She wasn’t in any condition to laugh at the joke, and she looked more annoyed than amused. She wasn’t the maternal type.
“Did you get that bastard android?” she whispered.
“It wasn’t him,” I told her, dully. “It was some other bastard, just using him. He never really had a chance, did he? First the Salamandrans, then the evil masterminds of Anti-Life. Given the opportunity, he’d have been a better man than you or I, but he got all the rough deals that fate could find for him.”
“Did you get him?” She had a one-track mind.
“Yes,” I said. “No clever illusions this time. No mistakes. I blasted all hell out of him. You’d have been proud of me. I got Finn too. And the thing that was pretending to be Tulyar. I got them all, the Star Force way. No ifs and buts… just blood and guts.”
She looked up at me. There wasn’t a trace of hero-worship in her pale blue stare.
“As of now,” I told her, “I’ve resigned. You can keep the medal.”
She smiled faintly.
“You got to the Centre,” she said, “didn’t you?”
I looked around. The lights were back on in the levels, but not here. We were surrounded by darkness, dust, and the dead.
“I got to the Centre,” I agreed. “All the answers are here… and I have all the time in the world to find out what they are.”
It was true, in a way. Our friendly neighbourhood gods would be only too pleased to give me a more leisurely explanation of anything and everything, as soon as someone had put my intestines back together and I was fit to be told. I could have the unedited version of the history of the universe, and all the lessons in life-science I could possibly desire. All the secrets of Asgard the Ark, Asgard the Fortress, and Asgard the Universal Landscape Gardener would be mine for the asking.
I could have long conversations with any god I cared to name, and share classes with Athene of the Isthomi.
Magnifique.
Something deep inside me echoed my ironic cheer. I was not the man I used to be, and I knew that what was lurking now in the darker recesses of my brain might yet trouble my dreams far more than any scary vision of Medusa, even though it was really only me.
Only me!
I had a lot of finding out still to do, and I knew only too well that although my perilous journey to the Centre of Asgard was over, my journey into the depths of my own being had hardly even begun.
About the Author
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.