Gradisil (GollanczF.)

by Adam Roberts

  ‘I’ve nothing to confess!’ bravadoes Hope, lookiŋ around rather desperately.

  Laurier simpers. ‘Hope Gradisil,’ he says, in an insinuatiŋ tone, ‘you have the guiltiest conscience I’ve ever come across, and I’ve been dealiŋ with criminals and vagabonds for 20 years.’ Hope thinks: did he really say vagabonds? How strange. His mind won’t come straight. He can’t think straight. ‘You’ve had a guilty conscience all your life,’ Laurier is sayiŋ. ‘You think gettiŋ talked into planniŋ a murder by your sycho brother makes you guilty? No, that is just one more thing pulled out of the witches’ broth of your bad conscience. The guilt doesn’t depend on that at all. It’s all bottled up. It’s the pressurised container of liviŋ a life as Gradisil’s fekless son, never matchiŋ her achievements, never liviŋ up to wat she managed. You’ll feel so much better when you jab a hole in the side of that absurd existence, really you will. You’ll feel so much better - I can’t begin to tell you.’

  ‘You’ll shoot me,’ says Hope, quavery.

  ‘Not if I have your confession. I won’t need to. But if you’re stubborn, and don’t talk, then maybe that’ll be my only option.’

  ‘I don’t know how to confess,’ says Hope, although he has to drag that statement up from somewhere surprisingly deep inside him. Once it’s said, though, he sees how true it is. There’s a profound truth in it, in fact.

  ‘Just start talkiŋ. I’m not jokiŋ; you’ll feel like a migraine you’ve had all your life has been simply whisked away. You’ll feel better.’

  And Hope almost believes him. He can sense the granules of truth, like grit in honey, within Wilfrid Laurier’s speech. And, who knows? Maybe he will start doiŋ what the man has told him to do, confess, only he sees something that Laurier can’t see. His head is frazzled, which is why - although he knows (obviously!) that he shouldn’t look up - nevertheless he looks up. Looks up. His line of sight is a giveaway, and Laurier follows it, looks up as well. But by then it’s too late. Sol, wedged across the corner of the ceiling to give himself purchase, brings a dagger down, and there’s a wet teariŋ sound and the side and front of Laurier’s nek splits open in a spectacular fluid firework of red baubles. The windpipe is not cut right through, there’s still a patch of cartilage at the bak, or something like that (Hope’s mind is disarranged, his sense of the way bodies fit together suddenly unclear), but Laurier can’t scream, it’s comiŋ out as puffs of air at his throat, turniŋ little circular globes of blood into myriad oval baubles, waftiŋ the spray of red into tiny tourbillons. The gun in Laurier’s hand discharges. Lukily it isn’t pointiŋ directly at Hope, or that would have been messy.

  A wire bullet embeds itself in the wall. Official USA ammunition, fired, missed.

  Sol has pushed off and he flies, he flies along the ceiling, like Peter Pan tryiŋ to catch his own shadow, except that wat he is actually doiŋ is tryiŋ to avoid the billowiŋ and expandiŋ cloud of red drops already splotchiŋ dully into the wall. He pulls himself down, grabs Hope, and yanks him out of the way of the scarlet steam. ‘Outside,’ Sol says, in a surprisingly calm voice. Surprisingly calm. But, then again, Hope isn’t panikiŋ either. It all seems weird. He has one of the sleepiŋ bags off its hook, and is usiŋ it as a kind of shield to push through the mess of floatiŋ blood to the door, open, outside into the corridor, bundle the sheet bak through, shut the door.

  There they both are, on the other side of the closed door. There they both are, in the corridor.

  Hope can’t quite bring his thoughts into mental focus on wat has just —

  ‘You’ve got some on you,’ says Sol, lookiŋ disapproviŋly at Hope’s shirtfront. Hope looks down, and there is a little red-on-white star map there, some Sirius-like larger dots, some little distant clouds of galactic haze. It is only by lookiŋ down that he can see that his own hands are trembliŋ. He feels removed from his own hands, but they’re wobbliŋ like flaps in the gale. It’s Parkinsonian, it really is. He feels removed from his own trembliŋ hands. He wants to share his simile with his brother. ‘It looks,’ he says, ‘like a red-on-white star map, cartography of our destination,’ but in speakiŋ he realises that his own voice is trembliŋ too, so wobbly indeed that it’s actually quite hard to hear wat he’s sayiŋ.

  Sol has pulled off his own jumper. He is weariŋ a blak tShirt underneath. ‘Wear this,’ he says handing him the jumper, and then helps Hope’s wibbliŋ hands to manoeuvre the too-small top over his head, down his torso, coveriŋ the evidence of their —

  ‘You killed him,’ he says to his brother.

  ‘I heard the 2 of you outside the door,’ says Sol. ‘So I got myself up on the ceiling. He scoped the room,’ he adds, grabbiŋ Hope’s wrist and pulliŋ him. ‘But he’s used to workiŋ downbelow, I guess, as an agent I mean. He’s not used to chekiŋ the ceiling as well as all the walls. He was thinkiŋ 2-dimensional. Come on, come on.’

  They go round the corridor and out into the atrium, and as before - as if nothing had happened - people were throngiŋ it, moving to and fro, goiŋ into and comiŋ out of shops. There are human bodies dispersed through the space, just as there were, a little while ago, or was it a long while ago, separate monads of blood dispersed through the space of the hotel room. ‘We have to go away,’ Hope says to Sol, and his voice, though low, is steady. ‘We need to get away now, now, now.’

  Sol is scanniŋ the atrium. Hope knows, telepathy perhaps, wat his brother is lookiŋ for.

  ‘I was just with him,’ he says. ‘He’s in the coffee parlour. I was just with him.’

  ‘I know,’ says Sol. ‘I saw you, on my way bak up from the lobby.’

  This is the moment to say we can’t kill him, and to say that with enough force to make the statement true, but somehow Hope can’t work the words out of his pukkered little mouth, this turdus of a sentence. Sol has him again by the wrist, and they are both flyiŋ straight down. Hope thinks: wat did he do with the dagger? Then he thinks: the thumnail camera is on his lapel, it will have recorded everything. This panics him. They should go bak, but obviously they can’t go bak to that room in which particles of blood must now, surely, have inter-penetrated every single cubic centimetre of space. Then, the thoughts tumbliŋ fast through, he thinks: but the image will not be of me committiŋ murder, only of Sol, and now they are at the entrance to the coffee shop, and Paul is there, and Slater is there, both chattiŋ genially away, now eatiŋ couscous with those little xero-g spoon-sivs. This is the most disorientiŋ of all, for now Hope must compact into his brain the fact that it is only a few minutes since he was here, sittiŋ with them, and that in those tiny little minutes, bug-like in size compared with the leviathan years, everything has changed. It belongs to a different world, and here he is again, before it has had time to alter.

  Hope tries once again to tell his brother that they cannot murder their own father. This time it comes out, but in a strangulated and altered form: ‘it’s a crazy, is crazy, not to - we can’t do it here, not in here’ he says. But the words seem, simply, redundant. Events have changed things. Everything has changed now.

  Sol is inside the coffee shop. Hope has this same sense of hurtliŋ towards something implacable, a rok wall say, or freefalliŋ parachuteless towards fields of flat concrete; this is a feeliŋ that he has had before. It’s like some kind of primal scene. Paul is lookiŋ up, and his face is registeriŋ that his other son is also here, a contorted hey! no! well! expression that is more fearful than it was when he greeted Hope, because - well, because he knows his sons, and he knows the difference between Sol and Hope, and he knows from which of them the greater danger is likely to come. But he’s still happy to see his younger son, despite even that. Of course he is.

  Hope pushes off, flies through the air, snags his hand on a ceiling bar to pivot and angle himself down. His father, startled at this sudden movement, relaxes. Both his sons are here, so it’s alright, it must be. Surely Hope will act as a restraint upon the wilder possibilities of Sol’s rage. But as David Slater turns towards Sol, perhaps to in
troduce himself, the younger man jabs him with something. Hope emits a high-pitched noise, pure scared alarm, thinkiŋ this is another knifestabbiŋ, like the slaughter of Laurier in their hotel room; but it’s a diffuser needle, and Slater’s skin is not cut, his life not taken. Instead something strange happens. He freezes in mid turn. Hope sees that Sol has injected him with some sort of neural paralysiŋ agent: Slater is stopped in the act of turniŋ, and of reachiŋ out with his left hand to hold the table, but the oddity of watever agent Sol has introduced into his system is such that his prosthetic hand is not frozen, but rather trapped in some loop of stimulus so that it turns the palm down, turns it bak up, turns it down, turns it up, whilst the rest of his body holds itself with exaggerated stillness.

  Paul Caunes starts to move his head to take a look at Slater, his expression just on the point of startiŋ to cramp into distrust, and in a counterpoint move that is balletically mirror-matched to his father’s Sol turns and jabs him as well. There is no fuss. Paul simply stops moving. The other customers in the parlour do not seem to notice that anything amiss has happened, although several heads are turned in their direction, drawn by Hope’s precipitous entry, and by the odd tikiŋ of the left hand of Slater (Say! Isn’t that — you know, wat’s his name . . . ? The guy who...).

  ‘Wat have you done, have you killed them both?’ asks Hope, although as he speaks he knows that Sol has only paralysed them.

  Sol, characteristically, doesn’t answer the question asked of him. Instead he says: ‘Take his elbow. I need you to help me take him.’

  ‘Are you crazy?’

  ‘I can move him by myself, of course,’ Sol says, slippiŋ his hand between Paul’s torso and left arm, ‘but with 2 it will look more natural.’

  ‘Wat are you doiŋ?’

  ‘There’s a private plane in the porch,’ says Sol.

  ‘A taxi?’

  ‘Private plane.’

  ‘You think you can simply carry the body through a busy hotel, through the lobby and out into the porch without anyone noticiŋ? Don’t you think somebody’ll see that you’re luggiŋ an unconscious body . . .’

  ‘You’re thinkiŋ like a groundliŋ,’ says Sol. ‘Take his right elbow.’

  Paul’s eyes are still open.

  Sol says ‘It’s easy’, and so it proves; they move easily through the coffee shop and out into the atrium. They carry Paul’s awake-lookiŋ body between them - it’s a little stiff, but not implausibly so. They move through the lobby and nobody stops them. It’s all part of the dream-like, vividly dissociated procession of events. There is a man, or there was a man, whose job it was to prevent exactly this sort of kidnappiŋ; but his blood is spattered through the 3 dimensions of the hotel room on the top floor.

  They’re in the plane. The hatch is open, and Upland hands are helpiŋ pull Paul Caunes inside. They’re inside the plane and the hatch is closiŋ now.

  nine

  Hope says, ‘I can’t believe we just did that’ as the plane pulls away from the Worldview’s porch, haviŋ paid a leaviŋ fee that Sol - with an actiŋ skill Hope did not know he possessed - called ‘exorbitant, a scandal, I’ve half a mind to compose a message of complaint,’ passiŋ himself off as a typically grumpy Uplander rather than as the kidnapper and assassin in the commission of his crime that he actually was. But they pay, they leave. They drop down into a lower orbit and put the world between themselves and the hotel. They pull up. Hope keeps repeatiŋ: ‘I can’t believe we just did that’.

  Hope is introduced to the 3 Uplanders in the plane: their names are Hopson, Brok and Twain, 2 of them are male and 1 female, 2 of them are white-skinned, with the sunless bleachiŋ of complexion that comes of repeated lengthy stays Upland; and 1 has skin the colour of bran. They are all delighted, energised, so pleased to meet you Mr Gyeroffy, sir, to meet the eldest son of Gradisil; they all greet Sol as an old friend. But Hope takes none of it in. All he can do is look at the static floatiŋ body of his father, and repeat: ‘I can’t believe we just did that, I can’t believe we just did that.’

  ‘Believe it,’ says 1 of the 3.

  ‘We pulled him right from under their noses,’ says another.

  Paul twitches, shudders all the length of his long body, and makes a sort of low bark. He flaps his arms, tryiŋ to rub his eyes but instead flailiŋ, throwiŋ his limbs into a series of peculiarly modern-dance-like postures. This motion starts to shift him in space, rotatiŋ his body very slightly.

  ‘He’s comiŋ round,’ says the first of the 3, Hopson, Brok or Twain, Hope really wasn’t payiŋ attention as to which was which.

  It takes Paul 20 minutes, and several lengthy swigs on a globe of water, before he is able to communicate properly; and even then there’s a sluggish calm to him that doesn’t seem appropriate in the circumstances. ‘So,’ he says. ‘I wondered, when I saw Hope in that coffee shop, whether something like this was afoot. I wondered.’

  ‘You should have made a bolt for it then,’ says Hope, sulkily.

  Paul doesn’t say anything. For long minutes nobody says anything.

  ‘Well, you’ve got me. Take me to a house, lok me in the porch, open the outside door. So why are we waitiŋ?’ asks Paul. He seems oddly calm.

  ‘We’re assembliŋ a meetiŋ, puttiŋ the word out so that people can have their say,’ says Sol in a colourless voice, not lookiŋ at his father.

  ‘Why bother?’

  ‘Bother? This is justice, father,’ says Sol. That word, that father, is like a little dart of electricity into Paul’s body; he jerks, minutely but visibly. ‘The Uplands are almost free of laws, but we are particular about treason, and we have forms to follow.’

  ‘You’re in the government, of course,’ says Paul. ‘I saw that on the news channels. Bravo.’ Sol doesn’t reply to this.

  ‘How can you be so blithe about it?’ asks Hope, bitterly. ‘Dad, you do know wat this will mean?’

  ‘You think I don’t?’

  ‘Dad, there’s goiŋ to be a heariŋ, a sort of court, and you’re goiŋ to have to energise yourself if you want to defend yourself.’

  ‘Defend myself against wat?’ asks Paul, with all the appearance of an elderly person not entirely sure wat is happeniŋ.

  ‘Against the charges. Don’t sit there so . . . so . . .’

  ‘The charge is treason,’ says Sol, still without lookiŋ at his father.

  This interruption is too much for Hope. It’s so typical of Sol, talking right through another person. ‘I was talkiŋ,’ boils Hope, decades of compacted irritation forciŋ through; he flaps his right hand, he scowls at his brother. ‘I was right in the middle of talkiŋ and you just — ’

  ‘Boys,’ says Paul, mildly, just as he used to do. ‘Don’t bikker.’

  There’s a silence at this. This is too too weird. The three Uplanders, Hopson, Brok and Twain, have on their faces a uniquely strange expression, compounded from equal parts of embarrassment at beiŋ privy to this family quarrel and delighted pride at their axess to this, the remnant or relict of Gradisil’s own family — traitor husband, hero sons.

  ‘Father,’ says Sol, after a pause. ‘It’s murder.’

  ‘Whom did I murder?’ Paul asks, lookiŋ round absently

  ‘Don’t be facetious,’ says Sol.

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘It’s treason,’ says Sol, ‘and it was tantamount to pulliŋ the trigger.’

  ‘It’s Gradisil I murdered, is it?’ Paul asks, innocent-seemiŋ.

  ‘Dad,’ says Hope, wantiŋ this conversation to stop.

  ‘You know it,’ says Sol. ‘You killed her.’

  ‘You’re beiŋ silly, boys,’ says Paul. ‘Gradisil is unkillable. She’s more alive now than I am; more alive than most people. She’s impermeable. I know you care, boys, and I’m proud of you for that. I know you loved her. Do you think I didn’t? But I knew her, and you never did. She’s not a figure susceptible to bleediŋ. She eats up death and digests it as her food. She’s — ’

  ‘Be quiet now,’ says
Sol. ‘Be quiet now, Dad.’ He pulls himself up and floats over to a phone, bleepiŋ quietly in the corner of the plane. ‘Time,’ he announces, and 1 of the interchangeable 3, Hopson, Brok or Twain, scurries to the pilot’s chair.

  They drop down, and axelerate; they pull up and slow down. It’s all ball beariŋs rolliŋ around the frictionless lip of a massive cup, getting faster nearer the bottom, slowing down as they rise up. Hard-times, heart-times. Paul floats quietly, his arms crossed. Hope presses his face to one of the plane’s windows, tryiŋ perhaps to catch a glimpse, actually to see, this fabled land, this Nova Americana, this empty world, this homeland, motherland, this new utopia, goodplace-noplace. But all there is nothingness, of course; the empty medium in which things can be, but not beiŋ itself. Is that so different from any other landscape?

  Yes, Hope thinks. Yes. Here I am, and I am the Great Isolato. Perhaps this is my true place, a land in which no sound and no heat and no liviŋ matter can pass over the blak fields outside each hermit’s house.