Asgard's Conquerors (43 page)

Then
again, even if something had happened, how could I know for sure just what it
was? Even if I was correct in believing that a message had been sent which I
had received, on what grounds could I assure myself that I had read it right?

And yet
again, if it all was true, and something in the depths of the macroworld—something
great and fine and utterly mysterious—had cried out to me for aid . . . then
what the hell could a mere human being be expected to achieve in rendering aid
to beings who were apparently very different in kind, and far superior in their
abilities?

What,
indeed, could possibly be done?

I had
begun this chapter of my life with a terribly sense of not knowing what I ought
to do, but the progenitors of that feeling had been mere boredom and a
superfluity of trivial opportunity. Now, I was faced with another uncertainty
about what I could and should do next—an uncertainty infinitely more terrible
in aspect.

It was
at least possible that I had been singled out for great things. But I had not
the slightest idea how to go about them.

I and I
alone had stood four-square with the Nine when that anguished cry for help had
surged from the depths of Asgard to blow through us like a hot wind. Myrlin and
994- Tulyar had been so badly shocked by the first instant of their contact
that they had been thrust into the valley of the shadow of death—I was soon
able to ascertain, once they were well again, that they had no memory of
anything that might have happened to them while they were at the interface. If
their being had been polluted with vestiges of an alien soul, they knew nothing
of it, and manifested no stigmata of any such infection.

The fact
that I had fared differently reflected no credit upon me. I was inclined to
presume that by the time I entered the game the "creatures" who were
manifest in my dream as eyes of fire had learned to be more gentle, and had
moderated their approach, so that their touch became something which a frail
and tiny humanoid mind could cope with.

It was,
of course, to the Nine that I turned in the hope of enlightenment, but they too
were unable to offer much insight. The contact had affected them as severely
as it had affected Myrlin and Tulyar, and in their fashion they had been much
more severely wounded by it. They could not confirm or deny what I told them
about my interpretation of the contact as a cry for help. Even when I
interfaced with the Nine again, to give them more intimate access to my
memories and interpretations of the experience, they could not judge what it
was that I set before them. Their knowledge was no more secure than mine,
their scepticism no less corrosive.

Perhaps,
if they had been well, they would have had more powerful resources on which to
draw, but in their injured state, they had to devote all but the tiniest
fraction of their attention and endeavour to the business of self-repair.

Of
course, I now had a relationship with the Nine more special than their
relationship with Myrlin, or any other being of my kind. They and I had secrets
in common; circumstance had forged a bond between us, and that bond was far
from being merely metaphorical. In some sense, the Nine were in me . . . just
as the eyes of fire and whatever consciousness lay behind them was in me.

It
mattered very little that I could hardly begin to understand the Nine: what
kind of beings they were, what view of the world they had. The Nine had taken
the natural course in choosing my face as the medium of their new visual
manifestations. They accepted that in some subtle but crucial fashion, they and
I had exchanged parts of our personalities, and that I now lived in them and
they in me. Their acceptance was a foundation stone on which we could build
trust, and perhaps a common cause.

But
they, like me, had no idea what could and should be done to answer the call
that I might have received.

In our
ignorance, we hesitated—waiting, I suppose, for something more to happen. It
was not that we were hoping for a third contact—the Nine felt that they could
well do without another such traumatic experience. It was more that we were
expecting some process of change to complete itself in me. We hoped and feared
that my experience might have consequences that were yet to unfold.

After
all, I did have a strong sense of being different from what I had been before,
though it is not easy to describe exactly what that sense was like.

In my waking
moments, I was myself, and once my elation had evaporated I seemed very much
the self I had always been—stubborn, self-contained, frequently facetious,
sometimes churlish, but always with my heart in what I thought to be the right
place.

In my
dreams, though, I sometimes found strange sensations lurking within a deeper
self than the one I knew and was in my everyday intercourse with the phenomenal
world. I never went back to that dreaming desert, nor saw those eroded
monoliths, nor faced those eyes of fire, but there were feelings, and more than
feelings. Sometimes, there were faint and fragile voices, which spoke in
querulous whispers, which seemed to be hunting for something to say, as if they
were trying to remember—or simply trying to become.

I began
to fear that those dreams would eventually intrude upon reality, but I waited,
and they did not.

I often
went back to the room with the hooded chairs, to interface again and again with
the wounded Nine, to dream more exotic dreams awake than those I dreamed in
sleep. But it was not easy, as I have explained, to begin the serious work of
communication.

Although
the Nine already knew parole, and English too, there were still many barriers
to the kind of speech which was necessary in that curious spaceless
"world" of electronic information. But the Nine did want to talk—they
wanted, in fact, to bring me to the edge of their own community. There was no
sense in which they could welcome me into that community, and become the Ten,
but they did want to know me in a fashion very different from the way they had
known Myrlin.

I think
the waiting, and the work that we did while we waited, was valuable. I think
even the uncertainty was valuable, in its way, in making us question what it
was that we must do.

This time,
though, there was no possibility of turning my back and deciding to go home.
Although the Nine and I did not know what it was that we had to do—or what it
was that I had to do—we did know that the way forward was the way downward, and
that whatever was in the heart of Asgard had to be found.

As the
wise man said:
Si Dieu n'existait
pas, il faudrait Vinventer.
He
might have added that there comes a time when it is no longer enough merely to
invent. It is necessary, also, to confront. Even if our gods are invented, we
still need to know what it is that they require of us.

And so,
when I have finished recording this second volume of my adventures—which I have
been doing, I candidly admit, as much to straighten out my thoughts as in the
hope of entertaining readers—I intend to set out yet again on my journey to the
centre of Asgard, to discover whether, in truth, there is a place for me in the
halls of Valhalla—and a task for me to do, in order to earn it.

I will be,
as ever, a reluctant hero—and I leave it to you to decide whether that is the
best kind, or the worst.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

BRIAN STABLEFORD
was born in 1948 in Shipley, Yorkshire. He was educated at Manchester Grammar
School and the University of York (B.A. in Biology; Doctorate. Phil, in
Sociology). From
1976 to 1988
he was
a Lecturer in the Sociology Department of the University of Reading, teaching
courses in the philosophy of social science and the sociology of literature and
the mass media. He has also taught at the University of the West of England, on
a B.A. in "Science, Society and the Media." He has been active as a
professional writer since
1965,
publishing more
than 50 novels and 200 short stories as well as several non-fiction books; he
is a prolific writer of articles for reference books, mainly in the area of
literary history.