by Adam Roberts
‘You must have seen that there was only a ladle’s worth of soup left in the bin. Why did you not take half a ladle, and leave me some?’
‘Everybody else had a full ladle,’ Bil Costra objected. ‘Why should I have less?’
‘Why should I?’
‘You were behind me in the queue.’
‘We drew no lots,’ said Garten. ‘My position as last was not fairly chosen.’
‘We did not know, ahead of time,’ Bil Costra pointed out, ‘that one must go without.’
‘There was no need for me to go without,’ retorted Garten, ‘if all of you had not been so greedy - a spoonful less for you, each, and my belly would be full now!’
Tempers were clearly fraying.
‘Friend,’ said Syrophoenician, attempting to make peace. ‘We all regret your position.’
‘Regret is facile on a full stomach,’ snapped Garten.
‘At the least you may scrape the remnants from inside the bin,’ I offered.
‘Oh, scrapings,’ said Garten, hissing sarcastically. ‘Why thank you sieur, and thank you.’
Nevertheless, of course, he stepped over to the automated bin to salvage what he could. He put the ladle in its slot and attempted to open the lid; but it had sealed itself, as presumably it was programmed to do when empty. This was too much for Garten. ‘By all that is holy in this world . . .’ he shouted, striking the top of the bin with his fist.
So it was that we discovered the nature of the sonostat response. All of us fell directly to the floor, as if choreographed to fall in perfect unity. The pain was not so intense as it had been on the parade ground - I say so in retrospect, but at the time I was consumed by the sharp agony of it; it dazzled and sparked along every one of my nerves. It drove my limbs apart, and it forced a howl through the flute pipe of my neck.
This, indeed, was the worst of it; for as long as we howled, so long did the truncheon-like sonostat effect continue. To begin with this was a matter of sheer and agonised astonishment - amazement at the whole-ness and utter penetration of the pain, and amazement that it did not come to an end. These varieties of amazement are, I suppose, actually the same; any pain we experience bewilders us in duration simply by virtue of the fact that it has dared trespass into our bodies at all.
It is also true what they say: that pain stretches time. One flayed-out second gave way to a second, and then a third - for there was a clock fixed above the door, that we might know the time to reveille and sundry other duties, and from where I lay on my back it fell within my field of vision. The second number shimmered from five to blankness, and then shimmered back into existence as a six, and at all times my nerves body screeched like fingernails drawn down a blackboard, and burnt like scalding acid was running along its veins.
One of us (afterwards we discovered it was Geza) mastered himself sufficiently to shout, ‘We must all - be quiet - to stop this pain—’
Several of us stifled our screams. I fought mine down. But three or four continued to whistle and pipe mindlessly.
‘Stop-the-screaming-’ cried Geza, ‘and-the-pain-will—’
One by one the screaming people quietened; several by smothering their neck-stump valves with both hands. The last person gulped in, sucked a long breath, and instantly the pain ended.
Precious seconds. Then one of the headless belched and vomited out his potage upon the floor, and, like an aftershock, a glass fragment of pain cut lengthways through our bodies again. The vomiting did not last long, and soon all was quiet.
Shivering, moaning only in whispers, we picked ourselves up by ones and twos. I gathered myself, and moved on jellied legs to my bed, upon which I collapsed. Then, desperate not even to breathe too loudly, I lay until the last memory of the actual pain had drained from my body.
Syrophoenician had taken the bed next to mine, and he reached it by crawling and pulling himself up. But not even an experience as severe as this could silence him for very long. ‘As a regular soldier I was never treated so cruelly,’ he whispered. ‘The officers respected us as warriors. And when a man had to be punished - I never was, but sometimes a man would be - he would be beaten a wooden staff. A proper punishment which, though painful, was not undignified. But this - this is infinitely worse.’
‘Or better,’ I said. ‘For although it is unpleasant, this pain does not damage our bodies at all.’
‘I suppose not,’ said Syrophoenician. ‘It’s all in the mind, as the phrase goes, except for us the phrase is a literal truth. ‘Course, it feels very much as if it were all in the body. It feels so very much like that.’
I could not disagree. Soon after that the lights went out.
I was in no mind to sleep, and neither, I think, was anybody else. All of us revolved our new fate in our minds, pondering with what fortitude, or with what desperation, we might face it in the months to come. All save me: for the thought that was most insistently in my mind was how glad I was to be leaving this place very soon. I pitied these men that they faced years of this treatment. Death, even a shameful death such as the one I faced, was better.
‘I will tell you,’ Syrophoenician whispered to me, ‘what I miss most now that I am a headless man. It is the sense of smell. I had a very keenly developed sense of smell when I was headed. The aroma of a rose, or a desert lily. Stone-filtered coffee when it is fresh in the cup. The smell from grass when it has been cut and watered.’
‘My own sense of smell,’ I returned, ‘was never well developed.’
‘But how deprived you were! Without a fine sense of smell there is no fully developed sense of taste, and the best foods are—’
‘Be quiet,’ hissed the person at the next bunk along. ‘With your talk of fine smells and delicious flavour - what do you do, except torment a room of people who are deprived these things for ever?’
There were murmurs of agreement, which ceased abruptly as the murmurers became, all together, fearful of raising the volume too high.
After a pause I said, ‘It is possible to purchase smell receptors, as prostheses. Our ordinators are perfectly capable of processing the sense data of smell, I assume. And even, I suppose, of taste.’
‘Hoo hoo,’ whispered Syrophoenician, as if amused. ‘And are you so wealthy, as to be able to afford these things, Sieur Cavala? The wealthy do not often end up in the army. How did this come about, that you are now a soldier?’
‘My personal history,’ I replied, after a pause, ‘is complicated.’
‘It seems we have a wealthy man amongst us!’ whispered Syrophoenician to the room. ‘Sshhh!’ returned somebody out of the darkness.
‘I am as poor as anybody here,’ I said. ‘My purse is underneath my pillow - shall I show you how many coins it contains?’
‘Oh a totale or two, I’m sure,’ said Syrophoenician. ‘I don’t doubt that you’ve lost much of your former wealth when you lost your head. But you were wealthy . . .?’
‘I,’ I said, shortly, ‘was a poet.’
‘A fine profession. And not one that tends to hurt the back with heavy lifting, or blister the hands with harsh use. A poet, were you?’
In the bed on the other side of me was Geza, who broke in now with a carefully hissed: ‘I used to read poetry.’
‘Another wealthy man,’ said Syrophoenician, amused.
‘By no means. I was an accountant. But sometimes I would read poetry. Your name?’
‘Jon Cavala.’
‘I have never heard of you.’
‘My fame was, perhaps, limited.’
‘Speak one of your poems, Sieur Cavala,’ urged Syrophoenician. ‘Only whisper it, lest your words be words of fire to us!’
I was silent for a while. ‘I am not convinced that you truly wish to hear my poetry.’
‘Come now,’ said Syrophoenician. ‘Don’t be coy. That is unbecoming.’
And so, whispering the words through my speakers, I spoke:It’s good you’ve learned to smile
And no one looks for traces
&nbs
p; Of tears about your eyes:
Your face is like most faces.
It’s good you’ve learned to smile.
There was a silence. ‘Is that all?’ said Syrophoenician. ‘That is barely enough poem to fit inside a ring.’
‘It is brief,’ I agreed.
‘Do you catch my meaning?’ said Syrophoenician eagerly. ‘I meant, as it might be, to write a charm inside a wedding ring, such as my love my life.’
‘My poems were mostly brief,’ I said. ‘If you want an epic you must go to another poet.’
‘If you whispering sieurs will quieten yourselves,’ said Geza, turning on his side, ‘I would like to sleep now.’
We all slept. Then, all at once, we were all woken.
I was startled into a terrible wakefulness by the sensation of clenching pain up and down in body. Everybody was awake at once.
There was a greater degree of self-control about the group on this occasion; we stifled our cries, and blocked the more involuntary hooting from our neck pipes caused by spasming chests and lungs. Very soon the pain passed, but we were all sharply awake now.
Afterwards, clustering together in a group and exchanging angrily whispered words, we agreed that one of us had cried out in his sleep, moved unconsciously by some nightmare or provoking dream. Yet no one would admit to being this person; either concealing the truth for fear of reprisal, or else perhaps genuinely unaware that they had been the one.
‘If I had a head,’ hissed Geza, ‘I would tie a scarf tightly around my chin to hold my mouth shut and prevent myself from barking out in my sleep.’
‘Yet there is no equivalent for the headless,’ said somebody else.
We returned to our separate beds; but it was very hard to fall asleep after that.
Three
There is no need for me to delay this narrative excessively with accounts of military training. That is not my purpose. This is not, properly speaking, my story after all: it is Siuzan Delage’s, of the dreadful thing she had suffered and the more dreadful danger that we three, through our selfishness, had placed her in. It is about my resolution to make atonement to her for those things.
Indeed, as I stood at attention beside my bed in the morning, I did not expect to spend another night in the barracks. A police cell, I resolved, was infinitely to be preferred.
A superior inspected us. ‘First, breakfast. Then you will form up on the—what? What is this?’ He was standing by the spatulate spread of vomit upon the floor. ‘What stink is this?’
None of us wished to be the one to answer the superior’s angry question.
‘You,’ he bellowed, pointing his truncheon at me.
‘It is vomit, Superior.’
‘Is it yours?’
‘By no means.’
‘You revolting pigs,’ he cried, swivelling on his heel so that the truncheon, like the barrel of a gun, swept past us all. ‘You disgusting dogs! You think that because you can’t smell the rest of us are prepared to sniff up your stink? Why did you not clear up this disgusting mess?’
None of us replied.
‘One of you,’ he screeched, ‘will reply to my question, or I will give all of you’re a taste of the truncheon.’
‘We had no cleaning materials, Superior,’ said Bil Costra.
The superior clacked across the floor to Bil. ‘None? No mops, no buckets, no water, no detergents?’
‘No,’ said Bil, in a nerve-charged voice, ‘Superior. There is only the toilet, and in that room there is not even a sink.’
‘You have,’ asked the superior levelly, ‘hands?’
‘Of course, Superior.’
‘You were beheaded, not behanded?’
‘Yes, Superior.’
‘Then use your hands. You! You! You!’ (singling out three at random), ‘scoop up every peck of that vomit, take it round the back of the building and rub it into the dirt. Now!’ With three little nervous hops the three chosen men scurried to the mess, wiped and scooped it up in their hands, and hurried outside. Whilst this was going on, the superior marched down the aisle between the bunks. ‘Whose was it?’ he asked.
Nobody spoke.
‘You think, perhaps, you are protecting one another. But this is to misunderstand the logic of your situation. If the vomiter does not make himself known, then I shall punish you all with the truncheon. If he does not make himself known after that punishment, I shall do it once more. And if this does not prompt him to come forward I shall do it again—’
‘It was I, Superior,’ said a headless.
The Superior walked over to him. ‘Your name?’
‘Steelhand, Superior.’
There was a moment of silence. Then the three headless came trotting back in from outside.
The officer raised his truncheon, and tapped Steelhand’s shoulder with it. The headless man flinched. But the superior did not flick its switch, and instead he hooked it back onto his belt and stepped back. ‘You must learn to control yourself, Steelhand,’ he said. ‘You three, back to your position.’
The three stood by their beds. Two of them were rubbing their dirtied hands against the fabric of their meadhres.
‘In a short while,’ the superior announced, ‘the breakfast bin will roll through. After breakfast you will assemble upon the parade ground.’
I spoke up. This took, perhaps you can believe, considerable courage on my part. The memory of the pain from the truncheon was in my bones and muscles as well as my mind. Yet, I told myself, I must go through with it.
‘Superior!’ I said.
The stillness in the barrack was so complete that the mumbling of Garten’s empty belly sounded like a drumroll.
The superior stomped over to me. ‘What?’
‘I have something to report, Superior.’
He peered at me, leaning forward a little. I could see his hand reaching down to where the truncheon was dangling from his belt. I could even see the little circular button, on the flat end of the handle, which, I presumed, triggered the response. My heart was trilling. I felt an urge, almost impossible to squash down, to start running and run as far as fast as I could.
‘Report?’ he said.
‘Superior, I must speak to the Magister,’ I said. ‘There is a vital matter I must report to him.’
This provoked a laugh from the officer, a series of little nasal snickery sounds. Indeed, he was so amused that he took his thumb away from his truncheon. ‘The Magister, is it?’ he said. ‘Why, certainly not. Most certainly not. The Magister of this camp would not waste his time speaking to me. What chance is there of him talking to a carcass such as you?’
‘Then a captain, Superior,’ I said. ‘I beg of you.’
I could see that my attitude puzzled him. He fingered the truncheon again. Perhaps he was telling himself that since I had experienced its effects more than once I could surely not be engaging in a deliberate levity or insubordination.
‘Report to me, soldier,’ he said. ‘I am your superior.’
This was the hardest moment of all. Even after only one day, my treatment had gone a long way towards conditioning me to obey without question. Yet I felt I needed to speak to a higher ranking officer.
‘Superior,’ I said, ‘if you order me to report, I will. But I believe your captain will want to hear my report himself, and not at second hand.’
The superior glowered at me. ‘This is,’ he said, ‘a serious matter?’
‘The most serious, Superior.’
‘Concerning this camp? You should report any matters to do with the camp to a superior.’
‘Not camp, Superior.’
‘Then what is it?’
Again I hesitated. ‘I could tell you, Superior,’ I said. ‘But all I say is that it may be the case that your captain would prefer that I report it directly to him.’
The superior pondered this for a long time, evidently debating within himself whether he could afford to ignore what I was saying. Presumably he decided that he could not. ‘Carcas
s,’ he said, in a slightly distant voice, as if going through the motions of warning me, ‘if you are wasting the army’s time, the army will not be pleased.’
‘Superior !’
He turned and marched out of the barracks, and I, feeling trepidation even at so minimal an act of personal decision-making, fell into step behind him. We passed across the parade ground, round a wide, single-storey and windowless building, and finally across a lawn of what appeared to my eyes to be blue grass. The building on the far side, towards which we walked, was pilastered and painted white - of a different sort to the others in the camp: three storeys, windows shining in the morning sun, a Pluse pennant - as long as the building - slinking and undulating effortlessly in the wind.
