By Light Alone

by Adam Roberts

  People nodded, hugged their knees to their collar bones, adjusted their hair to gain the best purchase on the light.

  That evening, as most people were settling for the night, Issa overruled her exhaustion and explored. The guard was changed on the gate; the day soldiers carted away in a landcar, the night guard brought in. Issa wandered towards the sealine. The lights itched and shivered on the water. One tall white-lit glass skyscraper, visible round the bay, looked to be built on the foundations of a trembling, watery, inverted version of itself. Flitters passed through the city’s sky. An eerie mix of sounds, blended into a clanging, choral, mumbly noise. A hundred thousand people with money, folk who owned things and ate hardfood, going about their lives in the young night.

  Issa found a place where the fence had been underdug, and thought about sneaking into the town. But she couldn’t think of anything she wanted to do in there.

  The next morning Alia went off with three of the Georgians, and Issa made her way around the south of the city, up and down an arthritic topography of hills and descents. She passed many derelict and semi-derelict houses and innumerable longhair bodies, variously prone, supine or upright. Her own throat was dry as sand, as thorny as a kaalbush. Her insides felt bleached. Little sips from her bottle did not alleviate the horrible sensations, so, impulsively, she drained the last of her water. The relief was temporary, of course, as it always is. By the end of the day the inside of her throat was again dry rubble and dust, except that now she had no water at all. She sat on the roof of a Neoclean shrine – two solid planks of concrete set into the rise of the gradient, leaving a space below into which people came and went – and stared at the sea. Strange how beguiling the sea is to look at.

  She dreamt that night, or else it wasn’t a dream but a genuine ghostly visitation, that Rageh sat beside her, with his ridiculous cranium like a crimped-rim ear trumpet. ‘Will you go on a raft?’

  ‘I don’t see how I shall get on one,’ said Issa. Either in her dream, or in real life, she started weeping. The tears were exhaustion, and weariness, and physical suffering (for her throat’s lining felt like a hot puff pastry). But as soon as she started crying, she stopped: for crying made her feel foolish, and weak, and she didn’t like feeling either thing. ‘I may die of thirst this night, or tomorrow,’ she said.

  ‘You do need to guard against despair,’ agreed Rageh, as if she hadn’t so much as mentioned the physical condition of thirst. ‘That’s the one thing that will sink us.’

  Us. ‘Will I get on a raft?’

  ‘Of course you will. The real question is what you do when you have come to the king’s palace.’

  ‘What king’s palace?’

  ‘New York, of course. You’ll come floating back in, like the big space-bubble baby in that book. But will you come to destroy, or save?’

  ‘Nonsense,’ she muttered, slipping past her physical discomfort into deeper sleep. She had a dream then, or had another dream, depending on whether her encounter with Rageh was or was not a dream. She was Moses going down the mountain with horns upon her forehead. She came down to discover that the water had flooded the whole world, but the horns upon her forehead meant that she could breathe under the water, like a deep-sea diver, they were magical like that, or they were technological like that: grasping her two ingots of stone to help her sink down, readying herself to encounter the grotesque forms that sealife takes upon the abyssal floor.

  She was woken by rain. The sky was pre-dawn grey, but filled with shimmers and lines. At first she lay on her back with her mouth wide open, but this barely got enough water into her. She waved her bottle about, and cursed the idiotic design of bottles that made the mouth and neck so tiny compared with the belly of them. But cursing was fruitless. She got up and danced. Then she slipped out of her dress, sodden with water, and wrung it out into her mouth. Water had never tasted so delicious. The water was cold, and the air was cold, and so she shivered. But she danced nevertheless in an access of joy that amounted almost to ecstasy. Spreading her dress meant that it soon soaked with water again, and she was able to squeeze some into the bottle, although most dribbled down the sides. Finally the rain died away, and the silver-grey clouds brightened with full dawn. Issa dressed again, and hugged herself to try and prevent her shivering. Her dancing had worn her out, and there was little sustenance in the cloudy sunlight. But the water had had a reviving effect, and by midmorning she was able to gather herself and walk down the slope towards the waterside.

  On her way she ran into Coco, the wandering man she had met when she first left the village. He was in a large crowd, and he recognized her straight away, although it took her a moment to place his intense blue eyes and wrinkled skin. ‘Fate means for us to be together!’ he said.

  ‘Oh, hello. Where’s your friend?’

  He looked momently puzzled. The clouds were scooting through the sky behind his head. ‘I’ve got lots of friends. Oh, you mean the man I was with when we met last time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s away at sea. That’s where I’m going.’

  ‘A raft, is it?’

  Coco stood up taller. ‘My raft. My cadre. My wife, too.’

  ‘You have a wife?’

  ‘I’m sure I mentioned that. But don’t let that put you off. Lots of men have more than one wife. Do you want to come on my raft?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Issa, and her heart galloped a little. But she took a deep breath, and let it out, and tried to get her pulse under control.

  ‘I’m the captain,’ said Coco. ‘You’d have to do what I said.’

  ‘You mean, I’d have to have sex with you.’

  ‘What else are wives for? But it’s more than that. We’re not a pleasure cruise, you know. We have a mission – we are Spartacists.’

  ‘What would Sudhir say?’

  Coco’s eyebrows lowered. ‘Maybe you’d better come meet her.’

  ‘I don’t think she’ll be too keen.’

  ‘Oh, we need bodies! Bodies. Our strength is numbers, and numbers can always be bigger.’

  He started down with his jerky little walk. Though she felt tired, Issa went after him. ‘What do you mean, bodies?’

  ‘I mean lots of people. I mean enough people to cross the river and retake West Stalingrad. I mean hordes and crowds of people.’

  ‘I don’t know where you mean by Western Lingrad,’ said Issa. But very soon they had come to a makeshift gateway: a barricade between two roofless buildings, and a great many hard-faced people. Coco talked to one of these for what seemed to Issa a very long time, and eventually they were let through. Down they went into the interior of a large building. People were actually up, pulling away rooftiles to let the sun into this space. A great impression of bustle, and action, although of course the majority of the people there were lounging about, trying to get as much sun on their heads as they could.

  Coco led Issa to a corner, told her to wait, and went off. She sat for a while, and then took a sip of the water in her bottle. It tasted strange, iffy, but she drank it anyway. Shortly she dozed. She woke to somebody kicking her foot. It was Sudhir. ‘You’re persistent,’ she said. Issa sat up, and Sudhir sat beside her. ‘Tell me why you want to go on one of our rafts,’ said Sudhir.

  ‘I want to go to New York,’ said Issa.

  ‘Now, why would you think the raft is going to New York?’

  ‘I don’t suppose it is. But it’ll surely take me closer. Maybe it’ll take me all my life to get back there. If it does, it does. If I can’t go on the raft, I’ll walk.’

  Sudhir seemed less hostile than the last time they had met. ‘Sit down my dear,’ she said, and the my dear didn’t seem hostile or ironic. They both sat on the floor, with their backs to the wall. ‘You understand why I’m anxious?’

  ‘You think I’m a spy.’

  ‘I can’t be reckless. I can’t take risks. To be a Spartacist is to be dedicated to the struggle. Do you know what that means?’

  ‘It means your li
fe,’ said Issa, gravely.

  Sudhir looked closely at her. ‘It does,’ in a quieter voice. ‘This is the great war of our age. The wealthy have the hardware, and they are ruthless. But we have the numbers, and justice belongs to us. And those are the two most important things. The rich have realized, although it is only belatedly, that they must eradicate us, or perish themselves. And so they are planning eradication. The latest thing is a targeted disease, one that affects only longhairs. That is only the first of what will be a whole series of assaults. They are planning the greatest genocide the world has ever seen. Should we not fight back?’

  Issa thought about this. ‘Is it really so dire?’ she said.

  ‘You don’t think Triunion showed that it was dire? You don’t think Florida did?’

  ‘I know where Florida is,’ said Issa, unsure what else to say, since she still didn’t know what had actually happened at those places – beyond her general understanding that they had been places of massacre. ‘What did happen there?’ she added, feeling it better to ask than to carry on in ignorance.

  Sudhir did not answer this. Instead, she said: ‘If you are a spy, then you have been extraordinarily poorly prepped for your mission. Or perhaps it’s a sort of brilliance. Maybe it’s a brilliant strategy.’

  ‘Or maybe I’m not a spy.’

  ‘I know what you mean when you say that,’ said Sudhir. ‘You mean that I am looking for spies, because I crave the attention of my enemy.’ Issa had neither meant that, nor, really, understood what Sudhir meant by it. But she didn’t interrupt. The older woman went on. ‘It is demeaning to think that my enemies have such contempt for us that they’re not even bothering with counter-espionage. But I prefer to see that as their weakness. Will you commit your life to this struggle?’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Issa, looking at the floor. ‘What struggle, precisely? What commitment am I being asked to make?’

  ‘You see,’ said Sudhir, ‘a spy would immediately say yes, yes, I commit. And a spy would have some prepared boilerplate about the horrors of Triunion.’ She poked at one of her own teeth with a forefinger, wobbled it. ‘Except, except. You mentioned New York. Why would you mention New York?’

  ‘I am the only living Queen of that city,’ explained Issa.

  ‘Let me tell you this, Issa,’ said Sudhir. ‘I’m lowly.’

  ‘Lowly?’

  ‘I’m very far down the hierarchy of the organization. I’m very far from being at the heart of this operation. So if this is some elaborate attempt to infiltrate the mission, then you’ve picked the wrong person.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that.’

  ‘Do you want to go on Coco’s raft?’

  ‘You mean, do I want to have sex with Coco? Of course not.’

  At this Sudhir laughed, and her face was transformed. All the severity and suspicion vanished. ‘Oh well said!’ It took her a moment to gather her serious face again. ‘So it comes down to a judgement,’ she said. ‘Conceivably my enemies are stupid enough, or think they are playing a cunning enough double bluff, to send a half-wit right into the Spartacist camp babbling about New York. If so, I should probably kill you.’

  ‘Probably?’ echoed Issa.

  ‘But I don’t think so. You can come on the main raft.’ She stood up. ‘Our strength is in numbers, but numbers mean nothing without unity.’

  Issa, who didn’t like Sudhir standing over her, stood up too. ‘I don’t know what you mean by that.’

  Sudhir, about to turn away, looked back with amused astonishment. ‘What?’

  ‘What do you mean, unity?’

  ‘Ha! Wonderful. I’m surrounded by people who use that word all the time, and never question it. But you ask a good question, of course you do. By unity I mean all of us working together. No.’ She put her hand to her cheek. ‘No, I mean all of us fighting together. I mean putting an end to ten thousand different movements, to Islamicist longhairs and Christian longhairs and Marxist longhairs and Capitalist longhairs and neoCasteians and Gandhians and Abdullans and Chavists and Ferdinandists and Wedgers and Moral Forcers.’

  ‘The Seafolk?’ offered Issa.

  ‘Oh they have a point. It’s only a point though. We do thrive at sea, provided we have only a float and a desal device. But we’re vulnerable there, too.’

  ‘I saw Maguelone speak,’ said Issa.

  ‘Who?’ said Sudhir. ‘Never mind that. If we could coordinate all the longhairs in the world to act as one, then we would be unstoppable. Do you know what is the most profound piece of political wisdom ever uttered?’

  This pricked some distant memory inside Issa, something buried under the glacier weight of her day-to-day existence. ‘Do as you would be done by?’ she suggested?

  Sudhir looked frankly astonished at this. ‘You need to learn not to interrupt so much,’ she said. ‘At your age! Listen and learn. Don’t speak so much. The most profound piece of political wisdom ever uttered. It’s attributed to Neocles himself. It’s this, in English: Ye are many, they are few.’

  Issa digested this. The sound of a dozen or so people singing was audible outside. It wasn’t clear what they were singing. ‘What’s ye?’ she asked.

  ‘You understand the English then?’

  ‘Yes. Apart from ye.’

  ‘It means: there are many more of us than them. Many more. If we all act together we will beat them, even though they have the machines and the money. Do you see that?’

  ‘Well,’ said Issa. ‘Not wanting to interrupt, or anything. But it seems to me that people are too awkward to get them to do what you want.’

  Sudhir looked at her again. Then she said. ‘Where did you learn to understand English, then?’

  ‘New York,’ said Issa.

  There was just enough of a pause before Sudhir started laughing to indicate that she had decided to take this harping on the name of the city as a running gag. ‘Come along,’ she said. ‘You can come on my raft.’

  There were two weeks of waiting, down by the waterside, before Sudhir made good her promise. But they were weeks with plenty of water to drink, and many interesting conversations to eavesdrop upon. This was a camp, a group organized towards one large-scale project, and the levels of excitement were unmistakable. Issa began to understand that there were pleasures in submerging one’s individual self in the larger group. Everybody around her seemed so purposeful! Several of the men made advances towards her, of course, but none of them pushed themselves physically upon her, and most of them took her rejection in good temper. A couple more lectured her about her outdated, shorthair morality, and advised her that having sex with many people was the truly revolutionary behaviour. ‘When we’ve overthrown the shorthair tyranny,’ a man called Kal told her, ‘when we’ve driven them out of the tropics to live in the arctic deserts, then we’ll all spend our days sunbathing and fucking.’ He was a tiny man with ricketed armbones that curved like ribs, but there was a sparkle in his eyes. Issa smiled and nodded and didn’t believe a word of it.

  Lots of people talked about Florida, and the strategic lessons to be learned from that débâcle. She thought débâcle was an English word until somebody explained to her that, actually, it was French. A few people claimed to have access to the higher echelons of the movement: to be privy to the secrets of the campaign. A broad assault on the eastern coastline of the United States, millions of people pouring from the sea to the land – but all this only a feint, a ruse, a piece of distraction. The actual aim was a single man, a token, a figure of enormous symbolic potential. To capture him, and use him to unite all the longhairs of the world. To connect the movement with the aura of Neocles himself. ‘Neocles is dead, though,’ said Issa. Nobody contradicted her.

  She saw Sudhir from time to time, but the older woman was very busy. Their conversations were inevitably truncated: and then the day came when all Sudhir said was: ‘Get on the raft now. Porro will take you.’

  Finally she went down to the seashore, and got her legs wet walking out to the raft. F
rom the water’s level it was a reef of plastic barrels. When she was hauled up by those already on the raft, she stood to see a great undulating floor of plastic boards and wood. There was a shed near the centre, and beside it a heap of plascable and bits and pieces. Around the perimeters three separate desal devices dipped tubes in the water. She didn’t see it straight away, but soon enough she discovered the solar motor: its top portion was a fan of solars; the motor itself of course below the waterline, a metre-diameter white tube. Apart from that, the only things on the raft were people. There were a great many people.

  Having finally boarded the raft, Issa sat cross-legged and waited for departure. Nothing happened. People came and went. The sun went down. Issa tucked her limbs about her as best she could and slept uneasily, waking as much from unsettled dreams as from shivers of cold. The next day the raft’s population unwound from the torpor of darkness and arranged itself to make the most of a haze-thinned sun.

  The day passed with people jumping off the raft to wade back to the shore, and more people – sometimes different people – splashing out to the raft to clamber aboard. Nothing else happened. Issa fell into conversation with some of the other rafters, but all they wanted to talk about was the coming revolution.

  ‘At Florida so much of our blood flowed into the ocean that the seas there are red now,’ said one twitchy woman. ‘That’s why they changed its name to Florida – for all the blood that flowed there.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s true,’ said Issa, although nobody heeded her.

  ‘What we shall have,’ says somebody away in the crowd, ‘is vengeance. Venge-ance!’ There was a cheer at this, and a few people shouted, ‘Vengeance for Triunion!’ and ‘Flo-o-orida!’ and there was a quantity of ragged dancing. But longhairs tire easily, and it soon died down again.

  That night, Issa introduced herself formally to a group of mostly older women, some as old as forty, and was permitted to cuddle in with them. She slept much better, in large part because she stayed warm. These old ones spread their hair luxuriously in the sunlight of a hotter day, and chatted in unhurried, uncontending voices about many things.