Bloodsong

  At the time I let myself believe her. Why shouldn’t she get me all these things? Perhaps she was as lonely as I was. She was a city. She needed people too.

  Afterward when I could think again I realized what it was about. Backup. Every machine has backup. It’s only us poor animals that have just one brain. Yes, there would be another man, because Crayley wanted more babies. She wanted a hundred babies. Why not? What a processor that would be! But there would be no Sigurd. She would never let Sigurd back down here. Sigurd was dangerous.

  All lies. Don’t you think?

  And here he was. Another man.

  And that’s why I call it her.

  “Crayley can be killed,” I said. I was thinking, I’ll take you to your death, King Gunar. I was part of the system. I will never be part of the system! This man would die, a hundred men would die and so would I, before I would give her another one of my babies.

  “Show me.”

  “And what about me?” I asked. “What’s in it for me?”

  He licked his lips and glanced away. He smiled cautiously. Again, not like Sigurd, who could hide nothing of himself. “You can come back with me, if you like. Odin’s daughter, aren’t you?”

  “He’s not much of a father.”

  “I’m a king.” He nodded. I knew what he meant. Him and me; man and woman.

  I just laughed. “What sort of a wife would I make, King Gunar? You don’t even know me.”

  He frowned. “Love is something people can learn.” He nodded again. He believed it. Well, who knows? Why shouldn’t it be like that?

  “If you’re willing,” he said.

  I sighed.

  “If you can kill Crayley I’ll come to the surface with you. And maybe I’ll be yours. We’ll see.”

  He nodded, satisfied.

  “We’ll go a-hunting then,” I said. So that was how it would be; either he would kill Crayley or Crayley would kill him. I never used the word “test”; but I was thinking, If he can do this, then he is as much a man as Sigurd. I have tasted excellence; only excellence will do.

  On the other hand, if he dares kill Sigurd’s daughter, maybe I will have no taste for him. Perhaps I’ll kill him myself after all. . . .

  “Take me away from all this,” I said. I was as crooked as he was. Kill the city and I’m yours. Kill my daughter and you’re dead.

  Excellence, yes. And it must be burnished with hate.

  Slipper danced impatiently. The clone reached down and offered Bryony his hand but she drew back. She began to tell him what he should watch out for, what sort of dangers the city had waiting for them.

  The clone listened curiously. Every word she told him he already knew, but his mind had no place for any of it. Déjà vu at every word; the unfamiliar feeling familiar. He wanted to kiss her, stroke her hair. He wanted to tell her things . . . things he’d never known.

  He gestured impatiently for her to climb up behind him.

  “I have to tell you how to get there,” she complained, but he shook his head.

  “Speak as we ride,” he growled. He bent down and seized her hand. As he did so, his gaze fixed on a small band shining on her finger.

  “Where did you get that?” he demanded.

  “It’s mine,” said Bryony startled, as if he was accusing her of stealing it. She tried to pull her hand back, but he held her in an unflinching grip.

  “May I see it? I know that ring. Give it to me. I’ve come down here to rescue you. A token . . .”

  “It’s mine, I said it’s mine,” insisted Bryony. She tugged but his grip was set in stone. The man glanced briefly at her, and then calmly slid it from her finger while holding on to her hand with his implacable grip.

  “My ring! Give it back!”

  “It’s only a little thing. I can give you better jewels by the armful,” said the clone. Then he heaved and swung her up into the seat behind him. Bryony was outraged. He had stolen her ring—her only possession, her love-ring from Sigurd. But Sigurd wasn’t here. For a second she considered killing this Gunar, if she could. He was even stronger than Sigurd had been. She was squeezed up tight against him on Slipper, she could feel his back against her belly. So close! He turned and their eyes locked again. The eyes, gateway to the soul. So close—just a kiss away. There was another moment of desperate yearning. Do you believe in love at first sight? Perhaps you already met. Perhaps you are two halves of the same thing. They were ignorant, but their hearts knew the truth.

  He had stolen her ring. The clone looked away.

  “Ha!” he yelled, and Slipper leapt forward, dashing along the corridors and alleyways toward the city’s heart. Behind him, a skin’s breadth away, Bryony wrapped her arms around his waist and groaned. Rage, yearning, and confusion fought inside her; she hardly knew where she was. A tear squeezed out of her eyelid. If she had been facing him, she would have seen tears in his eyes, too. What manner of a monster was she that she could fall so utterly in love again so soon? As for the clone, he had no idea why he had taken the ring. It was a cruel, petty thing to do, unlike him. He told himself he would give it back to her later, but he never did.

  He reached behind and handed her a pair of short, stubby automatic guns.

  “Soon,” he yelled.

  Bryony took the guns and stared at his broad back in amazement. They were going the right way; he even knew what was coming. How did he know so much? From one second to the next, she didn’t know whether she wanted to cover him with kisses or throw him off his horse and trample him into the cinders. She grasped his shoulder and felt the muscle and bone. Thin—nothing like her Sigurd.

  “Where did you get this beast?” she asked.

  The man glanced at her over his shoulder. “Someone loaned it to me,” he said.

  Bryony’s heart jumped. “His name?”

  Again the clone glanced back, and licked his lips.

  “Sigurd Volson.”

  Bryony felt as if the hand of death had touched her heart.

  “Where is he?” she whispered.

  “Waiting for my safe return.”

  “He told you about me,” she whispered.

  The rider looked straight on. Slipper was picking up speed, although the obstacles in their way were increasing. He leapt from side to side like a rabbit.

  “Sigurd knows nothing of you,” he said finally.

  “He said nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “But I . . .”

  “I told you, he knows nothing about you!” Gunar screamed. Bryony shrank back.

  “Is everyone like you up there? All men . . . ?” she asked tentatively.

  “Not all men are kings,” said Gunar eagerly, glancing over at her.

  Boasting again; cheap. Sigurd never boasted, he had no need to. Sigurd in Gunar’s shape was boasting for his friend, but his hopeless openness made it look foolish. Deceit was one thing he was not good at.

  So—Sigurd was still alive. He had lent Gunar Slipper. And, thought Bryony, this Gunar was lying again: Of course Sigurd had mentioned her. In fact he had told him everything—where to go and what to say and how to win her, because if she fell in love with another man he owed her nothing, he was free. He was not dead; he had betrayed her. He had come upon her like a dream, promised her the world, and then betrayed her— handed her on like meat on a plate to another man. She did not yet know what to make of this Gunar, so like and so unlike Sigurd. Maybe she would kill him. Maybe she would never be able to forgive him for not being Sigurd. She vowed this, though: She would never love him, even though her heart yearned for it. Was it possible to murder love? What a self-mutilation that would be!

  When you have been so badly hurt for so long, Bryony thought, then hurt becomes your life. Was that all she had? Pain, and the promise of more pain?

  And who cared if it was?

  So they darted across the halls of fire and rage that protected the brain of Crayley. Now the creatures came—the humanheaded rats, the snake people, the suicide mice, the machin
es. The clone knew how to kill the creatures, each different type; Bryony marveled at how his arm moved like Sigurd’s, how his thoughts worked like Sigurd’s. It must be a strange world up there where men looked so different but behaved the same, and where knowledge and perhaps even love were things they held in common.

  He fought like a demon! Bryony began to believe that they would reach Beatrice and kill her after all.

  When the fire grew too hot Bryony had to be stowed away in the hold, wrapped up in the other part of the dragon’s skin. The clone put on the unneeded headpiece to his own suit, to maintain the deception. Then he slammed the door on her. Humiliated in the horse’s belly she bit her lip and tried not to think about Sigurd, how he was trying to give her away; or how they were riding out to kill her daughter.

  On they rode, stopping only to kill. The clone had the sword out now, but Bryony could not see it, trapped in Slipper’s hold. Against tanks and fire and viruses, against bombs and soldiers and robots, Crayley could fight, but before Odin’s gift, there was no defense. As they got closer, back into the cooler areas it needed for its higher functions, Crayley at last understood that there was real danger inside itself, and it began to beg. The clone heard, but did not understand. Why did the city call out for mother? What mother could give birth to this monster? Why did it weep in the voice of a baby girl?

  “Mother—help me, please. Keep him away! Keep him back! Don’t hurt us, don’t hurt us!”

  It struck a feverish shiver in his skull to hear that. The words meant everything—and nothing. Below him, in the hold, Bryony heard it all and began beating with her hands against the sides of the horse, but the clone understood nothing but that this place had to die.

  The city howled in terror as they swung a corner close to the room where Beatrice was kept.

  “Mother! Please . . .”

  “What does it mean?” he screamed, but he could not hear her reply. He goaded Slipper forward into the quiet place at the center of things, where Crayley kept its consciousness.

  There was a moment of stillness. Slipper’s belly opened and Bryony tumbled out into the neon-lit room. She got to her feet and in the pale blue light saw her daughter again. She was sitting up now, under the crystal clear liquid, her hair floating like weed. She seemed to have grown gills, feathery blood vessels on the sides of her neck. Her legs were out straight in front of her, and she was twisting to one side to watch them.

  She had his face.

  “Mother!” begged the child. “Mother—what does he want?” The child—she was still just a baby—looked at her fearfully. Under the liquid, her mouth moved but her voice came out of speakers on the tank. Bryony turned to the clone and gave him a terrible grin. How much of this was her daughter, how much was it Crayley playing tricks? Even if it was nothing more than a box of tricks, an illusionist’s play, it was better than no daughter at all.

  “She’s . . .”

  “Don’t let him hurt me, Mummy,” pleaded the child, and sobbed.

  Bryony looked at the clone, who stared at the strange girl with . . . what was that expression? Disgust? Tenderness?

  “Your daughter,” he said. His face trembled.

  “Mummy!”

  “She’s been turned into a fucking component! She’s just . . .” The clone was lost for words in rage, humiliation, grief that he had no place for. He stepped forward and raised the sword. With a cry, Bryony cast herself at him and tried to pull him away, but he held her back with one hand while she clung like a monkey to his back, screaming and shouting, fighting and begging him to leave her baby be. The strength in him was terrible. He raised the sword. The strange child with his face looked up into his eyes and recognized him.

  “You!” she hissed. Then, in a quieter voice, “Father!”

  The clone stood with his sword raised, and trembled from head to foot.

  “I know you, Volson,” said the child. “Listen—it’s not too late. Impregnate the girl and go back where you came from. Do as I say. You can keep your secret. Neither of you will come to any harm. Father? Daddy? Please?”

  The clone glanced behind him. Bryony was fighting his back, her screams drowning the voice; she had heard nothing. He wasted no more time. Violently, he brought the sword down through the tank and across the child’s head. The head divided in a clash of glass, poured bright red into the wave of fluid that crashed down upon them. Then, one two, one two, he diced her up like a slice of liver. Bryony screamed in horror. The city shrieked and burbled. The clone pushed her off his back.

  “I had to do it, it was eating the world,” he screamed. “It’s done now,” he added quietly. He looked at the mess at his feet, and gagged at the sight of his work.

  Bryony lifted her own gun and fired at the clone’s head, but he was unharmed. She flung the gun down. She was unable even to aim straight in this man’s presence.

  “Murderer!” she screamed. “Murderer!” She took a step forward to the ruin before her, but there was nothing to nurse or hold or even stroke in that pile of offal that was her daughter.

  “I had to!” sobbed the clone. “If you saw what she’d done you’d know. Do you think that was me doing that? Do you think I wanted to? It had . . .”

  The man—part Sigurd, part clone, pretending to be Gunar— choked on his words. He was losing all sense of who he was or what he was for. He was about to say that the child had his face, but he had his deception to play.

  “It had . . . his face,” he gasped.

  “Yes, his face. Sigurd’s daughter. Do you think a man like that will forgive you for killing his child? Do you expect me to?” screamed Bryony.

  “Him—me—here?” demanded the clone. So close! So close to being Sigurd! Just a memory away. Surely it will happen—the memories will burst out of Bryony and pour into him like blood.

  “No! I’ve, he’s . . . we’ve never been here! You took us here. We knew . . .” The clone floundered for words. His child? He had killed his own child? Impossible! “You . . . you understood. You took me here. You knew this had to be done. You killed her as surely as I did!”

  Bryony flung herself at him, striking him violently in the face. In a fury the clone raised the bloody sword. Bryony lifted her face to it. Yes! Death was all she had now. But the blow never came. Instead he turned and looked at the slaughtered child.

  “How much of it was her?” he whispered.

  “We’ll never know, King Gunar, because you were angry and killed too fast. Sigurd would have rescued her.”

  The clone could only stare. Was that true? It felt like the truth. How far had he fallen beneath his own star?

  On the banks of computers and panels around them the lights had begun to flash on and off. Outside violent bangs and explosions were pounding the walls. There was a low, shuddering moan. Far off they could hear pumping, like a giant heart beating fit to burst.

  “The city’s dying. Quick!” gasped the clone. He lifted Bryony up and flung her like a doll into the hold, yelling at her to keep wrapped up in Fafnir’s skin. He seized from his pack a bundle— the package of viruses Marshall had prepared, and jumped aboard. The horse reared up. The clone flung the package down on the floor where it broke into fragments. The viruses were airborne; it was done, it was all done. Slipper wheeled round and made a dash for the door. It was the last run, up to the surface. Gunar had fulfilled his mission in front of the girl’s eyes. The clone had served his friend well, but he was never so close to being his true self as now, at the heart of deception. He understood nothing of the passion and rage in his heart, or any of the things he had seen and done, but life still beckoned. The woman trapped beneath him in the hold stirred such terrible feelings in him. He didn’t know if he wanted to make love to her or murder her. Maybe in this case they were the same thing.

  Slipper rushed away, past the bellowing fires that were now devouring the city itself, past trembling metal organs, rupturing vessels and failing machines, past the screaming creatures running for their lives, back up to
the world where life went on.

  What had happened? Meanings down there were broken before they even formed. It had been so charged and yet there was no place in him for any of it.

  As the clone rode Slipper across the poisonous wastes surrounding the maw, he felt that he was emerging from a nightmare, but it was worse than that. It was real; he had been to Hel and back. He remembered the old stories. The place of shadows, ruled over by Hel herself, Loki’s daughter, half living, half dead. What had the girl told him?

  “I’m only half alive.”

  The clone shuddered. Was that it? He had her with him now, then—Hel herself, Princess of death. Not Odin’s daughter at all: Loki’s. But she had seemed so alive, she had such sweet flesh. He had longed for her as if he was in love. How could that be? Perhaps half dead was not what the story meant. What if her soul rotted inside her living body? Half dead. Or her mind. Can the mind rot? Then only her flesh was alive.

  He had brought Hel up into the world, and death is always jealous of life. And yet he loved her! Oh, yes, he loved her. Was that how it was with her? Would everyone who met her love her—love death? If that was so, the slaughter would be endless.

  They were not yet out of the feed bowl when under Slipper’s feet there was a tremor; then the rock underfoot shook like a struck table. Deep underground, Crayley was going through its death throes. Behind them at the maw, a deep, dull whistle sounded and grew rapidly louder. The massive explosions now taking place deep underground were producing billions of cubic meters of burning gases. Much was escaping into fissures in the rocks, but a great deal was finding its way out of the dying city’s mouth parts, forcing this terrifying whistle from the earth. The noise grew from a piercing screech, to a howling bellow, to a bawling of the earth, shaking the world.

  The clone geed Slipper up and galloped off into the green. He fled, tearing across the pastures, leaving the exploding rock behind him, dodging flying boulders and stones until the noise became a dull moan in the distance.