Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Summer

The king was visibly taken aback and remained silent. The timepiece lay forgotten in his tunic pocket.

He recalled now, all too late, how he had always feared the timepiece as an alien thing, a thing of science to be mistrusted. When BillishOwpin, the man who claimed to have come from another world, had offered him the timepiece, JandolAnganol had thrown it back to him. Mysteriously, it had returned later through the agency of the deuteroscopist. Despite his intentions, he had never rid himself of it.

Now it had betrayed him.

He could not speak. An evil spell had descended on him: that he saw, but could not say when it had begun. Not all his dedication to Akhanaba had saved him from the spell.

“Well, Your Majesty, well, brother,” said Sayren Stund, with relish, “have you this jewel with living figures?”

JandolAnganol said faintly, “It is intended as a wedding gift for the Princess Milua Tal…”

A hubbub broke out in court. People dashed here and there, clerics called for order, Sayren Stund covered his face in order to hide his triumph.

When order was restored Crispan Mornu put another question to Abathy. “You are sure this young man, RobaydayAnganol, son of the king, is the man who murdered your friend, Div? Did you ever see him again?”

“Sir, he was a great nuisance to me. He would not go away. I don’t know what would have happened to me if your men hadn’t arrested him.”

A short silence prevailed in court while everyone contemplated what might have happened to such an attractive young lady.

“Let me put one last and rather personal question to you,” Crispan Mornu said, fixing Abathy with his corpse-like stare. “You are evidently a low-born woman, and yet you seem to have well-connected friends. Rumour mentions your name with that of a certain Sibornalese ambassador. What do you say to that?”

“Shame,” said a voice from the court benches, but Abathy answered in an untroubled way, “I did have the pleasure of knowing a Sibornalese gentleman, sir. I like the Sibornalese for their good manners, sir.”

“Thank you, Abathy, your testament has been invaluable.” Crispan Mornu managed a tone which resembled a stiletto’s smile. He then turned to the court, speaking only when the girl had left.

“I submit that you need no further proof. This innocent young girl has told us all we need to know. His lies to the contrary, the King of Borlien’s son is revealed as a murderer. We have heard how he murdered in Ottassol, presumably at his father’s instruction, merely to obtain some bauble to bring here. His preferred weapon was a phagor horn; he had already murdered Simoda Tal, using the same weapon. His father was left to proceed here to enjoy our hospitality, to carry out his evil designs upon his majesty’s sole remaining daughter. We have uncovered here as black a plot as ever history related. I have no hesitation in demanding—on behalf of the court, and on behalf of our whole nation—the death penalty for both father and son.”

RobaydayAnganol’s defiance had collapsed as soon as Abathy had entered the court. He looked no more than an urchin, and his voice sank to a whisper as he said, “Please let me go free. I’m made for life, not death, for some wild plot where the breeze blows. I have no wild plot with my father—that I deny, and all other charges.”

Crispan Mornu swung dramatically about and confronted the youth.

“You still deny the murder of Simoda Tal?”

Robayday moistened his lips. “Can a leaf kill? I’m merely a leaf, sir, caught in the world’s storm.”

“Her Majesty Queen Bathkaarnet-she is prepared to identify you as a visitor to this palace a while ago, when you came disguised as a Madi for the express purpose of committing the foul deed. Do you wish her majesty to come to this court to identify you?”

A violent trembling took Robayday. “No.”

“Then the case is proven. This youth, a prince, no less, entered the palace and—at his father’s command—murdered our much-loved princess, Simoda Tal.”

All eyes turned to the judge. The judge turned his gaze down to the floor before delivering judgement.

“The verdict is as follows. The hand that committed this vile murder belongs to the son. The mind that controlled the hand is the father’s. So where lies the source of guilt? The answer is clear—”

A cry of torment broke from Robayday. He thrust out a hand as if physically to intercept Kimon Euras’s words.

“Lies! Lies! This is a room of lies. I will speak the truth, though it destroys me! I confess I did that thing to Simoda Tal. I did it not because I was in league with my father the king. Oh, no, that’s impossible. We are day and night. I did what I did to spite him.

“There he stands—just a man now, not a king! Yes, just a man, while my mother remains the queen of queens. I, in league with him? I would no more kill for his sake than I would marry for his sake… I declare the villain innocent. If I must die your dingy death, then never let it be said even in here that I was in league with him. I wish there was a league between us. Why help one who never helped me?”

He clutched his head as if to wrench it from his shoulders.

In the silence following, Crispan Mornu said coldly, “You might have done your father more harm by keeping silent.”

Robay gave him a cold sane look. “It’s the principle of evil in men I fear—and I see that principle more rampant in you than in that poor man burdened with the crown of Borlien.”

JandolAnganol raised his eyes to the ceiling, as if trying to detach himself from earthly events. But he wept.

With the sound of rippling excitement, the judge cleared his throat.

“In view of the son’s confession, the father is of course shown to be blameless. History is full of ungrateful sons… I therefore pronounce, under the guidance of Akhanaba, the All-Powerful, that the father go free and the son be taken from here and hanged as soon as it suits the convenience of his majesty, King Sayren Stund.”

“I will die in his stead and he can reign in my stead.” The words came from JandolAnganol, spoken in a firm voice.

“The verdict is irreversible. Court dismissed.”

Above the shuffle of feet came Sayren Stund’s voice.

“Remember, we refresh ourselves now, but this afternoon comes a further spectacle, when we hear what King JandolAnganol’s ex-chancellor, SartoriIrvrash has to say to us.”

The drama of the court and the humiliation of JandolAnganol had been watched by a greater audience than the king could have imagined.

The personnel of the Avernus, however, were not entirely occupied by the story in which the king played a conspicuous part. Some scholars studied developments taking place elsewhere on the planet, or continuities in which the king played merely an incidental role. A group of learned ladies of the Tan family, for instance, had as their subject the origins of long-standing quarrels. They followed several quarrels through generations, studying how the differences began, were maintained and were eventually resolved. One of their cases concerned a village in Northern Borlien through which the king had passed on his way to Oldorando. There the quarrel originally concerned whether pigs belonging to two neighbours should drink at the same brook. The brook had gone and so had the pigs, yet two villages existed at the spot locked in hatred and still referring to the killing of neighbours as ‘hog-sticking’. King JandolAnganol, by passing with his phagors through one village and not the other, had exacerbated the feud, and a youth had had a finger broken in a brawl that night.

Of that, the learned Tan ladies were as yet unaware. All their records were automatically stored for study, while they at present worked over a chapter in their quarrel which had taken place two centuries ago; they studied videos of an incident of indecent exposure, when an old man from one of the villages had been mobbed by men from the other village. After this squalid incident, someone had composed a beautiful dirge on the subject, which was still sung on festive occasions. To the learned Tan ladies, such incidents were as vital as the king’s trial—and of more significance than all the austerities of the inorganic.