive an honest mistake. In fact, they're really rather keen to arrive at a peaceful settlement beneficial to all parties."

  "So our Tetron guests have assured us," he said. "But you must try to see things our way. What would happen if we were to make peace with the Tetrax? They would want access to the levels we control, in order to pursue their peaceful researches. In return, no doubt, they would offer us their own technology, their own knowledge. They would become involved in our projects, interested in our environments. They already believe that Asgard is theirs, because they have the technology to built cities on its surface, and explore its depths. If we give them leave to go where they wish, do what they will, Asgard will become theirs. They will be the ones who learn to use and control the technology of our ancestors. That would not be right. We are the inheritors—all this is ours. We must do everything in our power to keep control of it."

  Again he paused, expectantly. I played fair, and tried to see things his way. I had to concede that he had a point. "If you let the Tetrax have the run of your levels," I said, slowly, "they'll certainly be in a far better position than you are to figure out how Asgard is put together. The technology of the builders—which is incarnate in the very architecture of the macroworld and in the systems that supply energy to the life-sustaining habitats—is very much superior to Tetron technology, but if you and the Tetrax are both trying to figure it out, the Tetrax are bound to get there first. I can see why you want to keep it all to yourselves. You're sitting on the most high-powered technics in the known universe ... if you could only learn to understand it, you'd be ahead of the Tetrax—ahead of everybody. But the fact is that you don't understand it—you don't even understand the technology you've captured from the Tetrax in Skychain City, do you?"

  "Asgard is ours," said Sigor Dyan. "We belong here. I think the people of Skychain City refer to us as "invaders," but that is not correct, is it? It is, in fact, the inhabitants of your city who are invaders of our world. Is that not so?"

  "I can see that it must look that way to you," I conceded carefully.

  "I understand that your own race has recently fought a war against another species, which you won," he said. "Is that not so?"

  "It's true."

  "And why did you fight that war?"

  I gave him a wry smile. "Territorial disputes," I admitted.

  "Your opponents were humanoid, I believe—but I am told that they did not resemble you as closely as we do."

  "That's true too," I confirmed warily.

  "If they had resembled you as closely as we do, do you think your two races might have resolved their differences more amicably?"

  "I doubt it," I said drily. It was an interesting question, though, and I couldn't pretend to know the answer for sure.

  "Your own race is, I believe, technologically inferior to the Tetrax. You are no doubt more advanced than we are, but you have had to find your place in a community of races dominated by the Tetrax. Do you think, given what you know of that community, that humankind will ever catch up with the Tetrax? Do you think that the Tetrax would ever allow any other race to catch up with them, given their present position of superiority?"

  I swallowed a gulp of the green stuff. He was sounding altogether too reasonable. His questions were the sort that are best answered with more questions.

  "What chance do you think you'd have against the Tetrax if it came to armed conflict?" I asked him. "They take great pride in not being violent, but I'd be willing to bet that they could draw upon some awesome firepower if they had to."

  "I have no doubt of it," replied Dyan. "If half of what humans have told us about your own Star Force is true, I have no doubt that you could blast Skychain City into dust, and that we could not defend it. But would the Tetrax really want to bomb Skychain City when there are so many of their own people there? What good would it do them, in the long run, if they did? We have twenty billion people in the lower levels. If they tried to retake Skychain City without destroying it, they would find it very difficult—I do not say impossible, but I cannot think of a way that it could be done. And if Skychain City were to fall . . . what then? We still have twenty billion people in the lower levels. How long do you think it would take your invading armies to take the tenth level down ... let alone the fiftieth?"

  He had obviously had more time to think this out than I had. His arguments looked suspiciously strong. If the galactics tried to take the invaders' little empire by force, they would have a real job on their hands. It might be easy to retake Skychain City—but what then? Could the Tetrax really send their explorers down into the levels with a vast population of hostile aliens standing against them? I knew only too well how difficult it had been for the C.R.E. to make headway in the task of learning about the people who had once lived in the outermost layers of Asgard, even when their only enemy was the cold. Maybe, I thought, the neo-Neanderthalers could buy themselves the time they needed to catch up. Maybe they could keep the Tetrax at bay, not just for years but gen
erations, while they fought as hard as they could to master—really master—the technics that were all around them, built into the fabric of their enclosed universe.

  "Okay," I said. "You can keep the Tetrax out of Skychain City . . . and the levels you control. But you don't have any way of controlling what happens on the other side of the macroworld, do you? Your empire's straight up and down. If it's to be a contest, the Tetrax are going to start digging in all the other habitats on level one. And they'll bring in a great deal more manpower than they ever lent to the C.R.E.—you may still outnumber them by millions to one, but you've already conceded that they're clever. They could still win the race, and if you go all-out to stop them, it will cost you an awful lot of lives. Maybe even twenty billion. Do you really want that kind of war?"

  "We are used to war," he told me, coldly. "It would be a foul betrayal of our ancestors to surrender to alien beings the inheritance which they left for us."

  I was tempted to challenge his assumptions about his so- called ancestors, but I didn't want to antagonise him. I kept quiet, nursing a headache that was getting rapidly worse in consequence of the taxing discussion.

  "In any case," said Sigor Dyan silkily, "there are other factors in the situation which still remain to be considered, are there not? We know that there are other inhabitants of Asgard more advanced than the Tetrax or ourselves. It is entirely possible that our ancestors are still alive, far beneath us in the depths of our world. If our ancestors were now to emerge, to assist us in our hour of need, it would transform the situation dramatically, would it not, Mr. Rousseau?"

  I realised then—perhaps belatedly—exactly why the invaders had been so very pleased to see me when Jacinthe Siani pointed me out. The way Sigor Dyan had things figured, I was the man who had talked to their ancestors . . . the messiah who had been in touch with their gods. I had been thinking in terms of alliances, assuming that the invaders were interested in their downside neighbours as potential allies. It hadn't sunk in that their way of looking at things made me much more important than that.

  I didn't relish the idea of being cast as a messiah. It's a dangerous job, by all accounts.

  I nearly blurted out the fact that Aleksandr Sovorov and at least a dozen of their Tetron prisoners must also know the location of Saul's dropshaft, but I bit my tongue.

  I didn't know how much they had already been told. If all the information they had came from Jacinthe Siani, it would be woefully incomplete. They probably had no idea what kind of deal I'd made with the C.R.E., and they also might not know that the way down to Myrlin's biotech supermen had been very solidly blocked. I had to keep in mind the maxim that careless talk costs lives, and that one of them might easily be mine. I had to tread carefully until I found out exactly what they wanted from me, and exactly what they thought I could deliver.

  "You don't have any real reason to believe," I began tentatively, "that the people down below are your ancestors. They could be just one more race planted in their own habitat just as you were. The fact that they're technologically superior doesn't mean a thing. Ask yourself, Mr. Dyan—if they're just another captive race, would you be any better off becoming their underlings than you would becoming the underlings of the Tetrax?"

  "That is exactly the kind of question, Mr. Rousseau, that we hope you can answer for us," he said, his voice as sweet as the stuff he was feeding me . . . which, now that I had finished it, had left in my mouth a strange and not altogether pleasant aftertaste.

  19

  During the next exercise period, while I was temporarily let loose—presumably to think over all that had been said to me—I got my chance to talk to 822-Vela for a while.

  We met by one of the observation windows, and as we spoke I was able to alternate my glance between his wizened face and the alien wilderness outside. There was a kind of swirling oily mist which made it difficult to see further than ten or fifteen metres, but there was a cluster of the dendritic structures close to the wall, and it was possible to make out, albeit vaguely, the small creatures fluttering amid the branches. The coloured lights which dressed the branches of the dendrites insinuated their soft radiance into the mist, creating rainbow hazes through which the fireflies danced and darted.

  Why is it here? I wondered. Is it something so very unusual in the great universal scheme that it became precious?

  822-Vela was explaining to me the policy that the Tetrax of Skychain City had decided to follow. "Essentially," he said, "our strategy is one of calm reason, with a measure of stubbornness and a certain seductive appeal. We are trying to make clear the benefits that both the galactic races and the races of Asgard would obtain from a meeting of minds and a joining of resources. We stress the standards of behaviour which are required if a complex galactic community is to exist in peace and harmony. We have refused to tell the invaders anything about our technology, or about our discoveries on Asgard, or about the position of our other subsurface bases, unless and until they make some kind of treaty with us and allow us to restore effective communication with the starships in space."

  "Well," I said, deciding that I could make a bid for prestige by name-dropping furiously, "1125-Camina and 994-Tulyar deduced that you would follow that policy, and are planning their own overtures to fit in with it. The problem is that the invaders won't respond in any way to their calls, and without more information it was difficult to decide how to continue. With luck, one of our groups will have managed to renew communications, so that the people in orbit will be fully informed, but it's not easy to see what will happen next. You can probably judge better than I whether 1125-Camina would think it appropriate to order some kind of military action."

  It's no good fishing for information with the Tetrax. They're too good at it to fall for any bait mere humans can deploy. All he said in reply was: "No doubt 1125-Camina will make the best decision. Can we assume that you, like Dr. Sovorov, will follow our directions in this matter? Many of your species-brethren are actively collaborating with the invaders—mercifully, few humans or Kythnans are in a position to offer effective assistance to them."

  I couldn't tell whether he was implying that I was in no position to offer effective help to the enemy either, but I didn't care. For a few moments I just looked out at the swirling mists, wondering whether this habitat, too, contained tens of millions of square kilometres of territory, and wondering what awesome variations the life-system might exhibit over the full range of its terrain.

  When I did answer him, it was to say: "There may be gains to be derived from collaboration. As you say, my fellow humans are not in a position to explain Tetron

  technics to the invaders, so they can do little harm. They might, though, succeed in winning the trust of these people. We must remember that the discoveries they made in capturing Skychain City have upset their entire world-view. By the time my race ventured outside our solar system we already knew a great deal about the universe, and were forewarned of the fact that it was inhabited. Contact with the galactic community was not entirely surprising. These people have suffered a shock of far greater magnitude. It may be that they are reassured by their close resemblance to us, and that through contact with humans they can gradually become accustomed to contact with galactics in general. My species-brethren may be building vital bridges."

  I was proud of myself; I thought it a speech worthy of a Tetron in its delicacy and guile. No doubt 822-Vela wouldn't agree, but a Tetron never will agree that anyone can play his own game half as well as he does.

  "That would be a dangerous policy," observed 822-Vela. "And we must remember, Mr. Rousseau, that you humans are not practised in the ways of diplomacy. Better, perhaps, to say nothing at all than to attempt a policy of friendliness which might easily do more harm than good."

  Or to put it another way: Don't try to be too clever, human—you're not up to it.

  "I'm not sure that they'll be prepared to be polite indefinitely," I told him, not without a certain vindictiveness. "I think members of you
r own race might be in grave danger of harm. I think that it may be necessary to give these people some answers—and the answers we humans can give them may help to discourage them from attempting to extract information from you by violent means."

  Tetron faces aren't expressionless, but they're very difficult to read, even for a human who has spent a lot of

  time around them. I couldn't tell whether he was disappointed or annoyed, or whether he was telling himself that this was just what you'd expect from a lousy barbarian.

  Somehow, Aleksandr Sovorov materialised at my elbow. He seemed to know what I'd just said, although he certainly hadn't been in earshot when I said it. "It's important, Rousseau," he said, sternly, "to figure out exactly where your loyalties lie. Your past recklessness has already cost us one chance to communicate with the advanced race which apparently lives in the lower levels. It would be unfortunate if further recklessness were to damage our standing in the galactic community irreparably."

  I deliberately turned away from both of them to stare directly out of the window. They edged round slightly, lining up on either side of the view like a pair of curtains.

  "The thing is, Alex," I said, with all the condescension I could muster. "You aren't really in a position to see the big picture. Anyhow, I'm in the Star Force now, and recklessness is my profession."

  Sovorov and the Tetron exchanged glances, and the Tetron bowed slightly before withdrawing.

  "Vela and I were chatting yesterday, while you were being questioned," explained Sovorov. "We tried to establish what would be the best thing for you to do."