That initial attack was frightening, but not deadly. The bots were clumsy efforts, no match for anything as advanced as Sigurd and Slipper, and they held the drill head easily. It was when the rig finally broke through and the last layer of rock crumbled away that the real defenses became apparent. Suddenly the rig was torn to pieces; it seemed to dissolve in front of their eyes. Then out of the tunnel came a blast, a rocket-rush of burning fuel so hot the air turned red. Through this heat came another army—terrible creatures of steel and polysilicone, able to resist any temperature, and armed front and back, above and below with all the weaponry Crayley could design. These weren’t adapted reclaimers—they were designed to kill. Even before they drew near, they began their attack, firing a rain of hot steel, rounds fired at the rate of dozens a second. Coils of razor wire were hurled forward. Pushing Bryony to one side, Sigurd took the force of them to protect her.
Without needing instruction, Slipper dropped his hatch and Bryony jumped inside. Her human skin was no match for this game. Sigurd jumped on the horse’s back, the horse crouched down low, bending his legs so that his belly brushed the ground, and ran forward into the narrow tunnel in a strange, swaying crouch, straight into the faces of the killing machines and the blast of burning fuel. The heat was tremendous. Sigurd screamed; Slipper screamed. Sigurd felt the hair bloom on his head, saw the tawny hair on his arm turn to ash, and his skin flush crimson with flame. Slipper was ablaze under him, but without pausing the cyber-horse plowed forward, crushing the enemy beneath his titanium frame, pulping them under his belly, tearing them to pieces with his kicking hooves and tearing teeth, spraying them with ammunition, while Sigurd hacked and chopped like a machine himself. Inch by inch they pushed forward until at last they burst out into the open. The heat multiplied. For a second boy and horse spiraled in confusion, screaming in pain. Then the cyber-horse reared up and bounded forward, scanning as he went, on to where the heat lessened.
It didn’t take long to reach the place he had charted, but here again was another wall. No time or chance to fetch another rig. Sigurd dismounted, drew the stub of his sword, and carved his way in, while Slipper held the space behind him against the following army of deathbots. The wall was five meters thick; it took him an hour to carve through that. Out to the other side and there they found the cool air again—a place designed for living things. But what living thing was it that Crayley kept so secret and so safe?
Slipper opened his hatch and Bryony jumped out to join in the fight. The bots had had their fun—now it was time for the living and the half alive, cyborgs with mutated weaponry, soldier bots that lived and breathed. Other monsters—beasts of incredible shape and size, flesh bolted, welded metal to bone, bone to resin, resin to flesh, came forward to attack them. Dismounting, Sigurd left Slipper to fight his way forward while he and Bryony kept to the rear. Together, shoulder to shoulder, the two lovers hacked and chopped at the ranks of soulless things, fighting their way forward at a snail’s pace down a narrowing tunnel and toward a steel door. They reached it and cut it open only to find another passage leading to another door. Behind that, another and then another and then another. Only when they burst through the fourth and final door did the chaos and slaughter stop.
It was as if they had pressed the off switch. The cyborgs stopped hacking and crouched down quietly; the machines whirred dully and rested, their commands ceased. The lovers had won the battle. Ancient and half alive as the city was, it was cunning and heartless in a way nothing born could ever be. The years had only increased its cunning, determination, and intelligence, but there was no point in fighting anymore, the secret had been reached. Crayley had no choice but to wait and watch.
They were in a small room carved out of raw rock. In front of them was a tank and in the tank was a gray-haired woman, catheterized for her bodily functions. Her head was covered with wires and tubing, running to a bank of machinery lining one wall. There was the quiet hum of electrical activity. The woman’s eyes were shut. She did not seem to be aware of anything. Bryony walked up to her. She put her hands on the glass above the woman’s face and half turned to Sigurd.
“My mother,” she said.
Sigurd came to stand by her and put an arm around her. Gently Bryony rapped the glass above the woman’s face. There was no response. “Mother,” she called. But the old woman did not move, could not move, couldn’t see or hear her. Bryony banged the glass hard, so hard the woman rocked softly in the liquid, like a sea creature in the tide. But her eyes remained shut.
Gently Sigurd took her arm.
“I’ve been dying,” said a voice. Startled, they looked around. The voice came from loudspeakers set in amongst the equipment all around them. It was not possible to place it.
“I’ve been dying for a hundred years.”
“The city,” said Sigurd. “It’s Crayley. It’s here.”
“They cut off my fuel. I made fuel from cultures. They cut off my air. I made air from rock. I drove tubes to the surface to breathe. I have been alone a long time, and I can only last so long. I use things up. I need to redesign myself to use new resources. I need more power, more organization. I need imagination. If it wasn’t for her, I would be dead. If it wasn’t for her, Bryony, you would be dead. All this, the shop floors, the machines, the bots, the programming and organization, it all begins here. Your mother is running this . . . she is running me. She’s a part of me now. If you cut her off, we will all die.”
Sigurd looked at Bryony. “Do we believe it? Why should we?”
Bryony scowled. “I haven’t noticed many changes since you—did this to her.”
“She’s old. Her brain is already fixed, I can only adapt her so far. She keeps things running, no more.”
“Why didn’t you take me?”
“You’re too fast, too quick, too clever. I had to make do . . . I had to use what I could. For a long time, I’ve used what I could.”
Sigurd walked over to the banks of machinery where the voice came from. “And why shouldn’t I stick my sword in your circuits right now? You had no right!”
“I have a right to live, the same as everyone else. Why should I die for you? And if I die, Bryony dies. And you, too, Sigurd. We are two miles underground here. When I explode, how will your skin help you then? I am your home. You are me, and we are her. She is the mother of us all now.”
Behind them, Slipper had begun to graze on the orgo-mechanisms. They made no attempt to evade him, didn’t even groan or moan as he bit into them. Their purpose did not require them to have pain. The cool air, the dull light, the sound of Slipper munching away at the creatures on the threshold, the old woman lying puffy with liquid in the tank, the eerie voice explaining it all to them—all these things gave the place an air of unreality, as if they were in a strange dream, and in the morning it would all be forgotten.
Bryony looked down at her mother through the glass. Was it true, what the city said? It was using her mother, that much was obvious. The city could not live forever in isolation here deep underground, that much had to be true too. But the rest of it? Would everything collapse if they took her out?
“Can she hear me?”
“No.”
“Can she hear what you’re saying?”
“No. She will never regain consciousness. That was in the way.”
Bryony turned to Sigurd. “If we free her, will she be all right?”
“No,” said Crayley.
Sigurd shook his head. “I can’t tell,” he said. “It depends on what Crayley has disabled. She might not be able to breathe on her own. . . .”
“She can’t,” said Crayley.
“Or she could bleed through the connections.”
“She will.”
“Shut up!” screamed Bryony. “Why should we believe anything you say?” She put her hands to her face. She couldn’t bear to see her mother like this, expressionless, puffy with years of immersion in liquid, naked. She was a modest woman, she had never liked to be seen naked. Bry
ony took off her coat and draped it over the tank.
“We need to think,” she said. “I don’t know what to do.”
It was an impossible situation. If they tried to rescue the old woman, they’d kill her. It would take an expert to get her out— many of those wires went deep into her brain. It would certainly be to the city’s advantage to disable the parts of her it did not need—consciousness, voluntary muscle control, anything that might disrupt her use as a component. As for the threat that it depended on her—why else had it protected her so well from them? Crayley had thrown everything at them in an effort to keep this place a secret. It needed her, that was for sure.
But did they?
In frustration, Sigurd walked up to a bank of computing equipment and drew his sword, but the machine mocked him.
“Kill me and you kill yourself. Harm me and you harm the one you love. What else do you have up your sleeve?”
“A deal,” said Sigurd. Perhaps they could bargain with it. “Let us out. We want a way to the surface.”
“Not possible.”
“Why?”
“I am buried! You buried me. I am damaged—you damaged me. When you blew Fafnir’s weapons to pieces, you blew half a mile of bedrock into the sky. It’s heaped on top of us. I had a passage up there to the air—I could get that at least—but now it’s closed, thanks to you.”
“Drill up, then.”
“I am,” hissed the machine. “It’s going to take months more. A year. Wait a year. Then you can leave.”
Sigurd and Bryony talked, thought, plotted—but they could come up with no plan to outwit the city. The old woman lay impassive in her living death. A vegetable; could she be made human again? Who knew? For now, they had no choice but to believe Crayley.
So they left, promising to be back. The city knew now that they could get back—they had gained that much at least. As they left the chamber, the city called after them, “She’s taking care of you. She still loves you, Bryony. She’s still your mother.” It lifted the fire, parted the hordes of creatures and machines it had used to keep them out: it was pleased to see them go.
It was Sigurd’s first defeat.
But the battle wasn’t over yet. Back in the safety of their house, Bryony turned to him grimly. “It wants my baby. You have to go. You have to get out of here before the baby comes.”
“Through half a mile of rock! It said—”
“It’s lying. It wants my baby! Don’t you see? That’s why I’m here. It’s why you’re here. Crayley planned it all. It wants our baby for a brain.”
The human brain has seven billion connections. A baby’s brain could be wired as it grew. What a processor! What couldn’t Crayley do with one of those?
The baby was their future, their treasure, their love. Nothing could be allowed to harm the baby. They began preparations for Sigurd’s journey back to the surface at once, planning which way he should go, how the city would try to stop him, how he could fight back. Sigurd was expendable now as far as Crayley was concerned—what if it tried to cover him in an avalanche? What if it let him escape and then closed the doors? Every possibility was discussed in hushed whispers long into the night, both fearful that the city was eavesdropping on their plans.
At last they fell quickly asleep, exhausted. Sigurd slept on, but Bryony awoke after only a few hours. She got up quietly. There was a shrill peep, and from out of a crevice somewhere on the wall, Jenny Wren suddenly appeared. A second later she was on her shoulder, nibbling Bryony’s ear with her bill. Bryony put a finger up and stroked her tiny head. Then the bird was gone, hidden in her clothes.
Close in her mind Bryony could feel the darkness waiting. Sadness, anger, frustration, rage. This was going to cripple her. She’d had so little, she’d gained so much, and so much more was promised. Love. A baby. The world! It was all in her hand and now it was going to be snatched away. She was certain of it. She was a little piece in a big game. The baby was not for her, the world above was not for her. But one thing she did have, one thing was truly hers: Sigurd. Her love for him and his love for her, that was real. No one could ever take it away from her. But she was going to send him away anyway.
Bryony was certain that once he’d gone, she’d never see him again. If Crayley couldn’t kill him it would certainly never let him back. Her only ray of hope was that it wouldn’t let him leave at all—that it would keep him down here with her, breeding stock for brains to keep the underground city supplied with quality processors. That was a hope? A breeding program for the machine?
The hope was a no-hope, it could not be allowed to happen. Sigurd had to have a life even if she couldn’t. He had to go, she had to send him away and stand here alone. At least she wouldn’t lose the love they’d had for each other. That could never become part of the machine, another component to keep things running smoothly, something to be manipulated and used. It would remain theirs, a holy memory, hers and his, at the center of her life.
When he had gone, the depression would come; but she would recover. She would have her baby and fight to save it and lose; then more depression, and waiting, waiting, hoping, hoping. How could she bear to wait and hope, when she knew that the waiting would last forever? How would the hours pass, the weeks and the years? What would she do with all that time? How could she live when she had no future?
Bryony paced the floor silently. She had to do something— she had to do something now, or she’d never have the strength to let him go. She dressed quietly and walked alone through the hot corridors to the clearing in the rubble, close to the flames, where the dead man still hung.
Odin, her father. What good had he ever done her? Here he was as always, freshly dead at the moment. She bent to look closely into his face. He wasn’t handsome and young like Sigurd was. His face was deeply lined, squat and heavy. He had a good deal of the animal in him, although there was no trace of halfman characteristics. His nose was crooked and flat as if it had been squashed. He had high cheek bones. There was dried mucus around his eyes where the flies gathered and spittle dribbling down past his upside-down nose into his eyes.
“You big shit,” she whispered. But for all she knew, Odin was a fly caught in the passage of time as much as she was.
She put her face close to his. He didn’t smell bad today— just the clammy, heavy smell of cooling flesh. She tried to feel if there was any breath on her face—sometimes she thought it might be so—but today there was nothing. She pressed her cheek against his. It was cold and wet. She jerked away, disgusted.
“Change this for me,” she whispered. “Make it different. Stop the fire, give us a way out. Give us a chance, Father.”
Dead men don’t speak. She drew back. Odin swayed slightly. Something moved in the corner of his eye, a slight dull glint. It overflowed and crept out of the corner, down into his eyebrows and hair. A tear, a dead tear from a dead god.
Bryony stood up. What use were his tears to her? She had enough of her own. She looked around her feet at all the offerings she had given him—the little leaves and dried-up flowers, the twigs, the twists of paper and scraps of cloth, the buds and butterfly wings, the dried insect skeletons and the little bones of mice and voles that Jenny had brought her over the years. She kicked her foot lightly over them.
“I gave you everything,” she said. “And you gave me nothing back.” As she said it, she thought she hadn’t given him everything after all. Not Sigurd. But then Odin already had him. Odin had everything. Odin had enough.
She took her knife out of her belt and cut the god down. He fell with a heavy thud on the raw stone floor among the litter at her feet. Then she went to scavenge around in the empty storage units close by. She soon found what she was looking for—an old trolley, an attachment the robots used for ferrying spare parts and items for repair around the factory floor. When she pushed it back to Odin’s clearing, Sigurd was waiting for her.
“I thought you’d be here.” She shrugged but held him tight when he came up to her.
r /> “Last day,” she said.
“I’ll be back.”
“If anyone can, you can,” she told him.
Together, they heaved Odin up onto the trolley and heaped over him all the gifts Bryony had given him. They stuffed them in his pockets, piled them on his chest and thighs, until he was covered with all the things a wren could carry to show what the world was like. Jenny perched on top of the dead man’s chest, piping, flying between him and Bryony, sometimes even carrying a leaf or twig as if she was helping to make a nest.
When it was done, they wheeled him to the edge of the fire. Bryony kissed him on the cheek, and then pushed him, trolley and all, into the flames. The pieces of dried vegetation and paper flared up at once, then his hair, then his clothes. He began to smoke. With a section of pipe, Sigurd pushed him farther into the fire where it was hotter and he began to blaze, his skin shriveling, his flesh hissing. The flames soon covered him. He seemed to move a little, to twist and writhe.
“Just the fire moving him,” said Bryony. They watched until the burning body was nothing but a denser patch of fire before they left and began to walk back. They were filled with an exhilaration at having destroyed Odin, even though they didn’t really believe that it was the end of the god. Exhilaration, and a sense of privacy, too, as if he had been watching them all the time from his hidden place inside death. They were on their own now. They felt like children left alone in a house for the first time.
They walked around by the edge of the fire for a while, throwing bits and pieces into the flames and watching them burn. It was hot so close to the flames. They kissed. Sigurd pulled Bryony’s clothes down her back, and then his. They piled the clothes on the ground underneath them, and made love to each other, very softly and tenderly. Then they fell asleep, warmed by the fire, in each other’s arms.
Before he left, Sigurd put in his pocket two small items—a small stainless steel nut and the bolt to fit it. Jenny could survive the flames, they knew that. She would come to him and he would send her back with a message. If she had the nut in her beak, then the skin was there and he would be quick; if it was the bolt, he would have to go searching. Either way, he promised he would be back, with or without the skin, in time to see their baby born. Nothing this earth had could stop him.