Asgard's Conquerors

by Brian Stableford

  "It was obvious to us that the chemistry of life is so complicated that its evolution by chance would require vast areas of space and incredible spans of time. Our best estimate is that given the size of our universe, the length of time for which we expect it to endure, and the kind of life-history we expect it to follow, the odds against life evolving at all were about ten to one against. It would appear that we owe our existence to a remarkable stroke of luck."

  I didn't ask him to explain the mathematics of this remarkable calculation, but I took it with a pinch of salt. The trouble with the calculus of probability is that you can easily get silly answers if there are factors operating which you don't know about. Ludicrous improbabilities are ten a penny in scientific research.

  "Does that explain why the life-systems of the homeworlds

  of all the galactic races are so very similar?" I asked.

  "Not in itself," he told me. "If your world and mine had simply received the same elementary biochemical system, in the form of bacteria and virus-like entities, natural selection might have built very different systems. The fact that the pattern is repeated so closely, to the point where the insects of Tetra are very similar in their range to the insects of Earth—and so on for all the other major groups—implies that each of our worlds was seeded more than once. We think that new genetic material drifts from the outer to the inner regions of solar systems more-or-less constantly, and that this provides a major source of variations upon which natural selection can work, but we also think that seedings of more complicated genetic packages have occurred two or three times in recent galactic history—within the last billion years, that is."

  "So you think that the humanoid gene-complex was actually dumped on the inhabited worlds we know—by godlike aliens using the whole galactic arm as a kind of garden?"

  Tetrax can't frown, but I could tell that he thought I was going way over the top, and he clearly didn't want such implications read into his argument. "We could not isolate the humanoid gene-complex as such," he said. "At present, our best theory is that the last seeding may have been done at the time when, in Earthly terms, the dinosaurs died out. That radical break in the evolutionary story is something that recurs on many worlds. But there is no reason to suppose that alien intelligences were responsible for the seeding."

  "But you are saying that the mammalian gene-complex came from outer space, not from the DNA that already existed on Earth or Tetra?"

  "That seems to be the case," he confirmed. He looked at me carefully for a minute or two, perhaps wondering how much I would be able to understand. I got the feeling that we were now getting close to his own hobby-horse. "Do you know what is meant by the phrase 'quiet DNA'?" he asked.

  "No," I replied. I began to suspect that we mightn't get much further. Pan-galactic parole is a language designed to be easy to use. It isn't geared up for complicated scientific discourse, and my limited mastery of it might soon come up against its limitations.

  "Your gene-mappers, like ours of a few centuries ago, have now succeeded in locating on mammalian chromosomes—including human chromosomes—the genes which produce all the proteins which make up your bodies."

  He paused, and I said: "Okay—I understand that."

  "Those genes," he said, "account for somewhere between five and ten percent of the DNA in your cells. The rest is 'quiet DNA.' "

  "What you mean," I said, in order to demonstrate my intelligence, "is that nobody knows what it does."

  "Quite so. Our scientists thought for some time that it must be made up of genes to control other genes. You see, there is more to building an organism than a mere chemical factory. An egg-cell, as it develops into a whole organism, must not only produce the proteins it needs, but must organise them into a particular structure. For many years our biotechnologists have tried to discover how it is that an egg is programmed to develop into a particular kind of organism. We had always assumed that the answer lay in the quiet DNA. We have failed to solve the problem. Your own biotechnologists are just beginning to be frustrated by that barrier to progress. We have found many practical applications for our biotechnology, and have been able to accomplish many things in spite of our incomplete understanding, but we must reluctantly acknowledge that one of the basic features of the

  chemistry of reproduction is still a complete mystery.

  "What we have discovered, though, is that the quiet DNA of many—perhaps all—lower mammals includes genes which are expressed only in higher forms."

  I was having a little difficulty in following this, and had to pause for thought, but I suddenly saw what he was getting at. "You mean," I said, "that virtually all the genes which code for the bodies of humanoids were already in mammals when they first appeared on Earth—or Tetra— and that the subsequent evolution of the mammals has been partly a matter of that quiet DNA waking up."

  He looked a little surprised.

  "That's correct, Star-Captain Rousseau," he said. "In my view, at least, that is a distinct possibility—although it remains as yet unproven. The evolution of mammalian forms is, we think, partly pre-programmed. The programme has to be adapted by natural selection to fit local circumstances, but in essence, the evolution of intelligent hu- manoid life-forms on all the worlds of the galactic community was inevitable from the moment the mammalian gene-complex appeared there. The subsequent millions of years of evolution can be seen as a kind of unfolding of potential already contained in the DNA-complex."

  I found that a pretty startling thought. 673-Nisreen was still watching me, and I realised that there was something else. Having impressed him with my intelligence, I was now expected to see the next step in the argument. It took me about a minute.

  "And the story isn't over!" I said, getting excited. "Ninety percent of human DNA—and Tetron DNA—is still quiet. We have no idea what other possibilities are still locked up in our cells!"

  "Indeed we have not," he replied. "Nor do we know what trigger might be necessary to bring it out. Our scientists thought, when they first invented biotechnology, that we had become masters of our own evolution. It is possible that the assumption was premature."

  "So the garden isn't in full flower," I murmured. "We might be just the first humble shoots, peeping up through the spring soil. We haven't the faintest idea what it is that we're scheduled to become ... or why."

  "I must repeat my objection to your assumption that the galactic arm has been deliberately seeded for some particular purpose," said 673-Nisreen. "Your image of godlike alien gardeners, while picturesque, has no evidence to support it. It remains conceivable that some entirely natural process was responsible for the spreading of this genetic material through local space."

  "Oh sure," I said. "It was probably a fleet of flying pigs on their annual vacation." He didn't get the joke. There isn't a word in parole for pigs, and even if there had been, it would have been taking coincidence to ridiculous lengths if the Tetrax had used the phrase "pigs might fly" as an expression of absurd improbability.

  Humans came out of their own solar system to find superior aliens already there, in the shape of the Tetrax. It was easy for me to jump to the conclusion that there might be even more superior ones waiting in the wings. The Tetrax had strong ideological reasons for not jumping to any such conclusion. We humans had been anthropocentric in readily assuming that life might have evolved on Earth, making us the product of a special Creation—even though the Tetrax knew better, they had their own anthropocentric tendencies.

  "If there are answers to these questions," I said, to cover up for my momentary impoliteness, "I think we might find them inside Asgard. There, I think, are

  some very good biotechnologists."

  "I think that you might be right," said 673-Nisreen. "And if the evolutionary future of your species and mine is yet to unfold from our quiet DNA, then it might well be that in the lower levels of Asgard we might find that potential already displayed."

  He didn't seem to find this an overwhelmingly depressing
thought, perhaps because his scientific curiosity was sufficient to outweigh his anxieties as a member of a politically ambitious species. I was willing to bet that some of his compatriots couldn't contemplate the possibility with similar serenity.

  When I left him I had already begun to toy with scenarios in which Asgard could be made to play some crucial role in my hypothetical galactic gardening business.

  Maybe Asgard was the gardener's shed. Maybe it was a seed-bank.

  Or maybe it was the combine harvester.

  It didn't take long for me to get round to looking at the question from the dark and nasty underside.

  Suppose, I told myself, that the galaxy is a garden, and that deep in the heart of Asgard are its gardeners. But just suppose, for a moment, that we aren't the crop that's being raised. Suppose we're only the weeds! And even if we aren't, what can we possibly expect to happen when we come a-calling on the creatures we hope we might become?

  I asked myself what might happen if a legion of Neanderthal men suddenly turned up on the Earth's surface, expecting to be invited to the party.

  It seemed a slightly ominous question even then, though I couldn't imagine at the time how soon it would assume a much more peculiar relevance, and what an awful answer might be implied by the example with which I was to be confronted.

  9

  By the time we reached Asgard I had just about readjusted to one-gee, and my muscles—not without a little help from the medics—were ready to go into the levels and give of their best. The men were all trained in the use of cold-suits, and had been as fully briefed on the geography of Skychain City as I could manage. I wouldn't in all honesty say that they were raring to go, but the idea of another tour of dangerous duty was hardly new to them. The only ones not combat-hardened were Kramin's little bunch of thieves.

  We made rendezvous in the Asgard system with a small fleet of galactic ships—not all of them Tetron. There was a makeshift station providing an anchorage for the group, but it was a thing of thread and patches, not a custom-designed microworld. Months had now passed since the invasion, and the Tetrax had carefully picked up all the pieces, but they hadn't begun to rebuild. Support ships were arriving from the Tetra system, and from a couple of closer ones, but as far as I could judge it would probably take a year or more to put together any convincing base by means of which the Tetrax could establish a respectable permanent habitation—whether to serve as an embassy in which the galactic community could re-establish friendly relations with Asgard's inhabitants, or as a launching-point for an invasion, remained to be seen.

  Meetings with our hosts, including the briefings, took place aboard one of their ships. We had to edge in very close to string an umbilical between the vessels, and ours wasn't the only link they set up. I don't know what we looked like from outside—probably like a lot of wind-blown debris caught in a tattered spiderweb.

  The earliest meetings involved Valdavia and 673-Nisreen, but no Star Force personnel. I had the uneasy feeling that Valdavia was acting as a salesman, dickering with the Tetrax to fix a fair price for our services. I had an even uneasier suspicion that the Tetrax saw it that way as well; their whole social order seemed to be based on elaborate service contracts whereby individuals bought limited control of others. Humans tended to translate the word describing the system in pan-galactic parole as "slavery," but that just made the Tetrax laugh at us for being horrified by the idea. From their viewpoint, selling themselves in whole or in part was quite routine, and there was a parallel system of quasi-feudal duties and obligations which meant that they all stood ready to act as civil servants—maybe even as military personnel too—at a moment's notice. Thus, it was neither surprising nor upsetting to 673-Nisreen that he had been snatched away from his biological work to become a liaison man with the UN nabobs. I couldn't help wondering what Dr. Ayub Khan's attitude would have been had the UN sent him orders to forget Uranus and go to Asgard as a diplomat.

  When the haggling was over (Valdavia carefully refrained from giving us the details) the colonel, Crucero, and I went over with him to the Tetron ship so that we could find out what it was that Earth and Tetra expected of us in the line of duty. The Tetrax, with their usual sharp eye for formality, confronted us with their own committee of four.

  One of them, I already knew very slightly. His name was 74-Scarion, and he'd been an officer with immigration control. He'd been the one who'd contrived to get me involved with Myrlin in the first place. He was very much the junior member of the Tetron team, though, and had presumably been included because he and I had already met.

  The other three announced themselves as 994-Tulyar, 871-Alpheus, and 1125-Camina. 673-Nisreen wasn't present. Camina was a female, though it wouldn't have been obvious if she hadn't taken the trouble to tell us. All Tetrax have round faces, wizened features, and black skin with a highly-polished look to it. They do have hair, of a sort, but it's black and very short, and doesn't differ in length or style between individuals. Their dress is unisex and they don't seem to make any attempt to adopt small tokens of individuation. You can tell one from another by the shapes of their noses and the patterns of the markings on their faces, but it isn't easy. They profess a horror of excessive individuation, which is why they give themselves numbers as well as names. I never had figured out whether the names they had were more akin to our Christian or family names, or what kind of relationship was likely to exist between two Tetrax with the same name. I did know, though, that high numbers were in some loose way connected with high status. Four-figure numbers were rare, and it wasn't surprising that 1125-Camina turned out to be the chief spokesman.

  "We are most honoured and very grateful for your willingness to assist us in this tragic hour," she assured us. "This is a time of trouble for all the galactic community, and I know of no homeworld which does not mourn for lost sons and daughters. The Asgard project was one that brought together all races in a common endeavour, and was therefore precious to us all as a symbol of harmony. These have been dreadful happenings."

  All of this tripped very smoothly from her tongue in pangalactic parole, which is a language perfectly suited to Tetron mouth-parts. Human tongues, which are flatter and wider, can't quite get to grips with the full range of syllables, and the fact that we have to substitute a couple of nonstandard consonants means that we sound very awkward when we try to use the language. Alas, there's no other way to get by in the community. One could hardly expect the Tetrax to learn English.

  For this reason, Valdavia's official reply to the greeting was more succinct than his natural inclination would have prompted him to be, and the words did not flow like verbal honey.

  "We regret," 1125-Camina explained, speaking directly to the colonel because Valdavia had presumably already heard the news, "that we have been unable to establish communication with the people who have seized Skychain City. There is, of course, a language barrier, but no attempt seems to have been made by the invaders to begin the work of overcoming it. Our transmissions are ignored. We have sent down unarmed emissaries, but none have returned, although we have no evidence that any of them has been harmed. There are still galactics beneath the surface who have not yet been captured—people who were working in bubble-domes established by the Co-ordinated Research Establishment. We have been able to communicate sporadically with these groups, though we are wary of attracting attention to them. We did manage to receive communications from our people in the city for some time after the invasion, but we have not picked up any transmissions for some time. With your permission, we will summarize briefly what we now know about the invaders."

  Valdavia inclined his head, gesturing that she should continue. The colonel simply raised a blonde eyebrow. She was well into her tough-guy routine. 1125-Camina promptly passed the buck to 994-Tulyar.

  "The invaders came from beneath the city," he said. "They emerged from at least five different points in levels two and three, using doorways of whose existence we had been quite ignorant. We infer that the inva
ders must have been grouping in levels three and four for some time before the attack; it is possible that they were there even before Mr. Rousseau first penetrated to the lower levels, and that the attack was in no way a response to that penetration.

  "There is one remarkable coincidence, of whose significance we are uncertain. If you will look at these. . . ."

  He took some flimsies from a bag beneath the table. They were photographs, presumably taken in the aftermath of the battle for Skychain City and transmitted before communication was closed down.

  The invaders looked human.

  Of all the starfaring races in the community, about half a dozen are near enough to human for at least some of their members to pass. Humans are pretty various, of course, so it only has to be the case that some members of a near- human race could be mistaken for some humans for us to be able to speak of there being a coincidence. The invaders in the photographs were all white-skinned—rather pasty- faced, in fact—and they all had light-coloured hair. Their features were a little on the Neanderthal side, with heavy brow-ridges and Eskimo-type noses, but they could have walked the streets of a dozen Earthly cities without attracting too much notice, and on a multiracial microworld anyone would have been happy to shake hands with them.

  I realised that my newfound interestingness was not entirely determined by my experience in the levels.

  "The people who once inhabited levels one, two, and

  three were humanoid," I pointed out. "We've always known that. There's no reason to be particularly surprised."

  "Perhaps not," said the Tetron. "It is possible that the coincidence can now be turned to our advantage. Colonel . Lear could certainly be mistaken for one of the aliens, and so could you, Star-Captain Rousseau. This may assist in the gathering of intelligence. It might conceivably be the case that the invaders would be more ready to make contact with a race which resembles them so very closely than with the Tetrax, who unhappily do not."