Asgard's Heart Read online

  While I was watching, fearful for her life, I'd carelessly forgotten my own troubles, and it was with a sense of desperate astonishment that I noticed the second arm flashing out in my direction, ambitious to grab my shoulder and pluck me out of my hidey-hole in the bushes. Even with its eyes at seventy- five-percent strength, the monster was obviously capable of paying attention to two targets at once.

  I ducked, wishing fervently that for once my reflexes wouldn't let me down—I had long ago come to the conclusion that I was at the end of the queue when instincts were handed out, and that the stupid set I'd been born with was absolutely not to be trusted. But my luck was still holding; like Susarma, I was just out of reach, and the mechanical grab went back empty-handed.

  Knowing only too well that it would get me next time, I turned and ran. A purple flower to my left suddenly turned into a firework, and I knew that the head was pointing my way now. Panic spurred me on, but running wasn't easy. The plants were just too tightly-packed, and even though their stems and branches weren't woody at all, they were still capable of getting in the way.

  There was only one thing I could do, and that was to dive down to the region where the insects lived, beneath the lowest leaves. There was a narrow space down there where even a man might crawl, if he'd a mind to. Doing snake- imitations is not usually my kind of thing, but when death is only a few metres away you have to improvise as best you can.

  Flattening myself out, I tried to pull myself along with my arms and scramble with my feet, almost as though I was pretending to swim. It was pretty crowded at ground level, because the entire space was seething with panic-stricken insects that didn't know which way to run, but were totally committed to the project of getting somewhere fast. They were still shrieking their hymn of complaint from all sides. I hated the noise, but I could sympathise with the way they felt.

  As I did my silly parody of the breast-stroke I could feel the muscles in my back protesting. I could feel the stickiness of my shirt, but couldn't make a guess as to how badly I was bleeding. I took a little comfort from knowing that the Isthomi were top-flight medical men when it came to repairing bodies and making people immortal, and that they'd already made me a promise that they'd wrought some considerable improvements in the quality of my flesh, but as the pain built to an excruciating level that comfort seemed to fade away.

  It faded away even further when the question rose belatedly in my mind as to why there was an enormous mechanical praying mantis trying to destroy me in the Isthomi's own back garden. The fact that it had been able to make its grand entrance at all suggested that something was yet again amiss in the state of Isthomia. If it was not, the Nine would surely have managed to give us a little notice of impending danger, even if they didn't have the heavy metal to nip it in the bud.

  As I continued crawling, I began to feel that I was in a uniquely awkward situation. I had no idea where I was going, and no way of knowing whether the monster mantis was right on my heels. I had no weapon of my own and was well and truly separated from Susarma Lear. The indigenous insects didn't seem to want me in their underworld, and didn't seem to want to get out of my way to ease my passage. Fortunately, I had every reason to think that they were not given to biting, stinging, or otherwise being nasty, though the repulsiveness of their touch made their company quite unpleasant enough. I imagined that they were tolerated in this garish scheme of things because they pollinated the flowers, but I couldn't help feeling that a tastefully designed and suitably-programmed robot could have done the job more economically.

  I got to a place where even the space beneath the foliage became unbearably constricted, occupied by a tangle of what looked to me like surface-lying adventitious roots. They fanned out from a central stem, and I had moved into a closed V-shaped space, cornering myself. I had no alternative but to stand up, and was glad to find that the leaves above my head were fern-like, and that they parted easily. Unfortunately, their delicacy was compensated by profusion, and when I was drawn up to my full height they were still clustered above my head. When I looked up I could catch a glimmer of light filtering through the translucent foliage, but could see almost nothing.

  The insects were quieter now, and when I rose to my feet the ones I had been disturbing with my snake-act decided that I was no longer a threat to their sanity and well-being. They gradually ceased their awful keening. I was able to stand still and listen.

  I didn't know what kind of sound would be made by a mantis-dragon stomping through a giant's garden, but I figured that its progress would probably alarm the insects just as much as mine, and once I had ascertained that there was no cacophonous whistling in the neighbourhood, I came to the conclusion that I was relatively safe.

  Because I wanted to see where I was, I decided to climb a tree. This wasn't easy, because there were no authentic trees in the place—merely overgrown bushes with limp branches. Nevertheless, the topmost parts of the canopy, which extended all of ten metres into the air to bask in the glow of the fifteen-metre ceiling, were borne aloft by relatively sturdy stems, and I was able to pick my way through the ferny stuff to a stem bearing a particularly solid leaf.

  There was an insufficiency of decent footholds, and the stem swayed alarmingly when I shifted my weight. The pain in my wounded back didn't help, either, and I had a fearsome headache caused by a combination of Shockwave concussion and screeching insects. But I managed to climb, drawing on those hidden resources of strength that our bodies prudently save for moments of terrorized hyperactivity.

  When I got to a reasonable vantage point, with my feet on one leaf-stem and my hands clutching another, balanced as safely as I was able, I looked around—and promptly wished that I hadn't.

  Big the monster mantis might be, but it obviously wasn't very heavy. Its great long legs were protruding in every direction—I could count ten of them now I could see the thing in all its hideous glory—and it was moving three or four of them at a time, finding new purchase wherever it could. It was coming over the top of the canopy, and it was already turning from its previous path to head straight for me, having caught a glimpse of me with its three remaining eyes the moment I stuck my head out into the open.

  I wasted no time in clambering down—I jumped, half- falling and half-sliding through the thick vegetation. But with the ground still cluttered by the root-ridges there was no way I could hug the turf and crawl, so I ended up in a furtive crouch, trying to step over the ridges as fast as I possibly could, hoping to reach a space which I could share with the inhospitable insects.

  One of the great pincers smashed down beside me, trying to stab rather than to grab, missing me by a margin that was far too small for comfort. There was a tearing sound from above as the other grabber began tearing at the foliage, trying to get a sight of me. I jinked to the left, then to the right, trying to confuse any extrapolation of my path its mechanical brain might be making, but it obviously got another brief sight of me because the hand came groping through the vegetation again, closing with a vicious snap no more than a dozen centimetres from my left ear.

  The insect chorus was in full swing again now, filling my ears with raw sound lacking even that elementary aesthetic propriety that one might imaginatively credit to the last trump.

  I stumbled over a root, but thrust myself instantly to my feet again, and ran on as fast as my feet could carry me across such disadvantageous territory. The arm reached out for me just once more, unsuccessfully, and then I suddenly found myself confronting an open space—a clearing where the only things which grew were no higher than the top of my boot. It was star-shaped, and maybe twenty or thirty metres across. When I saw it my heart leapt, as I realised that here was somewhere I could really run, but almost immediately it sank again as I realised that it was somewhere that the gargantuan predator could see me clearly as I ran, and get a clear shot with its flamer.

  It was too late to change my mind—my legs had already carried me out into the open—but in trying belatedly to alter the directi
on of my charge I turned my ankle, and fell, rolling as I did so to look back at the thing which was looming far above me, its head seeming tiny now because it was so high, its legs lashing out in search of purchase so that it could anchor itself for one final, fatal grab.

  I saw its swiveling head rotate and stop, so that two good eyes stared down at me, and I saw the barrel of the proboscis come into line as the arms pulled back, ready to thrust.

  And then the thing stiffened, as though struck rigid by some inner convulsion. A curious shiver passed along its body, and then it collapsed, falling all in a heap like an unreasonably complicated puppet whose strings had been simultaneously sheared.

  I shielded my face as it fell, and ducked towards the ground because I feared that it would fall on top of me and crush me, but its loathsome head came down to one side, missing me by a metre or more. I stood up again, and looked around—feeling slightly foolish, although I didn't know why.

  Myrlin was standing on the far side of the clearing, with something on his shoulder that looked like a bazooka with a slender, solid barrel. Susarma Lear was by his side, looking uncannily neat and trim. She was still holding the crash-gun in her hand, and she used it to beckon me urgently.

  "Come on, Rousseau!" she yelled, audible even above the sound of the insects. "Let's get the hell out of here!"

  I picked myself up, knowing that I was filthy, ragged, and bloodstained, feeling as if I had just been stamped on by a giant boot. I limped across the open ground. The news that my life no longer seemed to be in imminent danger must have been transmitted to my hormone system, because all the adrenaline seemed to drain away, and my limping gait became a drunken stagger. I felt as though my legs had turned to rubber.

  Incongruously, I fell over. I remember thinking, dimly but clinically, that I must have lost a lot of blood.

  Myrlin shrugged the silent weapon from his shoulder and let it drop. He took three titanic strides forward and picked me up as though I were a rag doll. Then he threw me over his shoulder where the weapon had rested, and set off at a run.

  Inexpressibly glad that someone else had finally taken responsibility for my poor battered body, I thankfully blacked out.

  6

  Inevitably, I fell straight into the grip of a dream.

  I express it thus because that is precisely what it felt like. It was as if something had been there, forming and growing according to some inner process of its own, ready and waiting for whatever it was that constituted the essential me to lose its grip of consciousness. When I blacked out, it was as if a great cold pool of darkness sucked me in and gobbled me up, consuming me more completely than any mammoth- sized mantis-machine ever could have.

  The sensation of falling didn't last long, and there was no jarring end, but I found myself suddenly alone, standing on an infinite plain as featureless as the surface of Asgard. The stars were bright in the sky, and I knew that a cold wind was blowing though I could not feel it on my skin. It was as though it blew straight through me.

  I looked down at myself, and was unsurprised to find that I was a phantom—a pale, glimmering, translucent thing. My ghostly form was clad in a phantasmal tunic cut in a style which I associated with ancient Greece, but the cloth was torn and stained with blood and I knew that I had been mortally wounded by the thrust of some savage blade—a sword, or the head of a spear.

  I was dead, and waited for my journey to the Underworld to begin.

  There came to meet me, riding across the sky on a great night-black horse with shadowy wings, a woman in

  quilted armour. Her hair was very pale, but there was no colour in her, and I could not tell whether her piercing eyes were blue. I knew, though, that something was wrong, and that the imagery was out of joint, for surely this was a valkyrie come to carry some fallen Norseman off to the halls of Valhalla, whereas I had been slain without the walls of beleaguered Troy, and was destined for a very different kind of paradise.

  When the night-mare landed beside me, and she reached down her tautly-muscled arm to lift me up, I raised my own hand in protest, as though to tell her to go away, but she only gripped my arm in hers, and pulled me to the saddle behind her, as effortlessly as might be imagined, given that I seemed to weigh almost nothing.

  I had no time to discover whether I could speak my protest aloud, because the huge creature launched itself forthwith into the firmament, and carried us up into the starry night, where we grew in size so vastly that the stars seemed mere snowflakes gently flowing through the wintry air.

  I looked down, expecting to be giddy, but there was no particular sense of height—it was as though I looked through a godly eye which could capture all Creation at a glance, and I saw what I took to be the whole great world of men, which consisted not of one meagre Earth and a handful of microworlds, nor even all the worlds of the galactic community, but something immeasurably vaster, growing even as I watched in a futile attempt to fill the limitless expanses of the infinite and the eternal. I was inexplicably unmoved by the incalculable profusion of it all, but while I watched, and the winged horse soared above the very rim of the cosmos, I saw patterns of change which worked in me like pangs of anxiety and knots of fear.

  Despite the vastness of everything there was no detail which I could not comprehend, and I might have seen a single sparrow fall if I had not been so disturbed by other things that tormented my attention.

  I saw a land all a-tremble with the paces of a giant hungry wolf, which led a pack of dire shadows to a feast of blood.

  I saw a world that was a mighty twisted tree, ravaged by a blight which ate up its vitality from within, desiccating its foliage and shriveling its multitudinous fruit.

  I saw a great ship whose hull was made from the growing nails of the coffined dead, whose sails were their silvered hair, riding on massive waves stirred by the roiling of a serpent greater than galaxies, its crew of skeletons armoured for war.

  I saw a traitor with eyes like red coals, making magic to draw the shadowy wolf-pack to the field of slaughter.

  I saw a monstrous army whose troops were made of fire, which marched like glowing lava from a wound in the fabric of time, its banners of lightning streaming proudly in the radiant breath of countless dying suns.

  I saw a bridge like an infinite rainbow, extending from the world below to some other mysterious realm outside the range of my miraculous vision, its colours livid as it cracked and splintered, presaging in its shattering the death of all the gods, the desolation of that Valhalla where—after all—I did not really belong.

  And I saw a face, which stared at me from the starry firmament, and knew it for the true possessor of that godlike sight I had borrowed for an instant. It was a face full of sorrow and concern, a face where mercy was mingled with wrath, whose sight could penetrate every atom of my being, every secret of my soul, and I knew that this was a god which men had made, and a god which had made man in his turn, and a god which now faced destruction, and was desperate enough to seek his heroes wherever he could find them, whether they belonged to him or not. . . .

  And then the god who held me in his guardian hand was forced to let me go, and I fell again, and fell, and fell, all the way back to consciousness.

  7

  I opened my eyes, and looked up into the ungodlike face of my old friend Myrlin. I was flat on my back and he was kneeling over me, peering at me with a measure of concern.

  My back was hurting, but not so very badly. It was cushioned by something soft and yielding. I was slightly surprised to find that I was not in one of the Isthomi's healing eggs being quietly restored to full fitness, but it seemed to be a time for counting my blessings and a quick survey of the relevant referents assured me that my body was still in one piece and that my mind, so far as I could tell, was still my own.

  I looked around, and saw nothing but grey walls. The ceiling was rather ill-lit and there was a distinct lack of furniture and fittings. Susarma Lear was sitting on the floor with her back to the wall, watching me,
with less apparent concern than Myrlin. The upper half of her was clad only in a light undershirt, and I guessed that her Star Force jacket was what was providing my injured back with a modicum of comfortable support.

  "Where are we?" I asked, hoarsely.

  "Safe, for the time being," said Myrlin. "How do you feel?"

  "Not so bad," I said. "Just had a hell of a dream, though."

  "You'll be okay," he assured me. "The way the Isthomi have fixed us up, we heal quickly. The cuts and bruises won't trouble you for long."

  I sat up, then reached behind me with tentative fingers to see what sort of damage I'd sustained. There was no moist blood, and the wounds didn't complain too terribly about being touched. I looked down at the colonel's jacket, and saw that it wasn't badly stained. I picked it up and threw it to her.

  "Thanks," I said, as she caught it. She put it on, but didn't fasten it. She looked rather tired.

  "Anything to drink?" I asked Myrlin. "Even water would do."

  He shook his head.

  I looked at the weapon which was propped up in a corner of the tiny room. "What is that thing?" I asked—unable to figure out how it had felled the dragon without so much as a bang, let alone a bullet.

  "It's some kind of projector," said Myrlin. "I don't understand the physics, but it creates some kind of magnetic seed inside a silicon brain, which grows—or explodes—into something disruptive, wiping out most of the native software in a fifth of a second or so. It's a kind of mindscrambler, I suppose, except that it's for artificial minds instead of fleshy ones."