Everyone has their own ambitions. Regin had always wanted to be the one who knows, an enabler—to put the world at the fingertips of other men. But as he approached the sheer black face of manufactured rock that Fafnir had chosen for his front door, he was aware of the stirrings of another desire inside him. If he had the means to carry out other men’s ambitions, why should those ambitions not be his, too?
Regin scowled and shook his head. He knew what this was: Fafnir’s defenses were still operating, filling his mind with dangerous thoughts. This was not him. But Regin had never before been near so much power. For a few hours, alone here with Fafnir’s treasures, he would be the most powerful man in the world.
Getting into the stronghold was not likely to be easy. To every lock there is a key, of course; but like all the best keys, this one only worked for one person. If you were Fafnir, it opened. If you weren’t, it didn’t. Such keys were based on an individual genetic code, scrambled up, say, in the skin of the thumb, and they were notoriously difficult to replicate. Regin had to transcribe Fafnir’s genetic code, find how much of it was used in the key, then work out how the code had been scrambled and ciphered. This was something he had anticipated. He had a small dedicated computer to analyze the monster’s tissue. Of course Fafnir would have laid false trails in his chromosomes, blind alleys in the code, repeated loops, all sorts of tricks. Regin had confidence in his device, however. He had set it up overnight and fully expected to find the code waiting for him.
But the machine had frozen. Fafnir had doubled his double helix, and then doubled that, and then doubled that and so on many times. The cell nucleus was enlarged to take these countless multiples of genetic material. There were devices that could handle that amount of data, but Regin’s handy portable was not one of them. It would take the machine literally years to get the code in order, let alone break the cipher.
They had to find another way in.
Regin was flummoxed. He had such faith in his machines and now, suddenly, he had no answers up his sleeve and so little time. To lose the prize now after coming so far—so much farther than anyone else! He couldn’t let some croaking, uneducated halfman king come marching in and steal it. He wandered off to try and marshal his thoughts, but the task was impossible. The code was as impermeable as the black face of the citadel. For hours he wandered in the mud, trying to work out what to do, but he could think of nothing. At last, cold, covered in black mud from head to foot, and in near despair, he went to wake Sigurd and announce that their efforts had been in vain. But Sigurd was already up. He looked surprised. What was the problem? He had already been inside the citadel. Now he was having some breakfast. Did Regin want some, or would he prefer to go and have a recce first?
Regin was astonished. “How?” he asked.
Sigurd smiled and touched the broken stub of his sword.
“Have you forgotten?” he asked. “I cut my way in. It was like cake.”
Regin shook his head. How had he forgotten? Of course, Fafnir had devices to scramble the mind, he wasn’t thinking clearly, that must be it. He looked resentfully at Sigurd. It was so easy for him! Everything was waiting to be given to him.
“What’s the matter, Regin, are you angry with me?” asked the boy.
Regin shook his head, but he was full of dark thoughts as he followed on up the hill to Fafnir’s front door.
It stank; that was the first impression. It was rotten food, BO, and stale urine. Fafnir was a military marvel, but at home he was just a derelict old man who never washed, pissed in the corner, and ate out of tins that he never threw out. The squalor was unbelievable. Fafnir did not live alone, after all. Down the passages came a thick buzzing. The dragon shared his home with a million flies.
Along the corridors and in the chambers to the sides were pallets stacked with tins of beer, baked beans, sardines, cans of stew or ham that he had raided—enough to keep a small army going for years. There were vitamin supplements, as well, but nothing fresh. Fafnir was no gourmet. When he emptied a tin he threw it in a corner for the flies to find. The rubbish was strewn everywhere, the maggots crawling blindly in the tins and pupating in the cracks of the walls and floors. There was a sleeping chamber—Fafnir still had some human habits—with a vast heap of blankets and mattresses stinking of sweat and the long unwashed. Along the walls, heaps of pornography. Fafnir had changed himself so much that he was useless for any sexual act, except those committed on himself. His life had narrowed down to just one thing: ownership. But he owned a very great deal.
Regin and Sigurd wandered off down the long corridors, baldly lit with neon light that never went off. Many chambers were behind locked doors—some behind twin doors, with an airlock between them, with small viewing windows installed. Sigurd wrinkled his nose and peered into the various chambers. Gold? No. Chamber after chamber was filled with gray cases, some small, some large. There were monitor screens, loud speakers in some cases. The gray cases hummed, whirred, and clicked. Regin grunted with excitement. Time and time again he made Sigurd cut a way in through the doors. Treasure! Who knows what these things could do! Half of them he couldn’t even begin to guess at—they just stood there and hummed, or gave off a gentle heat or a chill. He examined each one and checked the codes against a small book that listed what each one did before he turned them off, one after the other. Yes! They were all here. Dark. Bright. Excite. Delight. He knew those: crowd manipulation technology. These machines bore the name of the Norn Group. Treasure indeed! As he suspected, Fafnir had got his hands on the very latest technology. Threat. Fear. Murder. Better and better! Murder technology!
Some of the machines—Delight, for example—were not turned on, but there was a great deal of fear and confusion being generated in Fafnir’s house. Often, when he flicked a switch to off, a pressure inside him seemed to lift. Even in his excitement, Regin breathed a sigh of relief. The resentment that had been slowly growing inside him receded. Good thing they had gotten here quickly! You could end up committing any sort of crime even against those you loved with devices like this at work.
The chambers went on and on. Regin examined each one, listed its contents, and then had to go scurrying off after Sigurd to beg for another hole to crawl through, like a child, he thought crossly, pestering its parent. It was only right at the end, last of all, that he found the real treasure, the newest technology, hidden away in the deepest part of the caves—the tall, green machines of the Destiny Corporation. Loki. Jesus. Tyr. Odin. Destiny technology. Was this heaven? Had he found the homes of the gods or did these devices just mimic? And what happened when you turned them off?
Despite himself, Regin paused before he looked for the switches. What if he was switching off God himself? Regin had no idea what purpose these things served.
“I’m in awe,” realized Regin. Of course! The generation of the numinous. Well—it must be more than that, surely. The machines sat silently in their place, no lights, no heat, nothing to give him any clues. When he looked for the power source, there was nothing. Fafnir had never activated them—unless they were solid state? That could well be, but either way, there was nothing Regin could do now. Superstitiously, he was glad of it.
But one treasure remained elusive: Andvari’s ring. Such a small thing, it could be anywhere. More likely, it simply did not exist.
• • •
While Regin ran about trying to catalog his cave of wonders, Sigurd was searching for the gold. He felt a cur for doing it. There was all this fascinating stuff on all sides, machines alive in more ways than one—there was flesh and blood inside those cases as well as circuitry—and here he was plodding up and down looking for dead metal. But what a wonder gold is, too. Each of these devices had their purpose, but wealth is the beginning of everything, the alchemy that can create all the works of man. Everything in these chambers could be bought. And Sigurd had no need for machines to manipulate the crowd, or generate awe, or love, or fill people with delight. He was such a device himself, tuned perfectly to
his times.
The citadel was huge—it had to be, to take Fafnir’s bulk— but there were not so many chambers as he had thought at first sight. It took him little over an hour to examine them all, and he found no gold. He thought that perhaps the monster had spent it—but what use has a thief for money? In fact, it was the gold that Fafnir loved most of all, and he had taken care to hide it carefully. It was bricked up in a small chamber right at the back of one of the longest rooms—four small pallets of gold bars. Scattered all around were other precious things—Fafnir loved anything of value. Jewelry and treasures looted over the years from state apartments, government buildings, royal palaces, and museums were jumbled about, stuffed into cardboard boxes, or just dumped in fistfuls on the floor. And here, as elsewhere in Fafnir’s citadel, not all was as it seemed. The most dangerous things are often in disguise.
Looking around, Sigurd could see any number of gorgeous and curious objects, but his eye was caught by a small ring, unremarkable to look at. Perhaps it was the proportions that caught his attention, or the looped design engraved inside and out, or simply that the other things there were too ostentatious to actually wear. He put it on his finger, and wondered where it had come from before he went to find Regin. It was time to load up and leave.
For the rest of that day and all through the next, Sigurd and Regin worked packing away their loot—one the gold, the other technology. Inside the horses there were spacious holds where they could pack away a ton or more of gold apiece, but there was not going to be room for everything. Sigurd wanted to be sure that all the gold was taken, but Regin wanted the machinery to have priority. He had radioed back to Alf; help was on its way and most of the machines would have to wait until then, but Regin wanted to make sure that the most precious and advanced items were safe.
Sigurd was unhappy about machines designed to control and destroy people. Regin was amused at first.
“You’re just such a machine yourself!” he teased. But it was more serious than that and a real argument developed. Regin pointed out that with these machines, they could win back any gold they lost and win tons more besides. Maybe, replied Sigurd, but at what a cost: people’s freedom of thought. Maybe even their souls, he added, glancing sideways at the still, quiet machines labeled JESUS, ALLAH, and ODIN. But look at gold as a machine—what a device that was! It could buy anything within the wits of man or halfman and leave everyone it touched more able, not less. It was the gold that would do people good, not some artificial generator of delight or fear.
They agreed to postpone the argument until they saw how much space the gold took. Sigurd loaded the gold into Slipper while Regin chose the most important items of machinery to put inside his beast. But Sigurd was young and strong, while Regin was old and weak. He needed help with his cargo and soon he had to stop and sit outside the cave watching Sigurd go about his work, raging in his heart.
Sigurd could not understand his old mentor. This wasn’t the Regin who had once only wanted to help Sigurd achieve his plans and share his aims. He thought it was selfish to put these strange devices before the gold that could buy the nation peace and prosperity, mundane though those things were.
Or am I being selfish? he thought. Gold was the source of so many conflicts—was he falling into that trap too, fooling himself into thinking that his wealth was good for all? As he worked, he turned it over in his head. He felt uncomfortable under Regin’s angry eye, but he could not like these machines. He had no need for them; all they represented was threat. It was no longer a question of giving up gold—he was going to manage to stow it all away inside Slipper; but by the time the light was failing he had begun to believe that the machines were evil, thieves of life, and that it would be best simply to destroy them all.
That night, Regin talked excitedly of the devices they had captured and how they could help a leader conquer and rule. Sigurd listened carefully, frowning as the old pigman stuttered with enthusiasm. The treasure Fafnir had! With this device, for instance, Sigurd could wipe out a city, and yet leave everything intact—the machines, the buildings, even the plants that grew between the paving stones and the insects that crawled among them would be unharmed; but every mammal would be destroyed. Clever! No enemies, but all their wealth . . .
“But what use would that weapon be, Regin?” Sigurd wanted to know.
Regin wiped the sweat off his face and laughed. What use? Who knew what his enemies might be prepared to do? An army could invade a town and massacre the inhabitants—what then? Or they might capture an industrial complex. What would Sigurd do then, blow up the lot? But seeing the boy’s look of bewilderment, he backtracked. Well, maybe it would be useful as a threat against greater powers, a terrorist weapon, perhaps, something to scare them off if they threatened to invade. Of course the weapon had to be real for it to be a threat, but that didn’t mean you had to use it.
But Regin soon lost his caution again as his enthusiasm took over. Look at this device—it could make the people happy! Look at this one—it could make his enemies fear. This one could disable machinery, this one scrambled genes. This one affected memory. But Sigurd was appalled. To him, these weapons were not treasures, they were a curse. He wanted to lead people, not manipulate them. Look at Fafnir, Lord of London. What was London when no one lived there? But Regin laughed at him for being naive, and talked about the wonders of knowledge, the realities of power.
“If you don’t use them, someone else will,” he said. “Leadership goes to the one with the best weaponry. You know that. If you don’t have this stuff, you don’t rule.”
“We defeated Fafnir with a sword.”
“But what a sword!” said Regin. “Without that, you would have been helpless.”
Sigurd was stung—as if the sword had done the killing itself. Regin was amused. It was true, wasn’t it? he taunted. Without the sword, no death. Fafnir would still be here.
“You’re drunk, Regin,” said Sigurd quietly. The old pigman had forgotten what Sigurd had gone through—waiting in the pit, struggling through the guts of the monster to reach his second heart. Who else could have done that?
Regin had drunk nothing, but he laughed again, just to taunt the boy. His thoughts whirled forward without him. How small Sigurd looked sitting next to him. It was the sword that had killed Fafnir, not Sigurd. And who had made that sword? Given a little more time he could have designed the sword to be used by anyone—himself, for instance. He could have killed the monster alone, if he had chosen. Of course it was more sensible to get someone else to take the risks. He, Regin, had knowledge. Sigurd was expendable; he was not.
And he alone knew the one place on Sigurd’s body where he might be killed if he ever needed to do such a thing.
But then, as his mind flew to these dangerous places, the reality of his thinking came to him. What was he doing, thinking such terrible thoughts, as if all his values and principles and way of life had suddenly dropped off him like old clothes? As if a skinny old pig like him could ever have done what Sigurd had done. Flustered, overcome with emotion, he jumped up and ran over to hug Sigurd. He was affected by the air, he was in shock . . . something.
“See, Sig, I’m not fit even to help you,” he gasped.
“I could never have done it without you, Regin,” said Sigurd. But he had made up his mind now—seeing Regin change so drastically had finally convinced him. “But look what these machines have done to you. We have to destroy them.”
Regin drew back. Was that it? But he had turned them off— at least, he had turned off the ones he knew how to turn off. Perhaps it was true—yes, yes, it could be like that. Some device of Fafnir’s was working on him. In shock at how far he had been brought—even to dream of murder!—he did not argue his case; but he could not agree. In the morning they would talk again, his head would be clearer.
Later, when they lay down to sleep, he ran his mind over and over and over all the devices. Fear, Hatred, Murder—they had all been turned off, it couldn’t be that. The Desti
ny technology? The god machines? They had never been turned on in the first place. Fafnir had obviously not learned how to use them.
Unable to sleep, he got up and went around the citadel, from room to room, checking. Nothing seemed to be operating. Could it be possible, then, that these thoughts were not generated at all, but were his own? Was there a truth in it? Regin sat with his back to the wall and his head in his hands and thought until his head hurt. Sigurd was a fine person, none better. He was a hero, a fighter. But a ruler? Someone so naive, so young, so hopelessly idealistic—what chance would he stand in the slippery, backstabbing world of politics? You needed an old head, a wise head, and cunning mind for that. It was possible that someone else—Alf, perhaps, or maybe Regin himself—would serve the people and the nation better by seizing power for themselves before Sigurd had a chance to lose it to some easy friend, out to use him and steal his power.
In the morning, Sigurd was more certain than ever that his instincts were right. What had all this technology to do with his vision? Destruction and control—what sort of power was that? Where were the schools, the hospitals? Where was the hope? True, it might be that one of the devices hidden in the citadel might generate hope, but what use was even hope if it was not based on the realities of life? One thing he was sure Regin was right about: If he didn’t use these things, someone else would. There were a dozen kings and ganglords who would be emperor and wouldn’t hesitate to use them if they had them. So it was possible to treat the people like caged dogs and fill them with hope? How the tyrants would love that! It was exactly the kind of thing Sigurd had pledged himself to fight.
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