Asgard's Conquerors (26 page)

"So our Tetron guests have assured us," he said. "But
you must try to see things our way. What would happen if we were to make peace
with the Tetrax? They would want access to the levels we control, in order to
pursue their peaceful researches. In return, no doubt, they would offer us
their own technology, their own knowledge. They would become involved in our
projects, interested in our environments. They already believe that Asgard is
theirs, because they have the technology to built cities on its surface, and
explore its depths. If we give them leave to go where they wish, do what they
will, Asgard will become theirs. They will be the ones who learn to use and
control the technology of our ancestors. That would not be right. We are the
inheritors—all this is ours. We must do everything in our power to keep control
of it."

Again he paused, expectantly. I played fair, and tried to see things
his way. I had to concede that he had a point. "If you let the Tetrax have
the run of your levels," I said, slowly, "they'll certainly be in a
far better position than you are to figure out how Asgard is put together. The
technology of the builders—which is incarnate in the very architecture of the
macroworld and in the systems that supply energy to the life-sustaining habitats—is
very much superior to Tetron technology, but if you and the Tetrax are both
trying to figure it out, the Tetrax are bound to get there first. I can see why
you want to keep it all to yourselves. You're sitting on the most high-powered
technics in the known universe ... if you could only learn to understand it,
you'd be ahead of the Tetrax—ahead of everybody. But the fact is that you don't
understand it—you don't even understand the technology you've captured from
the Tetrax in Skychain City, do you?"

"Asgard is ours," said Sigor Dyan. "We belong here. I
think the people of Skychain City refer to us as "invaders," but that
is not correct, is it? It is, in fact, the inhabitants of your city who are
invaders of our world. Is that not so?"

"I can see that it must look that way to you," I conceded
carefully.

"I understand that your own race has recently fought a war against
another species, which you won," he said. "Is that not so?"

"It's true."

"And why did you fight that war?"

I gave him a wry smile. "Territorial disputes," I admitted.

"Your opponents were humanoid, I believe—but I am told that they
did not resemble you as closely as we do."

"That's true too," I confirmed warily.

"If they had resembled you as closely as we do, do you think your
two races might have resolved their differences more amicably?"

"I doubt it," I said drily. It was an interesting question,
though, and I couldn't pretend to know the answer for sure.

"Your own race is, I believe, technologically inferior to the
Tetrax. You are no doubt more advanced than we are, but you have had to find
your place in a community of races dominated by the Tetrax. Do you think, given
what you know of that community, that humankind will ever catch up with the
Tetrax? Do you think that the Tetrax would ever allow any other race to catch
up with them, given their present position of superiority?"

I swallowed a gulp of the green stuff. He was sounding altogether too
reasonable. His questions were the sort that are best answered with more
questions.

"What chance do you think you'd have against the Tetrax if it came
to armed conflict?" I asked him. "They take great pride in not being
violent, but I'd be willing to bet that they could draw upon some awesome
firepower if they had to."

"I have no doubt of it," replied Dyan. "If half of what
humans have told us about your own Star Force is true, I have no doubt that you
could blast Skychain City into dust, and that we could not defend it. But would
the Tetrax really want to bomb Skychain City when there are so many of their
own people there? What good would it do them, in the long run, if they did? We
have twenty billion people in the lower levels. If they tried to retake
Skychain City without destroying it, they would find it very difficult—I do not
say impossible, but I cannot think of a way that it could be done. And if
Skychain City were to fall . . . what then? We still have twenty billion people
in the lower levels. How long do you think it would take your invading armies
to take the tenth level
down ...
let alone the
fiftieth?"

He had obviously had more time to think this out than I had. His
arguments looked suspiciously strong. If the galactics tried to take the
invaders' little empire by force, they would have a real job on their hands. It
might be easy to retake Skychain City—but what then? Could the Tetrax really
send their explorers down into the levels with a vast population of hostile
aliens standing against them? I knew only too well how difficult it had been
for the C.R.E. to make headway in the task of learning about the people who had
once lived in the outermost layers of Asgard, even when their only enemy was
the cold. Maybe, I thought, the neo-Neanderthalers could buy themselves the
time they needed to catch up. Maybe they could keep the Tetrax at bay, not just
for years but generations, while they fought as hard as they could to master—really
master—the technics that were all around them, built into the fabric of their
enclosed universe.

"Okay," I said. "You can keep the Tetrax out of Skychain
City . . . and the levels you control. But you don't have any way of
controlling what happens on the other side of the macroworld, do you? Your
empire's straight up and down. If it's to be a contest, the Tetrax are going to
start digging in all the other habitats on level one. And they'll bring in a
great deal more manpower than they ever lent to the C.R.E.—you may still
outnumber them by millions to one, but you've already conceded that they're
clever. They could still win the race, and if you go all-out to stop them, it
will cost you an awful lot of lives. Maybe even twenty billion. Do you really
want that kind of war?"

"We are used to war," he told me, coldly. "It would be a
foul betrayal of our ancestors to surrender to alien beings the inheritance
which they left for us."

I was tempted to challenge his assumptions about his so- called
ancestors, but I didn't want to antagonise him. I kept quiet, nursing a
headache that was getting rapidly worse in consequence of the taxing
discussion.

"In any case," said Sigor Dyan silkily, "there are other
factors in the situation which still remain to be considered, are there not? We
know that there are other inhabitants of Asgard more advanced than the Tetrax
or ourselves. It is entirely possible that our ancestors are still alive, far
beneath us in the depths of our world. If our ancestors were now to emerge, to
assist us in our hour of need, it would transform the situation dramatically,
would it not, Mr. Rousseau?"

I realised then—perhaps belatedly—exactly why the invaders had been so
very pleased to see me when Jacinthe Siani pointed me out. The way Sigor Dyan
had things figured, I was the man who had talked to their ancestors . . . the
messiah who had been in touch with their gods. I had been thinking in terms of
alliances, assuming that the invaders were interested in their downside
neighbours as potential allies. It hadn't sunk in that their way of looking at
things made me much more important than that.

I didn't relish the idea of being cast as a messiah. It's a dangerous
job, by all accounts.

I nearly blurted out the fact that Aleksandr Sovorov and at least a
dozen of their Tetron prisoners must also know the location of Saul's
dropshaft, but I bit my tongue.

I didn't know how much they had already been told. If all the
information they had came from Jacinthe Siani, it would be woefully incomplete.
They probably had no idea what kind of deal I'd made with the C.R.E., and they
also might not know that the way down to Myrlin's biotech supermen had been
very solidly blocked. I had to keep in mind the maxim that careless talk costs
lives, and that one of them might easily be mine. I had to tread carefully
until I found out exactly what they wanted from me, and exactly what they
thought I could deliver.

"You don't have any real reason to believe," I began tentatively,
"that the people down below are your ancestors. They could be just one
more race planted in their own habitat just as you were. The fact that they're
technologically superior doesn't mean a thing. Ask yourself, Mr. Dyan—if
they're just another captive race, would you be any better off becoming their
underlings than you would becoming the underlings of the Tetrax?"

"That is exactly the kind of question, Mr. Rousseau, that we hope
you can answer for us," he said, his voice as sweet as the stuff he was
feeding me . . . which, now that I had finished it, had left in my mouth a
strange and not altogether pleasant aftertaste.

19

During the
next exercise period, while I was temporarily let loose—presumably to think
over all that had been said to me—I got my chance to talk to 822-Vela for a
while.

We met by one of the observation windows, and as we spoke I was able to
alternate my glance between his wizened face and the alien wilderness outside.
There was a kind of swirling oily mist which made it difficult to see further
than ten or fifteen metres, but there was a cluster of the dendritic structures
close to the wall, and it was possible to make out, albeit vaguely, the small
creatures fluttering amid the branches. The coloured lights which dressed the
branches of the dendrites insinuated their soft radiance into the mist,
creating rainbow hazes through which the fireflies danced and darted.

Why is it here? I wondered. Is it something so very unusual in the
great universal scheme that it became precious?

822-Vela was explaining to me the policy that the Tetrax of Skychain
City had decided to follow. "Essentially," he said, "our
strategy is one of calm reason, with a measure of stubbornness and a certain
seductive appeal. We are trying to make clear the benefits that both the
galactic races and the races of Asgard would obtain from a meeting of minds and
a joining of resources. We stress the standards of behaviour which are required
if a complex galactic community is to exist in peace and harmony. We have refused
to tell the invaders anything about our technology, or about our discoveries on
Asgard, or about the position of our other subsurface bases, unless and until
they make some kind of treaty with us and allow us to restore effective
communication with the starships in space."

"Well," I said, deciding that I could make a bid for prestige
by name-dropping furiously, "1125-Camina and 994-Tulyar deduced that you
would follow that policy, and are planning their own overtures to fit in with
it. The problem is that the invaders won't respond in any way to their calls,
and without more information it was difficult to decide how to continue. With
luck, one of our groups will have managed to renew communications, so that the
people in orbit will be fully informed, but it's not easy to see what will
happen next. You can probably judge better than I whether 1125-Camina would
think it appropriate to order some kind of military action."

It's no good fishing for information with the Tetrax. They're too good
at it to fall for any bait mere humans can deploy. All he said in reply was:
"No doubt 1125-Camina will make the best decision. Can we assume that you,
like Dr. Sovorov, will follow our directions in this matter? Many of your
species-brethren are actively collaborating with the invaders—mercifully, few
humans or Kythnans are in a position to offer effective assistance to
them."