Asgard's Conquerors (6 page)

They made contact first. I assumed that this was because their machines
chewed up the data which mine had sent a little more quickly than mine could
process theirs, or possibly because the microworlders were more scrupulously
polite than me. They sent me an invitation to dock, couched in very friendly
terms. I figured that they probably didn't see many strangers out here, and in
a small microworld everybody really does know everybody else. A traveler with
tales to tell of the mysterious universe would surely be a popular
dinner-guest.

I reckoned that I could put up with being a social lion for a while. In
any case, the microworld would be spinning fast enough to produce a decent
gee-force, and though it wouldn't be very spacious, its walls wouldn't be
crowding me quite as closely as the walls of my little star-skipping

cocoon. So I
decided to visit for a day or two.
It can't hurt, can it?
I asked myself. Which just goes to show that a man can very easily jump to
entirely wrong conclusions when he happens to be living in interesting times,
and when fate has it in for him.

2

It took
nearly two days to get to the microworld, with the stresser working very gently
indeed. You have to be very careful when you're around large lumps of mass, and
you can't wormhole short distances.

On the way in my software and the microworld's software continued to
exchange friendly chitchat, but voice contact wasn't possible while the
stresser was functioning. By the time it was possible to start a dialogue, it
didn't seem to be worth bothering, because I'd be meeting my hosts face to face
soon enough.

So I let the machines negotiate the tedious details of the docking
while I cleaned myself up and unpacked my best clothes. I put a thinfilm
overall over the top so I wouldn't get smeared climbing through the umbilical
to the docking- bay. Civilization is supposed to have left dirt behind in the
Earth's gravity-well, but you know how things are.

I squirmed my way through the umbilical, thinking how good it would be
to feel the grip of a good spin again. When I came out the other end into the
docking bay I was contentedly looking forward to basking in the sensation of
fake gravity. The bay, of course, was at the hub of the station and wasn't
spinning, but I knew that the reassuring pull would be only a short distance
away.

There was no one in the docking bay, which was unusually crowded with
equipment. As well as the usual lockers there were several big steel drums
about a metre-and-a-half high and a metre in diameter, with dials and warning
notices jostling for space around knots of feeder-pipe connections. I didn't
pay them much attention, but made directly for the hatchway that led to the
ladder that would take me out into the station's living quarters. I knew that
the microworlders would have someone waiting for me at the end of the spur.

I was so preoccupied with the sensations associated with slowly gaining
weight as I climbed "down" the ladder that I didn't immediately
notice, when I got to the other end and came through the hatchway, that the
welcoming party wasn't quite what I had expected.

It took me a second or two to get my up and down properly sorted out,
and then I began reaching for the seal on my overall as I looked around for a
friendly face.

There were several faces, but they weren't very friendly. I felt a
sinking sensation as I realised that the faces were all attached to bodies
wearing Star Force uniforms, and the sinking got worse when I noticed belatedly
that one of them—a lieutenant—was pointing a gun at me.

Merde,
I thought.
I think I've
been here before.

Looking down the wrong end of a Star Force weapon is one of those
experiences you never want to repeat.

Reflexively, although I'd no real intention of doing anything as
absurd as making a run for it, I turned back to the hatch through which I'd
just come. A trooper had already moved round behind me to block the way, and as
my eyes met his he launched a punch at my head. I was too slow, and too
unaccustomed to the new gee-force, to dodge. I took it on the jaw, and it
lifted me off my feet, sending me sprawling in an untidy heap at the
lieutenant's feet. It's slightly easier to take a thump like that in low-gee
than in the depths of a real gravity well, but that doesn't make it pleasant.
The punch hurt, and the hurt was compounded with humiliation. I wanted to hit
back, but the muzzle of the lieutenant's gun was now only a

couple of
centimetres away from the end of my nose.

"Blackledge," drawled the officer, "you shouldn't have
done that. Nobody told you to hit him."

"No sir," said Trooper Blackledge, and added in a stage
whisper: "Bastard!"

It was obvious that he wasn't talking about the lieutenant.

"Michael Rousseau," said the lieutenant, calmly. "I
arrest you on a charge of desertion from the United Nations Star Force. You
will be held in safe custody on Goodfellow pending the arrival of the Star
Force cruiser
Leopard Sharks
when a lawyer will be appointed to defend you and
a court martial will be held, according to the provisions of emergency martial
law. Your ship is hereby impounded, and is subject to confiscation, according
to the provisions of that same legislation."

I was still down, half-kneeling and half-sitting. Absurdly, all I could
think of to say was that
Leopard Shark
was a really stupid name
for a warship.

I didn't say it.

I also didn't bother to tell them that they wouldn't find it easy to
impound my ship. Her inner airlock was programmed to check the retinal pattern
of anyone trying to get in, even if they could produce the right passwords.

"On your feet," said the lieutenant. He pointed the gun away
from me, obviously having had his fill of melodrama for the time being.

I got to my feet, touching the tender spot on my jaw. The punch hadn't
drawn blood, but I suspected that I was going to have one hell of a bruise.

"I don't suppose you'd be interested in seeing my discharge
papers?" I inquired. "They bear the signature of one Star-Captain
Susarma Lear—almost illegible, I fear, but quite legitimate."

The lieutenant gave me a stony smile. "Every station in the system
has been alerted to arrest you," he said. "We knew you were coming
back here—you'd have been better to stay out on the fringe, with all your alien
friends. And you'd better know that if there's one thing you can do that will
make people like you any less, it's to insult Star-Captain Lear. Star-Captain
Lear is a hero."

"I believe she mentioned that fact," I said sourly.

I figured that I had every right to be sour. I hadn't thought Susarma
Lear mean-spirited enough to pull a trick like this, after we had parted on
fairly good terms. I didn't doubt for a moment that she could get away with it,
though.

Why in the world, I wondered, had she posted wanted notices on me?
Could she possibly have found out that I'd kept secret what I knew about Myrlin
still being alive?

I thought guiltily about the incriminating memoirs sitting on the shelf
in my disc-store, and began to regret having recorded them.

Microworlds don't actually have jails, so where I ended up was an
ordinary crew cabin with a special lock. It had the usual fittings—a bunk and a
pocket-sized bathroom, a food-dispenser, and a set of screens. I soon found out
that the screens had a security block on them. I could dial up videos of old
movies or library teletext, but I couldn't make personal telephone calls. I was
being held incommunicado.

That seemed to me to be adding insult to injury, so instead of meekly
sitting down I tried to get a line to the outside world. I started out by
requesting a lawyer, but the system wouldn't let me through, so I tried for a
doctor. When the software queried my symptoms, I convinced it that I might well
have a broken jaw. It's easy to lie to artificial intelligences, once you can
persuade them to take notice of you at all. Within ten minutes, the doctor duly
arrived.

"I'm Mariyo Kimura," she said, reaching out to take

hold of my
chin. "And this jaw isn't broken."

"Really?" I said. "You don't know how glad I am to hear
that. It hurts like hell."

I could tell that she didn't believe me.

"Look," I said, "I'm sorry there isn't an emergency, but
I did need to talk to someone. I've been cooped up in a tiny starship all on my
own for the best part of a year, and the first human being I came into contact
with tried to smash me into insensibility. Then they threw me in here,
seemingly with every intention of leaving me to rot. In my book, that's cruel
and inhumane treatment. I don't know what passes for law around this place,
but perhaps you could advise me on what it has to say about my position. I did
try to get hold of a lawyer."

"Goodfellow doesn't have any lawyers," said Dr. Kimura.
"We don't need them."

"You have a platoon of Star Force troopers. Do you need
them?"

She had opened her bag and she was dabbing something from a bottle onto
a wad of cotton wool. She pushed me back so that I sat down on the bunk. I knew
it was going to sting— it's a medical tradition that goes back centuries. When
she touched it to my jaw, though, I took the pain like a man.

"Mr. Rousseau," she said, "I don't know exactly what
you've done, or why Lieutenant Kramin was ordered to arrest you on arrival
here. I don't really approve of the way that you were lured here under false
pretences, nor of Trooper Blackledge knocking you down. But you must try to
understand our situation. While you've been out of the system we've been
fighting a long war. Salamandran warships invaded system space no less than forty
times. Way out here, we were always a target for occupation, or for destruction.
Most of us have been here for the whole ten years of the shooting match—it's
our home, and transport within the system hasn't been easy. One missile is all
that it would have taken to blow Goodfellow into smithereens, and we've been
very happy to play host to a Star Force defence- system. You'll not find any
sympathy here for Star Force deserters."

"Would it affect your attitude to know that I'm innocent?"

"Of course. But that remains to be proven, doesn't it?"

"That's why I need some kind of legal representation. The Star
Force is carrying on some kind of weird vendetta against me. I need an advocate
from outside, not their court-appointed defender. I'm not a deserter."

No reaction showed in her features as she studied me with her dark
eyes. She was very small—no more than a metre sixty-five—and she wasn't looking
down from any great height even though I was sitting and she was standing.

"No?" she queried. "Just what did you do during the war,
Mr. Rousseau?"

It was a dirty question. What was I supposed to have done—rush home and
enlist the minute I heard that serious hostilities had broken out? I didn't
ask. The answer would probably be yes.

On Asgard, the war had always seemed like a distant affair, and it had
been all too easy in that cosmopolitan setting to fall in with the Tetron way
of looking at things. In the eyes of the Tetrax, Earthmen and Salamandrans were
two gangs of barbarians who ought to know better.