Me an' Sigs stuck into the maps and he did what a good general would do- looked glum when he saw the extent of Conor's conquests and then cheered up when it became clear he'd overstretched himself. Ah, ah, I could tell! His face? That meant nothing. I'm a sodding dog! I can't read faces like you monkeys. But we have our ways. Moods stink! Yeah, yeah, I liked him. He smelled good.
He was a practical type, y'know. No visions, none of that stuff you heard about his father – uniting the nation, that fizz. Siggy, he just didn't like suffering and Conor was a bit of filth he needed to scrape off, that was all. An' that's good, y'know because…
Well, listen, there's only room for one top dog! Me! Oh, I want unity. The country, the species – everything. Under me. Yeah! Yeah! I don' wanna be just top dog. I wanna be top pig, top man, too. So- no vision, maybe he won't wanna fight me for it. Yeah?
Maybe. Maybe not. I never knew no general didn't want to hold the power.
I took him round and showed him the divisions. Everyone wanted to see him. Volson, the name means something. He was the same as the rest of his kind, hair standing on end and trying to show he was cool. But they don't know, see? They stink! Yeah, yeah you get every whiff of fear. I was grinning and laughing and laughing and grinning until he asked me why and I told him. He laughed at hisself! I like that.
Well, people, they expect to see spider-cats and bird-dogs and beehorse-men and babies that fly and get in your hair, but all that fancy stuff died out a long time ago. Nah, nah, nah! Not fertile – types are too different. There's dogs and there's pigs, stuff the rest. Horses? Taste good! Cats? Yeah, well, never trust a rucking cat, pal! Never. Nah, nah! Birds? Stooooopid! Yeah!
People? Dangerous! Ah. Oh, yeah.
So, later, Sigs got to speak to the human troops. Yeah, well, now that was something. Listen, it's part of the job, know what I mean? You gotta make them think you know everything, man. You gotta make'em think you're really one of them. Oh, boy, he had them in his damn hand. He knew how humans work, and listen, when it comes to species, there's dogs, there's pigs and there's people, and it's the people you got to watch! Yeah!
And it wasn't just the monkeys – 'scuse me, no offence, nickname for mankind, y'know; stoooopid monkeys. Everyone pricked up their ears when Sigs spoke. His voice ringing over the fields. His flame lighting them up. At the end of it they cheered themselves hoarse. He more or less promised them victory and they were stoopid enough to believe it!
I said, 'Some speech, got 'em going, dincha?'
And he said, 'You need to. Morale.' Yeah, as if it was just another practical thing, y'know. You gotta be inspiring or you don't win.
And then right at the end of the day I showed him the glass wombs.
Monkeys and their faces. You're a dog, you lose your ear, you break your tail, you get your chops ripped up – who cares? The bitches? Hah! If it's a bitch, do the dogs care? Nah, nah! See, you're a dog, it's smells that count. You lose your smell you've had it, but who loses their smell? That, you keep till the end, you can get every bone in your body broke and you still smell! But people! Get a scar on your cheek and it's sex-death, the way they go on. I remember this kid, one of yours, brave boy, fought like a dog. Got his face smeared off with hot oil and he was weeping and you know what? Sod the pain, it was his looks bothered him!
'My face, how'd I look, how'd I look!' he kept going. I reckon he'd rather have his tackle chopped off than lose his face. So right away when I saw Sigs I thought of the wombs. Y'know? The tanks.
These days, we like to go at the breeding the ol'-fashioned way, but if you want something a bit more specific – bit more special, y'know? – then you gotta use a tank. They say maybe the gods was born outta tanks. Yeah, some technician did a few tricks. I mean, you get a priest of Odin knows how to operate a womb, what happens? Nah, but I don' go along with it. Ragnor never made the gods, but maybe the gods made Ragnor.
We use them sometimes to make cray-zee soldiers. Something with steel teeth or claws. Made a few man- bombs. Yeah, they creep into the enemy camp and then go BANG! 'Course, you don' tell 'em that. Ah, you can do anything with a womb – just depends how long it lives afterwards. You can get a pup, put a few toenails clippings from a man, a leg of a spider, a few shavings of stainless steel, type in the right notes – it takes a technician to do that, but we got them too – and away you go. The tank takes out DNA from the clippings and the leg, organises the steel, and yeah! You got you a dog with steel teeth and hands that shits webbing! Yow!
But it's a dodgy business. They don't live long. And they don't like it much, either. It's kinda, 'Whatcha give me this crap tail for! What for the shit teeth?' Or it's, 'You ain't getting me to do that, I ain't no machine!' So we mostly use the tanks like a hospital, you know? A tank'll take your DNA and fix you up. That kid with the melted face. We put him in, a week later, out he comes pretty as ever. Yeah! Did the girls love that kid!
So I thought at once of Sigs…
You shoulda smelt him! It's a sight, the womb shed. The technicians wandering about checking up on stuff and making notes. The tank-things, bloated and pruney and necks puffing up and down…
'How about it, comrade? Ah, ah – new face? Old face back? Yeah, why not?'
He thought a while. That heap of gristle at the front of his neck. Even I wouldn't want that.
'Nah,' he said. 'There's a war on. I'll get my good looks back when the peace comes. This is a face for war.'
He was focused, man! I just yelped I was so fucking happy 'bout that! A face for war! Yeah! Oh yeah! Me and Sigs, me and Sigs – we work well together!
28
Time passes, children grow, hearts harden. London was at last opened up to the rest of the world, if you could cross the battle zones to get in or out In these days of war, it was crumbling faster than ever. One January night a hurricane ripped across the city, flinging tiles through the air, clawing down the crumbling brickwork, tearing the panels from tall offices. It blew out a thousand windows from the old Galaxy Building. You could see the dust of a century blowing out the other side as dawn rose over the wrecked city. Conor, fearing it unsafe, had explosives put in the sides of the great building and had it levelled to the ground. In the mass of rubble and twisted steel, the lift shaft lay, a great cylinder unscratched by hurricanes, explosives or time itself. The only damage was a narrow slot right at the bottom, where a dead man once struck with a stone knife.
Once Conor had let Signy out of the water tower, his fortunes began to change. Now, with Siggy in the fight and Signy doing all she could to help the enemy, it became his fate to watch everything he had achieved crumble under his touch. At first he raged and fought harder. There were purges, massacre after massacre of his closest and most powerful generals. Who else but they could know enough to give away his careful plans? In the early days he had still suspected Signy, had her watched and monitored and checked and double checked, but everyone agreed: there was no way she could get the information out It was simply impossible. And at night didn't she hold his head and comfort him when another battle was lost? Didn't she weep with him as city after city fell from his grasp? As the months lengthened into years, he came to trust her even to the point of letting her help him lay his plans of war. General after general was hung by his heels, but Signy's loyalty and love was unquestioned. His plans continued to fall waste. In the end Conor himself began to believe the whispers that were abroad on the streets of London about him, that Odin was against him.
'Not forever…'
The years passed… one, two, and still the fortunes of war went against him.
'Not forever.' He would whisper that to himself as he watched another front collapse, another battle lost. The fortunes of war continued against him – but not forever. Deep under the ground in the very bottom of the great network of bunkers he was building in the rock under the Estate, he still had Odin's knife in his keeping. How could the god be against him when he held his gift?
Other treasures he kept deep in the secret bunker: his only child, Vincent, the future king, now seven years old. Conor wished and prayed for more children, but they never came, not from Signy at least. The boy grew up alone with his nurses; his mother and father were strangers to him.
And of course Conor kept his queen safe down in the bunkers. Few ever saw her apart from him, not the generals who followed her plans, not the gangmen who lived and died by her word, not her own son. Certainly not her allies, Dag and Siggy, even though they depended on her so much in fighting the war.
