Asgard's Heart (9 page)

"The inquiry would come better from myself,"
she assured me. "It may be necessary to be diplomatic, in the case of the
Tetron."

I readily forgave her the impolite implication that
diplomacy was not my strong suit. "In that case," I said,
"perhaps I should try to get a bit more sleep."

"If you dream," she said, before she faded
out, "be sure to pay attention as carefully as you can."

It wasn't the most soothing instruction I'd ever taken
to bed with me, but as things turned out, I couldn't obey it anyhow. Whatever
dreams disturbed my mind failed, for once, to penetrate the blissful wall of my
unconsciousness.

4

I was
awakened from my peaceful slumbers by the delicate trilling of the telephone
apparatus that the Isthomi had installed in my quarters. I always hung the
mouthpiece above the bed before retiring, so that I could respond to
interruptions with the minimum of effort. I didn't even bother to open my eyes—I
just fished the thing from its perch, thumbed the ACCEPT CALL button, and
mumbled an incoherent semblance of a greeting into the mike.

"Jesus, Rousseau," said the voice at the
other end. "You're supposed to be an officer in the Star Force. Why the
hell are you asleep at this hour?"

"Time," I said, "is purely relative.
"What you call 'this hour' can be any damn hour we care to call it. What
do you want, Susarma?"

"For a start," she replied, "I want you
to call me 'Colonel.' Also, I would like to invite you to accompany me on a
little walk in the garden."

I opened my eyes then and held the phone away from my
face, staring at it as one tends to stare at an object that has unexpectedly
started behaving in a perverse manner.

"You want me to come for a walk in the
garden?" I asked guardedly.

"That's what I said," she confirmed. She
sounded slightly bad-tempered, but there was nothing unusual about that. What
was unusual was that she was talking about gardens as if I was supposed to know
what she meant. I thought about it for a moment, and had little difficulty
figuring out which garden she meant, but couldn't for the life of me fathom out
her reasons for wanting me to go there. One thing was certain though, and that
was the fact that she must have a reason. She was not normally given to circumlocution
or to guessing games.

Something was obviously wrong. I wondered whether it
was the same kind of something wrong that I had already encountered, or an
entirely unconnected kind of something wrong. Troubles seem never to come
singly.

"Okay," I said, in an off-hand manner.
"The garden. Give me twenty minutes to wake up, and I'll be there."

I was proud of myself for giving no more than the
slightest indication that I'd had difficulty working out what she meant, and I
further demonstrated my initiative by waiting until I had showered and
breakfasted, and was well away from my room, before asking the Isthomi if they
could get me to the enclosed region which they'd used as an arena on my first
visit to this level, to stage the big fight between the Star Force and Amara
Guur's mobsters, and to fake Myrlin's death by fire at the less-than-tender
hands of Susarma Lear.

The Isthomi opened up one of their convenient doorways
into the hidden recesses of their world, and laid on a robot car which whizzed
me away through curving tunnels at breathtaking pace. It was a longer journey
than I expected—although it had never before occurred to me to wonder whether
the maze in which my last adventure had taken place was geographically close to
the essentially- similar one in which I'd found myself on the earlier occasion.
I had nothing to do during the journey but worry about the speed at which I was
traveling, and wish that it didn't seem quite so much like a kind of repeating
nightmare I'd suffered from in my youth—a stereotyped dream from which most

microworlders
are said to suffer.

Eventually, the car stopped and another doorway opened
up beside me, through which I stepped into a hothouse world of gigantic
flowers, vivid in hue and sharply scented. They presented a riot of colour—mostly
purples and golds in this particular spot, which was dominated by a single vast
bush, whose branches were tangled into an inextricable mess, and whose convolvuline
blossoms looked like a scene from a surreal bell-factory. Given the host of
mythological references that every waking moment now evoked, I could hardly
help thinking of the bush as a Gordian knot, though it would have taken a much
mightier hand than mine to slash it with a massive sword.

"Colonel Lear!" I called, mindful of her
instruction that military protocol was still to be observed between us. I
looked in either direction along the grey wall that curved away to my left and
right, with a thin green verge which could serve as a path, if only I knew
which way to go.

The door by which I had been admitted had closed
silently and seamlessly behind me, but now another opened, a dozen metres away,
and Susarma Lear stepped through. She was, as always, wearing her Star Force
uniform, the black cloth contrasting in a remarkably pleasing fashion with the
dazzling shock of blonde hair surrounding her face. She was also wearing a
sidearm—one of the guns she'd taken from the Scarida when she'd come to my
rescue while I was making my painful contact with the gods of Asgard.

The way she was holding her stern jaw made me wince.
It wasn't hard to believe that the icy stare in her bright blue eyes could turn
men into stone.

"Hello, Rousseau," she said, soberly.
"Thanks for being so quick on the uptake."

"I deduce," I said—having had time to think
about it— "that some unkind person has taken advantage of the fact that
the Isthomi granted our request for personal privacy, and has surreptitiously
bugged our rooms."

"That's right," she confirmed.

"Finn again?"

"I assume that he's involved. 994-Tulyar is
behind it, of course."

"Why?"

"If you mean, why are they doing it, it's
probably because they're a bunch of scheming bastards to whom low cunning comes
naturally. But I don't like it. I don't know what kind of game Tulyar's
playing, but I think it's something I ought to find out about."

"Why did you want me to come all the way out here
so you could tell me about it?"

"I don't know where else they've distributed
their little listening devices. Since the Tetrax from the prison camp came down
here with the Scarid delegation, the entire level is lousy with people I don't
like and don't trust. The only other authentic human here is Finn—and he's got
the kind of coat that's ready cut for turning at the slightest provocation. It
looks to me like you and me against the universe, Rousseau, and this is the
only place down here that none of the other guys have been."

She hadn't included Myrlin in her list of potential
enemies, nor had she included him while numbering the tiny clique that knew
about this little Eden. I gathered that she still had him on her list of
unmentionable topics, even though she'd made no attempt to wipe him out for a
second time.

"So this is a council of war?" I said.

"If you like," she said. "I never
expected to end up in a situation where the only person I could trust is you,
but that's where I am now. Read this."

She drew a flimsy out of her pocket and passed it over
to me. I scanned it quickly. It was in English, and was signed by Valdavia, the
diplomat who's been sent out from the solar system aboard
Leopard Shark
to represent the UN in
negotiations with the Tetrax. The document was an order to Colonel Susarma Lear
to return as soon as possible to Skychain City. It was embellished with firm
statements to the effect that in the meantime she was still to consider herself,
and all her subordinates, to be under the orders of 994- Tulyar, and that she
was to co-operate in every possible way with the Tetrax. It did not say in so
many words that Valdavia knew how cynically the Tetrax had used us to spread
their plague for them, but he was obviously assuming that we might have fallen
out with Tulyar, and was telling us in no uncertain terms that we were not to
take offense at what had happened.

"He's got a hope!" I muttered. "The
Scarida have been telling us for days that the chaos caused by that damned influenza
makes it impossible to transport anyone up or down above level fifty-two."

"They got
that
down," she pointed out, drily. "And they also brought down a group of
top-flight Tetron scientists. Mostly electronics men, plus a couple of
bioscientists. They arrived during the night. Our old friend 673-Nisreen is one
of them. The Tetrax used us as weapons of war, but now it seems that we're
definitely surplus to requirements. They want us out."

"Not exactly," I said. "They want
you
out. There's no mention of your bringing me
with you—or Finn for that matter. I have a nasty suspicion that Tulyar might have
other plans for me, and that I won't like them one little bit."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

It wasn't necessary to tell her about Medusa.
"I'm the one who made the contact with whatever godling kicked the shit
out of the Nine," I pointed out. "Tulyar can't begin to understand
the situation which is now unfolding, and there's nothing a Tetron high-number
man hates worse than not understanding. What's more, the fact that he can't
understand doesn't affect his ardent desire to
control
things. I think he's almost as far out of his depth here as the
Scarid commanders, and I have a feeling that, for all his velvety Tetron
manners, he might react to being out of his depth in much the same panicky
fashion. One thing I'm sure of—he means me no good. I never thought I'd say
this, Colonel, but I think I'm going to miss you."

"Like hell you are," she said. "I'm not
going."

I was mildly surprised. I knew how seriously she took
the Star Force, and I couldn't quite see her in the role of mutineer.

"Do you have a choice?" I asked, raising the
paper slightly.

"Valdavia doesn't understand the situation,"
she said. "My duty is to protect the interests of the human race, and if I
can make a better estimate of what those interests are than he can, I'm the one
whose obligation it is to make policy."

"What policy did you have in mind?" I asked.
I remembered, without much enthusiasm, her approach to the problem of finding
Myrlin when she'd first arrived on Asgard. She had been making her own policy
then, and she hadn't impressed me with her style. In fact, she'd shown all the
sensitivity and diplomatic flair of a wolverine.

"That's a little hard to say," she retorted,
"unless I have rather more information at my disposal. You're the one who
knows more than the rest of us, Rousseau. As I said, I never expected to get to
the point where you were the only person I could trust, but here we are. What
do
you
think we should do?"

I was less surprised than I might have been a day
earlier. After all, I'd already been presented with evidence that the Age of
Miracles had dawned again. Unfortunately, I didn't have any pat answer ready to
hand.

"That's a difficult question," I parried.

"Well," she said testily, "if it was an
easy one, I sure as hell wouldn't have to ask you, would I?"

I suppose it was a compliment of sorts, though she
hadn't quite intended it that way.