Polystom (30 page)

The last thing, the very last thing, he wanted to do in the remnants of the afternoon was to step out again onto the battlefield. He felt sick at the very thought. He felt tired, a sweeping tiredness that came down on his head like a hammer blow. He would curl up in his bunk and sleep; he would sleep all the way through to the next day, and then everything would be finished – the hogsback would be taken, and he could take the next balloon-boat away from the world. He would go home.

He leaned back in his chair.

‘Helloë,’ said Stet, from the door. ‘Was that a command orderly I saw coming and going? Have we orders?’

Polystom stared at him. He wanted to deny that he had received any orders. He knew, in the honeycombed centre of his bones, that he could never fight again. He just couldn’t.

‘And these,’ said Stet, stepping inside the digs, with what struck Polystom as a near-obscene jauntiness, ‘must be they. Shouldn’t leave them lying around on the table, sir.’ He fished up the sheet of paper and read it.

Look
, Polystom wanted to say.
Can’t we just forget we received this?
But his mouth felt gummed up.
It’s clearly a mistake. Look, I’ll send to Command for clarification. Can’t we wait? Can’t I
. . .
can’t I go home now?

‘Right ho,’ said Stet, beaming. ‘Ho ha hum. I’ll get the men organised.’

I won’t be going with you this time, Lieutenant
.

‘The men,’ said Polystom.

‘Sir?’

‘Casualties were . . .?’

‘Nineteen dead, sir. Five injured. Another half dozen minor injuries, but they’ll be alright to fight again.’

‘Lieutenant,’ said Stom, slowly. His brain didn’t seem able to process the words properly. ‘Lieutenant . . .’

‘Sir?’

‘Lieutenant Sof was . . . injured, I think.’

‘Oh I
know
sir,’ said Stet, with a broad smile. ‘I saw him trotting up-trench to get it fixed. Quite a hole, that. Quite a beauty spot, it’ll make. There,’ he said, angling his head. ‘There they go.’ Polystom could hear the drone of planes overhead. He found himself on his feet without quite instructing his muscles to stand up.
That’s not half an hour! That can’t have been half an hour!

‘I’ll whip the men up,’ said Stet, and slipped easily through the doorway.

Polystom was planning his excuses as he stepped into the trench outside. He felt dazed. There were flickers of light passing in front of his eyes, perfectly transparent globular blotches, like a magnified image of unicellular life, drifting across his line of sight. Like clouds. He had injured his head. He had been blown up, and needed medical attention.

He had changed into his regular jacket and trousers. They were mud-free.

The noise of the bombing died away, as it had done earlier that day, and lieutenants up and down the line shouted the order to advance. Once again, soldiers scrambled over the lips of the trenches and out of the dugouts, and started across the broken ground. Polystom stood motionless in the bottom of the trench, until a passing soldier – one of his own, or another platoon, he didn’t know – slapped his shoulder. ‘Need a hand up, sir?’ And then, like a triggered clockwork toy, he sleepwalked up the steps and out into the exposed territory.

What are you doing? Go back! But there seemed some disconnection between brain and muscles, because he was trudging forward through the mud as before, the sweat was oozing into his eyes as before, and at any moment he
expected the explosions to begin, the men to start falling all around him, the concussion to strike him, the metal scraps to come hurtling towards him. He plodded on.

Stupidly, he realised that he hadn’t brought his revolver with him. He had had one before, he knew, but he’d dropped it somewhere in the mud. Perhaps it was around here somewhere? Without breaking his stride he started scanning the ground about him. Dead men were inserted into the mud like static swimmers in the static sea: arms propping out, faces, backs, legs at queer angles. A clay-smeared man caught in the middle of some balletic pose, body twisted like the letter M. A leg lay, severed, by itself. Here was a face, a framed oval in the mud with nothing else around it to indicate head or body: like a discarded mask. There was a hand reaching out of the ground, its fingers curled into a miniature model of a winter tree.

You ought to, said his inner voice. You ought to have a weapon, you know.

Who could he send back for his pistol?

But looking around, everybody was so intent on marching onwards. The land was more uphill now, and the going tougher. He didn’t feel he could interrupt anybody’s procession. Perhaps it didn’t matter.

Perhaps nothing mattered. Every second was the last second of his life. He marched on and on, and he knew with every step that he pulled out of the mud that he would never plant that foot. Never lean into it, drawing the other foot out with a squelch. Never swing that forward, and plant it in its turn. And then, the slightest pressure on his shoulder, and it was Stetrus, beaming at him.

‘How focused you look sir!’ he said. ‘Well, you can stop now, sir. We’re here.’

Polystom assumed the bombing had been more effective than the first time, and that all the defenders had been eliminated. Stet was of the opinion that the enemy had
simply pulled back. ‘Their heavy ordnance has vanished,’ he pointed out. ‘I think they’ve scarpered.’ Either way, the elation at obtaining their objective lifted Polystom’s spirits. He felt absurdly, ridiculously happy. He danced, as well as he could, in the mud, lifting each clay-weighted boot with ponderous grace and dancing about.

‘Best not let the men see you do that,’ said Stet, from behind him. ‘Shall we dig in, sir?’

‘What?’

‘Dig our position in, sir? I’ll tell the men to get going on the digging straight away. Until we receive further orders, you know.’

Polystom stood, grinning, dazed.

‘Best get to it, I’d say, sir,’ Stet went on. ‘The sun’s hot. Ordnance has softened this mud up some, but it’ll dry out hard as stone quick enough. Assuming there’s no rain.’ He went off.

Polystom looked up at the beautiful blue-mauve sky, at the glorious hot sun. Life! The men were standing around, their rifles across their shoulders, running up into the sky like horns. The lieutenants were going amongst them, barking at them. Shovels were being unpacked, men were leaning into their work, heaving dirt aside.

Polystom sat himself down on the lip of a larger crater, and reached into his breast for his whisky flask. Only when he’d twisted off the cap and lifted it to his mouth did he remember that it was empty.

There was a dead body, half buried in the mud, inches from his hip.

Polystom carefully rescrewed the cap and put the flask away. Then he leant forward a little. The dead body might have been naked, might have been in full dress uniform, it was so caked in mud it was hard to tell. Only its left hand was clear of dirt; that, and its cheek. The top of its head was missing. Its legs were buried in the earth, its torso lying along the contour of the crater, one arm lying forward
alongside its face. It looked like it was sleeping, except that its head ended in a shear-line of red. The insides of the cavity were filled with mud also. What most caught Polystom’s eye was the quality of the dead flesh, like soft cheese.

In an hour the lieutenants had overseen the construction of a trench along the line of the ridge. The men had been able to dig in a small room at the end of it, bracing the ceiling with some pieces of wood hauled up from the camp at the root of the ridge. ‘Captain’s dugout, sir,’ said Sof.

‘What about Captain Parocles?’ Polystom asked.

For a fraction of a second, the expression in Sof ’s eyes was that of a tired parent dealing with an awkward child. Then he smiled, ducked his head forward. ‘The captain caught one in the first attack, sir. Weren’t you told?’

‘No,’ said Polystom. ‘So I’m in sole command?’

‘That’s right sir,’ said Sof, complaisantly. The stitched wound in his cheek looked like a tiny mouth caught in the act of gobbling a fly. Polystom didn’t like the look of it.

Clouds spooled and curled in the sky, and in half an hour all the pale mauve was swallowed up by a greasy, low-slung ceiling of raincloud. A shower splashed abruptly down upon them, lasting five minutes and then passing by.

There were three more brief, intense showers in the next half hour. Polystom sat in his dugout, looking down the line of the newly constructed trench. The men were working on, digging side-lines and excavating quarters for the lieutenants at the end of the thing. According to Stet, nineteen men survived from Parocles’ company. Nineteen men and no officers. ‘What should I do?’ Polystom asked. His euphoria had dissipated entirely, and now he felt disoriented and powerless.

‘Absorb them into your platoon, sir,’ said Stet, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

‘Right,’ said Polystom.

The men were working energetically, the rain bouncing off their bent backs. A puddle had formed at the foot of the trench, a few feet wide but many yards long. In the rainstorm, splashes made a hundred transient little nipples out of the surface of the water.

Parties of men hurried up and down the ridge, bringing chairs and tables, Polystom’s possessions, moveable things from the lower dugout.

The thought that kept dribbling through Polystom’s mind was: Captain Parocles is dead. If one captain is dead, why not the other one? Why not me?

A colonel flew down to them, in a one-man mono-wing miniplane. Its engine could be heard clearly in the damp air. It swooped over the ridge, and circled round, the single wing gawkily long, the pilot’s cradle slung underneath in front of a chugging motor. None too skilfully the colonel brought it down to land stickily in the wet mud alongside the new trench.

Polystom received him in his digs.

‘I’ve just come direct from Command,’ said the colonel, without so much as introducing himself. ‘We want to say, firstly, well done, captain. Taking this ridge is very important. Now we want you to hold it.’

‘Hold it,’ said Polystom. His own voice sounded funny to him; tinny, somehow. Unreal.

The colonel looked at him. ‘I know what you’ll ask me,’ he said.

‘You know,’ repeated Polystom.

There was a pause.

‘You’ll ask,’ said the colonel, a little less gung-ho, ‘for reinforcements. I can’t give you any. There’s been a most enormous push by the enemy, west of here.’ The colonel stood, and pulled a square of paper from his jacket. It was
spattered with dried droplets of mud. Polystom was struck by how much they looked like blood. The square unfolded and unfolded, and the colonel spread out a map covering the whole table. ‘You can see,’ he said, ‘these ridges fan out from this central peak.’ Geographical features were marked on the map with numerous straight marks, like laughter lines. ‘Four ridges. We hold them all, now that you’ve taken this. That was why we put such an effort into isolating and then retaking this ridge. You see?’

‘Yes,’ said Polystom, although he didn’t.

‘The enemy were trying to defend this ridge,’ said the colonel. ‘Your ridge. When they realised that was hopeless, they pulled all their forces into an attack on this one here – it’s a bigger feature, and it runs directly to the peak. Your ridge is not such a good path to the mountain, because we’ve mined and wired the further reaches of it. So they’re pushing hard to take Camel Ridge, here, do you see?’

‘Yes,’ said Polystom, again.

‘There’s no doubt,’ said the colonel, folding the map up, ‘that the enemy is going all-out to take the peak. All out. They’ve realised how important it is. How important,’ he repeated, fixing Polystom’s eyes, ‘it is.’

‘Yes?’ Polystom asked, although he had no idea what the significance of the peak was.

‘Now, Captain,’ said the colonel. ‘I’m about to tell you something top secret,
top
secret. Your specific orders, you understand, are to tell nobody. Not even your lieutenants.’

‘Alright,’ said Polystom.

‘You may know of the existence of a Computational Device of enormous size and power on this planet.’

‘I’d heard.’

‘The peak I’m talking about is the central section. It’s part of a naturally occurring crystalline-rock prominence. When the device was being constructed it utilised the natural crystal in its circuitry. This was augmented with valves, of course, and with a series of separate power
sources. But the crucial thing is this: the Computational Device is of the
utmost
importance to the war effort, and to the System as a whole. Do you understand? The
utmost
importance. It
cannot be allowed
,’ said the Colonel, becoming quite fierce in his emphasis, ‘to fall into enemy hands. I
cannot
stress this too greatly. Your orders are to hold this ridge. It may be that the enemy attempt to retake it when their attack on the Camel falters – or maybe they’ll try a diversionary attack. But they must not be allowed back up here.’

Polystom, a little wide eyed from the urgency of the colonel, nodded.

‘So, Captain,’ said the colonel, standing up. ‘I’m sorry I can’t let you have any reinforcements. I can, however, let you have two guns; your men can pull them up this evening. How many men have you got left, by the way?’

Polystom had no idea. ‘Sixty,’ he said, randomly.

The colonel’s eyes widened. ‘I must say,’ he said, ‘that you and Captain Parocles both deserve especial commendation – you two retook this feature with less than fifty per cent casualties. Superb commanding, sir!
Superb
. Both of you will be mentioned in the Command Account, sir. One last thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ll need your men to lift my monoplane out of the mud, and help me aloft a little. Just running along, helping me catch the air. The lift of these single wings isn’t too good, and in the mud I can’t manage enough speed to get airborne.’

‘Of course,’ said Polystom.

The colonel was outside now. A light drizzle was falling. Pinheads of water started accumulating in myriads upon the colonel’s jacket and cap. Polystom relayed the colonel’s needs to Stet, and a dozen men were detailed to haul the airplane onto their shoulders and stagger through the mud with it. The last thing the colonel said, from his cockpit,
was: ‘I feel more confident than I can say, leaving two such distinguished captains in command here.’ Then he was off, jerkily transported along the ridge and finally hurled into the sky, where his engine caught and swung him away. It occurred to Polystom that the colonel did not realise that Captain Parocles was dead.