On (GollanczF.)

by Adam Roberts

  Tighe supposed this was a good thing, but looking around at the faces of his fellow kite-pilots he saw awe, shock, even terror at this news. He could see it was more of an honour than he had realised – as if it were more like a divine blessing than a human honour. To meet the Pope himself!

  Waldea stepped forward, came towards Tighe. ‘The Pope has heard the story about our newest member, about the sky-boy, the good-omen boy.’ He grabbed Tighe by the hair at the top of his head and gave him what Tighe assumed was meant to be a friendly shake, although it was really quite painful. ‘But he will meet us all. All of us! My children …’ Waldea stepped back and strolled along the ranks of kite-pilots. ‘I am – happy,’ he said. His eyes were moist. The glints from the morning sun came up from below and illuminated the glassy moisture of his pupils. ‘Proud of you. Today you need not fly. Today we will sing the great Songs of the Empire! Tomorrow we assemble with the Imperial army for the march along the wall. Within the week we will have defeated the enemy! Otre will be part of the Empire!’

  Everybody cheered.

  ‘War is a glorious thing, kite-children,’ said Waldea. Tighe could see that he was actually crying now, smeary teardrops rolling along the ragged creases of his cheeks. ‘War is glorious, although it is terrible. War will make you wealthy! War can find you a wife, find you a husband! War stocks the houses of the mighty with slaves and servants! Thank God, my kite-children, that you have been born upon the worldwall at a time like this!’ His face was weirdly contorted, as if the emotions within him were tormenting him in some way. ‘You will lose friends and lovers, but you will gain new ones. You may lose – your looks, your health, but the Empire will be stronger! War is a – glorious – thing.’

  Tighe didn’t catch the meaning of every one of these words, every nuance, but the sheer passion in the Master’s voice conveyed his meaning, carried Tighe away. Tears were zigzagging over the creases of his face.

  Then, with a growly, raspy voice, Waldea began to sing. Tighe did not know the song, but the majority of the platon joined in, hesitantly at first, then with more gusto. Tighe found himself crying and he was not alone. He felt wonderful, warm somehow; absorbed into the loving body of the whole platon.

  They sang songs for an hour or more. Tighe, embarrassed at knowing none of the words, tried to join in; making shapes with his mouth and humming vowels with the rise and fall of the music. Waldea fetched some of his alcohol from the metal jug in which he kept it, and passed his little plastic bottle around so that everybody in the platon got a sip of the acid-burning liquid. By the time the bottle got to Tighe the plastic nipple at its top was slick with the spit of everybody else, and he had to upend the thing to get a dribble of fluid out of it.

  Everybody was gathered in little knots, cross-legged on the ledge; laughing and chattering. The Pope himself! They would meet the Pope himself! It was unbelievable.

  Tighe found Ati and huddled close to him. ‘It is all so exciting,’ he said.

  ‘You barbarian, you have turd for a heart,’ said Ati, grinning and slouching back. ‘You excited by anything, the singing of some songs. I am not excited.’

  ‘Have you ever been at war before, Ati?’ Tighe asked, with wide eyes.

  Ati waved his hand, as if he had fought too many battles to remember them all. But then he leant forward and said, ‘No, in fact, no. But I know many stories about war. Much fire in war, fire and flames.’ He made his eyes wide, 0-0, to hint at the horrors he could tell.

  ‘Ati,’ said Tighe, tears pricking at his eyes again. ‘I am happy to be in the army, and full of happy. But the Otre, they are – fear.’

  ‘You mean they frightening?’

  Tighe nodded. ‘They frightening me. They are strong, you said so.’

  ‘They not so strong,’ said Ati. ‘Otre is a small land, few ledges, only one shelf. They work with plazár.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Meshwood is wood, but not made of trees, of platán. It is like wood, but is smaller, softer. It grows all over, like a weed. That is the Meshwood. The Otre work with the platán, make things, trade them. They are a weak people and we will destroy them.’

  ‘Do the Otre live in the wood?’

  Ati scoffed. ‘You know nothing at all, barbarian. Nobody lives in the Meshwood!’

  ‘Why not?’

  Ati waved his hands. ‘Horrors live in the wood! Animals that cut human flesh, that eat and eat human people. Claw-caterpils! Terrible things! Land-lobsters, snakes and uruchai – terrible things.’

  Tighe shivered. He didn’t want to hear this. ‘We don’t want to go through the Meshwood,’ he said.

  ‘The Meshwood is between us and Otre,’ said Ati with a grim smile. ‘The army passes through.’

  Suddenly Tighe was crying again; not in fear of the horrors of the Meshwood, but for more nebulous, emotional reasons. With a sharp focus he suddenly hated the platon; he hated the way nobody regarded him with the proper respect a Prince ought to have, the way all of them – except Ati – bullied and mocked him. He hated the way Waldea beat him; hated the way Waldea was so ugly and so unyielding. Hated being shoved off the world to tumble through the sky strapped to a kite. Hated facing the prospect of battle, of violence and maybe death. But, and this was the strangest thing, at the same time he felt a joy filling every part of him, a trembly inner-sunshine happiness in his stomach. At the same time as all the fear, the sense of isolation and desperation, he knew that he loved the platon; loved Waldea; loved the Empire. Ati was sitting in front of him grinning and he knew that he loved him too.

  He reached out and touched Ati’s face. Ati brushed the gesture aside, with a nervous look in the direction of Waldea; but when he turned his gaze back to meet Tighe’s there was an answering glance in his dark eyes.

  10

  The following morning Waldea woke the whole platon earlier than usual. The dawn gale was audible past the closed door; the Master bellowed to be heard over the roar.

  ‘You will all wash! Today, everybody washes, face and hands. When everybody has washed, I will inspect you. If there are any rips in your clothing, you will borrow the platon needle and sew them up. Do you understand?’

  This frightened Tighe a little; he had never learnt to sew. It was not something a Prince needed to do. But he went carefully over all his clothing and checked each seam, and everything seemed intact.

  Then he joined the queue of happily muttering boys and girls at the sink. It was not a proper sink; but, then again, the dormitory had been excavated only recently. It was a matting-lined space scooped out of the wall at the far end, fed by a piece of pipe. The faucet on the pipe was opened only as the water evaporated; there was no plughole. When he finally arrived at the sink the water was even muddier than usual, but he went through the ritual of splashing his face and rubbing himself with a handful of broad-leaved grass-blades.

  By the time this was over the dawn gale had died down and Waldea opened the door. Everybody lined up on the ledge outside and Waldea stalked up and down the line, plucking at the kite-boys’ and kite-girls’ clothing.

  ‘My children!’ he announced. ‘Today you meet the Pope himself! If any of you disgrace me, I will beat you bloody afterwards! But you will make me proud, proud.’ He drew himself up to his full height, so that the weight of his belly rose a little towards his chest. ‘Then we shall join the army, and march to battle. To battle! Gather your kites.’

  Another line, as each member of the platon gathered up their unassembled kite and hoisted it over their shoulder or balanced it on the fulcrum of their neck. Waldea checked the line one more time and then marched to the front.

  As the sun started rising and the last of the morning clouds faded and dissipated in the air, they made their way round the spur in single file, treading carefully on the man-made walkway.

  There was the same confusion of human activity on the main shelf. The calabashes still dominated the scene, swollen and perfectly spherical. From this angle the large pots they carri
ed beneath them were more clearly visible: painted with red and blue patterns, as were the floating bellies of the calabashes themselves. Each of these cradles had one large door that displayed a prominent lock and several small slits. As he watched Tighe saw a thin tube poking through the slit, angling round and being withdrawn.

  ‘What is that? In the calabashes there?’ he asked the boy in front of him; but he was ignored.

  The line of kite-pilots made their way round and on to the shelf itself. Waldea, who had been following at the rear of the line, came hurrying up at this point and, shouldering his way through the throng of blue-uniformed people who surrounded the platon, took a position. ‘My children!’ he yelled, over the chatter and noise of the shelf. ‘We march to the pier and take our position!’

  It was harder to keep the line along the shelf because people were coming and going, cutting through them and jostling them. A group of three tall men in uniform were lounging in the way, leaning on long poles. They stared at the kite-pilots, and started laughing. ‘Hey kite-babies!’ one of them called. ‘Tweet-tweet! Tweet-tweet!’ These three men thought themselves hilarious and laughed loudly with their heads angled back. Tighe looked expectantly at Waldea, leading them on, expecting the Master to rebuke these men. But instead Waldea put his eyes to the ground.

  Tighe began to feel self-conscious. All the other kite-pilots were marching in step, but his bad foot made it impossible for him to do the same. He kept losing the rhythm and had to make a little hop-skip to get back into it. A round-bodied, bald-headed man pushed against him in passing, so hard that Tighe stumbled and nearly fell. For a moment he caught a whiff of the bald fellow’s strange smell, like goat’s butter on the turn, and then the man was away, pushing through the crowd to a doorway in the wall at the back of the shelf. Tighe stood, resting his foot, watched him, and then was distracted by what appeared to be a metal crane by the entrance, stacked with metal globes like fruit from a fruit tree. Two men in black overalls stood languidly beside it, occasionally stepping forward to push people away who came too close. A couple of metal poles, oiled but with freckles of rust showing through, were stacked against the wall beside them. Tighe remembered Ati saying something about these: the mushroom dust was put in them and they spurted fire at the enemy. He wished he could have a closer look at one. He hurried and caught up with Ati.

  ‘Ati,’ he said. ‘There – are those …?’

  ‘Very rare,’ said Ati, with awe. ‘Very precious, our most deadly weapon.’ But the whispered conversation was cut short.

  ‘Here!’ called Waldea. Tighe hurried on.

  The line assembled itself by a wooden pier that reached out over the lip of the shelf.

  ‘Stand and hold your position here!’ yelled Waldea and stood tall himself.

  They waited for an age. Tighe felt hideously impatient and it took all his self-control not to twitch and fidget – not to give way to his urge for motion and run up and down the ledge. The unceasing bustle around him filled him with the urge to get busy, to do things. A mighty army! He was part of a mighty Empire now – a small part, maybe, but still a part.

  As the wait by the empty wooden pier dragged on, Tighe found his mind running on. It was better to be part of an Empire than a tiny village that nobody on the whole wide worldwall had even heard of! It was better to be part of this great enterprise against the evil of the Otre than it was to loiter around at home doing nothing. He was proud to be here. At the thought, tears squeezed into his eyes again. It was a magnificent thing.

  But, as the wait dragged on, this sensation of epiphany and marvel faded and died. He became simply bored. Around him the kite-pilots began to twitch their arms, jump up and down. ‘Be still!’ Waldea roared. ‘Stand in line!’ But it got harder to keep people straight as the wait dragged on.

  Finally, Waldea cried out. ‘Here, now! It comes up!’

  The bustle around them took on a more definitive purpose. People hurried on to the pier, a guard of blue-coated soldiers, all carrying the metal poles before them with both hands, lined up along from the kite-pilots. The murmur of voices on the shelf became more pronounced, rose in timbre.

  Then, with the astonishing splendour of enormous scale, as unexpected and impossible as dreamwork, the bald red-blue-painted crown of one of the calabashes appeared over the edge of the world. It rose slowly, smoothly, filling out and tapering away until its whole belly was visible and the pot underneath it came up into view; it was varnished wood studded with metal spikes. Standing this close to the apparition, Tighe could see all the detail that made it up. The great circle was made of fabric – perhaps the same thin leather that the kites were built with – hundreds of skins stitched together carefully. A network of lines, a web drawn tight around the swollen sphere, led the eye down to the cradle beneath; this was how the large metal-studded pot was attached, hung there in a harp-mesh of lines.

  The people at the far end of the wooden pier threw out lines of some kind that snagged in the supporting cables of the calabash. Then four of them grabbed the line and hauled, pulling the great shape closer towards the wall. There was a flurry of action, tethering the calabash, and sliding a plank out to make a walkway with the now-opening doorway of the cradle beneath.

  Then three people in brisk military style marched along the pier, up the walkway and disappeared inside the cradle of the calabash. Tighe thought he recognised one of these as Cardinelle Elanne, the high-ranking officer who had visited him whilst he was still in the hospital ward.

  There was an expectant hush, but nothing happened. Slowly the murmur started again on the shelf. As minutes stretched and accumulated, the kite-pilots, who had been frozen with the excitement of expectation, began to relax and fidget again.

  ‘Hold yourself.’ cried Waldea. ‘Be still! Order!’

  Tighe’s expectancy was intense. He found it extremely hard to stand completely still. With surreptitious glimpses over his shoulder when he thought the Master wasn’t looking, he noted the ranks of military arrayed behind him. Somehow the still, ordered strips of men gave an even greater impression of numbers than the usual sight of the shelf thronging with people all moving in different directions.

  He had never before realised that there were so many people on the worldwall.

  After what seemed a lengthy wait the gilded door of the calabash cradle banged open. A murmur rippled through the assembled crowd and died swiftly: Tighe noticed Waldea glaring at the line of kite-boys and kite-girls, willing them to silence.

  The Pope emerged. He was a tall man, grass-blade thin, who had to genuflect forward in order to fit through the small space of the doorway. When he stretched upright he paused for a moment to look about him, before walking confidently along the pier. He was dressed in a bright blue whole-body uniform that bristled with prongs, like blue thorns. Tighe assumed it was some sort of thick-haired animal skin, most of the hairs having been plucked out to leave only a few regularly spaced bristles.

  The Pope was, as Tighe could see as he approached, an extraordinarily pale man; his skin was utterly white. As he stepped on to the shelf itself, it became apparent that he had been sweating; presumably it was hot inside the calabash’s cradle. But the combination of pure whiteness and the glistening sheen of sweat made the Pope look weird, unpleasant; as if instead of ordinary skin his body was covered with the material out of which the whites of the eyes are made.

  His nose was long, flat and bony with a sharp edge, like the shoulder blade of a skinny man; and it poked clear away from the Pope’s round white face. But there were several chunks missing from the upper edge of it, crenellations in the line of the nose that started just below the bridge and culminated in a frayed nose tip. The whole thing looked like a leaf whose edge has been chewed by a caterpillar. Whether these deformities were the result of injury or disease wasn’t possible to say; but Tighe sucked in a breath, and several possible battle fantasies suggested themselves to him.

  Behind the Pope came the senior officers who had gone
aboard the calabash’s cradle to greet him, and he turned to exchange words with them as they came along the pier. Tighe was close enough to hear the sound of the Pope’s voice, but he couldn’t quite catch what was said. The Pope turned back to face his army, his huge, strange-shaped nose swinging round like a threatening finger. Cardinelle Elanne said something to him and pointed in the direction of a line of men, all carrying the metal poles over their right shoulders. The Pope stalked in that direction, away from Tighe and the kite-pilots.

  He had a strange, jaggedy stride, as if his hip joints were sore.

  For a while the Pope and his small retinue passed up and down the line of soldiers. They chatted with a man at the end of the line, and inspected the man’s metal pole.

  ‘Riflemen!’ hissed the boy next to Tighe in a tiny voice, a touch of awe in the expression. Tighe made a mental note to remember the strange word.

  The Cardinelle was touching the Pope’s shoulder and pointing in the direction of the kite-pilots. Despite himself, Tighe felt his stomach clench in excitement. The Pope, nodding at something the Cardinelle was saying, loped back across the shelf towards him.

  He stopped at the end of the line and spoke briefly to Waldea. It sounded like ‘ownership of the air’ and some other words that Tighe couldn’t catch. ‘Yes, sir,’ said Waldea, his voice strangely choked.

  Then, following another gesture from the Cardinelle, the Pope started down the line of kite-pilots, nodding as he walked. As he came closer, Tighe could see that his wide-spaced eyes gave out glints of red. He seemed to be without eyebrows. The roots of his head hair, as thick and ropy as any Imperial citizen’s, were just visible at the base of the blue snood that covered his head and were a shocking white. In Tighe’s roiling mind, he wondered if this whiteness was something the Pope had been born with, or was the result of some treatment, some bleaching out of his normal human colours that was a necessary precondition of assuming Popehood.