Telomerase was a genetic therapy that reversed cellular biological age. The Greek-averse simply called it “Iðunn’s Apples.” It was all so wonderful, and as heir apparent, it had all been hers. Trumba was still in the flush of her youth, and she now she could stay that way. Pert, trim, and voracious. She wasn’t going to end up a withered old hag like Nanna. And the Nine Worlds had better get used to her because she planned to rule for a long, long time.
Admittedly, Trumba had initially thought her inheritance to be a spectacularly grim prize. She hadn’t held out much hope for the future and had said so in her acceptance speeches after her father had died. The fringes had needed a cold splash of water. It wasn’t as if they would ever afford to even sniff an apple, let alone sample one.
The Jötnar might have been broken, but the Himinríki wasn’t in much better shape. Maintaining the Einherjar to defend the hinter-worlds from Jötnar attacks had been a constant drain on the government. Adding the burdens of her father’s predilection for public housing and perfectly-maintained roads meant the jarls had no option but to raise taxes, which in turn, frequently led to increased inflation and worthless wages. No wonder angry vassals lost their desire to defend the empire. It was a vicious circle. The war had cost them so many lives, they started fulfilling troop requisitions with phantoms. Most of the genuine new recruits were drawn from the Sleeping Lands or, worse, from Chitai. As far as the stallari were concerned, they were only fit to be human minesweepers or, at best, act as Jötunn decoys.
Trumba was amazed and delighted to find out that MIM agreed. Human minesweeping was the optimal solution.
Trumba had seen immediately how to use the machine. MIM the Matchless had delivered her a blueprint for the ages. MIM was a miracle. For example, when the Norse stopped conquering new lands, the flow of wealth into the economy had stalled, yet vast sums were being spent still on luxuries. Opulence had to be replaced by austerity.
The very soils of empire, denuded and depleted by years of ostentatious over-farming, had to be replenished. Genetically modified food was the answer.
Relying so heavily on the labour of thralls, the empire was under pressure to produce goods more efficiently. Gene-modded slaves were the solution.
Taxes that had been raised, ostensibly to pay for deficit government spending, had ended up in the pockets of provincial lords. That had to stop. The optimal approach was a uniform tax system, policed centrally by MIM, to harvest the profits of the new photogenic world.
Of course, sycophantic jarls and fringe traitors would publicly proclaim their unswerving support, while all the time working quietly to subvert MIM’s plan from within. That was human nature. They had to be rooted out, given the option of becoming thralls or becoming topsoil. The Einherjar could be disbanded.
Everything slotted neatly into place. The people would take their medicine, and the empire would be leaner, healthier for it. Uniform and unified. Optimal.
Trumba clattered her cup onto the table and tossed her visor after it. She quickly inhaled some raven’s bread and then crawled across her bed to sleep the sleep of the industrious.
THE NEXT MORNING, BOHR WAS all forced smiles, veering between light and dark more than the planet did. He had materialised after breakfast and offered a tour, which Trumba had begrudgingly accepted. She’d been planning on visiting the new facility anyway, to inspect the site personally and give it her imperial seal of approval. It was killing two birds with the same stone. Odin knew she liked to be efficient.
They were still in orbit, but thanks to following tech, Trumba felt like she was outside the station and down ambling around the habitable zone.
“What you see here is the original Skuld enclave. The original Mímisbrunnr was erected on that spot—we should put up a plaque perhaps—some two hundred years ago. Does Her Majesty take much interest in the penal code?”
It was a rhetorical question. Bohr was relishing taking his time leading the inspection, treading through virtual landscape. The coal-black Mímameiðr thickets were like spiders, which made the whole place feel like an insect hive.
“I am a foolish, fond old man, but I sometimes wonder what the most breathtaking moment in our illustrious empire was. When Ragnar stepped ashore at Lindisfarne and discovered the riches of the Christians, or when Lind emerged from the greenways and found himself looking at the wealth under this alien sky.”
Trumba ignored her tour guide. “Has anyone escaped Náströnd in the past year?”
“Ask your advisors. Ask MIM. That abomination isn’t my idea. I was aghast that you ever allowed it to happen. Perhaps you might consider clearing the area when the war is concluded to your satisfaction?”
Trumba smiled to herself. So. That was the old fool’s game. He didn’t like the mess she’d made in his backyard.
Trumba had been proud to honour her election pledge to deliver the Náströnd facility. MIM’s vision has been as simple as it was elegant: the planet itself would be warden for the murderers, adulterers, and oath-breakers who found themselves banished there, the worst of Norse society. Flee into Niflheim and freeze, flee to Muspelheim and burn. It was a successful optimisation of the principles of incarceration. Trumba signed the executive order to start sending the Abrahamists here as well. To let them have a taste of what hell was really like.
The Norse, taken as a whole, didn’t believe in rehabilitation. They had raved about the idea. Since the old Skuld facility and the warrens underneath were no longer in use, they became the centerpiece of the project, an immense underground cage. She’d paid for them, after all. Predictably, the Althing had reacted immediately, passing a motion—a formal censure—telling her she was playing with fire, but the Skuld had moaned longest and loudest.
“If the war is concluded.”
Trumba flicked between the follow and the detail on her visor. She wasn’t even convinced she should eradicate the Jötnar. She always indexed well after a battle. MIM went so far as to state she ought to siphon off some secured funds to keep them in the game, but you couldn’t have the bogey-man on payroll. Not yet, anyway.
Bohr was still rambling away.
“As to escape, I doubt it. Unless you were accompanied by a willing völva, you couldn’t escape by mimetic osmosis—you can’t force spell-singing, and if you could, it would be an easy matter to abandon the kidnapper in the greenways after you staggered.”
“If that were true,” she said, “I wouldn’t have to unchain the Úlfhéðnar every night to send them hunting. You don’t have the monopoly you think you have, Lector.”
She moved swiftly on. Next, she surveyed the floor plan, then followed a guard into the tunnels and shafts. Empty room upon empty room, all the old circuits ripped out as per her request, insulation and building materials strewn everywhere. At first, she couldn’t fathom why the Skuld had burrowed here, but then she realized that, thanks to the facility, they’d survived the Jötunn War unscathed. The old Mímisbrunnr bunkers were both impregnable and remote, safe from prying eyes and sabotage. Used as a prison, she knew any situation could be contained. It was easy to imagine a prisoner’s plight. Once banished, there was nothing to damage, nothing to rage against except concrete. The Mímameiðr trees had defied the stars for millennia, they were utterly impervious to whatever the criminals might muster. MIM could adjust the harmonics in the vicinity to make sure that no one staggered in or out without the right key.
She dropped the link and went to a nearby hollow, to look down at the surface with her own eyes. It was a long way down. The new Mímisbrunnr Station was colossal, on a scale Trumba found frankly daunting. She tried not to think about the whole structure—tried to compartmentalise it, to comprehend it in portions. It stretched over the horizon and beyond, looping around the whole of the planet, adorned with a hundred habitats, each devoted to the advancement of her realm. Hydrostatisticians, computational chemists, biomathematicians. Transplant the keenest minds in Midgard to one secluded garden, sprinkle on unlimited funds, and the crop co
uldn’t fail to impress. Some of the Skuld might have withered over the years, but tinker with their telomerase and you had the font of all knowledge and the fountain of eternal youth, all splashing profitably into one.
Of course, the occasional war led to the most productive spurts of growth, the most interesting, innovative offshoots. The first Gjallarhorn was fired at the grabs and gallivants of the Maratha Navy; ironically, two hundred years later, Hindoo like Ramanujan and Ammal led the team that birthed the HEIMDAL system. Applied science was a marvellous thing.
She knew that there had been attempts by prisoners to capture Skuld smiths and apprentices. They still made regular trips down to the surface for study, cargo inspections at the Bifrost launch loop, or travel to Midgard. Those attempts all failed abysmally. It was difficult to surprise a precognitive military specialist with a masters in material science. Even if the Skuld didn’t see you coming, they’d simply vanish from the visible spectrum, escape through the treeline, or in extremis, bombard the assailant with psychotropics. Still, the few attacks clearly bothered Bohr. He evidently was a poor seer if he couldn’t see what she’d been brewing. Náströnd was full of walking corpses, but there was always room for one more. She’d smash the ratings with this next broadcast.
“Could we bring captured Jötnar here?” she asked innocently.
“Your Majesty is most amusing. But tell me, have we ever captured a Jötunn alive? There were no survivors at Utgard, were there, just escapees?” he simpered.
The old man played dirty. The war hadn’t gone well these past thirty years. The Jötnar were initially bigger, faster, and stronger than the armies of Midgard, but the defector Iðunn had levelled the playing field. Let’s see how the scattered remnants survived without her medicine, she thought. Just as a cleaved head no longer plots, a Jötunn who has his feet hacked off cannot scurry far.
The timing of Bohr’s invitation to Mímisbrunnr station could not have been better. It offered the perfect cover and so she accepted.
The truth was she was planning a visit regardless. She had someone stashed onboard, a prisoner entrusted to a special squad of her own elite Varangian troops. Someone she’d not yet met in the flesh. And the news of him would shake the Nine Worlds.
THEY’D CAPTURED HIM LESS THAN a week ago. The press had dubbed him Hveðrungr or “Roarer” after his ranting broadcasts had echoed across the globes. She’d been bursting to crow about it and bask in the triumph that would follow. However, she wanted him under glass first. She wanted to see for herself, find out if that vituperative voice, full of pride and disdain, was real or enhanced. The navy had held her hand for far too long and she didn’t feel like getting into a pissing match about it. She’d have her staff hand over official notes afterwards.
She couldn’t wait to tell Bohr that he was about to get an entirely new class of neighbour. Shut down Náströnd indeed! It was only going to get bigger and better! The questioning would be at arm’s length of course. Varangian arms. She wasn’t about to risk her person standing in a cell with an insurgent. Two of her finest would administer the beatings while she followed, up close and personal. It was simply delicious to see the fear erupt from the victim first-hand, with the added safety of a whole planet between the cold cell on the far side of the station and her comfortable chambers. Her father should never have pandered to these worms.
The wait was almost as agonizing as listening to Bohr—it was all she could do to resist sneaking a quick peak. It took another day for her to get the all clear.
She bounded into the room, full of nervous energy and childish excitement and immediately shrieked with laughter. The leader of the insurgency, this great enemy, seemed almost comical. The Roarer was painfully thin and walked with a lopsided gait, swinging spindly arms. His hair rose almost six inches above his forehead into a tousled crest that gave him a strange, bewildered look. His head perched on slightly hunched shoulders, a sarcastic smile playing around frozen lips. He dressed immaculately, fur and silk from head to toe—otherwise he might have been mistaken for a scarecrow. Only his eyes, large and lively, flickering with malice, showed the deep intelligence that burned behind them. But a genetic superman or devourer or worlds, he was not. He was a mouse that roared, a garrulous fool with delusions of grandeur.
Evidently, whatever alterations or manipulations this Roarer had wrought on himself were nothing compared to the imperial arsenal. The Úlfhéðnar squads pushed the limits of human peak performance beyond credulity, possessing the eyes of eagles and the stamina of stallions. She could attest to that personally; if she couldn’t have the pick of the soldiery, what was the use of being fylkir? It had been her idea to splice their best trackers with lupine DNA. She had drawn her father a genemap when she was only twelve. Why simply imitate the savagery and speed of a wolf when you could possess it throughout your being? She had bred them loyal as well as cunning. Seven years later, those same trackers found the Roarer hiding out in an Alfheimr forest with his perverted family, chased him down, and trussed him up. That had been a sight for sore eyes. She watched the broadcasts of that again and again, admiring their speed and brutality as the soldiers handled the “package.”
“Devourer indeed!” she drooled. Trumba had worked up quite an appetite herself for one of her own tasty morsels, a thoroughbred Varangian “steed.”
“Your Majesty?” Her chamber guard said.
“Nothing. A yawn. Now, back to my revelries.”
She returned to the follow, nestling into the viewpoint of the guard again. At the same time, she connected to a broadcast feed directly into the room. It was amusingly disconcerting to watch herself at work.
“Ah, young man. I am delighted to finally meet you. Are you in fact a young man, or have you been eating Iðunn’s Apples, too? We don’t know much about you, I’m afraid. Perhaps I should start with the introductions. I am Trumba, the All-Glorious Queen of the Storm-Hall, Ruler of Princes and Lady of All, Daughter of Odin, the Fifth to bear this name. I believe you are acquainted with my crown, though, because you sought to detach it from my head and give it to the Jötnar?”
“I know who you are, Witch, and all of your wicked deeds.”
The prisoner ignored the broadcast and stared straight at the Varangian, his gaze boring through the guardsman as if searching out her hiding hole.
“I know you, Whore. Which of these two mares have you enticed between your legs? You, have you sucked Her Majesty’s breasts? Or does she invite your wives instead to bed her while you two rut in the fields?”
The soldiers were thrashing him before he finished; the last sentence came as a yell between a flurry of fists. Trumba didn’t interrupt them, wanting to see the prisoner bleed. To his credit, the Roarer was taking the punishment. In fact, he didn’t look in the slightest bit perturbed. After a few minutes, the guards paused to catch their breath, before they tore the last tatters of his finery from him. Even that didn’t shake the Roarer.
Trumba took a deep breath.
“What is the point of you, little man? Why am I wasting my time with you? I seem to ask that question a lot. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Did you find that? Did you find that your Jötnar listened?”
The rebel leader sat on the floor, staring into the mid-distance.
“After my inevitable death,” he said, “this is my consolation: noone will be able to find one single bit of information about what has really filled my life.”
Trumba raised an eyebrow. “We have your wife and children. We have Iðunn, your collaborator. You don’t think they will tell us all about you? You might change your mind when you hear their screams.”
Her wolves had sniffed out Iðunn Lind too. Recovering the Verðandi might have been the last achievement of her father’s reign, and the only one worth repeating. Dietbald the Beloved hadn’t been able to fight his way out of a paper bag. The thought of him on the throne, all indecision and procrastination, disgusted Trumba. The first time she sat down herself, all she could think about were
his haemorrhoids. She’d asked the High Urdur if they were contagious. Dietbald the Bleeding Rectum should have been his name. It would have matched his Bleeding Heart. The abolition of Northern thralldom was a farce; it just drove up the price of dunga everywhere.
But, oh, how the people loved him, cheered him, praised his generosity—and ultimately mourned him. The only thing more profligate than his Great Works schemes and ragtag Social Housing projects was his funeral. Every Urdur would tell you that it was the war industry that turned the economy. Perhaps that’s why they saw fit to drain the dregs of the treasury when victory looked close at hand.
They brought Dietbald’s broken body from Utgard for a lavish state funeral. The stallari argued that it was only fitting for such a great prince, the fylkir who had brought peace to the realms with his noble sacrifice. They said that the Ringhorn was soon to be scrapped anyway. Trumba was all for honouring tradition but turning the imperial flagship into a pyre was pure melodrama (ultimately, she might have to concede they’d been right about it being antiquated; if Bohr’s new fleet was as superb as he professed, she’d just pretend her complaints were due to being grief-stricken). Tragedy became farce when the launch mechanism jammed and the whole thing exploded on the ground, wiping out half the general staff. Nanna had screamed so much that it might have been a mercy to just throw the old dear into the inferno too. It was certainly one way to pass the torch. A damn expensive way.
Her father’s whole reign was a folly. Trumba’s first official act after the coronation was to have the skalds rewrite the sorry chapter from beginning to end. The new empress couldn’t be seen to have an imbecile for a father and a hysteric for a mother. People would question her gene pool. Besides, history should be kind.
The transgenic troops had helped ensure an orderly transition. The election would be held with minimal fuss. Of course, the usual elements had complained about interfering with the natural order and, yes, some of the early Jötnar were inconceivably ugly. Iðunn had allegedly been under duress, experimenting, tinkering. You just had to think of them as lessons learnt. Like Dietbald’s social programme. She grimaced at the memory, unsure who was the biggest monster. At least Lind contributed to society, and would do so for—well, who knew? She was already well over one hundred years old, although if old age didn’t claim her, obesity might. Thor alone knew how much the woman packed away every night, stress eating.
The All Father Paradox Page 23