Asgard's Secret (34 page)

"Some
day," I said, "I might want to go back to the home system. If the
people there think I've been infected

with some alien bioweapon ..."

"You
haven't."

"Even so,
they'll want to be certain that I haven't. Okay, so I'm not a secret army of
hundreds or thousands—I'm no real danger, in practical terms. Even so, they
will
want to be certain. They'll want to be certain about all of us—Susarma Lear,
Serne, Vasari . . . everyone who's ever been on Asgard."

"They can be.
They will be. They know about the programme now. It's just a matter of
investigation and analysis. They can remove that last nagging doubt, if
they're prepared to try. Even without Tetron help, it's just a matter of making
an effort. They'd check you over anyway, coming in from a place like Skychain
City . . . even if you hadn't been down
here."

He was right, of
course. They would. There really wasn't any more danger from whatever he might
be carrying than there might be from any alien bug I might have picked up
purely by chance, playing cards with a Zabaran, or making an everyday journey
on a road-strip. You'd have to be paranoid to think otherwise—as paranoid as
Star-Captain Lear and her commanding officers.

"The surviving
details of the programme are in that warship's cargo," Myrlin told me.
"If our own scientists can't work it out, the Tetrax surely can."

Our own
scientists.
He believed that he was human. Was the belief enough
to
make
him human? Some would think so, others wouldn't. I had to
decide which side I was on.

"It can't have
been easy to hijack a starship, and escaping from what was left of the
Salamandran surface," I observed, thoughtfully.

"No, it
wasn't," he admitted.

"You must be
an exceptional human being."

"I think I am,"
he said. "In fact, I know I am."

29

We saw another predator when we stopped to
rest, but this one didn't attack. It looked at us from a distance, and went
away. Maybe it was because we were between the rails, outside its territory—or
maybe it just had a slightly smarter way of operating than the first one I'd
met. We saw other animals, too, but mostly just their rear ends as they disappeared
from view.

"I hope we
reach the terminus soon," I said. "All this walking is just using up
time. It wasn't supposed to be like this—the big discovery was supposed to have
a lot more
immediacy
than this."

"We'll get
there," he assured me.

"Is that just
self-reassurance, or do you know something I don't?" I asked.

"How could I possibly
know anything you don't?" he asked.

"I don't
know," I said. "I don't know how much the Salamandrans knew about
Asgard, or what they might have piped into your brain while you were growing in
that tank. Susarma Lear wondered whether you might have an objective in mind—a
specific reason for coming here."

"I told you
what the reason was," he reminded me. "I knew there weren't many humans—and
that the Tetrax are biotech-minded."

"The galaxy is
full of places with no humans at all," I pointed out. "And there are
a lot more Tetrax on the Tetron homeworld than there are here. If you want your
story to ring true, you might want to modify that particular part of it."

I couldn't see much
of his face behind the plate in his helmet, except for his outsized nose, but I
knew that he was looking at me long and hard.

"Okay,"
he said, eventually. "I told you the truth, but not the
whole
truth. I didn't know anything about the programme of which I was a part when I was
liberated. I thought I really was a prisoner of war. When my liberators first
became suspicious that something odd had been going on, they didn't figure out
immediately that I was part of it. They asked for my help trying to figure it
out, because I'd been on the spot. Local knowledge, you see. I tried to help
them, as best I could. Why shouldn't I? I began to realise what I was before
they did—not long before, but long enough to give me an advantage. I think I found
out quite a bit more than they did—which is how I know that I'm no threat,
although they're not so sure. I also found out that the Salamandrans had to buy
in technics to help them get the programme started."

"Tetron
technics?"

"I don't know.
Not from the Tetron homeworld, that's for sure."

"From
Asgard?
You're saying that the Salamandrans bought bootleg military biotech from
Asgard?"

"I can't be
certain," he admitted, "but I saw documents and equipment marked with
a symbol shaped like
this"
—he drew a picture in the empty air with the forefinger
of his right gauntlet—"and Asgard was named as a port of departure. It
might have been a cover story of some kind, but I didn't have any other leads.
Once I'd found out all I could about Asgard, it seemed at least plausible that
it might have been something excavated from the levels."

"I could see
how you might jump to that conclusion," I said, thoughtfully. "If so,
I bet the scavenger who found it was paid a pittance for the discovery. If
someone's bootlegging local technics, it needn't necessarily be the Tetrax . .
. and if Tetrax are involved, they might not be operating with the blessing of
their own people. Black marketeering of every kind is rife in Skychain City,
and it isn't all run by the vormyr."

"It doesn't
really matter any more," he said, "but it seemed to be a
potentially-sensitive item of information. I didn't want to mention it, until
..."

"Until you realised
that I needed more convincing of your absolute honesty. I'm flattered. After
all, while you have the guns and I don't, my opinion of your honesty doesn't
matter much, does it?"

He didn't give the
flame-pistol back. I hadn't supposed that he would.

"We'd better
move on," he said. "We won't get to the terminus by sitting
still."

It was fine by me;
I was feeling a little better. We set off along the track yet again.

"There's
energy to spare here," I observed, after we'd gone a little way further.
"The ecosystem may seem degenerate, and the artefacts we've seen so far
are definitely long past their period of use, but there's no obvious reason why
evolution shouldn't be progressive. Given that this is an artificial habitat—a
big cage, in essence—the fact that the power's still switched on means that
things really ought to be working according to plan. I can't believe that this
is anybody's plan, but it's certainly not a plan that went awry millions of
years ago. The humanoids who lived here must have suffered a fairly recent
catastrophe. It's possible, I suppose, that the heat fuelling the ecosystem is
leaking
in from other levels, rather than actually being
laid on,
but that's
not the kind of situation that could have endured for millions of years either.
Are you following all this?"

"I understand
what you're saying," he confirmed, "but it's not the most urgent
matter on my mind."

"No, it's
not," I admitted. "Okay, what do
you
want to talk
about, Mr. Myrlin? Is it Mr. Myrlin, or is Myrlin your first name?"

"It's my
surname," he said. "At least, it's the surname the Salamandrans made
up for me. My forenames are supposed to be Alexander James. I don't really
feel comfortable with them, now that I know the memories associated with them
are fake."

"But you're
content with Myrlin?"

"With a 'y,'
" he reminded me. "Or maybe a 'why not'? Everybody needs a name, Mr.
Rousseau."

"You can call
me Mike," I said, generously.

"I'm not a
magician," he told me. "I'm not a monster either. It's just a name,
and I'm just a human being, like you."

He was protesting
too much, but who could blame him?

"It's
okay," I assured him. "I'm not the one you need to convince."

"The horizon's
getting brighter," he said. "I can't see any buildings yet, but I think
we're getting close."

He was right. The
"sky" was definitely brighter in the direction we were headed. Given
the closeness of the horizon, the brightly-lit region couldn't be far away. I increased
my stride, although I couldn't match his. He moved ahead of me effortlessly
enough.

I wondered if I ought
to change the radio channel while he was distracted, to make contact with the
star-captain and reassure her that I was still okay—but I'd have had to explain
why I'd been out of contact for so long, and where I was, and what I was doing
. . .

All in all, it
seemed simpler just to keep going. After all, in spite of what Myrlin had said
a few minutes ago, the only thing that
really
mattered was
the mystery of Asgard. It might not be the most urgent matter on his mind, but
it was still the most urgent on mine.

As he drew further
ahead, I tried to break into a run, but the cold-suit wasn't built for it. He
had the longer legs, so he was the one who came in sight of the city first—but
I got there as soon as I could.

I was hoping for something
that would really bend my mind, but I knew that I would be over-optimistic to
expect it. I'd seen enough of the habitat to be pretty certain that we weren't
about to meet the humanoids who had built Asgard, or any equally exciting
alternative.

The city was
decaying. Like everything else in the ecosystem, it seemed to have been
deteriorating for a long time, though not for millions of years. Walls were
crumbling; doorways yawned; the streets were overgrown and littered. The one
thing untouched by the effects of long neglect was the system of lights; no
frail bioluminescence had ever held domain over this place; it was illuminated
by countless incandescent bulbs, each one the size of a humanoid head. Whatever
repair system had been entrusted with the job of keeping the network in good
order was obviously fully functional.

What the light
displayed to us, though, was quite the opposite.

There was no need
for us to mount an assiduous search for the inhabitants of the city; they came
to us, like night- flying insects drawn to a flame. The metaphor is more
appropriate than it may seem, because there was nothing in their eyes to
suggest that they were moved by an active curiosity. Their vacant expressions
suggested that they were indeed being
drawn
by some inner
impulse that they neither understood nor cared to suppress.

They were humanoid,
but on a scale that I hadn't seen among all the starfaring races represented on
Asgard. Those who seemed to be fully-grown were no taller than the average
human child of ten or eleven, and much more lightly built. They weren't just
thin; they were bony, as if they ought to have been carrying far more flesh
than they actually were. Their silvery-grey skin was wrinkled, so that even the
faces of the smallest ones—children, I assumed— seemed irredeemably ancient.
They were clothed, but the majority wore little more than filthy loincloths.
Even the most extravagantly dressed had only knee-length trousers and
threadbare waistcoats without buttons or hooks.