Land Of The Headless (GollanczF.)

by Adam Roberts

  ‘A popular fallacy,’ said Geza knowingly, ‘is still a fallacy, for all its popularity.’

  Everybody in the compartment was now paying close attention to this exchange. Some were laughing.

  So Syrophoenician, playing up to his crowd, adopted the tone of a popular preacher of the sort that is seen sometimes upon television. ‘My son, you stray from the truth. It is well known that God denied faster-than-light travel to the ungodly so that the colonisation of the universe might be accomplished by believers, whilst the unbelievers stagnate and remain in Mondial-Earth.’

  At first it seemed as if Geza, being made the laughter object by Syrophoenician’s extravagance, was going to refuse to answer. But he could not resist the provocation. ‘I concede,’ he said eventually, ‘that most of the colonised worlds are part of the congregation of the Book . . .’

  ‘. . . and worship the All’God . . .’

  ‘But there are secular worlds. Such places exist. Worlds colonised by the nonbelievers.’

  ‘Devil worlds!’ chuckled Syrophoenician. ‘And now I insist that you listen to the true history of space exploration.’ And here, despite interjections of protest from Geza, he related a cartoonish account of the first wave of settlers from the Mondial-Earth - all, he said, devout believers in the Book, fleeing the corruption and secularisation of a world gone to the bad, leaving behind an infuriated secular population prevented, by their lack of faith, from utilising God-particle drives.

  ‘No! No!’ Geza could not help himself. ‘God particle is only a manner of speaking - this particle is simply another elementary particle, like the others, except that it has certain unusual properties . . .’

  ‘The God particle,’ said Syrophoenician, holding up his hand, as if by simply restating the common name he was making an irrefutable point. ‘The God particle.’

  ‘We would better call it the gluonic photino - serious scientists do not refer to it as . . .’

  ‘I’d say,’ interrupted another soldier, whose name was Hoppier, ‘that you have lost the argument, Soldier Geza. Don’t be a carcass. Accept your defeat!’

  ‘You are arguing not against me,’ said Syrophoenician piously, ‘but against the All’God.’

  There was general laughter.

  Geza, puffing and clicking at his neck stump, moved across the floor away from the main group, and sat down next to me. I do not know why he chose me; perhaps my silence led him to believe that I did not share the mocking hostility of the others. In this he was half-right; for I felt neither hostility nor warmth towards him.

  He lectured me for a while, myself remaining unresponsive, about how, whilst the majority of settlers who left Mondial-Earth in the first wave of settlement belonged to the faith of the unified Book, many groups of settlers came from other faiths, and some from no faith at all. ‘It is peasantry, and ignorance, to believe, as this carcass does, that only believers can travel faster than light.’

  Something in his despairing outrage touched me. ‘Perhaps,’ I offered, ‘Syrophoenician does not truly believe so simplistic a thing.’

  Geza sat in silence for a while. ‘And he says so . . .?’

  ‘Perhaps from sheer delight in contention.’

  ‘But of course this,’ said Geza, in a bleaker voice, ‘makes me a double fool. Once for being bested by him in argument, and twice for falling for his raillery.’

  ‘You should not trespass upon your own self-esteem over so small a matter,’ I suggested.

  For a long time he was silent. There was a growl from all the walls of the thrust engines increasing their load, and then the floor angled by about five degrees, causing much slipping and staggering and accompanying merriment amongst the soldiers. The Heron was turning, the shift in its accelerated gravity revealing a last-minute adjustment.

  The floor straightened again.

  ‘Preparing to travel faster than light!’ somebody cried. ‘Have a care, Geza - you’d better firm up your faith, or we’ll leave you behind!’ Everybody laughed. Their laughter, it seemed to me, masked a nervousness. Few of this crowd had ever travelled through space before; nor had I myself. In the face of the unexpected we blustered.

  ‘The irony is,’ said Geza, angling his body towards me and speaking low, such that only I could hear, ‘is that I am a devout man, probably more so than soldier-carcass Syrophoenician over there. I attended the Masjid of Saint John, a famous school. I stayed there for three years after the end of my basic education, to learn more about the nature of the faith. And yet it offends me to hear science and religion muddied in this manner.’

  ‘Speaking purely for myself,’ I said, since it appeared that some response was required, ‘I would say . . .’

  I stopped. I had no idea what I was saying. For a moment I could not remember what we had been talking about, or even to whom I was speaking.

  ‘What was I saying?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the headless man sitting next to me. ‘What were we taking about?’

  ‘I am Jon Cavala,’ I said.

  ‘Geza,’ said the headless man.

  ‘Those individuals - headless, all,’ I said. ‘They were laughing. Were they not?’

  ‘We,’ said Geza, as the realisation dawned on him, ‘have just been projected through space faster than light.’

  But of course this was it. One cannot travel faster than light without also travelling, in effect, back in time; and the effect of this backward temporal motion, woven intimately with the relativist consequences of moving so rapidly, is that any journey, no matter how lengthy, takes literally no time at all. But it takes no time because it travels forwards and backwards in time at the same rate and at the same time - or more accurately, because time is simultaneously dilated forwards and reversed. And this in turn interferes with any mental processes that are tagged to time, such as memory. It is said that fleshly brains cope with the aporia better than individuals whose minds live inside mechanical devices. Computation inside an ordinator is literally parcelled out by timing devices, and these are muddled by such an experience.

  I do not know how much of my conversation with Geza was lost to my memory by the passage faster than light. Eventually the mind fills in the gaps, draws on long-term memory (it being less temporally marked), and a picture of the whole passage settles into a mental narrative. But in the immediate aftermath we were confused. The headless who had been laughing stopped in mid laugh, and looked around in puzzled surmise.

  ‘We have arrived,’ somebody said portentously.

  There was no announcement made, either before or after the faster-than-light passage. Why should headless be kept informed of what was going on? Nobody said, ‘We have arrived at the world of Athena, and will soon be entering orbit.’ I daresay that headed passengers were kept informed; but what point was there in talking to the headless?

  Time carried on. Some of the headless switched on the television inset in the wall of the quarters and watched various programmes. Others lay their truncated forms down and slept.

  As for me, I lived again the memories with an uncomfortable freshness, as they returned to me, of my betrayal of Siuzan Delage, the woman I loved - my stupidity and delay, offered two chances to save her with my confession and rejecting them both. I considered the fact that she was now certainly headless, and living a shamed life on Pluse. All this, with a little mental effort of recall, was still clear in my head. And recalling these things brought back some of the anguish I had felt before. Yet there had been a breach in the continuity of my emotions. Travelling faster than light had jarred the thread of my depression, perhaps had even broken it, even if only for a moment - and try as I might I could not gather it up again so as to experience it as I had before.

  Don’t misunderstand me: I felt no relief from my own shame, and I didn’t curse my stupidity any the less for poor Siuzan’s undeserved fate. But somehow my mood was less severe. I chatted with my comrade headless. I felt a curious feeling, close to elation, at the prospect of descending to the
surface of Athena, and facing battle for the first time. Perhaps this paints me in a fickle light. But I cannot, in a memoir dedicated to rigorous truthfulness, disguise the fact. Perhaps I was fickle in this matter.

  The first we, in our quarters, knew that the ship had gone into orbit about Athena was a change in the tone of the thrust engines, a slew of changes of direction in the arrow of our pseudo-gravity, and finally weightlessness.

  At first we soldiers mostly laughed and frolicked in the weightlessness. It seemed a fine sport; and, lacking inner ears, none of us felt in the slightest bit nauseous. But after a while it palled. This same lack of an inner ear meant that a headless man can orient himself in empty space only very poorly; we floated not like swimmers or ballet dancers, but as clumsy men, banging and knocking our bodies. Soon most of us had strapped ourselves down to our benches, and lay or sat sullenly, waiting for the next stage.

  Food and drink was delivered. The television, as our only mental distraction, remained continually switched on. People, imperfectly remembering their former friendships, chatted nervously. ‘Do you remember what the war is about?’ ‘Do you remember what the war is called?’ ‘Which side are we fighting on?’

  ‘It is called the Sugar War,’ said Geza.

  This prompted our memories. ‘Yes - that is it.’ ‘Yes of course.’ ‘I remember the name.’ And so on.

  I fingered my talisman; my blue knuckled stalk of plastic. It meant something to me, but for a moment I could not remember, exactly, what.

  Nine

  We had been dropped onto the world Black Athena. I did not discover, in my time there, whether the ‘Black’ was part of its official name, or was simply a nickname, or unofficial designator - for the world, such as I saw of it, was black indeed. In the night-time no stars were visible, and the world’s three moons were all so small as to be nothing more than sliding points of light, distinguishable from the lights of orbiting battlecraft only by the fact that they were a pale cream colour instead of the reds and mauves of the artificial lights. And in the daytime the sunlight barely penetrated. So much polarising agent had been pumped into the air - in the area of the battlefields at least - that a very little smoke blackened the air completely. Flares were often launched into the air, to provide light for assaults, but they merely added to the problem by contributing more smoke to the environment.

  Fighting in this medium was like fighting in a black fog, except that the polarising agent did not deaden sound. All the crashes, the violin screeches and high-pitched whistles, all the sub-base rumblings, all the screams and shouts of wounded and dying men - these remained egregiously audible throughout.

  We were shipped forward, and left in a warehouse building. A superior inspected us. He was wearing battledress: the rubbery-textured leggings and armings, the stiffer material of his torso guard, and a strange multiple-panelled helmet the design of which was new to me, with many baffle wedges and fins upon it, like a strangely petalled flower a metre high. His face - eyes, nose, mouth - poked from the midst of this protection through the triangular slot into which, in combat, a guard plate was slotted.

  ‘Headless,’ he said. ‘You will shortly be shuttled to the attack zone. Prepare yourself! Your training has brought you to this place - and glory and atonement wait those who fight bravely.’

  ‘Superior!’ we cheered.

  ‘You will be joining, and reinforcing, the Fortieth Troop of Doué Headless and the Seventh Troop of Didion Headless, so as to press again the attack. It is vital we take this objective.’

  We were given three bins of food, and left to our own devices. We slept. We were ordered up, and went outside to a dented and rather dirty transport, thrumming its engine impatiently in the darkness - it could have been the middle of the night, or perhaps the middle of the day. We bundled in.

  The ride was a bouncy one, and various strange sounds - clucks and knocks, keening noises and sudden bangs - were audible through the porthole-less walls. At the far end we were unloaded and hurried into a dirigible building, an oval-arching warehouse space. Here were the other troops of which the superior had spoken.

  They were in their battle armour, and were clutching their weapons, gathered in knots of two or three people about the place. We, the Thirtieth Troop of Cainon Headless, moved amongst them; but they seemed unexcited to see us. ‘Hello!’ I tried, settling myself on one man. ‘I am Jon Cavala, of the Thirtieth Troop of Cainon Headless.’

  ‘Harsent, of the Fortieth Troop of Doué Headless,’ he replied in a dull voice.

  ‘You have already been in battle?’

  ‘I have. I returned with my life, to spend an hour coughing my lungs free of the hardfoam - no pleasant business, I can tell you. Have you been in combat before?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘But you feel yourself well trained, and prepared?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Perhaps you are even excited?’

  ‘I am glad,’ I said, ‘to have finished training. I am eager to get past the war. I have business on Pluse to which I must return.’

  ‘You must not think me unfriendly,’ said this Harsent without pause. ‘I wish you luck in battle, and I hope you do not die. I hope, indeed, that you return to Pluse to complete your business. But I cannot befriend you.’

  ‘This is abruptly said,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Indeed. But if I befriend you and you are killed, as is more likely than not given your inexperience, then I suffer the pain of losing a friend. This I am disinclined to endure.’ He stood up, hoisted his snub-gun, and walked away.

  I made my way back to my own comrades, and found Syrophoenician complaining of the inhospitality of these troops. ‘It approaches treason, in my opinion. My friendly advance was rejected imperiously.’

  ‘The same has happened to me,’ I said.

  ‘Leave them be,’ suggested Geza.

  We newcomers sat in a ring, talking intermittently, and sometimes stopping to listen to one or other sound effect - a whizz, a bang, a drumroll, or the interspersed silences which assumed the palpable intensity of anticipation in this context. Below all these noises there was a strange throbbing almost-sound, an ultra-low base note that swelled and receded, but which never departed.

  Within the hour three superiors entered. We stood to attention in a dozen rows. All three of them were wearing the strangely finned and petalled helmets.

  ‘Troops!’ said the first superior. ‘The assault will take place in one hour. Fortieth and Seventh, to you I say: with the new reinforcements of the Thirtieth Troop of Cainon Headless we will press again at the salient and be successful.’

  We - the Thirtieth - cheered ‘Superior!’ in unison. The soldiers from the other troops did not speak; although they were standing smartly enough at attention.

  ‘To you,’ said the superior, turning in our direction, ‘I shall say what the Fortieth and Seventh already know. It is usual in battle for headless troops to be commanded by superiors. For strategic reasons, this is not possible in the current assault. Accordingly, your battlefield commander will be Aolis of the Fortieth. He has your orders, and you must follow him unthinkingly.’

  A headless stepped forward. He marched over to us, and spoke. His words emerged slightly doubled, once in muffled form from beneath his torso armour, and once from an amplifier set upon his neck stump. I assumed that this was so we could hear his commands clearly.

  The superiors were leaving, walking with loose strides towards the entrance. ‘Salute the superiors!’ shouted Aolis.

  ‘Superiors!’ we yelled.

  They did not look round as they exited.

  ‘Very well,’ said Aolis to us. ‘You may as well sit yourselves. I will attempt to prepare you for what is to come.’

  We arranged ourselves in rows, sitting cross-legged. Aolis stood. His torso armour, I could see, was banded with gold stripes, to identify him as our point of command in the murk outside.

  He began without preliminary and spoke without force or emphasis, a
s if reciting words from rote. ‘Are you trained in specific weapons, or are all trained in all?’

  None of us answered, since he had not addressed any of us in person. ‘You,’ he said, pointing to somebody in the front row - Garten, as it happened.

  ‘All are trained in all, Superior,’ Garten replied. ‘Though some have been given software augmentations for sniper work.’

  ‘Do not call me “Superior”,’ he said blandly. ‘I am no superior, but a battlefield officer and nothing more.’

  ‘Then what should be call you?’

  ‘You should call me Aolis.’

  It seemed, to me, strangely indecent for a subaltern to address a person in authority baldly by their name. But this was what was ordered, and this is what we did.