The Gradual

by Christopher Priest

  We stayed with them as late as we could but it was depressing to see my parents in such a state. Alynna had cooked a light meal while we were there, and my father sat next to me while we ate.

  ‘I have played your records, Sandro,’ he said.

  ‘Do you like them?’ I was pleased.

  ‘I do like them.’ A little later he said, ‘I have played your records, Sandro.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad.’

  I tried to explain about the tour, about to begin in less than forty-eight hours, but I don’t think either of them understood.

  As we returned home, Alynna said, ‘Do you realize you have almost never talked to me about Jacj? What you remember about him, what he’s like, what your feelings are.’

  ‘I don’t know what to think,’ I said. ‘Therefore I never know what to say. I lost my brother before I knew I was going to lose him. I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again.’

  ‘How old is he now?’

  ‘He’s just over four years older than me.’

  ‘So he would be … middle aged now?’

  ‘Early middle age,’ I said.

  ‘Isn’t that too old to be a serving soldier?’

  ‘I always thought he was too young to be a soldier. The longer this goes on the more I think that. Seeing those old photographs today—’

  She said, ‘We ought to visit your parents more often.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, but I was thinking of the tour, unavoidably close. ‘We’ll go to see them again as soon as I’m back.’

  ‘Would you like me to visit them while you’re away?’

  ‘It’s only a few weeks. Let’s wait until I’m home again.’

  I remember those words. Now.

  13

  I was demoralized by seeing my parents. I should have cancelled the tour but I did not. The heart of my work would have died. I knew that my images of the ocean and its clustered islands were the product of dreams, of fancy, of guesswork, of uninformed wondering. To complete my work, to take on the great and serious works that I then believed lay ahead, it was essential to experience the Dream Archipelago directly.

  The tour began with a gala concert in the main auditorium of the Federal Hall in Glaund City. Alynna was there with me – I had no formal part in the concert, so we sat together in reserved seats close to the front, soaking up the sumptuous, subtle sounds of a first-class orchestra playing three works from the repertoire of great classics. At the end, flowers were presented, speeches were made, tears were shed. The applause was thunderous, the orchestra played a brief light-hearted orchestral encore, then left the stage while the audience stood and cheered. Alynna and I spent our last night together in a hotel, and in the morning we said goodbye.

  14

  The port adjacent to Glaund City is called Questiur, and our first ship to the islands was moored there, waiting for us to board. In common with everyone else I had never been into Questiur. For years it was used exclusively as a naval base, and all civilians were barred from it. Because the war was in a kind of limbo, at least as far as the home countries were concerned, an area of the main harbour was open for non-military shipping.

  We were driven in a convoy of buses from the hotel straight to the quay. There was a delay boarding the ship because we had to be sure all the instruments were with us and accounted for. I saw my violin case being unloaded in the first batch, so while I waited for the others I walked briefly along the huge quay, past where our ship was moored.

  Now that I was breaking free of a world based almost entirely on the inner mind, I was curious to see one of the places which for so long had been a state secret. The day was dark under a sky of grey, scudding clouds. The wind bore stinging pellets of ice. The harbour was a bleak and disquieting place, with many of the dockside buildings derelict. I was glad to hurry back down the quay and stride up the gangplank into the warmth of the ship.

  I was late into my bunk that night, because for all of us on the tour this journey was a step into newness, an escape into a different life. Everyone I spoke to seemed uplifted, excited, speaking more loudly and emphatically than usual. The mood was infectious. The saloons and dining areas of the ship were luxurious and well stocked. The ship must have moved away from its mooring while we were eating, because a background vibration from the engines, which I had been aware of since I boarded, became louder and more insistent. The ship was soon under way as we went out into the open sea.

  After our first onboard meal many of us moved to the nearest bar and our celebrations continued. Standing there with the other musicians, listening to what people were saying, joining in, laughing with the rest of them, I was relaxing in a way that was almost unique in my life. Glaund was away, Glaund was behind us. We were sailing to peace and neutrality, the calm vigour of island air, island seas. I wanted to be there now – I was already there now, I realized, enjoying the unfocusing effect of the alcohol.

  In a period of relative quietness I stood alone by the bar with a large glass of whisky in my hand, feeling the ship moving beneath me, to and fro, up and down, a twisting motion side to side – gentle, unthreatening, a sense of movement forward, a purpose, a destination. Some of my colleagues had said the ship’s movements made them feel queasy, and they had left the saloon, presumably to return to their cabins, but I felt no such malaise. I wanted the ship to thrust forward into the swell of the sea, speed up, take us more quickly to our first landing on an island.

  By the time I returned to my cabin, finding my way there somehow through the muddle of all that drink, I was mellow and sleepy. I rolled into my bunk with a feeling of pleasurable surrender to the comforts of onboard life.

  In the morning I was aware of the ship’s noises and movement before I was fully awake. I turned over, then back again, stretching and snoozing, feeling the vibration of the engines deep beneath me. I pressed my fingers lightly against the metal wall: the gentlest tremor teased me, like the touch of violin strings.

  Bright sunlight was shafting in through the porthole but I kept my eyes closed against the glare for some time, wanting to prolong the feeling of luxury. Also, my head was hurting – I knew I had drunk too much the evening before. Finally I climbed carefully out of the bunk and leaned towards the porthole. I rested my hands on the circular metal rim and I peered blinking into the daylight.

  I was assaulted by a blaze of brilliant colours. For a moment I was so surprised that I found it difficult to register what I was seeing. Then I focused. The ship had been steered towards a shore and was sailing slowly. We were so close to land that it felt as if we were passing beneath a steep rocky wall, or cliff, thick with multi-coloured foliage. At first it was so close that I was sure that if I could somehow wrench the porthole open I would be able to reach out and take hold of some of the flowers, or let my fingers drag against the jagged rocky wall. But of course the ship could not be so close in as that, and as I peered up and to each side the perspective made sense. The ship was probably at least fifty metres from the rock face, but the escarpment was so huge and steep that it loomed above and against the ship.

  I had never seen anything like it. I was dazzled by the colours.

  I had grown up in a drab country. The environment of Glaund was a nation of cinder-grey stone and pale concrete buildings, black roads, pebbled beaches, dark trees that never lost their evergreen needles, steep mountains that when they did not present their bare rock faces were clad in snow. The plazas in the towns were paved with slate flagstones, the old buildings had mullioned windows that reflected in small fragments the cloudy skies.

  Outside the towns there was of course the countryside, but most of the land was given over to monoculture crops, or where it was not cultivated it revealed vast areas of stone and sand scrubland. There were few open spaces in Glaund’s cities – no parks or playgrounds, no tree-lined avenues. The heritage of heavy industry was evidenced everywhere. Because of the effects of the war, because of the deadening social levelling of the war, there were few bright lights, only m
odest advertising placards, understated signs outside offices and shops, curtains drawn behind every window, doors that were closed all year round. Even our national flag was almost monochrome: the main ground was dark grey, and the emblem of St Sleeth, his Cross, was a deep red, surmounted by two narrow crossing lines.

  When I had been at home, staring longingly across the pallid coastal waters towards beautiful Dianme, troublesome Chlam, unreliable Herrin, even then I could only view those in virtual silhouette, dark mounds bulking against the south-lit sea, hidden in the day by the dazzle of sunlight, hidden at night by the darkness. Mostly there was a haze, a dirty miasma, which drifted away from our coastline and spread sluggishly across the surface of the sea, blurring and concealing. From those islands I had gained no idea of what the Archipelago might really be like. Now I was seeing!

  This island against whose flower-clad wall we were sailing – was this one that might also be seen from the mainland? How far had we sailed from grim Questiur while I drank myself to sleep, then slept? And how long had I been sleeping?

  Although I fell happily into a whisky-fuelled sleep I had stirred several times in the night, once to visit the toilet, and after that I drifted between states of semi-slumber and semi-excitement until the daylight started lightening the sky beyond the porthole. I found my wristwatch – it showed the familiar time that at home I would normally get out of bed and wander down to find myself a breakfast. That was good, because I had not wanted to sleep through the day.

  I washed and dressed as quickly as I could, and while I was doing so I noticed that there were two clocks, or chronometers, already mounted in the cabin. They were built into the wall next to the door. One showed the same time as my watch, but the other was more than four hours ahead of that. I imagined that this must mean we had crossed one or more time zones during the night.

  Both clock faces had words inscribed on them that I could not understand. I guessed they were in island demotic. The one on the left was labelled Mutlaq Vaqt; the other was labelled Kema Vaqt.

  As soon as I was dressed I left the cabin and hurried along the companionway to try to find a way out to the upper decks. I passed several other members of the orchestra as I hurried along – I did not stop to speak to them. I found a door and broke out of the interior of the ship into hot, blinding sunlight. The white-painted superstructure of the ship reflected the glare, and I protected my eyes with an arm thrown across my forehead, but already I could see what I had come outside to find.

  We were passing through a waterway that was so straight, so neatly laid between the two sheer cliffs, that it could only have been artificial. The canal was just about wide enough for our ship, but there was not much spare. On the high cliffs of the canal there were a few bare areas where the blasting of the rock had left steep patches of baldness, but otherwise bushes, vines, flowers, grew in profusion. The scents from them were almost overwhelming.

  Ahead I could see that the narrow cleft was coming to an end. A stretch of open sea lay beyond. Soon enough the ship came to the end of the passage and as we moved out into the open it was possible to see when I looked back that a line of mountains ran across the island we had traversed, and that the canal was a deeper extension of what had once been a valley. The mountains stretched away as far as I could see in either direction.

  Other ships were hove to in the bay we were starting out across. As soon as we were clear of the entrance to the canal, the one waiting closest began turning, then headed towards it. It was a transport ship, an elongated tramp steamer of some kind, lying low in the water. Two large cranes stood on its deck. Its aft-mounted superstructure was dark and stained, and the hull was pock-marked with spreading patches of rust pushing up through the paintwork. There was an exchange of sirens between our ship and this one. A smell of coal dust drifted across to us.

  I saw another man standing at the rail. I recognized him as Ganner, a cellist who had sometimes played alongside me as a session musician. I walked across to him, glad to see a familiar face.

  ‘We seem to have travelled a long way already,’ I said. ‘Do you happen to know where we are?’

  ‘You’ve slept late,’ Ganner said unexpectedly.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘You missed a briefing session this morning, after breakfast. One of the ship’s officers described the route we were taking.’

  ‘Breakfast?’ I said. ‘What time is it now?’

  He held out his arm for me to see his wristwatch. It was long past midday – my own watch was four hours slower than that. I made what I hoped was a self-effacing comment about having had too much to drink the night before, and slipped off my watch. I adjusted it so that it was showing the same time as Ganner’s.

  ‘There are chronometers in every cabin,’ he said. ‘The crew recommends we use those, and not bother with our own watches.’

  ‘I saw them,’ I said. ‘Two dials showing different times. Any idea why?’

  Ganner shook his head. ‘Things are different here. Several others missed the briefing. I don’t suppose it matters much. None of the place names meant much to me, or anyone else.’

  I was frustrated to hear this – I should have loved to have heard island names.

  ‘Can you give me some idea of what was said? Did they say what that island was called, the one we just left?’

  ‘He said the name of the island, but I didn’t really pay much attention. Sick? Seek?’

  ‘Was it the island of Serque?’ I said. I had noticed that name as a transit point on one of the documents. Two names in fact: Grande Serque and Petty Serque, intriguingly.

  ‘It might have been,’ said Ganner. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Just interested.’

  I didn’t want to say any more – I could feel the annoyance in me cohering around a sudden idea, a sound of words, a line of music, brilliant in my mind.

  Serque, Serque – I read you!

  That was mine, that was not for conversation.

  Ganner glanced up at the sun and wiped a hand across his shining face. ‘I’m not dressed for this climate,’ he said. ‘I’m going down to my cabin to change.’

  He went away, leaving me to marvel alone at the scenery. The sea was silver and calm, the ship punching white churning foam away from us. The azure sky was unbroken by cloud and the sunlight was intense. I walked to a side rail, staring back at the bulky mountains of the island we had just traversed. It was already no longer possible to see the narrow entrance to the canal, although the place where it lay was indicated by the fold in the mountain range.

  I thrilled to the constant sound of the engines, the rush of the wind, the accompanying seabirds who glided and swooped behind us, the constant but unidentifiable noises of a ship thrusting powerfully through the waves. My senses were alive: I could not resist hearing a rhythm in the deep beat of the engines, far below. The hot wind blustered my ears and the sun glossed the sea. Everything around me was trembling with sound, and the impressions flooded in.

  15

  Mutlaq Vaqt was a phonetic rendering of a demotic phrase meaning ‘absolute time’. Kema Vaqt was demotic for ‘ship time’. (They appeared never to be the same.) The island we had passed through was called Serque, as I had guessed, and it was divided by the canal into two artificially created regions: Grand Serque and Petty Serque. Serque was a long island that sprawled inconveniently in the path of many preferred shipping routes, had difficult areas of shallows at its extremities, and so the canal had been constructed about a century before. Serque itself was the main island in a huge group called the Greater Serques. Apparently there was a second island group, half the world away, even more huge in extent, and paradoxically called the Lesser Serques. That group too had an eponymous island called Serque. Serque and Serque were emphatically not the same island, although they were sometimes confused for each other. They were rivals in a passive sort of way. Both had a thriving tourist trade, both were seats of learning, both had important historical figures, both were go
ing through a programme of industrialization, both were heavily forested, both had huge mountain ranges, and both spoke a local language called Serquois, although the two languages were completely unalike, even to the use of different alphabets. People from one Serque rarely visited the other Serque. There was not thought to be any reason for this other than the immense distances involved.

  I garnered this confusing information from a young woman called Jih, who worked as a publicity assistant to Ders Axxon, and who had been one of those at our pre-tour briefing who had offered to help and advise us during our travels. I found her on the second evening before dinner, and asked her to sit at my table so that I, and the three other musicians who were with me, could be given a little information. When we were seated I asked her if she knew through which part of the Archipelago the ship was presently sailing.

  ‘We are still in the Greater Serques,’ she said, and it was then that she attempted to explain about the confusion of the two identically named islands and their groups. When we had cleared this up, she added, ‘At the moment we are heading for an island called Wesler, and we expect to be docking there early tomorrow morning. Wesler is the place of your first scheduled concert booking.’

  I remembered then, as I suppose so too did the others, that I had seen the name Wesler in our itinerary.

  ‘Do you recognize any of the islands we have passed?’ I said.

  She looked concerned, as if my questions were challenging her role as a provider of assistance. I wasn’t trying to do that – I merely wanted to know where we were. There were no charts or maps anywhere on the ship and none of my colleagues knew anything more than I did. Most of them appeared to have missed the early-morning briefing that Ganner had told me about.