The Turing Test

The Warrior Half-and-Half

“That’s the North Fortress down on the right,” said the helicopter pilot.

A huge grey wave burst against a desolate gun-platform, flinging a column of spray hundreds of feet upwards into the air. Then another wave threw itself against the fortress – and another and another. Dwarfed by the ocean, the tiny figures of soldiers looked up at us as we passed.

The North Fortress was one of four that guarded the prison island of Gendlegap. An armed airship circled constantly above them. Another airship circled ten miles further out. A satellite hung overhead in space. Five hundred miles away to the east at our bases on the bleak Phrygidian coast, and to the west in Anachromia, fighter planes and transporters stood ready to blast into the air at any sign of an escape attempt or a rescue bid…

The helicopter banked and turned.

“There it is now sir,” the pilot said.

Gannets and petrels swirling around it, spray lashing its basalt cliffs, the bleak sea-mountain of Gendlegap came into view. I steeled myself for my imminent encounter with the legendary Half-and-Half, the island’s solitary prisoner. What state would he be in after a century of solitary confinement? How would I react when I first saw him? How would I keep my composure when he first opened his mouth to speak?

The helicopter descended towards the landing pad and the little windswept reception party came into view among the concrete buildings huddled at the island’s desolate peak. It was a great honour, of course, to have been chosen by the Emperor for this mission but my feelings now were very mixed indeed.

More than anything else, I wondered how I could look a man in the eye that had betrayed the Empire so wantonly to our enemies. This was the most famous traitor in our history, after all. And I was a devout Eninometic. Treachery, to me, was the one unforgivable sin.

The helicopter settled. I adjusted my uniform, fastening the top button of my white jacket and straightening my medals. Then I nodded to Sergeant Tobias. He opened the door. With a cold blast, the Antarctic winds swept in, and a band struck up, somewhat shakily, the Imperial Anthem.

I stepped out into the gale. The governor saluted. I inspected a small guard of honour. The governor introduced his staff officers to me in rank order, and began a speech of welcome.

“Major-Cardinal Illucian, may I say…” and here he stumbled over his words, “may I say how honoured we are…”

Major-Cardinal Illucian. Yes, that was me. I was only thirty years old but I was a high-ranking officer of the Pristine Guard, dedicated by solemn vow to the service of His Imperial Majesty, and to the Holy doctrine of Eninomesis.

The Guard demanded great sacrifices. My home, such as it was, consisted of two small whitewashed rooms which I inhabited alone. I didn’t smoke, or drink, or eat meat. Every time I went out into the City and saw the colour and the cheerful bustle of ordinary sinful human life, I felt a pang of regret and of longing.

But someone had to bear the extra burdens that others shirked, I always told myself. Otherwise the Empire itself would surely fall and all this colourful life would come to an end, like a kite tumbling from the sky when its cord has been severed.

And, let me be honest, there were compensations, moments of quiet pride, moments such as this one, when the whole garrison of Gendlegap visibly quailed before me, the Pristine officer, stern and austere in my uniform of immaculate white.

“We haven’t seen him for nearly ten years,” the governor told me, as he led the way down the narrow spiral staircase. “There has been no occasion for it, not since those academicians came to interview him about his immortality. Of course we monitor him constantly. He goes into a kind of suspended animation. There is no body-warmth, no nervous activity, no breathing…”

The Immortal Warrior was incarcerated a hundred feet down in the solid rock. The only access to him were these stairs cut through the grim black basalt and sealed by a series of eight iron doors, the seventh of which the governor was now unlocking.

Cold arc lights illuminated the descending steps beyond the door. I followed the governor through. Behind us came my sergeant, Tobias, and three of the garrison soldiers.

“Well, I assume there is no breathable air in there,” I observed, “if it is ten years since it was last opened.”

“Indeed, your Holiness. But the strange thing – the uncanny thing really – is that he springs to life at once when we disturb him. His nervous system has completely shut down, yet he responds instantaneously to a change in the outside world!”

I shrugged. “I suppose there is very little about Half-and-Half that can be explained,” I said, “his origins, his shape-shifting, his apparently magical powers…”

In times past, pieces of the Immortal Warrior had even been cut off and examined by science: a finger, a hand, a leg. But as soon as they are separated from him, his tissues disintegrate completely, only to reappear later, re-formed in some mysterious way, inexplicably re-united to Half-and-Half himself.

“A complete mystery, your Holiness,” the governor agreed, opening the last of the eight doors. “Of course, he himself is full of fanciful explanations if you give him half a chance.”

“I have no intention of doing so,” I said coolly.

But I was not quite as calm as I appeared. As the door of his cell came into view, I confess I experienced a moment of pure childish dread at the prospect of facing this being who could be burnt in furnaces, torn into a hundred pieces, and still not be destroyed.

“He is not invincible,” I reminded myself, “even if he is immortal. He can be chained. He can be held. He can make mistakes…”

He could certainly make mistakes. Or otherwise he would never have allowed himself to fall back into the hands of the Old Emperor, after he had betrayed him so treacherously to the Hippolytanians at the Battle of the Mill.

The light sprang on as the enormous door swung open.

Laden with chains, the prisoner of Gendlegap squatted in the corner of a tiny metal-lined cell that looked and smelled like an empty water-tank. His head was between his knees. He was as angular and motionless as a dead spider.

Half-and-Half the magical warrior, Half-and-Half the traitor: for several generations, every child in the Empire had been told the story of his exploits and his disgrace. But how many expected ever to stand there in that cell, faced with the mysterious Warrior himself?

He was quite small, dark-haired, swarthy. I had seen pictures of him of course and should not have been surprised. And yet somehow it was hard to believe that this ordinary-looking prisoner, with the rough skin of a middle-aged bricklayer or peasant, could have been the same one who over a century ago struck terror into the barbarian armies with his shape-shifting illusions.

Just barely perceptibly, Half-and-Half moved. He was alert, he was listening, though his head was weighed down by the heavy iron collar round his neck.

I cleared my throat. I felt suddenly ridiculous stooping there next to the governor in that tiny tank-like space.

“Prisoner Half-and-Half,” I began, “His Imperial Majesty has asked me to convey to you this message. In exchange for your assistance in his current wars, he would be willing to grant you, temporarily, your freedom. Depending on your conduct during the period of these wars, His Majesty would also be willing to contemplate in due course granting you a full pardon for the crimes committed by you in the service of His great-grandfather.”

There was a long silence. Then very suddenly Half-and-Half sat up and looked straight at us. His eyes were very bright, full of energy and cunning and wit, and on his lips there was a faint teasing smile.

Well, I am a soldier of the Pristine Guard. I have looked death in the face many times. But it was a struggle now – why not admit it? – to keep myself from lowering my gaze.

“Speak, damn you!” I thought, “Speak!”

At last he nodded slowly. “Yes,” he said, and his voice was quite ordinary and human. “Yes, I will speak with the Emperor.”

“You will agree to his terms?”

“I will speak to him.”

“But we need to discuss the terms of your service before we can…”

The prisoner made a small gesture of impatience, with a right hand laden with heavy rings of black iron. “I said I would speak to the Emperor.”

As the helicopter lifted, Half-and-Half twisted his chained body to look back at the rock where he had languished for so long. Then he turned to me with that clever, mischievous smile.

“Well, that was no picnic, I can tell you! No air, no food, no space…”

The sea-lashed platform of the North Fortress passed by beneath us.

“I mean,” said Half-and-Half, “you’re a vigorous-looking young man. Never mind food or drink. Imagine going for a whole century without sex!”

I informed him – rather stiffly – that the Pristine Guard was a celibate order.

“Celibate eh?” he said. “Well, well. So virgin soldiers are back in vogue again are they? Still, there’s certainly something in the idea, I must admit. The virgin soldiers always were the most ruthless fighters. They long for release all the time, I suppose!”

I declined to reply to this nonsense. Half-and-Half was clearly a master of establishing the upper hand. I was determined to prove to him that he had met his match.

But my silence did little to discourage him. He laughed and continued his train of thought.

“In fact,” he said, “I’ve heard it said that death is the ultimate orgasm, though I’m afraid I just have to struggle by with the ordinary kind.”

Again I didn’t respond. And we sat for some time in silence.

But over the coast of Anachromia, as we looked down on the thousands upon thousands of grey sea-lions that covered the beaches, the Immortal Warrior chuckled.

“So the Emperor thinks he can make use of me, does he? Doesn’t he know how I got my name? I’m Half-and-Half! Whoever I serve, whoever I have dealings with, I do them just as much harm as I do good and just as much good as harm.”

“I think His Majesty is sufficiently confident in his own authority,” I said, dryly, “to believe that he can channel your capabilities in the right direction.”

(After all, His Majesty’s armies made use of all kinds of technologies and weapons which could be used against us just as effectively as they could be used in our defence. The trick was to ensure you were in control.)

“Well,” said Half-and-Half, “I wish I had a penny for every time someone managed to convince themselves that they could ‘channel me in the right direction’!”

He made a small exasperated gesture. “It can’t be done! Why can’t these kings and emperors get that through their heads? I’m the love-child of an angel and a demon, I’m light and darkness in exactly equal proportions. Don’t they tell the story any more? There was an illicit union between good and evil at the beginning of time – and I was the result. I’m immortal, I’m full of hybrid vigour, but I’m a moral zero. It’s just not negotiable, it’s a law of the universe like the speed of light. You can imprison me or make me General-Supreme, in the end it’ll make no odds. You might just as well let me sit on the sea-shore and count shells.”

The Immortal Warrior snorted, giving a glance down at the bare Anachromian Ridge as it fell behind us. In the rocks down there, so I’d heard, were remnants of cities so old that they’d fossilised, become part of the bones of the Earth itself. Yet, if the stories about him were true, Half-and-Half had existed even then, sometimes disappearing for years or even centuries, but always reappearing in some new guise.

Now his chains clinked.

“Not that I’m complaining,” he said. “If your Emperor has managed to persuade himself he can use me, that’s fine with me. I have no desire to spend another hundred years under that damned rock.”

“Things have changed since you were last at large,” I said. “This is a scientific age. No one will take seriously all this talk of demons and angels.”

His merry, mocking eyes turned back to my face. “It was a scientific age when they locked me up,” he said, “but they still believed in Eninomesis.”

“That has not changed,” I said, quietly and firmly.

“You still believe in the prophet Enino and how he descended to the ultimate Core in a wheel of light?”

“Of course,” I said.

He smiled.

“But that’s different,” I added.

“Is it? Oh, I see.”

In spite of his chains he gave a dismissive shrug and looked away.

But he didn’t remain silent for long. “Did you know I was with Enino for a while?” he asked. “He was another one who thought he could reform me. A vain man, he was. Do you know how I remember him best? In front of the mirror with a pair of tweezers! He had this incredibly vigorous growth of nostril hair, and…”

“Silence!” I interrupted him. “Show respect to the Holy Prophet or I will have you gagged.”

“Fair enough,” said Half-and-Half with his shrug and his mocking smile, looking back out of the window.

“I am the son of an angel and a demon,” he repeated very quietly to himself, rather as a child will mutter defiantly when it has been told off. “The Norse knew me as Loki. The Chinese called me the Monkey King. One way or another, though, I seem to keep on getting buried under mountains.”

He looked round at me slyly. “The American Indians, they knew me very well. They weren’t preoccupied with Progress like you urban people are, so they found me less of a problem. They gave me lots of different names…”

I drew in breath. “I really do not wish to hear the names that extinct or imaginary races are supposed to have called you. I merely repeat: this is a scientific age.”

He looked at me. “A scientific age eh?”

His eyes were bright and fierce under his dark brows. “But my immortality is a fact, isn’t it?” he said. “I’ve just lived for a hundred years without food or air or drink. How does your science explain that?”

“Well…” I began, and found myself stumbling. “Well, there are plenty of theories… To do with parachemistry at the subatomic level. To do with non-local forces… Apparently there are spores in space which display a similar ability to reconstruct, and to…”

“Yes, yes,” said Half-and-Half impatiently, “but do you actually understand any of this?”

“Well, it’s not an area in which I really – um – have any specialist knowledge,” I began, “but…”

Half-and-Half laughed. “No, I thought not!” he said.

He settled back in his seat, winking at me jovially, as if I’d just failed to pull off an ingenious joke at his expense.

We were crossing the Ontibian Alps when he spoke again.

“I suppose you’re furious with me for selling out to the Hippolytanians all those years ago?” he asked. “I’ve noticed your type never forgives that sort of thing.”

I remained silent and looked away.

He nodded. “I thought so. A fine young, tight young virgin soldier like you!”

“Thousands died as a result of your treachery,” I said quietly.

“So they say. The Battle of the Mill was lost without me and thousands of Imperial soldiers died who might otherwise have lived.”

He shrugged, clinking. “Of course if it had been thousands of Hippolytanians who had died, you’d have called me a hero. But I saved Hippolytanian lives.”

The Immortal Warrior made a small, contemptuous gesture. “You’re all such babies aren’t you? I’ve been around since the beginning of time. I’ve seen nations come and go, I’ve seen religions and political systems come and go that were supposed to be the answer to everything. I’ve seen whole continents come and go. How could you possibly expect it to mean anything to me when you draw one of those stupid lines across a map and say it’s good to kill the people on one side of it and bad to kill the people on the other? Listen, I’m a mercenary. I fight in my own interests. And the Hippolytanians offered me a better deal.”

He looked at me, his fierce, angry eyes mocking my own suppressed rage.

“And what do you fight for, Cardinal-Major Illucian?” he asked me.

I said nothing.

“I’ll tell you,” he said. “You fight so that everyone will tell you what a good boy you are for holding all your shit tight up inside you, and only ever crapping it out in the special receptacle that daddy provides.”

I wasn’t going to rise to this. I indicated to Sergeant Tobias that he should take my place, then went forward to stand by the pilot.

We were crossing the Southern Marches. Far off in the hazy distance the green hills of our beloved homeland were already coming into view.

“So this is the famous Half-and-Half!” exclaimed the Emperor, as I led the chained prisoner into the throne-room.

His Serene Majesty sat on a high throne like a stage, surrounded by protective force fields that bathed him in a pearly pinkish light. I knelt and prostrated myself, but the Immortal Warrior merely nodded at the planet’s supreme potentate as you might nod at some tradesman in the street.

“The Cardinal-Major has no doubt told you our proposal,” the Emperor said, letting this insolence pass without comment, “and I understand that His Excellency the Minister of Peace-through-War has also now met you and outlined our position. So what is your reply? Will you promise to serve me for the duration of the war in return for your freedom? Or do you prefer to return to your cell on Gendlegap?”

The Immortal Warrior ran his tongue over his lower lip.

“No one would stay on Gendlegap out of choice,” he said. “So naturally I promise to serve you to the best of my ability. I’ve already explained to Illucian here about why I’m known as Half-and-Half. But I would imagine that you’ve convinced yourself that you’ll be able to…”

His Majesty laughed comfortably. “Oh I have no illusions about your loyalties, Half-and-Half, no illusions at all. But I think we can do business. I think – ” (and here the words came out so glibly that I felt like calling out some kind of warning) “ – I think, one way or another, we’ll be able to channel you in the right direction.”

Half-and-Half laughed. “That’s what they all say…” he began, but here I interrupted him.

“You are in the presence of His Majesty the Emperor, Half-and-Half!” I hissed.

He looked at me and back at the Emperor. “I know I am in the presence of the Emperor,” said the prisoner of Gendlegap, without lowering his voice. “And he is in the presence of the warrior Half-and-Half, who helped his great-great-grandfather murder old Nanophea and so usurp the throne…”

“Silence!” I ordered.

But his Majesty merely observed, quite mildly; that he did not want Half-and-Half to talk about the past, mythical or otherwise, while in his service.

“Is that understood?” he enquired. “I want that to be part of our deal.”

“Perfectly,” said Half-and-Half, with an ironic snapping of his heels to attention, which set his chains clanking loudly. “That’s always been part of the deal. I must not disturb the rosy mists of the past!”

His Majesty smiled slyly at him, as if they had shared a private joke. Then he gave a signal to one of his guards, who went to a side door and ushered in the grey, aquiline figure of the Minister of Peace-through-War, accompanied by an aide carrying a small box.

“Half-and-Half,” said the Emperor, “you are an impudent man, and you obviously think you can outsmart us all. But things have changed since you last walked the Earth, things have moved on. We understand, perhaps better than ever before, how your strange body works.”

I think His Majesty expected Half-and-Half to look impressed, or even alarmed that his secret was finally out. But the Immortal Warrior said nothing, merely smiled his faint sceptical smile, just as he had done with me when I had attempted to advance those fashionable theories about para-chemistry and non-local forces.

“Yes, we have new tools at our disposal now,” said the Minister of Peace-through-War. “Bullets can smash tissue and fire can smash molecules. Nuclear fission can even smash atoms. But now, for the first time, we have a means to destroy even sub-atomic particles, reducing them to pure energy.”

His Serene Majesty nodded. “Yes, Half-and-Half, and I don’t think even your strange flesh could reconstruct itself after such total annihilation.”

The prisoner of Gendlegap said nothing.

The Emperor gestured to the Minister’s aide, who opened the box he carried and removed from it a heavy metal bracelet.

“We have been using these subatomic bombs on the battlefield for several years now,” said the Minister, “and we have acquired some skill in miniaturization. This bracelet is in fact such a weapon.”

The Emperor smiled. “You can be held, we know, Half-and-Half,” he said, “you cannot escape from secure bonds. We’re going to fix this bracelet to you. If you tamper with it, it will destroy you. If you disobey me, I will destroy you, for I personally hold a control device for this thing. And if you harm me, the Minister here will destroy you, for he also holds the key to your instant annihilation. This is how I will ensure your loyalty. Is that understood?”

Half-and-Half nodded, still faintly smiling. The Emperor made a gesture to the Minister, who nodded to his aide. The aide fastened the bracelet onto the prisoner’s upper arm.

“Very well then,” said His Majesty. “Remove his chains if you please, Cardinal-Major!”

My guards came forward to release the locks in Half-and-Half’s collar and manacles. The chains fell away to the floor and the Immortal Warrior stood there, unfettered for the first time since before my grandfather was born. Tentatively he felt his wrists, his ankles, his neck. He smiled. He touched the heavy bracelet that had just been fastened round his arm.

Then suddenly he performed a series of cartwheels across the throne-room. It was so unexpected that we all lowered halberds or whipped out hand-guns.

“That feels good!’ exclaimed Half-and-Half, coming to a halt.

Sheepishly, we replaced our weapons. Only the Emperor behind his protective field seemed to have remained calm. Leaning forward, as if the better to enjoy the show, he clapped his hands and called out “Encore!”

So then Half-and-Half performed a series of flying somersaults – one, two…

But the third one was different. Half-way through it, he stopped, he became motionless, suspended three feet off the ground. We all gasped – the Emperor, the guards, all of us – as he hung there for five seconds or more. And then, equally abruptly, he darted sideways, from that motionless mid-air position, generating momentum from nowhere. He darted sideways, snatched my weapon from its holster and flung it down at my feet, while he himself landed effortlessly beside me, smiling, without a wobble, without any sign of breathlessness or strain.

“Come on!” he called to the Emperor’s guards. “Attack me with your halberds!”

They hesitated.

“No. Go on. Do your worst. I won’t hurt you.”

The guards glanced up at His Majesty, who nodded, smiling broadly.

Clumsily, feeling afraid and feeling like fools at the same time, the two guards converged on him, their halberds lowered.

“Come on! Run!” shouted Half-and-Half.

They ran.

And suddenly Half-and-Half had vanished. There was only a single golden butterfly hovering in the space where he had been.

The guards clattered to a stop, just in time to prevent themselves from impaling one another. The butterfly flew upwards, upwards, upwards…

…and crashed to the ground, transformed into an enormous fiery lion. It lashed left and right, it roared. As the guards backed away, it struck their halberds from their hands with its great paws and sent them clattering across the floor…

And then Half-and-Half was back again in human form, looking up at the Emperor with a friendly wink. “There!” he said. “You can see I haven’t lost my touch!”

“Indeed!” said His Majesty, laughing. “Indeed! But I also see that my bracelet of annihilation is still securely in place!”

He clapped his hands to bring the audience to a close.

“Very well then, Cardinal-Major. Thank you for your assistance with this. Take this fellow away and get him out of those dreadful breeches and into some sort of decent outfit that will reassure your fellow-officers. He can come to my war cabinet this afternoon. We’re in very serious trouble just now, I’m afraid. Those damned Antinomians are making fools of us all along the Eastern front. I’m losing a lot of territory, not to mention about a thousand soldiers a day. We need some new ideas – and quickly. We need some sort of encouragement.”

A metal screen slid down in front of the throne and the Emperor and his pearly light were gone. I led the Immortal Warrior down the famous Amber Stairs, and across the Court of Roses.

Half-and-Half the traitor was to be accommodated in the House of Honour.

That is politics I suppose.

“You see?” he said, as we passed among the roses. “They just won’t accept it, even when I tell it to them straight! Once they see what I can do, they refuse to believe that they’d be just as well off without me.”

We passed down the Corridor of the Succession with its long series of portraits of Emperors and Empresses past. Half-and-Half smiled. “Still,” he said, “I like this Emperor. He’s fun.”

He made no mention of the bracelet and, when I spoke of it, he touched it vaguely with his fingers and moved on to other things. I couldn’t help admiring his sangfroid.

“Tell me,” I asked him, “How did you do those tricks?”

The Immortal Warrior smiled. “Hypnotism, sleight of hand, mirrors, very good balance – take your pick!” He winked at me. “There’s no point at all in my telling you how it really works. You wouldn’t believe me. This is a scientific age after all!”

He laughed. To my own surprise, I found myself smiling.

Half-and-Half looked at me sharply. “There’s quite a pleasant fellow under that stiff exterior, I shouldn’t wonder,” he said after a moment, “quite a good-looking fellow too. Maybe you should think of chucking in this Pristine nonsense and having a bit of fun for a change? After all, you only live once. Unless, of course, you’re me.”

We crossed the Court of Fountains and reached the entrance of the House of Honour. Flunkies came out to greet the Immortal Warrior. My role was at an end. We said goodbye.

“Take a leaf from my book,” said Half-and-Half, “Whatever I do, life will go on the same. So I might as well do whatever I like.”

He smiled. “I won’t say that it always works out for me as a philosophy of living, but half of the time it works out fine.”

I turned to go.

“Do you know what I’ve missed most of all?” I heard him say to the flunkies. “It’s not food, it’s not drink. It’s…”

And then the door closed behind him.

My duties completed, I left the Palace and crossed the teeming city. I smelt the city smells of spices and cooked meat and excrement and sweet cakes and rotten vegetables. I heard the angry shouts and the love-songs and the crying babies and the children shrieking and yelling as they played chase through the streets and alleys. I saw the white incense smoke rising from the houses of Enino as they made ready for mid-afternoon prayers. I saw the purple ribbons fluttering in the windows of the whorehouses. I crossed the Great River and looked down at the dirty children and old women and dogs, swarming over its muddy bed, scavenging for scraps…

And I returned to my home, the barracks of the 32nd Pristine Guard. The white walls were bare, the stone courtyard swept scrupulously clean. Officers in white jackets like my own saluted and greeted me with polite deference.

“Pleased to see you, sir.”

“Good to have you back, your Holiness.”

I was suddenly very tired. I couldn’t face eating with my subordinates that night. I asked for some bread and cheese to be brought up to my rooms and let it be known that I would take up the reins again in the morning.

Then I retired to my quarters, my two austere rooms, with the iron bed, and the plain whitewashed walls and the single plain image of Enino, unsmiling, in the midst of his fiery wheel. Dutifully I made an obeisance, then I began to undress.

As I unbuttoned my jacket I caught sight of myself in the little mirror I use for shaving.

Tentatively, uncertainly, I smiled.

I’d never smiled at myself before. It seemed a strange thing to do. But I quite liked it. I sensed the pressure, long suppressed, of a warmer, lighter, more sensual me within…

Half-and-Half went to war. In No-Man’s Land he danced among the bullets and laser beams. Among the ruins and the bomb craters, he laughed and performed acrobatic feats. Over the fallen corpses, he became a lion, a giant, an eagle with wings of fire.

Back at headquarters Generals and Arch-Generals stood in awe as he effortlessly absorbed information and expounded stratagems. Our soldiers cheered. They loved him for his indomitable spirit, not caring at all that he had once betrayed their own great-grandfathers. Along the whole front, they went back on the attack, full of courage and hope and new energy.

And all the while the bracelet of annihilation remained securely fixed to the Immortal Warrior’s arm.

Day after day the Antinomians fell back, very often dropping their weapons and running in sheer panic. Day after day, fair-haired Philinomians ran out from their hiding places and prostrated themselves at our feet. At the Battle of the Ford, our enemies were finally routed. Their kingdoms were annexed to the Empire. Our victory was complete.

I was sent by the Emperor to grant Half-and-Half his pardon and to bring him back to the City for the celebrations. But as I drew near to his encampment, a flash of blinding white lit the sky ahead of us. The bracelet had exploded, annihilating Half-and-Half and, with him, hundreds of soldiers and the entire mountain on which he had stood, looking out over those fertile Antinomian plains which he’d added to our Emperor’s realm.

Where the mountain had been there was only a huge crater, almost completely smooth, as if scooped out of butter by a gigantic spoon.

We walked up to the rim of it, Sergeant Tobias and I. It was as bare and as dead and as featureless as a crater on the moon.

“No one could survive that,” Tobias muttered, “no one. Not even an Immortal.”

Not long afterwards I left the Imperial service and became a merchant, dealing in military surplus, and making good use of my reputation and my contacts. I married, I became quite comfortably off, I travelled the length and breadth of the Empire making deals.

About fifteen years after the Battle of the Ford, I happened to be passing through the Antinomian Borders with my new assistant Zolinda, and thought I would go up with her and take a look at the crater. (It had filled with rain over the years and become a lake). Partly I was curious: I wanted to remind myself that those strange events had really happened and not just been a dream. Partly I hoped to impress Zolinda with my stories of Half-and-Half and Gendlegap and my place in the history-books. She was an attractive woman and I wanted to sleep with her. It had worked with several others before.

So we went up to the lake known as Half-and-Half’s Doom, Zolinda and I, and I told her the story, looking out over that circular expanse of lifeless water. But when I had finished, I felt strangely flat and not at all impressed by my own importance. What part had I really played after all in the story of Half-and-Half, other than the part of a dupe and a stooge?

That explosion was no accident, whatever the official story. Even as he was instructing me to fetch the Immortal Warrior, the Emperor knew quite well that I would never reach him. He hoped to cheat fate by getting the benefits of Half-and-Half’s service and then eliminating him before the price had to be paid. He was – he still is – a player of games, a chancer, as amoral as Half-and-Half himself. A pure and virginal soldier like me was merely a useful foil.

But still, Zolinda was impressed. “You must be very proud, Illucian,” she said. “I remember my father telling me how Half-and-Half had finally been made to serve the Emperor and win our war! I never dreamed I’d one day work for the man who was sent to fetch him from Gendlegap!”

I shrugged. “Actually I’m not so sure the Emperor did really benefit from Half-and-Half’s service. For one thing our soldiers all loved Half-and-Half and blamed the Emperor for his death. The Emperor lost their wholehearted loyalty and that was the beginning of the end of his power.”

It was cold up there. Above the rocky bowl of Half-and-Half’s Doom, the sky was heavy and grey. Zolinda suddenly put her arm in mine. Why did this give me so little pleasure?

“As for the war,” I said, “we won it, I suppose, but the Antinomians have been winning the peace ever since. Now that they are inside of the Empire, they’re taking over. We even have an Antinomian in charge of the Imperial Bank!”

I turned to go, pulling free of her as I did so. “And of course the Philinomians breed like rabbits,” I said, as we began to climb the rocky slope. “There isn’t a street in the Empire where their pale little children aren’t running about and shouting to one another in that outlandish Inglic tongue.”

“But none of that is anything to do with Half-and-Half!” Zolinda protested.

“You don’t think so?”

I paused to look back at the lake, surrounded by its rim of bare smooth rock.

So much for the Emperor, so much for the Empire, but what had become of me?

Well, I ate well now, I drank well, I made love as often as I could. And I was no longer thin, no longer haunted by the Eninometic ghosts of duty and sacrifice, no longer at war with my ordinary human needs.

Yet there were still times when I missed my old life in the Pristine Guard. Those austerities were once a part of me, after all. They gave me a direction, they provided me with certainties to live by.

And whatever I did, I would never recover those old certainties again.

There was a splash. Ripples spread outward from the central point of the lake.

It couldn’t have been a fish. Nothing lived in that perfectly transparent water. Someone must have thrown a stone.

Yet there was no one by the water’s edge, no one at all to be seen but a small dark-haired figure far off at the very top of the opposite rim.

And surely no one could have lobbed a stone from that far. It would have been an astonishing feat of strength.

The concentric waves spread over the glass-like surface until no part of the lake was untouched by the impact of that single stone. But as they spread they became smaller, and soon the lake was blank and smooth once again.

The dark-haired figure seemed to be watching us. Whoever it was, he waved. I could almost imagine I saw a small, teasing smile.