Then, without warning, the woman drew her club and slammed it against the side of the child’s head. The child fell in the dust and lay still. Luca would have stepped forward, but Dolo had anticipated his reaction and grabbed his arm. Immediately the woman switched her attention to the others. She stepped over the prone form and walked up and down their rows, staring into their faces; she seemed to be smelling their fear.
Luca had to look away. He glanced up. The Galaxy’s centre glowed beyond a milky blue sky.
Dolo murmured, ‘Oh, don’t worry. They know how to do such things properly here. The child is not badly hurt. Of course the other children don’t know that. The girl’s crime was trivial, her punishment meaningless - save as an example to the others. They are being exposed to violence; they have to get used to it, not to fear it. They must be trained not to question the authority over them. And—ah, yes.’
The woman had pulled a boy out of the ranks of silent children. Luca thought she could see tears glistening in his round eyes. Again the woman’s club flashed; again the child fell to the ground.
Luca asked, aghast, ‘And what was his crime?’
‘He showed feelings for the other, the girl. That too must be programmed out. What use would such emotions be under a sky full of Xeelee nightfighters?’ Dolo studied him. ‘Luca, I know it is hard. But it is the way of the Doctrines. One day such training may save that boy’s life.’
They walked on, as the children were made to pick up their fallen comrades.
They came to a more ragged group of children. Some of these were older, Luca saw, perhaps twelve or thirteen. It disturbed him to think that there might actually be combat veterans among this group of barefoot kids. At the centre of the group, two younger children - ten-year-olds - were fighting. The others watched silently, but their eyes were alive.
Dolo murmured, ‘Here is a further stage. Now the children have to learn to use violence against others. The older ones have been put in charge of the younger. Beaten regularly themselves, now they enjoy meting out the same treatment to others. You see, they are forcing these two to fight, perhaps just for entertainment.’
At last one of the fighters battered her opponent to the ground. The fallen child was dragged away. The victor was a stocky girl; blood trickled from her mouth and knuckles. One of the older children walked into the crude ring, grinning, to face the stocky girl.
Dolo nodded with a connoisseur’s approving glance. ‘That fighter is strong,’ he said. ‘But now she will learn afresh that there are many stronger than she is.’
‘These barefoot cadets must long to escape.’
‘But their prison is not just a question of walls. In some places the regime is - harsher. When they are taken from their homes, the children are sometimes made to commit atrocities there.’
‘Atrocities?’
Dolo waved a hand. ‘It doesn’t matter what. There are always criminals of one class or another who require corrective treatment. But after committing such an act the child is instantly transformed, in her own heart, and in the hearts of her family. The family may not even want the child back. So she knows that even if she escapes this place, she can never go back home.’ He smiled. ‘Ideally, of course, it would be a family member who is struck down; that would be the purest blow of all.’
‘How efficient.’
‘Even in the face of violence a child’s social and moral concepts are surprisingly resilient; it takes a year or more before such things as family bonds are finally broken. After that the child crosses an inner threshold. Her sense of loyalty - why, her sense of self - becomes entwined not with her family but with the regime. And, of course, the first experience of combat itself is the final threshold. After that, with all she has seen and done, she cannot go home. She has been reborn. She doesn’t even want to be anywhere else.’
They walked on to the edge of the compound. Beyond the rows of buildings there was a break in the fence. On the rocky plain beyond, a group of children, with adult overseers, were lying on their bellies in crude pits dug into the ground. They were working with weapons, loading, dismantling, cleaning them, and firing them at distant targets. The weapons seemed heavy, dirty and noisy; every firing gave off a crack that made Luca jump.
Dolo asked, ‘Now. Do you see what is happening here?’
‘More indoctrination. The children must be trained to handle weapons, to deploy destructive forces - and to kill?’
‘There are native animals - flying, bird-like creatures - which they hunt. These days the animals are raised for that purpose, of course; it has ironically saved them from extinction. Yes, they must learn to kill.’
‘And people?’
‘The Xeelee are not like us - but they are sentient. Therefore it helps to be exposed to the moral conflict of killing a sentient creature, before it is necessary to do it to save one’s life. So, yes, people too, when appropriate.’
‘Commissary, must we commit such barbarism to wage our war?’
Dolo looked surprised. ‘But there is no barbarism here. Novice, what did you expect? This regime, this crude empire of mud and clubs and blood, is actually a sophisticated processing system. It turns human beings, children, into machines.’
‘Then why use human beings at all? Why not fight the war with machines?’ It shocked him to find himself even mouthing such ideas.
Dolo seemed patient. ‘This is a question everybody must ask at least once, Luca. We fight as we do because of the nature of our foe, and ourselves. The Xeelee are not like humans, not even like species such as the Silver Ghosts, our starfaring rivals in the early days of the Expansion. Read your history, Novice. With the Xeelee there has never been a possibility of negotiation, diplomacy, compromise. None. In fact there has been no contact at all - other than the brutal collision of conflict. The Xeelee ignore us until we do something that disturbs them - and then they stomp on us hard, striking with devastating force until we are subdued. To them we are vermin. Well, the vermin are fighting back.’
‘And we are doing so,’ Luca said, ‘by consuming our children.’
‘Yes, our children - our human flesh and blood. Because that is all we have.’ Dolo held up his hands and flexed his fingers in Galaxy light. ‘We weren’t designed for waging a Galactic war - as the Xeelee seem to have been. We carry our past in our bodies, a past of cowering in trees, of huddling on plains, without weapons, without even fire to protect us, as the predators closed. But we fought our way out of that pit, just as we’re fighting our way out of this one - not by denying our nature but by exploiting it, by breeding, breeding, breeding, filling up every empty space with great swarms of us. We are nothing but flesh and blood - but in overwhelming numbers even soft flesh can win the day. Our humanity is our only, our final weapon, and that is how we will win.’ As he talked his broad face was alive with a kind of pleasure.
Around Luca the squads of children went through their routine of training, punishment, reward and abuse, their young minds shaped like bits of heated metal. He conjured up the face of Teel, her soft humanity above the stiff collar of the military uniform.
Dolo was watching him again. ‘You’re thinking of the lovely Captain. This is where she came from.’ He waved a hand. ‘An inductee into this dismal boot camp, here on New Earth, she was a tough fighter. Saw her first action at twelve, survived, went back for more. Why do you think I brought you here?’
Luca, bewildered, looked down at the dirt.
Dolo, at random, beckoned a small boy standing in a row of others. With a glance at his overseer the boy came running and stood at attention before them. His eyes were bright, lively. Dolo bent down and smiled. ‘Do you know who we are?’
‘No, sir,’ snapped the boy.
‘Then who are you?’
‘Who I am does not matter. Sir,’ he appended hastily.
‘Good. Then what are you?’
‘I am a little boy now, and I must study. But when I am big enough to operate a weapon I will join the unending war, and avenge those who have fallen, and fight for the future of mankind.’
Dolo straightened up. Luca would have sworn he could see a tear in his eye. ‘Novice, it has taken us twenty thousand years - perhaps even longer - to get to this point. But, step by step, we are reaching our goal. I give you the child soldier: the logical future of mankind.’
When Dolo nodded dismissal the boy turned away and walked back to his section. Luca could see he was struggling to contain his youthful energy, trying not to skip or run.
When they got back to the Rock, an evacuation and hasty re-equipping was underway. Non-combatants were removed from the Rock, equipment, stores and people hurried underground, weapons, sensor and drive emplacements rapidly completed and tested. Meanwhile the troopers were checking their skinsuits and other kit, and injecting themselves with mnemonic fluid, a record which might help the military analysts reconstruct whatever happened to them.
It turned out that orders had been changed. The Rock was to be hurled on its new mission to the Front in just a few more days, weeks ahead of the old schedule. Perhaps, Luca thought with a shiver, the prognosticating librarians on distant Earth had discerned some shifting in their misty maps of the future, and the Rock was to be sent to secure some famous preordained victory - or to avert some predetermined disaster.
But for him the most important consequence of this chain of events was that he was to be taken off the Rock and flown out to another station, while Teel was to ride the Rock once more to the Front itself.
He hurried to her quarters.
Aside from a small bathroom area there were just two pieces of furniture, a simple bed and table. She was sitting on the bed studying a data desk. The top button of her uniform was undone; he found his eyes drawn to the tiny triangle of flesh that showed there.
She put down the desk. ‘I knew you would come.’
‘You did?’
‘You have learned about the new orders. Your emotions are confused.’
Tentatively he sat beside her on the bed. ‘I’m not confused. I don’t want to be parted from you.’
‘Do you think I should defy my duty? Or you yours?’
‘No. I just don’t want to lose you.’
Her blue eyes were wide, deep as oceans. ‘It’s not that. You’ve been to New Earth. Now you know where I come from - what I am. You want to save me, don’t you?’
He was hot, miserable, perplexed. ‘I can’t tell if you are mocking me.’
She took his hand and enclosed it in hers. ‘Go home.’
‘Take me with you,’ he said.
‘What?’
It was as if he was framing the thoughts even as the words emerged from his mouth. ‘To the Front. Give me a posting on the Rock.’
‘That’s absurd. You’re a Commissary - a Novice at that. You don’t have the training.’
He let his voice harden. ‘I could surely be as useful as the twelve-year-old conscripts who will be riding with you.’
‘Do you know what you will face?’
‘I know you will be there.’ He moved his face closer to hers, just a little, until he could feel her breath on his mouth. It was his last voluntary act.
Her passion was primal, like the way she ate, as if after this moment there would be no more to savour. And all through the love-making, and the hours later they spent asleep together, he could sense the strength in her - a strength she held back, as if afraid of damaging him.
IV
Luca huddled at the bottom of the trench. It was just a gouge scraped roughly in the surface of the Rock.
He stared up at a great stripe of sky that was full of cherry-red light, a sky where immense rocks sailed like clouds. Sometimes they came so close to his own Rock he could actually see people moving on their inverted surfaces. It seemed impossible that such vast objects could be crowded so close. The slightest touch of one of these great jostling rocks against another could crush him and these shallow trenches and chambers, utterly erasing him and any trace to show he had ever existed, scraping clean his life from the universe. He was in a heavily armoured skinsuit, but he felt utterly defenceless. He was just a mote of soft blood and flesh, trapped in this nightmare machinery of churning rock and deadly light.
All of this in utter, inhuman silence, save for the shallow scratch of his own breathing, the constant incomprehensible chatter over his comms.
The Rock itself was a swarm of continual, baffling activity. Troopers crowded constantly past him, great files of them labouring from place to place carrying equipment and supplies. They were blank-faced, dogged, their suits carefully dusted with asteroid dirt in the probably vain hope that such camouflage would help them survive. Sometimes they stepped on Luca’s feet or legs, and he cowered against the dirt in his trench, trying to make himself small and invisible.
Bayla, the trooper on the charge of religious sedition, was with him, though. She had been assigned by Teel to ‘supervise’ him. Luca hadn’t seen anything of Teel herself since they had broken through the last cordon of Navy Spline ships and into the full battle light, and the final preparations had begun. Whatever fantasies he had had of working alongside Teel, of somehow participating in this effort, had long evaporated. The only human comfort he drew was from the warm pressure of Bayla’s leg against his own.