Asgard's Conquerors (33 page)

I was
breathing in great ragged gasps, and my heart was pounding. I could feel no
immediate sense of recovery as I turned around and looked back the way I had
come. Seized by exhaustion at last, I sank to my knees, and then slipped
sideways into a half-sitting sprawl, my upper torso propped up by my left hand.
In my right hand, I was surprised to find, was the makeshift club that Susarma
Lear had thrown to me before commanding me to run. I had carried it, without
being aware of the fact, all the way from the scene of carnage.

I had no
idea how much time had passed, and I became fearful that I might run out of
oxygen at any moment. The recycler was still working perfectly despite the
battering I had taken, but I had no way of knowing how much longer it would do
the job before coming to the end of its resources.

My
capacity for intelligent thought was restricted to the consciousness that there
were only three things I could do. I could go left along the wall; I could go
right along the wall; or I could stay put.

I stayed
put. I can now think of three or four good reasons why that might have been
the correct thing to do, but I cannot honestly claim that any of them was the
true reason why I did it. I did it because I felt completely and utterly
finished. I was probably underestimating myself—after all, it wasn't the first
time I'd felt that way—but I couldn't for the life of me get back to my feet.

Even
when the other suited forms appeared between the spiky pillars, I couldn't get
up. First there was one . . . then two . . . then half a dozen. I saw the
nearest one pull up, turn, and go down on one knee, firing twice before hurling
aside what was presumably an empty rifle and coming on toward me. I saw one of
the others fall, and two or three others returning fire, but there was no
sustained firing, and some of the pursuers were hanging back. Obviously, the
shortage of ammunition was universal.

The
first one to reach my side was Susarma Lear. She took one look at me, and then
reached down to grab the club from my hand. I could barely lift it to meet her
partway. When she turned back, I realized that she was the only good guy who
had made it through. Serne was not with her, nor Finn. There was no sign of the
two Tetrax. All the other suited figures I could see were the enemy.

Now they
knew they had us cornered they were not chasing . . . instead they were fanning
out, and approaching very slowly indeed. I realised that they were waiting for
further support. There were five of them, but they were staying thirty or
thirty-five metres away, awaiting reinforcements. I didn't take any pleasure in
the implied compliment they were paying to my heroic commander.

Seconds
drained by, and nothing happened. The approaching Neanderthalers had all
stopped, apparently just as drained by it all as we were. I stayed sitting
down. Susarma Lear stood beside me, battleaxe at the ready. I wondered whether
she would carry the fight to them, if discretion kept them back for too long.

Then I
saw the tank, manoeuvring round one of the pillars. It was a great ugly thing,
with caterpillar tracks and an absurd plastic-shielded turret. Forty metres
away, it stopped. The turret-hatch opened, and a suited man climbed down,
followed by two others. They carried pistols, and they began to walk in a
leisurely manner toward us. I watched them approach, their lazy, measured
strides in sharp contrast to the staggering steps their companions had been
able to manage at the end of the long chase.

She
waited, without moving a muscle, until they were only three or four metres
away. She stood in a slightly

slumped position,
as though she had given up.

But she
hadn't.

She
hurled the battleaxe with all her might at one of the approaching men, and it
took him full in the chest. He fell backwards, spilling his pistol. She hurled
herself at the next in line, and though she moved faster than I could have
imagined possible after everything she had been through, it had all taken just
a little too much out of her. He was too quick on the trigger.

The
shot, fired without aiming, must have gone through the flesh of her thigh, and
I saw blood gush out into the cavity between her transparent plastic suit and
the leg of her pants. I heard her scream of anguish, and I dived after her,
trying to get my hands around her leg, in a desperate attempt to seal the rent
in her suit. I knew that she'd be dead in a matter of minutes, even disregarding
the bullet-wound, if the suit wasn't patched.

My own
attempts were futile anyway—it didn't matter that the guy who'd been hit in the
chest by her missile came to his feet in a temper and lashed his pistol across
my helmet. In fact, if they'd been ready with some kind of patch or tourniquet,
it might even have been the best thing for them to do, to clear me away while
they took effective action.

But they
weren't interested in applying any first aid. They were more than happy to see
us both die. The blow landed just about where Trooper Blackledge's punch had
landed, and this time I felt as if it had really broken my jaw. I sprawled
over, while he got ready to hit me again, and I saw that they weren't going to
do a damn thing for the colonel. In fact, one of them tried to roll her away
with his foot. I was watching him and not the man who was hitting me, so the
second blow came right out of the blue,

smashing into the
other side of my helmet.

If the
plastic had been rigid, it would have cracked, but the soft suit could take any
number of blows like that. Unfortunately, the recycling apparatus inside the
suit couldn't. I heard a kind of splintering sound, and I knew that the next
few breaths I took would be the last ones from which I'd get any real benefit.

I lashed
out with my foot, but didn't connect with anything, and then was flat on my
back, gasping for air that wasn't coming through. Above me, silhouetted against
the glowering sky, I could see three helmeted heads—our murderers.

And
then, in what I thought at the time was a vengeful hallucination, I saw those
three helmeted heads dissolve into murky black vapour.

For a
few seconds there was nothing but the sky, and then something else floated into
view. It was silvery and even in the faint light of that dreadful underworld it
gleamed and glittered like something magical and marvellous.

Mori
dieuf
I thought.
There is light
beyond death after all!

And
then, it seemed, I died.

25

You, of course,
will not be in the least surprised to discover that I did not die. I would
hardly be telling you the story if I had. I, on the other hand, was in no
position to prejudge the issue. It came as something of a surprise to me when I
woke up again, and the shock was most definitely not ameliorated by the
circumstances in which I found myself.

I was
floating.

At first
I thought this was a purely subjective impression; I leapt from that idea to
the conclusion that I was in zero- gee. Eventually, though, the tactile
messages arriving in my brain sorted themselves out into reluctant coherency,
and I knew that I was literally floating on some kind of thick liquid that did
not wet me. The only kind of non-wetting liquid I knew was mercury, but I was
too deeply immersed for it to be mercury.

There
was sound in my ears, but it was only the thin hiss of white noise, completely
featureless.

I tried
to open my eyes, and found it difficult—not because there was any tiredness
left to make me want them shut, but because there were two wire-ends stuck to
my eyelids. I had to pull my right hand out of the glutinous fluid to snatch
them away. There were other wires secured to my forehead, and more on my skull.
They were not just glued down—in some peculiar fashion they seemed to be
extending roots into my skin. I ripped them all away, not caring what kinds of
sensors were on the ends. The "roots" snapped easily, causing no more
than mild discomfort, and

leaving only a
faint itching sensation in my skin.

The
white noise ceased when I pulled the wires from my ears, and I was left in
silence.

Opening
my eyes brought me little immediate profit, because the light was as nebulous
and informationless as the sound in my ears. My visual field was filled with
grey. I reached forward with my hand, and touched a surface about fifteen
centimetres in front of me—above me, that is, given that I was floating on my
back. The surface was concave.

I knew
where I was, now. Not in Hell, and certainly not in Heaven. I was in a sensory
deprivation tank.

I pushed
at the concave surface, which was neither warm nor cold to my touch. The force
of the push sent me back into the liquid, in accordance to Newton's third law,
and then the liquid buoyed me up again, sloshing around the interior of the
tank. The surface above me didn't yield.

I made a
fist of my hand, and rapped on what I assumed to be the lid of my tank. The
non-wetting liquid slopped around me, agitated by my movements. I tried to
change my attitude, thrusting my leg down, and touched the floor of the tank,
also concavely curved.

I'm shut
up in a bloody
egg!
I told myself, with deliberate
vehemence.
Or in some kind of
hi-tech make-believe womb!

I
remembered, then, that I ought not to be feeling too good. I moved my jaw from
side to side, and touched my fingertips to the place that should have been
injured. There was no break, and no sign of a bruise.

I had a
pretty good idea where I might be, by now. I was down to my last hypothesis,
and as Sherlock Holmes always used to remind us, when you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains—however improbable—must be the truth.

I still
wanted to get out of the tank. I don't suffer from claustrophobia, but there
was something about that perverse liquid that I didn't relish. In addition to
which, I was no longer deprived—I was conscious, and my mind was sharp and
clear. A sensory deprivation tank is no place to be when you want to get on
with your life.

I banged
again on the inside of the lid, and suddenly felt it move beneath my hand. It
was moving sideways, in an arc following its curvature. It was as if the upper,
transparent half of the egg were being rotated about a central axis, disappearing
into the lower, solid half.

I pulled
myself free, not wet at all. I was naked, but the air was neither warm nor cold
on my skin.

The
light outside the tank was just as nebulous, just as grey. I could barely make
out the shape of the room. The walls seemed utterly without colour, and were
featureless. I looked back at the half-egg behind me, where the liquid had
already become calm. Wires attached to the rim of the egg trailed in the
liquid. There were more than I'd thought. They weren't metallic; they looked to
me as though they were organic. The egg-thing looked like a giant woodlouse
tipped on its back, with spindly legs everywhere.