‘Commissary?’
‘Well, look around you. Most of these soldiers are the children of soldiers – obviously, how could it be otherwise? And the relentless selection of war is working to shape a new kind of human, better equipped for the fight. Combat survivors are the ones who get to breed, after all. Already their descendants are wiry, lithe, confident in the three-dimensional arena of low or zero gravity. Some studies even suggest that their eyes are adapting to the pressure of three-dimensional combat – that some of them can see velocity, for example, by perceiving subtle Doppler shifts in the colours of approaching or receding objects. Think what an advantage that would be in the battlefield! Another few thousand years of this and perhaps we will not recognise the soldiers who fight for the rest of us.’
‘I think I’m losing my bearings,’ said Luca truthfully.
Dolo patted his shoulder. ‘No. You’re just learning, is all.’
‘And what have you learned about my troopers?’ Teel had joined them on the small stage, and the troopers began to line up in rows before them.
Luca had learned to be honest with her. ‘I find them – strange.’
‘Strange?’
‘They have all ridden the Rock, yes?’
‘Most of them.’
‘Then they have seen comrades fall. They know they will be sent out again to a place where they must face the same horror. And yet, here and now, they laugh.’
Teel thought about that and answered carefully. ‘Away from the Front you don’t talk about what happens out there. It’s like – a secret. You’ve seen something beyond normal human experience. If you show your fear, or even admit it to yourself, then you’re allowing a leak between this, normal human life, and what lies out there. You’re letting it in. And if that happens there will be nowhere safe. Do you understand?’
He watched her face; there was sweat on her brow, traces of asteroid grime. ‘Is that how you feel?’
‘I try not to feel anything,’ she said.
Luca looked around the dome. ‘And this place is so shabby.’ He felt a kind of self-righteous anger, and he encouraged it in himself, hoping to impress Teel. ‘If these people are willing to die for the Expansion, they should have some comfort.’
Dolo shook his head. ‘Again you don’t understand, Novice. Think about the life of a soldier. It is a limited existence: moments of birth and growth, comradeship, determination, isolation – and finally, after the briefness of the light, an almost inevitable conclusion in pain and death. They have to know they are fighting for something better. And so they have to see that the present is imperfect. The soldiers must live in an eternal now of shabbiness and toil, so that they can be made to believe that we will progress from such places until a glorious victory is won, and everything will be made perfect – even if no such progress is ever actually made.’
‘Then everything here is designed for a purpose,’ Luca said, wondering. ‘Even the shabbiness.’
‘This is a machine built for war, Novice.’
A junior officer called the troops to order. On their crude seats, just blocks of asteroid rock, they fell silent.
Teel stood up. She said clearly, ‘Eighteen thousand, three hundred and ninety-one years ago an alien force conquered humanity’s home planet. We are here to ensure that never happens again.’ She held up a data desk and read a single short obituary, a summary of one ordinary soldier’s life and death. Here was another memorial, Luca supposed, for those who had fallen – and again, not strictly Doctrinal. Then Teel went on to a kind of situation report, summarising incidents from right around the Molecular Ring that circled the Galaxy’s centre.
The troops listened carefully. Luca watched their faces. Their gazes were fixed on Teel as she spoke, their mouths open like rapt children’s, some of them even quietly echoing the words she used. When she finished – ‘Let’s hurl the Xeelee starbreakers down their own Lethe-spawned throats!’ – there was cheering, and even some tears.
Teel invited Dolo to get to his feet. As an emissary of the Coalition, he was to make a short address to these far-from-home troopers. He was greeted with whistles and foot-stamping. Luca thought he looked small and out of place in his pristine Commissary’s robe.
Dolo talked in general terms about the war. He said that the ‘Ring theatre’ was a testing ground for future operations, including the eventual assault on the Xeelee concentrations in the Core itself – which, he hinted, might be closer than anybody expected. ‘This a momentous time,’ he said, ‘and you have a momentous mission. You have been commissioned by history. This is total war. Our enemy is implacable and powerful. But if we let our vision of the universe and ourselves go forth, and we embrace it entirely, those who remember us will sing songs about us years from now…’
Luca let the words slide through his awareness. When the troops dispersed he found a way to get close to Teel.
She said, ‘So do you think you have seen the comradeship you envied so much?’
‘They love you.’
She shook her head. ‘They think I’m a lucky commander. I’ve ridden this Rock four times already, and I’m still in one piece. They hope I’ll give them some of my good fortune. And anyhow they have to love me; it’s part of my job description. They won’t let their brains be blown out for a stuffed shirt—’
‘No, it’s more than that. They will follow you anywhere.’ His blood surging, longing to be part of her life, he said recklessly,
‘As would I.’
That seemed to take her aback. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’
He leaned closer. ‘You’ve known there is something between us, a connection deeper than words, since the moment we met—’
But here was Dolo, and the moment was already over. The Commissary held up a small data desk, ‘Novice, tomorrow we have a chance to advance your education. We will accompany a press gang.’
‘Sir?’
‘Be ready early.’
Teel had taken advantage of the interruption to slip away to join her troops. Luca saw how her face lit up when she spoke to those with whom she had fought. He was hopelessly jealous.
Dolo murmured, ‘Don’t lose yourself in her, Novice. After tomorrow, we will see if you still envy these troopers.’
III
The blue planet came swimming out of the dark.
Dolo said, ‘You know that planets are rare here. This close to the Core, with so many stars crowding, stable planetary orbits are uncommon. All the unformed debris, which elsewhere might have been moulded into worlds, here makes up huge asteroid belts – which is why the rocks are used as they are; they are plentiful enough.
‘This pretty world, though, was discovered by colonists of the Second Expansion – oh, more than twenty thousand years ago. Almost inevitably, they call it New Earth: names of colonised planets are rarely original. They brought with them a very strange belief system and primitive technology, but they made a good fist of terraforming this place. It lies a little close to its sun, though…’
Luca didn’t feel able to reply. The world was like a watery Earth, he thought, with a world-ocean marked by tiny ice caps at the poles and a scatter of dark brown islands. He felt unexpectedly nostalgic.