by Adam Roberts
Then it was gone.
After this noise, the silence returned with a greater intensity.
‘Planes have taken most of the trade from those trucks, as I was reading in a newsbook only last month,’ said Mark Pol conversationally. Chatter, chatter, chatter: could he never be quiet? But I restrained myself. ‘They were more common ten years ago, but those new elemag engines have brought the cost of jet flight down considerably.’
As if anybody cared!
We did not see another truck for another hour. After that two passed us in the space of ten minutes. Then nothing for several hours.
We walked through the heat of the day. My body slipped into a steady rhythm. The heat was uncomfortable but bearable. I pondered the sort of staff I would buy if I had the money: with a knob for the palm of the hand, as tall as from the ground to my breast, made of white wood.
Mark Pol fell into step beside me. ‘Siuzan Delage is a beautiful woman,’ he observed, as if to the air. Siuzan herself was perhaps thirty feet away from us.
‘Do not talk about her,’ I retorted. ‘And certainly do not talk about her in that way .’
‘Oho,’ he said, amused. ‘I have touched a tender spot, have I? And why not? We may all dream. You, Sieur Cavala - you have as much right to love as any, I think? As much right to fantasise about taking a woman in your arms . . .’
‘Be quiet!’
‘Have I offended you?’ he asked, in mock surprise. ‘Was it because I referred to you as Sieur Cavala? I apologise; I had forgotten your dislike of the honorific.’
‘You speak to vex me,’ I said. ‘Leave me alone - go back.’
‘Not at all. Speak to vex you? No, no. Why should it vex you that I call Siuzan Delage a beautiful young woman? Is she not beautiful? Don’t I have as much right to admire her as you?’
‘Stop!’
‘You can’t be jealous, Jon Cavala, surely,’ he joked. ‘Although I have been wondering whether she has some special taste or fetish for headless men - for why else would she agree to accompany us on this tedious walk? I have been wondering. And if she has a taste for headless men then why might her favour not fall on me, as like as you?’
I quickened my pace, his words (if she has a taste for headless men) burning in my mind. I walked on in a fury, and indeed got far ahead of the other three, before stopping at the side to wait for them to catch up. I repeated to myself, silently, over and over, be calm.
Mountains serrated the line of the northern horizon, rising up very slowly as we approached them. My vision recognition software represented them to me as a dark blue that was nearly purple, blistered and capped at the top with pure white. The flat land leading up to them registered as a sharp and artificial-looking yellow. These were not the real colours, but were instead a function of the crudeness of my vision software. I could not tell you what colours the landscape truly possessed. But it made a very striking visual composition.
Above the mountains the sky looked white. A wide lenticular raincloud, with a white border and a heart the colour of plain chocolate, dominated that empty space over the peaks. But the air was dry. That raincloud would never relinquish its yield. It would slide (and indeed I watched it slide) away over the horizon to the east unpunctured and whole. Dust was blowing over the road before us, as fine and yellow as pollen. The unnatural straightness of the tarmac had the effect of foreshortening it, such that it appeared to be only a few tapering metres long.
One foot stepped in front of another, over and over.
Once again I regretted the lack of a staff to aid my walking. I chided myself silently. Why had I not taken the foresight to provide myself with a simple staff of wood? How could I have been so remiss?
‘Perhaps you could explain again to me,’ said Mark Pol to Siuzan, ‘why you are prepared to walk this long and gritty path with us. I only mean,’ he added, angling his torso towards her a little, ‘that a woman such as yourself - so blameless, so wealthy, so beautiful !-could easily take passage in a jet. Surely you could afford it. And we could, if you wished, still rendezvous with you at Cainon.’
‘Is my company irksome to you, Sieur Mark?’ said Siuzan, smiling.
‘Not in the slightest,’ Mark Pol replied gaily. ‘Not in the least irksome, Chère Siuzan.’ I did not like the way he used the honorific; it smacked, I thought, of too great an assumption of intimacy, of too much levity, and I thought the way Mark Pol drew out the second ‘e’ of the word almost lascivious. But Siuzan did not seem offended.
‘I view this,’ said Siuzan, ‘after the manner of a pilgrimage. I pay duty to the All’God by walking with you. It is my honour.’
‘But precisely, it is your honour,’ said Mark Pol, ‘which is my chief concern. It is your honour that is uppermost in my mind.’ It is difficult to decipher nuance with an artificial voice, even of the more sophisticated sort that Mark Pol was using. But nevertheless I felt I detected a lewd double-meaning here, as if he were saying that he himself wished to take her virginity, and thereby her honour. I bridled. ‘Mark Pol, restrain yourself,’ I barked.
‘But what prompts your outrage, Sieur Cavala?’ he replied, as if surprised. ‘I spoke sincerely. Or did you think I had some pornographic intention behind my innocent words?’
‘Do not apply the honorific to me,’ I replied, my electric voice gruff. ‘For I do not deserve it.’
‘Then plain Cavala it shall be,’ Mark Pol said straightaway, with a chuckle in his voice. ‘But I must press the point. Why do you rebuke me for my perfectly genuine expression of interest in the lady’s honour?’
This was approaching impertinence. ‘I say: leave this conversation wholly behind you, Mark Pol.’
There was no mistaking the gloating tone that was in Mark Pol’s artificial voice. ‘No, Cavala, no,’ he said. ‘This cannot be. You have impugned my honour, and although perhaps, like you, I do not deserve to be addressed as “Sieur”, nevertheless I cannot let that pass. Even a headless may want to preserve such tatters of honour as remain to him. You impute to me lewd and base motivations . . .’
‘Please,’ said Siuzan. ‘No quarrelling. No fighting.’
‘Chère Siuzan,’ Mark Pol said. ‘A moment, by your gracious consent. Allow me merely to impress upon Cavala, here, the gravity of what he has said. Lewd motivation? Some base sexual motivation to my—?’
‘Mark Pol!’ I cried, almost in an agony.
‘—to my words? This is insupportable. This was not in my mind at all. It is not I, after all, who was beheaded for sexual crimes. It was not I who forced my sexual attentions on a woman - that is something I would never do.’
I could feel the flush on my chest. For once I was grateful that I no longer possessed a face, for that would have been as dark as wine with my embarrassment. But, of course, I had permitted Mark Pol to force me into this situation. It served me poorly to over-react to his goading. I could do nothing but concede.
‘Very well,’ I said. ‘You have won the victory here, Mark Pol.’
But he chose not to be pacified. ‘Victory? This is not what I was thinking, not in the least. No, no, I am not in conflict with you, my fellow headless.’
‘Whatever you will,’ I said. ‘Take it any way you choose. I give way. The ground is yours.’
He carried on protesting that this was not his intention, but I quickened my stride and walked ahead of the group. My emotions were cast into a profound turmoil by this little exchange and by the fact that Mark Pol had so easily fooled me in front of Siuzan Delage. I was angry as much with myself as with him. This forge of shame inside me flamed hot.
A little later, perhaps a quarter of an hour, Siuzan hurried up to walk beside me. Because my legs were longer than hers, and I was striding fiercely in my miserable anger, she had to insert little running trots into her own step to keep up. ‘Do not be concerned by Mark Pol, I beg of you,’ she said.
‘He is a mocker,’ I said.
‘I can hardly be unaware of that! It is his nature.’
> ‘His intentions towards you,’ I growled, ‘are dishonourable.’
‘I am indeed appreciative, Jon Cavala, of your attempt to protect me from his roguery. But you need not be so worried. I have worked for years now amongst the newly headless. Do you think I am unfamiliar with inappropriate words and actions? The truth is that, especially amongst the newly decapitated, there is much anger and resentment, and on occasion this becomes directed at me. I have listened to obscenity and sexual suggestion much more upsetting than anything Mark Pol has said a dozen times a day. Besides, he is not capable of true obscenity. He is a clown. He may joke with me, and attempt to provoke me, but he would never assault me.’
This, naturally, stung me, and further stirred up my furious shame and anger; although I believe Siuzan spoke carelessly, for the moment forgetting the reason I had been beheaded.
‘You should be more careful of him,’ I told her. But, in truth, I meant: you should be more careful of me. For, from the time I had first known her and day by day since then, I was finding it harder and harder to look upon her without instantly sinking into the imaginative rehearsal of erotic possibility. I pushed my stride out longer, walking so fast now as to be almost running, and I left her behind.
Can a man escape himself? Not merely by quickening his stride, alas.
We came to a bridge over a railway line. The steel rails were inset into a trench, ten metres below us, and we paused on the bridge to drink from our water bottles. The sun had swung through the sky. I could feel it on the backs of my shoulders. The covering of my neck stump was made of a plastic darker than skin-tone, and this had heated during my walk.
Gymnaste came and stood beside me. ‘If you’ll forgive me, Jon Cavala,’ he said gently. ‘You should not allow Mark Pol to make you angry. When he speaks, I beg of you: consider his words as nothing more than the whining of a mosquito.’
I was silent for a while, staring at the view with my artificial eyes. But Gymnaste’s words were kindly meant, so I said: ‘Thank you. I know, of course, that what you say is right.’
‘He cannot help himself, perhaps,’ Gymnaste said. ‘He must infuriate and madden those around him. It is a habit with him. Perhaps he feels he would expire were people not to direct their attention upon him.’
As we stood there a train passed under the bridge: a lengthy robot-driven goods train of perhaps a hundred metal cars. We all watched it approach, drawing closer and louder, until it rolled directly beneath us and conversation was swallowed by the whoop of steel on steel, the grinding, swaying chunter of the carriages. And then we turned about, and watched it recede again, the noise diminishing until once again we were left with pure silence, the sort that is so clear it rings bell-like inside you.
We walked on, and within two hours we reached the outskirts of a small town. A sign announced its name: Lacon. ‘We must find a place to stay for the night,’ said Siuzan Delage, and immediately she added, ‘Here,’ pointing to a one-storey wooden hostel set a little way back from the side of the road.
‘At the very first place we come to?’ I asked.
‘Do not forget our condition, for that declares our crimes to the world,’ said Mark Pol. ‘We will be lucky if they will give us a roof over our—over our heads I was going to say.’ He laughed. ‘But a roof at any rate, even though we have no heads that need housing. A place where we can curl up together.’ His torso was angled towards Siuzan when he said this last.
It occurred to me at that moment that I hated Mark Pol enough to want to kill him.
We walked up a short gravel path between two wide flower beds and up three steps onto a wooden terrace. Tables were arranged for diners, although none was occupied. ‘Stay here,’ said Siuzan. ‘I shall explain the circumstance to the owner.’
She went inside.
The three of us stood, headless and awkward, in silence. The late afternoon sunlight was bright upon the little terrace. The wooden lattice roof above us was wholly grown over with vines. Bunch after bunch of grapes hung down like dozens of irregular toy chandeliers. Between the grape clusters moth-shaped leaves plucked and stirred in the breeze.
‘Beautiful roses,’ said Mark Pol, gesturing with his right hand at the flower bed through which we had just walked. Of course he was unable simply to stand there in silence, as Gymnaste and I were doing. ‘My visual recognition software is of a higher quality than yours, Sieurs Cavala and Gymnaste, so I am able to appreciate the extraordinary delicacy and loveliness of the coloration. But perhaps even you can see how well-grown these flowers are, even though your prostheses are considerably inferior to mine.’
I looked at the roses. I looked at the little eye-shaped leaves on the stems, the luxuriant upholstery of their petals clustering around their buds. ‘They are pretty,’ I said.
Mark Pol angled his torso towards me to bring his stalk eyes more directly to bear upon me. He was intending, I am sure, to say something galling to me; but in this event he was interrupted by the hostel owner coming through the main door and onto the porch. ‘No,’ this fellow was saying. ‘I say it again, chère lady. You are welcome to any room you choose, but these lopped fellows cannot stay under my roof.’
‘I ask you to think again,’ said Siuzan. ‘I beg you, in piety and mercy.’
‘This is a respectable house,’ said the owner. ‘Lacon is a respectable town. No hotel will accommodate them. If they intend staying they should make their way, perhaps, to the church barracks behind the ammonia sink.’ He was pointing, but none of us followed the line of his arm with our eyes.
‘Please put your preconceptions aside,’ said Siuzan.
‘Chère lady, your business is your business. But I am surprised to see you walking the high road in the company of three such . . .’ He trailed off, looking at us with disgust.
‘I assure you,’ Mark Pol, said, with almost a giggle in his voice, ‘that you, sieur landlord, should not include me with these other two in your disdain.’
‘I know these men,’ said Siuzan in a placatory tone. ‘They have repented of their crimes. I trust them more readily than I would men I know with heads.’
The landlord was a small-framed, corpulent man with spiky black hair and a turf-like beard over his chin and neck. His dark eyes flicked from Siuzan to the three of us. ‘Your business is your business,’ he repeated.
‘And will you not give them shelter?’ Siuzan pressed.
‘Chère lady,’ he said. ‘They can, if they like, sleep in the yard at the back. That is more than many hostels would do, I assure you. If they are newly headless, as I see they are, then I’d recommend they reconcile themselves to their new circumstances - they will not be welcome in most respectable towns. They had better get used to sleeping outdoors and tucking themselves out of the sight and way of decent people.’
‘The yard at the back then,’ said Siuzan. ‘Thank you.’
‘Shall I prepare a room for you inside, chère lady?’
‘I shall stay in the yard at the back,’ said Siuzan. ‘With them.’
The hostel owner swallowed this information. He started speaking, and stopped in surprise. Then he said: ‘Your business is yours,’ one final time, before going inside again.’
That evening Siuzan joined us as we sat in the backyard of the café. Mark Pol began chittering and chattering again. His favoured topic was himself, and he liked to ponder aloud, making plans for his life. ‘We could leave the world altogether.’
‘That,’ I pointed out, ‘would require us to obtain passage on a spaceship. ’
‘Of course. But on other worlds the stigma of being headless might well be lessened. Or perhaps there would be no stigma at all. Perhaps we would be interesting curios, or objects of pity.’
‘This seems unlikely to me.’
‘How many worlds practise so severe a punishment? None but ours.’
‘I shall say prayers for all of us,’ said Siuzan, ‘after I have washed.’ She went into the hostel and returned a few minutes later with a bowl of wa
ter, which she placed on the floor. Then she pulled off her coat and crouched down to wash her hands and face. We all watched her, without moving. As she bent forward over the bowl, her shirt rode up a little way- no more than a hand’s width - at the base of her spine. Several of the knuckles of her spine were visible, and the taut skin stretched over them.
My breathing was very shallow. My male organ had become aroused.
This disgusted me, of course. I disgusted myself. But I could not remove my gaze from her back. I stared as a starving man stares at fresh food. I was furious with myself, simultaneously revolted and angry and yet excited, and though I rebuked myself internally yet I could not stop looking. I was visited with an urge to reach over and touch her, an urge so powerful it almost made me gasp. I held myself rigid. Only by doing so could I restrain my shameful desire.
