Asgard's Heart. Brian Stableford
had turned Luddite.
“You’re saying,” I said, to make sure I had it right, “that in order to attack the Isthomi, someone has cut off power supplies to the entire macroworld.”
“Not necessarily,” he said. “I think we can rule out coincidence, but it’s possible that the enemy simply had advance notice of the power being cut off, and decided to plan his assault on the Nine accordingly. The power cut might be part of a grander campaign. If there really is a war going on in Asgard’s software space—and the Nine are convinced that there is—that war seems to be getting hotter by the hour.”
I looked around again at the blank walls. Susarma Lear was still watching us, her eyes attentive despite her tiredness.
“We’re sealed off in a hidey-hole,” Myrlin told me. “The Nine have put solid walls around us; hopefully, no more robot dragons will be able to find us, let alone break through to us. The real fight is going on back at the living-quarters. We three were lucky to be away from there for various reasons—we might yet turn out to be the sole survivors. The Nine don’t have many robots with fighting capability, nor any substantial store of weapons. The Scarida will fight, and the scions with them, but they might be up against overwhelming odds.
“It will take time to get power back to all the peripheral systems, and to get vehicles like the ones which brought you here on the move again. They’ll send something to pick us up when they can, and will activate the wall to talk to us once they’re certain that it won’t attract hostile attention. They didn’t know what they were up against when they last got a message to me, and they didn’t dare take too many chances.”
“Well, I said, “so much for our fond hopes that the software damage they sustained in their contacts was just an unhappy accident. We really are caught up in a shooting war, and it doesn’t look as if the guys doing the shooting are prepared to consider us innocent bystanders. If the power doesn’t come back on.…”
I remembered that Sigor Dyan had casually mentioned the total size of the Scarid population. There were tens of billions of them, without counting the members of races they’d displaced or conquered. Their tinpot empire had already been laid low by the plague that the Tetrax had loosed on them; now the power supplies that they believed to have been left to them by their kindly ancestors were suddenly gone. People were going to die. Lots of people. If the power didn’t come back on soon, every single habitat in the macroworld would be under threat, not merely of major disruption, but of total destruction.
“All in all,” I murmured, “I’d rather be in Skychain City.” All the systems in Skychain City had been installed by the Tetrax. The power-supply from the starlet had been switched off in levels one to four for a very long time.
“Why are they so determined to get us?” asked Susarma Lear, harshly. “What makes us so interesting that someone would send something like that electric stick insect after us?”
Myrlin looked over his shoulder at her. “I don’t know,” he said, soberly. “I’m not sure it’s anything personal. It looks to me like a chain reaction. Something down below was aroused from inaction by the attempt the Nine made to explore the information-systems in the Center. At first it probably acted reflexively, but now it seems to be organizing a strategy of destruction. The entity that contacted Mike while he was interfaced with the Isthomi is probably something different—if it really was appealing for help, it might have brought us to the attention of its enemies.”
“If your computerized buddies hadn’t gone prying,” she said, “we wouldn’t be in this mess.” She was still nursing aggressive feelings towards poor Myrlin.
“They wouldn’t have embarked upon that kind of exploration if it hadn’t been for what they learned from us,” he answered, mildly. “And I wouldn’t have attracted their attention by buggering up one of their systems if you hadn’t been chasing me with murderous intent.”
“So it’s all my fault?” she said. Her voice was still cutting, but I thought that she had some appreciation of the irony of the situation.
“No,” I said. “You explained it to me before, remember? It’s all my fault, for not taking Myrlin in and keeping him safe until your assassination squad arrived. I suffered a momentary lapse of generosity, and the consequences of my churlishness have imperiled the whole bloody universe. Lack of charity is a terrible thing, don’t you think?”
“Well,” she said, “I’ll say one thing for you, Rousseau. Things are never dull when you’re around.”
“Not my fault,” I assured her. “Just lucky enough to be living in interesting times.”
The wall behind her suddenly lit up, presenting the appearance of another room, with that same silly chair and that same impeccable goddess. She was back in her thin dress, but I didn’t ask her to change it. One Star Force colonel at a time was quite enough for me.
Her face was not shaped to show anxiety or stress. Indeed, it radiated imperturbability. I wasn’t sure whether that meant that everything was under control, or whether things were so awful that the Nine didn’t dare to let on.
“I will try to get a vehicle to you in a short time,” she said. “I am sorry that it has taken so long.”
“Have you zapped all the mantises?” I asked.
“The robot invaders have all been disabled or sealed in,” she said. “Many systems are still non-functional, and the damage is severe, but the situation is now stable.”
“We can’t rely on it remaining stable,” I said. “We’ve got to get ready to make our bid for the Center as soon as possible. We can’t just hang around, getting battered by one attack after another.”
“I agree, Mr. Rousseau,” she said, with a little smile that I didn’t entirely like. “We must waste no more time before making a serious attempt to find out precisely what is going on in the deeper levels, and how we can rectify the situation. The power-supply must be restored, and the hostile force that is attempting to destroy us must be neutralized.”
“Is the robot transporter safe?” asked Myrlin. He meant the one that the Nine had been building for our journey to the Center. If we’d lost that, we might not have any alternative but to sit tight and wait for the next attack.
“It is safe,” replied the Nine, “but it may be irrelevant. There is another way to make the attempt to reach the Center, and this attack leads us to believe that we must attempt both, as soon as we possibly can.”
My first thought was that they meant the deep elevator shaft that had brought us down from level fifty-two. It wasn’t much use for our purposes, partly because it didn’t go down much further, and partly because it wasn’t big enough to carry a heavy armored vehicle—but then I realized that, without the central power-supply, the elevator wouldn’t work. I also realized that, without the central power-supply to open doors and activate other elevators, it was going to be a very tough job getting a truck down into the bowels of the macroworld—even if we could discover a route.
“What better way?” Myrlin had asked, while I was realizing all that.
“Through software space,” she replied.
“You already tried that,” I pointed out, “and were nearly destroyed. Besides, we can’t go through software space, can we?” It occurred to me even as I was saying it that it might be an unwise remark.
“Yes, you can, Mr. Rousseau,” she told me. “And if our present understanding of the situation is correct, we think that the entity that has made contact with you intends that you should.”
Ever since humans first began building so-called artificial intelligences, people had looked forward to the day when it would be possible to duplicate a human mind in machine-based software. In the home system, our software scientists had not yet come close to the skill and sophistication that would be necessary to carry out such a task, but other races in the galactic community had got closer—the manufacture of Myrlin’s personality by the