Asgard's Secret (12 page)

I was too harsh; I should
have taken more notice of the fact that he'd conceded the possibility that I really
might have been framed. His hesitation before referring to my
"talents" hadn't been intended as a sly insult. He really was
wondering what I had that might prompt Amara Guur—or anyone else—to take so
much trouble to obtain total control of me.

"You
know," I said, to calm the atmosphere a little, "there's one thing
I've never understood about you Tetrax. Why do you have code numbers instead of
first names?"

Usually, you have
to be wary of asking aliens questions like that, in case they take offence.
Fortunately the Tetrax don't seem to go in for taking mortal offence at personal
questions, and 69-Aquila seemed enthusiastic to educate me while I was at his
mercy.

"Humankind is
not the only race whose members resent being numbered," he told me.
"Such refusals seem to be based in a fear of losing one's individuality, a
reluctance to think of oneself as a more-or-less insignificant unit in a much
greater whole. We Tetrax do not require such illusions, and our guiding anxiety
is precisely the opposite. We treasure our connectedness, our membership of a
nested series of larger wholes. We bear our numbers proudly, because they

remind us that we are not mere isolated
irrelevancies, divorced from the context that gives our thoughts and actions
meaning. As a species, humans are stuck in the last phase of a degenerate
capitalism; as individuals, you are stuck in the last phase of a degenerate
existential isolation. Wiser species have moved on."

"So one of us
is crazy," I said, "and you think it's not you. Well, you would,
wouldn't you?"

"I would be
forced to worry if you began to agree with me," 69-Aquila said calmly.
"I believe that I win again."

Before he could lay
his cards triumphantly down on the tabletop, however, his wristphone chimed. He
consulted the display for a full minute.

"Someone is
asking to see you," he said. "It seems that they have a contract of
employment to offer you."

"What a
pleasant surprise," I said, grimly.

Amara Guur didn't
come in person, of course. I was half-expecting Heleb, who'd already made his
desire to purchase my services a matter of public record, but discretion
seemed to be keeping him out of the game for a while. The person who actually
appeared on the other side of my glass partition was a Kythnan woman named
Jacinthe Siani.

All the humanoid
races making up the galactic community are built according to the same basic
blueprint, although no one has figured out, as yet, how the original was determined.
We all have two arms, two legs and a head, and we all have two eyes, a mouth
and an arsehole. Noses are more various, and so are the embellishments with
which various kinds of skin come equipped—horns, hair, scales and so on.
Humanoid species come in all colours and many textures; relatively few of them
seem utterly loathsome or frightful to one another, but relatively few of them
seem markedly attractive either. There are only a couple of dozen alien species
that are sufficiently similar to humans that it wouldn't seem in the least
perverted for them to engage in cross-species sexual intercourse. Among those,
there are maybe three or four which produce significant numbers of individuals
who seem
more
beautiful to human eyes than actual humans do.

Kythnans are one of
them. Among humans, the fact gives rise to frequent jokes about Kythnans and
kin. Jacinthe Siani was an exceptional member of her species, as measured by
human eyes.

I assumed that
Simeon Balidar must have been the one who explained that circumstance to Amara
Guur, given that the vormyr are at the other end of the spectrum. To Amara
Guur, Jacinthe Siani probably looked just as loathsome as Balidar did; I didn't
dare to conjecture what she must think of him.

Her skin had a
faint greenish tinge, but it wasn't at all unattractive. Her features had a
cast that would have been considered Oriental had she been human, but that
wasn't unattractive either—far from it. She didn't have pointed ears though. I really
like pointed ears—but there was no way that Simeon Balidar could know that.

"Perhaps
someone ought to explain to Amara Guur that we humans tend to do things the
other way around," I said to her after 69-Aquila had formally introduced
us. "We try the seduction first, and the bribery second.
Then
we bring in the heavy metal. There's no point in putting on the velvet glove
when I've already been floored by the iron fist."

"I have no
idea what you are talking about, Mr. Rousseau," she purred. She had a
soft, low voice that would probably have sounded very nice if she'd been
talking English—or, even better, French—instead of pangalactic parole.

"No," I said.
"I bet my lawyer could search for days on end without tracing a manifest
connection between you and Amara Guur, or any other petty crime-lord. I suppose
you're recruiting for your private stud farm, and you've just decided to start
breeding humans."

"I need a man
with your expertise," she said.

"Precisely,"
I replied.

"Your
expertise in lower-level exploration," she elaborated.

"You don't
say," I said. At least, I tried to. Parole isn't geared to translate that
kind of idiomatic expression.

"I do,"
she assured me. "I represent a group of people who are mounting an
expedition that will penetrate further into the core of Asgard than any
previous one. We need to hire men who have extensive experience of moving into
virgin territory."

"And unlike
the C.R.E., you don't mind hiring convicted murderers?"

"You have a
debt to pay, Mr. Rousseau," she observed. "We are civilized folk, who
do not harbour petty prejudices. You have the expertise we need."

"So have a lot
of other people," I told her. "Saul Lyndrach, for example. Have you
tried to buy him?"

For a fleeting
moment, a shadow crossed her face. No matter how human or superhuman she
seemed, I couldn't be sure that I'd read the expression correctly, but it
seemed to me like anxious suspicion. She was worried that I might know more
than I seemed to know. She was worried that I might have more with which to
negotiate than was apparent, even now.

I wished,
fervently, that I had. "Amara Guur doesn't have the situation under
control, does he?" I said. "Framing me was a hasty move, urged on him
by panic. There's a loose cannon rolling around his deck, isn't there? You
don't have Saul on the payroll, do you? Whatever he found and you're trying to
steal, it's still out of reach. You want me because I'm a friend of Saul's,
don't you? That's what makes me so much more valuable than any other freelance
scavenger."

Every word we
exchanged was being recorded, of course. My trial was over, but that didn't
mean the Tetrax weren't still taking an interest in the case.

"We are
prepared to offer you a two-year contract," she said, doggedly following
her script. "It will not pay off more than a fraction of your debt, but
the rate of repayment is considerably greater than you would earn by any other
means of employment. There are risks involved, of course; we shall be going a
long way from Skychain City, and descending further into the levels than anyone
has contrived to do before— but I believe that prospect will interest you, and
it is clearly in everyone's interest that you sign the contract."

"Except,"
I said, "that once I'm out in the cold, my life won't be worth a spoonful
of nitrogen."

"On the
contrary," she said. "It is very much in our interests that you
should remain alive, healthy and cooperative. We have no intention of allowing
you to come to harm."

"Do I get a
percentage of the profits?" I asked.

"That might be
negotiable," she confirmed. "May I take it that you are agreeable in
principle, subject to the outcome of such negotiations?"

"That
depends," I said. "I might get other offers. Now that you've put
yours on record, the competition might decide to match it, or go one better.
It's Myrlin, isn't it? The wild card, I mean. The factor that threw off all
your calculations. Whether you have Saul or not, you don't have him—and you
don't know how much he knows."

"Please try to
concentrate on the matter in hand, Mr.

Rousseau," she said, seemingly
unruffled by my stab in the dark. "May I take it that, in the absence of
any other offers, you are prepared to negotiate the details of this one? I'm
sure the court would be happy to know that you intend to discharge your
obligation conscientiously."

I remembered that
Myrlin was supposed to be a giant. Even if he hadn't been, he'd have had a
problem blending into the background of a place like Skychain City. If Myrlin
was out of Amara Guur's reach, he must surely have found some influential
friends of his own. Or had I miscalculated the situation? Was it something else
that had gone awry, derailing Amara Guur's original plan? Who had tipped him
off that Saul had found something valuable? Balidar? Someone at the C.R.E.? Who
would have known, given that Saul hadn't given me more than the merest hint?

"I'll be happy
to give your offer serious consideration," I lied. "But you'll
forgive me if I wait the full seventy-two hours before making a decision. I have
to consider all the alternatives."

"You only have
one, Mr. Rousseau," the Kythnan said. "Do you really want to spend
half a lifetime asleep, while your body and brain are rented to anyone and
everyone who cares to pay the standard fee?"

"I'd have job
security," I pointed out. "And the Tetrax would want me alive and
healthy too. Lifetimes are increasing all the while—by the time I got my mind
back, we might all have the biotech to live forever. There are a thousand races
working on the problem, and we all have the same DNA."

"That would be
a reckless gamble, Mr. Rousseau," she said. "Accidents happen, even
in a gel-tank."

Her tone was
casual, but I knew a threat when I heard one. I hoped that the people listening
in were similarly sensitive.

"Maybe I'm
beaten," I conceded, "but I'm not quite ready to lie down yet. You
have my permission to talk to my lawyer about that percentage of the profits,
and any other safeguards he cares to incorporate. His name's 238-Zenatta. But
I'm not going to sign anything until I've had every last hour of my three days'
grace, and I'm not going to give up hoping for a miracle."

"Thank
you," she said—and she smiled. It was one hell of a smile, but I wasn't
fooled for an instant.

8

When the Kythnan had gone, I kicked the
glass wall in frustration, but all that achieved was to make my big toe ache.

"I hope you
got all that," I said to the empty air. "If she's telling the truth,
your expectation of getting down into the lower levels in your own time and on
your own terms is under threat. I only hope you care enough to try to figure
out what the hell is going on—and to do something about it before my time runs
out."

I was confident of
the first part of that hope. The Tetrax had to care enough about what Saul
Lyndrach might have found to worry about Amara Guur getting his hands on it—
but I was all too well aware that it wasn't at all the same thing as caring
what might happen to me. If the Tetrax concluded that the sensible thing to do
was to let Amara Guur do their spadework for them, they probably wouldn't be in
the least interested in subverting his plans—which meant that from my point of
view, they might as easily be reckoned deadly enemies as potential allies.