Anticipations

by Christopher Priest

  “He was filming us, but he didn’t let us die.”

  “Sandy, this is just . . .” Harben began to walk away, then he saw that she was crying. “Listen to me,” he said. “The fawn is dead and gone, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. And you’ll notice that he didn’t kill that brute off. It’s all right again, and it’s going to go on feeding itself in the only way it knows how. For all we know, that’s what happened to the Visex team a couple of years ago.”

  “It’s a pity you weren’t here to film that.”

  “You’ll feel better when I get you away from here,” Harben said curtly. He turned from her and collected his cameras at the points where they had fallen, being careful not to set foot within the circle of menace. Sandy’s last remark had stung him, but his thoughts were becoming preoccupied with new plans for the future. Quite apart from having yielded the fleeting but newsworthy contact with the super-naturalist, Hassan IV was an even richer treasure house than he had dreamed, one which could only be exploited through years of dedicated work. Already it was obvious that Sandy would not want anything to do with it, and that fact posed serious problems with regard to their marriage covenant.

  Later, as they were crossing the uplands on the approach to the radio beacon, he realized he had come to a decision. He felt unexpectedly guilty at the prospect of broaching the subject while she was still so badly shaken, but he was entering a vital phase of his career and would have to learn to move quickly in everything he did.

  “Sandy,” he said quietly, taking her elbow, “I’ve been thinking things over, and . . .”

  She pulled her arm away from him without turning her head. “It’s all right, Bernard—I don’t want to stay married to you, either.”

  Harben stood still for a moment, staring at her retreating back, experiencing an emotion compounded of puzzlement and relief; then he adjusted his camerapack to a more comfortable position and continued picking his way across the wet, grey shale.

  CHRISTOPHER PRIEST

  The Negation

  Dik would listen for the train every evening he was not on patrol. Sometimes, when the mountain winds had temporarily stilled, he could hear the rhythmic drumming of the wheels while the train was many miles from the depot, but he always heard the blast of steam as it arrived, and the shriek of its whistle when it left. To Dik it was a melancholy reminder of home, because roads were few in the mountains and he knew he would leave the frontier as he had arrived, on one of those nightly trains.

  He had once written a few lines of verse about the train, trying to maintain a lifeline to his identity that had existed before conscription, but he had destroyed them soon afterwards. They were the only writing he had done while serving in the Border Police, and he felt it was unlikely he would try any more.

  For the last two weeks he had been listening for the train with extra interest, because he knew that Moylita Kaine, the novelist, should be arriving soon. He hardly expected that the sounds of the train would be any different for her being on it, but it seemed appropriate that he should be waiting for her. As events turned out, though, her arrival in the village was signalled by something else. He was leaving the canteen one evening, half an hour before the train was due, and he noticed that several of the burghers’ limousines were parked in the centre of the village. They were lined up outside the civic hall, their engines running and the hired drivers sitting in readiness. Dik walked by on the other side of the street, smelling the gasoline fumes and hearing the soft puttering of the muffled exhausts: both unusual phenomena in the isolated village.

  The large double doors of the civic hall opened, and a beam f orange light from within fell across the polished cars and the trodden snow. Dik hunched his shoulders, and walked on towards the constabulary hostel. He heard the burghers leaving the hall, the car-doors slamming, and in a moment a slow convoy of vehicles passed him, turning from the village street on to the narrow, unmade track that led towards the station further down the steep valley. It was only then that Dik guessed at the possible meaning of the burghers’ excursion, and when he reached the entrance to the hostel he paused to listen for the train. It was still too early, and with the wind it would be impossible to hear the wheels in the distance.

  He changed quickly out of his uniform, then went alone to the outside balcony on the first floor. No fresh snow had fallen that day, and his frozen footprints from the night before led to the corner of the balcony and lost themselves in a confusion of stamping and shuffling. He followed them and stood in the corner, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his greatcoat.

  From this position he could see up the narrow street that led to the centre of the village, but most of the buildings were dark and seemed uninhabited; from somewhere came the sound of an accordion band, and men were laughing drunkenly. In the other direction, looking across the sharply angled roofs of the houses on the edge of the village, was a panorama, breath-taking by day, down the wintry valley. The night was dark, and Dik could only just make out the pine-forest clinging to the frozen scarps that rose on either side. On the northern ridge, three thousand feet above the village, the frontier wall overlooked the valley, but Dik knew without looking that no trace of it could be seen from here.

  He waited, stamping his feet and shivering, until at last he heard a jetting of steam, echoing up through the chill, blustery air of the valley, and he felt again the familiar pang of homesickness.

  Dik went inside at once and joined his friends in the hostel common-room. The talk was boisterous and rowdy: the last few days at the frontier had been eventful, and there was much suppressed tension to release. Dik was soon shouting and laughing with the rest. A few minutes later one of the lads by the window let out a shrill whistle, and the others ran to cluster around him. Peering with them through the film of condensation into the street outside, Dik saw the convoy of burghers’ cars returning from the depot, the engines purring, the wheels crunching softly across the compacted snow.

  Dik had been about to enter college when he was conscripted. He could imagine no one less suitable for any kind of military service than himself, and had taken all the usual steps to try for deferment. It was unlucky for him that his draft-papers arrived more or less coincidentally with the first of the enemy’s airraids on Jethra, and when, a few weeks later, there was an unsuccessful invasion in the south, the pressures of conscience grew and he signed on with as much goodwill as he could muster.

  His intention had been to read Modern Literature at Jethra University, and it had been the writing of Moylita Kaine that had prompted the decision. Although he had been reading fiction and poetry for as long as he could remember, and had written many poems of his own, one book—a novel entitled The Affirmation—had so impressed him that he counted the reading of it as the single most important experience of his life. In many ways a deep and difficult work, the book was little known or discussed. For Dik, the book’s apparent obscurities were among its greatest joys; the novel spoke to him in an intensely clear, wise and passionate voice, its story an elemental conflict between deceit and romantic truth, its resolution profoundly emotional, and its understanding of human nature so perceptive and candid that he could still recall, three years later, the shock of discovery. He had read and re-read the book more times than he could count, he had urged it on his few close friends (though never once allowing his precious copy out of his possession), and tried, as far as was humanly possible, to live his own life within the philosophy of Orfe, the chief protagonist.

  He had, of course, looked for other books by the same author, but had found nothing. He had instinctively assumed the author dead—because of the common assumption that books found in secondhand shops are always by dead authors—but a letter to the publisher had elicited the enthralling information that not only was Moylita Kaine still very much alive, but she (Dik had assumed the author was male!) was presently working on a second novel.

  All this was before the political dispute with the neighbouring countries, and
before the fighting broke out along one of the frontiers. As a growing boy, bookish and isolated, Dik had been vaguely aware of the impending war, but his conscription had placed him, literally, in the front line. Since joining the Border Police all his hopes and plans had had to be suspended, but he had kept his much-used copy of The Affirmation with him wherever he went. It was now, like the nightly arrival of the train, a link with his old life and his past, and in another sense a link with his future.

  The fact that a government-sponsored writer had arrived in the village was posted on the notice-board in the common-room, and Dik applied at once for a pass to see her. Much to his surprise, it was granted with only the slightest hesitation.

  “What do you want it for?” the platoon serjeant said.

  “To improve my mind, sir.”

  “No relief from duties, understand.”

  “In my own time, sir.”

  That night Dik slipped the piece of paper into the pages of the novel, choosing as its place the passage describing the momentous first meeting between Orfe and Hilde, the captivating wife of his rival Coschtie. It was one of his favourite scenes in the long book.

  Before he could use the pass, Dik was sent on patrol again. There was an exchange of mortar-fire and grenades—six constables from another platoon were killed, and several more were injured—but then the weather closed in and Dik was sent back to the village.

  The streets were blocked by drifting snow, and the blizzard continued for another two days. Dik stayed inside the hostel with the others, watching the grey-black sky and the driven snow. He had grown used to the variable weather in the mountains and no longer saw it as an expression of his own moods. Grey days did not dispirit him, clear days did not cheer him; rather to the contrary, indeed, for he had sufficient experience of the patrols to know that enemy attacks were fewer when the sky was heavy, that days that began bright with winter sun often finished bright with spilled blood. It was curiously exciting to know that Moylita Kaine was somewhere in the village, but also depressing that he could not use his pass to visit her.

  The next day was clearer and by noon the snow had stopped. Dik was detailed to a shovelling team, and worked alongside the tractors to clear the streets once more. Digging with the others, his arms and back straining with the heavy work, Dik spent most of the time obsessively wondering why the burghers did not lay electric warmways through the village, as they had done along the approaches to the frontier, and on the wall itself. But beneath the snow were the ancient cobbles of the village streets, grating against the metal edge of the spade as Dik laboured on at the futile task.

  Repetitive work induced repetitive thoughts, but it relieved him of some of his bottled-up resentment against the burghers. He knew little of what life must have been like in this village before the frontier was closed, but he detested what he knew of it now. The only civilians were the burghers and their servants, the only distractions those provided by grace of the Police authorities.

  He slept deeply that night, and in the morning, as he set off up the steep warmway to resume patrol-duties, Dik felt the agony of his over-used muscles. The pack on his back, and his rifle and grenade-thrower, and his snow-shoes and ropes, felt as if they had the entire weight of the snow he had shifted.

  The chance to see Moylita Kaine had come and passed, and now it would have to wait until his next spell of leave. Dik was resigned to this with the weary stoicism of the part of him that had become a soldier. He accepted that by the time he came down again from the frontier wall, if he wasn’t killed or injured or had been captured, she might have finished her work in the village and left on the train.

  The wall was quiet, and a few days later Dik returned unharmed to the village. He had two days to himself, and the time which normally would be spent in lassitude or tomfoolery in the hostel suddenly had a meaning and purpose.

  The pass the serjeant had given him allowed him access, during daylight hours, to the old saw-mill on the edge of the village; this was presumably where Moylita Kaine was working or living. Dik knew the saw-mill, and during the long hours of patrol he had rehearsed the walk to it in his mind perhaps a score of times. This aside, he didn’t know what to expect, either of himself or of the writer. He had nothing that he had prepared to say; it would be enough to meet her.

  As he left the hostel, Dik made sure his copy of The Affirmation was in his greatcoat pocket. An autograph was the only definite thing he wanted from her.

  At the edge of the village, where the street became a path, Dik was surprised to discover that a warmway had been laid on the ground, cutting a winding black swathe up through the stiff pine-trees towards the mill. White vapour rose from it in the frosty air. He stepped on to it, his feet slipping slightly as the snow and ice he had picked up on his boots melted beneath him.

  As he approached the old mill he saw someone standing by a window high up in the front wall. It was a woman, and when she saw him climbing the warmway she opened the window and leaned out. She was wearing a huge fur hat, with flaps that fell over her ears.

  “What do you want?” she called, looking down at him.

  “I’ve come to see Moylita Kaine. Is she here?”

  “Yes. What do you want her for?”

  “I’ve got a pass,” he said.

  “There’s a door . . . round there.” The woman withdrew her head, and closed the window firmly.

  Dik walked obediently towards the corner she had indicated, leaving the warmway and stepping along a narrow path where the snow had been trodden. It was only as he rounded the corner, and saw a door set into the side of the building, that he realized he had just spoken to Miss Kaine herself!

  It was quite a surprise. While he had never built up a mental picture of the author, and had envisaged her neither young nor old, he suddenly knew that he had not imagined her looking quite like that. The glimpse of her had been of a woman in her early middle age, rather plump and fierce-looking, quite unwriterlike.

  The author of The Affirmation had been, in Dik’s mind, more ethereal, more a romantic notion than an actual person.

  He opened the door and walked into the saw-mill. The old building was unlit and cold, but he could see the angular shapes of the benches and saws, the storage racks and conveyor-belts. The smell of pinewood and sawdust was in the air: dry and distant, sweet and stale.

  He heard the hollow clumping of feet, and the woman appeared at the top of a flight of wooden stairs that were built against the wall.

  “Are you Miss Kaine?” Dik said, still hardly believing that it could be her.

  “I left a message at the civic hall,” she said, coming down towards him. “I don’t want to be disturbed today.”

  “Message . . .? I’m sorry. I’ll come again later.” Dik backed away, reaching behind him for the door-handle.

  “And tell Clerk Tradayn that I shall be engaged tonight as well.”

  She had reached the fourth step from the bottom, and halted, waiting as Dik fumbled for the handle. It seemed to have stuck . . . so he took his other hand from his pocket to get a better grip. As he did so, his copy of The Affirmation fell to the ground. The pass, still wedged between Orfe and Hilde, slipped from the pages and fluttered away. Dik stooped to pick them up.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I didn’t know—”

  As he stood up, Moylita Kaine came quickly to his side and took the book from his hand.

  “You’ve got a copy of my novel,” she said. “Why?”

  “Because . . . I was hoping I might talk to you about it.”

  Holding the book, looking at him thoughtfully, she said: “Have you read this?”

  “Of course I have. It’s—”

  “But the burghers sent you?”

  “No . . . I came because, well, I thought anyone could see you.”

  “So they tell me,” she said. “I suppose we should go upstairs and talk.”

  “But you aren’t to be disturbed.”

  “I thought you were from the bu
rghers. Come up to where I’m working. I’ll sign this copy for you.”

  She turned and went up the stairs. After a moment, with his eyes fixed disbelievingly on the back of her trousered legs, Dik followed.

  The room had once been an office in the saw-mill, and the window looked down the valley and across to the distant snow-caps beyond. It was a bare, grubby room, furnished with a desk and a chair, and a tiny one-bar electric radiant heater. It was not much warmer here than it had been downstairs, and Dik understood why Miss Kaine wore her furs as she worked. She went to the desk, moved some papers aside and found a black fountain-pen. As she opened his copy of the book to the title-page, Dik saw that her hands were clad in gloves, with the woollen fingers cut away.

  “Would you like me to dedicate it?”

  “Yes, please,” Dik said. “Whatever you think is best.”

  In spite of the moment, Dik’s attention was not wholly on the signing of his book, because as she spoke he had noticed that in the centre of the desk was a large, old-fashioned typewriter, with a curl of white paper coming out of the roller. He had found her actually writing something!

  “Then what shall I say?” Moylita Kaine said.

  “Just sign it,” Dik said abstractedly.

  “You wanted me to dedicate it . . . what’s your name?”

  “Oh . . . Dik.”

  “With a ‘c’ ?”

  “No, the usual way.”

  She wrote quickly, then passed the book back to him. The ink was still wet. Her handwriting was very loose and wild, and it looked as if she had written: ‘To Duk . . . will evey beet wisl, Moylilo Kine’. He stared at it in joyous incomprehension. “Thank you,” he said. “I mean . . . er, thank you.”

  She went behind the desk and sat down, stretching out her hands towards the fire.

  Dik looked at the paper in the typewriter. “Excuse me . . . is that a new novel you’re working on?”

  “A novel? I should think not! Not at the moment.”