Land Of The Headless (GollanczF.)

by Adam Roberts

  I laughed. ‘They’re not so different to one another, I agree.’

  At this Syrophoenician sat up. His blue shirt and meadhres were black with sweat, the fabric heavy and sluggish with the weight of his water. ‘It is good to hear you laugh, my friend,’ he said.

  I was very struck by this: partly at his concern, partly at the fact that he considered me his friend. Indeed, it is almost shameful for me to record that it was only my lack of a head that prevented me from crying. I felt the goosebumps rise and fall in a great swathe across my skin, as wind moves and strokes patterns into a field of corn, from my neck stump down to my hips. For moments I could not even speak.

  ‘You are a good man, Syrophoenician,’ I said, when I was able.

  At this he laughed. ‘By no means,’ he said. ‘A good man would have a head. A man without a head is by definition not a good man’.

  ‘There is a great deal of honour in you using that word friend to describe me,’ I said. ‘Friend,’ I said, ‘I have a favour.’

  ‘Ask it,’ said Syrophoenician, putting his arms wide, as if he had the world to give and I need only request it.

  ‘I told you of the woman—’

  ‘Ah,’ said Syrophoenician, folding his arms into a self-hug, ‘the woman you love. Love is a glorious thing, Sieur Jon. For does it not say in the Bibliqu’rân—?’

  I interrupted him, to stop him running into a lengthy scriptural digression. ‘Your piety is indeed creditable, my friend. But my request is an urgent one. Let me assure you that the woman I wish to save is as pious as you - in fact, she is much more so, indeed—’

  ‘So I should hope!’

  ‘—she is innocent of any crime, yet prepared to suffer beheading rather than send a Headless man to his death. I cannot allow her to do this. The man she would save—’

  ‘You?’

  ‘No, no,’ I said, crossly. ‘It was not I who assaulted her in that disgraceful manner. But the man who did has gone. He is beyond justice.

  And by confessing to his crime I can at least save her.’

  ‘At the cost of your own life?’

  ‘A small cost, I think.’

  Syrophoenician thought about this for a while. ‘It sounds noble, I agree. And that appeals to what you are pleased to call my theatrical soul. But I have a worry. Don’t your actions amount to suicide? The Bibliqu’rân is very clear on this matter. Suicide is impermissible.’

  ‘It is an arguable point,’ I said. ‘For mightn’t it rather be considered an act of martyrdom?’

  ‘But you are seeking your own death.’

  ‘I am not,’ I said. ‘If I had a head to lose I would lose it for this crime. If the justice system decides to spare me I will be glad. But that is not the important thing; the important thing is to save Siuzan from—’

  ‘Ah,’ said Syrophoenician, leaning back luxuriantly against the pillow of his bed, ‘so her name is Siuzan? My first tender passion was for a girl named Siuzan. I was only a lad. How pure was our dalliance!’

  ‘My friend, I feel I must leave the camp tonight. Since the captain will not hand me to the police, I must go myself.’

  ‘Impossible! To step outside the camp would bring the truncheon down upon you. You might lie in the dust in agony - how many minutes of that suffering would be enough to kill you?’

  ‘I believe you are right,’ I said. ‘But’ - and here I turned my back on him - ‘please examine my ordinator. Is there some addition to it, some prosthesis that might be broken off or pulled out?’

  I heard Syrophoenician rise from his bed behind me, and after a pause he said: ‘Nothing. The modifications they have made must be internal.’

  ‘Is there nothing you can do to—?’

  At this point in our conversation the soup-bin trundled in, and Syrophoenician broke away. Then there was a lengthy discussion. ‘Bil Costra is not with us,’ said Garten. ‘I say we can all take a full ladle.’

  ‘But what if they have again reduced the ration?’ asked Steelhand. ‘What if they have accounted for the absence of Bil and given those that remain less than a ladleful each?’

  ‘In that case,’ said Syrophoenician, stating the obvious, ‘the last man would go hungry.’

  ‘You should be that man,’ said Steelhand, pointing at Garten.

  ‘I went hungry yesterday,’ returned Garten. ‘Somebody else must go at the end of the line today.’

  ‘Not I!’ declared one headless. And then everybody was twittering or whispering ‘not I!’, ‘not I!’, ‘not I!’

  ‘Let us all take half a ladle,’ suggested Geza. ‘That way we can be sure, or reasonably sure, of all getting something.’

  ‘That will surely leave a surplus in the pot,’ Garten said. ‘And how can we distribute that?’

  ‘Let us address that matter after we have eaten our half portion,’ urged Geza.

  ‘Perhaps the most needy could be given first access to the surplus?’ suggested Cash.

  ‘Most needy?’ returned Syrophoenician? ‘That would be me! I went hungry at the last meal.’

  ‘That is a mere temporary thing,’ said Cash. ‘I’m talking about constitutional need.’

  ‘And how should such neediness be defined?’ Syrophoenician pressed. ‘Do you mean yourself, Sieur Cash, because you are so skinny? But why not argue that the larger men have a greater need - since they have larger bodies to feed, and need the nutrient more.’

  ‘Such logic is deficient,’ said Cash petulantly.

  ‘Perhaps one ladleful each, from which we return two spoonfuls?’ suggested Steelhand.

  ‘There is greater risk in that,’ opined Garten. ‘Would you be prepared to be the last in line?’

  ‘Provided two spoonfuls from each ladle are returned to the pot,’ said Steelhand, ‘then I would.’

  ‘Very well!’ boomed Syrophoenician. ‘A solution! Let’s eat.’

  There was a scurry of activity as we took up positions, and Garten was at the head of the line. But he immediately discovered that the soup-bin had closed its lid and could not be persuaded to open it again.

  ‘Infamy!’ cried Syrophoenician.

  ‘We spent too long bickering amongst ourselves about portions,’ wailed Geza. ‘The machine thinks its meal is unwanted.’

  And, as if on cue, the bin’s motor whirred and the device rolled back and out through the door. Several of the headless ran after it, smacking its top in a hopeless attempt to get at the food within. But they stopped on the threshold, for a superior was there, with his truncheon in his hand.

  ‘To bed,’ he called. ‘Come eight, and lights out, and you must all be in bed.’

  We clambered, weary and starved, into our beds. The numbers on the clock over the door mounted towards eight, and with a snap the lights went out.

  I listened, and heard the retreating crunk of the superior’s boots on the dirt outside. Everything was quiet.

  ‘Syrophoenician,’ I hissed. ‘Syrophoenician.’

  ‘Sieur Jon,’ he replied in a weary whisper. ‘I am extraordinarily fatigued. I must sleep.’

  ‘My friend,’ I hissed. ‘It must be tonight. I must do what I can - and do it tonight - to save Siuzan’s head. Will you help me?’

  He groaned, very low. ‘Don’t ask me, Sieur Jon,’ he said. ‘I need sleep.’

  ‘It must be tonight,’ I said.

  ‘Be reasonable,’ he returned. ‘You cannot leave the camp. Five minutes after stepping outside - five minutes of unimaginable agony, lying outside the camp wall - and your mind would collapse. You would surely die.’

  ‘Then I must stay in the camp, but find some sort of communicator or radio with which to contact the police.’

  Syrophoenician made no reply to this, beyond another low moan, but Geza, from the bed on the other side of mine, spoke up. ‘I will come with you,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ I whispered.

  We got up and crept to the door of the barrack. It was locked. ‘What if there were a fire?’ I hissed. ‘Would we al
l simply burn to death?’

  ‘Would the superiors care?’ replied Geza.

  ‘Hush,’ hissed somebody from the nearest bed.

  ‘I’ll try the lock,’ said Geza, in a lower voice. For several minutes he fiddled, but to no effect.

  ‘There is a window in the toilet,’ I whispered.

  Carefully we picked our way along the aisle between the beds and into the toilet. There was the window. Through it the moon, sliced diagonally in half like a silver fruit, gave out its light, cold and strong. It printed a parallelogram of white upon the dark floor, which shape intersected the edge of the toilet. Standing on the seat I could reach the window, and doing so I discovered that it opened perhaps half a metre. ‘Is it enough?’ hissed Geza.

  ‘I think so.’ I pulled myself up to the lip, and wriggled through the space, at every moment half expecting the truncheon to hit me. But it did not, and I dropped, clumsily, to the floor. I landed with a painful impact, but already I had learnt not to call out upon suffering pain.

  Geza emerged soon after me, and I was able to catch him as he fell.

  The camp looked austere in the moonlight. The mountains had sheathed themselves in a close-woven tessellation of blacks and purples that only added to their grandeur. Though the sky was dark the air was still warm from the day. The perimeter fence was illuminated with blobs of dim purply light at regular intervals, each blot of light standing like a head upon a pole. Buildings, at various locations about the place, were imprinted with lines of orange-lit squares from doors and windows. Otherwise the whole place was deep-sea dark.

  We pressed ourselves against the wall and crept round the vertical rim of the barrack. Across the parade ground the nearest buildings were perhaps a hundred metres from us: bright windows like dealt cards placed in an orderly line beneath the bar of a low roof. We stopped. From the shadows we watched a car growling its way along the perimeter road, its headlights sweeping the road like a snout sucking up crumbs. It stopped at the gate. The timbre of its engine faded as it idled. Voices were distantly audible, but no words could be distinguished amongst their buzz, musical as blue-flies. The gate opened and, with a little scurr of acceleration, the car drove through. The gate closed. Silence settled its blanket again on the camp.

  Very faintly, beyond the walls, cicadas rang like distant phones.

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked Geza. Now that we were outside we were, of course, free from the barrack’s sonostat, and there was no need to keep whispering, but nevertheless we continued to do so. Fear had habituated us.

  ‘I suppose - over there.’

  There were no spotlights inside the camp perimeter, but the moon made the run across the parade ground a dangerously exposed business. We trotted, trying not to look conspicuous but of course failing in this. It was luck, only, that nobody stopped us. Reaching the block on the far side unchallenged we hunkered down in the shadows at the side of the main ramp. Voices floated in from somewhere, one laughy, the other more level. It was not possible to distinguish individual words, but the tone of the exchange was clear: cheerful, lighthearted. Perhaps there was a window open somewhere above us, and two men inside that room. Eventually the voices stopped. Another car passed, this time coming into the camp, its motor revving up and then fading away as it drove past.

  ‘We must go inside this building, I suppose,’ said Geza.

  ‘We must.’

  I offered up a silent prayer to the All’God for success, reminding Him that it was not for my sake that I prayed, but for Siuzan, a devout and virtuous woman. But as I did this, it struck me as foolish and impertinent, for the All’God knew her virtue, my intentions, and everything else. The All’God knows everything in the whole echoing, sunbleached cosmos. How puny we must seem to Him; specks crawling on the face of specks circling dots of life. How subatomic our concerns and passions and agonies must appear, from His perspective!

  ‘I suggest,’ whispered Geza, ‘that we do not skulk into the building, but rather walk up purposefully, as if we have been ordered to come.’

  ‘Very well,’ I said.

  ‘That will look less conspicuous, I think.’

  ‘I agree,’ I said.

  And so we did. We walked straight up and inside. There was nobody on the ramp, and nobody in the hall through the main door. Inside the building we were faced with many doors, all painted the pale blue of the military.

  ‘Where?’ I asked irresolutely.

  Geza pointed. We stepped towards a door. I felt my stomach tighten. Siuzan’s redemption might be on the other side of this door.

  It opened on a darkened room, and a wave of my hand before the light pad summoned a yellow glow. Inside were a dozen or more datascreens.

  ‘This is perfect,’ I said, hurrying over to the nearest and turning it on whilst Geza closed the door behind us. Its screen flickered blue and white and snapped into focus.

  The door opened again. I looked up, and a superior was standing there.

  If this officer had come into the room only minutes later than he did, I am certain I would have had time to send my message to the police. I could, conceivably, have typed the whole message, located a sending destination, and processed it in a very little time. But the superior chanced upon us before I had typed a single character.

  Geza stood to attention. I, sitting down, rapidly calculated the odds. Everything depended on this, I reminded myself. Siuzan’s whole future had distilled itself into a single gleaming droplet of time. Everything that mattered to me, love and honour and the hope for atonement, was now bounded inside the ‘o’ in the centre of now. There were only two possibilities, no others: I could try to bluff my way, to convince the superior that I had legitimate business in that room. Or I could try to type my message, as rapidly as possible, and hope that Geza detained the superior long enough for me to complete it.

  Perhaps I should have attempted the first strategy. But I ask you to consider two things: one was that, even in the short time I had been there, the superiors had conditioned me to be automatically and servilely subordinate to them. I regarded them as powerful beings, more powerful and knowledgeable than me. This feeling had already been deeply rooted in my psyche by the truncheon. It did not seem to me likely that I could hornswoggle them. And, secondly, there screen was there, in front of me: lit. I needed only type my name and details, and call up a send-address screen, which (surely!) would list all relevant police and civic destinations. It might not even take me two minutes. It might take me—

  ‘What are you carcasses doing in here?’ demanded the superior.

  —one minute, or perhaps less, and my fingers were already on the keys, and I was scrabbling at the words, mistyping, returning the cursor, retyping.

  ‘Superior!’ Geza said. ‘I respectfully inform you that we have received orders to—’

  ‘Be quiet!’ snapped the superior. ‘You there - step away from that datascreen.’

  ‘We have received,’ Geza tried again, but the sentence finished with a grunt, and a double thud as he collapsed to the floor.

  ‘You!’ said the superior again, at me.

  I was halfway through the message. My name was down, my location, and the fact that I confessed - but not yet the crime to which I confessed. I felt the panic bubble inside me. Should I send the message as it was? Would it be enough to call the police to the camp to investigate further? My finger stumbled on the keypad like feet on an icy pavement, and a menu spooled down - containing nothing but military data addresses. I could see no civilian addresses at all. But there was a search box. My fingers formed themselves over the keyboard to type ‘police’.

  My fingers flew up from off the keyboard. My legs kicked straight out with a clatter as they knocked the wall. I grunted, and clamped down upon my pain, even as I was toppling sideways out of the chair.

  I knew nothing else, then, except pain.

  A little later I stood stiffly beside Geza, and even the fear and proximity of the truncheon could not blot out the realisa
tion that I had failed, for the message remained unsent on the datascreen.

  The superior marched us from the room, and gave us over to the custody of another officer. Soon after this, we were marched outside. It struck me that we were at no point interrogated; nobody seemed interested in our motives, or in what we had been up to. I was given no opportunity to plead my case, to urge upon the humanity of the superiors the injustice of an innocent woman losing her head on my account.

  A treacly, tar-pit sense of despair was clogging my spirit. I repeated silently to myself the woeful mantra this can’t be happening, over and over. I tried to convince myself that it was a dream - I had fallen asleep in the barrack, and now I could wake and be given another chance to reach the outside world and save Siuzan. But the sensation of the night air, its temperature dropping away from the heat of day; the sounds of feet on dirt, the quiddity of my experience, all these things were such that I could not truly doubt that I was awake. I wanted very much to disbelieve my senses, but they must be believed. I had failed. Siuzan was doomed.