Polystom (34 page)

‘Sergeant,’ Polystom said to the man next to him. He still couldn’t remember the fellow’s name. That blank spot in his memory bothered him, gnat-like. Why couldn’t he hold the name in his head? ‘I’m sorry, man,’ he said. ‘What’s your name, again?’

‘Mero, sir.’

‘Of course. Of course. Mero – how long have you been here?’

‘Sir?’ That distantly panicked expression came into the men’s faces whenever Polystom asked them a question. It was starting to get on his nerves. They were comrades-in
arms, weren’t they? ‘Come along man,’ he chivvied. ‘Don’t be shy. How long have you been here.’

‘On the Mudworld?’

‘Yes.’

‘Less’n a year, sir.’

‘Under Captain Parocles?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Was he a good captain?’

‘Sir?’ Whites visible all around the man’s pupil.

‘I mean – did the men respect him? Did he have their respect?’

‘Sir.’

‘Did he . . . um, did he command well?’

‘Sir.’

‘He had a lieutenant?’

‘Two sir, and a subaltern.’

Polystom stopped for a moment, trying to form up in his own head exactly what he was trying to get at. ‘I suppose what I’m wondering,’ he said, taking another swig of drink and watching the flies bounce swarmingly from corpse to corpse, ‘what I’m wondering. Well, sergeant. Did you know that this is my first term of service on the Mudworld?’

‘No, sir.’

‘My first term of service anywhere, actually. Have another sip of brandy.’

‘The cup . . .’

‘Use mine.’

‘Sir, I don’t think . . .’

‘Go on.’

The man gobbled at the lip of Polystom’s glass. ‘Thank you, sir.’

‘I think what I’m asking you, what I’m wondering, is how typical this – this experience is of warfare. Now you’ve been in the army a year . . .’

‘Three years, sir,’ said the sergeant, emboldened by the booze to interrupt his superior.

‘You said a year?’

‘A year on the Mudworld, sir. But I’ve been in a couple of other engagements. It’s a five-year term, service, for the ground troops, you see. I was considering renewing my term when the five years’re up. Now I’m not sure I will.’

‘No?’

‘Not sure, sir.’

Polystom sipped again at his brandy, pleased that the barriers were coming down a little between himself and his man. ‘Why’s that?’

‘This last year has not been . . . has been hard, sir.’

‘So this is harder than usual service?’

The sergeant looked sheepishly at the floor, as if he were betraying somebody or something by saying so. ‘Come on man,’ Polystom chivvied him again. ‘It sounds like you’ve had a fair bit of experience, fighting.’

‘That I have, sir.’

‘Whereas I don’t have any. So if this seems hard to me – I mean, the last few days have been . . .’ He petered out; filled the gap with another drink. The sergeant took the proffered cup, and drank more decorously than before.

‘Well, sir,’ he said, ‘the way I see it is. I’ve seen some hard fighting before. When I joined up, sir, after the basic training we were taken off to sort out some trouble on Rhum. There was a compound in the mountains, there, where some servants had gone bad, killed their masters and so on. Well, it was difficult to get to, on account of the mountains and snow, and it was pretty well defended. That was some hard fighting: uphill, in the snow and cold, and precious little cover. There were plenty killed those first few days, and it was the shock of it, you know sir? My first experience of the killing and the dying. Training is all very well, but it’s not the same. I remember that well. Then we had several months mopping up in the mountains, and we all grew to hate the cold, the nights especially. Frostbite, misery. Now, when we were told that we were coming here
there were men in the platoon who were happy enough. At least it’ll be warm, they said. Warm!’ The sergeant flashed a grin. ‘It’s warm enough.’

Polystom realised that the man’s name had again slipped from his mind. ‘You mean, hard fighting?’

‘I’ll tell you sir,’ said the sergeant. He looked at the floor. ‘It’s not that. Though it’s sorrowful to see the captain – Captain Parocles, I mean – catch one, and we’ve had our numbers cut back pretty bad. But it’s not that. I’ve known fights before where casualties fall as thick as this. It’s not that.’

He stopped. ‘So what is it?’

‘It’ll sound foolish to you, sir.’

‘Tell me anyway.’

‘It’s this planet, sir.’ ‘Yes? What of it? The mud?’

‘No sir.’

‘What then?’

‘The sense of it is, sir, amongst the men, that this world is haunted.’

For a moment Polystom didn’t quite catch the word; then he felt a twitchy shiver run up his back and over the back of his head. Beeswing’s mysterious expression; her lips forming the word,
hello
. ‘What did you say?’ he asked, a little too sharply.

‘Haunted, sir. All the men agree on it.’

‘But tell me what you mean by that.’

‘Dead people, sir. We’ve all seen them. They come at odd moments. Some of the men say that they get a good look at the people we’re fighting, and they recognise some dead commander or dead person.’

‘Dead?’

‘Some who died a long while ago, some who died more recent, but here they are, walking over the mud, sitting in the trench below the wall smiling. Raising a rifle and aiming it at you. Dead people all around.’

Polystom felt a rushing sensation inside him, in his heart, as if the world were pouring through him. ‘Have
you
seen the dead?’ he asked. ‘These dead, these – ghosts?’

‘Yes sir, many times. Before I was in the army, sir, I worked on the estate of the horseman, Huperbolus. You heard of him? Famous equestrian trainer and rider, marvellous master, just marvellous. Anyway he died, fell off a horse on jumping practice, and his son took over the estate, and that’s when I was offered the option of joining the army. No disrespect to his son who’s a fine master, but I thought I’d rather not be around the estate with the old master dead. So I joined up. Now, Huperbolus was a distinctive-looking man, very tall, pure triangular nose. I know I saw him yesterday.’

‘Yesterday?’

‘In the first attack on the hogsback. Captain Parocles took us up to the base of the ridge before we were turned back, and that’s where I saw him.’

‘You’re sure it was him.’

‘Plain as daylight, sir. He came up out of the mud, smiling. There was no mistaking him. Ask any of the men, sir. They’ve all seen dead people.’

Polystom was close to saying something about his encounter with his dead wife, but something held him back. Battlefield intimacy was one thing, but this sergeant was, for all that, a servant, and Stom’s mind rebelled against the idea of sharing details of his marriage with such a person. But ghosts! It was the plot of an opera, not real life.

He thought back to the night before, to Beeswing’s appearance. He had not seen her on the battlefield; she had come to his door and peered inside.

Flies shuddered up through the air. The day was getting hotter and hotter.

‘Sir!’ called somebody from the far end of the trench. ‘Sir!’

They had called him over because, inside the dugout, Stet had started moaning. It could be heard clearly from outside, a weirdly musical and pure line of sound. Polystom waved the men back, and stepped into the dugout. The stench was horrible.

‘Stet,’ he called, covering his own mouth against the smell. ‘Stet, dear fellow. What’s wrong?’

The figure of the lieutenant was shuddering on the bunk, the whine broken only when he sucked in breath, beginning again straight afterwards. Polystom sat in the chair beside the bed, looking down on the ruined figure of the man as if examining a scientific specimen through a microscope. He complained like a child. His body shook, as if feverish. Perhaps he
was
feverish. The wound on his right cheek was starting to look a little rotten.

‘What’s wrong, man?’

Only the wailing. Polystom wondered if the problem was one of water. Perhaps Stet was thirsty. The lieutenant’s jacket was hanging from a pole by the entrance, and Polystom located the water bottle easily enough. Back at the bunk he offered it to Stet’s shaking head, and when this got no response he held the man’s mouth and poured the fluid in. The flesh felt as slick and cold as a fish. Stet’s moaning stopped; he started choking, then swallowed deeply. The water gurgled at the gap in his throat, and dribbled down the sides of his neck. When Stom took the bottle away, Stet’s hand lurched up and gripped his shoulder, until he poured more water down.

After a drink, Stet seemed calmer.

‘I’ve some brandy,’ Polystom said.

Did he shake his head at that? Or had his tremor returned? The head lurched from side to side for several moments, and then subsided.

Feeling awkward, Polystom didn’t think he should leave his lieutenant’s side. He sat for a while, looking around himself at the dugout. He ought to have Sof ’s burnt corpse
moved out of here; it probably wasn’t hygienic. Not that Stet would live much longer, he thought. But still. Or perhaps it would be better to have the men carry Stet down the trench to the other dugout? But he shied away from that idea. He couldn’t quite rid himself of the thought that his own dugout was haunted. Like the sergeant had said. That the ghost of his dead wife lurked in that underground mud-cave. He looked at Stet, who appeared now to be sleeping.

Ghosts?

Did
ghosts
change the apprehension one felt about death? The lieutenant had hurried to embrace his own demise. Did he know that the planet was haunted? Did he hope to slip off his painful flesh in the expectation that he would return to the world in smiling, spectral form?

Outside again it was enormously hot. The men, some languidly in position along both lips of the trench, some lolling in the path of shadow underneath the eastern wall, looked dead themselves. Polystom stood for a while staring up into the violet sky. He half expected the noise of the colonel’s plane:
Well done, captain, your men are relieved, the battle is over
. But nothing happened.

The heat drew out the buzz-stained silence, lengthened the hours.

He tapped a soldier on the shoulder. ‘Any action down there?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Come with me: I want to have a look.’

Soldier first, captain after, they mounted the steps and huddled over to the burnt wreck of the northernmost gun. From there Polystom peered as far north as he could. The shouldered hunch of the mountain loomed, brown and white, just visible over the horizon. Mines and wire, the colonel had said, between this ridge, this prong of the mountain’s base, and the mountain itself. He had no idea, although clearly a captain ought to know – no idea how to traverse mines and wire. Perhaps the sergeant would know.

Why were things so quiet?

Back in the trench Polystom drew the sergeant with him into his dugout. It was cooler, and the air did not stink the way the lieutenant’s dugout did, but Polystom was uncomfortable, nonetheless. He turned round, and turned round again, like an arachnophobic checking for spiders, except that it wasn’t spiders he was checking for.

‘Sergeant,’ he said, eventually.

‘Sir.’

‘Sergeant, my judgement is that we’re pretty much understrength here.’ He paused, maybe hoping that the sergeant would confirm his judgement, but the soldier stood passionless, expressionless. Waiting for commands. ‘Look,’ said Stom. ‘If they attack again – when they attack again – I think it’ll be best for us to withdraw. Strategically withdraw, you know. Along the ridge. Yes?’

‘Sir.’

‘Now, I know there’s some wire, and some mines, along the ridge. Do you know how to deal with those?’

A fraction of a pause. ‘No, sir.’

‘Have you never encountered them?’

‘Yes, sir. But I don’t know how to deal with them.’

‘Ah,’ said Polystom, hoping that the colonel would fly in and relieve them, hoping that there would be no further attacks, hoping for any sort of release. ‘Ah, well. I suppose we deal with that eventuality when it arrives. If it arrives.’

‘Very good, sir.’

Polystom tipped his chin up, and the sergeant started turning towards the door. ‘Oh, sergeant,’ Stom said.

‘Sir?’

‘When you said . . . you know, earlier.’

‘Sir?’

‘About the haunting. About the ghosts. Is it, you know, generally known? Is it general knowledge?’

‘Official? No sir. The men talk about it, of course, swap stories, that sort of thing. But not an official thing.’

‘This whole war,’ said Stom, waving vaguely with his right arm. ‘It started as a servant insurrection, I suppose.’

‘I suppose, sir.’

‘What I’m trying to say,’ said Stom, falteringly, ‘is that – I don’t know – do you think this planet was, ah, haunted before the war? Or is it haunted
because
of the war, you know?’

‘I don’t know sir.’

Polystom dismissed his man, and rustled through his box until he found his very last bottle of spirits. A wheat whisky from his homeworld. Would he ever see his homeworld again? He unstoppered the bottle and took a swig. A more disturbing question occurred to him. Say he died, here, in battle; say the enemy put a bullet through his very heart. Would he return as a ghost? Would he, like the villain from some second-rate opera, be condemned to walk this world for ever?

Behind him, a female voice. ‘Stom?’

His face chilled; he felt the tiny hairs that lined his cheek bristle and move. It crossed his mind: it’s as if my thinking it has summoned her up. He didn’t want to turn around, but with the inevitability of a dream he knew he must.

Beeswing was at the door again. No, it wasn’t Beeswing, but a young soldier. Polystom’s heart hammered. What did you say?’

The soldier looks startled. ‘Sir?’

‘I said
what did you say?
’

‘Nothing, sir.’

‘Don’t lie to me!’

‘I said
sir
, sir,’ squealed the soldier, his boyish voice rising even higher. For a moment Stom hovered on the edge of rage, then toppled back into rationality. He was breathing deeply. A stupid misunderstanding.

‘Well,’ he gasped. ‘What is it?’