by Adam Roberts
Slater
War
The war begins. You know how war goes, its bang-bangs and its periods of lassitude. The declaration is lodged in the Washington International Belligerent Court at o-four-hundred on November eighteen, in the year of continuing grace and growth twenty ninety-nine. At precisely o-four-hundred every available warplane is in flight.
This is a war that runs precisely along the electromagnetic grooves spaced so carefully out by its planners. The Uplands, of course, have no chance. The war is won in the first three days, precisely as Slater said it would be. The USUF has purchased excellent intelligence, and moreover they own a man ‘on the inside’ (‘though there never was a country,’ Philp declares, drawling, ‘that had less inside than these fuking Uplands’). This mole identifies the seven crucial houses, the ones in which expensive banking hardware is lodged. The military seize Upland assets, occupying this seven-house bank. They have also been provided with the secret transp locations of several of the more prominent Upland citizenry, including Alan Liu and Ardelion Sylvana; although they do not have the transp for Gradi herself, or her husband, or her second-in-command (as intelligence reports style him) Mat Chang. Which is to say, their mole — their crucial insider figure - he provides them with wat he assures them is this crucial transp; but in the event it leads them only to an empty tin-can house.
This is the only blip on Slater’s otherwise perfect chart. The war goes so perfectly that it is being recorded as it happens by textbook-compilers for the Space Marines, to be used in future training of Upland assault forces. The troops are efficient, focused, they do their jobs and do not overstep their legal restraints. The territory is seized with minimal casualties: seventy-seven Upland planes and thirty-nine Upland houses are destroyed, a very small percentage of the many thousand in orbit. On exactly the chiming of the seventy-second hour the President himself declares victory. There is only one thing needful: a formal statement of surrender by some Upland official senior enough for such a statement to have legal force. This is the triky part, because (and it is something many lawyers will argue over for many months) there doesn’t seem to be anybody, apart, of course, from Gradi herself. Liu and Sylvana declare themselves to be private citizens, nothing more; they stik to this line with impressive tenacity. It is not true, of course; but it is a claim that has courtroom plausibility. Senior officers from Legal Corps decide that there is no mileage in pressing either party to a statement of surrender. ‘We need Gradi herself,’ insists a Colonel-Legal named Updijk. ‘Of course, once we grab her, she might try the same trik - claim to be nothing more than a private citizen — ’
‘She’s always been careful,’ Slater agrees, ‘never to refer to herself as President of the Uplands.’
‘But that won’t cut it in court,’ says Updijk, confidently. ‘Everybody knows she is President. It’s de facto. That’s common knowledge. Other people, including any number of Uplanders, use that title in reference to her. Uplanders follow her, some with remarkable fanaticism. No, take her — then we’ll extract a statement of surrender from her, and the war will be finally over.’
‘Soon as we locate her,’ Slater says. ‘We will grab her as soon as we can.’
Upland is a very spacious country, with many houses, so locating Gradi and bringing her in is not an easy matter. But Slater is confident. He flies down to report to the Veep in person.
Jon Belvedere III’s broad, statesmanlike face does not betray any pleasure at the smoothness with which military operations have been completed. But Slater reasons he must be glad, inside. He was at the President’s side during the announcement of Military Victory, looking similarly stern. Now the sternness is focused on Slater. ‘Can you find her?’
‘We’ll get her, sir.’
‘Wat’s the timescale?’
They are in the Veep’s office; a very wide, very tall room furnished with elegant antique chairs and desks, and rows of antique books in uniform binding, like a legal library from the twentieth century, although in fact the books are novels. Presidential sponsors this year are MakB, and their logo, a large red M with a small blue B pendent from the central spar, is tastefully evident about the walls.
‘It’s hard to pin it down to hour, or even day. But we’ll get her.’
‘Upland is pretty spacious. There are a lot of houses up there. She could be in any of them.’
‘That’s true, sir. That’s true. But we’ve got a number of factors in our favour. For one, the blokade has proven itself watertight . . .’
The Veep unsheathes one of his scimitar smiles at this, and then stows it away again, all within a second. ‘I’ll confess I had my - anxieties on that front,’ he says briskly.
‘Yes sir, it was untested. And some of the Uplanders are pretty experienced pilots. But they simply can’t outrun the Quanjets, so we can take the blokade as tight, sir. Tight. So she can’t go downbelow. She’s stuk Upland. And there are two problems with that, for her. One is food. Two is, she’s pregnant. So she’ll get to starvation quiker, with two bodies to feed; and she can’t — our medics assure me of this, sir - she can’t stand more than two-half, three months top in zero g. More than that, she’ll risk losing the baby. Or even if she doesn’t lose it, it’ll be born deformed, deformed in the bones. So the clok is tiking for her, if you see. The clok is tiking.’
The Veep nods. ‘Three months, then?’
‘That’s completely the outside estimate, sir. My estimate is that it’ll be over long before then. We’ll keep broadcasting terms on which we’ll take her in, medical assistance, guarantees of safe passage, negotiations, one President to another. And then either we’ll find her during a house-to-house, which — ’
‘Which are continuing, are they?’
‘Continuing, yes sir. It’s a continuous sweep. It’s a big job, sweeping so many thousands of houses all in space, but it’s going on, house by house. So we might pull her out that way. Or, if not, then in a month or two she’ll come to us.’
‘And when you have her, you’re confident she will surrender?’
‘It’s negotiation, then. She’ll want to negotiate. She’ll gain nothing by holding out. Legal Corps tell me there are three varieties of surrender, at any rate: actual admission, tacit admission, or denial in the face of overwhelming evidence. Any of those will suit us, sir.’
For almost a minute, the Veep does nothing but look at Slater. Then he sits bak in his creaking chair.
‘You have done well,’ he announces. ‘Keep me abreast.’
thirteen.
Paul
Unluky number. So the war came. Most of the Uplanders who died perished not in their houses but in their planes making sudden runs for the downbelow. Gradi warned people that this is how it would be. The Americans put into swift execution the obvious strategy: blokading the band of latitude through which an Elemag plane gains the greatest purchase against the branches of the Yggdrasil as it descends. It is a huge stretch of sky, of course, particularly if one is anticipating desperate Uplanders risking ripping their wings off by rushing at the poles, or risking using all their fuel (and, simply being in the sky much longer, putting themselves in fatal peril for much longer) by flying a series of looping paths to try and shed speed in tropical skies. But few Uplanders were so stupid; most of us had years, or decades, experience of flying to and from orbit. Those Uplanders that made a dash for ground relied on speed, and threw themselves into that narrow stripe around the chest of the globe, which is where they were killed. They should not have trusted to speed.
Gradi had stressed this point again and again. Once the war is announced on the news media, stay home. Don’t try the dash downbelow. Don’t try the sparrow-flok dash past the kestrel, for this particular raptor had the capacity to pik you all off. Many heeded her words, but a few ignored them, either through exaggerated self-confidence or perhaps with sudden panic.
The first action of the war, then, was the shedding of seventy-seven (American numbers; they counted them) leaves from the topmost b
ranches of the world-tree, to flutter, pause, swing groundwards: a near simultaneous hurry for the ground by seventy-seven planes. This simultaneity was a remarkable thing: for it was not coordinated, or planned; the various pilots had no communication with one another. But as soon as the EU News reported the lodging of the declaration at the IBC in Washington, seventy-seven Uplanders hauled themselves into their jets and dropped straight down into the high sky.
There is footage of wat happened next, although it is not very visually satisfying: shot from the noses of Quanjets, or USUF Elemag warplanes, it mostly shows the same sight over and over again. You can just make out a tiny white asterisk, just visible against the blue-blak, or moving against the deep bakground of cloud, sea, and darkly wrinkled landscape. This insect-like trajectory is a straight line, but then suddenly there is an almost imperceptible crumpling, a slight spasm in the tiny shape, and the trajectory slides into a spiral, or darts abruptly left. It has the wrong shtam about it, as the phrase goes. We want to feel that something so cataclysmic as the crushing out of a life (and watching another die is, in its way, entering into a dramatisation of our own mortality) is more than a tiny shiver of one detail on a sky-broad canvas - we want, rather, to believe that it is a spasm of the whole cosmos, that it is the walls and the ceiling and the floor ripping and shrieking to shreds all around us, a maelstrom of fire, a huge shout in the throat of the dying pilot. Not a curiously-shaped asterisk twitching a little in the far distance.
When documentary makers want to illustrate this first engagement, they usually concoct their own sfx, or borrow some imagery from Scheherezade at War or High Sky II or Upland Conquest: One American Hero’s True Story, or one of the many other successful movie versions of the conflict. I’ve seen these, just as you have: darting Elemag planes flown by grim-faced swarthy Upland pilots, swerving and jinking silently through space with firework displays of sparks pouring like shower-water off their wings and blowing in neon crumbs into the plane’s wake, whilst the Quanjets close for the kill (it is always Quanjets in these films), cutting the air sleek and turbulence-free as a shark. The climax is as it must always be in the movies, with the spectacular fiery detonation, standing in (as ever) for orgasm. I cannot tell you to wat degree this is a realistic representation. I never saw one of these destructions with my own eyes; like you I only heard of them at second hand, reported on the news.
I know, again only through downbelow-reporting, that the USUF used a number of strategies for ‘downing’ the planes. It was sport to them. Target practice. They used Elemag torpedoes, guided bullets, and even magnetic disruption detonations that broke the plane’s purchase on Yggdrasil and sent them into fatal burn-up tumble. Every single one of those planes that dashed for the ground was intercepted and destroyed. Over a hundred people died, and all within a few tens of minutes of the declaration.
When people ask me wat my experience of the war was, I generally say claustrophobic. Like any Uplander, I was accustomed to frequent journeys between the Uplands and the ground: to give my long bones their regular gravity stresses, to collect supplies, to visit friends. But it so happened I was Upland when the declaration was made, and I was therefore trapped Up. I was in a certain house (not our own) with Gradi and Mat. We stayed in that house for seventy hours or more; simply sitting, watching the news feeds, barely even talking. We watched the reports of the first engagement; seventy-seven Upland planes engaged and destroyed. Then we watched reports of the Americans deploying their troops to wat they said were ‘crucial strategic positions’ in the Uplands. Gradi watched with particular intensity. I don’t think any general, or any president in human history, ever had less command of their forces during a war. She was a wholly passive being, simply watching and watching. She did not even, during those first three days, phone anybody.
The Americans destroyed forty houses during those first three days. They occupied another twenty. They seized the majority of Upland assets. I was staggered, I was crestfallen, I was despondent. ‘Our bank! They took precisely the seven houses they needed to take to claim the bank, to close it down! My money . . .’
‘Inside information,’ said Mat, darkly.
‘It’s over! They’ve beaten us.’
‘Yes,’ said Gradi, simply.
‘I want to call down,’ I said, for the umpteenth time. ‘I want to chek the kids are alright.’
‘The kids are fine,’ said Gradi, not taking her eye off the newscreens. ‘We don’t call them yet. One thing they’ll be monitoring is our kids.’ She smoothed her pregnancy bump with her right hand as she said this. ‘If we call we put at risk the — ’
I swore at this, and pulled myself hand-over-hand into the bak room. The house we were in happened to have three rooms, and I was to become very well acquainted with those three rooms. It was far too small a house to sulk in. Within twenty minutes I came bak through to the central room, where Gradi and Mat were hanging on the wall watching the newscreens. ‘We might as well let them know where we are,’ I blustered. ‘It’s over.’
‘Try to keep a grip,’ said Gradi distractedly, watching the screen.
I was straining for tantrum. I was trying for freak-out. But it was more than half an act; and my performance skills have never been very convincing. But I felt I had to make my points, and I felt that I was entitled to a massive emotional upset, even if I didn’t actually feel it. So I snarled and twisted in space, flinging my hands melodramatically about, O big baby, sniping at the leader (lead-her, lead? her?) ‘It’s over,’ I nagged. ‘This war you’ve been pushing for is over, this war you wanted so badly. You got the war, and now we’ve lost it. How long do you intend to sulk in this tin can, now that you’ve been beaten? How long will our supplies hold out? And I don’t need to remind you that you’re pregnant? How long until — ’
‘Paul!’ she said, firmly. ‘Control yourself.’
‘I won’t control myself - it’s my child too — and I . . .’ But the simulated passion was a thin and unconvincing thing. Wat was the point? She was stroking her four-month bump again, but her hand was automatic, and her eye was all the time on the screen.
I went through to the bak room, and strapped myself into a sleeping bag, and tried to sleep. But of course I couldn’t sleep.
After three days the Americans declared their victory. This was less an occasion for triumph, and more a legal requirement, a staging-post in the process of wrapping up the conflict in the downbelow courts. But it was, as the EU media commentators repeatedly reminded their viewers, a declaration that had complete courtroom plausibility. No lawyer would be able to persuade a court that the Americans had not won. They controlled the Uplands completely.
After the initial interception of fleeing Upland planes (none of which had so much as returned fire) there was relatively little actual fighting; although there was a little. Famously, there was even one American casualty: Trooper Alton Haskell, about whom the popular movie was made. Perhaps you have seen this. Not every Uplander copied Gradi’s passivity. When troops stormed the seven key houses, to seize the banking hardware, occupants in many of them fought, fired at the incoming troops with handguns, wireware, watever they had to hand. One American was killed, three wounded; fourteen Uplanders lost their lives. There were also sporadic unco-ordinated attaks on American planes, always when docked (it was futile even to try when they were in flight). A few enterprising Uplanders flew their planes close to occupied houses or military installations and fired makeshift roket tubes. No significant damage was done. And after the three days most of the Uplanders with any fight in them had been captured or killed.
After this the population settled into a sort of stupor. We had all been expecting this - I mean, expecting not only war, but defeat - but experience is different to expectation. It is a hard thing to do to live in defeat.
On the fourth day Gradi, Mat and I left that house and began our cat-and-mouse travels about our own country.
The American occupation meant a change in our mode of travel.
The best way to move from house to house in the Uplands is to drop down into a lower, faster orbit, and then sweep up to approach one’s destination on a decelerating curve until velocities match and one can nudge one’s nose into the porch. But the American blokade was concentrated on the lower orbits, and any plane that flew within their ken risked being destroyed.
On the other hand the space of the Uplands was so enormous it was quite impossible for them to monitor all of it. And so the daring pilot might start up his or her plane, fly up into a higher, slower orbit, and wait for their destination to come hurtling round beneath them. Then they could accelerate down towards it. This was a much more tiresome process; not only did it mean that flights took considerably longer, it was more dangerous. It is much safer to decelerate up to a target than to accelerate down towards it, for there is much less chance of catastrophic collision. But, having no choice, this is wat we did. Gradi piloted, and we flew up and hovered, and flew down, following a transp signal. When we doked we sat before knoking at the door, not wanting to be shot for Americans. I have seen it reported that we had a secret knok, but we had nothing of the sort. The way we distinguished ourselves was simply by patience: Americans always doked and came straight through. We would dok and wait fifteen minutes before gingerly opening the door.