Asgard's Conquerors (24 page)

In a way, I realised, what was happening here was a curious inversion
of the characteristic pattern of life on Earth. There, light provided the fuel
for the ecosphere, and sophisticated organisms made their own heat. Here, heat
was the basic fuel, and the cleverest organisms made light for communication— perhaps
as casually as Earthly creatures made odours. I had never heard rumour of
anything like it, and I found it entrancing, but my bored fellow travellers
hardly gave it a glance through the sealed windows of the car. There were a few
buildings along the road we traveled, but no pedestrians. I guessed that it
was probably another of the habitats where the invaders needed filter-masks to
breathe safely.

Neither the man with pale blue eyes nor Jacinthe Siani volunteered any
information about this place, and I realised that the Kythnan's single comment
about the musical plants was a true gauge of what it took to awaken her curiosity.
As for the invader, although he was "only a soldier," he seemed
nevertheless to be remarkably insensitive to the beauty and the inherent
fascination of what Asgard held. He took all this for granted—it meant nothing,
in terms of inspiring theories about what Asgard was, and the godlike beings
who had designed it.

The savage mind, I thought, fixated on the wisdom of imaginary
ancestors, uncaring about the progress of its own wisdom. And yet these people
might succeed in driving the Tetrax from Asgard, and in bringing desolation to
vast reaches of the macroworld.

If ever I had thought seriously about throwing in my lot with the
invaders and betraying the Tetrax, I was sure by now that I could not do it. I
needed to pin my colours to the mast of some cause that was actually interested
in penetrating Asgard's mysteries.

After catching only the merest glimpses of the ecosystem on level
fifty, I was enthusiastic to see more. Our next drop took us to what I judged
to be level fifty-two. This was another weird one, and I knew when we changed
vehicles before we went through the complicated locks that it would be another
with a reducing atmosphere. The car we got into was like a miniature spaceship,
sealed very tight.

There was more life here, though, than there had been in the earlier
hydrogenous environment. There, everything had been vaporous save for a kind of
swampy sludge at ground level. Here, there were many dendritic forms—I hesitate
to call them "trees" because they looked more like corals, and
certainly didn't have any leafy foliage—coiling and branching tortuously. They
didn't form much of a forest because they mostly kept their distance from one
another, but some of them—after the fashion of the cloudy habitat on level fifty—
bore what looked like luminescent fruit.

There were flying creatures, too—or, to be strictly accurate, gliding
creatures, because I couldn't see any evidence of fluttering wings as they
floated from one dendrite to another. There was a sort of undergrowth,
consisting mostly of globular entities of assorted sizes, many of which were
associated in clusters. I couldn't imagine what kinds of metabolism these
things must have; I knew there were bacteria in conventional ecosystems that
could only grow in the absence of free oxygen, but I knew of no metazoan
entities with anaerobic habits. Here, I assumed, some fairly radical revision
of the basic DNA support-system must be necessary, if this life were akin to
our own.

Our drive across this territory was another short one—barely a couple
of kilometres. We came then to a big windowed wall curving away in either
direction into the murk. We crawled through a second system of airlocks, but
instead of coming to another big elevator that could lower our vehicle down to
the next level, we parked in a bay. As we disembarked, and were met by more
armed troopers, I realised that we were not going any further. We had arrived
at our destination.

The wrist-timer I was wearing was showing Asgard metric time, but in
human terms our journey had taken the best part of two days. While there had
been plenty to look at, I hadn't been entirely aware of how tired I was, but
now it came home to me that I'd only slept for about six of those forty-eight
hours.

I was initially surprised that our destination had proved to be located
in such a hostile habitat, but I soon perceived the logic of it. What better
place is there to put a maximum-security prison than a building surrounded by
an alien atmosphere? It would certainly help to discourage would-be escapers.

Now that we'd arrived, I could no longer distract myself from the
extremity of my plight. Fifty levels down, there could be not the slightest
hope that the Tetrax could do anything to free me. Susarma Lear would have not
the slightest chance of ever finding me, even if she were disposed to bring
the Star Force to my rescue.

And as if that were not trouble enough, I was morally certain that my
captors were going to demand far more information from me than I actually had
to give, and were not going to take at all kindly to the inadequacy of my
answers.

17

I later
discovered that it was a pretty crowded prison camp, but that was by no means
obvious when I arrived. The corridors were all empty—everyone was locked up in
the cells. There weren't even many guards about; I suppose they didn't need
very many, given that there was little future in dreams of rebellion or escape.

The accommodation offered by the camp seemed somewhat basic, as far as
I could judge while being marched through its corridors. The walls were
polished, coldly metallic in appearance, and the cell doors were all identical—
row upon row of them, a mere six metres apart.

It seemed a bleak prospect as they hustled me to my appointed place,
but when they opened the door and shoved me in, I was grateful to find that it
wasn't quite as bad as I had begun to fear. The inmates of this curious
institution were housed two to a cell, and our captors were considerate enough
to match up like with like, placing members of the same race together. At the
time of my arrival there was only one other human in the camp, so I was taken
immediately to his cell.

As the door banged shut behind me, he looked at me in open
astonishment, as if the fact of my appearance were almost a miracle. I was
pleased to see him, figuring that he was probably the next best thing to a
friendly face that this godforsaken spot could offer.

"Hello Alex," I said. "Small universe, isn't it? What
time do we eat around here?"

It was pleasant to see the expressions of utter surprise crossing his
face, one after another.

"Rousseau!" he said, almost as if I were Santa Claus—or maybe
the devil incarnate.

"You can call me Mike," I said.

"But you left before the invasion," he complained, foolishly.
"You should be back on Earth by now." He was speaking in parole—English
wasn't his first language, and he tended not to speak it unless asked.

I looked around warily. "Is this place bugged?" I asked, in
English.

He shook his head tiredly, more in amazement than negation.
"Hardly," he said, answering in the same language. "As far as I
can tell, these people are barbarians. Apart from technology they've taken over
without really understanding it, they're about as sophisticated as early
twentieth-century humans."

"Well," I said, "it probably doesn't matter anyway. It's
just that I'm not entirely sure how much the Neanderthalers know about me, or
how much I should tell them. Jacinthe Siani fingered me as the guy who went
down Saul Lyndrach's dropshaft, and blew a cover story I'd invented on the spur
of the moment. They're interested in me on account of what I found down below,
and I suspect that's the only thing that's inhibiting them from shooting me as
a Tetron spy. I'm being as discreet as I can, but I don't know what they have
planned. How much have you told them?"

"I can assure you," he said, stiffly, "that I have told
these people absolutely nothing, and have not the slightest intention of doing
so. They may regard me as a first cousin to their race, due to a superficial
similarity of appearance, but that only betrays their crudity of mind."

I nodded. Aleksandr Sovorov could always be relied upon to stand on his
dignity. He didn't go in for half-measures, either. If he had decided not to
talk to his captors, he was perfectly capable of remaining silent until
doomsday.

I sat down on the unused bunk, and wiped my forehead with the back of
my hand. I felt slightly feverish and my throat was a little sore. Until that
moment, I had attributed the fact that I didn't feel on top of the world to
tiredness, but now my sinuses were beginning to trouble me.

"Have you got a spare handkerchief?" I asked. "I've got
a cold coming on, and I was travelling light. I don't suppose the medical
facilities around here are up to Tetron standards?"

"Hardly," he said. He found me a handkerchief and passed it
over to me gingerly. There didn't seem to be much point in avoiding physical
contact—if we had to share a cell, we would also have to share our viruses.

"I suppose one of our fellow humans identified you as the man most
likely to know how Tetron technology works?" I speculated. "So they
asked for your help, didn't like your uncooperative attitude, and sent you down
here for a bit of re-education."

"Quite probably," he said.

"Have they tortured you yet?"

"No. So far they have only tried to seduce my support with
arguments and bribes. I think they believe that my knowledge is very limited.
Their worst threats have been directed at the Tetrax."

"That's a relief. I only hope they use the same tactics on me.
Arguments and bribes I can stand."

"I hope," he said frostily, "that you do not intend to
co-operate with these vicious murderers."

"That depends," I told him, "on what they want to know.
I do have a certain authority to negotiate. Who's senior Tetron here in the
camp?"

"There is a man named 822-Vela," said Sovorov, a little
suspiciously.

"Do we have any opportunity to talk to him?"

"Certainly. There are two exercise periods per day, when prisoners
associate quite freely. Do you have any particular reason for wanting to
communicate with him?"

"I told you. I'm a Star Force spy. The Tetrax hired me, along with
Susarma Lear and a shipful of troopers, to investigate the situation down
here, and to open up lines of communication."

"How do you expect to be able to report back?" he asked,
sarcastically. "Security in the camp is lax, but it hardly needs to be
tight. Even if you could get an atmosphere suit, there is nowhere to go except
the elevator shaft, and even if you could get up or down the shaft, there are
invader-occupied levels at the other ends."

"So nobody escapes?"

"Nobody even tries," he assured me.

"In that case," I told him, "I'll probably have to talk
my way out. And if that means telling them some of what they want to know, I'll
do it. We all have to make sacrifices." I hadn't realised until I spoke
that I would have to make plans along some such lines—in fact, I hadn't been
planning at all—but Alex Sovorov was a man who'd always been able to provoke
me with his marginally insufferable manner, and I wasn't about to tell him that
I hadn't a clue what I could or should do.

He looked at me uncertainly, not entirely sure whether it was
appropriate for him to disapprove. That was a new dilemma for him—in all our
past dealings, he'd been quite certain that I merited disapproval.