“He said that he’d seen a map,” she replied. Her voice was steady now, and she had no difficulty talking.
“Did he give you a reason for hijacking the transporter?”
“He said that we couldn’t trust the Isthomi—that they were really responsible for the power being shut off. He said that they were fighting a war of their own, and that we would be killed if we stayed on that level. Down below, he said, we’d find people to help us—the ancestors of the Scarida. He said that they’d find a way to restore power to the Scarid levels, once they knew the Scarida were in trouble. He said that the Nine were no friends of the Scarida or of the Tetrax… that they were frightened by the discovery of the Scarid empire, and the galactic community, and would like to see them both destroyed.”
She paused for breath. Then she went on: “He said that the Scarida and the Tetrax must make contact with the builders of Asgard, whether the Nine liked it or not, if the humanoid population of the macroworld was to be saved. If we didn’t, he said, all the humanoid races would be wiped out, and things like the Isthomi would be the sole survivors. He said they’d fooled you completely, and made you their slave.”
I remembered what I’d told her about the Nine being the best friends she could possibly have if the power wasn’t restored. For a moment, I wondered whether it might be true. Might the Nine be worried about the power of humanoid cultures inside and outside Asgard? Might they be acting entirely in the interests of their own kind? Might they have me completely fooled?
I didn’t think so… but how could I be sure?
The horrible thought struck me that it might all be a put-up job. Maybe there never was any attack on the Nine. Maybe it was the Nine and the Nine alone who had injected mysterious software into my brain. Maybe Tulyar hadn’t been taken over… maybe he had only guessed the truth. Maybe he had seen a map. Maybe I was being played for a sucker all along the line.
When I thought about it carefully, though, it didn’t make any sense. If the Nine had wanted to bring down the Scarid empire and cut themselves off from the galactic community, they could have done it all by themselves. They didn’t need to pretend to be injured, and they certainly didn’t need me. It had to be the Nine who were telling the truth, and the thing using Tulyar’s body that was lying.
Hadn’t it?
“I don’t suppose Tulyar mentioned dreaming at all?” I asked, weakly.
She thought it was a crazy question, and didn’t dignify it with an answer. There was only one question left to ask.
“I know you didn’t see much when the trouble started down below,” I said, “but did you see anything at all to indicate whether any of your people got through?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, faintly. “It all happened so quickly. Our lights were smothered… then put out. I’m only certain that some of them were killed. If I were you, Rousseau, I wouldn’t go down there.”
“If I’d always followed your advice,” I said uncharitably, “Amara Guur would have made mincemeat out of me a long time ago.”
She didn’t say anything in reply, but her big dark eyes were radiating injured innocence. If she had really pulled the Scarid officer out of the frying pan down there, she couldn’t be quite as nasty as I’d always supposed, but I wasn’t about to forgive her for the bad turns she’d done me.
“Don’t worry,” I told her, again. “You’ll be okay, if anyone is. Maybe we’ll meet again, when the lights are back on.”
I left her to mull over her past life, and to wonder whether she had a future.
When the flying cameras brought back their pictures we found that her story, such as it was, seemed to be honest and accurate. The picture quality was awful—not unexpectedly, given that there was no light and our spy-eyes had to use infra-red vision—but our brain-in-a-box managed to integrate all the information and enhance it a little. There was a good deal of debris, but it didn’t show up very clearly. We could make out a couple of bodies, still sheathed in transparent plastic, and we guessed that the killers hadn’t been able to breach the suits. That was comforting, in a way— but it hadn’t saved the poor guys inside them, who’d been broken and crushed regardless.
The predators themselves looked like a cross between gargantuan slugs and sea anemones. They were sitting still while the spy-eyes flew around, so we had no way to judge how fast they could move when the need arose, but they didn’t look very quick. There were about twenty of them gathered about the doorway by now, but several had been damaged by bullets and a few were almost certainly dead. They were heaped up untidily, and though it was difficult to be sure, I got the impression that the ones on top might be patiently devouring the ones below. The fact that their prey had proved unexpectedly difficult to digest hadn’t cost them their meal. No wonder they were still lurking, hoping for dessert.
“They’re nothing,” opined Susarma Lear scornfully. “If the Scarids had been carrying Star Force flame-pistols instead of needlers and crash-guns, they’d have mopped that lot up in a matter of minutes.”
I diplomatically refrained from pointing out that we’d lost our Star Force flamers long ago, and that she too was reduced to carrying a relatively primitive handgun.
“It will not be necessary to expose ourselves to any risk,” said Urania. “We have programmed the truck’s organic production unit to supply ample quantities of a powerful poison which will paralyse the nerve-nets controlling the smooth muscle of the tentacles. It is sufficiently powerful that the tiny robots which carried the infra-red cameras can easily be adapted to carry a lethal dose. We should not need our guns immediately, although it will of course be necessary to carry such arms as we can when we resume our journey.”
I saw Nisreen nodding with approval. The Tetrax had always believed that heavy metal was no substitute for clever biotechnics.
When our fly-sized shock troops had completed their mission, we set out ourselves. We had a certain difficulty crowding five of us and all the relevant equipment into the car, but it was possible. The pseudo-Tulyar’s party had divided themselves into two fours only because it was a split down the middle, not because four was the car’s maximum capacity. I guess we were crammed in pretty tightly, but we’d been crowded in the truck, and it wasn’t particularly claustrophobic.
The ride down was very long. The flow of time felt different now that we were out of the truck—the vehicle had been a comforting cocoon, where the minutes that passed were naturally dead and empty. Now I was in a light suit, with a small cargo of weapons and equipment to carry, every second was pregnant with hazard.
I hadn’t asked Urania exactly what Tulyar’s party had taken from their own truck, and much of it was already packed up in satchels. It was all too obvious, though, what kind of transport we would now be expected to employ. No doubt they were sophisticated robots in their own right, but they looked to me like glorified bicycles. Susarma was used to going into battle with whatever came to hand, and didn’t seem too worried about the prospect of riding one, but Myrlin was anxious about their small size and apparent frailty, and 673-Nisreen—who still had his right forearm immobilised by a plastic sheath—seemed on the brink of asking to be left behind. I made the suggestion that perhaps he should stay with the truck, in case it was only pride that was preventing him, but he said no. The Tetrax had something of a reputation for exaggerated discretion, but if the entire race could be judged by Nisreen, they were certainly no cowards.
The long descent was a severe trial of my peace of mind. By the time we reached the bottom I was so eager to move, so eager to act, that it was almost a disappointment to find that our advance guard of mechanical wasps really had stung to very good effect, and that there was not a monster in the vicinity still capable of raising a tentacle.