“The Nine not only adopted me, as an informant who could tell them a great deal about the universe outside Asgard; they also began to use the technology by means of which I was created, to construct more humanoid bodies. You called me an android, and I suppose you might think of the scions as androids also, but I do not think that designation is correct in either case. I am a true human, developed from a human egg-cell—albeit in unusual fashion. My new companions are true humanoids too. They were brought to adult form in a matter of months, and though the minds inside their heads are abridged versions of the minds of one or another of the Nine, they are entitled to be considered men and not machines. Because of the manner of their origin, they share just nine names, and distinguish themselves otherwise by number, so that they may know one another as different versions of their parent personalities.”
Again I noted how this made the prospect of a deal between the Nine and the Tetrax look healthy, and I wondered in my suspicious mind just how far the Nine had gone in making preparation for such a deal. The Tetrax had a long history of seductively playing the other galactic races for suckers, and I wasn’t distressed by the thought that they might be due for a strong dose of their own medicine.
“The Nine,” Myrlin went on, “were very disturbed by recent events in the upper layers. The Scarida, apparently, are an exceptional species; though they have not completely avoided the pattern which reduced most of the other transplanted races to savagery, they have managed to transcend their primitivism more rapidly than any of their neighbours. They have multiplied more rapidly, and have continued their expansion beyond their own level. They have met very little opposition until now, and know full well that they face a desperate task now that they have set themselves up in opposition to technologically superior opponents. It may not be easy, though, to persuade them that the limits of their expansion have been reached.
“The Nine knew that the task of forming a community of species out of the three very different factions which are now involved—the Scarid empire, the galactic community, and the levels known to the Nine—would not be an easy one, but they had to face the idea that the entire future of Asgard was at stake, and that they must play a role in the deciding of that future.
“That was the point at which the Nine decided to try a very daring experiment.”
“And that,” I put in, “is where things went seriously wrong?”
He nodded, slowly.
“What did they try to do?”
“They tried to connect themselves up to the software of Asgard itself—to extend themselves beyond the machinery of this particular habitat into the fundamental machinery of the macroworld itself. They projected their mind-group into the network of control systems that is built into the structure. The systems which impinge upon the habitats are, of course, simple ones governing the distribution of heat and light. The Nine presumed, though, that those systems must provide a means of access to further, more complicated systems, probably inhabited by machine- personalities like themselves. They believed that they could make contact with those personalities, by extending their own mind-group into the inner regions of Asgard’s ‘software space.’ ”
“They thought they could set up a hot line to the builders,” I said.
“In essence,” Myrlin agreed. “They hoped that at the very least they might find out about the true extent and nature of Asgard’s electronic ‘mind.’ ”
“Why didn’t it work?” I asked.
“Because the systems into which they tried to project themselves are themselves damaged. The Nine weren’t just sending a message out into the hardware in Asgard’s walls. They were transmitting themselves. All nine of them—because, though distinct, they are essentially inseparable.
“If the systems controlling Asgard had been simple and automatic, those systems would just have become part of the Nine’s extended body. If those systems had their own highly-refined artificial intelligences within them, then contact would have been made—albeit a kind of contact for which you and I have no ready-made analogy. It wouldn’t be like two humanoids meeting at a conference table—more like two immiscible liquids flowing together. The Nine didn’t think there was any real danger in what they were doing, even though they couldn’t know what kind of reception they might get from the intelligences they were trying to contact. They were wrong.”
“What happened?”
“I’m not entirely sure, and the Nine can’t explain it to me. I don’t know whether they were the victim of actual hostility or unfortunate circumstance. But whatever it was they made contact with down there, it went through their electronic selves like a bomb blast, injuring them very badly. They’re not dead, and they’re not quite incapable, but they’re seriously hurt. They may well have lost aspects of their own personalities, and—more ominously—they may have unknowingly picked up parts of other personalities. They’re no longer entirely coherent. Again, it’s difficult to find an analogy, but it’s as if you were to wake up feeling very weird, unable to access large chunks of your memory, occasionally acting without knowing what you were doing and why, maybe hearing voices too—as if your mind were no longer fully in control of itself or your body, and as if there were bits of other minds somehow lodged in your brain.”
I thought about it for a few minutes, trying to figure it all out. It didn’t quite come together to make a coherent picture—I thought I could see what he was getting at, but it was as dim and strange as those not-quite-focused faces in which guise which they had appeared to me. Anyhow, it seemed that our software supermen were no longer as super as they once had been. Which could make things complicated, if their grand plan still involved bringing peace and harmony to the whole of Asgard.
“It’s not at all clear what we can conclude from the Nine’s unfortunate experience,” said Myrlin. “But I’m rather afraid that there are two available ways of looking at it, neither of them encouraging.”
“Go on,” I said.
“If,” he said, emphasizing it heavily to let me know what a big if it was, “the builders of Asgard—or the guiding intelligence which the builders left behind to look after it—is an entity like the Isthomi instead of a humanoid species, then what happened to the Isthomi when they tried to contact it can only be interpreted in two ways. Either it’s hostile—or like everything else in and of this macroworld, it’s badly decayed: mad, senile, or incompetent.
“If the first hypothesis is true, we could all be in deep trouble—you, me, the inhabitants of Asgard, and the inhabitants of the galactic arm. There’s no way we can fight something like that. If the second hypothesis is true, the situation is even worse. All the aforementioned are still in trouble—and so is Asgard itself.”
“Not necessarily,” I countered.
“Oh no,” he said, “not necessarily. But think about this: if the Nine experienced the contact they made as a kind of bomb-blast, which has all but reduced them to helplessness, how do you think the other side experienced it? If’—that big if again—“it did the same to the indigenous systems, it might have done untold damage to Asgard. And you know what has to be in the middle of Asgard, to produce the energy that runs all the levels, don’t you?”
I did indeed. At the physical centre of Asgard, whatever was wrapped around it, there had to be a little star. The biggest artificial fusion reactor in the known universe.
“And you think . . . ?” I began.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I do think that we’d better make every effort to find out.”
27
Later, Myrlin had to leave. It was time for 994-Tulyar to awake, and he wanted to be there, in order to begin the lengthy business of explanation all over again. He wanted to put Tulyar into direct contact with the Nine as soon as possible, so that Tulyar could begin the work of bringing peace and harmony to the upper levels.