Polystom (20 page)

The transition from one-world to six-world Realm happened with an extraordinary smoothness. Indeed, the sixty years or so that elapsed between the first settlers arriving on the Kaspian moon and the ratification of the Protocols of Principality as governing fully six inhabited and commissioned worlds with three attendant inhabited moons saw only two events that could in any manner be described as ‘disruptions’. The first of these was the unpleasantness that occurred on the Southern Continent of Bohemia, when a population of masterless and vagrant servants attempted to set up a secessionist stateling, and it proved necessary to apply military force. But in actuality the whole of this campaign lasted no more than three months, with another
year or so for mopping up stragglers and resistance in the mountainous territory around the frozen high-altitude lake of Gauldas. Moreover, the greater proportion of casualties was on the side of the secessionists. Reputable historians deal with the whole sorry affair in a few sentences, and pass on to more important subjects.

The second, and far more significant ‘event’ marking the transition from one world to six was not, in fact, an event at all, but rather a smooth and largely painless transition from one manner of constitution to another. One of the things that made it painless was the fact that the ruling Dynasty had ruled the world of Kaspian for less than a century before humanity moved up into the sky. So, without bloodshed or war, the six worlds evolved six separate characters, distinct cultures, and their own local centres of authority – necessarily so, of course. The notion that they were all centrally ruled from Kaspian was little more than a polite fiction, although a fiction all parties piously followed. Fact, however, presented itself as five Princes, not necessarily of the Royal Blood Direct (although, of course, all of good breeding), declaring nominal affiliation to the monarch on Kaspian but actually ruling their various worlds after their own pleasure. From this it was a short step to the monarchy of the original world itself coming to refer to itself as a ‘kingdom’ and adopting the title ‘Prince’ (or, as it might rarely be, ‘Princess’) of Kaspian. So for a while six Princes governed as one, and the paraphernalia of joint rule – royal council, a senate, stewards beneath them to undertake the less ceremonial aspects of rule – came into being, almost of its own accord. Three hundred years of peaceful, slow growth testified to the stability of this System, and time’s slow mutations continued until we arrive at the constitutional situation now prevailing. Of the six Princes only one remains, and the Stewards (who had been de facto rulers for some time) are responsible directly to him. And the source of the greatest pride for Polystom, as he grew up
and was educated in the glorious history of his System, was that ‘rule’ involved so little actuality. The machine ran so smoothly, he was taught, so evenly, so perfectly harmonious was the social sculpture that ‘governance’ could be enacted with the lightest and most occasional hands upon the tiller.

The single focus of social disturbance, in these latter days, was the Mudworld. The war there had begun before Polystom’s birth. The fern-covered hills and blue-green marshy lowlands of Aelop were almost entirely gone by the time he reached maturity.

There was a mysterious aspect to the war. Polystom had realised, growing up, that it was one of the things polite conversation abhorred. The newsbooks, weekly or monthly, were full of reports from the fighting, of course: so much so that the names of the geographical features of the place (the Western Mire, bordered by the Lesser and Greater Broken Headlands, the Dash, Slops) acquired the familiarity of famous writers or operatic singers. People mentioned it, but nobody
discussed
it, nobody really
talked
about it. Questions from the boyish Polystom would be blocked with a polite ‘and what an inquisitive little thing he is!’ His father would look pained if pressed on this issue; his co-father would be more direct and straight out rebuke him for asking something so indelicate. Even his uncle Cleonicles was strangely reticent – strangely for him, because more usually he delighted in explanations and discussion. Polystom, not one to persevere at anything too disagreeable, soon gave up the issue. There were many things it was not possible to discuss.

Once the little planet had been called Aelop: a steamy, marshy little world whose aboriginal life had been ferns and grasses, a large family of fat, semiaquatic cow-like beasts and innumerable insects. It had been settled; the cows had been farmed; peat had been dug out for its rich deposits and as fuel; estates had been established. Dwellers in the outer planets, where the air was cool in summer and frosty in
winter, took to holidaying on Aelop, for the novelty of it. Pleasure palaces had been built overlooking the small seas of the place. That was the past.
Now
the whole geography of the place had been transformed by war. At some stage, clearly, things had changed. Polystom assumed, without really thinking about it, that the servants had behaved badly in some way. The proper population of Aelop had presumably been small; few people of breeding could possibly enjoy such heat all year round. But a large population of servants must have been required, tending the swamp cows, digging, as well as serving their masters. Maybe this imbalance had been dangerous. But Polystom didn’t pursue the line. If it had been an ‘insurrection’, it was beyond deduction why it had gone on so long. Any insurrection would be put down in months as a matter of course. Perhaps it was something else, although what else eluded him. All he knew was that many men flew to that world to fight there; that many glorious reputations for bravery and strength were made there; and that some died.

Polystom’s first reaction upon hearing of Cleonicles’ death was a calm one. ‘Dead,’ he had repeated, and then turned his whole body through ninety degrees, facing himself deliberately away from the servant who had brought him the news. ‘Dead.’ As if saying the word would act as the open-sesame for his emotions.

Nothing. There was a space where his reaction should have been, almost as if marked out in his mind, like a chalk sketch on a wall made by an artist before he filled in the design with colour and shading. But nothing more.

‘Murdered,’ said the servant. ‘Assassinated. It was three men, they say. Shot him with a firearm.’

‘Dead,’ said Polystom a third time, still trying the word on for size.

‘They killed his butler too. But they didn’t kill anybody else on the estate. The militia is all over the moon, now,
of course. Extra troops have been sent from Kaspian, they say.’

Polystom looked at the servant. He had come directly from the moon. He was one of Cleonicles’ own servants, travelling with the postal balloon-boat. He was carrying a letter: Stom assumed it was an official account of the death, written perhaps by one of his uncle’s estate managers, but Stom didn’t take the letter. ‘Assassinated,’ he said, and then again with an upward intonation. ‘Assassinated? By whom?’

‘Three men,’ said the messenger again. ‘They were seen loitering about on the estate earlier that day.’

‘Who were they? I mean, where were they from?’

‘Not from the moon, sir. All the estates have counted heads, and nobody is out of place. They must have come from offworld, sir.’

‘Offworld?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘What do you mean, offworld?’

‘Nobody knows, sir. Only they weren’t servants from the moon, sir.’

‘Were they servants at all?’

‘Masterless men, sir,’ said the messenger, gabbling the words in the horror of them. ‘Vagrants, is what people are saying. They looked dirty and disreputable.’

The whole thing had an unreal timbre. Perhaps that was why, Stom thought to himself, he couldn’t register the sorrow of his uncle’s death. He couldn’t quite believe that the old man wasn’t breathing any more. ‘This doesn’t make sense,’ he said. ‘Vagrants? How could vagrants have come to the moon from another world? Vagrants don’t buy tickets to travel by balloon-boat.’

‘They weren’t off any balloon-boat, sir,’ said the messenger. ‘Nor any plane. That’s all been checked . . . the first thing that was checked.’

‘So how did they come from offworld?’

‘A skywhal beached itself in your uncle’s estate that same day, sir. We all saw it. And they say that three figures leapt off it when it was still in the sky, and floated to the ground by parachute. That’s what they say, sir, though I never saw it with my own eyes.’

It was clearly all a joke. In poor taste, but it was surely too ridiculous to be serious. ‘And you say,’ Stom repeated, ‘that my uncle is dead?’

‘Yes, sir. Dead, sir.’

The messenger had a coldsore on his lower lip, towards the left: the scab of dried blood was perfectly oval, flat, like a ruby planed and buffed and fitted into the skin. It was fascinating. Polystom couldn’t stop looking at it. It was simultaneously revolting and oddly ornamental.

He felt like laughing. The hilarity bubbled up out of him like champagne bubbles in a flute-glass. But a gentleman did not laugh. It was an ill-bred thing to do. He turned another ninety degrees, so that his back was now to the messenger.

‘Thank you,’ he said, keeping his voice steady with some effort. ‘That’s all. If you go down to the kitchens, they’ll find some food for you.’

‘I’ve a letter for you too, sir,’ said the messenger in a wretched voice.

‘Leave it on the side there,’ said Stom. ‘I’ll see to that later.’ He didn’t feel like laughing any more.

His nails needed paring. Usually he had one of his servants attend to them whilst he listened to music. But he felt like doing them himself. He went upstairs to his own bedroom, and through to his annexe bathroom. There he sat down on the edge of the bath, and brought out the nail scissors from their ledge. The left hand was easily trimmed; little finger first, curving the scissors in a tight arc as he cut, cutting away a crescent moon. The ring finger, releasing another splinter of cut nail like a discarded shirt collar in miniature. The middle finger, cutting off a lopsided shred,
and then cutting again to balance out the shape of it. The pointing finger, cutting the nail away, and then using the blunt side of the scissor blade to push back the encroaching skin from the bed of the nail, tidying it up, like pushing down the earth around a newly-bedded plant. Finally the thumb, a different shape altogether, a flatter curve, that Stom cut straight across and then cut the corners off of. Transferring the scissors to the left hand and starting to cut the nails of the right-hand fingers was trickier. The coordination did not come naturally. The little finger. The ring finger, where the pink nail displayed a curious little splash of darker pink within, like a fly squashed and trapped in amber. The middle finger, where the nail, uniquely, sported miniature corrugations from left to right. Pointing finger. Thumb. He was finished. The floor was scattered with the splinters of his cut nails, like broken frosted glass.

Polystom got to his feet. His uncle was dead. Surely he should be upset? No more trips to visit him on the moon. No more conversations with him about science. Why didn’t he feel anything?

He contemplated the situation. In four years he had lost his father, his co-father, his wife and now his uncle. This was surely a great loss, a kind of tragedy. Wasn’t it? This accumulation of grief.

But there was nothing. He took some food, and felt the savour of the food and the intoxication of the wine, but nothing more. He received reports from subsequent messengers, and later in the day a great-aunt came to stay for a week. The two of them discussed how terrible it was, but Stom’s concerned face and woodpecker tut-tutting were acts, carefully performed to catch the appropriate degree of grief. The days went by, and the weeks, and there was no grief in his heart for his dead uncle. The sadness refused to grow.

He watched his great-aunt weeping, discreetly, into a gold-embroidered Kaspian-silk Sagé handkerchief. Her
tears were like little hiccoughs. But he couldn’t imitate the crying.

He discovered, by accident, ten days later, the letter that the first messenger had been bringing, where it had been tidied with other mail. Most of this pile consisted of condolences, families striving discreetly to out-do one another with the opulence of their crested paper, some sheets as thick as cotton. In amongst them Polystom discovered his uncle’s handwriting, and he held the slender envelope up with a sudden, fierce joy. Some part of him thought that this sheet would be the tocsin to bring out tears. He thought: Cleonicles must have written this letter shortly before he died. Reading it will be like hearing him speak again, from beyond the grave, for one last time. Surely it will move me, and make me cry? There was something grisly about the eagerness with which he ripped the envelope:

My dear Polystom. Wonderful to see you again, naturally. I hope your nightmares ease themselves. I repeat what I told you; from the vantage point of science nightmares are a natural phenomenon, a way in which the brain purges itself of negative energy. In time they will subside. And I urge you, my dear boy, to consider remarrying. The time has come for it, I sincerely believe
.

Nothing. No emotional response at all, except for a faint, and under the circumstances wholly irrelevant, flutter of irritation that the old boy was still meddling in his personal life. He read on: Cleonicles’ personal version of the dead skywhal, the beast that had been freighted with his own death.

I’m having the carcass carried ashore where we will – somehow! – improvise an embalming strategy. Then I’ll be able to study it at my leisure. You must come again, my dear boy, and examine it for yourself!

Nothing at all. The mind of Polystom noted the small ironies in the words, and even the spookiness in receiving an invitation from a dead man. He was able to read the letter as a reader of poetry might, the hulking carcass as a metaphor for the old man’s own death – a mighty creature fallen from high, his flesh raked, turned into so much meat to be manufactured into remembrance. But none of this moved him. Other things did: Phanicles’
Rhum Elegies
still tickled his eyeballs with tears. Listening to beautiful music did it too. He still had the capacity for feeling. It simply didn’t assert itself over his uncle’s death.