As I sipped it, I contemplated my next move. As was my habit, the first option I considered was forgetting the whole thing, or at least keeping it a dark secret. There were reasons why that might be a good idea. I was hoping that circumstances would soon permit me to gather about myself a few bold companions in order to begin my odyssey through the inner regions of Asgard in search of the final solution to its mysteries. I could hardly expect to attract such disciples—let alone reconcile them to the acceptance of my leadership—if they suspected that I was insane, possessed, or otherwise not to be trusted. No one but me had felt the urgency of that cry for help that had come from Asgard’s depths, and no one but me had the strength of my conviction that I had understood it. It was going to be difficult enough to talk Susarma Lear into following my lead—especially in view of the fact that I needed her old adversary Myrlin every bit as much as I needed her—without letting her know that I had been visited by an apparition of a gorgon’s head.
On the other hand, I had to concede that I had been way out of my intellectual depth for some time. I am no fool, by human standards—and, despite the opinions of the Tetrax, I believe those to be reasonably good standards—but nothing I had ever encountered in my education or my experience equipped me to come to grips with what had happened to me in my moment of contact with whatever it was that was loose in Asgard’s software space. If I wanted to fight this thing properly, I needed the insight and advice of someone much cleverer than I was, and that meant that I had no option but to confide in the Nine. Sick and shattered they might be, but they were the only ones who stood a real chance of figuring out what the hell it all meant.
So when I drained my cup, I turned to the nearest blank wall, and said: “I think we ought to have a little chat.”
3
The grey wall faded away, to be replaced by what looked like another room. Although it was just a surface image, it looked as if it had depth; I had come to think of it as a mirror-world, like the world beyond the looking-glass into which Carroll’s Alice stepped. This was partly because it had the colour and sharpness of a reflection, but partly because I knew only too well that the world it represented was not at all like ours, but was instead a mad world where the limits of possibility were very different indeed.
The figure facing me was seated on an illusory chair which looked rather like an ornate wooden piano-stool; it was backless, but had low side-rails. The Nine presented the image of a single person—a female, clad in a somewhat diaphanous garment recalling (and not by any coincidence) my vague memories of ancient Greek statuary. She seemed to be about twenty years of age, and was very beautiful, although the contours of her face, which were partly borrowed from Susarma Lear, now put me disturbingly in mind of the apparition that had recently confronted me.
I coughed, in an ineffectual attempt to hide the embarrassment that her appearance caused me. “I don’t want to appear rude,” I said, “but could you possibly put some less provocative clothes on?”
The image changed, without a ripple or a flicker, and she was now clad in a severely-cut Star Force uniform; but her hair was black, not blonde, and she seemed less like Susarma Lear than she had before.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Something is wrong?” she observed.
“Maybe,” I said, unenthusiastically wondering whether this was, after all, the best thing to do. Now the room was bright and I was face to face with what looked like another human being, my experience began to seem much more like a bad dream, and an alarmist reaction seemed absurdly out of place. “I don’t suppose you were monitoring this room a moment ago?” I asked.
“Of course not. Since you expressed to us your anxieties about privacy, we reserve our attention, and take our place only in response to your summons.”
I knew that. “I saw something,” I said. “I don’t think it was real, though. Not solid. Perhaps it was just a dream.”
Her face reflected her interest and concern. It was odd that her mimicry of human mannerisms went so far, but it was something the Isthomi had very carefully crafted into the programme that produced her. The Nine had taken great care in the rebuilding of their appearances, and took quite a pride in their simulation of expression and nonverbal patterns of signification.
“Please describe it as fully and accurately as you can,” she said.
I did my best, stumbling over a couple of details, to give her a complete account of the hallucination. When I had finished, she was radiating puzzlement like an over-enthusiastic method actor.
“Can the silent movie bit,” I told her with slight asperity. “We both know it was some kind of residue from that interface when I made contact with whatever it was that nearly took you apart. What I want to know is, was it an attack of some kind? Am I playing host to some sort of poisoned programming or what?”
“Please tell us everything that you know about this person called Medusa,” she said calmly.
“I can’t remember very much about her at all,” I replied. “She was a character in Greek mythology who turned everyone who looked at her to stone. A hero called Perseus cut off her head while watching her reflection in a highly polished shield. That’s it.”
“Are you sure?” she countered.
The inquiry left me feeling rather helpless. I knew that she was prompting me—trying to make me remember something else. She was an alien group-mind who lived halfway to the core of an artificial macroworld orbiting a star a thousand light-years from Earth, and yet she knew more about the mythology of the ancient Greeks than I did. What made it even more bizarre was that her primary source of information about matters human was an android on Salamandra, whose own second-hand information had been pumped into him by hostile aliens while he was growing at an unnatural pace from embryo to giant in some kind of nutrient bath.
“As sure as I can be,” I replied, defensively stubborn. “No doubt there’s more locked up in the vaults of my subconscious, but I only have the primitive lever of memory to get me in there. I haven’t got your kind of access to stored data.”
“Please don’t be disturbed,” she said softly. “There is a mystery here, but I believe that we can solve it.”
She had some of Susarma Lear’s features, but she didn’t have Susarma Lear’s voice—which, as even the colonel’s many admirers would have admitted, did tend to the strident. This voice was much more like Jacinthe Siani’s. There was no point in complaining—Susarma Lear and Jacinthe Siani were the only two humanoid females the Nine could use as models. Jacinthe, who still had the trust of the Scarida on account of being their most loyal galactic collaborator, had been brought down by a team of their negotiators shortly after the end of the war.
“It’s all very well to tell me not to be disturbed,” I told her, “but I’m not sure that I have much control over that any more. This stupid hallucination was a disturbance, and though I’m pretty confident that I’m not going mad of my own accord, I can’t help worrying about the possibility of having picked up a little hostile software.”
“Exactly what do you mean by ‘hostile software’?” she asked, in a painstaking fashion.
I sighed. “As with everything else,” I said, testily, “I’m sure you know far more about it than I do. I’m no electronics expert. Ever since the earliest days of infotech on our world we’ve had things called ‘information viruses’ or ‘tapeworms.’ They’re programmes that can be hidden on a disc or a bubble, which load into your system along with other software. Once they’re established in your equipment they begin intruding bits of random noise into other programmes, and if left to themselves they can turn all your inbuilt software to junk. All our semi-intelligent systems have protective devices—immunizers—which are supposed to keep them out, but the tapeworms just get cleverer and cleverer. They’re used mainly by saboteurs. No doubt you and any other machine-intelligences lurking in the depths of Asgard are far too clever to be infected by the kind of tapeworms we produce—but I dare say you have troubles of your own. What I’m asking you is: did I pick up some kind of tapeworm when I was contacted? Is there something in my brain that’s intended to destroy my mind?”