So goes the song, and so it proves to be. When did this happen? I think back to the long post-midnight walks I used to take all over town and I seem to remember overgrown streets in deep shadows that it was fun to disappear into before you came into the next orange streetlamp halo. There were plenty of bright spots around the main drag, around the park and the tennis courts, you know, where you’d expect them, but am I just looking back at my old wanderings through night-coloured glasses?
I haven’t been walking in way too long, as you might have guessed, and it’s funny to rediscover something that was such a basic part of my nights for so many years after I moved here. Some things were wonderfully the same. Winter air still makes the blood hum and exposed skin zing, and now I’m looking forward to it being cold enough that I can go walking in my old police-surplus greatcoat (and when I get back maybe I’ll play some Spiderbait and Bush and watch some Z-grade horror flicks on videotape for the full Matthew Revisits The Mid-90s experience). I fell into my old nighttime quickstep nice and easily. The crunch of sneaker soles on asphalt still sounds the way it used to.
But seriously, where did all the light come from? I was noticing it by the first intersection. It took me a moment to realise why I kept looking around, and then I worked out that I was looking for where the trees had used to be. There have never been any street trees around that intersection, but the light was brighter, which made the whole space look brighter and more open than I expected, and I associate that with tree-clearing, don’t ask me why. I’m sure clearing has happened along the riverbank, because there’s a playground there that wasn’t there before and the big spreading tree that used to have a rich green floodlight lighting it up at night seems to be gone. That plus the bigger, redeveloped Leagues Club across the water makes lights up that whole stub end of the street. Less gloomy, but harsher. If I actually had moved into that weird octagonal block by the bridge (say, for example, I hadn’t found mushrooms growing on the carpet when I went in to inspect) I’d have had to invest in some heavy curtains by now if I wanted to sleep.
The stretch ’round the corner to the roundabout is bright and clean too, although that’s less of a surprise. I remember the works that trimmed the heavy foliage on the roadsides right back and repositioned the footpaths in so they didn’t snake right into the hanging branches. I can understand that one. The old paths were cool and picturesque but they must have been a real happy hunting ground for muggers if anyone was coming back to the east side on foot after a night at the pub. And the big conifers a couple of corners away from home are still there, and as I came past were giving off a beautiful, astringent scent that the cold seemed to sharpen.
I know I’ve said this before, but I need to keep exploring. I’ve fallen out of touch with my town, I think. Too many late nights on the Internet.
On which note…
I’m only just getting to know it, but I do love late night walking in Canberra. The feeling of no-one being around.
There’s a lovely line early in It where Ben Hanscom is thinking about what a pleasure it is to walk through his town at night, that feeling of having the place to himself as his own secret, passing by lit windows in the dark. I remember thinking back on that passage when I first started my night walks in town and thinking that there was someone who’d done the same in his time. And when you do meet someone else on foot, you feel almost like their co-conspirator, even if the two of you pass each other without a word.
I would love to walk at night, but I’m too chicken to go out alone. but agree with the impact of cold air – it does make you feel alive.
I’ve always looked at that octaganal building and thought I’d like to live there. Were the rooms a funny shape too?
They were indeed. I don’t think it would have been fun trying to find furniture to fit those room shapes. I remember it feeling much more cramped than my eventual place too – no balconies, and the one stairwell is narrow and inside. (These are seventeen-year-old memories, mind.)
Spent a good bit of time wandering around NZ and Sydney late at night this past summer (well, Southern Hemisphere’s summer) whilst doing a bit of travelling. The feel in and around Dunedin, for instance, was quite peculiar. It’s a prominent university city (like my own place for the last six years, St Andrews in Scotland, albeit a town), so the students were largely gone.
It felt peculiar during the day, but at night it was rather easy to imagine that the students remained, that they were just…elsewhere in the city. (So not the ‘nightlife’ as it’d commonly be known.) And yet, there were a scarce handful still haunting over the summer (presumably postgrads, I never asked), but they certainly appealed to the ‘co-consipirator’ idea you mention when they made in-passing conversation. That it wasn’t just a local but a tourist doing the night-time wandering seemed to tickle them a little.
Something I’ve done myself many, many times in the past decade has been commencing a wandering in the pre-dawn twilight, especially over the summer months. Seeing a city or town in ‘broad daylight’ (though with the shadows in vaguely unfamiliar place) yet still empty has always been an enjoyable sensation, though I suppose this is aided by Scotland’s distance from the equator, getting a sunrise at ~4am ensures a certain lack of wanderers.
As an almost complete aside, I once lived in a pentagonal room; quite peculiar, but its design did mean I could lean very easily out my window and knock directly on my next door neighbour’s.
Calpurniawise. What if a little bit demoted Shira would find herself in the arbites precinct on the planet suffering invasion of Chaos forces? What she would do? Please, would you tell us readers. Thank you very much.
Hi Leo, apologies as always for the delay. I keep thinking “I’ll just think on that a bit before I reply” and then it’s nearly a week gone.
The thing about Calpurnia is that she’s very tightly bound to duty and obedience, she doesn’t do the go-it-alone maverick thing. So the simplest answer, given that you’re positing she’s been demoted down from the top ranks when this invasion happens, is that she’ll do what her post and her orders require her to do, which is going to depend on the decisions of whoever *is* at the top.
That, of course, doesn’t make for a very satisfying story, so were I actually planning this out as a book then there would need to be some twist of circumstance that freed her up a bit from that and allowed her more agency, similar to how she was temporarily restored to her old rank in Blind. The easiest way would probably be to isolate her from her commanders, or have those commanders killed or otherwise taken out of the picture.
Assuming that’s happened, what then? It depends to an extent on the form the invasion took, and how successful it’s been. The Arbites making a stand in their precinct fortress against impossible odds is a classic 40K trope, so if the invasion swallows up the planet (or at least the right part of it) very quickly then Calpurnia would find herself commanding a relatively straightforward military siege, or as straightforward as anything can be when your enemies aren’t entirely bound by the laws of physics or sanity. A large-scale uprising from a cult underground or a smaller-scale invasion backed by a coup from the planet’s elite fit into the same broad model: countering those sorts of things is what the Arbites do, it’s just that this time the stakes are a bit higher.
Then you’ve got a large-scale military incursion that puts the whole planet into a state of war but might not literally be happening on the Precinct’s doorstep. In that case I don’t see Calpurnia putting the Arbites into front-line military roles unless the situation got truly woeful. Instead, she’d consider it her garrison’s responsibility to keep the Imperial machine running so that the war effort could do the same: I can see her unleashing savage Arbites reprisals against any hint of popular unrest, non-co-operation among the Adeptus, or vaccilation or incompetence by war officials. The subtler resources of the Arbites, the secret-police side rather than the paramilitary side, would be working full steam to ensure that no spies or fifth columnists could operate behind the lines.
Another interesting facet would be her upbringing on Ultramar and the firm cultural stamp that that’s left on her. The Ultramar ethos seems to me to trust and value its citizens much more than the mainstream Imperial political culture, so while the other Adeptus leaders around her might be solemnly agreeing that it was time to cut rations again, increase work shifts in the munitions plants again, have a few random people arrested and flogged to keep the rest cowed, Calpurnia would be out there helping civilians to organise local defence companies, set up supply caches, recruit and train volunteer leaders for firefighting teams, evacuation co-ordinators, emergency medics and supply caches, and so on. Think of it as laying the foundations for something like the Vervunhive scratch companies or the Gereon resistance, should it come to that. There would still be plenty of potential for action, but the point about writing the Arbites is that they’re not a straight military force, and their most interesting stories aren’t straight-up battle stories.
What do you think?
Thank you for the answer very much!
You are right, it would be too straightforward for the arbites book. Though it was very interesting to read your thoughts even on this straightforward matter.
Calpurnia has a big bag of experience. And what if situation arise when her experience would play an important role. Calpurnia (demoted as probably would be) for example would see the signs of incoming disaster (would it be incursion, some vile summoning or something of even lawlessness) and her superior would not. Is that possible? She would have to align with the orders of her betters. And I don’t believe that she would not try to do something to prepare for the coming storm. So there would be personal relations and conflicts in the foreground.
Naturally if such situation (with different levels of experience) is possible at all.
Thanks again for your answer and your books! I hope that there will be continuation of Calpurnia’s story. And I am quite sure that it will be very interesting.