It was all straight out of my mind. He was still speaking in parole but all the names were in the original Earthly language. Did it mean that the invaders of Asgard had picked my mind clean, the way the Isthomi had tried to do when I first fell into their inquiring hands? Or was this creature some kind of magic mirror, reflecting my own ideas back at me?
“But it begins again,” I said. “In the story, it begins again! There is no final end.”
“Oh yes,” he said, “it begins again. In other galaxies, other macroworlds, in every little Earth-clone planet which wheels in its track around a yellow star, it begins again and again and again. But for every beginning there is an end, and this is the end of Asgard. Surt will consume it all.”
That was one symbol I had no difficulty in decoding. Surt was the king of the fire-giants, whose fire turned the battlefield of Gotterdammerung to ashes when all the killing was done. Surt could only be the starlet at the heart of the macroworld, which would blow Asgard apart if it went nova. The products of a thousand Creations—and what did it matter whether those Creations took place on planetary surfaces or inside macroworlds?—would be destroyed and wasted in such an explosion. Ashes to ashes; dust to dust. Was that what the invaders of Asgard were trying to achieve? Were they a software suicide squad?
“But you’d die too,” I said. “The plague which kills the sheep leaves the wolves to starve. The destroyers go to their destruction with their victims. Why?”
He laughed. “You have made me a humanoid in order to see me,” he said. “But you know that is not what I am.”
“It’s not what I am, either,” I retorted. “I’m just a bundle of information, like you. I’m just a shadow on the wall of the cave, lit by Platonic fire.”
“Precisely,” he said. “We are all shadow-selves, sent into combat by our archetypes. Perhaps that is what you are really fighting, Mr. Rousseau—the archetypal predators. Your Amara Guur is a very pale imitation of the real thing. You have no idea how limited your imagination is.”
“Predators kill for food,” I told him. “Amara Guur was a fake. He used his predatory ancestry to justify behaviour that would never have been tolerated in a wolf pack.”
“You mistake me, and you mistake your own kind,” replied the thing which looked like Amara Guur. “The predator kills for many reasons: for food, to defend his territory, and for pleasure, too. For pleasure, Mr. Rousseau. It is a sentimental view that says the predator takes no pleasure in his killing. The predator is prudent, the predator deceives, but the predator loves to kill. Only a fool believes that it could be otherwise.”
“Territory,” I echoed. “Is that what this is all about: territory?”
“Or pleasure,” he riposted. “You are trying once again to omit the pleasure.”
“Despite our petty squabbles,” I said, trying hard not to think about destruction and decay, “all the humanoid races have their DNA in common. The Tetrax are right, aren’t they, to be ambitious for galactic brotherhood? They’re right to try to bind us into a community. Whatever you’re a copy of, it isn’t made of DNA, is it? This cuts deeper than meat-eaters versus leaf-eaters. This is competition between alternative biochemistries.”
He laughed again. “Mr. Rousseau,” he said, “do you really imagine that biochemistries care? Your thinking is anchored to your imbecilic point of view. Do you really think that you have the intelligence to understand, when the power of your dreams can do no more than this? How can you believe that you ever had a chance to understand?”
He was shifting the ground of the argument, leading me first one way and then another, and I suddenly wondered why. If I were dead and on my way to Hell, immobilised and facing inevitable disintegration, Amara Guur would not be here, teasing me and taunting me. Suddenly, I began to believe that I was doing the wrong thing in letting him delay me. I had to get past him—I had to go on.
I looked again at my arms, which were mottled with grey, the flesh rutted and scratched. There were several ulcerous sores, slowly turning fire-red, beginning to suppurate. The sores reminded me, strangely, of the fruit on the branches of the humanoid trees. But I knew that it didn’t matter whether I was “dead” or not—what mattered was that I was still active, still thinking, and still some kind of threat to whatever strange army it was that sought to keep me from the heart of the macroworld’s systems.
I drew my sword, and raised it high above my head, ready to slash at the branches blocking my way. No expression of terror came into those crazy staring eyes—it was rather as if they mocked me, challenging me to do my worst. I hacked at the tangled branches and the thorny undergrowth, scything through it with my bright, sharp blade, going against him as fiercely and as recklessly as I had gone against him once before, when he tried to use me as a shield to save himself from the Star Force.
As I moved forward to pass him, the spined leaves thrust at me, and I felt the thorns plucking at my armour, but they could not penetrate it to rip my flesh. It was as though the wall of thorns dissolved beneath my attack, evaporating on contact with my wrath and my warmth.
I forced my way through, leaving Amara Guur to return to his wooden slumber, and went on into the dense thicket, which became dark as the branches above my head obscured the sun. There was a foul, dank smell all around me, and all of a sudden there was no green at all but only shades of grey, and the signs of decay and corruption were everywhere. It was as though I were hacking my way into the body of a gigantic corpse. There was no sign of another side to the wall, and I felt that I was tunneling into the heart of something horrible.
Too late I was seized by doubt, wondering if I had been tricked. Perhaps this was not the path that the enemy had tried to prevent my taking—perhaps this was instead the way they had wanted me to go, so that I might deliver myself into their hands.
I turned, and looked back.
There was no sign of the path by which I had come—no tunnel back to the sandy beach and the sunlight. On every side of me there was nothing but a tangle of white, soft, rootlike things, dimly lit as though by furtive bioluminescence.
I looked wildly around, and while I stood still the tangled knots drew more tightly about me, until I was confined in a circular cage with no more than a metre of space around my spoiling flesh. There was still a frail, faint light to see by, and I watched the knotted things in front of my face writhe like maggots as they wove themselves into a tight, confining wall.
I raised my sword, and slashed wildly at the confining threads, trying to cut my way through. For a moment, I thought they might not yield, but the sharpness of the blade prevailed and the cage in which they had tried to confine me was breached. I shoved my body into the gap, pushing through to the other side. I was still in the forest and the branches still writhed in a determined attempt to block my way, but I broke into a run, hacking madly at whatever was in my path.
My arms ached and my head hurt. I felt dizzy, but I dared not pause for an instant lest I give the malevolent vegetation a second chance to imprison me. Branches grabbed at my arms and rootlets tried to seize my feet, but while I was moving they were impotent to establish a hold. I did not know how long I could go on, or how long I would need to, but I was determined not to be beaten while there was strength in my body, and despite the gathering discomfort I had no sensation of nearing exhaustion.