On (GollanczF.)

by Adam Roberts

  Vievre worked busily, wiping away the blood from this boy’s pale face; but it flowed back out as soon as he wiped it away. The boy’s breathing was extraordinarily loud, it filled the low-ceilinged ward. Pink bubbles like spiders’ eggs congregated in a mass at the boy’s half-open mouth. His breathing had a liquid, gurgling quality that sounded to Tighe like farting. Tighe was horrified by his injuries, but then there was that noise and he felt himself giggling. It was so comical a noise. He tried to stop laughing and even prised his lips together between his thumb and finger to lock the noise in, but he could barely contain himself. Prrprr-ahh. Prrprrphrprl-ahh. It was appalling and hilarious at the same time.

  Then the breathing stopped.

  Vievre and his helpers stood around the corpse for a few minutes; then they wrapped it in a blanket and two of the assistants carried it out of the ward. Vievre himself mopped up some of the spilt blood, a menial job he would usually have delegated.

  There was a gloomy mood in the ward for an hour or so after that; but it didn’t last for ever. A military medic cannot afford to let himself be too moved by death.

  ‘Who was that?’ Tighe asked, when Vievre came to check on him later on.

  ‘Some boy.’

  ‘Some boy,’ repeated Tighe.

  Vievre made a gesture with his right hand. ‘He merden.’ Died, there it was. Tighe knew what the world meant without having to ask any further questions.

  ‘How?’ he asked.

  ‘He was flatar,’ said Vievre. ‘Soldier in the sky. They practise in the sky and he fell. It is sorry. A sorry thing.’

  ‘Flatar?’ asked Tighe.

  Vievre wrinkled his face. He clearly wasn’t in much of a mood to explain words today. ‘Flatar,’ he said. ‘Flatar.’ He made a swooping gesture with his hand flat.

  ‘Like a bird?’ Tighe pressed.

  ‘And what is buhhd?’ Vievre asked, without much energy.

  ‘A thing in the sky,’ said Tighe. He put both palms together at the thumbs and flapped them like wings.

  ‘No, no, that is owso, owso,’ Tighe would have asked him more, but Vievre was walking away now, walking through the door and out into the light.

  The next day Tighe didn’t see Vievre at all. The assistants served him food in their silent way, and then sat together by the door looking out and chatting amongst themselves in low voices.

  Tighe was full of fidgets these days. He could barely keep still. His knee still hurt if he pressed it or put weight on it, as he did from time to time, walking around the ward supported by the medics. But his foot in its mud casket had long since stopped hurting; now it mostly itched and Tighe wriggled in an ecstasy of discomfort when that happened. Or he just wriggled around anyway. He was so bored. He sat up and strained to see through the open doorway.

  ‘What is flatar?’ he asked one of the assistants, but she ignored him as she usually did.

  Vievre came back the following day. ‘Good new day to you, my little bird,’ he said, laughing and flapping his hands together in wing-shapes. ‘My little bird! The boy who fell! How are you?’

  ‘My foot itches,’ said Tighe. ‘It very itches.’

  ‘You should say it itches badly,’ said Vievre. ‘But no language teaching today! Today I have a conversation with the Sky Cardinelle of the whole army! He is very interested in you, my little bird. Escoutiens have gone up the wall, up the wall, and there are no people for ten miles or more. Think of it! Some paucie ledges, some solitarris, but no people, no villages, no cities. Ten miles.’ A mile, Tighe had learnt, was some two thousand arms’ lengths; nearly two leagues.

  ‘If there are no ledges,’ said Tighe, ‘then how did your people go up there?’

  Vievre laughed at this. ‘They went up in the air,’ he said, ‘of course. Derienne, they travelled up for many miles and there is nothing there.’

  ‘Nothing at all?’ asked Tighe.

  ‘Think how far you must have fallen, my little bird,’ said a delighted Vievre. ‘To fall so far and still to live! It is a mark of God’s especial gressa. So Master Elanne will have a conversation with you, he tells me.’

  ‘Master Elanne?’

  ‘Master Elanne is the Sky Cardinelle of the whole army – think of it! Assistant-at-war to the War Pope himself. A very great man. A very streesha man.’

  ‘He will speak with me?’

  ‘You are a good fowlel – a good thing for the future, a good sign. You know?’

  ‘Omen,’ said Tighe. ‘We say.’

  ‘Fowlel – ommen – yes. To fall so far and not to die. All the men and women in the army think so, a good omen for the future. To fall so far and not to die.’

  ‘Vievre,’ said Tighe, ‘how did I fall so far and not die?’

  Vievre laughed aloud at this. ‘Admiraculla!’ he declared. ‘It has never been known before. The army was gathering itself, setting its camp – yes? – in this place. We go to war with the enemy. We bring thousands of men and women in the army to know this part of the wall. Master Elanne was readying the flatars and the calabashen, those parts of the sky army.’

  ‘What are they?’ asked Tighe. ‘What is flatar?’

  ‘Part of the army. A flatar is’, he paused, ‘a thing. Each with a boy or a girl.’ Vievre made the swooping gesture with his flat palm. ‘You will go walking outside, on the ledge outside, soon; then I will show you. And a calabash is a bag, yes? Full of air, the hot air. It is a big thing.’ Vievre mimed a great sphere in the air in front of him. ‘A big thing that goes up in the air. The army has a dozen. Two dozen.’

  Tighe tried to picture this strange thing, but had no imaginative purchase.

  ‘Well,’ said Vievre, a little downcast that his explanation had brought no flicker of recognition from his charge, ‘you do not know the calabash in your land?’

  ‘No,’ said Tighe.

  ‘Well,’ said Vievre, ‘you doubesse your life to the calabash. When you came it happened that one was being exhalpenen, made big with hot air. It was half fall, beginning to rise. Then you fell on to it! One boy saw you far up, then everybody saw you, shouted, pointed. You fell from high and landed – pouff!’ (Vievre blew all the air out of his lungs through his mouth to make the noise) ‘– on to the calabash. Pushing the air out of it, nan al-derienne all covered up in it like a blanket at the end. So! The fabric of a calabash is thick – yes? But your left foot entrelatte, pushed through it. This is why your foot was all souped’ – there was the word for soup, poltete, used as a verb. ‘All mashed’ – another food word. Vievre made a face. ‘But otherwise, you were alive! Many bruises, cuts. Much blood. You slept – yes? De conaissep. But alive!’

  ‘Alive,’ whispered Tighe.

  ‘So Cardinelle Elanne will speak with you tomorrow or the tomorrow after that.’ Vievre was clearly delighted with this development. A genuine military celebrity to visit his ward!

  3

  For much of the rest of that day Vievre fussed about Tighe: preparing him, he realised, for the visit of the high-ranking officer. With one of his assistants he walked Tighe round and round the ward, calling off ‘One, two, one two,’ in time to the steps.

  Over the course of his stay Tighe had learnt to count up to twelve in his new language. And, of course, he knew the word for thousands.

  They rested for a meal, and after that Vievre called for some equipment – Tighe’s ear was not skilled enough to overhear exactly what kind – and he folded his legs under himself to sit at the foot of Tighe’s mattress.

  ‘I shall remove the cast, now, my little bird,’ he announced. His face was beaming and he was actually cooing in his happiness.

  ‘Vievre,’ said Tighe. Then, to be more respectful, ‘Master Vievre.’ Vievre looked up at him. ‘I have a question.’

  ‘You have?’

  ‘What is your family?’

  Vievre’s head tilted a little. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You have family?’ Tighe rephrased.

  ‘Father and mother,’ said Vievre. ‘Brot
her and sister.’ He might have been answering, or he might have been clarifying for Tighe what the word family meant.

  ‘You are father,’ said Tighe, blushing a little. ‘Pahe and pashe, we say in my land. To me, you play at father.’ He didn’t want to use the word meaning play, but he couldn’t think of a word that meant ‘act’ in the more serious sense. But having said it, it didn’t sound right. He tried again, ‘You work at father to me,’ but that sounded wrong as well.

  Vievre was looking at him in a slightly puzzled way. With a flurry, wondering if he had somehow offended the medic, Tighe coughed, and tried again. ‘You must have a son,’ he said, ‘I think. You are good, I think.’

  ‘I have no son,’ said Vievre in a distant tone.

  Tighe looked up, but Vievre’s face had taken on a frightening, stony aspect.

  There was a silence. One of the medical assistants came through carrying a leather satchel. Tighe wanted to say, I hope I have not offended you – it was not my intention to offend you, but he did not have the language for it.

  In silence Vievre took the satchel and the orderly withdrew, leaving them alone together again. He opened the bag and brought out a serrated spatula.

  ‘Vievre,’ said Tighe, again. He felt – for some reason – close to tears. ‘I say: thank you.’

  ‘For what?’ replied Vievre, without looking at him.

  ‘You are good, I think. You are father, I think. To me. My pashe, my mother, she good, but she break me sometime.’ Tighe slapped the mattress with the flat of his right hand to illustrate what he was trying to say. ‘She go ill every month, she’ – he slapped again – ‘every month.’ The tears were coming out now more freely. He wasn’t even sure why he was saying this. ‘You are good to me,’ he said, finally and then sucked in his lips to stop sobs from emerging.

  Vievre still wasn’t looking at him. ‘Don’t cry. You have wounds on your head and body, I donerete – I saw them, when you were first here. Under your hair particularly. Deep old scar on the back of the head. Some said you were a soldier and they were soldier’s wounds.’

  ‘I had that as child,’ said Tighe. ‘I not remember when.’

  Vievre looked up suddenly. His own eyes were bright. ‘It happens sometimes. Your mother, I think. I am sorry to hear of your mother breaking you, to hear of your family. But she loved you, I think.’

  ‘She loved me,’ said Tighe, trying to breathe more calmly.

  ‘Family is like army, family is like war sometimes. Sometimes people get hurt in the war. You know this?’

  ‘She was’, said Tighe, but didn’t know the word for unstable, the word for precarious, and he couldn’t think of a roundabout way of expressing it, so he said, ‘she fell off the world.’

  ‘So you told me,’ said Vievre, more briskly. ‘Anyway, good, I shall cut off the cast with this coutno here. It looks sharp, but it will not cut your skin.’ He smiled. ‘So?’

  Tighe nodded.

  Vievre sawed at the outer part of the dried mud-cake, and then pulled fraying chunks of the stuff off with his fingers. Then he cut more carefully closer to the foot itself. Tighe was aware of a lessening of pressure, a vague sensation difficult to assign specifically to his foot, but happening somewhere down his leg. Finally Vievre put the spatula down and pulled the cast apart in different directions. It came away in a miniature puff of mud-dust and there was his foot, wrapped in a flimsy show of dirty fabric. ‘There!’ said Vievre.

  ‘Good,’ said Tighe.

  Vievre cut easily through the cloth and together they peered at the foot. It looked a little misshapen, the toes all warped in the same direction, the top of the foot hunched and bulbous. There was a prominent lump on the side that wasn’t supposed to be there – Tighe put his other foot alongside for comparison. But otherwise it was his foot, as he remembered it.

  ‘I will wash it now,’ said Vievre. He packed up the spatula and went over to the ward sink, filling a bowl with water.

  He came over and settled himself down again, starting to stroke the foot with a cloth soaked and wrung through. Tighe felt the chill of the water and the strangely sensual action of the cloth over his tingling skin.

  ‘Having a person to wash your feet!’ Vievre exclaimed, still not meeting Tighe’s eyes. ‘Only the Popes themselves have such pleasure, such luxesse.’

  Anxious now for conversation that would lead him away from the painfully personal subject on which they had just touched, Tighe asked, ‘Master Vievre, you say Pope. What is Pope? Is it a Prince?’

  ‘What do you mean by preense?’

  Tighe thought for a little about the best way to answer this question with his limited language. Finally he said, ‘If society is a body, then, the Prince is the head. Prince and Priest and Doge are the three heads.’ He thought of adding that his pahe – his father – had been Prince of his village, but for some reason he decided it was wiser to keep that information to himself.

  Vievre shook his head gently, wringing the cloth again over the bowl of water. ‘Your words are ugly words in your language, I think. But Pope is moncher, true. They are head of the body, of the Empire. You have three, we have three.

  ‘The Prince is head,’ said Tighe. ‘Priest is head for God. Doge is for’, but he did not know the word for trade so he trailed off.

  Vievre seemed to grow larger as he spoke, to breathe in more deeply and hold his shoulders back. He said, ‘The Empire is in the hands of the mighty Three Popes. A Law Pope, a Pope Espitpul and a War Pope. But the Empire is a large land, it stretches many many miles up and down the worldwall, many many miles east and west. Where we are most at war, that is where the War Pope is mostly – and now he is here, he is Law, Espivre and War in one person.’

  ‘Espivre,’ asked Tighe. ‘That word. It means God?’

  ‘It is here,’ said Vievre, tapping his head with his free hand. ‘In here.’ He gestured towards his chest. ‘That is Espivre.’

  ‘Soul,’ said Tighe.

  Vievre shrugged with his eyebrows, and went back to washing Tighe’s foot. ‘The Soul Pope is in the Imperial City now,’ he said. ‘There she is at the heart. The Law Pope, he is many miles downwall. That is land we eparven last year and the last year before.’

  ‘Eparven?’

  Vievre stood now, carrying the bowl back to the sink and emptying it. ‘We took in war. It is Empire now. It has a large need of law and the Law Pope is there.’ He turned. ‘And now your foot is clean and you are ready to meet Cardinelle Elanne.’

  Tighe was starting to intuit some sense of the structure and hierarchy of the Imperial Army. Under the Pope, it seemed that the Cardinelles had the most power. Beneath that were Caponelles and Prelettes, and other junior officers. So many ranks, so many levels of command, spoke of an army more enormous than Tighe could easily imagine. Thousands, Vievre said. Thousands.

  4

  Cardinelle Elanne came early in the next day. He was a small man, much smaller than Tighe expected, but there was a fat prise bone tied around his neck with a leather strap. His hair was woven together into thick strands like crude cloth and tied at the back. His skin was wrinkled and he was clearly old, but he wore no beard. Looking at him, Tighe realised that he had seen no beards at all since waking in this ward.

  ‘I am pleased to meet you, Sayonar Tig-he,’ said the Cardinelle. He was attended by two blue-uniformed soldiers, who waited several steps behind. One of these was carrying a small case; at a signal from the Cardinelle she opened the thing, pulling legs from the underside to create a small stool. It seemed to be made of wood, except that Tighe could hardly believe a material so valuable would be used in the construction of something as menial as a stool.

  The Cardinelle positioned the stool and sat down. ‘You fell from the sky,’ he said slowly, speaking each word carefully. ‘It is a miracle that you are alive at all.’

  ‘I know this,’ said Tighe.

  ‘We sent scouts up in a calabash. There is no settlement directly up the wall for many miles. How long
did you fall for?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Tighe.

  The Cardinelle seemed to think that Tighe had failed to understand his words. ‘What I mean by that question’, he said, more slowly, ‘is what period of time? How long did your fall last you?’

  ‘I understand your question, Master Cardinelle,’ said Tighe, meekly. ‘But I do not know the time. I do not remember.’

  The Cardinelle was staring at him with an unsettling, unblinking stare. ‘It must have been a long time, I think.’

  ‘A long time.’

  ‘Were you ventien at all? East? West?’

  Tighe blushed. I do not know these words.’

  ‘East,’ said Vievre, ‘leftward – west, rightward. Were you ventien leftward or rightward as you fell?’

  ‘I do not know this word, Master Cardinelle,’ said Tighe, in a small voice.

  ‘Ventien,’ repeated Elanne briskly. He blew through pursed lips, then blew on his hand and mimed it being pushed back by the current of air.

  ‘Ventien,’ said Tighe, understanding. Blown.

  ‘Yes. Were you blown at all by the wind as you fell? Perhaps you derit-nabur from some land far to the east or west above us. We do not know.’

  ‘I do not know. The wind blown me up a little, sometimes the falling felt less – less falling,’ said Tighe.

  Cardinelle Elanne puffed noisily. ‘The wind blew,’ he corrected. ‘But anyway. Are you from a large land? Your people – they have an army?’

  ‘A village,’ said Tighe.

  ‘What word is this?’

  ‘A small land,’ said Tighe.

  ‘And your army?’

  ‘We have no army.’

  This was so astonishing to the Cardinelle that he made Tighe repeat it twice. ‘But what happens when you are at war?’ he pressed.

  Tighe thought how to phrase himself. ‘Once, when I am boy,’ he started, ‘there were’, but he couldn’t think of the word for bandits, ‘bad men, women, they come to take goats and things. Then two, three villages gather men and women together, and they fight the bad men, women. Then they dead, thrown away off world, and men, women are able to go to work again.’