Land Of The Headless (GollanczF.)

by Adam Roberts

  Then there was a moment that crystallised my fury, as if the pressure that my continuing to live had subjected it to was now, suddenly, producing diamond. This revelatory moment came when our superiors gave us our first weapons. This was nothing more than a basic needlegun, although in due course I handled all the weapons that one person can carry: from enormous club-guns and frock weaponry down to suckers, shunt pistols and projectile pistols. But our training had to begin somewhere, and so it began with needleguns on the firing range within the camp.

  We fired the weapons on the range at flat targets that lurched and scurried on robot mounts. Eventually we were even taken outside the camp (the truncheon pathways in our ordinators disabled I suppose) to dance the gun-dance, shoot-dance, spot-the-target-dance, amongst the boulders and jetsam of the lower mountain slopes. Here our targets were automated to shoot back at us, although with pebbles rather than needles. But of course to be struck by a fast-flying pebble was bruising and potentially bone-breaking, and so we danced the dance as our superiors instructed us. Roll and duck, leap and run, boulder to boulder.

  Aiming, since both the binocular vision and the single-eye sightings of the headless are equally vague, involved pointing the weapon where the target was, and then adjusting the aim as the little screen on the top of the butt advised us. ‘For those of you who have talent for this,’ a superior announced, marching behind us as we pinged and ta-tatted away, ‘will be given better weaponry - guns that plug into your ordinators directly, such that your visual software can interpret the muzzle camera data directly.’ He offered this as if it were a great prize.

  But I had discovered a greater prize. For the first time in my life I had a gun in my hands. And the target I was shooting at was, to my mind, Mark Pol. All the associations of him that fed into my mind printed out the same word: revenge. It was he who had violated Siuzan - which, given her exacting purity and piety (which caused her to deny the assault to save the life even of one as unclean as him), meant that he was the one who had struck off her head. I swore a great, though silent, oath: I would survive whichever campaigns the army sent me on, and then I would return to Pluse and I would find Mark Pol and kill him. With each twitch of my finger, and each friendly tap of the butt upon my shoulder, with each squrling puff of dust from a target hit, the fantasy of revenge bedded down inside me. I had planned to kill Mark Pol and then save Siuzan. It was too late now for the latter; but the former portion of my plan could still act as pole star to guide me through life.

  I fingered the eye stalk, my fragment of him, my holy relic. This was the most precious thing I possessed.

  Seven

  The weekly trips to church on Holy Day and the fortnightly doses of pharmocopy pouches marked the time away. Eventually our food became more amply provided, and a separate bin brought us clean water. The earlier experiences had been part of the army’s strategy for breaking us before reassembling us according to their template. Truncheon punishments became rare. Every now and again, it is true, one or other of us in the barrack would cry aloud at night - at a nightmare, perhaps - and all of us would be woken by piercing rods of agony filing up and down our long bones. But on these occasions we never shouted with the pain. Even the man who had provoked the sonostat would silence himself when he felt the pain inside his body. We had been conditioned.

  The life rhythm of the camp became second-nature to us. We watched the headed soldiers being trained, although we never interacted with them. There were two other troops of headless being trained at the same time as us, one who had begun the process six months before us, and one that had come in after we had mastered the basics. We had some exchanges with these individuals, on such occasion as we ran across them, but mostly we kept ourselves to ourselves. Now, when the new recruits first arrived in camp, I made it my business to go amongst them (as none of the more experienced headless had done with us, on our arrival). But I did this because I was interested in one thing only: whether Mark Pol had joined, or been recruited, or otherwise press-ganged into the army. It seemed to me possible, that a shiftless man, prone to violence and marked as shameful by the lack of his head, would enter the military. But he was not in that batch of recruits, and neither was Gymnaste.

  I waited. I was spiderlike. The gravitational centre around which my life rotated was now revenge. It might seem that I was hurtling away from Mark Pol, but I would sweep round and soar back, a comet bringing disaster to his life. This was a vow that I made.

  From time to time we would hear the huge clanging, repeat-explosive sound of a spaceship lifting off. We might be on the parade ground, or training with weapons, but the sight of the great whale-shaped craft hammering itself into the sky would stop us wherever we were. It is a splendid sight, the kind of thing of which a person never grows bored. On occasion a ship would land. This produces a very different set of noises; a growing, frictive screeching noise, and sonic boom, and finally a great roaring that crescendos like the final movement of a symphony. After landing the craft would sit on the kilometer-wide concrete circle and do nothing but produce enormous creaking and snapping sounds as its superstructure cooled.

  Over time the people in the troop became more like themselves, as if perfecting stage roles which they had previously played only as amateurs. Syrophoenician became more circus-ringmasterish as the time passed. Geza became more contemplative. Garten more insistent - indeed, and although he was prideful, as the chief of my old Masjud used to put it, none of us thought badly of him. We pardoned him his pride, not because we were charitable, but because he was a comrade. Bil Costra became more obviously cowardly, always attempting ineptly to preserve himself from harm and thereby making the injury worse.

  I was chosen as gunman, and an input was added to my ordinator so that certain weapons could be plugged in by optical cable. Doing this had the effect of giving me a third eye, which, by triangulating the field of vision (and by virtue of the fact that military technology of this sort was of a higher calibre than civilian prostheses) gave me a much sharper and more vivid field of view. I saw details at great distance; things appeared rounder, deeper, more crisply demarcated against their backgrounds. I could also, by willing it, call up a variety of targeting patterns that appeared, like spiderwebs of luminous dew, over my field of vision.

  Then, one morning, a superior stepped into the barracks just behind the porridge bin. We all stood at attention by our beds.

  ‘You are,’ he announced, without preliminary, ‘the Thirtieth Troop of Cainon Headless.’ We had not, before, been given a troop designation.

  ‘Superior!’ we sang, in absolute unity of voice.

  ‘Your training is complete. You are soldiers now. Some of you were soldiers before, and you’ll know that, on completing their training, headed soldiers receive the congratulations of the captain. But you headless do not merit congratulation. No matter how well, or badly, you have completed your training, you have not yet atoned for the crimes that truncated you.’

  He paused, and we filled the gap with a loud, bright shout: ‘Superior!’

  ‘But you will have the chance for atonement. Tomorrow you ship offworld. There is no drill today.’

  He turned and left.

  It was a startling thing. We ate our porridge, and then we gathered in a huddle. Our experience had taught us not to make decisions singly, and now, as a troop, we had to decide what to do with the day. ‘Safest,’ said Costra, ‘just to stay in our barrack.’

  ‘I may,’ announced, Syrophoenician, in an excessive luxuriant tone, ‘sleep all day!’

  ‘Do you suppose the sonastat will be off?’ asked Garten.

  ‘Sieur Garten,’ said Syrophoenician gaily, ‘we may sing and dance and shout the roof to splinters if we wish!’

  And, indeed, something of Syrophoenician’s gaiety infected us all that day. It felt as if shackles had been uncoupled from our limbs. ‘Of course,’ Geza pointed out, ‘many of us will go to our deaths. We are to be sent to fight in the Sugar War, I suppose.’ />
  ‘What are soldiers for,’ asked Syrophoenician, ‘if not war?’

  ‘The Thirtieth Troop of Cainon Headless,’ said Steelhand, trying out the phrase for its grandeur and resonance. ‘Is it prideful to take pleasure in this?’

  ‘By no means,’ I said.

  ‘For in the Bibliqu’rân, does it not say—’ Syrophoenician began pompously. Laughingly we shouted him down, and several of us leapt playfully upon him, to stifle this preacherly affectation. It was in no way an act of disrespect to the Faith of the Book, but rather an expression of the high spirits of the moment.

  We sat about talking, or sleeping, or playing hand games (such as gun-stone-paper, or finger-wager) for the whole of the morning. The sense of luxury was so intense it almost soured the enjoyment. The soup bin came by at lunch, and we ate. After this half a dozen of our number stepped out of the barrack, to make their way to the church for prayer. I slept for an hour, the food in my belly pulling me down into slumber.

  Later it became clear that the group was becoming restless. Unused to inactivity, the novelty had passed off and left behind only a restless sense of the wrongness, almost the sinfulness, of doing nothing.

  ‘Come Sieur Cavala,’ boomed Syrophoenician. ‘You were a singer-poet - this we all know. Yet we have none of us heard your poetry!’

  ‘Not so,’ I objected. ‘My last recital received only a chilly reception.’

  ‘But sing us something now! We’ll surely be more appreciative.’

  I demurred. I knew no songs except my own, and they, I insisted, would not be appropriate to the occasion. But the rest of the troop joined Syrophoenician in insisting, and eventually I sang, unaccompanied:On the cold hill and under the sky,

  Standing alone in fall weather,

  Lonely winds passing by

  As I and my sorrow walked together.

  Then gone, gone.

  The swallows were swinging themselves

  Through the sky over my head,

  Flitting in sixes and in twelves

  Repeating what my sorrow said,

  And then gone, gone.

  My whole self, my body and spirit:

  To keep, or cast aside?

  To claim or disinherit,

  Or do as the winds decide?

  Gone, gone, gone.

  The mood after this recital was subdued. ‘Well,’ Syrophoenician said. ‘That was no war chant.’

  ‘That does nothing to make the blood pump more vigorously,’ agreed Geza.

  ‘You asked, and I obliged,’ I said, feeling snubbed. ‘I am going to lie down and try to sleep.’

  ‘Does anybody else know a song?’ asked Syrophoenician, in his penetrating voice. ‘A more cheery song?’

  ‘When you are this troop’s first casualty of the Sugar War,’ I told him, ‘I shall compose your lament, and that will be a jolly ditty.’

  He laughed. ‘Since your rejoicing is indistinguishable from your lamenting,’ he returned, ‘I may thank you in advance for the elegy.’

  ‘You are a cardboard fellow . . .’

  ‘And you,’ he returned, ‘are the soldier of the doleful countenance. ’

  ‘Come!’ I cried, breaking into laughter myself. ‘Let us play finger-wager, you and I.’ My spirits, unaccountably, were suddenly high. I told myself: once the training is over, then to war. Once the war is over, then back home and to my revenge.

  Eight

  The following morning we were ordered to an equipment shed, and fitted with body armour, made from some chitinous and matt material. After this we marched to the huge blasted concrete circle from which ships landed and launched.

  We filed over to the arching side of the craft, where it curved up and away from us like a smooth mountain overhang. We mounted the ramp. I felt the childish urge to reach out and touch the hull as I passed through the hatchway, for I was strangely moved by the thought that this structure had been in space, but I restrained myself.

  The notice over the hatchway gave us the name of the craft: the Heron.

  We trooped along and through to our hold, and here we had seats. Excited, we bubbled with conversation and speculation. Laughter passed through the group infectiously.

  The hatch to our hold was closed from outside. We settled ourselves and waited. After a while we heard the engines growl into life, the noise swelling. The floor lurched. Those of us not in our seats hurried to occupy them. Then the craft leapt into the sky. With a tremendous vehemence that shook us like dried peas inside a rattle, the jackhammer drive punched the ship forward. We were squeezed into our seats, and then flopped forward; another explosive burst and we were squeezed back, and then flopped forward. I felt the porridge, still in my stomach from breakfast, threaten to bulge up into my throat.

  We jerk-hurtled on, a great hammer striking against the anvil of the sky and always falling through it to reach higher.

  The last of the explosive thrusts passed, and there was a period of silence and weightlessness that seemed to last a very long time. Then the engines growled to life again, and a more continuous thrust brought a half-gravity to the hold.

  We were silent for a while, but conversation soon started up again. Naturally we were nervous, and uncertain as to what the future held for us.

  ‘It seems to me futile to assert,’ said Syrophoenician, ‘as those beheaded for blasphemy attempt to assert, that there is no God.’ He slapped the wall panel beside the pallet upon which he was sitting. ‘How else is this craft powered?’

  ‘You are making a schoolchild’s error,’ said Geza.

  Syrophoenician walked forward and pressed his torso against the torso of Geza - had he still possessed a head, he would have glowered intimidatingly down upon him. But Geza was unintimidated. He pushed the other man away. ‘You think the All’God pilots this spaceship?’ he said disdainfully. ‘You think as a child thinks. Does the All’God have a white beard, a long white beard, as he sits in the pilot’s seat?’

  Syrophoenician notched his volume up. ‘Does this craft move faster than the speed of light?’

  Geza declined to answer.

  ‘Is this possible, in our material universe? To travel faster than light? Answer me!’

  ‘Simply because the particle is named as it is . . .’ Geza began.

  ‘Can this ship achieve the impossible? It can!’ boomed Syrophoenician. ‘Does it operate according to the logic of the natural world? No, it operates according to the supernatural! It is, in my view, heresy to assert otherwise.’

  ‘Be quiet with your preaching,’ grumbled Garten. ‘We were none of us beheaded for blasphemy.’

  ‘This one’, (Syrophoenician threw his arm out theatrically to point at Geza), ‘denies the divinity of the God particles pouring from the nose-cone of the—’

  ‘Be quiet,’ called Garten again. ‘You old bladder - quiet I say.’

  Syrophoenician sat himself back down. God particles have anti-gravitational properties, possessing also anti-momentum, and they leech backwards along the track of time. The Heron aimed a blast of these particles forwards, and these in turn acted upon the minutely porous texture of spacetime in a certain way - which way depends upon how you best like to think it. You may wish to think of them as reversed in their momentum and therefore pulling the ship after them, backwards in time and therefore faster than light - for travelling against the line of time must, necessarily, involve travelling through space faster-than-light. Why must this be? Because only thus do we roll the correct way, the only way, down the gradient of cause and effect. Or, if you prefer, you may wish to think of them as cutting through the texture of spacetime, opening an elongating and receding pocket of no-space, or true-space, or what you will, through which the ship slips. Or, if you prefer something else, you may wish to think of God particles as the aura of the Holy Spirit, or Jibreel, or the All’God Himself, and that by conjuring them from the three lenticular generators the Heron is touched by the tip of the little finger of the All’God, or nudged by the breath of His nostril,
or winked away by the slicker of His eyelid (I have heard all three of these idioms used) into beyond-c. Each of these three explanations is a way of talking.

  ‘If our spaceship is not powered by the God particles pouring from its nose,’ said Syrophoenician, evidently in an argumentative mood, ‘then perhaps you may explain to me, sieur soldier, how is it that only the godly may travel this way?’

  ‘Another fallacy,’ retorted Geza.

  ‘You assert that the ungodly travel through space?’

  ‘Indeed they do.’

  ‘But not faster than light - only faith in the All’God permits travel that is faster than light.’

  ‘You are wrong.’

  ‘Solider!’ barked Syrophoenician, in imitation of a superior, with a metallic and sneering edge to his words. ‘Your words are rotten and decayed, because your mind is rotten and decayed. Everybody knows that only the godly may travel faster than light.’