Asgard's Secret: The Asgard Trilogy, Book One. Brian Stableford

really like to help,” he assured me, “but my hands are tied.”

      “And your fat ass is bolted to your well-upholstered chair,” I retorted. “There are two hundred humans on Asgard, Alex—some of them have got to be capable of caring about Saul, if not about me. If you can find him before my time’s up—or Myrlin the jolly giant—you might be able to get something going. If the Tetrax can’t find them, somebody must be hiding them, and the somebody is far more likely to be human than alien. You have to find them, and persuade them to tell the Tetrax what’s going on.”

      “Do you think I’m some kind of miracle-worker?” he complained.

      “Nothing less will do,” I assured him. “A miracle-worker is what I need.”

      “Well, I’m not,” he informed me, unnecessarily. “I’ll ask around, but I’m warning you, Rousseau—if this business ends up harming my position in the C.R.E., I’m going to be extremely annoyed.”

      “Well, if I don’t end up dead, I’ll just have to carry that on my conscience.”

      “You’re not much of a diplomat, are you?” he came back, radiating wounded vanity. “Murderer or not, it’s people like you that get the human species a bad name. No wonder we get embroiled in stupid wars. We did win, by the way, insofar as either side can be said to have won. The Salamandrans came off far worse than we did, at any rate. It’ll take us centuries to live it down, of course, even though they started it—but at least it wasn’t out homeworld that was devastated. They’re going to need our help now, just to avoid extinction. Compared with the amount of blood the whole race has on its hands, your innocence of the death of a single Sleath is a minor matter.”

      “Not to me,” I told him, through gritted teeth. I was being as diplomatic as I possibly could.

      “We’re all complicit in near-genocide, Michael,” he told me, morosely. “None of us can avoid that stain. It’s a whole-species crime. You and I and our two hundred compatriots might be a very long way from Earth—further, I suppose, than anyone else—and you and I, at least, might have set off from home before the war even began, but we’re still guilty. There’s no way around that.”

      I hung up on him, figuring that either he would do what I’d asked him to do or he wouldn’t, and that, either way, he was the least likely miracle-worker I’d ever met in my entire not-quite-guilt-free life.

      There was no mad rush to buy me out that day. Nor was there any news of Saul Lyndrach or mysterious Myrlin. The hours of grace remaining to me ticked inexorably by, and the only manifest improvement in my situation was the slight amendment to Jacinthe Siani’s contract that 238-Zenatta negotiated on my behalf.

      The changes were cosmetic, of course; I knew as well as the Kythnan did that my chances of collecting a share of Amara Guur’s profits were a good deal slimmer than a snowball’s in hell.

      I seriously considered the alternative, but I couldn’t persuade myself of it merits. Amara Guur might be a murderous crook, but he wanted me conscious as well as alive and healthy, at least in the short term. While he still needed me, I had a chance to outwit him, and maybe even get my own back.

      I knew that I’d have to sign Jacinthe Siani’s contract in the end, but I was determined to drag it out as long as I could.