ONE
I was not a cynic about it all. Not then, and not now. Neither, though, was I entirely convinced. I had my doubts.
You could be like that, in those days – some of the time at least, if you were careful, walking that tightrope of maybe/maybe not. Don’t mistake it for original thought; I just had difficulty making up my mind. Lack of sleep had a part to play. Throne, I wish I’d learned to sleep, and not to dream so much when I did. You can never be entirely happy, never be entirely settled, if you’re exhausted all the time.
I shouldn’t complain. I’ve seen things beyond imagination. I’ve been across the galaxy and back, and survived to put some of what I saw to parchment. I was – am – lucky, by any measure.
And it was doubt, in the end, that turned me into what I am. Writers have a reputation for arrogance – for manipulation and self-regard. Maybe some are like that, but I don’t think many are. We’re all a bag of contradictions, of worries and obsessions and changes-of-mind. We can’t cope with too much reality, because we struggle with how messy and difficult it is already, so we invent our own worlds, try to make them stable, as if we could somehow retreat inside them and live there undisturbed.
We can’t, of course. We’re stuck with the real world, and every time we put our pens down it’s right there still, waiting for us.
I wish it were better. I wish it were simpler, with good and evil, yes and no, right and wrong. If it were, though, if it really were, what would layabouts like me do for our coin? Who would need interpreters and storytellers and myth-makers, if the world were already straightforward?
So there’s always a qualification, if you look hard enough. Always a reason to second-guess yourself.
I travelled to meet Judita Widera, and it took a long time. Four warp-stages, three different ships. The passage was difficult, and gave me a queasy stomach, but apart from the obvious difficulties I didn’t really mind it. No one else gets any sleep in the warp, which at least puts us all on an equal footing.
I should have used the time to prepare, or maybe reflect on what missed chances and random luck had brought me to such a strange pass, but I didn’t. The food was pretty good on Imperial Army cruisers, and there was plenty of it. All the ships were well run, with captains that either ignored me or appeared interested in what I did, so I didn’t have any problems. I had a lot of free time, and nothing much to do but eat and rest up, which suited me fine.
It couldn’t last. As I drew nearer my destination – the big Naval station at Ashallon – I knew it would all start to gear up again. I’d been given a chance, and I was aware just how precious it was, but the responsibilities would ramp up quickly, risking putting me back into that awful state that made working impossible.
The black swamp, I called it. The mental sluggishness, the crushing weight of expectation, the freezing of any kind of inspiration just in case someone out there, anyone at all, hated what I did.
Ah, there I go again – moan, moan. I was selfish then, when billions were fighting and dying all around us to create the future, and now, given what happened afterwards, I feel even more of a heel. But we can’t all be soldiers, can we? I mean, He Himself thought we were important. That’s why He sent us out with the fleets – the scribblers and the scrawlers, tolerated for as long as we gave posterity something.
Remembrancer. Great title. I liked it, and took pride in it, even if I hadn’t done anything at that point remotely deserving of it.
Widera was a remembrancer too, though not a fingernail-chewing nerve-bag writer like me. She was a painter and an imagist. I’d seen some of her stuff back on Hydra Celsis, just when I was coming out of my last monumental mind-sulk, and had liked it. Clever depictions, hovering on the edge of figurative, but skilfully done. I didn’t love it, though. A bit too clever, if you know what I mean. A bit too knowing, as if it were more about pleasing the client than having a difficult vision.
But what did I know? I’m not a critic, and I paint about as well as I fire a lasgun. She’d got cachet and contacts, which meant she knew much more than I did. She was probably a genius.
We docked at Ashallon and I walked down the umbilicals feeling the flaky grav-pull of the decks replaced with the firmer one of an orbital station. I took a look out of some narrow realviewers and caught sight of a large world revolving far below, lurid orange pocked with the black scars of major settlements. Everyone around me seemed to be in uniform – deck-grade armsmen, Army officers, transit officials. Who made all those uniforms? I wondered. There must have been trillions of them out there, in all shapes and sizes. Did entire planets pump them out? Who designed them? Surely He hadn’t – despite what the iterators banged on about, He couldn’t have been responsible for everything. And yet, the way we all looked back then was important. It gave us our identity, made us part of the crusade, so someone must have had eyes on it.
They were smarter than me, at any rate. I was overweight, out of condition. My robes felt sweaty from waiting in the transition chambers, and I wished I’d shaved better. Hurrying past all those crisp-pressed jerkins and polished breastplates made me feel like a vagrant somehow hurled up out of a hive-sump.
I make more coin than any of them, I told myself, to try to make myself feel better. At least, I would do, if I delivered this time.
It took me a long time to locate Widera’s chamber. By the time I got there I was sweatier than ever. I knew how to make a good first impression – the doors slid open while I was still trying to straighten my neck scarf. She smiled knowingly, beckoned me in, showed me a chair, poured us both a drink. From that point onward, things got better.
She looked older than I’d thought she’d be. I hadn’t expected her to resemble her ident-images, taken years ago probably, but all the same – a long time on campaign clearly took its toll. For all that, she was neat, well groomed, physically fit. I guessed she was around fifty, standard Terran, so with appropriate rejuvenat she was nowhere close to the end of her career. She had blue eyes, olive skin, silver hair in a bun, and wore a high-collared trouser suit.
‘Avajis Kautenya,’ she said to me, doing a decent job of pronouncing my name. ‘On time, too.’
‘You didn’t expect that?’
‘I didn’t know if you’d come at all.’
‘It was a good offer. I don’t get so many, these days.’
‘That’s a shame.’
Was it? Or did I thoroughly deserve my expulsion from the limelight? Even I couldn’t decide, and I knew more about the circumstances than most.
‘I still don’t know why you got in touch,’ I said. ‘If I’m honest.’
Widera continued to regard me with calm amusement. Her expression was part tolerant, part resigned. I felt as if my mother had been talking to her somehow, and had passed on all her low-level irritation at my frequent calamities. ‘Because I read it,’ she said.
‘Oh, you read it.’
‘I’d meant to read it before I’d even signed up, but never had the time. And then there was a copy in the fleet’s archives.’
‘Improbable.’
‘You’d be surprised what you can find on a Legion warship.’
And then there was the question, the one I always wanted to ask, but never wanted to ask, but had to ask, because… well, you had to. ‘So what did you think?’
Widera sat back in her chair, crossed her legs. ‘I can see why it got you in trouble. And I can see why you didn’t follow it up with… anything much. When I paint something important, it can take a while to get back up there again. So maybe it’s something similar with you.’
I doubted that. How long did it take to paint a picture? A few hours? A day or two? Writing a book – a serious book – that was months out of a life.
‘Probably, yes,’ I said. ‘So you liked it?’ Throne, I was needy.
She laughed. ‘You want me to tell you it was brilliant? That you never deserved what happened next?’ She carried on looking amused. ‘It was very good. But you know that. I didn’t seek you out to flatter you. The Ninth Legion’s deeds aren’t being chronicled. The primarch’s aren’t. You’d think in this Imperium of a million worlds that wordsmiths capable of turning in something decent and accurate would be like switch-valves on a forge world. But they aren’t, and the war makes it difficult, ...
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