by Dan Abnett
One of them noticed Karkasy moving out through the thinnest part of the audience, and came over to him.
"Where are you going, sir?' he asked.
Tm dying of thirst.’ Karkasy replied.
There will be refreshments, I'm told, after the presentation,' the soldier said. His voice caught on the word 'refreshments' and Karkasy knew there would be none for the common soldiery.
'Well, I've had enough.’ Karkasy said.
'It's not over.’
'I've had enough.’
The soldier frowned. Perspiration beaded at the bridge of his nose, just beneath the rim of his heavy fur shako. His throat and jowls were flushed pink and sheened with sweat.
'I can't allow you to wander away. Movement is supposed to be restricted to approved areas.’
Karkasy grinned wickedly. 'And I thought you were here to keep trouble out, not keep us in.’
The soldier didn't find that funny, or even ironic. "We're here to keep you safe, sir.’ he said. 'I'd like to see your permit.’
Karkasy took out his papers. They were an untidy, crumpled bundle, warm and damp from his trouser pocket. Karkasy waited, faintly embarrassed, while the soldier studied them. He had never liked barking up against authority, especially not in front of people, though the back of the crowd didn't seem to be at all interested in the exchange.
'You're a remembrancer?' the soldier asked.
Yes. Poet.’ Karkasy added before the inevitable second question got asked.
The soldier looked up from the papers into Karkasy's face, as if searching for some essential characteristic of poet-hood that might be discerned there, comparable to a Navigator's third eye or a slave-drone's serial tattoo. He'd likely never seen a poet before, which was all right, because Karkasy had never seen a Titan before.
You should stay here, sir.’ the soldier said, handing the papers back to Karkasy.
'But this is pointless.’ Karkasy said. 'I have been sent to make a memorial of these events. I can't get close to anything. I can't even hear properly what that fool's got to say. Can you imagine the wrong-headedness of this? Momus isn't even history. He's just another kind of memorialist. I've been allowed here to remember his remembrance, and I can't even do that properly. I'm so far removed from the things I should be engaging with, I might as well have stayed on Terra and made do with a telescope.’
The soldier shrugged. He'd lost the thread of Karkasy's speech early on. You should stay here, sir. For your own safety.’
'I was told the city had been made safe.’ Karkasy said. We're only a day or two from compliance, aren't we?'
The soldier leaned forward discreetly, so close that Karkasy could smell the stale odour of garbage the heat was infusing into his breath. 'Just between us, that's the
official line, but there has been trouble. Insurgents. Loyalists. You always get it in a conquered city, no matter how clean the victory. The back streets are not secure.’
'Really?'
They're saying loyalists, but it's just discontent, if you ask me. These bastards have lost it all, and they're not happy about it.’
Karkasy nodded. Thanks for the tip.’ he said, and turned back to rejoin the crowd.
Five minutes later, with Momus still droning on and Karkasy close to despair, an elderly noblewoman in the crowd fainted, and there was a small commotion. The soldiers hurried in to take charge of the situation and carry her into the shade.
When the soldier's back was turned, Karkasy took himself off out of the square and into the streets beyond.
HE WALKED FOR a while through empty courts and high-walled streets where shadows pooled like water. The day's heat was still pitiless, but moving around made it more bearable. Periodic breezes gusted down alley ways, but they were not at all relieving. Most were so full of sand and grit that Karkasy had to turn his back to them and close his eyes until they abated.
The streets were vacant, except for an occasional figure hunched in the shadows of a doorway, or half-visible behind broken shutters. He wondered if anybody would respond if he approached them, but felt reluctant to try. The silence was penetrating, and to break it would have felt as improper as disturbing a mourning vigil.
He was alone, properly alone for the first time in over a year, and master of his own actions. It felt tremendously liberating. He could go where he pleased, and quickly began to exercise that privilege, taking street
turns at random, walking where his feet took him. For a while, he kept the still-unmoving Titan in sight, as a point of reference, but it was soon eclipsed by towers and high roofs, so he resigned himself to getting lost. Getting lost would be liberating too. There were always the great towers of the palace. He could follow those back to their roots if necessary.
War had ravaged many parts of the city he passed through. Buildings had toppled into white and dusty heaps of slag, or been reduced to their very basements. Others were roofless, or burned out, or wounded in their structures, or simply rendered into facades, their innards blown out, standing like the wooden flats of stage scenery.
Craters and shell holes pock-marked certain pavements, or the surfaces of metalled roads, sometimes forming strange rows and patterns, as if their arrangement was deliberate, or concealed, by some secret code, great truths of life and death. There was a smell in the dry, hot air, like burning or blood or ordure, yet none of those things. A mingled scent, an afterscent. It wasn't burning he could smell, it was things burnt. It wasn't blood, it was dry residue. It wasn't ordure, it was the seeping consequence of sewer systems broken and cracked by the bombardment.
Many streets had stacks of belongings piled up along the pavements. Furniture, bundles of clothing, kitchen-ware. A great deal of it was in disrepair, and had evidently been recovered from ruined dwellings. Other piles seemed more intact, the items carefully packed in trunks and coffers. People were intending to quit the city, he realised. They had piled up their possessions in readiness while they tried to procure transportation, or perhaps the relevant permission from the occupying authorities.
Almost every street and yard bore some slogan or other notice upon its walls. All were hand written, in a
great variety of styles and degrees of calligraphic skill. Some were daubed in pitch, others paint or dye, others chalk or charcoal - the latter, Karkasy reasoned, marks made by the employment of burnt sticks and splinters taken from the ruins. Many were indecipherable, or unfathomable. Many were bold, angry graffiti, spleneti-cally cursing the invaders or defiamly announcing a surviving spark of resistance. They called for death, for uprising, for revenge.
Others were lists, carefully recording the names of the citizens who had died in that place, or plaintive requests for news about the missing loved ones listed below. Others were agonised statements of lament, or minutely and delicately transcribed texts of some sacred significance.
Karkasy found himself increasingly captivated by them, by the variation and contrast of them, and the emotions they conveyed. For the first time, the first true and proper time since he'd left Terra, he felt the poet in him respond. This feeling excited him. He had begun to fear that he might have accidentally left his poetry behind on Terra in his hurry to embark, or at least that it malingered, folded and unpacked, in his quarters on the ship, like his least favourite shirt.
He felt the muse return, and it made him smile, despite the heat and the mummification of his throat. It seemed apt, after all, that it should be words that brought words back into his mind.
He took out his chapbook and his pen. He was a man of traditional inclinations, believing that no great lyric could ever be composed on the screen of a data-slate, a point of variance that had almost got him into a fist fight with Palisad Hadray, the other 'poet of note' amongst the remembrancer group. That had been near the start of their conveyance to join the expedition, during one of the informal dinners held to allow the remembrancers to get to know one another. He would have won the fight,
if it had come to it. He was fairly su
re of that. Even though Hadray was an especially large and fierce woman.
Karkasy favoured notebooks of thick, cream cartridge paper, and at the start of his long, feted career, had sourced a supplier in one of Terra's arctic hives, who specialised in antique methods of paper manufacture. The firm was called Bondsman, and it offered a particularly pleasing quarto chapbook of fifty leaves, bound in a case of soft, black kid, with an elasticated strap to keep it closed. The Bondsman Number 7. Karkasy, a sallow, rawheaded youth back then, had paid a significant proportion of his first royalty income for an order of two hundred. The volumes had come, packed head to toe, in a waxed box lined with tissue paper, which had smelled, to him at least, of genius and potential. He had used the books sparingly, leaving not one precious page unfilled before starting a new one. As his fame grew, and his earnings soared, he had often thought about ordering another box, but always stopped when he realised he had over half the original shipment still to use up. All his great works had been composed upon the pages of Bondsman Number 7's. His Fanfare to Unity, all eleven of his Imperial Cantos, his Ocean Poems, even the meritorious and much republished Reflections and Odes, written in his thirtieth year, which had secured his reputation and won him the Ethiopic Laureate.
The year before his selection to the role of remembrancer, after what had been, in all fairness, a decade of unproductive doldrums that had seen him living off past glories, he had decided to rejuvenate his muse by placing an order for another box. He had been dismayed to discover that Bondsman had ceased operation.
Ignace Karkasy had nine unused volumes left in his possession. He had brought them all with him on the voyage. But for an idiot scribble or two, their pages were unmarked.
On a blazing, dusty street corner in the broken city, he took the chap-book out of his coat pocket, and slid off the strap. He found his pen - an antique plunger-action fountain, for his traditionalist tastes applied as much to the means of marking as what should be marked - and began to write.
The heat had almost congealed the ink in his nib, but he wrote anyway, copying out such pieces of wall writing as affected him, sometimes attempting to duplicate the manner and form of their delineation.
He recorded one or two at first, as he moved from street to street, and then became more inclusive, and began to mark down almost every slogan he saw. It gave him satisfaction and delight to do this. He could feel, quite definitely, a lyric beginning to form, taking shape from the words he read and recorded. It would be superlative. After years of absence, the muse had flown back into his soul as if it had never been away.
He realised he had lost track of time. Though it was still stifling hot and bright, the hour was late, and the blazing sun had worked its way over, lower in the sky. He had filled almost twenty pages, almost half his chap-book.
He felt a sudden pang. What if he had only nine volumes of genius left in him? What if that box of Bondsman Number 7's, delivered so long ago, represented the creative limits of his career?
He shuddered, chilled despite the clinging heat, and put his chap-book and pen away He was standing on a lonely, war-scabbed street-corner, persecuted by the sun, unable to fathom which direction to turn.
For the first time since escaping Peeter Egon Momus's presentation, Karkasy felt afraid. He felt that eyes were watching him from the blind ruins.
He began to retrace his steps, slouching through gritty shadow and dusty light. Only once or twice did a new
graffito persuade him to stop and take out his chap-book again.
He'd been walking for some time, in circles probably, for all the streets had begun to look the same, when he found the eating house. It occupied the ground floor and basement of a large basalt tenement, and bore no sign, but the smell of cooking announced its purpose. Door-shutters had been opened onto the street, and there was a handful of tables set out. For the first time, he saw people in numbers. Locals, in dark sun cloaks and shawls, as unresponsive and indolent as the few souls he had glimpsed in doorways. They were sitting at the tables under a tattered awning, alone or in small, silent groups, drinking thimble glasses of liquor or eating food from finger bowls.
Karkasy remembered the state of his throat, and his belly remembered itself with a groan.
He walked inside, into the shade, nodding politely to the patrons. None responded.
In the cold gloom, he found a wooden bar with a dresser behind it, laden with glassware and spouted bottles. The hostel keeper, an old woman in a khaki wrap, eyed him suspiciously from behind the serving counter.
'Hello.’ he said.
She frowned back.
'Do you understand me?' he asked.
She nodded slowly.
That's good, very good. I had been told our languages were largely the same, but that there were some accent and dialect differences.' He trailed off.
The old woman said something that might have been What?' or might have been any number of curses or interrogatives.
'You have food?' he asked. Then he mimed eating.
She continued to stare at him.
'Food?' he asked.
She replied with a flurry of guttural words, none of which he could make out. Either she didn't have food, or was unwilling to serve him, or she didn't have any food for the likes of him.
'Something to drink then?' he asked.
No response.
He mimed drinking, and when that brought nothing, pointed at the bottles behind her.
She turned and took down one of the glass containers, selecting one as if he had indicated it directly instead of generally. It was three-quarters full of a clear, oily fluid that roiled in the gloom. She thumped it onto the counter, and then put a thimble glass beside it.
'Very good.’ he smiled. Very, very good. Well done. Is this local? Ah ha! Of course it is, of course it is. A local speciality? You're not going to tell me, are you? Because you have no idea what I'm actually saying, have you?'
She stared blankly at him.
He picked up the bottle and poured a measure into the glass. The liquor flowed as slowly and heavily through the spout as his ink had done from his pen in the street. He put the bottle down and lifted the glass, toasting her.
Tfour health.’ he said brightly, 'and to the prosperity of your world. I know things are hard now, but trust me, this is all for the best. All for the very best.’
He swigged the drink. It tasted of licorice and went down very well, heating his dry gullet and lighting a buzz in his gut.
'Excellent.’ he said, and poured himself a second. Very good indeed. You're not going to answer me, are you? I could ask your name and your lineage and anything at all, and you would just stand there like a statue, wouldn't you? Like a Titan?'
He sank the second glass and poured a third. He felt very good about himself now, better than he had done for hours, better even than when the muse had flown back to him in the streets. In truth, drink had always been a more welcome companion to Ignace Karkasy than any muse, though he would never have been willing to admit it, or to admit the fact that his affection for drink had long weighed down his career, like rocks in a sack. Drink and his muse, both beloved of him, each pulling in opposite directions.
He drank his third glass, and tipped out a fourth. Warmth infused him, a biological warmth much more welcome than the brutal heat of the day. It made him smile. It revealed to him how extraordinary this false Terra was, how complex and intoxicating. He felt love for it, and pity, and tremendous goodwill. This world, this place, this hostelry, would not be forgotten.
Suddenly remembering something else, he apologised to the old woman, who had remained facing him across the counter like a fugued servitor, and reached into his pocket. He had currency - Imperial coin and plastek wafers. He made a pile of them on the stained and glossy bartop.
'Imperial.’ he said, 'but you take that. I mean, you're obliged to. I was told that by the iterators this morning. Imperial currency is legal tender now, to replace your local coin. Terra, you don't know wha
t I'm saying, do you? How much do I owe you?'
No answer.
He sipped his fourth drink and pushed the pile of cash towards her. 'You decide, then. You tell me. Take for the whole bottle.' He tapped his finger against the side of the flask. The whole bottle? How much?'
He grinned and nodded at the money. The old woman looked at the heap, reached out a bony hand and picked up a five aquila piece. She studied it for a
moment, then spat on it and threw it at Karkasy. The coin bounced off his belly and fell onto the floor.
Karkasy blinked and then laughed. The laughter boomed out of him, hard and joyous, and he was quite unable to keep it in. The old woman stared at him. Her eyes widened ever so slightly.
Karkasy lifted up the bottle and the glass. 'I tell you what,' he said. 'Keep it all. All of it.’
He walked away and found an empty table in the corner of the place. He sat down and poured another drink, looking about him. Some of the silent patrons were staring at him. He nodded back, cheerfully.
They looked so human, he thought, and realised it was a ridiculous thing to think, because they were without a doubt human. But at the same time, they weren't. Their drab clothes, their drab manner, the set of their features, their way of sitting and looking and eating. They seemed a little like animals, man-shaped creatures trained to ape human behaviour, yet not quite accomplished in that art.
'Is that what five thousand years of separation does to a species?' he asked aloud. No one answered, and some of his watchers turned away.
Was that what five thousand years did to the divided branches of mankind? He took another sip. Biologically identical, but for a few strands of genetic inheritance, and yet culturally grown so far apart. These were men who lived and walked and drank and shat, just as he did. They lived in houses and raised cities, and wrote upon walls and even spoke the same language, old women not withstanding. Yet time and division had grown them along alternate paths. Karkasy saw that clearly now. They were a graft from the rootstock, grown under another sun, similar yet alien. Even the way they sat at tables and sipped at drinks.