Signy
I was frightened before he was born that there might be something wrong with him, but there's not. He's just a beautiful, beautiful baby boy. Even the guards who were minding the doctors and midwives smiled.
Listen, he cries so loudly!
The room was like a… a hijack, a kidnap. It was a kind of crime. I didn't want any of them there with me, I only wanted Cherry, but of course they didn't want a cat in the room where the prince was being bora. But she fooled them. She hid under the bed the whole time and a few minutes after he was born she came out to congratulate me. She jumped up onto the bed purring like an engine, and started to lick the blood off him. It was right -the baby is hers, too. But the doctor was cross, and I was scared they'd tell Conor, so I let them chase her off.
'Later,' I mouthed at her, but she was offended and went out of the door with her chin up in the air, and wouldn't look back.
Then they wanted to take him away from me and wash him, but I put him straight onto my breast and he knew what to do at once. I whispered to him, 'May you always know exactly what to do.' He was so beautiful. I wanted to save the cleaning up for Cherry but when Conor came he was angry that the baby was dirty and made them wash him at once. Underneath, his skin was a beautiful pale peach, very fine in texture.
He's a secret, this baby of mine. Even his father knows nothing about him. Like Cherry, he will have more than one shape.
When he was all clean Conor began to smile and held the poor little thing to his rough cheek. Poor Conor, who knows nothing. The baby cried Conor looked so pale. I didn't want him there. I felt cold, because I felt so much love in me even though I know there can be no space for feelings like that. When he tried to give me the baby back I said, 'Here, take him away, I need to sleep.' And then he got angry because I didn't love my baby enough. But he took him away and showed him to the guard, and they all bowed down. Cherry told me. I could have laughed out loud, because they were bowing to Conor's destruction.
Much later, when the room was empty and I had my baby back, Cherry came in to see. She came as a cat and put her paws up on the bed. I picked her up and put her next to the baby and let her sniff him.
'You're his mother, too,' I told her. But she was still offended and jumped off the bed. I was distraught. I don't want Cherry to be upset. I got out of bed and crawled after her, but she hid in a cupboard. In the end I took the baby and tucked him in the cupboard with her. Very soon I could hear her purring all across the room.
I waited a few minutes and then I said, 'But we can't leave him there, darling, or Conor will see and who knows what he'll do?'
She forgave me and came out. We both snuggled up in bed with the baby between us, and that's how we went to sleep. In the middle of the night I woke up and she was licking him in her cat shape. I kept waking up all night listening to the purring, and the baby sleeping so still between us and I thought, if it could stay like this tomorrow and next week and next year! Perhaps I could be happy then.
It makes me weep to think of the kind of man he has to grow into.
16
It is the night of no moon, a week after the birth. In the wet, still air of a cloudy February night, the pale trees surrounding the water tower are vivid with inner life; this is a supernatural night. The child, Vincent, son of two mothers so far, lies in Signy's arms. Conor is at the southern front. The town of Portsmouth is under siege; he hopes to break the resistance to his claim to it within a few days and fill the dockside with sacrifices.
Under the belly of the water tower, the soldiers on guard are falling asleep one after the other like men in a fairytale. Heads slump; there are thuds as the men fall to the ground, pale blue, military fruits. Nearby among the birch trees, one with red hair and almost as many shapes as there are in creation rubs his hands together. This is the contribution of the sly god. Nothing to do with empires or vengeance, nothing to do with destiny or fate or the big emotions of jealousy or love or anger. This work is mischief for its own sake.
As the guards' sleep deepens, a silence that reverses things surrounds the tower. Usually it is noise that breaks silence, but this is a silence which breaks the noise. Above in the tower, the trap door opens as if in a dream; the sound it makes is interrupted by the quiet. Signy weeps and kisses her baby. What other mother would give up her child when she has no one? She is about to launch him, her little living missile, against Conor.
Now a girl with the same hair as the god standing in the trees emerges and climbs a few steps down the ladder. The baby is handed down to her. Cherry is once more about her mistress's business. Signy watches her quietly slide down the ladder, changing shape as she goes. The little cat disappears into the leafless trees, and Signy stares a moment longer into the damp air. Then, she wheels her chair across the room that she and her Cherry have so carefully wrecked, over to one of the secure rooms Conor has had built for her. Walls of steel, doors of steel, locked from the inside.
A few minutes later, the guards begin to wake up to the sound of the young mother's screaming. They rub their eyes and wince in disbelief.
'My baby – they've taken my baby!' They run up, their flesh creeps as they see the wreckage. Despite all his care and warnings, Conor's worst dreams have come true – and now, they may be certain, so will theirs.
The door is opened, Signy emerges. Tells them her tale of a gang of soldiers breaking in, chasing her, taking her baby away, of her escape with her life…
'They'd have killed me if I hadn't locked myself away!'
And while the scared soldiers raise the alarm and begin a fruitless search, below in the woods a little brown bird takes to the air and flies west. In its claws it clutches a small, brown nut.
Dag Aggerman was standing inside a long, low building housing a row of twenty-odd glass-fronted tanks – womb tanks. The halfmen captured, traded or stole these wonders of modern technology from Ragnor and other towns and cities beyond their territory and used them to repair damaged generals and guerrilla leaders, or sometimes to make specialists for certain jobs. They could be used to clone, too. Technicians worked busily around him, wanting to impress, checking temperatures, nutrition, proteins, development. By the halfman leader's side stood a strange looking girl with a baby in her arms. Dag didn't like what he was being asked to do, but he needed Cherry. This one girl was as important as an army. Without the news she carried to him, the resistance would have already been destroyed.
'Conor's kid, eh?' he barked. He grinned. 'He'll go crazy when it disappears.' His tail, cut aggressively short, wagged so violently that his backside shook and his legs twisted into the concrete floor in his effort to look pleased.
Cherry smiled and held the precious thing close to her heart.
'What's it supposed to be, eh? Eh? Some sort a substitute for Sigmund? I coulda done with the real thing, but he's out of it. Everyone says, he's finished. Ah, ah! Yeah, sits at home all day, don go out. So. What's this one for?'
'My mistress promised Siggy will join you and he will. This little one will help.'
Dag grunted. 'Is that why she wants this?' he asked curiously.
'My mistress wants anything that'll help destroy Conor.'
'And how'll this help? Ah?'
Cherry smiled. 'The gods have told her so.'
Dag grunted again. Cherry was reputed to be a daughter of Loki. Whatever else that meant, it was bound to be trouble; but not the sort of trouble you could do anything about.
'We make a clone, like she says. And this one?'
This one goes back to live with her.' Cherry walked over to one of the occupied tanks and rapped on the glass. Inside, the bleached white form of a man twisted away from the noise. He had whiskers around his chubby face and short webbed fingers. His legs had welded together into some kind of paddle.
'He's gonna join the navy,' said Dag, and barked a laugh.
Cherry said, 'You have the details?'
Dag looked at a piece of paper with instructions written on it, instructions of the additions Signy wanted added on to her baby in his glass womb.
