Asgard's Conquerors. Brian Stableford

up in our cells!”

      “Indeed we have not,” he replied. “Nor do we know what trigger might be necessary to bring it out. Our scientists thought, when they first invented biotechnology, that we had become masters of our own evolution. It is possible that the assumption was premature.”

      “So the garden isn’t in full flower,” I murmured. “We might be just the first humble shoots, peeping up through the spring soil. We haven’t the faintest idea what it is that we’re scheduled to become....or why.”

      “I must repeat my objection to your assumption that the galactic arm has been deliberately seeded for some particular purpose,” said 673-Nisreen. “Your image of godlike alien gardeners, while picturesque, has no evidence to support it. It remains conceivable that some entirely natural process was responsible for the spreading of this genetic material through local space.”

      “Oh sure,” I said. “It was probably a fleet of flying pigs on their annual vacation.” He didn’t get the joke. There isn’t a word in parole for pigs, and even if there had been, it would have been taking coincidence to ridiculous lengths if the Tetrax had used the phrase “pigs might fly” as an expression of absurd improbability.

      Humans came out of their own solar system to find superior aliens already there, in the shape of the Tetrax. It was easy for me to jump to the conclusion that there might be even more superior ones waiting in the wings. The Tetrax had strong ideological reasons for not jumping to any such conclusion. We humans had been anthropocentric in readily assuming that life might have evolved on Earth, making us the product of a special Creation—even though the Tetrax knew better, they had their own anthropocentric, or tetrocentric, tendencies.

      “If there are answers to these questions,” I said, to cover up for my momentary impoliteness, “I think we might find them inside Asgard. There, I think, there are some very good biotechnologists.”

      “I think that you might be right,” said 673-Nisreen. “And if the evolutionary future of your species and mine is yet to unfold from our quiet DNA, then it might well be that in the lower levels of Asgard we might find that potential already displayed.”

      He didn’t seem to find this an overwhelmingly depressing thought, perhaps because his scientific curiosity was sufficient to outweigh his anxieties as a member of a politically ambitious species. I was willing to bet that some of his compatriots couldn’t contemplate the possibility with similar serenity.

      When I left him, I had already begun to toy with scenarios in which Asgard could be made to play some crucial role in my hypothetical galactic gardening business.

      Maybe Asgard was the gardener’s shed. Maybe it was a seed-bank.

      Or maybe it was the combine harvester.

      It didn’t take long for me to get round to looking at the question from the dark and nasty underside.

      Suppose, I told myself, that the galaxy is a garden, and that deep in the heart of Asgard are its gardeners. But just suppose, for a moment, that we aren’t the crop that’s being raised. Suppose we’re only the weeds! And even if we aren’t, what can we possibly expect to happen when we come a-calling on the creatures we hope we might become?

      I asked myself what might happen if a legion of Neanderthal men suddenly turned up on the Earth’s surface, expecting to be invited to the party.

      It seemed a slightly ominous question even then, although I couldn’t imagine at the time how soon it would assume a much more peculiar relevance, and what an awful answer might be implied by the example with which I was to be confronted.