Asgard's Secret: The Asgard Trilogy, Book One. Brian Stableford
human taste-buds would deem exotic.
The insides of my eyelids were red, and I spent another few seconds wondering whether that might be a symptom of something dreadful. Then I realized that, wherever I was, the lights were on—and very bright. I struggled to unglue the eyelids, squinting until the dazzle faded. Unfortunately, the headache didn’t. When I managed to sit up and look around I discovered that I was in a cell. The floor and walls—one of which was made of clear glass—were spotlessly clean. There was no mistaking the Tetron workmanship.
I was on a low-slung bunk. There was no mattress, but the surface was smart enough to soften up when someone lay down on it; the dent my recumbent body had left was slowly evening out. At the third attempt I managed to stand up. The glass wall was solid, although there was a marbled section just above head height that was emitting a stream of fresh, cool air. I stood on tiptoe to let the current stir my hair. I contrived a couple of deep breaths that didn’t fill my lungs with the sickly stench. Then I banged on the glass with my fist.
During the two minutes that it took for the guard to respond to my summons I reconstituted the memory of the fight in the bar. It didn’t seem so terrible—but I knew that I’d been set up by Amara Guur, and I knew that things had to be a lot worse than mere memory could tell me.
The guard was a Tetron, dressed in the sort of informal uniform that almost all Tetrax wear, whether they’re street-sweepers, public administrators, or schoolteachers—except, of course, for the ones that are wearing formal kinds of uniforms, like policemen.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Thirty-two ninety,” he replied. I’d slept through most of yesterday and a fair slice of today.
“How did I get here?”
“The police brought you.”
The answer was a trifle over-literal, but my head was hurting too much to allow me to frame one that might elicit the information I needed. All I could manage was: “Where from?”—which was pretty stupid, because I knew that too.
He didn’t. “I’m afraid that I haven’t read the arresting officer’s report, Mr. Rousseau. Would you like me to display a copy on the wallscreen?”
“Later,” I said. “Do you happen to know what I’m charged with?”
“Murder,” he told me.
It should have been a lot more surprising than it was. Even though it wasn’t particularly surprising, the sound of the word made me want to vomit.
“Who am I supposed to have murdered?” I asked, hoarsely.
“A person named Atmin Atmanu.”
“The Sleath?” I hadn’t even known his name; somehow, slimy Simon Balidar had forgotten to introduce us.
“I believe Mr. Atmanu was a Sleath.”
I groaned, but I didn’t bother to tell him that I had been framed. He was a Tetron, and he would simply have reminded me that I would be presumed innocent until I’d actually been proven guilty in a court of law, just like any other item of filthy scum the peace officers swept up from the gutter. Not that he’d actually have said the last part, but he’d have reminded me anyway.
“I need to get cleaned up,” I told him. “Then I need something to soothe my aching head. Then I need a lawyer—can you find me one?”
“The control-panel operating the bathroom facilities is located at the head of the bed,” he told me, patiently. “The cubicle has a medicare facility, although you will have to volunteer a second blood sample if you require controlled drugs. Did you have any particular lawyer in mind?”
“No. Can you call Aleksandr Sovorov at the Coordinated Research Establishment and tell him that I’m here? He probably knows half a dozen lawyers who’ll take humans as clients, if there are that many in Skychain City.”
“I will do that,” the guard said. “Is there anyone else you would like me to notify regarding your arrest and incarceration?”
“Saul Lyndrach,” I said. “He lives in sector six. I can’t remember his number, but he’s on the database. I can get a drink of water in the bathroom, I suppose?”
“Of course,” he said, seeming mildly offended at the implied slur on he quality of Tetron prisons. “There is also a laundry facility. Do you need instruction in the operation of these fitments?”
“No, I live in a Tetron-built apartment—it’s not as luxurious as this, of course, but I think I can figure out which virtual buttons to press. Thanks. What’s your name, by the way?”
“69-Aquila,” he told me, with a slight inclination of the head.
When he’d gone, I went to the behead control panel and found the button that would open the bathroom. Once I’d managed to display the virtual keyboard underneath the bathroom wallscreen it wasn’t too difficult to figure out how to activate the water-fountain, open the laundry chute and switch on the shower. I didn’t bother with the medicare facility; I figured that it would be simpler to live with the headache than work my way through an interrogation in parole, complete with blood samples, just to get a Tetron aspirin. By the time my clothes and I had both been thoroughly cleaned I felt better anyway—or would have done, if I hadn’t been so acutely conscious of the fact that I’d been fitted up for murder.
It was easy enough to figure out why. The Tetron criminal justice system is based on the principle of reparation rather than punishment, although it makes little enough difference when you’re on the receiving end. A criminal’s debt to society is exactly that: a debt. One way or another, it has to be paid off. If you’re a skilled worker lucky enough to find a generous employer, you can pay off a murder in a matter of ten or twenty years.
If abject slavery isn’t your thing, you have the option of renting out your body as a bioreactor and your unconscious brain as a relay in some fancy hypercomputer. Some people actually prefer that, because it allows them to sleep through their entire sentence—which rarely runs to more than forty or fifty years—but most people don’t, because they fear, very reasonably, that they might not be quite the same person when they wake up again.
Amara Guur wanted me to work for him—on his terms. He’d been prepared to ask politely, or at least to pretend, but either I’d been too slow to respond or something had happened after Heleb’s visit to increase his sense of urgency. I had to admire his efficiency, though. Had he actually planted Balidar in that bar to wait for me? Had he given Saul’s doorman instructions to send me along there if and when I turned up?
It seemed so—the only alternative was that the whole plan had been stitched together in a matter of minutes as soon as the bartender had spotted me with Balidar.
Either way, it was a lot of trouble to go to. Whatever Amara Guur had found that had given him a sudden interest in going out into the cold was obviously a powerful incentive.
If he’d only told me what it was, maybe....
I put that thought aside. Honest dealing wasn’t the sort of thing Amara Guur went in for. If he’d already committed a murder or two to get hold of whatever it was he had, he’d probably got stuck in that particular procedural groove.
My lawyer turned up at forty-one ten, full of apologies for the delay. His name was 238-Zenatta. He explained, regretfully, that it had proved impossible for 69-Aquila to contact Saul Lyndrach, who was currently being sought by Immigration Control. They were apparently anxious to know what had become of a human named Myrlin, who had been entrusted to Saul’s care following his arrival on the surface.
I wasn’t surprised by this news. After all, if Amara Guur’s men had given instructions to Saul’s doorman about where to send me, they must have known that he wouldn’t be at home when I came looking for him. I had more urgent matters to consider, though.
“The evidence for the prosecution has all been filed,” 238-Zenatta told me. “The witness statements seem to be in order and the