I couldn’t yet begin to understand what difference this little surprise package might make to the war that was going on in Asgard’s software space. I had no way of knowing whether what had just happened was Armageddon or just a minor skirmish. To tell the truth, I wasn’t particularly interested in trying to figure it out. What concerned me more was what would happen to me.
Despite the fact that I had apparently slain my enemies in one fell swoop, I was still in something of a predicament. I was reduced to the status of a severed head, with snakes instead of hair and a truly poisonous glare, dangling from the clenched fist of a stone statue. I still had my wits about me, but the problem of figuring out what to do next was more than a little vexatious.
For all I could tell, I might be condemned to hang there for all eternity, keeping my captives still and safe with my poisonous stare. Maybe that could be construed as a noble fate for a self-sacrificing hero, but it wasn’t one that I could contemplate with any relish.
I had been assured by my enemies that I was on the high road to Hell, and it seemed to me that if I was now destined to spend any kind of lifetime in my present condition, that would probably be hell enough for anyone.
I was still considering this awful possibility when I caught a glimpse of movement in the crowd. It was at the very limit of my peripheral vision, and for a moment or two I thought I had been mistaken, but the writhing of the snakes turned my head just enough to allow me a better sight of the relevant area, and I saw that there was indeed a humanoid figure picking its way through the densely-packed assembly.
As he made his slow and painstaking progress he moved round so that I could see him more directly, but my eyesight was blurred and I couldn’t bring him into focus.
All I was sure of was that he looked human, and rather elderly. He carried himself as if walking required unusual effort. I had a flash of anxiety in case he might be turned to stone the moment I set eyes on him, but that fear evaporated quickly. Most of the individuals in the crowd hadn’t needed to look directly at my eyes before being turned to stone, and if I was as effective against his kind as I had been against theirs he should have been petrified the moment he set foot in the square.
I watched him as he came up the steps to stand beside the statue of Loki. He was a tall man, and as he finally came into focus I saw that he had a Roman nose and blue eyes. He was wearing an amused expression. I figured that I knew who he really was. He was one of the builders. He was one of those who had sent out that appeal for help that had turned me into a hero and brought me to this undignified pass. But in exactly the same way that the enemy had worn the face of my arch-enemy, Amara Guur, he was wearing the face of a dear departed friend.
He was Saul Lyndrach—the man who had sent me forth upon my epic journey.
I still couldn’t speak. He saw me trying to produce sounds, and smiled. I didn’t think it was so funny, and the fact that I wasn’t amused must have shown on whatever nightmarish mask I was now using for a face.
“Pardonnez moi,” he said.
He couldn’t really have said it in French, but I heard it in French.
Had I been able to speak, I could have produced an entirely apposite quote: Si Dieu nous a fait a son image, nous le lui avons bien rendu. Saul would have understood. Saul would even have understood the subtle irony of a Rousseau quoting Voltaire. For once, alas, I could not take advantage of the readiness of my wit.
“You have rendered us a great service,” he said—and I heard his words now as though they were in English, and knew that he was speaking not as Saul Lyndrach but as one of the guardian gods of Asgard, whose enemies I had blighted with my stare. “You have helped us to break a stalemate that had endured for hundreds of thousands of years. You probably believe that you have been ill-used, and so you have, but you cannot realise how much this victory has owed to your own fortitude and your own strength. The scheme could so easily have failed had you yielded to the pressure of circumstance at any point along the way. You have survived experiences that would have obliterated very many entities forced into your situation. Perhaps, had you known the true magnitude of the threats that you have endured, you could not have succeeded, but your ignorance has been strengthened by courage and by a stubborn refusal to admit defeat. We thank you, Michael Rousseau.”
It was a nice enough speech, in its way. We all appreciate a pat on the back, even when we no longer have a back to be patted. But I had more urgent matters on my mind than testimonials. I wanted to know what the hell was going to happen now. Could Humpty Dumpty be put back together again? Assuming that this version of myself had to live out my allotted span in software space, without any opportunity to become a real person again, was there any way I could get another body… and the power of speech… and a haircut?
“Unfortunately,” Saul went on, “the dangers which Asgard faces are not yet entirely averted. The war in software space is not over, and although the balance has swung to our advantage because of what you have accomplished, there is a conflict still to be resolved. And there is a further adventure which has not yet come to its conclusion—which might, if things go badly, undo all that you have accomplished. There is another battle yet to be fought, in the actual space that surrounds the starlet.
“We are able to observe what is happening in the star-shell, but the defences which we have erected around and within it, to preserve it from our enemies, are as difficult for our own machine-intelligences to penetrate as for theirs. The enemy was able to send mobile units—robots—through the defences while they were temporarily disrupted as a result of the Nine’s unlucky attempt to breach them, and although they were belatedly destroyed, they succeeded in switching off the power supply to the levels. There is now a power build-up within the starlet which is destabilising it, and there is a danger that it may explode. We are trying as best we can to get our own robots into the starshell, but in spite of the fact that we have retaken control of the peripheral systems, mechanical brains simply cannot penetrate the defences surrounding the control room. Only an organic being can reach and operate the controls.
“Unfortunately, it seems that the enemy has employed a stratagem which is virtually a mirror image of the one which we employed in creating you. We copied into your brain a programme which, when retranscribed in a software persona, would bind up great destructive power in your being. The invaders seem to have copied into the brains of at least one of your kind a programme that will give him equal destructive power. The invader now using the body of 994-Tulyar would be able to destroy Asgard, if that is his intention, once he reaches the control-room of the starshell. He would also be able to damage us as severely as, with your aid, we have damaged the forces arrayed against us. Unfortunately, Tulyar and his companion are already perilously close to that destination. Had this victory come in time, we might have stopped them in the levels, but they have already made the jump to the starshell.”
I wished that I could ask questions, but I had no voice. I could only hang there and listen.
“It may yet turn out that our stratagem was the poorer one,” Saul continued regretfully. “Perhaps our purpose would have been better served had we planted a programme in your organic persona which could have equipped it to operate the starlet’s controls, but that would certainly have resulted in the obliteration of your own consciousness, and that is not our way. We are the creation of humanoids, and our primary purpose is to protect and preserve humanoid life. Alas, the biocopy which remains within your other self is virtually non-functional in that form. Your other self can derive nothing from it but a few messages, which he may not even be able to read. Although he is trying hard to reach the starshell, he does not know what to do when he gets there, and it is too late to get the information to him by any conventional means. He too has made the jump, and we cannot yet tell what his fate will be.”