Asgard's Conquerors (20 page)

The systems believed that emergency, all right. Alarm bells began
ringing all around me now, setting up a terrible clamour. Quickly, I dragged
one of the officers behind the crates, to buy me an extra couple of minutes
when the crowds began to arrive, and stripped off his jacket and trousers. It
was more difficult than I had expected, because he was a dead weight and an
awkward shape. By the time I was able to start pulling the garments on—without
bothering to remove my own first—people did start arriving, over by the tracks
and from the farther region of the warehouse as well. I left all the weapons
behind except the stricken man's sidearm, and walked out of hiding with a
purposeful stride.

There were
soldiers everywhere, plus a couple of neo-Neanderthal civilians and a handful
of galactics. I just walked to the side door and went out. Nobody said a word,
and I doubt that they even saw me—all attention was focused on the wrecked
console and the unconscious officer.

Up on top, no one had a clue what was happening. There were people
running along the walkways in several different directions. I didn't want to be
left out, so I ran too. The only difference was that I knew where I was going.
I got out of the fields and into the corridors that crisscrossed the solid
mass holding up the topmost of all Asgard's layers. I ran purposefully past
dozens of invader troopers, trying my very best to look like a man with an
urgent mission, who must at all costs not be interrupted.

It worked like a dream for fully nine-tenths of the distance I had to
cover, but then—in a corridor far too narrow to allow me to pass—I ran into a whole
bunch of the enemy, including two men with such fancy decoration on their
torsos that they had to outrank the poor sap whose uniform I'd stolen.

One of them—a big, bald man—barked an order at me. I don't know what he
said, but all I could do was stop and look foolish. There was nowhere to go—I
couldn't get past and as I half-turned, the man in charge barked again. I was
grabbed, and pulled forward.

I could tell by the way he stared that the bald man had jumped to the
right conclusion. My brow-ridges obviously weren't prominent enough, given my
inability to respond in any way whatsoever to his challenge. It probably helped
that he'd been shipping humans down here to try and help his own boys out. He
was quick to conclude that I was a member of the species Homo sapiens.

I had been feeling very good about my boldness until that moment—high
on my own adrenalin, and pleased to take credit for my brilliance. Now, all of
a sudden, I began to feel nauseous and extremely foolish.

The guns came out, and suddenly I was in the middle of a very hostile
crowd. I stuck my empty hands up into the air, hoping fervently that they could
recognise the symbol of surrender. I let them take the sidearm from my belt,
having made no attempt to reach it myself.

There was nothing very gentle about the way they hustled me along.
Stupid they might be, but they could put two and two together well enough to
figure out who was responsible for all the alarms that were ringing. They had
no way of knowing where I'd been headed, so Serne should be safe enough, but I
was going to be treated as a saboteur.

I wondered, as they hustled me along, what they did to saboteurs. On
good old Earth, I remembered, they used to shoot them.

14

Eventually,
having removed my stolen uniform, they threw me into an ill-lit room with a
table and a couple of chairs. They hadn't handled me too roughly—somewhere
along the line, I guess, they had found out that I hadn't killed the man from
whom I'd taken the uniform. They searched me, but I wasn't carrying anything to
give them a clue as to who I was or where I'd come from.

The questions finally began after an hour or so. I couldn't tell
whether the temporary chaos that I'd caused was still giving them trouble. A
Tetron system wouldn't have gone down in its entirety because of such a brutal
assault, but I assumed that the Tetrax wouldn't be keen to assist their
unwelcome guests in the vexing task of putting Humpty Dumpty back together
again. I knew that I would still be very unpopular, especially as I had struck
at what they must consider a vital target.

Two men came in to do the interrogation—not because they intended to
play good cop/bad cop, but because the one guy who could speak parole had to
report everything back to the other, who didn't. I didn't mind that—it slowed
things up. Despite the fact that the interrogation had to be conducted at a
leisurely pace, though, the atmosphere was far from relaxed.

They obviously weren't above a bit of calculated drama. Before they
began, they threw the empty mud gun on the table, to show me that their clever
little minds had at least taken step one in figuring out who I was, what I'd
done, and to whom.

"What is your name?" asked the parole-speaker. He was about
my age and height, with pale skin, very blond hair, and weak blue eyes. His
companion was older, with white hair, but his eyes were a darker blue. I'd
never seen Earth's sea or its sky except on video, but I began thinking of them
nevertheless as the man with sea-blue eyes and the man with sky-blue eyes.
Otherwise, they might have been brothers.

"Jack Martin," I replied, almost without thinking.

"And where do you live?"

"I used to live in a singlestack in the third sector, but I
haven't been home in a while."

"Where have you been?"

"Down here. I figured after the tanks rolled in that I'd hide
out."

They both looked at me solemnly, but they didn't immediately call me a
liar.

"What is your job?" asked Sky-blue.

"I used to be a scavenger—I used to go down into levels three and
four, hunting for artefacts. The bottom seems to have dropped out of the
market, though. I don't suppose you'll be maintaining the Co-ordinated Research
Establishment now that you're in charge."

As the blond man relayed this to his companion, they both remained very
poker-faced. I didn't know whether they could understand sarcasm. Almost all
humanoid races have some such concept, but it's difficult even for two humans
from different cultural backgrounds to be sure when they meet it. Sea-blue took
some flimsies from his pocket, and the two of them scanned the pages for a
minute or two. I practised staying calm, reminding myself that the Star Force
way was to maintain grace under pressure.

"Are you a human?" was the next question.

"Yes," I replied.

"Your race is very like ours," said Sky-blue, "but I am
told that you come from a world very distant from here."

"About a thousand light-years," I told him. I didn't suppose
the term "light-year" would mean a lot to him, given that his kind
must have had a very different idea of what the universe was like, but he
didn't query it. He must have heard it before.

"We have drawn up a list of all humans known to be resident in
the city. There is no Jack Martin on the list."

I met his eye steadily. "Nobody knows how many humans there are
in the city, and nobody knows all their names. Scavengers come and go."

Actually, the Tetrax probably knew exactly how many humans there were
in Skychain City, and all their names, but I had to gamble that the invaders
had not been given free access to Immigration Control's data. They didn't press
the point. I began to feel more in control of the situation, though they were
still frowning with displeasure.

"Why did you steal the uniform and destroy the computer?"

"I wanted to get into your stores here, and I had to create a
diversion. I needed food, weapons, clothing. I was getting desperate. It's not
easy, living wild out there. A lot of the other people running around are
pretty nasty characters— vormyr, Spirellans, and the like. I take it you've met
the vormyr?"

They had a brief conference about that.

"Are there many others . . . living wild, as you put it?"
asked the man with paler eyes.

"Hundreds, probably. The city sprawls over a big area down here,
and there are many dark regions where the Tetrax hadn't really got anything
going. Plenty of places to hide."

"Is that where the resistance to our occupation has its

headquarters?
Where sabotage is planned?"

"I doubt it," I said, calmly. "I steer clear of other
races. There's a grave danger of being mistaken for one of you. They'd probably
be just as enthusiastic to kill me as you are."

After another brief exchange between themselves, they turned to stare
balefully at me again. "We do indeed shoot saboteurs, Mr. Martin,"
said the man with pale eyes. "In the past, we have treated members of your
race generously. We believed—perhaps wrongly—that because your species is so
very like our own, we might easily develop a sense of kinship. We have been
told that the Tetrax are oppressive rulers, and that your species has no reason
to feel loyalty to them. In spite of these assurances, humans have given us
little real help—and now we find you trying to destroy the trains that carry
our food. Can you give us one good reason why we should not execute you?"

It was nice to be given the chance, but I wasn't entirely sure that I
could.

"You came into the city shooting in all directions," I told
him. "I've heard rumours that you're shipping people away to some kind of
concentration camp way down below. Sure I hid out. If I'd been sure that you'd
treat me well if I was useful to you, maybe I would have volunteered—but how
could I be sure? I thought I'd try to make it on my own, at least for a while,
and see how things turned out. I was doing what any one of you would have done
in my situation. But if there is any help I can give you, I'd naturally prefer
that to being shot."

As I said it, I couldn't help feeling that it was a weaker argument
than I'd have liked to offer. But it was all that a Jack Martin could
reasonably be expected to produce.

"Were you hiding in the hope that the Tetrax would launch

some kind of
counter-invasion?" asked my interlocutor.

"Not really," I replied, laconically. "The Tetrax aren't
the type. They'll try to talk you into being friends with them, and they'll
probably succeed. They talk everybody into being friends, in the end."

"Do you have many friends among the Tetrax?"

"I don't have many friends at all. I'm not a friendly
person."

I was trying to put on a show of being harmless and utterly
insignificant, though I didn't want them to be entirely convinced. It might
have been the wrong tack— perhaps I should have been trying to worm my way into
their affections by telling them how much I could do for them, but my reasoning
was that it might only make them suspicious. I wanted them to make me some kind
of offer. I had a suspicion they might, on account of what I'd seen in the
warehouse. They were obviously shopping for collaborators among the races who
looked most like them—exhibiting a kind of chauvinism that the Tetrax would
undoubtedly have considered barbaric. I wondered what that implied about the
variety of races in the levels below.

Meanwhile, Sky-blue and Sea-blue were having another conference. They
didn't seem to be entirely in harmony. From what little I'd seen, the invaders
certainly seemed to be a quarrelsome lot.

"This gun is of human manufacture?" asked Sky-blue, when the
quiet row was over.