Anticipations

by Christopher Priest

  Then Dik was found by the caporal. He was dragged down from his precarious place by the window and fell kicking and struggling into the snow. The caporal cuffed him painfully until he stopped, then hauled him away. He was taken to a guardroom by the entrance to the hall, where he was given another beating and two platoon-serjeants were summoned.

  The sky had clouded over and the wind had risen, and by the time Dik had been dragged through the streets to the hostel, the gale was bearing thick, suffocating snowflakes, piling them up against the walls and posts.

  Bruised and dispirited, Dik was locked in his room for the rest of the night, and for all the day following. He had much on which to ponder, and nearly all of it was concerned with Moylita and the possible fates that he imagined could be delivered to her; they were all awful, and he could barely countenance them. For the rest, he wondered about the little story he had held, unread, for those few moments. All Moylita had told him directly was that it concerned a soldier who became a poet; what he had later learned about it implied that its content was much more intricate. The few short sentences the burgher had read aloud: sense-gases, distortion of perception. Later, what he had overheard from the Chamber: the right to be told, the illegality, the madness.

  But Moylita had written it exclusively for him. She had not talked about the background, she had told him only about the poet. This was, for her, the true statement of the story, and so it should be for him.

  He had never told her of his own literary aspirations, of the bundles of unpublished verse that lay in a cupboard somewhere at home. Had she somehow guessed? In the same way that she had interpreted her novel for him, was she trying, with the story, to tell him to reinterpret his own life?

  Dik didn’t know. Whatever part of him had once been a poet had been beaten out of him by the military; he could not forget the failure of the verse he had tried when he arrived in the village. The studious boy who had never had many friends was a long way behind him now, beyond the wall of conscription.

  His precious copy of The Affirmation was safe in his room, and in the late afternoon he had worked enough of the resentments and angers out of his system to feel calm, and he lay on his bed and read a part of it. He selected the passage he always found the most intriguing: the last five chapters. This was the part of the story where Orfe had escaped from the conspiratorial machinations of Emerden and the other minor characters, and was free to go in search of Hilde. Orfe’s quest through the exotic landscape of the Dream Archipelago quickly became a journey into self-exploration, and Hilde became ever more remote.

  Reading the book again for the first time since Moylita had talked about it, Dik was suddenly aware of the wall-symbolism, and he cursed his lack of perceptiveness in not seeing it for himself. As Orfe sailed from one island to the next he encountered one barrier after another; the author’s images, her dialogues, her choice of words, reflected the fact that Hilde had retreated behind the wall of Orfe’s own making. Even Moylita Kaine’s choice of locale for the end of the quest—the island of Prachous, which in Archipelagan argot meant “the fenced island”—was appropriate.

  He finished the book with a sense of satisfaction, but his thoughts returned at once to the short story. Moylita had been trying to tell him something with it; did he know enough about it to try to imagine what that could be?

  Affirmation/negation: opposites. Orfe had failed to climb his wall when he had had the chance, and thereafter it was too late. In the story, the soldier climbed a wall and became a poet, so the chance was there. In the novel, Orfe started as a romantic idler, a dilettante and a sybarite; because of his failures and involvements he became a haunted ascetic, obsessed with purpose and guided by moral principle. In the story . . . what?

  Dik, drawing on his own inner strengths of rational contemplation, began to understand what Moylita Kaine wanted of him.

  On the mountain frontier there was no greater punishment than wall-patrol, and so Dik was unsurprised when he was restored to normal duties. By mid-afternoon of the next day he was pacing an allotted sector of the wall, high and remote and lost in cloud. It was bitterly cold: every minute or two Dik had to chip away the encrusting ice from his goggles, and work the breech-mechanism of his rifle to prevent it from jamming.

  While climbing up to the frontier in the morning, Dik had been able to see the saw-mill from the slopes above the village. There had been no lights on that he could see, and the unbroken snowfield beneath it was proof that the warmway that once led to it had been taken up.

  During his leave certain changes had been made to the defences along the wall. The beginnings of a floodlight system were evident near some of the guardposts, and several immense drums of electric cable had been dumped on the slopes. In addition, there had appeared several bulbous metal shapes, half-buried in the snow beside the warmway. Complicated arrangements of pipes and nozzles led from these across the warmway and up to the parapet of the wall; Dik tripped over the pipes several times in the murky light, until he learnt to watch out for them.

  He was allowed a short break at dusk, when he drank a ferociously hot soup in one of the guardposts, but after nightfall he was back in his sector, pacing to and fro in numb misery, trying to count the minutes that remained until relief.

  Night-patrols were especially nerve-racking, for he was alone in the hostile alliance of dark and cold and unexplained noises. On this night the enemy had not turned on their floodlights, so he could hardly even see the bulk of the wall looming beside him. All that was clear was the dark strip of the warmway against the white snow, and the sinister, half-buried cisterns.

  He wondered, as he always wondered, where the enemy were and what they were doing or planning on the other side. Was there someone like himself, a few feet away on the other side, stamping to and fro, hoping only to survive the cold night long enough for patrol to end?

  Here, at the place where the two countries met, where two political ideologies clashed, he was physically closer to the enemy than anyone other than the rest of the patrolling constables. And yet the frontier united him with the enemy; the men on the other side obeyed the same sort of orders, suffered the same fears, endured the same hardships, and they, presumably, were defending their country to support a system that was as remote from them as the burghers were remote from Dik.

  He worked the breech-mechanism to free it. There was a pause in the whining of the wind, and in the brief silence Dik heard, from the far side of the wall, someone working a breech-mechanism. It was something often heard at the wall: at once alarming and comforting.

  Dik could feel the weight of Moylita Kaine’s novel in his pocket. He had brought it with him, in defiance of standing orders. After the events of the last two days he felt that even temporary separation from it would be a breach of the responsibility he owed her. He had no idea of what had happened to her, and knew only that her life would have been changed drastically. Carrying her book was the only way he knew of accepting her ideas. She talked in symbols, and Dik was prepared to act in symbols. He could not act in reality, because he knew at last what she had been telling him.

  Climb the wall, Dik.

  He glanced up at the bleak, unsymbolic wall beside him. It was known to be booby-trapped. Flatcake mines had been laid by both sides. The trip-wires and scramble-fence were touch-triggered and electrified. A man had only to show his hand above the top of the wall and a fusillade of shots would come from the other side. In the short time the war had been in progress, there were already scores of stories about grenade-attacks brought on by nothing more than the sound of sliding snow.

  He walked on, remembering the momentary resentment he had felt about the way Moylita had interpreted her novel for him. This was the same. In her negation of ideals, a man could climb the wall and write verse about it afterwards; Dik was making his own negation.

  Then he remembered the sound of her voice coming from the Council Chamber. She had taken a risk in writing the story; punishment had been meted out to her. Con
science and the sense of responsibility returned, and Dik thought again about climbing the wall. He glanced up at the dark bulk beside him. It was high here, but there were firing-platforms further along, where one could climb if necessary.

  He was abruptly aware that somewhere around him was a hissing noise, and he halted at once. He crouched down, holding his rifle ready, and looking about him in the gloom. Then, from a long way away, from the depths of the valley, a shrill, thin sound reached him, distorted by the wind and the distance: the train was in the depot, letting its whistle be heard. Dik stood up again, relieved by the familiarity of the sound.

  He walked on rattling the bolt of his rifle. On the other side of the wall, someone else did the same.

  And the hissing continued.

  Another hour passed, and the time for the relief-sentry to come had almost arrived, when he saw the figure of one of the constables walking along the warmway towards him. Dik was frozen through, and he stood and waited gratefully for the other to reach him. But as the figure came nearer, Dik saw that he was raising his arms and holding his rifle above his head.

  He halted a short distance from Dik, and said, in a foreign accent: “Please not shoot. I wish surrender.”

  It was a young man of about his own age, the sleeves and legs of his protective clothing ripped and torn by the barbed wire. Dik stared at him in astonishment. They were near one of the cisterns, and the hissing of gas was loud above the wind.

  Dik himself could feel the bite of the freezing wind through the gashes in his jacket and trousers, and as a floodlight switched on he saw a smear of blood below his knee. He looked at the young soldier standing amazed before him, and said again, much louder: “Please don’t shoot. I’m surrendering.”

  They were near one of the cisterns, and the hissing of gas was loud above the wind.

  The enemy soldier said: “Here . . . my gun.”

  Dik said: “Take my rifle.”

  As Dik passed him his, the young man handed his own over and raised his hands again.

  “Cold,” said the enemy soldier. His goggles had iced over, and Dik could not see his face. “That way,” said Dik, pointing towards the distant guardpost and waving the muzzle of the captured rifle. “This way,” said the young soldier, pointing to the guardpost.

  They walked on slowly in the wind and snow, Dik staring at the back of his enemy’s caped head in admiration and envy.

  HARRY HARRISON

  The Greening of the Green

  “Be careful with that dinghy, you idiots.” the admiral bellowed in a whisper. “It’s the last one we have.”

  He looked on anxiously while the sweating sailors lowered the dinghy from the deck of the submarine into the water. There was no moon, but the crowded stars in the clear Mediterranean sky glowed like tiny light bulbs.

  “Is that the shore, Admiral?” the passenger asked. His teeth chattered as he spoke, probably from fear since the night was warm.

  “Captain,” the admiral said. “Fm captain of this sub so you call me captain. And, no, that is a fog bank. The shore is over there. Are you ready?”

  Giulio started to speak, then, sensing the trembling of his jaw, nodded instead. He felt as scruffy as he looked with his ancient beret, decaying corduroy trousers and decayed jacket. Felt even scruffier next to the crisply uniformed figure of the admiral: in the dark the patches and darns of his uniform did not show.

  Giulio nodded again when he realized the admiral had not seen his nod the first time.

  “Good. Then you know your instructions?”

  “Of course I don’t know my instructions,” Giulio said with petulant irritation, trying not to stammer the words. “I only know that there is a piece of paper in my pocket with a word on it and I’m to read that word then eat the paper. At dawn.”

  “Those are the instructions I’m talking about, you idiot.” The admiral grumbled like a volcano, his authority insulted.

  “You can’t talk to me like that,” Giulio squeaked, realized he squeaked and lowered his voice. “Do you know who I am . . .?”

  He choked himself into silence. No, the admiral did not know who he was, and if he told him then the CIA would kill them both; they had promised him that. No one was to know.

  “I know you are a goddamned passenger and a goddamned nuisance and the sooner you are off this vessel the better. I have far more important things to do.”

  “What?” Giulio tried and succeeded in getting a sneer into his voice. “Sail A.desk? What’s an admiral doing in charge of a crummy sub? Too many brass hats, that’s what!”

  “No, not enough ships. This is the last pig boat.” A little tear of self-pity formed in the admiral’s eye, for he had been hitting the vodka bottle hard. “My last command. After this the beach. I should consider myself lucky even for this . . .” He swallowed and gulped and shuddered away from this topic, which obsessed him night and day. “Here is your bag. I wish you good luck on your mission, whatever it is. Here is a receipt form—sign here.”

  Giulio scratched his name as well as he could in the darkness, clutched the battered but exceedingly large and heavy suitcase to him, then was half-carried into the bobbing dinghy. As soon as he was aboard the line was cast off and the four sailors began rowing furiously. An officer crouched in the bow with a compass and muttered instructions in arcane nautical terms. The beans and salt fish that Giulio had wolfed so hungrily an hour earlier now fought each other for a return journey up his throat. The dinghy bobbed and splashed through the waves. Giulio groaned aloud, then almost fell overboard as they grated to a stop. Horny hands seized him in silence, slid him over the side into a foot of cold water, then grabbed up paddles again and pulled hastily away.

  “Good luck, buddy,” the officer whispered as he vanished back into the darkness. A wave slapped cold water over Giulio’s crotch. He gasped and turned and staggered up on to a sandy beach, holding the massive suitcase to him like an old friend. Once above the water he dropped the bag and sat upon it and tried not to groan aloud. He had never felt as alone and helpless before. He didn’t even know where he was. Well that could be changed quickly enough. Dragging the suitcase after him he stumbled through the sand towards a looming dark structure.

  There was no sound, other than the susurration of the waves on the shore behind him. The dark structure proved to be a row of bathing shacks, unlocked, as he discovered when he rattled the door of the nearest one. Perfect for his purposes. He dropped the bag inside and pulled the door shut behind him, grinning wickedly into the darkness. Screw the instructions. Right now was when he wanted to know where he was and what happened next. A feeble flap towards personal freedom. This was why he had stolen the book of matches in defiance of all instructions and logic. He dug them out now, and the piece of paper, and fumbled to strike one in the darkness. It flared up suddenly, he squinted at the paper, at the word. It was upside down. He turned it over and read “shamrock”—then jerked his hand, burning his fingers, as memory rushed in. The match went out, he sucked his hand and almost spoke aloud the words that were dredged from his memory, hidden there by hypnotic suggestion until he read the word that had triggered their release.

  YOU ARE ON THE BEACH OF MARINA PICCOLA ON THE ISLAND OF CAPRI. IT IS NOW LIGHT AND YOU WILL WALK UP THE ROAD TO THE TOWN OF CAPRI. IN THE PIAZZETTA YOU WILL GO TO THE PHARMACY ON THE RIGHT. A MAN WITH A GRAY BEARD THERE WILL ANSWER BUCCA WHEN YOU GIVE THE PASSWORD STUZZICADENTI. EAT THIS PAPER.

  He ruminated on the paper and the words. Capri, isle of joy in the Bay of Naples, or that is what they said. He had never seen it before, or Italy itself for that matter. Land of his fathers. He wondered what it was like and, for the first time, forgot to be afraid. He would find out soon enough. And the message was wrong about it being light; he felt a small triumph over this. A tiny blow struck against the system. Nor was he going to wait here until dawn. The further inland he was before he was seen, the less chance of his being suspected of landing on the beach. The logic of this was suspect but he st
ill felt that way.

  After a good deal of stumbling against invisible objects, he found stone steps that led up through a wall. The road was on the other side, with houses flanking it. All the windows were tightly shuttered against the poisonous dangers of the balmy night air and he tiptoed past them silently. The suitcase was heavy as lead and he had to keep changing hands. Only when he was around the second bend of the steep road, with no houses in sight, did he drop the thing and sit on it. He was panting and dripping with sweat and wondered how far away the town was.

  Giulio was still struggling up the road when it began to get light in the east. The sky burned red as fire behind the mountains across the bay, and it was suddenly dawn. He felt vulnerable under the open sky and he hurried on. But it was a brief spurt and he had to stop, panting, and set the bag down again. Just as he did so a man came around a bend in the road carrying a great bundle of grass on his head. He looked up at Giulio with a very suspicious eye, made even more suspicious by the fact he was cross-eyed, as he passed.

  “Buon giorno,” Giulio said, forcing a smile.

  The man grunted, a deep porcine sound, and Giulio’s stomach churned. Was he really in Italy, on Capri? Then, when he was well past, the man released a reluctant “Buon gio’.”

  The first encounter was the worst. A few other peasants passed, some in silence, others with a good morning, and he began to feel a certain security. He himself looked like a peasant, Christ, his parents had been peasants, and he could talk Italian. This thing might work yet.

  Staggering with fatigue he made the last climb up the narrow road to the opening of the piazzetta.