"At some stage in history, however, the Nine—or perhaps fractions of the original Nine—were removed from their original environment and placed in another, of which they were the sole intelligent inhabitants—and which appears, in fact, to have been designed specifically to accommodate them. Their memories have no record of what was done to them. They do not know why it was done, or how, or by whom.
"The Nine do not know how long a lapse of time was concealed by the gap in their memories. They are not entirely certain that those memories they have which relate to their existence before they came here are to be trusted. They know how easy it is to create a new individual— robotic or organic—with a wholly synthetic 'past,' and they wonder whether they might not have been created likewise, with a synthetic history inbuilt into them. But the essential questions still remain: By whom? And why?
"The Isthomi are by nature patient. They live their lives, normally, at a slow pace. Their sleep, and other trance-like states, may last for time-spans that would be many lifetimes in humanoid terms. They had no urge to be fruitful and multiply, to replenish this new world in which they found themselves. But they did set out to explore it, and eventually, to fill it. Their machine-bodies had the means to produce robotic extensions, and through those extensions they began to increase themselves still further. They undertook a process of colonization parallel to the means by which a handful of humanoids might set out to populate a world and build a civilization there, except that they manufactured no new individuals, but simply extended and complicated their own bodies. Their mobile robots were simply parts of a much greater whole. The analogy of an ant-hive will probably spring to your mind, but it is a misleading one; it would be more appropriate to compare the robots to motile cells within the body of an individual—white blood corpuscles, perhaps.
"For many thousands of years this process of expansion continued. The Nine did not compete with one another, but operated always in concert. Each of the Nine considered the companionship of the other eight to be infinitely precious. The Nine are not egotists—rather, they fear loneliness and excessive individualism, and they value community above all else. They are not Nine so much as Nine-in-One."
With an attitude like that, I thought, they should certainly get on well with the Tetrax. But I couldn't help wondering whether the Tetrax might not find them a little too clever to be entirely welcome.
"At some stage," Myrlin continued, "the Nine made the startling discovery that their enclosed habitat was not the only one in the world—that there were other environments above, below, and beyond it. They also made the discovery that there was a pre-existent technology connecting the levels, supplying them with energy in an ordered and controlled fashion.
"They concluded, of course, that the world in which the humanoid Isthomi had lived must have been a similar artificial environment, and that it might be nearby. By finding it, they supposed, they could find out why they had been removed from that world and placed in another. Naturally, they set out to investigate the technology that had been used in the design and construction of Asgard, and they also set out to explore the neighbouring levels, at their own characteristic pace—which would seem rather leisurely to our species.
"They did not find the world of the humanoid Isthomi— although it may, of course, still exist somewhere in the bowels of Asgard. They did find many other levels with humanoid inhabitants, but in most cases the humanoid races were not thriving. They inferred, after considerable study, that their neighbouring levels were like their own, in that a few individuals of a civilized species had been introduced in the distant past and left to their own devices. But they found no individuals like themselves—only humanoids and other fleshy creatures.
"Many of the humanoid species had made some progress in rebuilding the civilizations from which they had presumably been taken, but for almost all, the process of social evolution had been interrupted. Whatever legacy of memories the original colonists had brought with them had been lost, so that their descendants reverted to savagery, sustained by elementary agriculture or by hunting and gathering. In some, there was a recovery after the initial decline, so that when they had increased to fill up their new world they began again to follow the path of technological progress, but in no case that the Nine found was there any species which had done as they had done, and conserved the heritage which they had brought with them into their new world.
"The uppermost of these inhabited levels was the one to which Saul Lyndrach found a route—a route which was followed first by me and later by you. You know what we found there—a decadent population, living in the ruins of a city built by their remote ancestors, under threat from animal predators which had evolved from less aggressive ancestors under strong competitive pressure. You know, too, that the Nine had begun to supply the inhabitants of that level with materials, fearing that they otherwise might become extinct. They had conceived of that project—as they conceive of all their projects—as a long-term matter, in which they could make plans for thousands of years.
"Our arrival changed their world-view very radically, and what I was able to tell them about the topmost levels of Asgard, and about the universe beyond, was a revelatory shock whose magnitude we cannot possibly imagine. We are young species, the humans and the Tetrax, and we are no strangers to surprise. The Nine are very old, and they had to make considerable adjustments in coming to terms with the knowledge that the universe is very different from what they had imagined.
"Their initial reaction, as you know, was to seal themselves off and give themselves time to think and to discuss. They told you that they would seal off the level that you had penetrated, and they did—but they left extensions of themselves on that level to continue the business of gathering information, and they opened new channels of communication between the levels they knew and the ones above.
"The Nine not only adopted me, as an informant who could tell them a great deal about the universe outside Asgard; they also began to use the technology by means of which I was created, to construct more humanoid bodies. You called me an android, and I suppose you might think of the scions as androids also, but I do not think that designation is correct in either case. I am a true human, developed from a human egg-cell—albeit in unusual fashion. My new companions are true humanoids too. They were brought to adult form in a matter of months, and though the minds inside their heads are abridged versions of the minds of one or another of the Nine, they are entitled to be considered men and not machines. Because of the manner of their origin, they share just nine names, and distinguish themselves otherwise by number, so that they may know one another as different versions of their parent personalities."
Again I noted how this made the prospect of a deal between the Nine and the Tetrax look healthy, and I wondered in my suspicious mind just how far the Nine had gone in making preparation for such a deal. The Tetrax had a long history of seductively playing the other galactic races for suckers, and I wasn't distressed by the thought that they might be due for a strong dose of their own medicine.
"The Nine," Myrlin went on, "were very disturbed by recent events in the upper layers. The Scarida, apparently, are an exceptional species; though they have not completely avoided the pattern which reduced most of the other transplanted races to savagery, they have managed to transcend their primitivism more rapidly than any of their neighbours. They have multiplied more rapidly, and have continued their expansion beyond their own level. They have met very little opposition until now, and know full well that they face a desperate task now that they have set themselves up in opposition to technologically superior opponents. It may not be easy, though, to persuade them that the limits of their expansion have been reached.
"The Nine knew that the task of forming a community of species out of the three very different factions which are now involved—the Scarid empire, the galactic community, and the levels known to the Nine—would not be an easy one, but they had to face the idea that the entire future of Asgard was at
stake, and that they must play a role in the deciding of that future.
"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 personal
ity 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.
Asgard's Conquerors Page 20
