Asgard's Secret

by Brian Stableford

  When I didn't answer her question, Susarma Lear looked over her shoulder, following my gaze. She smiled too, but the peace-officers ignored her as they leapt from the slow-moving strip on to solid ground.

  "Are you Michael Rousseau, sir?" the spokesman said to me.

  "Whatever it is," I said, "I didn't do it. I just this minute got out of jail."

  "You are not under suspicion of having committed any crime, sir," the Tetron informed me, dutifully. "However, we are investigating a multiple murder, and your name has been recently linked with several of the deceased persons. This necessitates my asking you some questions. It will not be necessary for you to accompany us to our offices, provided that you have no objection to our recording your answers here."

  The star-captain was giving me a rather peculiar look, as if she were wondering whether she'd accidentally conscripted Jack the Ripper.

  "Who's dead this time?" I asked.

  "Seven people have been killed," the policeman told me. "Three are vormyr, one is a Spirellan, one a human and two are Zabarans. Three of the persons gave evidence at your recent trial, testifying that you murdered Mr. Atmanu in their presence."

  It didn't take a mathematical genius to work out who one of the victims must be. "Balidar's been murdered?" I said, weakly. "Heleb too?" I added, optimistically.

  "Simeon Balidar is the dead human," the peace-officer confirmed. "The Spirellan named Lema also testified at your trial, as did the Zabaran Shian Mor."

  I was disappointed to hear that Heleb wasn't numbered among the dead, but I felt free to hope that he might be grief-stricken about his little brother. "I was in jail," I repeated. "My every word has been monitored for the last five days. You know that I couldn't have had anything to do with it."

  "I have already confirmed that you are not under suspicion," the Tetron reminded me, frowning as only a Tetron can frown. "All I need to know is whether you know anything that would cast light on the motive for the crime. Since you had nothing to do with it, you might perhaps be able to tell us whether anyone else had a motive."

  "Right," I said. "As it happens, I do. The dead men were participants in a conspiracy to frame me for the murder of the Sleath, Atmanu. The conspiracy has just gone awry, so the person who hired them is probably trying to clear up the evidence of his crime. His name is Amara Guur. He's not one of the dead vormyr, I presume?"

  The peace-officer didn't seem too happy about the content of my statement, but he recorded it meekly. "Amara Guur is not among the deceased," he confirmed.

  "Pity," I said. "He's your man, then. He's already been responsible for one murder that I know of. I have no doubt at all that he's also responsible for these. I suggest that you arrest him immediately."

  "Do you have any evidence to support what you say, sir?" the peace-officer asked, dutifully.

  "Absolutely," I said. "The best evidence there is. I know that I didn't murder the Sleath, and that all the witnesses at my trial committed perjury in order to force me to sign a contract drawn up by Amara Guur. You should arrest a woman named Jacinthe Siani as well as Guur—she's a Kythnan. If you put your minds to it, you'll have the entire puzzle unraveled by nightfall."

  The star-captain obviously wanted to get a move on. "Have you finished with this man?" she asked. "If not, you'll have to deal with me. He's a trooper in the Earth Star Force, and I'm his commanding officer. As it happens, I was hoping to talk to your commanding officer. I need your help to ascertain the whereabouts of a stolen vehicle and apprehend the thief. It's a matter of some urgency."

  "I fear that I am presently engaged in a murder enquiry," the Tetron replied. "If you care to call at our headquarters, one of our officers will record your complaint and will doubtless do his best to assist you. The central police station on the far side of the plaza." He turned and pointed.

  "Crucero," the star-captain said to her lieutenant. "Get over there and see what you can do to get some action out of these jumped-up monkeys."

  I winced. All three peace-officers were Tetrax—perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not—and they were standing close enough to hear what she'd said. Even though she'd said it in English, they had it on tape. When they played it back, they'd be sure to have it translated—and they wouldn't like it one little bit.

  I waited until they'd jumped back on the strip and had been carried away before saying, "You might want to be careful about remarks like that, Captain. The Tetrax can be touchy. They never show it, but rumour has it that they hold grudges for a long time."

  "They'll help us," she assured me. "Their friends on the satellite are very interested in my cargo."

  "The spoils of Salamandra?" I said. "Why would they be interested in loot picked up from the devastated homeworld

  of some barbarian species from way along the rim?"

  Her eyes were pure Medusa. "I'm asking the questions, Russell," she reminded me. "You're wasting time. How do we get started chasing that android?"

  "If you really want to make a move," I said, "we should probably start at my place. That's where he got the keys to my lock-up, and the truck. Perhaps he left a note to apologise—maybe even to explain. At any rate, I'd like to find out what else he stole. Also, I'm hungry—and I think your men might be hungry too."

  "I'll worry about my men," she said. "They're soldiers. But you're right. If that's where the trail starts, we should check it out. By the way, you were lying to the peace-officers, weren't you? You don't have the least idea who killed all those people."

  "Actually, I've got a pretty good idea who killed them," I said. "But yes, I was lying—I can't believe that Amara Guur slaughtered seven of his own people. What I can believe is that he'll be even madder when Jacinthe Siani tells him the bad news about me than he was when he found out that someone else had started gunning down his henchmen. It would be nice to think that the peace-officers might take him in for questioning, although they're probably a bit too scrupulous about matters of evidence to do it on my say-so. Shall we go?"

  Her Medusa stare was mingled with curiosity. She didn't know quite what to make of me. She didn't seem to approve of me, but wasn't quite ready to say so—yet.

  Crucero had taken three men with him to the police station. It took twenty minutes for the remaining four of us to get back to my place, but the interval passed without any discernible assassination attempts. My room was locked, and showed no signs of having been broken into, but I

  opened the door very cautiously, just in case there was anyone inside who shouldn't have been there. There was.

  He was lying on my bed, but he didn't get up to greet me. He couldn't, because he was very obviously dead. It was Saul Lyndrach.

  11

  The peace-officers arrived in a matter of minutes to conduct their investigation. The team was headed by the same Tetron who'd spoken to us in the plaza, who obviously felt that Saul's murder was linked to the others, although he didn't explain why. He was right, of course, but he didn't seem to attach any particular significance to my confident assurance that Amara Guur was definitely responsible.

  At least my own alibi was still cast iron.

  It was a long afternoon, but I was eventually allowed back into my apartment. The body had been removed once the forensic team had completed their examination, and someone had tidied up. The officer who'd interrogated us was kind enough to sum up his preliminary findings.

  Saul had died at approximately eleven twenty that morning, while I was still secure in my cell. Myrlin had logged out of lock five in my truck at eleven ninety-four. According to the Tetron medical examiner, Saul must have been unconscious for several Tetron units before he died. He'd lost a lot of blood. He had, apparently, been tortured for some considerable time over a period of days. He had several broken fingers and numerous electrical burns. Although he would have been able to control the pain to some degree by virtue of his internal technology, it would still have been an extremely unpleasant experience.

  In the opinion of the medical examiner, the p
erson or persons who had inflicted Saul's injuries had not been trying to kill him—in fact, he or they had been trying to keep him alive. The process must have begun, he deduced, on the same day that Saul had accepted responsibility for Myrlin the Homeless Android, probably within sixty Tetron units.

  Before lapsing into unconsciousness for the last time, however, Saul—or someone with a very similar voice, in possession of all the necessary identification codes—had used my phone to make a series of purchases, including an outsized cold-suit and enough supplies to stock my truck for a couple of hundred days. In so doing, he had used up every last vestige of his—by which I mean Saul's—remaining credit. The goods had been delivered to the lockup where my truck was kept.

  In the course of making these calls, Saul—or the person pretending to be him—had not requested medical assistance, but he—or the person pretending to be him—had taken the trouble to leave a message for me inscribed, in English, on the answerphone's display screen.

  Dear Mike, it read,

  We have no idea where you are and can't ask your permission, but we need a truck badly and we can't get to mine. After we're gone, though, mine is yours and you should have no difficulty getting to it. It's a fair trade, I think—maybe a little more than fair, to compensate for the inconvenience. All the best, Saul.

  "Does that count as a will?" I asked the peace-officer. "No," he told me. "It would not matter, in any case. I shall be forced to impound the vehicle in question, on the grounds that it may contain relevant evidence. Do you know where it is?"

  "No," I said. "Don't you?"

  "Mr. Lyndrach's personal records have been erased. We will doubtless locate it in due course."

  "As a matter of interest," I said, "what kind of gun was used to shoot the other seven victims?"

  The Tetron hesitated, but he must have known that it would be on the evening news. "They were not shot to death," he admitted. "The immediate causes of death were various, but they all had numerous broken bones, caused by their being struck very powerfully with blunt instruments— or, in some instances, hurled with considerable force into solid walls."

  "Right," I said. "A very violent person, Amara Guur. Very violent indeed."

  My room still seemed very crowded after the Tetrax had gone, although Susarma Lear's men had waited patiently outside until the coast was clear. Crucero and his companions had returned to the fold some time ago. I hadn't heard the lieutenant make his report, but I had no difficulty imagining its contents. The Tetrax did not anticipate apprehending Myrlin any time soon. They could probably track his progress by means of one of their communication satellites, if they could identify his truck—although there were certain to be others making their way over the surface that would make identification difficult—but they had no intention of chasing him. They would wait until he returned to Skychain City and arrest him then.

  Susarma Lear wasn't convinced, but she checked with me before taking any further action. "Surely they'll change their minds now that he's wanted for murder?" she said.

  "He isn't wanted for murder," I told her. "He's just a potential witness. Even if he were, they wouldn't try to pursue him. It would be pointless. While he's on the surface he's visible—don't be fooled by that bullshit about not being able to identify him—but as soon as he goes down to level one he's out of reach. They'll wait for him to come back, confident in the assumption that he'll have to, sooner or later. There's nowhere else for him to go. If he doesn't come back . . . then they'll stop worrying about it."

  She didn't like it, but she could see the logic of it. "Well," she said, "at least you must be keen to catch him now."

  "Why?" I asked.

  "Because he killed your friend," she said. "Surely you didn't believe what you told the gorilla about this Guur character having done it?"

  "Amara Guur did kill Saul," I told her. "Even the Tetrax must have figured that out by now. Myrlin killed the seven guys who were busy torturing him—not, alas, before they'd gone over the top and left him beyond help. I don't know about you, but that doesn't actually fill me with indignation. You might call it murder, but I call it heroism."

  Her stare wasn't quite as wrathful as before, but I figured that was because she was getting tired. She must have had a very long and trying day. "How do you know?" she said, eventually.

  "Elementary logic," I said. "Saul went to the C.R.E. to ask for a loan, just as I did—but he had better bait. He knew the location of a doorway down into level five, maybe further down than that. Unfortunately, rumours of doorways down to five are a dime a dozen in these parts. Saul's neither a fool nor a con man, but when a proposition like that goes before a committee there's bound to be some idiot who'll throw a spanner in the works. Somebody there knew Saul well enough to know that he was absolutely reliable, but getting the right decision through the committee would have needed someone much tougher than Myrlin the

  Superandroid. Guur knew a good thing when he heard the rumour, though, and he went after Saul.

  "Unfortunately for Guur, Saul wasn't alone when the kidnappers turned up, so they had to snatch Myrlin too. Whether they threatened him with fancy blasters like yours or shot him with anaesthetic darts I don't know, but they made the mistake of keeping him alive, in case he knew anything useful.

  "One way or another, Myrlin got his chance to fight back—too late to save Saul, alas. By the time he'd slaughtered the bad guys and got Saul out, Saul must have figured that he wasn't going to make it, even with the aid of Tetron medicare. He had no idea that I was in jail, so he told the android to come to me for help. Saul and I had reciprocal agreements about making use of one another's stuff if things went bad. He knew that Guur would have a heavy guard on his truck, but not on mine. I don't know whether he made the calls himself or gave Myrlin his codes, but that doesn't matter. Myrlin should have called an ambulance as soon as he got Saul out of Guur's clutches, even if Saul told him not to—but he's a stranger here, and Saul was probably insistent about the necessity of his making a clean getaway. Saul's one remaining ambition must have been to make absolutely sure that Amara Guur didn't get the big prize."

  The star-captain shook her head wearily. "Jesus, Russell," she said. "What kind of madhouse is this?"

  "Actually, it's Rousseau," I said. "As in Jean-Jacques."

  She looked at me uncomprehendingly.

  "Du contrat social," I said, helpfully. "Discours sur les sciences et les arts. That Rousseau. Not Russell." I could tell that it meant nothing to her; the French was just so much gibberish to her uneducated ears, and eighteenth-century philosophy obviously wasn't numbered among her personal interests. But she did catch on to the fact that she'd got my name wrong.

  "Jesus, Rousseau" she said scrupulously, "we've got more important things to worry about than how you spell your name. So where do you fit in?"

  It was a good question. Why, given that he must already have had Saul Lyndrach safe in his evil clutches—or so he must have assumed—had Amara Guur bothered to send Heleb and Lema to my apartment to make me a polite offer? And why, after a few more hours had elapsed but long before Myrlin had run amok, had he decided that the polite offer had been too tentative and that more extreme measures were required?

  "Saul wasn't giving in," I said. "Maybe Guur figured that the only way to put pressure on a man like him was by threatening his friends."

  "That doesn't sound very convincing," she observed accurately.

  "You haven't actually told me yet what your interest in Myrlin is," I countered.

  Her tone frosted over. "In the Star Force, Trooper Rousseau, it's the officers who ask the questions."

  I decided to be generous and forgive her; it was, after all, only a few hours since she'd saved my life. "No problem," I said, stoutly. "But we all need something to eat. I'm not sure my kitchen can cater for this many—might I suggest that you send your loyal lieutenant out for a takeaway?"

  She didn't like my tone, but she saw the merit in the suggestion, and she was still
leaning over backwards to be diplomatic—by her meagre standards—because I was the one with all the local knowledge she needed so badly.

  She sent the sergeant out to buy some food, with a couple of men to help him carry it. I didn't have enough

  chairs for the rest of us to sit down, but the troopers were obviously used to roughing it. They made no objection when the star-captain and I sat down on the bed.

  "Fire away," I said.

  She frowned at my choice of words, but she had more important things on her mind than criticising my sense of humour.

  12

  "What are these levels you keep talking about?" was the star-captain's first question.

  I was mildly astonished. I knew that she'd only arrived on Asgard that day, but I'd assumed that she must know something about it. I'd assumed, in fact, that everyone in the universe must know something about Asgard, even if they had been busy for most of their adult lives fighting an interstellar war.

  "This is an artefact, not a planet," I said. "It might have a planet inside it, but all the bits we have access to are artificial. The outer surface is a shell—one of a series of shells nested one inside another like the layers of an onion. Nobody knows how many shells there are. The levels are the spaces between them, which are fitted out as sets of habitats—four or five to a level—with seemingly independent ecospheres. The differences between them are subtle, but they seem to fill a similar spectrum to that of so-called Gaia-clone ecospheres . . . the worlds in which humanoids live. We know of hundreds of negotiable portals down to level one; they're easy enough to find. We know of a dozen that give access to level two, and a handful that let us down to three and four—but the further down you go, the more difficult it is to explore further. They're very, very cold. People lived there once, but they all went away."

  "Where to?" she wanted to know.

  "Opinions differ. Some think they went lower down, sealing themselves in against whatever catastrophe devastated the upper layers. Some think they went outwards, maybe to colonize all the gaiaformable worlds in the galactic arm— which would make them the ancestors of the present galactic so-called civilization."