Gradisil (GollanczF.)

by Adam Roberts

  And I was as susceptible to the mood of the meeting as anybody. People were grinning. Some had tears in their eyes. It was extraordinary - I don’t think I can convey to you just how extraordinary it was.

  ‘We’ll get the money bak, I swear it, I promise you all,’ said Gradi. ‘It’s tangled up in the weedbeds of the lawcourts, the groundling legal system. That’s exactly where the Americans are misunderestimating us. Maybe they have more guns and bigger guns, but wars are not fought on battlefields so much as they are in courthouses. And we have one advantage on the legal front: nobody has ever fought a war such as ours before. I will get our money bak.’

  The next day we left: Gradi, myself, Mat, just us three. We scanned the vacuum landscape before decoupling; our naked eyes were too crude as optical instruments to spot Quanjets, but we looked anyway, habit, and of course saw only blackness and the glinting nail-heads of myriad stars. So we unsnibbed and climbed through the magnetic medium to a waiting position, and turned all electrical equipment off, and became the same thing as junk, hollow and vacant.

  Mat kept looking at me. I did not return his gaze, unsure wat sort of intimacy he was trying to establish, although in retrospect it is obvious enough. He wanted to reassure himself that Gradi, whom he loved, was not a cold-fleshed killer. He hoped by conferring with me, who also loved Gradi, to reaffirm his precarious sense of Gradi as (to pik only a few of the relevant words) tender, warm, loving, fleshly, yielding, sensual, climactic, sleepy - or, to put it another way, he wanted me to help him somehow balance the two variables of this complex quadratic, whereby Gradi could be the same sensitive love-making human being and simultaneously this pitiless being with its slaughterous will. But, frankly, why would he want to ask me to help him in this? I didn’t know. I was no good to him.

  After half an hour, Gradi turned on the console briefly to chek for the transp; but it had not yet emerged from round the shield of the whole world, and so she turned the equipment off again.

  ‘That,’ said Mat, abruptly, ‘was something else.’ He was speaking a little too loud; he was not entirely in control of himself.

  Gradi looked at him.

  ‘I can’t stop thinking about it,’ Mat conceded, in a hard and bright voice. ‘Why didn’t you warn us, Gradi? Why not — ’ He stopped.

  ‘Why not wat?’

  ‘I just don’t,’ Mat started, and again stopped.

  ‘Boys,’ she said, with infuriating condescension. ‘Don’t you know wat politics is?’

  ‘I’m sure you can tell us, Gradi,’ said Mat, but the sarcasm was ill-judged. I almost winced. I reached out and grabbed the wall to pull myself a little apart from him. I didn’t want to be associated with him if he was going to antagonise Gradi in this manner.

  ‘It’s a show,’ she said. ‘That’s all. You need to make a splash. C’mon boys. Tell me this: Why did I insist on you not telling anybody about the incident with Stefan?’

  I could not, at first, remember Stefan, and from his expression neither did Mat. Then I remembered; the wealthy house, his butler. ‘The man who tried to assault you,’ I said.

  Mat’s face bloomed in distress. ‘Him?’

  ‘The man who tried to rape me,’ said Gradi calmly. ‘I killed him.’

  ‘That was self-defence.’

  At this Gradi shouted: ‘So was this!’ She almost never raised her voice. It was worse than a blow; we cringed, we really did. But she carried on smoothly, adding in a level tone, ‘Do you know why I insisted you not tell anyone about that? Why that had to be a secret?’

  For seconds we were both too scared to answer. But when Gradi repeated her question, and it became apparent that an answer was required, Mat said, in a low voice: ‘I supposed it was because it was too distressing for you to . . .’

  ‘No, that’s not it. You really don’t understand.’ From his face to mine. ‘Either of you.’

  ‘It’s strength,’ I said.

  ‘Yes — ’ in an exasperated teacher’s at last tone of voice. ‘That’s it. Stefan, Stefan, that’s a story would paint me as victim. The leader cannot be victim; people do not believe in and people do not follow the victim. Now, on the contrary, this execution of Bran — this is a different matter. This paints me as strength. Do you see?’

  She said: ‘It is sometimes said that politics is about will, but it’s not; really, I can’t imagine how so ludicrous a misapprehension has entered common currency. Strength of will correlates to strength of character, but people have always found it hard wholeheartedly to follow the strong character because his or her own personality intrudes too distractingly into the popular fantasy. The ideal politician is somebody upon whom the people can impress their own ideals, and because everybody’s ideal is slightly different (for this is the joy of human diversity) the ideal politician must be someone whose surface is specular enough to match a wide variety of fantasy-projections. Politics is about people seeing, about the best show, about the eye. That’s wat’s wrong with weakness, not the ethical, purely the practical consideration. The weak personality, like crumbly half-wet sand, will not take the signet ring impression of the public’s gaze. Show strength to the people and they will see themselves strengthened. That’s all. But you - must - organise the show properly.’

  Of course she didn’t say any of that. Can you imagine Gradi making a speech like that? I am extrapolating from several conversations, much less obviously aggressive on her part, over several occasions. I am trying to capture not the canny, considered mode of her speaking, but wat was in her mind. That mode of flat assertion, that wasn’t really her conversational style at all. Even her public speeches tended to be more balanced, seductive.

  One thing she did say, during that conversation in the hovering plane. She smiled, and asked rhetorically: ‘After all, who’s going to come after me?’ she murmured, more to herself than to us. At first I thought she meant, who will pursue me? - perhaps Bran’s family, perhaps the Americans. But then I saw that, on the contrary, she meant who will succeed me? She did not trust any of her inner circle with the responsibility of political leadership. Perhaps she was right to be untrusting.

  This became the subject of everybody’s conversation, over the weeks that followed. Some were shocked, said that it corroded their trust in Gradi. ‘I’ve met her,’ said a man called Juniper; ‘I’d have never thought her capable of something so — violent, violent.’

  ‘She’s capable of it,’ I said.

  ‘So cold-blooded.’ But there were three other people present, on that occasion, and they all immediately disagreed with him.

  ‘Downbelow leaders kill people all the time,’ said a woman called Irrawaddy. ‘Only they do it hypocritically; they deny they do it; they employ others to do their dirty work. Gradisil’s not like that.’

  ‘He was a fuking traitor,’ said a man called Smith, speaking with heat and absolute conviction. ‘Wat - he should have been allowed to just go? Is that wat you think? Go scot-free?’

  ‘No! No!’

  ‘Gradi’s no hypocrite, and she’s not a leader to hide behind her subordinates.’

  ‘She’s certainly no hypocrite,’ agreed Juniper.

  ‘She has the strength,’ said Smith, firmly. ‘She’s got wat it takes.’

  fourteen.

  Slater

  It is a cliché that war is much more frequently a waiting than a shooting game. Where do you stand on cliché? Its relationship with reality? I see, I see. The war goes on, and there’s little shooting, and there’s a great deal of waiting. The year 2099 folds over into the year 2100, with worldwide celebrations downbelow, and even some modest hoo-haa and military-sanctioned yawps aboard American military bases in the Uplands. It seems an auspicious date: no longer tip-toeing in the waters of the third millennium, humanity has now unambiguously taken the plunge.

  Once victory has been declared, and the game becomes a waiting one, Slater is granted several furloughs; each for a couple of days at a time, and always on call, such that he might be dragge
d back Up at a moment’s notice. The first of these he spends at home, with his wife and children. They invite Philp and his girlfriend to dinner, to stay over (it’s quite a flight bak to DC).

  Philp is on fine form at the meal, and his girlfriend is (as Marina whispers to Slater, whilst they both loiter five seconds too long in the kitchen disposing of the plates and fetching the blue jug of hot chocolate) ‘a peach!’ Her name is Daria, and she is a tall, wand-slender, almost translucently white-skinned young woman whose broad hammerhead skull, with wide eyes, her petal-like broad nose and full lips, are unconventional enough to prevent her looks being merely insipidly pretty. Her eyes move a fraction more slowly than the rest of her body, giving her gaze a dreamy belatedness, as if she is always just catching up with the rest of her corporeality. She speaks with a fairly pronounced Creek accent, very prettily pluking her vowels up short, ‘this foo[uh]d is ju[ah]st delee[i]cious!’ Philp’s pride in his beautiful companion is comically blatant.

  ‘She’s a catch, isn’t she?’ he booms. ‘Catch, yeah?’

  ‘Oh, stop,’ she says, laughing.

  The following day, the four of them go for a walk around Newport. The sun is warm, despite the season. New Year decorations have been cleared away. The wide streets are relatively empty, except for the ubiquitous shapes of advertising mannequins, those automata standing with weird plastic stillness until such occasion as a pedestrian walks within their ambit, when they start up with their spiel. ‘You hardly see those in DC,’ says Slater, gesturing towards the nearest. ‘A judge threw out a case for criminal damage against these guys who kiked one to pieces, on the grounds that they are intrusive in personal space when they spark up without being specifically asked. So after that the local youth went on a culling spree, knoking arms and legs and heads off.’ He laughs at the thought of it.

  ‘I feel sorry for them,’ says Daria, tenderly. She is walking arm looped in arm with her beau, like an eighteenth-century couple.

  ‘Sorry for them? They’re nought but things,’ says Philp, dismissive.

  ‘Even so,’ says Daria, dreamy (‘e’en so[uh]’)

  ‘Wat are you two planning?’ asks Marina, ingenuously. ‘For after the war I mean?’ She is angling for we’re getting married, but Philp, canny, only puts his head on one side. ‘War’s already over,’ he says.

  ‘The victory’s been declared,’ corrects Slater.

  ‘M’learned comrade is quite correct, war isn’t over, though victory has been declared,’ pronounces Philp in an hilarious, hypercorrect legal accent. Hilarious insofar that Daria laughs, at any rate.

  ‘Very well,’ says Marina, humouring him. ‘So wat is it, precisely, that marks the end of a war?’

  ‘That’s not something can be answered straightforward, like,’ says Philp, gambolling around his girlfriend like a wolf about a fawn.

  ‘There are several stages to it,’ says Slater, more soberly. ‘There’s the victory declaration that means that the military campaign is over. There’s the enemy’s surrender, which means that they’ve accepted the fact of their loss. Then there’s the tying up of legal loose ends - that can go on for years. But that’s not our problem. That’s for the lawyers to sort out. The surrender is our problem.’

  ‘So how long until the surrender?’

  ‘Won’t be long now,’ says Slater.

  ‘Gradi has to surrender soon,’ agrees Philp. ‘She’s got a fish in her tank.’

  ‘And wat on earth does that mean?’ asks Daria, in a strangely distressed voice, as if this phrase were somehow upsetting to her.

  ‘She got a loaf in her oven,’ says Philp. ‘She got a chiken in her bucket. She got a frog in her standpipe. She got a acorn in her soil.’

  But they have strayed too close to one of the advertising automata, a vividly pink and yellow model with a cartoony smiling face. He stirs into ersatz life and starts speaking: Not all vatgrown and seacultured foodstuffs are revolting! Talk to me for further information on an exciting new development in food technology and — the four of them run, giggling, away from this pronouncement.

  That evening, sitting together playing TrixPoker with the house AI at midnight, Philp confesses to Slater the nub of the matter, the thing he had shied away from admitting to Marina earlier that day. ‘I’ve fallen for her, man. I love her. After the surrender, when the Army gives us a month, we’re getting married.’

  ‘Congratulations, man!’

  ‘Thank you, Lieutenant. I’m pleased you’re pleased, I truly am.’

  ‘She’s a lovely woman.’

  ‘Isn’t she, though? Isn’t she, though? My daddy would like to meet her. I may even set up that rendezvouz,’ (he buzzes that word on both zs) ‘I truly might.’

  Slater has never heard his friend talk of his parents before. He says nothing, only ponders his cards with unusual attention. And after a pause Philp continues: ‘never told you this, Slayer, my da, but he was involved in the albino riots, bak in the sixties - yeah?’

  ‘Oh,’ says Slater. Then, because that sounds a bit stark, he adds, ‘No kidding?’

  ‘I know. Had that pigmentation pharmakos, everything. He was white as greasepaper. But wat people don’t understand about those rioters . . .’ He is wagging his forefinger as if about to make a serious point, but the sentence laks a conclusion, and he looks around puzzled by its non-completion. He’s been drinking.

  Slater prompts him: ‘Wat is it that people don’t understand about those rioters?’

  ‘They weren’t racists,’ Philp barks. ‘Leastways, not all of them. It’s possible, is possible to think . . . you know.’

  ‘I wasn’t accusing anybody of racism,’ says Slater. Philp gives a I-know-you-weren’t shake with his head. The walls all around are curtained in shadow. The circle of light on the green baize is like a diving bell on an oceanfloor of obscurity.

  ‘I only mean,’ says Philpot, selecting a card and laying it on the table just outside the circle, such that the AI must wheedle in its electronic voice, I cannot see this card, and Philp must reposition it inside the circle, ‘I only mean that it’s possible to think that really white skin, to think that just no pigmentation in skin, is just beautiful, you know? It’s possible to think that without necessarily believing all the racial purity stuff as well. I mean, I got nothing against more richly coloured people. I have dated them, people, er, like that, in the past. I could have married a more richly coloured person. That could have happened. But when I met Daria I just thought . . . I thought, phew, you know?’

  ‘Sure,’ says Slater. ‘I’m proper happy for you, I really am. Marriage, eh? And then, children?’

  ‘Why not!’ says Philp. Then: ‘I haven’t spoken to my da in eight years, you know, you know.’

  ‘No kidding?’

  ‘He was arrested after the riots. Did you follow the riots?’

  ‘There was stuff on TV.’

  Philp nods. ‘They didn’t report it too good. It wasn’t so much about race. It was about the local - the local — ’ the adjective is firmly in Philp’s head, ‘about the local — ’ but he can’t seem to bring forth a noun for it to qualify. ‘It’s Missouri,’ he says, finally. ‘It was about ways of doing things, about the. Anyway, so Da got arrested after the riots, spent some time in a correctional fluid.’

  ‘A correctional fluid?’

  ‘A correctional facility, yes. I had to concentrate on my career, you know? But I may make approaches now. After the surrender - I’ll have some good news for him. Da, hiya, remember me, war is over and I’m getting a-marriéd.’ He laughs. ‘Time for bed,’ he adds, ‘time for bed, time for bed,’ getting clumsily to his feet. His physical dyspraxia is provoked by the superfluity of alcoholic compounds in his metabolism: he jars the table with his hip upon rising, and leans left before stepping right. ‘Time for bed, time for bed, time for bed.’

  It occurs to Slater, as he paints his teeth with PurePaste in the bathroom later, how easily intimacy can grow between men who know, really, nothing at all
about one another. He had not known that his best friend was alienated from his father; that his father had been involved in those ugly albino riots (a particular use of pharmakos which had divided the community between religiously-inspired anti- and pro-racist); or that these factors, roots in the dirt of Philp’s past, were still determining the choices he made decades later - this almost pharmakos-white bride! This strain towards military glory! Slater moves as stealthily as the whisky inside him permits into the darkened bedroom, where his wife’s breathing susurrates in the blakness, and inserts himself between the smartcloth sheets with a fizz.

  He cuddles into his wife’s back, and she shifts in bed. She is whispering something to herself in her sleep, muttering, and Slater settles, listens, and can just make out thine is the kingdom the power. It annoys him. He pulls his eyes closed and tries to force himself into sleep, but it doesn’t work that way. So he lies awake, crossly, and thinks about the Pastor, about the malign ecstasy of revealed religion that lies, black-hole-like, just to the left, just sinister to the path through life his innocent, passive wife must follow.