On (GollanczF.)

by Adam Roberts

‘That’s right,’ said Ati, grabbing Tighe’s arm. ‘Now leave them alone. They’re military mushrooms.’ And he hauled him away.

  Tighe yelped with pain and it took several steps of this enforced pace before he could slip into his halting limp. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘They would throw me off the world for a few mushrooms?’

  ‘You don’t know anything?’

  ‘Wait,’ said Tighe, trying to catch his breath, to get into his stride. ‘Why? For mushrooms? Why.’

  ‘They’re military mushrooms. Do you really not know?’

  ‘I really not know.’

  Ati let go of his arm, and spat over the ledge. ‘You’re supposed to bring luck, you know. If you don’t bring luck, then what are you?’

  ‘Tell me about the mushrooms,’ said Tighe.

  ‘They make fire.’

  ‘Fire?’

  ‘The army take the mushrooms and dry them. They have a – a –’ he stopped, and then positively shouted with frustration. I do not know the Imperial word for it! In my family’s tongue it is burzhum. It is, like, earth – yes, Dry? Dry, small, much of it. Plants have it and they put it in the air, and it goes in the air to another place and settles in the earth and new mushrooms grow.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said Tighe, leaning against the wall on his right to rest his bad foot. I do not know the word for it either. It is a kind of dust,’ he added, using his native word.

  Ati shrugged. ‘This burzhum, this dusht, when it is dry, is packed in boxes and cases. With a flame it makes fire – great fire.’ He clapped his hands together and shouted Bah! so loud that Tighe jumped. ‘It is in the army’s weaponry. We have rifette in the army, and they are filled with the burzhum. That is how the weaponry works.’

  Tighe didn’t follow all of this. But he nodded.

  ‘So,’ said Ati. He stretched himself, straightening his posture. He appeared to have used up some of his anger. ‘The mushrooms are very important. We grow them everywhere we go, you know,’ he said, suddenly speaking confidingly. ‘We could not make war without them, you know.’

  ‘And we make war,’ said Tighe.

  ‘Soon,’ said Ati.

  ‘Who?’ asked Tighe, meaning against whom? But Ati was off again, down the ledge.

  They went down and down until they were on the shelf itself, weaving a way through the mess of people. Tighe was almost hypnotised by the enormity of the calabash bellies. He did not watch where he was going and bumped into several people.

  ‘Watch it,’ growled a man, pushing him to one side. The shelf was thronged, people coming back and forth, criss-crossing and passing one another in an elegant dance. Tighe tried to concentrate on where he was going, but his eye was snared again and again by the great spheres hanging over him. The sun was rising level to them and throwing enormous patches of shadow against the wall. He could see the pots hung underneath the sphere clearly now; twice the height of a man, like a small house with a doorway and several slit windows. Each appeared to be built of dark wood – the army’s use of wood was astonishing, just astonishing. They carried a fortune in wood about them, used it for menial tasks.

  Ati was by his side again. ‘You’re slow,’ he said.

  ‘My foot hurts badly,’ he said.

  Ati shrugged. ‘Come over to the wall’, he said, ‘and rest.’ They made their way wallwards and Tighe sat down. Ati took something else from his pouch and chewed it. ‘You see that spur?’ he said.

  He was pointing towards the far end of the shelf. Tighe nodded.

  ‘Just past there is the platon. There are the flatar.’

  ‘OK,’ said Tighe. ‘We can go there.’

  At the end of the shelf there was a man-made walkway set into the spur that led round it: it was a little rickety and difficult to manoeuvre with only one good leg, but Tighe took it carefully and then they were on the other side.

  The flatar platon was based on a broad singleton, only reachable by the walkway round the spur. Half a dozen boys were dancing, it seemed, in formation, and stacked against the wall behind them were half a dozen man-sized kites.

  6

  Ati led Tighe past the boys – not dancing, Tighe could see now, but all going through the same ritualised motions, as if training – to an opening in the wall behind them. This doorway led into a long, narrow space, with grass mattresses on the floor all the way along. The floor was uneven and the walls still marked with the ridges and scratches of spade-work. It had evidently only recently been dug out.

  ‘Ati?’ called a figure from the far end.

  ‘Master!’ replied Ati briskly. ‘Here he is.’

  The figure came bundling up through the shadow until, as he approached Tighe and the light from the door touched him, his features came into view.

  He was a short man, his torso as round as one of the calabashes that still lingered in Tighe’s imagination. The shadows of the room made peculiar patterns on his face; but, no, it wasn’t that: he was scarred, the skin twisted and pulled as if in fright. Or caught in a powerful wind; although, as Tighe looked more closely, he could see there was a dead, waxy gleam to the white skin that made it look wrong, frozen in its peculiar tourbillons. The man stared at Tighe, his expression unreadable underneath its disfigurement.

  ‘You’re it,’ he said. His voice was much more high-pitched than Tighe was expecting.

  Ati squirmed, nudged Tighe. ‘Say, “Yes Master”,’ he hissed.

  ‘Yes, Master,’ said Tighe.

  For long moments this man kept him under his eye. Then he said: ‘I’m Waldea. I am Captain here and you are mine. Life and death. That is how the army is. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Master,’ said Tighe.

  ‘You speak the language well,’ said Waldea, scratching at the folds of skin on his face.

  Tighe didn’t know if he was supposed to reply. He kept quiet.

  ‘Come,’ said Waldea abruptly, stepping forward and grabbing Tighe around the waist. Tighe was so startled he gave a little gasp of fear, but Waldea had him tight round the waist. It was an intimate, unsettling embrace; Tighe’s face was crushed into the blue fabric of the man’s uniform. Waldea’s smell was large in his nostrils, sweat and a smell of the grass-oil, plus something astringent and unpleasant, something bitter like spikenard pieces in a soup.

  Waldea hauled Tighe up into the air and held him there. This squeezed the air from Tighe’s lungs and he gasped. Then the man put him back on the floor and let go of him. Tighe came down hard on his bad foot and staggered a little bit when released, but he kept his balance. In the light thrown through the door by the midday sun, he could see a tiny dark patch on Waldea’s uniform where his spittle had marked it.

  ‘Good,’ whistled Waldea. ‘You’re light – very light.’

  ‘But,’ said Tighe and stopped.

  ‘Yes, Master,’ put in Ati, and nudged Tighe again.

  ‘Yes, Master,’ he gasped.

  ‘You’re thin,’ said Waldea, scratching his ruined face again. He seemed pleased by this. ‘That’s excellent for flying. That’s the only matter I care about. You’re a village boy, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tighe.

  Waldea nodded his approval. ‘Those small villages, there’s never enough food to go round. Everybody starves a bit. It keeps the people nice and light.’

  Tighe, recovering from the shock of being grabbed, felt a spark of outrage. ‘I’m a Prince in my village,’ he said.

  Waldea wrinkled up his already grotesquely lined face. ‘What’s that word?’

  ‘It’s like Pope,’ said Tighe, trying to sound self-important.

  ‘Is it? Like king? We get all types of people in this army. The army doesn’t care if you are preense or king or pope. I am all those things to you. Do you understand?’

  Tighe breathed in. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Come outside.’ Waldea pushed past him and went through the door. Tighe limped after him and Ati fell into step beside him.

  ‘That’s your Master now,’ he whi
spered to Tighe. ‘Don’t make him angry.’

  ‘What’s ill with his face?’ Tighe hissed back.

  Because he was looking at Ati, Tighe didn’t see Waldea’s fist coming. He had a thundering sensation of impact on the side of his head and a blast of pain and a high, whistling, ringing noise. Then he was on the floor, the trodden dirt of the ledge pressed up against the side of his face. Fiery pain was in his head and everything else about him felt numb.

  He became aware of somebody’s fingers grabbing at his arm. He lifted his face from the ground and reached round with one hand to touch his throbbing ear. He could see Ati crouched beside him, saying something, his face creased with concern. With Ati’s help he sat up and brushed the dirt from the side of his face. His ear hurt sharply, but the screeching sound inside his head was fading. He tried to focus on what was being said. ‘I told you so, you barbarian,’ Ati was hissing. ‘Come on, come up to your feet.’

  Shakily, Tighe allowed himself to be hauled up standing again.

  Waldea was standing in front of him, arms at his side. ‘You do not’, he said, his voice high-pitched but calm, ‘talk about my face. You do not talk about my face. Do you understand? If you anger me, I will throw you off the world.’

  ‘Yes, Master,’ said Tighe, stunned.

  ‘Shut up and come.’ He turned and stalked over to the wall, where the large kites were stacked. Tighe followed him, limping, his hand over his sore ear.

  ‘Now,’ said Waldea loudly, turning to face Tighe again. Tighe could see all the other kite-boys. They were staring at him.

  ‘Now,’ said Waldea, ‘have you ever seen a kite before.’

  Flatar. Tighe nodded. He knew kites. One of his friends had owned a toy one, back in the village and had flown it in the early morning when the air was rising. It was a toy.

  ‘I’ll say this only once,’ said Waldea. ‘You don’t nod to me like an idiot baby.’

  ‘No, Master,’ said Tighe sharply.

  ‘Do you know kites?’

  ‘Yes, Master.’

  ‘Man-kites, like these? Or just the little, cadheo ones?’

  ‘Little ones, Master.’

  Waldea nodded. ‘These are man-kites. They are war-kites. I have my orders, from the Cardinelle himself, that we are to train you to fly one of these, just like the kite-boys and kite-girls over there.’ He gestured with one arm and Tighe followed with his eyes. ‘Back to the exercise!’ Waldea bellowed at them. ‘All of you!’ They scurried back into formation. Waldea directed his attention back to Tighe.

  ‘I have orders and we will train you. You will be bad at it because we don’t have much time to train you. But I always follow my orders.’

  There was a pause, and Tighe didn’t know whether to say yes, Master or not.

  ‘Your arms are weak,’ Waldea said. ‘You need stronger arms to fly kites in war. So you will start by carrying stones.’ He pointed to a pile of large rocks just beyond the stack of kites. ‘Carry them to the other side of this ledge and put them by the wall. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Master.’

  ‘Carry them, yes? Don’t rest them against your hip or your belly. Carry them out – away from your body. You want to make your muscles big. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Master.’

  Tighe spent the rest of the afternoon doing the task given him by Waldea. The first rock was not too hard, even with Tighe’s bad left foot and his limping gait. He hauled it up, held it away from his torso and staggered away to dump it on the far side. The second was harder, the third harder still. By the fourth his skin was oozing with sweat, his head hammered pain out from his ear, his bad foot blazed with every step. He could see that Waldea was still watching him, so he took care to hold the rock away from his body. But he could only make agonisingly slow progress, step, halt, step, halt.

  When he dumped this fourth stone he had to stop. Then he limped his way back over to the original pile. With a relief so acute it was almost like pain itself, he saw Waldea walk away and go back inside to the dorm. Without his new Master’s fearsome eye upon him, Tighe hefted another rock, balanced it against his hip and made his way more easily towards the far pile.

  He moved twelve in all, by which stage he was so exhausted he could barely stand up. He sat down by the pile and rested, his head hanging between his spread knees, his breath coming in gulps. There were little cuts on the palms of his hands from grasping the rocks, and his hip hurt.

  Waldea came back out and Tighe struggled guiltily to his feet. ‘How many?’ the Master bellowed.

  ‘Twelve, Master,’ replied Tighe.

  Waldea snorted and went back inside.

  Within an hour Tighe’s whole body was aching so badly it felt as if his muscles had turned to stone. All the boys and girls in the platon gathered just outside the doorway with the sun high in the sky, giggling and whispering amongst themselves, staring at Tighe. He was too tired to care.

  Waldea himself carried out two long, narrow cauldrons with metal handles over their mouths, one in each hand. He dumped them down, and one of the kite-boys followed him with an armful of small bowls. Each of these bowls was filled with the soup from the cauldrons: a grass soup with lumps of meat floating in it: insects, but also chunks of flesh from some larger animal that Tighe didn’t recognise by taste.

  Tighe felt so weary he assumed he would fall asleep at once. But when Waldea finally shepherded the whole platon into the room and sent them to bed, the strangeness of his environment and his sense of anticipation, not to mention the pain in his limbs, kept him awake.

  Once they were all wrapped in their blankets Waldea went back out, closing the tight door behind him. It was very dark. As soon as they were alone in the dormitory, excited whispers from the platon danced through the air, boy and girl passing the hissing up and down along the line. Some of the words were unfamiliar to Tighe, but he understood the bulk of it. Was the new boy really the sky-boy, the boy who had fallen from the sky? Of course, idiot, who did you think? But his hair! The smell! His skin! Did you see how badly he carried the rocks – how weak his arms were? Did you see how the Master beat him on the head? Several people giggled, their repressed laughs coming out as little bursts of shh-shh-shh. He must have done something to make the Master so angry. I walked him over, hissed Ati. I know him. He’s stupid, a barbarian. He doesn’t know anything. You’re a barbarian yourself, Ati-smati, hissed somebody else, you stinking downwaller, and everybody laughed, the giggles more audible and rippling through the room. Shit falls downwall, hissed somebody else, and the laughter started again.

  Then the door scraped open and Waldea came back in. ‘Quiet!’ he commanded and there was silence. Then there was nothing but Waldea fitting the dawn-door against the evening gales, until he too settled down and went to sleep.

  7

  Tighe carried rocks and practised movements with his body for five full days. For the first of these days every movement was an agony, but by the end he was more used to the exercise and it came a little more easily.

  He quickly got used to the routine, to the way the days were harder edged, the way the tasks and the rituals of living were squeezed into a pattern dictated by military routine. It seemed that everything in the army (outside the hospital ward) was run by the clock. But the army clock was unlike the clocks he had known in the village, which divided the day into ten hours, marked out as portions of a circle. The army used a sundial and divided the day into degrees, from small angles in the morning to large ones at the end of the day. Fifty degrees was midday, a hundred meant the sun had disappeared over the top of the wall.

  And so the day was organised. At this hour (fifteen) food, at this hour (thirty) exercise, hauling stones to build the muscles in the arms and shoulders. This was a regular exercise that everybody had to do; and after his first week Tighe joined the others. He no longer hauled all day, but only in the morning.

  By fifty the sun was level with the ledge and had heated the air enough – so they told Tighe – to
produce updraughts. That was the way the world was constructed, they told him. The blaze of the sun heated the air and the heated air went up – seeking God, said Ati, who turned out to be devout, although devout in a religion that Tighe did not recognise. One of the other kite-boys, called Mulvaine, told him that this same principle was behind the operation of the calabashes. Their great sewn sacks were filled with hot air and that hot air strained to move up the wall. Seeking God, said Ati again. Tighe wondered about sharing with the others what he had learned in the village: that God did not sit on top of the wall, but huddled at the bottom, hurling the sun over the battlement. But he didn’t trust any of his fellow kite-boys enough to mention something so heretical – he didn’t know how seriously the Empire took religious orthodoxy. Sometimes they treated him well, but then sometimes they mocked his accent and his skin, pulled at his hair and punched him.

  But the hour was fifty and Waldea was hurrying the boys to their kites.

  ‘Ravielre!’ he would shout. ‘No evening meal for you, you’re too fat – and Bel!… too long in the bone now, you’ve only few months of kite flying left you, you’re getting too big. Nothing to be done, and no use in crying there – some people grow too big to fly the kites. Let’s hope the war comes on and you get a chance to fly in combat.’

  The other boys and girls flew their kites every day for practice; but in the beginning, after his first week, Waldea put Tighe into a sort of stationary frame. The frame was made all of wood – more wood than Tighe had ever seen before all in one place, just one more example of the army’s incredible profligacy with wood. It was like four door frames put together to make a wall-less room, and inside a series of leather and ropes draped over the top and fed down to heavy stones. Inside Tighe was strapped as if to a kite, and made to go through various manoeuvres, to control the kite, to angle it and steer it.

  ‘Tig-he,’ yelled Waldea, working his grotesque face, ‘you’re more the shape. Thin, you see! You’re more the shape for a kite-boy! Those village boys who eat nothing but grass, they don’t get fat like you other city boys and girls.’