Did it actually matter?

+++Broadcast Minus Two Weeks [Solar]+++

THE TITLE OF the book was Insignum Astartes: The Uniforms and Regalia of the Space Marines, and it was a real tome in the traditional sense of the word. Not a pict-book to be read by a data-slate, but a physical object made of plaspaper, like the ones his mother had always favoured.

Leon took great care with it, as the binding was old and the pages uneven where the glue holding them in place had yellowed and gone to powder.

He looked over age-dulled images of armoured warriors, captured by picters or rendered in artwork as they strode battlefields like mythic storm-lords. He knew the representations intimately, every shade and line and colour. He knew every word in the book by heart. The careworn pages showed details of Legion sigils, banners and insignia, basic facts on the nature of the Legiones Astartes and their battle doctrines. The book smelled of age and solemnity. At his feet, hand-drawn sketches that were full of painstaking detail, rendered on scraps of butcher’s paper, lay in an untidy pile beneath his bed.

Leon’s scribblings were crude in comparison to the illustrations in the book, but still he poured his full measure of intent into them. The best of his work – such as it was – was pinned to the walls of his small, narrow bedroom, along with yellowing newsprint clippings and pages kept from leaflets provided by the colonial authorities. The rest of his books and spools of picts lay on plastic shelves above his bed. They jostled for space with a collection of figurines, some stamped from metal and brightly painted, others formed from off-cuts of wood that Leon had carved himself. The youth’s room was, in its own way, a dedication to the great dreams of the Emperor and his warriors, to their glory and the glory of humanity.

Pride of place went to a single cylinder made of heavy-gauge brass, polished to a bright sheen: the spent casing of a bolt shell. He put down the book and reached for it, taking the case between thumb and forefinger, turning it so it caught the light. Not for the first time, Leon wondered where the shot it contained had been fired. He tried to picture the mass-reactive shell head and the damage it would have wrought on impact. Who died for the sake of this?He asked the question in silence. Leon tried to imagine himself there in that moment, looking on as the round took the life of an enemy of the Imperium.

The door to his room opened and Leon jerked, startled from his reverie. He’d been so engrossed in his own thoughts he hadn’t heard his father’s approach; certainly the man would never give him the grace to knock before entering.

Immediately, he saw the shell casing in Leon’s hand and his expression soured. ‘I can see you’re busy.’

Leon coloured, feeling foolish. ‘What’s wrong?’ He fumbled with the casing, unsure where to put it. The man who sold it to him had taken a high price for it, and Ames had beat him when he learned how much scrip he had ‘wasted’; but the casing had fallen from the ejection port of a Space Marine’s bolter, and owning it made Leon Kyyter feel somehow connected to the warrior kindred he saw in the books.

‘It’s worthless, you know that, don’t you?’ Leon’s father pointed at the brass cylinder. ‘It was probably picked from the mud beneath the boots of some idiot in the Imperial Army, if that. That shell’s never been within a light-year of a Space Marine.’ He glanced around the room disapprovingly, as he always did.

Leon kept his silence. He didn’t care to believe what Ames said. In his eyes, the casing was real and true, and that was all that mattered.

‘I’ll never comprehend why you hold so much interest for…’ He sneered at the crude drawings on the walls and the metal figures. ‘For all this.’ Bitterness clouded his father’s tone. ‘The Space Marines, the Emperor, all of them… They don’t care about you as much as you care about them. Terra thinks nothing of Virger-Mos or the people who live here. I keep wondering when you’re going to grow up and realise that.’

Still, Leon said nothing. He didn’t want to repeat the same pointless argument they had fought a hundred times over.

Ames tapped a picture of the Imperial Palace cut from a pamphlet, the edges of it curling inwards. ‘I know you think that one day you’ll go see this for real. But sooner or later, you have to learn that won’t happen. It’s a fantasy, son. You were born here, and you’ll die here. And the Imperium will go on without you. It won’t care.’

‘What do you want?’ Leon said, at last.

His father frowned and turned away. ‘Do something useful. Take the kitchen remains to the burner.’

Leon waited until he was gone, and then replaced the shell. He put the copy of the Insignum Astartesback on the shelf, where it would be pressed flat and kept safe, and then dolefully took up the duty he had been given.

HE WALKED ACROSS the dusty patch of grass behind the dormitory house to where the maw of the burner protruded from its underground hollow, and kicked the grate open with his feet. Leon let his mind wander, pretending instead he was on Terra, walking the halls of the Emperor’s Palace; but then the stink of the burner reached him and the pleasant illusion was destroyed. Scowling, he poured the pail of slops into the drop tube and let the furnace start its work.

Through habit, he looked up at the Skyhook. At this time of day, the sun was throwing the space elevator’s shadow directly over the building.

In the shade, Leon found Esquire Mendacs sitting cross-legged on the grass with a water flask and a cloth bag at his side. The remembrancer was working at a pict-screen, moving a stylus across it. He saw the youth and threw him a wan smile, beckoning him over.

He left the pail and wiped his hands on the thighs of his trousers. ‘Beg pardon, esquire,’ Leon said as he came closer. ‘If I smell a little. The kitchen remains, I was just disposing of them.’

Mendacs nodded. ‘It doesn’t notice. Are you well, Leon?’

‘Well enough.’ He nodded at the hand-held screen. ‘What is that you’re doing there?’

‘See for yourself.’ Mendacs offered him the device, and Leon took it gingerly, cautious not to touch any of the tabs or buttons around the pict-screen’s frame.

A half-finished image was centred in the middle of the display, a line sketch of the township from the shallow rise where the dormitory house sat. The rise of the Skyhook dominated the drawing.

Leon felt a brief flash of jealousy. Mendacs’s skill with the pen was an order of magnitude beyond the youth’s crude attempts, and even the incomplete piece here made his scribblings look like the work of an infant. He nodded. ‘It’s impressive.’

‘It will be the basis for a digi-painting, perhaps,’ Mendacs said airily. ‘We’ll see when I’m finished with it.’

When Leon didn’t answer, the remembrancer’s expression shifted and he frowned. The other man’s cool, steady gaze seemed to bore straight into the youth, and he wanted to look away.

‘Your father…’ Mendacs paused, feeling for the right words. ‘He doesn’t seem to have an appreciation for art.’

Leon gave a glum nod. ‘Aye.’

‘Your mother did, though.’

‘How did you know that?’

Mendacs smiled. ‘Because youdo, Leon. And because there are still traces of her lingering in your home.’ He stopped, suddenly concerned. ‘Forgive me. Am I speaking out of turn?’

Leon shook his head. ‘No, no. You’re exactly right.’ He sighed. ‘I’d like to have the talent that you do, but I don’t.’

‘I’m sure your skills are balanced in other ways,’ offered the remembrancer.

‘My Da doesn’t seem to think so.’

Mendacs studied him. ‘Fathers and sons always have a fractious relationship. This is a truth that spans the galaxy. One pulls against the other… one rebels, defies… The other tries to hold on to the old order of things, against reason.’