Bloodsong

by Melvin Burgess

  Weeping and gasping, Bryony gathered the little thing up to her. A girl, a baby girl! Her daughter. Sigurd’s daughter. He should have been there, it wasn’t right that she should go through this all on her own. But the baby was beautiful, even with all the blood and mess and hurt. She held it to her and loved it with all her heart, amazed and delighted that she could still feel like this after all she had gone through. She had a baby. It was hers and Sigurd’s. One day she would show it to him.

  “Beatrice. That’s who you are,” she told the baby. Her little girl. She had a name. She was real. She was the most real thing in the world. “With all my heart,” she whispered, kissing the little thing on its head. She must have two hearts, she thought, to love this baby with all of one and Sigurd with all of the other.

  Now what remained was this: She must never go to sleep again.

  “Don’t let me sleep, Jenny. We have to stay on guard. Don’t we?”

  Jenny Wren piped in agreement and looked waspishly about, alert and as full of life as ever. Bryony put the baby to her breast. Warm waves of comfort flooded her as Beatrice began to suck.

  Giving birth is the hardest of all work. Bryony was exhausted. Her head nodded a couple of times, but Jenny peeped and her head came back up. She nursed and rested, played games in her head, talked to the wren, to Sigurd, to her baby, sang songs, got up and walked carefully to and fro. But of course it was impossible. She should have known; she did know. If she had been really serious she would have killed the baby there and then, given it poison to sip as soon as it was out of her. But how could she do that? Her own child, and those long years all alone.

  Crayley, too, had been about its preparations for a long time. It didn’t know whether to believe her when she said she was prepared to kill the baby but it certainly wasn’t prepared to take the risk. This could be its last chance to get a decent mind for itself.

  It had originally considered flooding the whole area with anaesthetic gas, but dismissed the idea in the end as being too dangerous for the new baby. The little darling must not in any circumstances be hurt. No, the problem called for subtler measures. In the end, after many attempts, it developed a couple of devices that it was sure could steal Beatrice away without harm to either mother or child. Even as Bryony was giving birth, they were creeping across the ceiling and up the walls toward her. Crayley spied on her from a distance, and whenever her eyes closed or she looked away, a hidden device, the color and texture of the rock it sat on, would step like a spider so much the closer.

  Once, Crayley had been able to make things no bigger than these that could fly—how handy would that be? But those skills had been lost, the tools corroded, the codes broken and lost. These ones were the size of mice, shaped unsettlingly like giant spiders, but the city had lowered the lighting by degrees during the birth, they were well camouflaged. There was every hope of success.

  Progress was slow, but inevitable. Bryony nodded, the spiders ran, Jenny peeped. Occasionally, alarmed by the slight noises, the little wren flew off to investigate and found the devices sitting still as stones on the walls. She inspected them, shrilled at them, scolded them, then flew back. Bryony was concerned—but Jenny Wren had no words, and besides, she was just a wren. What does a wren understand about these things?

  The end when it came was sudden. Two of the creatures finally got within three meters of the outside of the cave. Bryony nodded; they dashed. Within the space of a squeak or the blink of an eye, one of them had bitten Bryony on the thigh. She was awake in a second, on her feet, running to the edge—she planned to leap off with her baby in her arms— but the dose was correct. Her legs buckled under her within a step, she sank to the ground, clutching the baby. She tried to crawl along the floor, but within another second her arms became too weak to move. She attempted to roll over, trying to throw the child away, but even that was impossible.

  Bryony had been paralyzed but she could still see and hear everything around her. Crayley had borrowed a trick off the solitary wasps who sting their prey with paralysis, and lay their eggs on the living body to be consumed by their grubs still fresh. Like those insect victims, Bryony could not move a muscle, but she could feel, see, and hear everything. So she was able to watch as another device came stepping into the cave. It was made of flesh, carbon fiber and nylon, covered with a living skin, nicely furred to keep the baby happy. Step by step the cyber-mother crept into the cave and lowered itself to the floor where it picked the baby out of its mother’s arms. How gently it cradled her! How much it loved her.

  It did a few basic health tests and then carried her off to be prepared. Behind it the paralyzed girl watched in silence.

  At the end of the war, old Bill Portland went into captivity as he went into everything else, full of plans. At over three hundred and fifty years old he was used to seeing eras come and go. It was never the end. A big player in business and politics, he had many friends at home and abroad. He negotiated, made plans, and the Niberlins, to his utter amazement and rage, had him quietly shot in the head while he waited for the answer to his latest deal.

  Abroad, his friends raged and cursed, the big powers frustrated that their desires were not being taken into account. Sigurd and the Niberlins had gotten rid of one of the ways those powers had of keeping England in its place, but there were many others, including the bomb that had ended Sigmund’s reign. Andvari’s ring, that device for turning fate sour, lay far below ground, on Bryony’s finger. The Niberlins had heard the rumors but no one had any idea of where it was, or what it looked like. A device that bends fate—how does such a thing work? Does it manipulate time to come? Does it reach back to alter the past, and thus the present, and so the future that arises from the present? If so, all the earth, stone and fire that separated it from the world above could do nothing. Time passes in the earth’s core the same as in the palm of your hand.

  But for now, for the first time in a generation, England was united. The Portland armies had been well equipped with the best advice and foreign weaponry, more than enough to crush any uppity native warlords and terrorists, but Sigurd had outmaneuvred the best military minds from across the world and won the heart of the whole nation to his cause. The remnants of the vanquished Portland forces dissolved rapidly into the surrounding countryside. Small bands of armed monkeys still occasionally opened fire on government troops, or tried to terrorize local people who no longer wanted to support them. They continued to receive money from abroad, but with old Bill and the immediate family gone, there was nothing to hold them together. Troop by troop, the remaining Portlands either emigrated—but they found a poor welcome abroad, where there was still a huge prejudice against halfmen—or settled down quietly to run bars and other small businesses. Business was still their thing, but the family was broken. They formed clubs and associations, affiliated their businesses for mutual benefit, dreamed of regaining the glory days, and rapidly became more or less harmless.

  Out of their broken homes the people emerged to search for dead fathers and sons, lost mothers, daughters and wives among the mass graves and scanty records the brief but brutal war had left behind. Rebuilding was going to take a long time. People had for so long been crushed between rival ganglords, funded by this or that foreign power, they had not believed it possible to come together again. But here it was, a power that drew the country into one. The postwar days lengthened into weeks, then months. The only soldiery the people saw were their own, clearing up the mess, leveling the rubble, building roads, schools, and hospitals, laying water pipes and cables. The conflict that had lasted a lifetime was over again. There were quieter days ahead.

  This had been the project of the Volsons for three generations: to make a land fit to live in. The Volsons had always represented hope to the people they governed. It was their gift to lift us above the mud, above the poverty and grime and disease, above the wars and the hatred, the vendettas and struggles for power. They were cooperation, they were all-together-now. This they tried to do with the
god Odin as their patron—god of war, death, and poetry. What sort of hope was that? Foolish, or just plain false?

  Gods—what are we to them? Our lives are just poems, stories that catch them if we tell them well. When the book ends, nothing has happened, no one real has lived or died. Our lives and all our pains and pleasures are images on a page. They shed tears for us, laugh at us, cheer us on, make demands of us, but they don’t believe in us any more than a reader believes the pages of a book.

  So Sigurd’s clone made his story of hope in the family tradition and he told it so well, everyone believed it, man and halfman alike. It had all gone his way, hadn’t it? He was the dragon-killer, the crusher of enemies, the bringer of peace and prosperity. With him standing by the throne, nothing could go wrong.

  A year passed, then two: the Golden years. The babies were fatter, the births easier, the harvests bigger. Industry flourished and grew. Men and women were easy and kind in each other’s company—even the weather was good. In Sigurd’s time all this was true. He was like a good-luck charm for his people. There was love in the air. People were looking to the future and thinking at last that this was a place they would like children to grow up in. There was a baby boom; the streets became full of rattling pushchairs and cooing mothers.

  And in everyone’s eyes were images of Sigurd and Gudrun on TV and in magazines, always together, always touching, holding hands, glancing at each other, smiling at each other. When would they have their first child? Gossip columns and news programs speculated endlessly—it was the most sought-after, eagerly awaited event in the country. The comings and goings of the other Niberlins were front page news as well. Hogni, of course, filled the palace with his boyfriends, who came and went like the seasons, but in a couple of years even he found someone he wanted to stay with, a purebred human, an administrator in the educational service with bright brown eyes and a taste for dangerous sports. Only Gunar was on his own. Women were endlessly proposed, every conversation he had with one was discussed and analyzed in terms of possible romance, but no one special emerged. He seemed out of skew with the times—typical of Gunar, who always had to work so hard to make things happen. He felt this lack himself. He, too, was judging every woman he met, wondering if she might be the one. But all of them had something wrong—too loud, too dull, not his type. So Gunar stayed alone.

  And what of Sigurd himself? He loved Gudrun with all of his heart, they were inseparable. He had lost his own family, but with the Niberlins he had gained two brothers as well as a lover. He had a beautiful wife, a beautiful home, he had his work to do. The glory days were gone, but somehow, so was the lust for glory. That was as it should be in a world settling down in comfort with itself. But sometimes there was a nightmare in which he woke up from a deep sleep with the words of an old song in his ears: But this is not my beautiful wife, and this is not my beautiful home. What am I doing here? Then he remembered a time when he was so flooded with love that he could change bad to good—even death into life, with the sheer force of it. Perhaps it was the loss of this precious thing that made him wake up sobbing so desperately.

  He spoke to Gudrun about it and she told him that God had lived in him for a while, but that he hadn’t been hers then, and she loved him more as he was. He spoke to Gunar about it, and Gunar said that he understood, he felt the same himself from time to time—it was the passing of boyhood, the loss of innocence.

  “But I’m only eighteen years old,” said Sigurd.

  “But you’ve lived a lot,” said Gunar. Sigurd thought of all those lives he had taken. Maybe it was that. He was a casualty of war—and that was just, too, he thought. It wasn’t right to come out of such a thing unharmed.

  Hooo-wha. Yeah, that’s right, a scientist. I know it isn’t in my name. Well, the de la is French. My family began in a French laboratory. The la-de-dah bit came when we came ho-ho-hover here and people thought it was all, you know, all Frenchy, all la-de-dah. The Portobello Road bit was because we spent three generations working on the market. Yes, it does sound a bit like Portland. That’s what we scientists call a coincidence.

  If it makes you happy I’ll put the scientist bit in too. Marshall de la la-de-dah de Portobello Road Graphpaper, hey? Nah—that old halfman thing about building up your surname to show your genealogy, it’s old hat, man. So what’s your name? Charlie Snout-face Muscles-up-my-arse Halfwit Hendersen? Ah! Ouch. Oooh, that hurt. Listen—you guys are going to find out who I am and then it won’t be clips round the ear, it’ll be Take me to your Leader and yes sir, no sir. Okay? I mean, I fuckin’ ran this place. I’m just saying, why not play it a bit cautious until then, okay?

  I’m a monkey. The Portlands are Bab oons. You know what I mean? Look at the canines on them. And their arses! No trousers, just suit jackets—that’s a real baboon thing, they totally communicate with their arses. I’m not even a monkey, I’m a great ape. Bonabo blood flows in my veins. It’s kinda like the aristocracy of monkeys, y’know? I dunno, like if your mother was a warthog maybe?

  But you know my name. Oh, for the video. Okay, my name’s Marshall de la la-de-dah de Portobello Road. Marshall Dee for short. I’m Creative Production Manager at Amicor. We make organic components for industry, from ordinary gene manufacture all the way up to the latest silico-neurological add-ons for the cloning, computing and personal impro-hoo-hoo-hoo-hooovment industries. Lo-tech, hi-tech, that sort of thing. The setup’s hi-tech, but after that you just brew ’em up and let ’em grow. You have your basic bacillus going through a series of controlled environments as they develop, so that by the time they come out the other end, you’ve got these perfect little chips swimming out into the storage vats, cilia waving, circuits pulsing. We’ve even been working on training them to swim into place during manufacture. Yeah!

  Hoo. Yes, yes, if I was a spy it would be a very good position to be in, but fortunately I ain’t. So you want the story or not, huh? Okay.

  I was ha-ha-hactually glancing out of a window when it happened. Man! The ground just started pouring away like sand going down an hourglass, smooth as you like. Then the corner of the building went—glup! It just turned into sludge and gurgled down the hole. You never saw anything like it. It was making the ground behave like heh, heh, hex-actly like water. I thought, That looks useful; then I ran like shit. Hoo ha ha! The ha ha ha whhee hoo hoo ho! Sorry, it gets me going just thinking about it. Hoo. Yeah, lost a lotta lives, lot of good friends. I got out by watching where it was going—straight for the nutrient vats at the back of the building, the big tanks where we breed the basic bacteria. Man, that was one hungry earthquake, only this earthquake was after proteins. I mean! Bad news? Oh, man! It sucked down the whole factory, plastics, nutrients, metals, stone, the lot. Then it headed out to the surrounding countryside. First thing it went for was the fuel station on Lanine Road. Sucked it straight down. Then the village. The school! All melted and gone, kids, bricks, the lot. It gulped up Moremart and then went for the cows in the field. After that it sucked down the fucking earth, man! Whoh! When it had finished it went back to where it started, right where the factory used to be, and pushed out its—well, what would you call it? Its hose, nose? Its mouth, its exhaust? You tell me. And that’s where it is now.

  Oh yeah? Well, frankly, you sound a bit speciesist to me. Listen, pal, there’s two sorts of monkeys—the kind with hairy hands who go on to be top scientists like me, and the other sort who get stuck a tenth of the way up the security services. Look, who do you think designed half of the stuff in there? Yes, that’s right, the overhanging brows are there to give me extra brain capacity. Whyn’t you go and mention my name to someone who knows about this sort of thing? See, son, you gonna need me.

  Some people are just prejudiced. I try to feel sorry for them but it doesn’t always work, especially when they’re expressing the intention of peeling you like a banana. They actually said that.

  “Any more lip out of you, big-ears, and I’m gonna peel you like a fuckin’ banana.” Everyone looks down on mon
keys these days. Not that I approve of prejudice in any of its forms, you understand, but you can see where the humans are coming from. They used to be the One and Only. Wahhhh! They had the place to themselves for about a million years. But pigs? I mean. They laugh at us. We get laughed at by pigs. And cats and dogs and pretty well everything else, too.

  “Monkeys are funny,” a friend of mine once told me. That was before the war, mind you. A lot changed during the war. No one finds us so funny now.

  So once I convinced those two moving ha-hoo hoo hoo hulks of pig meat that I ha-ha-hactually was in charge of science and engineering at the plant, they took me to see the big boys, and before you know it, I’m briefing Sigurd and Gunar. Yeah, that’s right. The big man. And yes, I was impressed. In fact I was very impressed. The funny thing about Sigurd was, though, he put you at your ease. You felt like you’d known him for years, you know? Like he was a personal friend of yours. Nice guy. It was only when he’d gone and you’re on your own, you started thinking, Gods! What was that?

  Excuse me, I’ll just get more comfortable. Yeah. Mmm. Upside down, ahh! Stretches the joints. So. First thing we wanted to know—alive or not? Machine or being? Orgomechanical or mechano-organic? The only visible bit of it was that opening, its waste hose-thing. It was maybe twenty-five, thirty meters across. At first glance you’d say it was a trachea or something organic like that, but when we got close, guess what? It was metal. Not manufactured, mind—it was grown. How about that? That thing was growing metal.

  You know what I mean? I mean, that could be useful.