Asgard's Conquerors

by Brian Stableford

  "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.

  And in the end, of course, they asked me about Asgard— about who might have built it, and why, and what I thought about it, and what my reasoning was.

  So we were back to the heart of the matter again, back to the thing that could hardly help but fascinate us all. Except that the matter was more complicated now, because the Nine had their own unfortunate experience to add to the register of perplexing evidence.

  We talked for a long time, and much of what we said even about Asgard simply went over old ground. I told them about the galactic races, and about all the things I'd discussed with 673-Nisreen aboard Leopard Shark—all of which was news to them. We had a sense of getting nearer to the whole picture, but we still didn't have enough to put it all together.

  "The Ark scenario still looks most likely," I told them. "The way I had it figured, on the basis of what I saw in the levels while the Scarida were taking me to prison, was that the builders of Asgard were making an object to contain thousands of environments, reproducing the conditions of a whole galaxy full of inhabited worlds. From each world they then took a series of ecosystems, and a handful of indigenes. But what Myrlin told me about the Isthomi doesn't quite square with that. There, it seems, the parent culture was living in a macroworld like Asgard, with no memory of any worldly existence. So maybe Asgard is a daughter macroworld, reproducing the structure and cultural diversity of an earlier model. In which case—was the earlier model an Ark, or do we face an infinite regress?"

  "We are more anxious about the disaster which appears to have overtaken the world," said Thalia-7. "What we have discovered about the outermost levels of Asgard is puzzling. For one thing, the outermost levels seem once to have had a level of technological sophistication that few of the levels below have reproduced, even though they were evacuated long ago. Wherever the inhabitants of those outer levels went, it was not to the levels immediately below. But the mystery of where they went is perhaps a lesser matter, compared with the mystery of why?"

  "The standard theory is that Asgard lost most of its atmosphere passing through a dense, cold cloud, and that the levels had to be evacuated because of that. We always supposed that the outermost levels, unlike the levels below, relied upon an external source of energy—an outer sun rather than an inner one."

  "That is a possibility," conceded Calliope-4—the two scions tended to take it in turns to speak—"but given that levels just below the outermost ones are equipped to draw energy from the distribution-system which exists in the walls of the macrostructure, we find it difficult to believe that the outermost levels could not have been sustained through any such disaster. We also cannot understand how the temperature in those outer levels fell so very far. We think it could not have done so by virtue of any natural process. We tend to favour the hypothesis that the outermost levels were deliberately cooled, and that the regions whose temperature was reduced almost to absolute zero were set

  up as a kind of defensive barrier."

  "A barrier against what?"

  "Some kind of invasion." Thalia took up the thread again. "Not by entities such as you or we, but by something microscopic, on the same size-scale as bacteria or viruses."

  I remembered all those bacteria, frozen in the rings of Uranus for four billion years, and still viable. But the temperature in the vicinity of Uranus was still tens of degrees Kelvin. Cold preserves, but not absolute cold. Maybe it was easier to freeze the outer layers of the macroworld than heat them up or irradiate them to the level needed to destroy a microscopic invader. But it was difficult to believe. Bacteria are no threat to an advanced biotechnology, and viruses can be combated too. Myrlin had assured me that neither he nor I now had anything to fear from that kind of attack.

  I explained to them that there was yet another aspect of the problem which interested me, and that the existence of entities like Asgard might help to explain why all the galactic starfaring races were about the same age. I pointed out that one could easily invert the story about Asgards—it seemed that we were now entitled to speak in the plural— being populated in the first instance by borrowing from the ecospheres of worlds. Perhaps, instead, the ecospheres of worlds were populated by borrowing from Asgards. I explained my gardening analogies: Asgard as a seed-nursery, its builders as planters, engaged in a project of colonization whose time-scale ran to millions of years. They thought the story more plausible and more palatable than Nisreen had—but they were used to the idea of personalities inhabiting inorganic hardware, whose sense of time was very different from that of planet-born humanoids.

  The galactics had always imagined the builders of Asgard in their own image—encouraged, of course, by the fact that the one-time inhabitants of the outer layers had been humanoid. The Nine, obviously, had always thought of the builders as beings more like themselves—beings whose personalities might be distributed through the systems of the entire macroworld. That would have looked like the more likely hypothesis, now I knew that it was on the map of possibilities, except for two things. How could we explain what had happened to the Nine when they tried to contact these hypothetical master-builders? And why would beings like the Nine, only more so, be interested in seeding whole galaxies with the kind of DNA that eventually produced humanoid beings?

  "If the chronology of the Nine is anywhere near accurate," I said, "then it can't have been this Asgard which seeded the galactic arm with the genes of my remote proto-mammalian ancestors. Perhaps the one that did has gone away again. On the other hand, there's every chance that there are other Asgards lurking about in the galaxy—even in the local region of space, which has been very imperfectly explored. If the others aren't in solar systems, we wouldn't have a snowball in hell's chance of locating them. We travel between star-systems in wormholes—for all we know, the depths of interstellar space might be lousy with macroworlds. Maybe we only found this one because something did go wrong with it."

  I think we could have gone on for several more hours, but we were interrupted by a knock at the door. It was a curiously homely sound to be hearing in that bizarre place.

  "That'll be Finn," I said, as I went to answer it.

  I was due full marks for deduction. When I opened the door of Myrlin's little igloo, I found that it was indeed John Finn who was standing on the doorstep. But he wasn't quite as I had expected to see him.

  For one thing, he had a gun, which he was pointing at my chest. I could tell by his expression that he wouldn't be at all averse to using it. It wasn't a mud gun either—it was the kind of gun the invaders used. Given that, the second surprise dovetailed perfectly with the first. As well as the scion who'd presumably been appointed by Myrlin to guide him here, he had three Scarida with him, one of whom was my old adversary with the sky-blue eyes.

  They were all carrying guns.

  Only a soldier, I reminded myself, as a sinking feeling took possession of my stomach. He's only a soldier.

  It seemed that this particular enemy weren't quite ready to negotiate on our terms. In fact, it looked as if they weren't in a negotiating mood at all.

  28

  When we were all safely inside, with the door closed, I relaxed a bit. Not that it was a very relaxing situation—the gleam in John Finn's eye suggested that he would like nothing better than to blow my head off. He still blame
d me for everything. The three invaders with him were as nervous as cats, though I guessed that they hadn't the slightest suspicion of what the real situation was.

  Thalia-7 and Calliope-4 stood up, anxiously. "What has happened?" asked one of them.

  The invader officer looked at them, but didn't answer. He seemed very uneasy indeed, as if none of this was making much sense to him. That was hardly surprising.

  "What's happening at the prison camp?" I asked him. "The negotiations between the scions and your superiors must be under way by now."

  I got no response save for a blank stare. He didn't know anything about any negotiations. He didn't know that Thalia, Calliope and all their siblings were scions of the Nine. To him, they looked like members of a conquered race, and he couldn't figure out what they were doing here. He was out of his intellectual depth.

  "Who brought you here?" I asked, trying to take the initiative in what was sure to be a difficult conversation, and hoping that I could explain it all to him.

  "As a matter of fact," said John Finn, "you did."

  I looked at him in puzzlement, thrown out of my conversational stride. He was grinning with smug satisfaction. I

  could only wait for him to explain.

  "You were right about me," he said. "I know what you told the blonde while we were sick in that hospital. You told her I couldn't be trusted. Dead right—I don't owe one damn thing to the Star Force, or Mother Earth, or the whole human race, let alone the Tetrax. When the invaders picked me up, I told them everything they wanted to know—and then some. I told them about all the little gadgets the Tetrax gave me, about which I knew a little bit more than the Tetrax thought I did. Told the Scarids how to start searching for all the bugs that were already in place. Found lots of them in the city—and we found some in places we never expected to. Took me a while to realise that I was carrying a bug myself, but I figured it out. My boot heels were leaking some kind of organic muck, leaving a trail for an olfactory sensor. Guess who else has a couple just like them."

  I remembered what had happened last time I had been followed into the deeper levels.

  "Oh merde!" I said. "Not again!"

  He nodded.

  "But why?" I asked. "It doesn't make sense for the Tetrax to bug their own agents."

  "Maybe they didn't trust you," said Finn. "Want to know what I think? I think they expected us to defect to the opposition—if not immediately, as soon as we found out what we were really carrying. They knew we'd be in trouble when the invaders found out that we were carrying that damned virus. They expected us to take the obvious way out. And they wanted to be able to find us again when the war was over."

  I suppose it was just about plausible, but I didn't believe it. The Tetrax had no interest in persecuting us. My theory was that they had tagged us for our own good—so that they could save us from the wrath of the invaders, if they got the chance. The Tetrax fight dirty, but they do have that curious sense of obligation, and in their own weird fashion they do go in for orderly moral bookkeeping. A man like John Finn wouldn't begin to understand things like that, though, so I didn't try to argue with him. Anyway, he hadn't finished bragging yet about how clever he had been.

  "The Scarids don't know anything about electronic security," he told us all, "but it didn't take me long to show them what was going on in Skychain City. Was a lot sharper than the Tetrax gave me credit for, that's for sure. Then I fell ill, and they shipped me downstairs with the others. When we all broke out, though, they discovered just how useful the information I'd given them was. Tracked us here—no more than a couple of days behind."

  It was interesting enough, in its way, but it was distracting us from the issue at hand. I turned back to the man with sky-blue eyes.

  "The situation's changed now," I told him. "The Isthomi in the camp. . . ."

  "You bet the situation's changed," Finn interrupted. He wanted to be in charge—to call the tune. "Skychain City is in the hands of the Tetrax again, and they're shipping in war materials just as fast as they can."

  I ignored him, and continued to appeal to the man with blond hair. "Lives are being lost," I told him. "The Tetrax will run right over you if your people don't capitulate. There's no help for you here—not the kind of help you're looking for. These people aren't your ancestors, and they can't give you any superweapons to help you turn the tide of battle. All they can do is make their own peace with the Tetrax—and they have a great deal to offer. They have already begun to talk to your people, back in your own levels. You can only foul things up by running around with guns down here. Believe me, it's all out of our hands."

  It was no good. He was only a soldier. I might as well have been talking to a brick wall. It wasn't just that he didn't believe me—I just wasn't making any sense at all. I had to try harder, but I didn't even know where to start.

  I glanced sideways at Finn, wishing he weren't there to complicate matters. "What exactly do you intend to do?" I asked, in a tone as gentle as I could manage

  "We want weapons," said Sky-blue, as though it were perfectly obvious. "We want the mindscramblers you described to Dyan. We want weapons powerful enough to stop the Tetrax and drive them offworld again. We want to take control of Asgard, and keep it."

  "And how do you intend to proceed?" I asked, trying not to be sarcastic. I turned briefly to look at the scions, who seemed utterly bemused by it all. They were content to leave it to me for the time being, it seemed. I was flattered by their confidence, but I couldn't believe that I was actually making any headway in this crazy discussion.

  "We want to speak with the immortals," said the blond- haired soldier, in his best heroic manner. "We want you to take us to the people who rule this habitat."

  "I don't need to take you to them," I told him. "They're here. Not just Thalia and Calliope—the walls, the floor, the ceiling. They're not people like you and me—they're electronic personalities. Sentient computer programmes. They don't have bodies as you understand them. They're all around us." His eyes were blank, and I knew that I wasn't getting through. "I can't help wishing that they'd take a more active part in all this," I went on. "I wouldn't object in the slightest if they put us all to sleep with one of their fancy tricks, and let us sort things out without those guns you're waving around."

  I was assuming, of course, that the Nine were quietly observing all this, as they'd quietly stood by while the Star Force settled accounts with Amara Guur on my last visit. I assumed that they had the situation completely in hand: that these cowboys had been detected and closely watched ever since they had penetrated this level, and that the only reason the Nine hadn't yet acted was that there was no need to panic. I wished, though, that they could take a hint.

  But nothing happened, and I couldn't help casting an anxious glance at Thalia and Calliope. I realised that I didn't really know how badly the Nine had been injured by their software skirmish. Maybe they hadn't been paying attention when the Scarid soldiers sneaked up. I knew they were supposed to be paying attention now, because Myrlin had told me that they'd be eavesdropping on my conversation with the scions. But there was only silence and inaction.

  Was it possible, I wondered, that the Isthomi no longer had sufficient control of their own systems to take effective action against the invaders? And if so—then where, oh where, was Myrlin?

  "You're not in any position to make demands," I told Sky-blue. "Surely you must realise that."

  "As it happens," said the Scarid, "we are in a stronger position than you think. I believe you were wounded when they brought you down here. You didn't see the machine or the shaft connecting this level to the ones above. It's a very deep and unusually wide shaft. I don't know how many levels it extends to below this one, but I know there are many hundreds above. The total volume of the shaft must be immense."

  "So what?" I said.

  "So it's evacuated," said Finn, with a sneer. "The warning signs aren't in any language we know, but whoever posted them intended them to be clear to anyone
with an atom of intelligence. We had a long journey down here, and plenty of time to figure out the graffiti. That cage goes smoothly up and down in an evacuated shaft which is deep enough to suck an awful lot of air out of this habitat. All it takes is enough high explosive to blow the lock. We can do a lot of damage with one big bang, and if the people of this level like air, perhaps they ought to talk to us, okay?"

  I shook my head in disbelief. "You don't get it, do you?" I said exasperatedly. "You have no idea what kind of a universe we're living in. I don't know whether you really have enough explosives to blow a hole in this habitat—maybe you do. But you can't hurt the Isthomi. They don't need air any more than they need light, and you could blast away at them for years with your stupid popguns and not hurt them. Can't either of you get it into your heads that your firepower isn't any good any more?"

  They looked at the guns in their hands, which were still pointed at my chest.

  I turned again to Thalia and Calliope, appealing for some assistance. I felt that I had done all I could, and that it was their turn now. I had the uneasy suspicion that they were still observing, in fascination, the interactions of all these strange alien beings, as though they were watching down the barrel of a microscope as a culture of bacteria underwent some kind of awful crisis. Perhaps they weren't even wondering whether they ought to care.

  "We can take you to a place where you may communicate directly with the Nine," said Calliope.

  I wasn't entirely sure what she meant. Surely the Nine were here. They were in the walls; they were in the sky.

  They were hearing every word. We didn't have to go anywhere. Or was it me that didn't understand?

  It was hardly for me to complain. I was only an innocent bystander.

  "Haven't you seen them already, Finn?" I asked. "Didn't you see any ghosts when you woke up?"