the streets, about the families burned in their houses for a rumour that they had plotted against the family. That's the legacy we're up against, that's the amount of hatred and fear we have to melt away.
And Abel's cruelty wasn't just confined to his enemies.
One example. Once, when my Conor was still little, his father found out somehow that he was scared of heights. So he ordered nails to be driven into the walls of a tall brick building on the Estate, up one side, down the other, and got that little boy to climb all the way up three storeys, over the roof, and down the other side of the house. Half the Estate came out to watch, certain he'd fall. So was Conor. He was actually sick with fear on the roof, behind the chimney where no one could see it. He did it, though; but only because he was even more afraid of his father than he was of heights.
Abel told him he was a good boy and said, 'That's how to deal with fear.' See? With more fear.
That's his own son! Imagine how he used to treat ordinary people! Conor showed me the house where it happened. The nails are still there, sticking in the walls, all rusty now, a long row of them marching like little, mad soldiers straight up to the roof and back down the other side. I thought of that little boy clinging to the walls, his stomach heaving with fear, and I thought, that's what we're up against. Not just the past, but the past in Conor too. No wonder he's so slow! No wonder sometimes he's more cruel and more ruthless than he should be, in getting what he wants.
There are so many stories just like that one – the time Abel beat his brother Tom unconscious for interrupting him at the table. The time he had their mother whipped because they had taken her side against him. The time he held Conor's head under water until the bubbles came.
And when he tells these stories, my Conor trembles – just as if his father was there in bed with us. I hold him close and we cry together for that little boy who had those horrible things done to him. And I say, 'We must make sure that no other children have to go through that sort of thing.'
No wonder there were so many who think that Conor's weak for trying to establish justice and fairness. No wonder he has to proceed slowly! But even so, it drives me mad! Everything is so slow. I just want to get it done, now, at once.
But we're making progress. Schools and hospitals are getting built. Only a month after I came we went to see the site where our first hospital was going up. Of course, our enemies tried to stop us, tried to make out it was too dangerous, that it was a security threat. They always use that excuse – how stupid! How can a hospital be a security threat? They just want to keep me away from the people because they're frightened of so much good feeling. And they want to keep Conor away from it as well. Well, we just went anyway. Of course they did their best to keep us away from the crowds – fences up everywhere, the people kept miles away from the site. But one thing they couldn't stop was the good feeling getting through. Everyone was cheering and waving flags, and you could feel the waves of hope going over them.
Actually, the funniest thing was Conor's face. He's used to being booed and hissed, or to people just standing staring at him blankly because they don't have any choice. The best he ever used to get was if they were bullied into shouting for him.
But on this day the crowds were out in their thousands cheering and shouting, and it wasn't just my name. They were going, 'Con-ner! Con-ner! Con-ner!' And Conor just stood there with this big smile on his face, as if he was a little boy who'd just woken up and discovered it was Christmas.
'What's it feel like to be popular?' I asked him. And he sort of scowled and looked embarrassed, but he couldn't hide how delighted he really was.
Then I looked across from his sweet face to where the security chiefs were standing. And you never saw faces so cold and hard. You could tell whose side they were on. They were hating every second of it. Well, we'll see to them, and we'll do it sooner than anyone guesses, even Conor. My father and all his people are coming on a visit in September. That's what security are scared of. When they find themselves up against my father and Conor together, they won't know what's hit them.
18
At the centre, Val. To the North, Conor – the only two gangmen left, with London divided between them. They called their tiny territories kingdoms but that was just a sign of their ambition. Outside London, the world. Outside there were open fields and quiet villages, towns and cities with all their amusements and wealth and power. Some even had streetlights and tree-lined avenues, strange factories, schools, hospitals and taps that worked for everyone. There was Ragnor, the new city, with its startling towers and robot servants and glittering electrical life. Or so it was said. News was not easy to come by. There were those who claimed that the world outside was not much better than that inside, but how would they know?
And in between a barrier separating Outside from Inside, the new from the old, society from the monkey house. It was a minefield, but the mines were alive. This was the land of the halfmen.
The halfman lands were a ring around London fifty miles deep. This was the impossible country where animal, human and machine walked in the same body. In this place, the gods were coming back to life, so it was said. The halfmen had seen them, hadn't they? The gods had entered Val's headquarters – or was it merely a tourist or a spy from Outside? No one knew. Maybe no one would ever know. This was a place of myths and stories tall and true.
The halfmen weren't born, or even made; they were brewed.
Take a man. Add a spider. Stir in a dash of wolf, a pinch of tiger. Simmer slowly for a year. Season with steel casing and fibre sinews; give it a titanium heart. Coat with thick, greasy fur and then let it loose to spin webs with strands as thick as your finger and sticky as superglue. See it wait in ventilator shafts or dark corners and alleyways, singing to itself a song it heard long ago about rocking babies in their cradles – but what a baby! And what a cradle! – waiting for you, for me, for Signy or Siggy or any sweet, juicy thing to stumble into its trap.
'Now I've got you,' it says, as it swaddles you in silk and kisses your face, and leans down to take the first bite…
Take a vulture. Add a human, a snake, a weasel. Give it hollow alloy bones and a machine in its face that makes it bite whether it wants to or not. Send it out to nest on the ledges of deserted warehouses and high rises. Best not to go bird watching for this bird, though. It'll spot you first. You might hear it singing a song, 'Salt, pepper, vinegar, mustard, my mother makes good custard.' If you do, you won't hear much else.
Long ago the secrets of mix'n'match with genes and chromosomes, plastic and steel had been discovered. The first halfmen had been boiled up in the early creature vats and used as policemen, or guards, or servants, or workers. Why not? If it was all right for a machine to work in a poisonous environment, surely it was all right to use a bit of flesh and nerve in its design? The ethics were strange, but it could be done and so it was. Then why not a cockroach, which stands such conveniently high levels of radioactivity? And how much easier and cheaper it was to make household robots mainly out of flesh and blood. So many of the engineering problems had already been solved.
But being flesh and blood, they bred. Some experiments have too many dangers; these servants had minds of their own. When society began to collapse they had been let loose in their own lands, set in a ring around London to keep the gangs in, and forgotten about. London and the halfmen were at each other's throats. Those outside thought it a job well done.
That's how terrified the authorities had been about the gangwars of London and other big cities. When the police no longer dared go into London, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and other cities, when the gangmen controlled all trade, all business, even the schools and hospitals, when they had the same weapons the army had, what better way of dealing with them than simply to withdraw? Ganglaw had grown so powerful it was no longer simply crime, it was a rival government. So the authorities had simply upped camp and gone. Outside they built new, better cities, populated with tamer, law-biding people. London and its generations were left to look after themselves.
Of course the gangmen had tried to break out. The first thing they came across was the terrified populations of the outer city fleeing from the released halfmen. They had to fight the fleeing people as well as the creatures themselves. Then began the long halfman wars. No doubt Ragnor would have been very happy if the gangmen and the halfmen had slaughtered each other to the last man. Instead they had separated. Now, Val and Conor dreamed
