On (GollanczF.)

by Adam Roberts

  The second blow, being less unexpected, hurt Tighe less. He caught a sense of Waldea’s arm coming up and let himself go looser. Then, with the impact, he rolled to the left, tumbling over, sprawling in the earth. He landed softly. But despite the throb of pain at the side of his head Tighe felt the grit of the ledge underneath him with a rush of satisfaction. Flown, landed.

  Waldea’s rage burnt itself out straight away and he hunkered down to check the boy. ‘OK? I get no pleasure hitting you,’ he said.

  ‘Fine, Master,’ said Tighe.

  Waldea helped him up. ‘Hit a man once,’ he said, uncharacteristically communicative. ‘Blinded him in one eye. Don’t make me strike you again. Can’t fly a kite with only one eye.’

  ‘No, Master,’ said Tighe. He was on his feet now. His head didn’t hurt so bad really.

  Suddenly, unexpectedly, Waldea laughed, a single burst of noise. ‘Looked like combat, God fuck it,’ he said, ‘like you were trying to bomb boy Ati out of the sky.’ Then he turned on his heel and marched away.

  Tighe put his hand to the side of his head, but there was no blood. Then he looked around. The other kite-boys and kite-girls had disassembled their kites and taken the packages back into the dormitory, so, with fumbling hands, Tighe did that. He felt strange, his head still stinging. He felt alone, uncertain what to do next. Then, angling his head back to look up, he understood that he felt euphoric.

  Alive!

  Somehow the sky seemed brighter, more soaked in light, than it had done before. The colours of the wall itself had intensified, the browns were richer, the greys more pure, the green more lively.

  That evening in the dormitory Ati was stand-offish. Tighe tried to gauge the mood as he wrapped himself up in his blanket.

  ‘Sorry’, he said in a soft voice, ‘that I nearly strike you.’

  Ati mumbled something, looking in another direction.

  ‘In the sky,’ Tighe added.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Ati. For a while he was silent. Tighe waited on a fuller reply and then gave up, turned on his side and tried to compose himself for sleep. Then Ati’s voice came back, peevish.

  ‘You don’t do that, could have killed,’ he said. ‘Killed the two of us, you, me. Fuck. Still,’ he added, his voice warming a little. ‘That was then. No demerat in thinking of the past all the time.’

  Silence.

  ‘I guess’, Ati said, eventually, ‘I figured you might fly better, you being the sky-boy and everything, but you flew badly, you flew like shit. Turd on a kite.’ He hissed with repressed laughter. Suddenly, without expecting himself to, Tighe started laughing as well, pressing his lips together with his fingers to try and stop the sound coming out. Waldea would be coming back into the room any moment now. Shouldn’t make any noise. But it was so funny – Tighe falling through the sky like a stone.

  ‘You supposed to be the sky-boy,’ said Ati, laughter eroding the sentence as he said it until it ended in a series of gasps.

  ‘Sky-boy,’ repeated Tighe.

  ‘You good omen? You shit omen.’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘You supposed to flown down here to us,’ said Ati, his body trembling with the giggles. I don’t think so.’

  ‘I fell,’ said Tighe.

  The door opened and Waldea was back in the space. ‘Quiet now,’ he boomed.

  *

  The following day at breakfast Ati came and sat next to Tighe. They didn’t say anything to one another, but it was the first morning when Tighe did not eat alone.

  8

  Tighe flew again the following day and the day after that, and the third day as well. Each time he felt the terrors thrum through his whole body as he stood on the edge of the world. He told himself not to look down, but he could barely help himself. His eyesight would drop as if it were subject to the same laws of gravity as physical objects. And there was the world, at his feet, plummeting away for ever until the strong block of hard stone dissolved into the mist of clouds and everything diminished and became blue with the distance. Just looking down like that would make his ribs clench together like fingers in a fist, make his heart pop and rattle, would dry his mouth and make all the hairs on his head tingle and stand apart.

  But, each time, he had stepped over the edge into the push of the rising midday air and the kite at his back had filled and soared. And every time that happened, Tighe had wept – actually wept – with the euphoria of it.

  The more he knew Ati, the more he realised that the downwaller’s command of the Imperial language was not as good as he had at first thought. What he had interpreted as smooth expression was actually haphazard in its syntax. But Ati himself, for all his strangeness – his strange look and smell, his peculiar manner and attitudes – began to seem homely to Tighe. Familiar, close.

  On the morning of one particularly bright day, as Tighe joined the rest of the platon for the stretching exercises and tyshe movements, he had summoned his courage and addressed Waldea directly. ‘Master?’ he had said, his voice more quavery than he would have liked. ‘Master?’

  ‘Tig-he,’ grunted Waldea. He was fixing a broken spar from one of the kites with daubs of glue from an antique plastic pot.

  ‘I want to go, some days,’ he said. ‘To the field hospital.’

  Waldea didn’t say anything, his whole ruined faced concentrated on the broken kite. When he had finished glueing and splinting the spar, he said, ‘You sick?’

  ‘No, Master.’

  ‘Broken bones?’

  ‘No, Master.’

  ‘That’s what the field hospital is for.’

  ‘The man there is Vievre, Master. He healed me after my fall. He a father to me, I love him.’

  Waldea looked up at this, his sky-grey eyes settling, unblinking, on Tighe’s gaze. ‘You love him,’ he repeated, in a colourless voice.

  ‘He a father to me, I love him,’ Tighe repeated, uncertainly. I love him a father.’

  ‘No, Tig-he,’ said Waldea, clambering to his feet. ‘You cannot go. There is no time in our day when we can spare the time for you to wander away.’ He slapped his own oval belly with the flats of both hands. I am your father now and you must love me. You must love me, or I will have to beat you again.’ Then, for some arcane reason that Tighe could not fathom, he started laughing and strode away.

  One evening, as the two of them sat apart from the rest of the kite-boys and kite-girls eating the evening meal, Tighe asked Ati, ‘Ati, this war?’

  Ati was always wholly absorbed in his eating until he had finished every fragment of food. He said nothing until he had run his forefinger round the inside of the bowl and licked it. Then he said, ‘What you say, barbarian?’

  ‘This war.’

  ‘What about this war?’

  ‘Who do we war?’

  ‘Don’t say we war,’ said Ati, smirking. He loved being able to correct Tighe’s language usage; it made him feel better about his own often halting command of the Imperial tongue. ‘Say we fight.’

  ‘Who do we fight? In this fight?’

  ‘Who do we fight in this war?’ said Ati. ‘You are a barbarian if you do not know who do we fight!’

  Tighe put his bowl to his face and ran his tongue round the inside. His tongue was long, but he couldn’t quite reach into the very middle. Ati leaned over and knocked the bowl with his knuckles so that it jarred against the bridge of Tighe’s nose.

  ‘Shiteater!’ squealed Tighe, dropping the bowl and reaching over to slap Ati on the forehead. Ati was laughing now and Tighe grinning, but they both looked round nervously to see if Waldea was watching them.

  ‘So?’ repeated Tighe. ‘Who do we fight?’

  ‘You are barbarian! – everybody knows who we fight.’

  ‘I am a Prince,’ snorted Tighe. ‘You shiteater.’

  ‘I apologies, you preens,’ said Ati, making a grinning obedience with his head.

  ‘Tell me!’

  Ati’s grin dropped away. ‘We are at a holy war,’ he said, with sudden seriou
sness. ‘We fight a holy fight. All three Popes have written. To the east alongwall from here is a mighty nation of darkness. They are called the Otre.’

  ‘The Otre,’ said Tighe, solemnly.

  ‘They are evil. They pull out the eyes of all boy-children, because they worship an el-daimon.’

  ‘What is el-daimon?’ said Tighe, horrified. Their eyes!

  ‘It is an enemy of God, a devil.’

  ‘A devil.’

  ‘Yes, but a woman devil. A woman devil and the Otre worship her. She tell them to put out the eyes of all boy-children of their enemies, to cut off their penis. They take two boy-children, and they cut off the two penis. Then they kill one boy-child, making sing-song prayers to the she demon, the el-daimon.’ Ati was rubbing his hands with the joy of telling this story, and leering at Tighe. ‘They kill the one boy-child and push his dead-body off the world. Then they take the two penis’ – and Ati wriggled his two little fingers in illustration – ‘and they put them in the eyes of the other boy-child.’

  Tighe breathed out a long, horrified sigh. ‘In the eyes?’

  ‘In the eye caves. The eye houses, where the eyes were. In my language we say gnazh.’

  ‘Eye sockets,’ said Tighe.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ati eagerly. ‘They put the penis in the gnazh, so that the end of each penis sits there like eyes. At the end of penis there is little hole, you know? Little circle. Those are the pupils.’

  ‘Pupils,’ said Tighe.

  ‘And the end of penis is like eye. And each woman in Otre is given a boy as slave. They tie tether through the neck, you know,’ and Ati pulled the skin away over his adam’s-apple to demonstrate, ‘and they walk them around all day.’

  ‘Horrible!’

  ‘And if they capture us in war, they do this to us. Only with men, sometimes, they cut off balls – you know? – and do the same in the gnazh.’

  ‘Is this true?’ asked Tighe, wide-eyed.

  ‘Entirely the truth,’ said Ati, leaning back looking satisfied. ‘It is a holy war and we bring the Empire to these barbarians, these women devils.’

  ‘We fight their army?’

  Ati blew out a long exhalation, expressive of his contempt. ‘They have small army. We fight them past the Meshwood.’

  ‘They have only women in the army?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No men in the army?’

  ‘Well,’ said Ati. ‘No, the army is men, I think.’

  ‘But they have no eyes!’

  Ati coughed. ‘Some men have the eyes,’ he said. ‘Many men have eyes, perhaps. But they are evil people and we will destroy them!’

  ‘Evil people,’ repeated Tighe.

  ‘Yes. East of here is the Meshwood.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘That is great wood, not trees but – we say ash.’ He made a gesture with both hands, all the fingers splayed and drawn together as a claw. ‘It stretches for many miles over the face of the worldwall. The Otre live on the other side. We march there, through the Meshwood, and fight the Otre.’

  The following morning, as the platon worked through its ritualised exercise movements, Waldea came and stood before them all. This was unusual and the platon’s movements broke up in uncertainty.

  ‘Children!’ barked Waldea. He was holding something behind his back.

  The kite-boy standing behind Tighe reached forward and pinched through Tighe’s clothing, grabbing a piece of the skin at the base of the spine and yanking it. Tighe couldn’t help yelping and immediately reddened and clamped his mouth shut. Waldea’s gaze settled on him for a moment and then passed on.

  ‘Today you will fly to the Pause.’

  There was an absolute stillness. Tighe had never heard the phrase before, although he recognised the word as meaning a gap in time, a moment of waiting. He had never heard it used as a noun before, never so ponderously, and he wondered what it was. But Waldea was holding up a curiously shaped box that he had been keeping behind his back.

  ‘These are my sight invigorators,’ he announced. ‘You know them. Through these I can see you, even though you are all the way out at the Pause. Through these I can see every one of you.’

  He waved the peculiar shape, black and tattered, in the air. Tighe’s eyes followed it, hypnotised.

  ‘Fly out to the Pause, you grubs, you grass-blades!’ Waldea declaimed. ‘You are warriors! Go to war against your fears! Some of you know it, many do not, but you must all be skilled at navigating at the Pause. It is strange air, out there, and you must be used to it. The sky goes strange there, so you must take care. But you will fly!’

  They started towards their kites, and Waldea called to them to stop again. ‘Have a care, all of you,’ he cried. He seemed unusually agitated, as if scared of something. Tighe felt a thrum in his belly, a fear at this new task. What was the Pause, exactly?

  ‘Go on then,’ yelled Waldea, his anxiety turning to anger.

  And so the kite-boys and kite-girls, uncharacteristically silent, collected their kites and strapped themselves in. Tighe found himself next to Mulvaine.

  ‘We are warriors,’ he said to the lanky boy.

  Mulvaine looked at him. ‘What did you say, sky-boy?’

  ‘We go to make war with the Otre,’ said Tighe.

  Mulvaine looked at him. ‘You’re a strange one, sky-boy. All the wall knows that.’

  ‘They are a women nation,’ said Tighe. ‘They have evil women there.’

  Mulvaine coughed and yanked a leather strap to tighten it. ‘Where did you hear that, you disease bag?’

  ‘I heard that they cut off the penis of the men.’

  Mulvaine spat. ‘That’s not what I heard. I heard they make their father and mothers eat themselves. They cut off first a leg, or something, and cook it and leave the fathers and mothers in a prison with nothing else to eat.’

  Tighe’s eyes were saucers. ‘Fathers and mothers too?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘But the mothers are the Princes in that land!’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The Popes in that land – the Popes there are the mothers, the women.’

  Mulvaine spat again. ‘Never heard that. But I did hear they lock up their parents, and cut away their legs and arms. Then they cook the meat and leave the mothers and fathers in a prison, like I said. They’ve nothing else to eat! They have to eat themselves or die! It’s muove, really muove, it’s bad.’

  They were at the ledge now. Tighe’s stomach was fizzing with the anticipation of going over the edge of the world again and his head was flickering with images of the atrocities committed by the Otre. Cutting off penises! Forcing their parents to consume themselves! Horrible!

  ‘Mulvaine,’ he called over. ‘What is the Pause?’

  ‘You’ll find out,’ said Mulvaine grimly.

  And they stepped off the world.

  There was the usual rush of agonising euphoria as Tighe fell away and as the invisible muscle of the wind flexed and lifted him into the air. The rushing sound of the wind filled his ears, and the updraught was unusually choppy and vibrated his kite. His vision was blurred by the shaking, but he swam round and saw the ledge below him. Then he circled again and saw his fellow kite-boys and kite-girls flying briskly away from the wall.

  He swung in and followed, allowing the updraught to give him height and then angling to sweep down and along. Soon he had caught up with the main flock of the platon and he concentrated on keeping a good distance from the kite nearest him and on flying on, away from the wall.

  At one point he circled up and round and saw how far away from the worldwall they had flown. He could no longer make out the platon ledge or the spur amongst the patchwork scattering of shapes; squares and wedges, semicircles and lines, grey and brown and green. He strained his eyes and thought that a tiny row of dots might be the calabashes moored along from the ledge, but he couldn’t be certain. The pattern revealed how plain the wall was above the military camp – a speckled, striated stretch o
f blank grey, a natural upper boundary to the growth of the Empire. A desert. Unless the Empire expanded to the west, or the east, and found another way upwards, a series of angled and connected ledges and pathways that led round this block, Tighe could not see how they would hope to go any further upwall. They might go up in calabashes, but they could surely not raise up a whole people in calabashes – supplies, food, building materials.

  With a twist in his chest, he realised that this same desert stood between himself and home. But then (his heart pattered with hope) he could ride his kite away – fly up and up on an endless updraught until he arrived back at the village.

  The air was colder around him now. It felt strange and unnerving to be flying so far from the body of the wall. Looking ahead, Tighe saw that the platon was in front of him.

  He swirled around in the air and climbed to get the acceleration to rejoin the platon; and he pondered. Go home – but to what? To Grandhe? To beatings and being cheated of his birthright? To a village where people starved, where most of his best friends had left because they were too poor to stay? Most of all – to a place where his pahe and his pashe were not. What was there for him? Only Wittershe. Only beautiful Wittershe, with her elegant face and her body. But she was probably married to somebody else by now – lost to him for ever.

  This pathway of thought was leading him to a dead end, to the internal plunge of misery and despair. He wriggled in his harness and manoeuvred back into formation with the platon. He needed not to think about those thoughts. That was what he needed.

  And up ahead things were happening to distract him from his pain. The lead kites suddenly flipped back, turning with impossible speed and dropping rapidly away. Tighe’s head tingled all through with anticipation.

  They were at the Pause.

  One by one the kites reached an invisible barrier, flipped back and dropped away. All of Tighe’s childish wonderings about the nature of the universe came back to him. He remembered sitting on the ledge back in his village and staring at the sky. Remembered wondering if the sky was another wall, a purer, ethereal wall; a wall of light and air perhaps, raised by the same God who had put brick on brick and clothed it with earth and life and made the worldwall. Another wall to hold in the air, so that it didn’t all bleed away, so that God’s people could breathe, could live in the space between the walls.