Polystom (Gollancz Sf S.) Read online

  Also by Adam Roberts in Gollancz:

  SALT

  ON

  STONE

  THE SNOW

  POLYSTOM

  Adam Roberts

  A Gollancz eBook

  Copyright © Adam Roberts 2003

  All rights reserved.

  The right of Adam Roberts to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in Great Britain in 2003 by

  Gollancz

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House 5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

  London, WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  This eBook first published in 2010 by Gollancz.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 0 575 10036 7

  This ebook produced by Jouve, France

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  www.adamroberts.com

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Also by Adam Roberts in Gollancz

  Character

  Part One

  [first leaf]

  [second leaf]

  [third leaf]

  [fourth leaf]

  [fifth leaf]

  [sixth leaf]

  [seventh leaf]

  [eighth leaf]

  Part Two

  [first leaf]

  [second leaf]

  [third leaf]

  [fourth leaf]

  [fifth leaf]

  Part Three

  [first leaf]

  [second leaf]

  [third leaf]

  [fourth leaf]

  [fifth leaf]

  [sixth leaf]

  [seventh leaf]

  [Acknowledgments]

  It is also calculated that at an altitude not exceeding the hundredth part of the earth’s diameter – that is, not exceeding eighty miles – the rarefaction would be so excessive that animal life could in no manner be sustained . . . But in point of fact, an ascension being made to any given altitude, the ponderable quantity of air surmounted in any farther ascension, is by no means in proportion to the additional height ascended, but in a ratio constantly decreasing. It is therefore evident that, ascend as high as we may, we cannot literally speaking, arrive at a limit beyond which no atmosphere is to be found. It must exist, I argued . . . It appeared to me evidently a rare atmosphere extending from the sun outwards, beyond the orbit of Venus at least, and I believed indefinitely farther, pervading the entire regions of our planetary system, condensed into what we call atmosphere at the planets themselves.

  Poe, ‘Hans Pfaall’

  We know that the dead are powerful rulers; but we may perhaps be surprised when we learn that they are treated as enemies.

  Freud, Totem and Taboo II.3.c

  Characters

  Old Polystom

  His partner, Egregos

  Young Polystom, his son

  Beeswing, young Polystom’s wife

  Cleonicles, Old Polystom’s brother and young Polystom’s uncle

  Parleon, his butler

  Nestor, a servant of young Polystom

  Elena, an aunt of Polystom’s

  Sophanes and Stetrus, military officers

  ONE

  POLYSTOM

  A Love Story

  [first leaf]

  Polystom climbed into his biplane one morning, having made up his mind to fly to the moon. It had come to him upon waking, the sudden whim to visit his uncle Cleonicles – the great Scientist Cleonicles, none other – in his mansion on the moon. It so happened that Cleonicles, the revered old man, the great scientist, had only three days of life left to him. Polystom knew nothing of this, of course, any more than did Cleonicles himself. Our lives are so densely filled with the atomic particles of existence, perception, memory, that taken together they accumulate into a sort of haze, and this prevents us from seeing very far into the future. Not knowing that his uncle was mere days from a violent death, Polystom was happy as he dressed. War was an impossibly distant blur on the horizon, nothing more.

  It was a dim morning, yellow clouds reducing the sun’s tack-head of light to a bleary focus of brightness. Far to the west, sunlight reflecting from the silvery rocks of the Neon Mountains seems artificially bright, throwing sharp black shadows long across the airfield. But apart from the silver-grey mistiness in the air the morning was good. Stom particularly liked the smell of the ground warming, a kind of acidic, gravelly, earthy smell. Like newly washed hair. He stopped and scratched his skull. The airfield reached flat to the line of trees, and then the forest swept away, before him, encircling the estate, reaching up and covering the hills in the middle distance. Beyond those hills the Neon Mountains rose in spectacular triangles and wedges of pure light. Look away, look up, and there was the deeply thrilling purple emptiness of the sky. Today, Stom thought to himself, it will be my sky.

  . . .

  [three lines missing]

  . . . up the steps, the la[dder, and] into the cockpit. His leather [helmet] was here, where the servants had placed it, and he fitted it over his head, snapping the goggles into place. It required only a sharp action of his thumb down on the contact to start the propellers. A choked-sounding series of barks, and then the engine thrummed, a rising arc of sound, grumble to moan, screech, whine and the plane rolling and jogging over the turf. A hop into the air, jar the ground and up again. The propellers catching in the air like a comb snagging a tangle of hair, and pulling – pulling Stom upwards, his spirit lifting in tandem with his body. He knew of no other sensation that came close to this. The thrill of lifting upwards.

  He was up.

  He circled, flew back over his own airfield, tipping the plane to one side to take in the view of the oblong runway, the sheds at the far end, and over to his house, its -shaped magnificence (eighty rooms! As his co-father had boasted, many times – nearly twice as big as Cousin Hera’s!). Then over that and there was nothing but woodland beneath him, trees and trees and away to the left the swordblade flash of sunlight on the water.

  The controls were sluggish, the wings still dew-soaked, and lift was elusive, but as Stom eased the stick back and flew a gentle upward spiral, they started to dry. Soon the whole biplane was humming. The fabric on its wings was drying and shrinking in the overblow of air, singing slightly, a high-pitched wail just audible over the rush of the wind. Stom wedged the fingers of his left-hand glove under his thigh, pulling the hand free, nude; he reached out with his free hand and touched the nearest of the wires that linked lower wing to upper wing in a crisscross of Xs. Twanged, it thrummed like a guitar string. He slipped the hand back into its glove.

  He banked, and looked down upon his home. This time the house was a mere comma, his own extensive woods a bent stretch of dark green. Mostly he saw the snout of the Middenstead sea where it rounded in innumerable coves on the border of his estate. The water looked shining but depthless, a range of textures from smooth-lit to pewter-dappled white-grey. Another circle and spiral upwards through the air and the wood had reduced to a curled finger, and the whole of the Middenstead
could be seen: sausage-shaped, nestling in amongst the perfect miniature details of mountains, splotches of forest, stamp-sized squares of cultivated land.

  One last look. Goodbye! I leave my world behind.

  That morning, as Nestor had brought him his breakfast on a tray, he had said Nestor, I think I shall visit Cleonicles today. Nestor had only said Very good, with that blank look in his eyes so characteristic of servants, and had held the tray out towards him. But once the idea was in Stom’s mind it was as if he were possessed by it. He hadn’t so much as touched his breakfast, had bounced out of bed. My silk underclothes, Nestor, if I’m to be flying today. Very good, sir, immediately. Tell the mechanics to prepare the biplane. Which one, sir? The Pterodactyl. My favourite!

  The plane is sprightlier now; Stom pulls back the long stick and sweeps upwards again, singing tunelessly in the sheer delight of it, an approximate operatic aria, except that he has no ear for music at all. Up and into the clarity of the blue sky. Surrendering himself to the great oceanic upper depths of the sky, up, up, up. Ortheen, he sings, orthe-e-e-en keleu-e-e-es, heeto dendron fai-ai-ai-ainetai! He remembers the words, but not the tune. When he next looks down he can see half a hemisphere, the whole of his estate and half a dozen other ones, the Middenstead and the Farrenstead seas, the scaly-looking chain of mountains stretching far to the west. The horizon still seems, by that strange trick of perception known to fliers and mountaineers, to be on a level with him, giving the panorama a weird, concave appearance, as if everything Stom owns is located in the base of a gigantic bowl. But an hour flying higher and the world has flipped round, bellied out. Now he can see the curve of the planet, the perfect arc marking off the browns and greens and blues of his world from the blue-purple of interplanetary space. One last look down, but now he couldn’t even pick out the three-hundred-mile-length of the Middenstead sea amongst the variegated textures of the world below him.

  The sun was still misty, a fingernail-sized smudge of brightness; the moon, forty times the diameter of the sun, glowed in the reflected light. Stom hauled his plane round, still singing, and positioned his nose straight at the heart of his destination. He pressed the engine-pedal down, and slipped the catch across it with his toe. The engines roared, heaved, and the plane started pulling towards the pockmarked green of the moon.

  The interplanetary air was weirdly thin, breathable of course but not relishable. Some fashionable newsbook opinion pieces made great claims for the purity of it, even to the point of suggesting merely breathing it as a treatment for various ailments. But it always made Stom feel slightly headachy. Nothing too serious, but enough to take the edge off the experience. As air it was never quite enough for him, made his lungs labour in an asthmatic manner. It was extremely cold, of course. He buttoned up his Zunft flying jacket and pressed the button that warmed the heating coil in its back. The cold, unpleasant, started to recede, although his sinuses still stung with chill.

  But he did love the view. Up here the sky was not the darker blue a ground-dweller saw; it was a rarefied, purified air, a delicate violet-blue, the colour of methylated-spirits. He could stare into the depths for hours at an end. It was almost a process of meditation.

  For ten minutes, as his plane pulled away from the world and towards the moon, Stom busied himself. He undid his harness, and rustled around in the compartment under his seat. His servants had provided him with some food, two flasks of drink (one alcoholic, one not), extra layers of clothing should the cold prove unusually sharp, some books to read. Polystom liked to read poetry, and his servants knew this fact. They also packed a medical basket, including painkillers, and Stom reached for this first. He took out two lenticular pills, and washed them down with one of his flasks of drink. What was it? Some fruit whisky or other. Blackberry whisky, possibly. It didn’t really matter.

  The plane droned on.

  The flight was necessarily lengthy, but Stom wasn’t in any sort of hurry. He stood up in the cockpit and turned to face the rear of the plane. This brought him within reach of the storage compartment, and this he opened, drawing out of it a thin bundle as long as a man’s height. Resting this upright in the cockpit, Polystom killed the engine and waited for the propellers to slow and stop. Coasting through the violet depths of interplanetary sky Stom’s plane would fly onwards, losing speed in small but inevitable increments until the gravitational tug of his world ceased and eventually reversed his trajectory. But Stom didn’t wait for this; he clambered out of the cockpit and lay over the warm engine casing, pulling free two bolt-catches and unfixing the propeller. This, hot from use, he removed and, turning, shoved it back into the cockpit. He had to wriggle backwards a little to retrieve the parcel, but then he easily untied it, unfolded the bent-up blades once, twice, three times, clicking each component into place. Finally, manoeuvring the enormous spindly thing easily enough in the miniature gravity, he slotted it into place and pushed the bolt-catches home.

  Back in the cockpit he folded up the regular props and pushed them into the storage compartment. Then he gunned the engine to life again, and the vast arcs of the high-sky props spun round. Too fragile for use in the thicker air closer to ground, these interplanetary propellers pulled the plane harder through the ethereal medium that occupied the spaces between worlds. It was a long journey; too long to travel the whole way on take-off-landing props. There was a kick, jerking Stom against the back of his seat, as his plane roared onwards. Up up up!

  For a while Stom listened with pleasure to the rapid whish-whish of the propellers, the contented purr of the engine. The speed rose, until he was travelling three times the speed the smaller blades could manage, five times, ten. Then he fine-tuned the direction, positioning the plane a little more precisely so that it was angled at the very heart of the moon. Already the great globe seemed closer. Dusty green and greys on the patched surface swelled minutely before him.

  Polystom retrieved the bottle. He ate one of the sandwiches and moistened his throat between bites. Then he finished the blackberry whisky, and lolled in the cockpit for an hour or more, staring out at the blue-violet depths of interplanetary sky. Being cradled in the near-nothingness of space drunk was a peculiar pleasure. Eventually Stom dozed, hushed by the rushing of the air around him.

  He woke thirsty, and drank some water. Then he ate another sandwich. With these physical needs addressed, he looked around. The moon directly ahead was conspicuously larger; more detail visible on the cracked and cratered green of its surface. Stom swivelled, kneeling on his seat to give himself a better view of the world he had left behind. His world, the world of Enting, was receding slowly behind him. Most of its arc was visible; clouds draped the mosaic fineness of the ground in intermittent shreds. The stretch of the hemisphere-crossing Great Ocean gleamed dark-blue, with strands of cloud gathered like folds in clothing, or like the ripples in sand at low tide, covering half its surface.

  Stom turned again, and played with the engine, gunning it, dethrottling. He pulled to the left, to the right, to check responsiveness. It was so delightful, the way it responded, the way it fitted together, every component working in mechanical harmony with every other one. It sang in Polystom’s heart.

  He refixed the throttle fully out, settled back in his seat, dozed again. On waking he scanned the sky in all directions; left and right, up and down, before and behind. Away to the fore and several miles below he picked out the shape of a balloon-boat, pen-shaped, bringing in some cargo from another world. Strictly speaking, planes were supposed to give balloon-boats a wide berth, but Stom disregarded the rule; of course it didn’t apply to him. He flipped off the catch and heaved the stick forward. The plane tipped forward, and within ten minutes the finger-sized balloon-boat was as big as a cathedral. A half-mile-long dark-green bladder of attenuated gas and storage compartments, piled above and below with towers to which were appended rank upon rank of mighty propellers. The passenger cabin, as big as the south wing of Stom’s own house, looked like a slug upon a giant marrow, nestling
underneath. Polystom flew over the structure, coming close enough to see a steep-jack clinging to one engine carrying out some repair or other, and then circled round to sweep under it, where he could make out the faces of passengers in the observation globe. He waved, half-frantic with the excitement, but nobody returned the gesture.

  These two vessels, tiny biplane and giant balloon-boat, in the violet sky between earth and moon, and nothing else. Stom circled for a while, until he finally provoked a response from the pilot, a blue-uniformed figure just visible in the wide porthole at the front of the command cabin. As Stom flew across the balloon-boat’s line of flight for the fourth time the miniature figure of the captain flapped his arm angrily, waving him away. Stom cheerily waved back, and then pulled the stick towards his body and flew up, over the vessel’s back, and away. He repositioned his plane so that it was aimed once more at the centre of the moon and flew straight on.

  He saw little else on his flight, and took to reading one of his books. Once, several hours later, he caught a glimpse of a skywhal, drifting mouth-open on a trajectory that took it behind the moon. It was unusual to see one of the great beasts so close in to a planetary body, and Stom wondered excitedly whether it was going to beach itself. But, on closer examination, it was a small creature, its fronds little developed, and so was almost certainly still a youngster, still exploring, not yet settled into one of the great cometary orbits that mature skywhals preferred, away from the gravitational disturbances of planets.