I realised that my newfound interestingness was not entirely determined by my experience in the levels.
“The people who once inhabited levels one, two, and three were humanoid,” I pointed out. “We’ve always known that. There’s no reason to be particularly surprised.”
“Perhaps not,” said the Tetron. “It is possible that the coincidence can now be turned to our advantage. Colonel . Lear could certainly be mistaken for one of the aliens, and so could you, Star-Captain Rousseau. This may assist in the gathering of intelligence. It might conceivably be the case that the invaders would be more ready to make contact with a race which resembles them so very closely than with the Tetrax, who unhappily do not.”
It’s difficult to import subtle inflections into pan-galactic parole, but he managed to make the word “unhappily” sound ironically insincere. What he was implying was that the invaders were barbarians just like us, and would probably have more in common with us than with civilized and cultured folk like the Tetrax.
“Is that why we’re here—to make contact?” asked Susarma Lear, bluntly, in parole that sounded coarse even by human standards.
1125-Camina intervened, quickly but smoothly. “It is our considered opinion that your group should attempt to make contact only if the circumstances seem very favourable. Our own diplomats, aided by members of several races who resemble the invaders closely, are making overt attempts to open a dialogue. Mr. Valdavia will be able to assist us, and he has kindly offered to do so. What we ask of you, if you are willing to help, is that you should help us to reopen channels of communication with the Tetrax in the city. We need the information which they have been gathering since our links were cut, and it appears that we will need them to act as intermediaries in communicating with the invaders.”
I was trying hard to read between the lines, to judge how anxious she was, and about what. I thought her words overlaid a real sense of urgency, and I guessed that what was worrying the Tetrax was the fear that this affair might not have finished yet—that there might be manpower enough and firepower enough in Asgard’s depths to allow the macroworld’s inhabitants to carry their campaign out into the star-worlds. I guessed that they were afraid that the invaders wouldn’t ever start talking peace, but would instead erupt into the galaxy, guns ablaze, in exactly the same fashion as they had erupted into Skychain City.
“Whose orders are we under, once we’re down?” asked the colonel, again defying Valdavia’s suggestions by being brutally frank. The diplomat looked annoyed, but she ignored him.
“994-Tulyar will direct operations,” replied the female Tetron. “He has lived on the surface of Asgard for some years, and knows the city well. Your own Star Force personnel will of course be under your command, but we respectfully ask that you take no action without careful consultation with 994-Tulyar.”
Or, to put it another way, you do as this guy tells you. Susarma Lear didn’t challenge the position.
“And what sort of equipment are we taking down?” she asked.
1125-Camina was sharp enough to know that “equipment” was a euphemism for guns. “We do not consider the circumstances appropriate for the carrying of weapons,” she replied. “Our principal objective is to establish friendly relations with the invaders, and your mission is a means to that end. We are determined to make no hostile moves. You should make every attempt to operate in secret, without attracting the attention of the invaders and certainly without trying to kill any of them.”
I was slightly surprised when Susarma Lear just nodded, keeping her face quite straight. Valdavia must have warned her that the Tetrax would take this stand, and had presumably instructed her not to protest. She’d already made an effort to show that she might take an independent line if necessary, but she was a colonel now, and colonels have to be extra-careful about expressing their displeasure openly. She had her orders, and she knew that in the end she had to take whatever crap the Tetrax cared to hand out. One more heroic sacrifice for the cause of Mother Earth.
I wasn’t a colonel. That meant I didn’t have a voice, let alone an opinion. I could make myself heard some other time.
“The interests of both our races—of the entire galactic community—are identical in this matter,” added 871- Alpheus, who seemed to be there simply as a yes-man.
My old friend 74-Scarion, who was a yes-man of an even lower order, echoed him with the observation: “It is our duty to serve as we may.”
I wasn’t quite sure how to translate that into ordinary language, but it sounded to me like: “We’re expendable, pal—you and me both—and we don’t have a choice.” I had a feeling he might be right. I gave him a little smile, but I don’t suppose he understood it.
“Ideally,” said 1125-Camina, now making a show of addressing herself to Valdavia, “we would like to bring some of our people out of the city, and establish routes by which they could go back and forth unobserved. No doubt the airlocks which provide the principal means of egress are heavily guarded, but it should not be too difficult to find covert points of entry into the lower levels.”
The purpose of this clumsy speech was simply to set up a question.
“Could that be done?” Valadavia asked me.
I shrugged my shoulders. “The city sprawls a bit in the lower regions,” I said. “The C.R.E. was always reclaiming more space. They opened up huge factory-fields down there to produce food for the city, so there’s a lot of ground for the defenders to cover. The locks are on the surface—down below, the interface between the city’s basements and the cold habitats is an extensive and untidy web of pressurized plastic bubbles. Some of the plugs are in dark corners. We couldn’t cut in directly without triggering leak-alarms, but if we built our own plastic wall behind us and then pressurized, we could get in. They can’t have posted guards everywhere, but they’ll presumably be running patrols. What about the C.R.E. people in outlying pockets, though— haven’t they been asked to try it? They’d have all the right equipment ready to hand.”
“We have been reluctant to order any major project of that kind,” 994-Tulyar replied. “In any case, the groups which were not captured were a long way from the city—all but two are actually in different cave-systems. We thought it best not to draw attention to the one closest to Skychain City until we could bring in reinforcements.”
That translated as: “No way—we were waiting for you suckers.”
“One further aspect of your mission,” added 1125- Camina, “will be to carry various sophisticated surveillance devices into the city, so that we can continue to gather intelligence of what is happening there even if all else fails. I believe that you have a man with you who has experience of the city, and who has some training in the use of surveillance devices.”
I didn’t immediately cotton on to what she meant, and was slightly distracted by the implications of her off-hand remark about all else failing. Then I realised that she must be talking about John Finn, and remembered what he’d said about using his time on Asgard to learn something about Tetron “security systems.” I was about to make a comment on that, but I was interrupted before I had the chance.
“When do we leave?” demanded the colonel, showing once again her marvelous talent for bulldozing through the bureaucratic niceties.
“As soon as possible,” 994-Tulyar told her. “We have already made the necessary preparations here. I am at your disposal. When your men are ready. ...”