Asgard's Conquerors (14 page)

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
invaders 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."

It's difficult to import subtle inflections into pan-galactic parole,
but he managed to make the word "unhappily" sound ironically
insincere. What he was implying was that the invaders were barbarians just like
us, and would probably have more in common with us than with civilized and
cultured folk like the Tetrax.

"Is that why we're here—to make contact?" asked Susarma Lear,
bluntly, in parole that sounded coarse even by human standards.

1125-Camina intervened, quickly but smoothly. "It is our
considered opinion that your group should attempt to make contact only if the
circumstances seem very favourable. Our own diplomats, aided by members of
several races who resemble the invaders closely, are making overt attempts to
open a dialogue. Mr. Valdavia will be able to assist us, and he has kindly offered
to do so. What we ask of you, if you are willing to help, is that you should
help us to reopen channels of communication with the Tetrax in the city. We
need the information which they have been gathering since our links were cut,
and it appears that we will need them to act as intermediaries in communicating
with the invaders."

I was trying hard to read between the lines, to judge how

anxious she
was, and about what. I thought her words overlaid a real sense of urgency, and
I guessed that what was worrying the Tetrax was the fear that this affair might
not have finished yet—that there might be manpower enough and firepower enough
in Asgard's depths to allow the macroworld's inhabitants to carry their
campaign out into the star-worlds. I guessed that they were afraid that the invaders
wouldn't ever start talking peace, but would instead erupt into the galaxy,
guns ablaze, in exactly the same fashion as they had erupted into Skychain
City.

"Whose orders are we under, once we're down?" asked the
colonel, again defying Valdavia's suggestions by being brutally frank. The
diplomat looked annoyed, but she ignored him.

"994-Tulyar will direct operations," replied the female
Tetron. "He has lived on the surface of Asgard for some years, and knows
the city well. Your own Star Force personnel will of course be under your
command, but we respectfully ask that you take no action without careful
consultation with 994-Tulyar."

Or, to put it another way, you do as this guy tells you. Susarma Lear
didn't challenge the position.

"And what sort of equipment are we taking down?" she asked.

1125-Camina was sharp enough to know that "equipment" was a
euphemism for guns. "We do not consider the circumstances appropriate for
the carrying of weapons," she replied. "Our principal objective is to
establish friendly relations with the invaders, and your mission is a means to
that end. We are determined to make no hostile moves. You should make every
attempt to operate in secret, without attracting the attention of the invaders
and certainly without trying to kill any of them."

I was slightly surprised when Susarma Lear just nodded, keeping her
face quite straight. Valdavia must have warned her that the Tetrax would take
this stand, and had presumably instructed her not to protest. She'd already
made an effort to show that she might take an independent line if necessary,
but she was a colonel now, and colonels have to be extra-careful about
expressing their displeasure openly. She had her orders, and she knew that in
the end she had to take whatever crap the Tetrax cared to hand out. One more
heroic sacrifice for the cause of Mother Earth.

I wasn't a colonel. That meant I didn't have a voice, let alone an
opinion. I could make myself heard some other time.

"The interests of both our races—of the entire galactic community—are
identical in this matter," added 871- Alpheus, who seemed to be there
simply as a yes-man.

My old friend 74-Scarion, who was a yes-man of an even lower order,
echoed him with the observation: "It is our duty to serve as we may."

I wasn't quite sure how to translate that into ordinary language, but
it sounded to me like: "We're expendable, pal—you and me both—and we don't
have a choice." I had a feeling he might be right. I gave him a little
smile, but I don't suppose he understood it.

"Ideally," said 1125-Camina, now making a show of addressing
herself to Valdavia, "we would like to bring some of our people out of the
city, and establish routes by which they could go back and forth unobserved. No
doubt the airlocks which provide the principal means of egress are heavily
guarded, but it should not be too difficult to find covert points of entry into
the lower levels."