by Adam Roberts
‘Only a small number,’ said Siuzan. ‘Most of those in church today are headless volunteers who work now for the Friends, helping us rehabilitate people such as yourself.’
‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘that there are few enough employment opportunities for such folk. Perhaps volunteer work for your philanthropic organisation is the best they can manage.’ My thoughts were sour and sarcastic, but the words emerged as blandly synthetic as all my other statements.
‘It is more likely,’ she replied blithely, ‘that they work from a sense of remorse, of duty, and a belief in the importance of making the mercy of the All’God prevail, even to murderers, heretics and adulterers.’
We were back at my room. I sat upon my cot, surprisingly exhausted by the short walk. ‘From your words,’ I said, ‘you are a zealot.’
I saw her nod, her features blurring between two vertically bouncing faces momentarily, before recomposing into a single item. She was a beautiful young woman, with straight, plump nose and lips and fat-lidded wide-set eyes of pronounced clarity and blueness, although perhaps the vivid shine of blue was a function more of my visual software than her eyes. Her dark hair was webbed into plaits and tied behind her head. Her skin seemed sunshine-white to my new eyes, and was blemishless and smooth. She wore modest but expensive clothes: a mauve droho with white stripes, and expensive-looking meadhres. She was smiling at me.
‘Indeed,’ she said. ‘I have been a zealot for seven years.’ She could not have been more than twenty years old. ‘I confess I cannot understand how one can worship the Divine and not do so with zeal. A frank, heretical denial of the All’God seems more logical to me, in a way, than any half-hearted adherence to the church.’
‘Some people are by nature half-hearted in their lives,’ I said. ‘It is the minority who are enthusiasts.’
‘And which are you?’
I considered. ‘It may offend you,’ I said, ‘and indeed may approach heresy, but I suppose that I have lost much of my confidence in the church. Until this affliction,’ and I put my hands up to wave in the air over my neck stump, ‘I thought little of the headless. Of course, I saw them from time to time, working at their menial jobs, or shuffling along the streets, but I was too caught up in my own business and my own thoughts to pay them much attention. But now that I have become what I did not used to notice, I am shaken by the extremity of the condition.’
‘Many amongst the newly headless speak as you speak,’ she said. She was still smiling. ‘It can take time for a person to overcome the injury to their pride.’
‘I speak of the general, not of my particular. I ask, is this the way to organise our society? This code, this penal code; it is from a medieval past, from a time when life was brutal. But life is no longer brutal. We are a space-faring, technologically advanced civilisation. We have a sophisticated and liberal culture. No other inhabited world still abides by so barbaric a practice.’
‘But every world,’ she said, ‘must have a legal code, and must punish wrongdoing. All worlds have punishments, and some are more barbaric than ours. What of Oudart, for instance, where murder and treason are punishable by death?’
‘Our own code calls for death!’ I said. ‘For centuries our criminals were decapitated and buried in criminal graves.’
‘But no longer,’ she said, still calm. ‘Because we understand the central points of our scriptures to be compassion and mercy, and so we are merciful and compassionate. Because the All’God has enabled us to develop new technologies, so it is that we can mitigate the necessity of death.’
‘It remains a monstrously antiquated creed,’ I insisted, ‘for a modern society.’
‘On the contrary. It is precisely modernity that enables you to speak to me, even though your head has been struck from your body.’
‘For crimes that other worlds view as pastimes! As hobbies!’
For the first time her expression cooled. ‘Murder and blasphemy cannot be described as hobbies!’
‘I was not beheaded for either.’
‘Nor,’ she said, ‘are there civilised worlds where rape is a pastime.’
This deflated me, and took the conviction from my statements. My torso sagged a little on the bed. ‘But,’ I continued in a quieter voice, ‘I speak of the principles behind the punishment. Anybody committing adultery faces the same punishment that I have faced, regardless of the benignity of the offence, adultery being defined as any illicit sexual activity whatsoever. Two teenagers committing fornication, an unhappy wife seeking solace with a lover, a man—’
But she stopped me, holding up her hand like a traffic policeman. ‘The All’God’s law is the All’God’s law,’ she said sternly. Then, in a kinder tone, ‘The divine We is who we are. Our religion is the spinal cord of our civilisation. Without the All’God all its richness would crumble.’
‘It seems to me,’ I said, after a silence, ‘that the worship of God evolves over time, as cultures evolve. Is it heresy to say so?’
‘Many scholars,’ said Siuzan, ‘and many theologians have argued the point. It can hardly be called heresy to discuss it. The All’God is duality, and relishes discussion.’
‘Yet a man was beheaded last year for insisting the practice of decapitation be discontinued!’ I said. ‘It is heresy to oppose the beheadings, and heresy results in beheading. Is it surprising that the practice has never been reformed?’
‘The All’God’s law,’ she said again, ‘is the All’God’s law.’
‘A circular statement,’ I said.
This animated her. ‘Is our world not harmonious, ordered, beautiful? Is ours not a complex and satisfying culture in which to live, to grow, to love and be loved, to study, to work, to grow old and die? Are our cities not free of crime, almost wholly so, and the people well mannered, polite, engaged, selfless and pure? Would you truly prefer a world like Rivy, where the populace carry guns and dozens die in street brawls every day? Would you prefer to live on Hoffmanwelt, where suicide outnumbers all other manners of death, and half the population live bleakly secular and alcoholic lives?’
‘These,’ I said shortly, ‘are merely rhetorical questions.’
‘Religion gives shape and meaning to our existences,’ she said. ‘Empirically this cannot be denied. The people of our world benefit from that. We are happy with a profound happiness. Would you jeopardise this, for the right to fornicate and kill at your pleasure?’
‘Though we speak to one another, you and I, perhaps,’ I said, ‘are having different conversations.’
Three
I stayed in the House of the Friends of the Headless for two weeks, and during that time the two of us had many similar discussions, Siuzan Delage and I. To begin with I assumed that all newly beheaded individuals received such devoted attention from the zealots of this organisation. But it dawned on me that Siuzan Delage held a special place for me in her heart. She wanted, perhaps, to return me to the path of the Divine. The conversion mania is common to many zealots.
‘I know the work you used to do,’ she told me. ‘The poetry you composed before your execution. It is beautiful.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, surprised.
‘Your music, your lyricism.’
‘Yes.’
‘It is spiritual,’ she said.
‘Thank you again,’ I said. ‘I tried to celebrate the spiritual within the ordinary.’
‘Precisely,’ she said with energy, as if I had pressed a button that released all her agitation, ‘precisely! The church is not for Sundays and high days, but for every day! God is not the decoration of our lives, God is our lives!’
‘I am not sure,’ I said tentatively, ‘that this is what my poetry expresses - not exactly this.’
It seemed to depress her that I said so, and she became surly. After a while she brightened. ‘But who can say? Music can be interpreted in many ways, after all. Not even the artist can encompass every resonance of his or her art.’
‘Musical poetry can be interpreted many wa
ys,’ I conceded. ‘More so than conventional narratives, more so than the visuals. And yet music is not open to every interpretation. Happy music is happy, after all. Sad music is sad.’ I had no need to add that my poetry had been sad. But my poetry was all behind me now, struck away with my old life.
‘These are only the broadest criteria of interpretation,’ she said. ‘Within that, we may find a spectrum of meanings.’
‘Is the same not true,’ I hazarded, ‘of Scripture also?’
It upset her, I believe, that I returned to this topic. ‘Scripture is precise where it needs to be precise,’ she said stiffly, ‘and general when it needs to be general. The All’God lays down specific rules we must follow, but also general principles we must interpret for ourselves in our actions - the principle of mercy, for instance, which is core to the Divine being.’
I replied that I had had little sense of that mercy.
This annoyed Siuzan further. ‘That you have not perceived All’God’s mercy tells me much about you, and little about Him,’ she snapped.
At mealtimes I fed little parcels of vegetable or meat pulp into the valve at my neck stump, and swallowed them down into my stomach. This food of course lacked any flavour or quality. Whatever drink I poured into the same valve slid down into my stomach the same way, tastelessly, distinguished only by subtle variations in viscosity and texture of flow. There was one exception, namely wine, which of course entails certain aftereffects which other drinks would not. But in general no savour remained to the business of eating and drinking. I took no pleasure in it any more. When my stomach creased with hunger, I fed myself. That was all.
I became acquainted with the other recent headless. A dozen had been received into the house from execution over the month, ten men and two women. I spoke to most of them, and two of them left the house in my company, joining me on my travels, and I shall say something more about this pair.
I sat in the courtyard, in the white heat of the summer sun, trying to read a book, or more exactly experimenting with different positions of holding the text so that my eyes could absorb it. The best way, I discovered, was to cover one eye, and position the book beside the other shoulder.
Two headless came out of the refectory into the courtyard and sat on the hot marble of the bench. They were wearing white meadhres and yellow shifts: one, like me, had epaulette eyes; and his shift was cut open about the shoulders to facilitate their vision. The other had stalk eyes placed on his neck stump, like antennae; a more expensive prosthesis.
We introduced ourselves. ‘My name is Jon Cavala,’ said I.
‘Mine,’ said the stalk-eye, ‘is Mark Pol Treherne.’
‘Gymnaste Peri,’ said the second.
‘You are the Cavala,’ said Mark Pol, ‘famous for his poetry? I know your poetry. I have heard some of your music.’ His voice emerged from some device in his neck stump rather than from his ordinator, and it had a more melodious timbre than mine, although it was nevertheless unmistakably synthetic. Such a device must have been expensive.
‘I am flattered,’ I replied.
‘I enjoy music,’ said Mark Pol. ‘Why were you beheaded?’
‘You are direct,’ I said, ‘in your questions. I was beheaded for adultery.’
‘Aha! Adultery, is it? But that covers several crimes, that word. What form of adultery?’
I angled my shoulders away from him a little, to express my discomfort. ‘Rape,’ I said shortly.
‘It is always rape, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘In our so-exacting legal definition. Adultery always means rape, doesn’t it?’
‘Not so,’ I contradicted. ‘Last year in this very city, in Doué, a young couple were both beheaded for adulterous fornication. There was no rape in that instance. This was a mutually consensual sexual relationship.’
‘I remember the case,’ said Mark Pol. ‘Although I insist it was an exceptional affair, and that “adultery” almost always does mean rape. But they were a fine couple, were they not? A handsome couple they were, both of them very good-looking. Neither of them older than twenty-four. But she was married to somebody else, as I recall. She shouldn’t have married the other man if she wanted the first fellow, I would say.’
‘They could not,’ said Gymnaste, ‘live without each other.’ He paused. ‘So they said.’
‘Indeed,’ said the more garrulous Mark Pol. ‘And so they faced execution together. Is it romantic? I don’t know. I heard that her husband has put her aside. He will divorce her, it seems, although the legal process takes seven years. So, in six years they will be together, a headless couple, enjoying legally sanctioned sexual congress in wedlock. Headless parents giving birth to headed children! How droll that thought is!’
‘There is no reason,’ I said, my thoughts on my own possible future, ‘that one of the headless might not marry and have children.’
‘Indeed not,’ said Mark Pol. ‘But would a beautiful woman marry one of our sort? Perhaps beauty is only on the surface, as the saying says, but who could fall in love with somebody in our poor, truncated condition? Yourself, Sieur Cavala, you are - Isee it - amuscular individual. You have a good body, a strong torso, two strong arms, well-proportioned legs. You have exercised assiduously.’
‘I have,’ I said. ‘And fortune has given me a robust constitution.’
‘Yours was a pretty face, I suppose?’ Mark Pol asked, seemingly offhand.
‘It is no vanity,’ I said, ‘to admit that I was handsome.’
‘And now that handsome visage is rotting in a ditch! So the world turns.’ He laughed his ersatz laugh, a tinnily mechanical noise, very grating to hear.
‘And why,’ I asked, encouraged by his boldness, ‘were you executed?’
‘For murder,’ he said, turning his torso flat to face mine, so that his stalk eyes were looking directly at me.
‘Indeed?’ I said, uncertain how to respond.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, murder. They say that blasphemy is the worst of the three crimes, don’t they? A crime against the All’God rather than man, which makes it worse. I can’t believe so. Surely murder is the worse, for heresy is just words, where murder is deeds, and deeds against flesh. Ask Gymnaste here - he lost his head for heresy. Didn’t you, Gymnaste?’
‘So I did,’ said Gymnaste, after a pause.
‘And a milder mannered individual you’ll not find amongst all the headless,’ declared Mark Pol Treherne loudly. ‘And yet I am far from mild mannered. I am quarrelsome and prone to anger.’
‘You killed a man?’ I asked.
‘I did.’
‘Under what circumstances?’
‘Oh,’ he said, giving his hands alternately a rub and a squeeze, ‘you’d like to know, would you? The violence and the death intrigue you, do they? Well, I have no objection to telling you. I was drinking in a bar here in Doué, and I became involved in a discussion with the person sitting next to me-a man I had never before met. Our discussion became more animated, until it would be accurate to describe it as an argument. The heat increased under the pressure applied to it by our two personalities, and before long we were fighting. I struck him with one of the long-necked bottles of wine for which the region of Brignol, far to the east of here, is so famous. The bottle was full, and accordingly heavy. It broke his skull, and he died inside an ambulance on the road to hospital. There.’ He held his hands before himself, showing the palms. ‘My whole story. I blamed what I had drunk. I said the wine had killed him and not I. But the court thought differently. They thought, fantastically, that the blame was mine.’
‘An engrossing story,’ I said.
‘Doué is full of such stories,’ he replied. ‘And now my victim is in one of Doué’s many graveyards, and my own head is rotting like yours on a rubbish heap, and the world turns again.’
We three sat together, and the heat and the faint pressure of the sunlight squeezed our skins. I had an itch at my neck stump, which was a frequent occurrence, although it was not always possible to reach t
he itching area with my fingernails. I scratched as well as I could at the place near the broad cap of the stump-fitting.
‘Where,’ said Gymnaste shortly, ‘will you go, Sieur Cavala?’
‘I am no sieur,’ I said. ‘My name is Jon. And I will travel into the countryside, hoping to find work on a farm or factory.’
‘I have thought a great deal about this very question,’ said Mark Pol, stretching himself on the bench. ‘The family of my victim are resident in Doué, and it would be uncomfortable to encounter them on the street. Unlikely, I suppose, in a city so large, but certainly possible. Perhaps it would be best to travel to the country. But at the same time, there is much to be said for city life, particularly from a headless perspective. After all, there are many hundred headless individuals in the city. Citizens are used to seeing them coming and going about their business. This is not so in the country, where villages may not see one of the headless from year’s end to year’s end. In such places one runs the risk of ridicule, of persecution, fingers pointed and doors slammed in one’s - face, I was going to say. Neck, I suppose I should say instead.’