approaching the end of its three thousandth year and I

  was serving in a conscript army.

  I marched mechanically, staring at the back of the

  man’s head in front of me. The sky was dark grey with

  cloud and a stiff cold wind streamed in from the sea. My

  awareness of life leapt into being around me. I knew my

  name, I knew where we had been ordered to march, I

  knew or could guess where we would be going after that.

  I could function as a soldier. This was my moment of

  birth into consciousness.

  Marching uses no mental energy—the mind is free to

  wander, if you have a mind. I record these words some

  years later, looking back, trying to make sense of what

  happened. At the time, the moment of awareness, I could

  only react, stay in step.

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  T H E D I S C H A R G E

  Of my childhood, the years leading up to this moment

  of mental birth, little remains. I can piece together the fragments of a likely story: I was probably born in Jethra, university town and capital city on the southern coast of our country. Of my parents, brothers or sisters, my education, any history of childhood illnesses, friends, experiences, travels, I remember nothing. I grew to the age of

  twenty; only that is certain.

  And one other thing, useless to a soldier. I knew I was

  an artist.

  How could I be sure of that, trudging along with the

  other men, in a phalanx of dark uniforms, kitbags, clank-

  ing mess-tins, steel helmets, boots, stamping down a

  puddled road with a chill wind in our faces?

  I knew that in the area of blankness behind me was a

  love of paintings, of beauty, of shape and form and

  colour. How had I gained this passion? What had I done

  with it? Aesthetics were my obsession and fervour. What

  was I doing in the army? Somehow this totally unsuit-

  able candidate must have passed medical and psycho-

  logical tests. I had been drafted, sent to boot camp;

  somehow a drill serjeant had trained me to become a sol-

  dier.

  Here I was, marching to war.

  We boarded a troopship for passage to the southern con-

  tinent, the world’s largest unclaimed territory. It was

  there that the fighting was taking place. All battles had been fought in the south for nearly three thousand years.

  It was a vast, uncharted land of tundra and permafrost,

  buried in ice at the pole. Apart from a few outposts along the coast, it was uninhabited except by battalions.

  I was assigned to a mess-deck below the waterline, al-

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  C H R I S T O P H E R P R I E S T

  ready hot and stinking when we boarded, soon crowded

  and noisy as well.

  I withdrew into myself, while sensations of life

  coursed maddeningly through me. Who was I? How had I

  come to this place? Why could I not remember what I had

  been doing even the previous day?

  But I was able to function, equipped with knowledge

  of the world, with working ability to use my equipment, I knew the other men in my escadron and I understood

  some of the aims and history of the war. It was only my-

  self I could not remember. For the first day, as we waited in our deck for other detachments to board the ship, I listened in to the talk of the other men, hoping mainly for

  insights about myself, but when none of those was re-

  vealed I settled instead for finding out what concerned

  them. Their concerns would be mine.

  Like all soldiers they were complaining, but in their

  case the complaints were tinged with real apprehension.

  It was the prospect of the three thousandth anniversary

  of the outbreak of war that was the problem. They were

  all convinced that they were going to be caught up in

  some major new offensive, an assault intended to resolve

  the dispute one way or another. Some of them thought

  that because there were still more than three years to go until the anniversary the war would be ended before

  then. Others pointed out cynically that our four-year

  term of conscription was due to end a few weeks after the millennium. If a big offensive was in progress we would

  never be allowed out until it was over.

  Like them, I was too young for fatalism. The seed of

  wanting to escape from the army, to find some way to

  discharge myself, had been sown.

  1 5 8

  T H E D I S C H A R G E

  I barely slept that night, wondering about my past,

  worrying about my future.

  When the ship started its voyage it headed south, passing the islands closest to the mainland. Off the coast of Jethra itself was Seevl, a long grey island of steep cliffs and bare windswept hills that blocked the view of the sea from

  most parts of the city. Beyond Seevl a wide strait led to a group of islands known as the Serques—these were

  greener, lower, with many attractive small towns nestling in coves and bays around their coastlines.

  Our ship passed them all, weaving a way between the

  clustering islands. I watched from the rail, enchanted by the view.

  As the long shipboard days passed slowly I found my-

  self drawn again and again to the upper deck, where I

  would find a place to stand and stare, usually alone. So

  close to home but beyond the blocking mass of Seevl, the

  islands slipped past, out of reach, this endless islandscape of vivid colours and glimpses of other places, distant and shrouded in haze. The ship ploughed on steadily through

  the calm water, the massed soldiery crammed noisily

  within, few of the men so much as even glancing away to

  see where we were.

  The days went by and the weather grew noticeably

  warmer. The beaches I could see now were white and

  fringed with tall trees, tiny houses visible in the shade beyond. The reefs that protected many of the islands

  were brilliantly multicoloured, jagged and encrusted

  with shells, breaking the sea-swell into spumes of white

  spray. We passed ingenious harbours and large coastal

  towns clinging to spectacular hillsides, saw pluming vol-

  1 5 9

  C H R I S T O P H E R P R I E S T

  canoes and rambling, rock-strewn mountain pastures,

  skirted islands large and small, lagoons and bays and

  river estuaries.

  It was common knowledge that it was the people of

  the Dream Archipelago who had caused the war, though

  as you passed through the Midway Sea the peaceful, even

  dreamy aspect of the islands undermined this certainty.

  The calm was only an impression, an illusion borne of the distance between ship and shore. To keep us alert on our

  long southerly voyage the army mounted many compul-

  sory shipboard lectures. Some of these recounted the his-

  tory of the struggle to achieve armed neutrality in which the islands had been engaged for most of the three millennia of the war.

  Now they were by consent of all parties neutral, but

  their geographical location—the Midway Sea girdled the

  world, separating the warring countries of the northern

  continent from their chosen battlefields in the uninhab-

  ited southern polar land—ensured that military presence

  in the islands was perpetual.

  I cared little for any of that. Whenever I was able to

  get away to the upper deck I would stare in rapt silence at the passing diorama of islands. I tracked the course of the ship with the help of a torn and probably out-dated map

  I had found in a ship’s locker and the names of the islands chimed in my consciousness like a peal of bells: Paneron, Salay, Temmil, Mesterline, Prachous, Muriseay, Demmer,

  Piqay, the Aubracs, the Torquils, the Serques, the Reever Fast Shoals and the Coast of Helvard’s Passion.

  Each of these names was evocative to me. Reading the

  names off the map, identifying the exotic coastlines from fragments of clues—a sudden rise of sheer cliffs, a distinctive headland, a particular bay—made me think that

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  T H E D I S C H A R G E

  everywhere in the Dream Archipelago was already em-

  bedded in my consciousness, that somehow I derived

  from the islands, belonged in them, had dreamed of them

  all my life. In short, while I stared at the islands from the ship I felt my artistic sensibilities reviving. I was startled by the emotional impact on me of the names, so delicate

  and suggestive of unspecified sensual pleasures, out of

  key with the rest of the coarse and manly existence on

  the ship. As I stared out across the narrow stretches of

  water that lay between our passing ship and the beaches

  and reefs I would quietly recite the names to myself, as if trying to summon a spirit that would lift me up, raise me above the sea and carry me to those tide-swept strands.

  Some of the islands were so large that the ship sailed

  along parallel with their coastlines for most of the day, while others were so small they were barely more than

  half-submerged reefs which threatened to rip at the hull

  of our elderly ship.

  Small or large, all the islands had names. As we passed

  one I could identify on my map I circled the name, then

  later added it to an ever-growing list in my notebook. I

  wanted to record them, count them, note them down as

  an itinerary so that one day I might go back and explore

  them all. The view from the sea tempted me.

  There was only one island stop for our ship during

  that long southward voyage.

  My first awareness of the break in our journey was

  when I noticed that the ship was heading towards a large

  industrialized port, the installations closest to the sea seemingly bleached white by the cement dust spilling

  from an immense smoking factory that overlooked the

  bay. Beyond this industrial area was a long tract of undeveloped shoreline, the tangle of rainforest briefly block-1 6 1

  C H R I S T O P H E R P R I E S T

  ing any further sight of civilization. Then, after rounding a hilly promontory and passing a high jetty wall, a large town built on a range of low hills came suddenly into

  sight, stretching away in all directions, my view of it distorted by the shimmering heat that spread out from the

  land across the busy waters of the harbour. We were of

  course forbidden from knowing the identity of our stop,

  but I had my map and I already knew the name.

  The island was Muriseay, the largest of the islands in

  the Archipelago and one of the most important.

  It would be hard to underestimate the impact this dis-

  covery had on me. Muriseay’s name came swimming up

  out of the blank pool that was my memory.

  At first it was just an identifying word on the map: a

  name printed in letters larger than the ones used for

  other islands. It puzzled me. Why should this word, this

  foreign name, mean something to me? I had been stirred

  by the sight of the other islands, but although the reso-

  nances were subtle I had felt no close identification with any of them.

  Then we approached the island and the ship started to

  follow the long coastline. I had watched the distant land slip by, affected more and more, wondering why.

  When we came to the bay, to the entrance to the har-

  bour, and I felt the heat from the town drifting across the quiet water towards us, something at last became clear to me.

  I knew about Muriseay. The knowledge came to me as

  a memory from the place where I had no memory.

  Muriseay was something or somewhere I had known,

  or it represented something I had done, or experienced, as a child. It was a whole memory, discrete, telling me noth-1 6 2

  T H E D I S C H A R G E

  ing about the rest. It involved a painter who had lived on Muriseay and his name was Rascar Acizzone.

  Rascar Acizzone? Who was that? Why did I suddenly

  remember the name of a Muriseayan painter when other-

  wise I was a hollow shell of amnesia?

  I was able to explore this memory no further: without

  warning all troops were mustered to billets and with the

  other men who had drifted to the upper decks I was

  forced to return to the mess-decks. I descended to the

  bowels of the ship resentfully. We were kept below for the rest of the day and night, as well as for much of the day that followed.

  Although I suffered in the airless, sweltering hold with

  all the others, it gave me time to think. I closed myself off, ignored the noise of the other men and silently explored this one memory that had returned.

  When the larger memory is blank, anything that sud-

  denly seems clear becomes sharp, evocative, heavy with

  meaning. I gradually remembered my interest in

  Muriseay without learning anything else about myself.

  I was a boy, a teenager. Not long ago, in my short

  life. I learned somehow of a colony of artists who had

  gathered in Muriseay Town the previous century. I saw

  reproductions of their work somewhere, perhaps in

  books. I investigated further and found that several of

  the originals were kept in the city’s art gallery. I went there to see them for myself. The leading painter, the

  eminence within the group, was the artist called Rascar

  Acizzone.

  It was Acizzone’s work which inspired me.

  Details continued to clarify themselves. A coherent

  exactness emerged from the gloom of my forgotten past.

  1 6 3

  C H R I S T O P H E R P R I E S T

  Rascar Acizzone developed a painting technique he called

  tactilism. A tactilist work used a kind of pigment that had been developed some years before, not by artists but by

  researchers into ultrasound microcircuitry. A range of

  dazzling colours became available to artists when certain patents expired and for a brief period there had been a

  vogue for paintings that used the garish but exciting ul-

  trasound primaries.

  Most of these early works were little more than pure

  sensationalism: colours were blended synaesthetically

  with ultrasonics to shock, alarm or provoke the viewer.

  Acizzone’s work began as the others lost interest, con-

  signing themselves to the minor artistic school that soon became known as the Pre-Tactilists. Acizzone used the

  pigments to more disturbing effect than anyone before

  him. His glowing abstracts—large canvases or boards

  painted in one or two primary colours, with few shapes or images to be seen—appeared at a casual first look, or

  from a distance, or when seen as reproductions in books,

  to be little more than arrangements of colours. Closer up or, better still, if you made physical contact with the ultrasonic pigments used in the originals, it became appar-

  ent that the concealed images were of most profoundly

  and shockingly erotic nature. Detailed and astonishingly

  explicit scenes were mysteriously evoked in the mind of

  the viewer, inducing an intense charge of sexual excite-

  ment. I discovered a set of long-forgotten Acizzone ab-

  stracts in the vaults of the museum in Jethra and by the

  laying on of the palms of my hands I entered the world of vicarious carnal passion. The women depicted by Acizzone were the most beautiful and sensual I had ever seen, or known, or imagined. Each painting created its own vision in the mind of the viewer. The images were always

  1 6 4

  T H E D I S C H A R G E

  exact and repeatable, but they were unique, being par-

  tially created as an individual response to the sensual

  longing of the observer.

  Not much critical literature about Acizzone remained,

  but what little I could find seemed to suggest that everyone experienced each painting differently.

  I discovered that Acizzone’s career had ended in fail-

  ure and ignominy: soon after his work was noticed he

  was rejected by the art establishment figures, the public notables, the moral guardians, of his time. He was

  hounded and execrated, forced to end his days in exile on the closed island of Cheoner. With his most of his originals hidden, and a few more dispersed away from

  Muriseay to the archives of mainland galleries, Acizzone

  never worked again and sank into obscurity.

  As a teenage aesthete I cared nothing about his scan-

  dalous reputation. All I understood was that the few

  paintings of his that were hidden away in the cellars of

  the Jethran gallery evoked such lustful images in my

  mind that I was left weak with unfocused desire and

  dizzy with amorous longings.

  That was the whole bright clarity of my unlocated

  memory. Muriseay, Acizzone, tactilist masterpieces, con-

  cealed paintings of secret sex.

  Who was I who had learned of this? The boy was

  gone, grown into a soldier. Where was I when it hap-

  pened? There must have been a wider life I once lived,

  but none of those memories had survived.

  Once I had been an aesthete; now I was a foot-soldier.

  What kind of life was that?

  Now we were moored in Muriseay Town, just outside

  the harbour wall. We fretted and strained, wanting to es-

  cape from our sweltering holds. Then:

  1 6 5