Asgard's Heart (14 page)

Nobody paid any immediate attention to our arrival. A
few scions were still busy picking up dead and wounded humanoids on stretchers,
ferrying them to doorways in the grey walls. Inside the labyrinth of tunnels
the Nine would have set out a whole series of egg-shaped flotation tanks, where
the wounded could be placed until they could do whatever was possible to mend
the broken bodies. I knew they were clever, and could sometimes resuscitate
people who would have been deemed dead by human or Tetron doctors, but the
miracles they could work were limited, and most of the injured were in a very
bad way. I looked at a couple of Tetron scientists—only recently arrived on
this level—who were being hustled away by the scions. I was morally certain
that nothing could be done for them. They were dead, and far beyond recall to
the land of the living.

There were several Scarid soldiers making a show of patrolling
the streets, carrying the weapons they'd brought down with them when they came
to negotiate a treaty with 994-Tulyar. They looked a little glazed, as one
might expect of men who'd just come through an unexpected battle, but they
also looked a little bit pleased with themselves. It wasn't hard to guess why.
They were fighting men who'd recently been humiliated by the cunning of the
Tetrax, forced to accept that their glorious empire was impotent to deal with
the
real
universe. They'd come down here to
learn their lesson from the all-wise and non-violent conquerors, but when the
attack had come, it had been they and not the Tetrax who'd known how to react.
They'd been able to put up something of a fight, and were proud of that.

As I looked around at the shards of the robots which
had served as the assault force, I quickly realised that the Scarid soldiers
couldn't have contributed much to their actual defeat—those which had been
stopped by firepower had been hit by missiles much bigger than the ones the
Scarida had in their popguns. Some looked as if they had blown themselves to
smithereens, probably because something had been done to their internal
software that had fatally disrupted their power-plants. It was the Nine who'd
done all the hard work, despite their peaceful inclinations.

We tried to find some task with which we could
usefully occupy ourselves, but the urgent work was virtually complete, and the
less vital clearing up could safely be left to the Nine's robot servitors. I
looked around for someone I knew, but the only person I recognised was an
ashen-faced

Jacinthe
Siani. I didn't particularly want to talk to her, but she obviously thought
that it was a time for old grudges to be set aside. She came over.

"What happened?" she said. "I thought
the war was over."

"That was the war between the Scarida and the
inhabitants of Skychain City," I told her, drily. "This seems to be a
war of much greater magnitude, fought by armies more peculiar than the ones we
galactic innocents are used to. I doubt that there'll be any further call for
your services as a traitor."

She didn't seem inclined to trade insults. She was
frightened, and she seemed rather forlorn. She was human enough, and beautiful
enough, to have made weaker men than me feel sorry for her, but I had no
difficulty in resisting the urge to put my arm around her shoulder. She'd done
me too many bad turns, and no favours at all.

"The sooner I can get back to the surface the
better," she said. "I don't like it down here."

"It's a long, long way to the surface," said
Susarma Lear, who had even less sympathy for the Kythnan woman than I did.
"And the elevators are out. I don't think any of us will be going home for
quite a while."

Jacinthe clearly hadn't thought of that. She looked at
me forlornly with her big dark eyes, genuinely pathetic.

"It's a disappointing universe, isn't it?" I
said. The words didn't come out quite as cruelly as I intended them. When it
came to it, I just hadn't got the heart to turn the knife in the wound.

Jacinthe turned disconsolately away, and wandered off
in the direction of the battered dome that was all the home she had left.

I went to look more carefully at one of the disabled
robots.

It
didn't much resemble the giant mantis that had come after me—it was more like a
bipedal armadillo, with guns instead of arms. It seemed to me to be rather
crudely- designed, as killing-machines went. This hadn't been a subtle attack,
or a particularly well-prepared one. I inferred that the sudden hotting up of
the war had taken the opposing forces somewhat by surprise. No doubt they were
improvising as best they could, but they didn't seem to have had much time to
prepare for the battle they'd just fought.

I asked one of the scions about the casualty figures.
She didn't have an exact count, but she told me that more than three-quarters
of the Scarid contingent had been killed or seriously injured, and that half of
the Tetrax were dead. I asked about 994-Tulyar, but all she could say was that
he wasn't among the casualties they'd collected.

"Did they get Finn?" asked Susarma Lear, and
when the scion told her that Finn was still unhurt she said: "Pity."
I knew how she felt.

Someone else had seen us, and came over to talk; the
scion went on her way. I didn't recognise the newcomer immediately—it's not
that all Tetrax look alike, but it does take an effort of mind to pay attention
to their distinguishing characteristics instead of the mere fact of their obvious
alienness.

"Mr. Rousseau?" he said, uncertainly. He
obviously had the same difficulty with human faces.

I realised belatedly who he was. "673-Nisreen?"
I countered. For the first time, I felt a small thrill of relief. Here was one
survivor I could be glad to greet.

He gave me a slight bow. "I arrived here only a
few hours ago," he said. "I know almost nothing of the situation. But
I am unable to locate 994-Tulyar, and if he is not found—or if he is found to
be dead—I shall be in effective authority over the remaining Tetrax here. I
have spoken to the entities that you call the Nine, and they have told me that
it may be some time before they can restore communication with the upper
levels. I am, as you know, a biologist, and although I have been an ambassador
of sorts to your own species, I am not at all sure where my responsibility now
lies. I cannot tell what ends we might work toward, or what means we might
employ in the hope of their attainment. It is said that you have a special
intimacy with the curious intelligences that are native to this level, and you
have been here longer than anyone else that I might consult. Will you advise
me, Mr. Rousseau, as to what you think will happen now, and what we should
do?"

I'd never been asked for advice by a Tetron, and had
never expected to be. 994-Tulyar would never have condescended to ask me the
time of day. In the one substantial conversation I'd previously had with
Nisreen he'd seemed as patronising as any of his race, but I'd obviously made a
favourable impression on him. The only problem was that I didn't know what
advice I could give him. I thought fast, trying to come up with something that
might justify his trust.

"The first thing the Isthomi will need to
do," I improvised, "is to organise some kind of defensive strategy
in case this happens again. I don't know who it was that sent those
murder-machines against us, but we'd be foolish to assume that they've shot
their bolt. The Nine know relatively little about weaponry. Scarid weapons are
fairly crude, and your scientists may have more useful expertise—you'd better
find out what help you can offer to the Isthomi in that regard."

Nisreen nodded. "I see," he said. Then he
waited— obviously I'd only whetted his appetite for more.

"The Nine already have a lot of problems on their
plate," I said. "As you probably know, they've suffered a couple of
disasters of a less crude nature. Now the attackers have switched off the power
supply to the entire macroworld, the Nine will want to find out very quickly
who they are and how they can be stopped. The people who stand to suffer most
in the short term are the Scarida— you'll have to talk to whoever's left in
charge of their team, to impress upon him that their interests and ours are
identical. We don't want them deciding to do something silly, and we'll
certainly need their fighting men if there's another attack."

He nodded again, but didn't even bother to provide a
verbal prompt. He just waited for more. He was certainly expecting a lot from a
mere barbarian. I decided, albeit a little reluctantly, to tell him about my
plans.

"The Nine have been building a robot vehicle for
me," I told him. "It's designed to cross more or less any terrain,
even through a reducing atmosphere. I intend to take it down through the
levels, relying on the Nine to find me a route. We need to find out what's
happening down there— and whether we can do anything about it. If turning the
power off was as simple as throwing a switch, then it can probably be turned on
again with equal ease, and if one side in this war had a pressing reason for
wanting it switched off, the other side will presumably want to switch it back
on again. If the people fighting this war thought that the Isthomi were
impotent to intervene, they probably wouldn't have tried to destroy them—which
implies that there's something we can do, even if we can't quite figure out
what it is."

I could tell from his expression that this wasn't
quite the kind of advice which he had in mind, so I stopped. There really
didn't seem to be anything else I could say. I decided that there was no point
in bringing up the Nine's other bright idea about sending a task-force of
personality-copies through software space. I still didn't like the idea very
much, and I wasn't at all sure that I was prepared to volunteer.

"I'm sorry, Nisreen," I finished, "but
I can't tell you what you ought to do. If there's a role for you to play in all
this, you'll have to work it out for yourself."

Nisreen studied me carefully, his face quite
inscrutable. "I am indebted to you, Mr. Rousseau," he said. "We
all face a difficult time now, and I must undertake to make what contribution I
can, as my duty demands. I will talk with you again, if I may. But may I ask
one more question?"

"Go ahead," I said, generously.

"We once discussed, very briefly, various
hypotheses regarding the possible nature of Asgard and its relation to the many
star-worlds which support humanoid life. Can you tell me which hypothesis you
now consider to be the most likely?"

It was a very good question.

"When I talked to you last," I said,
hesitantly, "I suggested that Asgard, or something like it, might have
been the common point of origin of the gene-systems which are scattered around
the galactic arm—that the builders of Asgard had been behind the seeding of the
star-worlds which produced the galactic community. The other hypothesis which
I had in mind was that its task might be to gather genes from star-worlds,
using the habitats in the levels to store and transport them. I can't say that
I'm any nearer to deciding whether either or both of those speculations is true—but
I have to admit that every day that passes seems to lend more credence to an
idea that Colonel Lear favours: that Asgard is some kind of fortress, heavily
armed and armoured to protect the life-systems to which it plays host against
some hostile and destructive agency. If that's true, it seems to have already
come near to failure in that purpose, and to be getting nearer all the time.

"In fact, if Asgard is a fortress, it looks very
much as if the fortress has been breached, and that the entire macroworld is in
danger—and not just from the slow death that will follow the power failure. We
must at least consider the possibility that if this war is being waged by
invaders of Asgard against its defenders, their objective might be its total
destruction."

I could tell that I'd impressed him. He looked very
serious indeed—as well he might, considering that I'd just suggested to him
that if the mysterious battle raging around us were to be won by the wrong
side, ten thousand life-systems might be blown to atoms.

The Tetrax had always posed as great believers in the
brotherhood of humanoid races, and were never slow to preach to others the
doctrine that truly civilized people outgrew the folly of war. I had always
had my doubts as to whether the likes of 994-Tulyar really believed that, but
673-Nisreen seemed less of a hypocrite. For him, the thought that the godlike
beings who had built Asgard were involved in the kind of war where multiple
genocide might qualify as a minor incident must be a very shocking one.

As I had said to Jacinthe Siani, it was beginning to
look as if we were inhabitants of a rather disappointing universe.

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