Land Of The Headless (GollanczF.)

by Adam Roberts

  In the sunlight outside my software bleached, paused, and then slowly filled the detail of the view in again. A row of headless soldiers, all in their uniforms, was standing to attention. I joined the end of this line.

  Two

  We all stood as still as we could manage. Slowly the new recruits filtered out through the door, many still fixing their jackets. We lined up, one after the other; watched at all times by two headed officers. Standing still for such a length of time was no easy matter. There was a great impatience in my soul. Come the nightfall, I thought to myself, and dressed in my uniform it would be a much easier matter to slip away from the camp. My uniform would surely camouflage me amongst all the others who were coming and going, such that there would be less chance of me being challenged. I could probably walk straight through the main gate.

  I stood as still as I could, but I desperately wanted the sun to set. I wanted to rush out and find Mark Pol, to turn myself over to the police. I thought of Siuzan in legal confinement; I wondered what she was doing at that very moment. Probably in prayer - certainly attempting to prepare herself for decapitation. The thought of her living in this dreadful apprehension was sharp misery to me. I wanted, pressingly, as a matter of the most extreme urgency, to save her from this state of mind. I wanted her to be relieved.

  One of the two officers was coming and going, leaving the parade ground and then returning to it at intervals. The other remained statuesquely, glowering down upon us.

  Slowly, the sun moved round. From shining obliquely upon the north-easterly facing flanks of the mountains, it shone directly from above, gouging more and longer black wedges and trapezoids of shadow from the pale brown and white flanks of those peaks. Then it moved over and the mountains took on the tint and dye of shadows; delicate mauve overlays.

  Finally the whole cohort of headless soldiers was assembled.

  ‘Soldiers!’ cried the taller of the two officers. ‘You will address me at all times as “Superior”. Today is your first day. In an hour you will march to your barrack. Tomorrow we will begin your training. But today there is one important demonstration to which you will pay close attention. For some of you - the wise ones - it will be the last time you will need to pay attention to this experience. For others - the stubborn and the foolish - it will be repeated many times. Reply!’

  ‘Yes, Superior!’ from some, just ‘Superior!’ from others.

  ‘Respond with Superior!’ he bellowed.

  ‘Superior!’ we all called, in an approximation of unison.

  The taller officer began marching along the length of us; reaching the end, wheeling and marching back down. The other pulled a short stick out of a holster and held it before him.

  ‘Your ordinators,’ the first officer boomed, ‘have been altered. We have patched a program into your ordinators that interrupts the reception and perception of pain. In battle’, (he positively shrieked this word), ‘we will dampen your pain. This will make you better soldiers. Respond!’

  ‘Superior!’ we all shouted.

  We were capable of much greater volume in our voices than had been the case before. This, I suppose, was another military adaptation, perhaps to enable soldiers to communicate over the din of battle. It was surprisingly liberating; more so than you might have thought. To be able fully to shout!

  ‘Some of you are murderers,’ the officer continued. ‘For some the murderous impulse is very close to the surface. During your training, you will come to hate me; doubtless you will come to hate all your superiors. And yet we are not afraid. We carry no weapons when we are with you. Do you wish to know why we are unafraid?’

  ‘Superior !’

  ‘It is because we have the truncheon.’ The other officer held up the stick. ‘In a moment I will show you how it works. Once the demonstration is over with, I will use the truncheon only on malefactors, on cowards, on deserters, on those who disobey orders. Do you understand?’

  ‘Superior !’

  ‘Good. Just as we will dampen your pain in battle, so we can switch your pain on in training. And so you must, as quickly as you can, acquire the habit of respect.’ With this last word, the second officer flourished the truncheon.

  What happened next was an experience far worse than the police chiller. I would not have thought such a worseness existed, but the truncheon proved me wrong. Every nerve in my body blistered and clenched at once, as if flayed along every length. I screamed, but my screams were swamped by a general roar or bellow or agony from the whole corps. My legs crumpled, jellied, evaporated. I smacked onto the ground and rolled, kicking and thrashing my limbs in an anti-ecstasy. I was hammered and destroyed by the downpour of pain.

  And then, suddenly, the pain ceased.

  ‘Get on your feet!’ the officer was screaming. His voice was hoarse at the edges with the sheer volume of his yell. ‘Get to your feet, all of you! Are you soldiers? Are you men? To your feet! At once - to your feet or you’ll feel the truncheon a second time!’

  Dazed, nauseous, I stumbled upright and fell straightaway over onto my knees. Besides me I heard the click of a neck valve followed by the spurt and splash of vomit striking the ground. I struggled up again, staggered. I endeavoured to pull myself together.

  I had never, until that moment, known what pain actually was. I had suffered broken bones in my youth; I had suffered decapitation; I had endured the touch of the chiller, but these amounted to nothing by comparison.

  ‘You miserable carcasses!’ the officer was screaming. ‘You toy soldiers! Fall over at the slightest touch of the truncheon? Roll in the dust? Disgrace! Disgrace! Respond!’

  ‘Superior!’ came from several wobbly throats, including mine.

  The officer went up and down the line, hauling headless men up with his own hands. ‘Disgusting!’ he screeched. ‘Disgrace!’

  ‘Superior!’ we cried, louder, in greater unison.

  ‘Again!’

  ‘Superior!’ more heartily. But my eye was not on the screaming man. It was on the officer holding the truncheon. His face was impassive, as if he had done nothing more than switch channels on a television set.

  I surprised myself with a thrust of the purest hatred, right through the core of my thoughts. I was close to stepping forward and tearing at his neck with my fingernails, forcing my forefinger into his eye socket. The urge to hurt him was almost overwhelming; but that small peg, the truncheon in his hand, was enough to hold back the avalanche of my passion.

  On the walk to Cainon I had wished for a staff to help me walk. Now I longed for a staff to use as a weapon: to pay him back for the pain he had caused me.

  I took a hold of my emotions.

  ‘Better,’ the taller officer was saying. ‘A little better. You disgraceful carcasses! Do you understand the truncheon now?’

  ‘Superior !’

  ‘Then understand this. Follow every order given you by an officer, at once, without dissent or question. Or feel the truncheon. Put your heart and soul into the fight, on orders, and risk your life without flinching. Or feel the truncheon. Over there’ - he waved to his right without looking - ‘is the launch ground. Three spacecraft are sitting there, with the infinite patience of the thinking machine. The Heron, the Shrike, the Swallow. On one of those, when your training is complete, you will leave this camp. You will leave the camp in no other manner. Do you understand ?’

  ‘Superior !’

  He began marching up and down the line. ‘Some of you are thinking of deserting, of running from the camp. Some of you are hoping to escape from the military life that you have chosen.’

  At this, my whole nervous system still twanging unpleasantly from the memory of the truncheon, I started. It was just such a desertion that I planned.

  ‘I would advise against this,’ said the officer. ‘Passing through the gate or past the walls will trigger your ordinators to register total pain, just as you have felt it.’

  But this was terrible news! All my plans at escaping, at tracking down Mark Pol
, sublimed away at these words. I did not doubt that the officer was telling the truth. The truncheon had, it seemed, paralysed my capacity to doubt.

  My mind jittered and spun. There was now no option. I had hoped to visit justice upon Mark Pol before sacrificing myself for Siuzan. But now, it seemed, that would not be possible.

  I resolved to confess the crime at the first opportunity. I would leave Mark Pol to providence - and perhaps, also, to the workings of his own conscience, although in this I had little faith. I resolved to turn myself over to the police.

  ‘Very well,’ said the officer. ‘You will now form up - smartly! - into two lines; and you will march - orderly! - to your barrack. Do not tempt us to use the truncheon again! Taste it a second time and I guarantee you will strain everything in your power to avoid tasting it a third.’

  We formed up, eager to please the officer, and marched a little raggedly, trying to keep in step, across the parade ground towards one of the many two-storey buildings. The sun was now standing exactly between two peaks of the mountain range, like a scarlet gong hung there and waiting to be struck. Our headless shadows stretched away beside us.

  We were installed in a bunkroom, and ordered to remain there for the rest of the day and the night. ‘You carcasses do not eat with the regular soldiery,’ the superior told us. ‘Pap will be delivered to your barrack here. Because you are newcomers, you will be inspected by an officer at irregular intervals. You may talk,’ he continued, ‘but at no louder volume than thirty decibels. Once I have left the room any headless soldier talking at louder than thirty decibels will trigger a sonostat response.’

  ‘Superior ?’ asked one of the men, standing to attention, ‘May I be permitted to ask: what is a sonostat response?’

  As soon as he asked the question he dropped to his knees and banged forward onto his front. It was as if he had been poleaxed from behind, despite his lack of a head. The officer brought his truncheon into sight. His thumb was on the switch at the end.

  ‘You carcasses,’ he said, ‘are not here to ask questions. You are to answer when asked. To obey without questioning.’

  The prone man was stirring, drawing his limbs in like a stabbed starfish.

  ‘To your feet, carcass,’ shrieked the superior. ‘There are many truncheon settings, and your was a minor one. Do you hear me?’

  ‘Yes, Superior,’ mumblingly said.

  ‘Would you prefer,’ asked the superior, in a parody of an insinuating tone of voice, ‘to lie on the floor and feel the truncheon again, or to get to your feet and attempt to recover your dignity as a soldier?’

  The headless man struggled to his knees, and tried to push himself up on quivering knuckles; but his legs were wobbling badly. ‘I will stand, Superior,’ he said.

  The superior’s hand went to his belt, and without sound or flash the headless threw his arms out and banged down upon the floor again. It goes, I daresay, without saying that none of us made any offer to help him.

  The superior turned and, unostentatiously, left.

  At last a few headless went over to the trembling figure on the floor and lifted him to a bed. ‘No louder than thirty decibels?’ somebody whispered. ‘How loud is that? How loud - precisely?’

  ‘We must assume,’ rasped another headless, whose name I did not know, ‘that the sonostat response involves the same technology as the truncheon; and that, if one of us makes too loud a sound, all of us will suffer.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I asked, emboldened to my speculation by the thought that I would not be staying in this place for much longer - indeed, that within a short while I would be dead - ‘perhaps it would be worth our while to test this warning?’

  We were all of us huddled around the bed of the one who had been truncheoned for asking his question. At my words several people hissed ‘No! no!’ and then somebody else rebuked the hissers saying, ‘Do not all bicker at once, or our combined volume might trigger the sonostat!’

  We all fell silent.

  ‘I only mean to suggest,’ I said, in a whisper, ‘that perhaps this business is a test of our mettle. Perhaps there is no punishment for speaking loudly. Would the army be content with meek soldiers, too timid even to try the water and see how hot or cold it is? Perhaps the superior will punish us tomorrow for pusillanimity because we sat here in a huddle whispering all night - instead of singing martial songs at top volume?’

  ‘The army may not want meek soldiers,’ said another, gesturing with his right hand for us all to remain quiet by pushing down with his palm several times, ‘but the army certainly wants obedient soldiers. As I see it, the officer gave us an order, and we had better follow that order.’

  ‘That is well said,’ said somebody else. ‘Do you desire to feel the truncheon again? Do you want to be like him?’

  We all looked down at the figure on the bed. He had stopped trembling; but without a face it was impossible to see whether he was fully recovered or not.

  Belatedly I realised that this figure was the same Syrophoenician who had spoken to me before the medical examination. ‘Syrophoenician,’ I said. ‘Are you well?’

  ‘Tolerably so,’ he replied, speaking not in a whisper but a low voice. Several of the people gathered around him flinched; but his voice did not trigger the sonostat - whatever that might be.

  ‘Your experience of army life,’ I whispered to him, ‘did not stand you in good stead.’

  ‘Indeed,’ he replied. ‘A regular soldier may ask an officer a question, provided he does it respectfully. Indeed, ah - I regret I have forgotten your name . . .’

  ‘I am Jon Cavala,’ I said.

  ‘Jon Cavala. Yes. Well, Jon Cavala, as a soldier I was encouraged to ask questions - in a mood of proper respect of course. But, it seems, they regard the headless troops as lesser creatures than headed warriors.’

  ‘So you have discovered to your cost,’ I said.

  We spent the rest of the next hour in a cowering frame of mind, each of us claiming one or other bunk, none of us prepared to argue the case for fear losing control of the volume of our voices. Half an hour later an officer stepped through the main door and marched up and down the central aisle. He was a different fellow to the previous ones, but was possessed of no sweeter temperament. ‘Stand by your beds when a superior enters,’ he shouted. ‘Present yourself neatly.’

  From this I deduced that whatever device governed the sonostat response disengaged when an officer was present. If the device even existed.

  The superior left, and shortly thereafter an automated bin rolled in with a soupy sludge in its central container. There was one ladle, but no bowls, plates or spoons. After much anxious whispering amongst ourselves, which occasionally pushed the volume dangerously high, we determined the order in which we were to share the ladle.

  We ate, each of us spooning a full ladle into our neck valves. I was, perhaps, halfway along the line; and although all taste and savour was of course absent from my meal the mere sensation of warmth, and the gloopy texture of the pap as it slid down my throat, was enormously satisfying. I was hungry. Little clenching pains had been passing along my gut and shivering my stomach, and it felt exceedingly good to eat. Immediately afterwards, as I handed the ladle to the next man, it occurred to me to marvel at how thoroughly I was adjusting to my new condition. Those criteria that, formerly, distinguished good eating from bad, as savour, smell, spices, sweetening, and even the look, had all gone; but my consciousness was now finding in quite other qualia (the texture in the throat, the warmth, the sensation within the belly) grounds for judging a meal good or bad.

  But when the last man stepped up to take his turn he discovered that all the soup was gone.

  ‘What is this?’ he hissed furiously. ‘You greedy fools! You have all taken more than your share - and now I must go hungry?’

  ‘We took no more than a ladle each,’ said somebody.

  ‘Evidently the officers omitted to tell us,’ said Syrophoenician, sagely, ‘that, to divide the soup between al
l of us, we must take a little less than a full ladle each.’

  ‘This is another of their little tortures,’ hissed a man called Geza. ‘It seems we can discover the truth only by suffering.’

  ‘By my suffering,’ said the hungry man.

  ‘Apologies, friend,’ said Syrophoenician. ‘Your name?’

  ‘Garten.’

  ‘Garten, you must take the first helping of tomorrow’s first meal.’

  There were murmurs in the group at this as a fair solution to the dilemma. But it did not sweeten Garten’s temper.

  ‘What use is that to me now? My belly is empty this moment - now, not later. You,’ he turned on the fellow who had been before him in the queue. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I am Costra,’ said the man. ‘My name is Bil Costra.’