Asgard's Secret Read Online Free Page A

us again, if you prefer."
    "Who
recommended me to you?" I asked.
    "We have
friends in the Co-ordinated Research Establishment. We know about the offer
they made to you yesterday—an insult, to a man of your quality. We will pay you
more generously, and I believe that you will find the work far more to your
liking."
    Lema had finished
studying my shelves. He hadn't touched anything, but he seemed satisfied that
he had found what he was looking for.
    "I have to
consider all the offers I've received," I told him. "If you leave
your employer's name and number, I'll call him when I've made a decision."
    There are some
races—or, at least, some kinds of persons— who don't recognise the propriety of
a diplomatic refusal. In a place like Skychain City, they're supposed to put
such idiosyncrasies aside, never taking offence at anything short of a kick in
the balls—but they're free to let their displeasure show, if they care to.
    Heleb looked me in
the eye for less than a second. If I hadn't known what I knew about Spirellans,
I'd have thought nothing of it, but I knew enough to feel a sinking sensation
in the pit of my stomach.
    "Thank you for
giving my offer consideration," he said, insincerely. "I hope to hear
from you in due course."
    If he'd been human,
or even Tetron, I'd probably have made a smart remark about not holding his
breath. Instead, I said: "It's extremely kind of you to think of me. I'm
very grateful. You can be sure that I'll give your offer sympathetic
consideration—but I owe it to everyone who has made me
    an offer to weigh their proposals very
carefully."
    He handed me a card
which had a number scrawled on it. Spirellan handwriting isn't nearly as neat
as Spirellan speech, but Tetron numbers are easy to distinguish from one
another.
    "Your
employer's?" I asked.
    "It is my own
number," he told me. It was the third time he'd passed up an open
invitation to tell me who his employer was, and he had to know that I had taken
due note of the fact.
    "Thank
you," I said, again.
    When I'd closed the
door behind them I realised that my heart was hammering. Without knowing
exactly why, I was scared. That had been Heleb's doing; he had intended to scare me.
    I sat down on the
bed and wondered what fate had against me. If Heleb really wanted me to join
his expedition, he wasn't going to take my refusal quite as politely as he'd
made his offer.

4
    I felt in desperate need of a sympathetic
ear and a little moral support, so I decided to go see Saul Lyndrach and take a
look at the mysterious Myrlin.
    Unfortunately, Saul
wasn't home. Like me, he rented a cell in a honeycomb singlestack—one of a
couple of hundred hastily erected by the Tetrax when they'd first built the
base that had grown into Skychain City. The Mercatan building supervisor hadn't
seen him go out and hadn't the slightest idea when he'd be back, but that was
only to be expected. The doorman did go out of his way to mention the giant
he'd seen Saul with the previous day, though.
    "What
giant?" I queried. Most starfaring humanoids are much the same size as
humans—it's a matter of the pressures of convergent evolution in DNA-based
Gaia-clone ecospheres—but there were a couple of species with representatives
on Asgard which routinely grew to two metres ten, so a singlestack supervisor
wasn't likely to use the word "giant" lightly.
    "A
guest," the Mercatan told me, in stilted parole. "The foolish fellow
at Immigration Control must have classified him as human by mistake, perhaps
because of his nose. Mr. Lyndrach is probably trying to sort out the error, but
you know how officious these Tetrax are. They never admit that they might have
made a mistake."
    Saul wasn't far
short of two metres tall himself. By Mercatan standards, he was a giant. If Myrlin seemed like a giant compared with Saul, he had to be really big—but he'd told me over the phone that he was human. He spoke English, and
had claimed to be able to speak Russian and Chinese as well. If he