Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Summer

Neither of them moved. Then Esomberr rose and stood with his back to one of the trunks of the denniss. His narrow handsome face had grown as pale as a dead leaf.

“I say, did it ever occur to you that those damned phagors of yours, well armed, with Sibornalese weapons, strike fear into ordinary chaps like me? That they will most likely meet with an ill reception in Sayren Stund’s capital, where a holy drumble is in progress? Are you ever afraid that you might… well, grow to be a bit like a phagor yourself?”

The king turned slowly, with an expression denoting total lack of interest in the question.

“Watch.”

He screwed his face into a mixture of grimace and grin, and snorted breath through his nose. He broke into a run, gathered himself, and leaped clear over one of the trunks of the tree, a full four feet above the ground. It was a perfect jump. He recovered himself, turned, and jumped the trunk in the opposite direction, with a force which carried him almost against Esomberr.

The king was half a head taller than the envoy. The latter, alarmed, reached for his sword, then stood without movement, tense against the king.

“I am twenty-five years of age, in fine condition, and fear neither man nor phagor. My secret is that I am capable of going with circumstances. Oldorando shall be my circumstance. I gain energy from the geometry of circumstance… Do not vex me, Alam Esomberr, or forget my words about the sanctity of what was once mine. I am one of your circumstances, and not vice versa.”

The envoy moved to one side, coughed as a reason for moving his hand from his sword hilt to his mouth, and managed a pale smile.

“You’re terribly fit, I see that. That’s tremendous. By the beholder, but I envy you. It’s a wretched nuisance that I and my little rabble of vicars aren’t in such fine trim. I’ve often thought that praying vitiates the muscles. Therefore, I must request that you proceed ahead with your party and your favoured species—at your breakneck pace—while we follow on behind at our own feeble pace, eh?”

JandolAnganol regarded him without change of expression. Then he gave a fierce grimace. “Very well. The country hereabouts is peaceful, but guard yourselves. Robbers have scant respect for vicars. Remember you carry my bill of divorcement.”

“Strive ever onwards, if you will. I shall deliver your bill to the C’Sarr in good time.” He gave a wave of his hand and left it dangling in front of him. The king did not take it.

Instead, JandolAnganol turned away without further word and whistled Yuli to his side. He called the gillot leader of the guard, Ghht-Mlark Chzarn. The ahuman columns formed up and marched away; the humans followed more informally. In a short while, Alam Esomberr, together with his followers, was left standing silent under the denniss tree. Then the figures were lost to JandolAnganol amid the shade. Soon the great tree itself was lost in the shimmering heat of the plain.

Two days later, the king halted his force only a few miles short of Oldorando. Wisps of smoke trailed across the rolling landscape.

He stood by one of the aged stone pillars which dotted the landscape. Impatient for the rear of the phagor column to catch up, JandolAnganol traced with one finger the worm design on the stone, a familiar pattern of two concentric circles with curving lines running from inner to outer circle. Just for a moment, he wondered what the pillar and its pattern could signify; but such enigmas—presumably never capable of resolution, any more than he expected to be told what long-dead king had erected the stones—occupied his mind only for a moment. His thoughts were all on what lay immediately ahead.

They had reached a region which was in fact a hinterland of the fabled city they were approaching.

Of that city, there was as yet no sign. The view comprised low rolling hills, the foothills of the foothills of the Quzint Mountains, running like an armoured spine over the continent. Ahead, sprawling across the ground, was one of the ucts, threading its way into the distance on either side.

The uct here formed a tawny rather than a green line, comprising few large trees, but many bushes and cyclads, entwined by gaudy mantle flowers, the seeds of which migrant tribes chewed as they progressed.

No road was as wide as this uct. Unlike a road, however, it was not to be travelled by humans. Despite the depredations of arang and fhlebiht, it had become impenetrable. The Madi tribes with their animals travelled along its edge. There, scattering seeds and droppings, the protognostics unthinkingly widened the uct. Year by year it spread, becoming a strip of forest.

Not that the strip was regular. Alien growths like a shoatapraxi, introduced as burrs on the coats of animals, had prospered in places where they could take advantage of favourable soil conditions and spread in thickets. The Madi skirted the new thickets, or else plunged through them leaving a trail later obliterated by further waves of aliens.

What was incidental became established. The uct served as a barrier. Butterflies and small animals found on one side of the barrier were not to be seen on the other. There were birds and rodents and a deadly golden snake which kept to the shelter of the uct and never ventured beyond its confines as they spread across the continent. Several kinds of Others lived their pranksome lives out in the uct.

Humans, too, recognized the existence of the uct by using it as a frontier. This uct marked the frontier between Northern Borlien and the land of Oldorando.

And that frontier was on fire.

A lava flow from a newly erupting volcano had set the uct ablaze. It had begun to burn along its length like a fusee.

Instruments on the Avernus were recording details of increasing volcanic activity on the world approaching periastron below. Data relayed to Earth concerning Mount Rustyjonnik showed that the material from the eruption rose to a height of 50 kilometres. The lower layers of this cloud were carried rapidly eastwards, circling the globe in 15 days. The material rising above 21 kilometres moved westwards with the prevailing flow of the lower stratosphere, to circle the globe in 60 days.

Similar readings were obtained for other eruptions. Dust clouds gathering in the stratosphere were about to double Helliconia’s albedo, reflecting the increasing heat of Freyr away from the surface. Thus the elements of the biosphere worked like an interrelated body or machine to preserve its vital processes.

During the decades when Freyr was closest to Helliconia, the planet would be shielded by acidic dust layers from its worst effects.

Nowhere was this dramatic homeostasis observed with more wonder and awe than on Earth.

On Helliconia, the forest fire was the end of the world for many frightened creatures. To a more detached view, it was a sign of the world’s determination to save itself and its freight of organic life.

JandolAnganol’s forces waited, tucked in a shallow valley. A pall of smoke to the east announced the approach of the fire. Numbers of hairy pigs and deer ran along the line of the uct westwards to safety. Herds of slower fhlebiht followed, setting up a massive bleating as they passed.

Families of Others went by, encouraging their young in a human fashion. They had dark fur and white faces. Some species were tailless. They swung deftly from branch to branch and were gone.

JandolAnganol rose and stood in a crouch to watch the game go by. The little runt Yuli leapt up sportively to join him. The phagors continued to rest impassively like cattle, chewing their day’s ration of porridge and pemmican.

To the east, Madis and their flocks were fleeing before the blaze. While some of their animals bolted for freedom or ran in terror into the thicket, the protognostics themselves remained obedient to custom and followed the line of the uct.