Asgard's Conquerors (36 page)

"That
was the point at which the Nine decided to try a very daring experiment."

"And
that," I put in, "is where things went seriously wrong?"

He
nodded, slowly.

"What
did they try to do?"

"They
tried to connect themselves up to the software of Asgard itself—to extend
themselves beyond the machinery of this particular habitat into the fundamental
machinery of the macroworld itself. They projected their mind-group into the
network of control systems that is built into the structure. The systems which
impinge upon the habitats are, of course, simple ones governing the
distribution of heat and light. The Nine presumed, though, that those systems
must provide a means of access to further, more complicated systems, probably
inhabited by machine- personalities like themselves. They believed that they
could make contact with those personalities, by extending their own mind-group
into the inner regions of Asgard's 'software space.' "

"They
thought they could set up a hot line to the builders," I said.

"In
essence," Myrlin agreed. "They hoped that at the very least they
might find out about the true extent and nature of Asgard's electronic 'mind.'
"

"Why
didn't it work?" I asked.

"Because
the systems into which they tried to project themselves are themselves damaged.
The Nine weren't just sending a message out into the hardware in Asgard's
walls. They were transmitting themselves. All nine of them—because, though
distinct, they are essentially inseparable.

"If
the systems controlling Asgard had been simple and automatic, those systems
would just have become part of the Nine's extended body. If those systems had
their own highly-refined artificial intelligences within them, then contact
would have been made—albeit a kind of contact for which you and I have no
ready-made analogy. It wouldn't be like two humanoids meeting at a conference
table—more like two immiscible liquids flowing together. The Nine didn't think
there was any real danger in what they were doing, even though they couldn't
know what kind of reception they might get from the intelligences they were
trying to contact. They were wrong."

"What
happened?"

"I'm
not entirely sure, and the Nine can't explain it to me. I don't know whether
they were the victim of actual hostility or unfortunate circumstance. But
whatever it was they made contact with down there, it went through their
electronic selves like a bomb blast, injuring them very badly. They're not
dead, and they're not quite incapable, but they're seriously hurt. They may
well have lost aspects of their own personalities, and—more ominously—they may
have unknowingly picked up parts of other personalities. They're no longer
entirely coherent. Again, it's difficult to find an analogy, but it's as if you
were to wake up feeling very weird, unable to access large chunks of your
memory, occasionally acting without knowing what you were doing and why, maybe
hearing voices too—as if your mind were no longer fully in control of itself or
your body, and as if there were bits of other minds somehow lodged in your
brain."

I
thought about it for a few minutes, trying to figure it all out. It didn't
quite come together to make a coherent picture—I thought I could see what he
was getting at, but it was as dim and strange as those not-quite-focused faces
in which guise which they had appeared to me. Anyhow, it seemed that our
software supermen were no longer as super as they once had been. Which could
make things complicated, if their grand plan still involved bringing peace and
harmony to the whole of Asgard.

"It's
not at all clear what we can conclude from the Nine's unfortunate
experience," said Myrlin. "But I'm rather afraid that there are two
available ways of looking at it, neither of them encouraging."

"Go
on," I said.

"If,"
he said, emphasizing it heavily to let me know what a big
if
it was,
"the builders of Asgard—or the guiding intelligence which the builders
left behind to look after it—is an entity like the Isthomi instead of a
humanoid species, then what happened to the Isthomi when they tried to contact
it can only be interpreted in two ways. Either it's hostile—or like everything
else in and of this macroworld, it's badly

decayed: mad,
senile, or incompetent.

"If
the first hypothesis is true, we could all be in deep trouble—you, me, the
inhabitants of Asgard, and the inhabitants of the galactic arm. There's no way
we can fight something like that. If the second hypothesis is true, the situation
is even worse. All the aforementioned are still in trouble—and so is Asgard
itself."

"Not
necessarily," I countered.

"Oh
no," he said, "not necessarily. But think about this: if the Nine
experienced the contact they made as a kind of bomb-blast, which has all but
reduced them to helplessness, how do you think the other side experienced it?
If'—that big if again—"it did the same to the indigenous systems, it might
have done untold damage to Asgard. And you know what has to be in the middle of
Asgard, to produce the energy that runs all the levels, don't you?"

I did
indeed. At the physical centre of Asgard, whatever was wrapped around it, there
had to be a little star. The biggest artificial fusion reactor in the known
universe.

"And
you think . . . ?" I began.

"I
don't know," he said. "But I do think that we'd better make every
effort to find out."

27

Later, Myrlin had
to leave. It was time for 994-Tulyar to awake, and he wanted to be there, in
order to begin the lengthy business of explanation all over again. He wanted to
put Tulyar into direct contact with the Nine as soon as possible, so that
Tulyar could begin the work of bringing peace and harmony to the upper levels.

"I'm
hoping that the scions will be able to bring some of the Scarid leaders down
here soon," Myrlin told me. "The Scarida will have to put themselves
in the hands of the scions, of course, and leave their hardware at home—but if
they have any notion at all of the realities of the situation they'll come. We
can bring them swiftly and directly here— one thing the Nine did get from their
excursion into the structural systems was a much more elaborate picture of the
connections between the levels. As I told you, we now have access to a shaft
which goes directly from this level to fifty- two, with a working elevator
still in it."

"What
do you want me to do?" I asked.

"Stay
out of it for the time being. The Nine do want to talk to you, though. They'll
probably send a couple of the scions over to do the talking, but they'll hear
everything themselves. Don't be alarmed by the scions—they're partial
personalities of members of the Nine, modified for life as humanoid
individuals, and they're somewhat weird, but they've made a lot of progress
during the last months. We can't make any more for the time being—we just
wouldn't be able to fill their heads effectively now that the Nine have been
injured. We daren't run the risk of producing madmen. A great pity—we should
have made hundreds more, in a dozen different forms, while we had the chance.
We may need them. By the way: Finn should be waking up too—or would you rather
we kept him in the tank?"

"It's
okay," I said. "Send him out. I'll look after him. What about Susarma
Lear?"

He shook
his head. "Another twenty-four hours, I should think," he said.

After he
had gone, the furry humanoids came to visit. There were two, and they were
certainly somewhat weird.

"We
are Thalia-7 and Calliope-4," said one of them, peering at me with big
brown eyes. They looked more like Tetrax than humans, but their hair was
shaggier and much lighter in colour, and their faces weren't as compact. They
had wide mouths and rubbery lips, and put me in mind of steep-faced orangutans.

"Thalia
and Calliope?" I queried.

"The
Nine have no names; they have no need of them. When they created our partial
personalities, we adopted names suggested by your species-cousin Myrlin, and
numbered different versions of each parent personality in a fashion similar to
your more distant species-cousins, the Tetrax."

They sat
down together on a sofa, moving almost in unison. They could easily have been
twins, and I would have inferred from the way they stuck so close that they
were aspects of the same personality rather than different ones, but I guessed
that it might take two to make a crowd, and remembered that they didn't like
"solitude." I couldn't tell what sex they were, but in view of the
fact that they'd chosen to name themselves after the Muses, I decided to think
of them as being on the female side of neuter.

"Why
are you so interested in me?" I asked them. "Paradoxical as it may
seem, Myrlin probably has more of the heritage of human knowledge locked up in
his mind than I do, even though he's never been to the solar system."

"But
you have seen so much more of the universe—and you know much more than he about
Asgard. In any case, it is good to talk as well as to know. To express
knowledge . . ." She groped momentarily for words, then concluded: "...
is to create being."

I looked
at them both, uneasily aware of the fact that these were beings more alien than
any humanoids I had ever before encountered.

"I
thought the Nine's machines had picked my mind clean," I said. "I
thought you knew more about me than I do."

Calliope
shook her head, obviously intending the gesture to be read as a negation.
"We know much," she assured me, "but there is a sense in which
we also know little—so very little. We can only know about you by hearing your
own account. In one sense, that is the only real account that can be given. Do
you follow?"

I
thought I did. The real person is the active, thinking, talking person. I was
the only one who could tell them about me. And it was something that had to be
told, not extracted by neuronal taproots plugging into my brain. They might
have copied my brain's software in some arcane fashion, but that wasn't the
same thing as knowing the person who belonged to that brain.

"What
do you want to know?" I asked.

They
wanted to know a great deal. About myself; about the history of mankind; about
the evolution of life on earth; about cosmology and cosmogony and atomic
physics and things that go bump in the night. In some sense, they knew it all
already, but they wanted to hear it. There was a great deal that I couldn't
tell them, and much that was very difficult for me to put into the proper
words, given my own ignorance and lack of expertise, but I tried.

All the
while, they watched me. It was as if they were studying me, learning how to be
human . . . how to be humanoid. They were unfailingly courteous in asking
questions—like great grave children anxious for the low- down on the business
of adult living.