Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Summer

Old Metty had a girl waiting for Div, an orphan of the Western Wars, slender and fair, with an attractive mouth and clean hair. Almost as inexperienced as Div, you’d say, at first glance. He had looked her over, trying with a coin in her kooni to see if she was free of disease. The copper coin had not turned green, and he had been satisfied. Or almost. He wanted the best for his son, fool though the boy was.

“Metty, I thought you had a daughter about Div’s age?”

She was not a communicative woman. “Doesn’t this girl suit?”

She flashed him a look as if to say, You mind your business and I’ll mind mine. Then perhaps relenting because he was always generous with his money and would never come again, she said, “My daughter Abathy, she wants to better herself, wants to move down to Ottassol. I tell her, there’s nothing in Ottassol you won’t find here, I said. But she wants to see the sea. All you’ll see is sailors, I told her.”

“So where is Abathy now?”

“Oh, she’s doing well for herself. Got a room, curtains, clothes… Earns a little money, she’ll be off south. She soon found herself a rich patron, her being so young and pretty.”

The ice trader saw the suppressed jealousy in Metty’s eyes and nodded to himself. Ever curious, he couldn’t resist asking who the patron was.

She shot one of her sharp glances at gawky young Div and the girl, both standing by the bunk impatient for their elders to go. Pulling a face—mistrusting what she was doing—she whispered a name into the trader’s mottled ear.

The trader sighed dramatically. “Well!”

But both he and Metty were too old and wicked to be shocked at anything.

“You going, Da?” Div asked his father.

So then he had left, to let Div get on with it as best he could. What fools men were when young, what clapped-out wrecks when old!

Now, as morning crept in, Div would be sleeping, his head against the girl’s, in some lower cabin. But all the pleasure the trader had experienced the night before, performing a fatherly duty, had gone. He felt hungry, but knew better than to ask Metty for food. His legs were stiff—whores’ beds were never meant for sleeping.

In a reflective mood, the ice trader realized that he had unwittingly performed a ceremony the previous evening. In handing his son over to the young whore, he was in effect relinquishing his old lusts. And what when lust died? Women had reduced him to beggary once; he had built up a prosperous trade—and never had he stopped lusting after women. But if that central interest withered… something had to enter the vacuum.

He thought of his own godless continent of Hespagorat. Yes, Hespagorat needed a god, though certainly not the god of this religion-infested Campannlat. He sighed, wondering why what lay between Metty’s narrow thighs should seem so much more powerful than god.

“Off to church, then? Waste of time.”

She nodded. Never argue with a client.

Taking the cup she offered, he cradled its warmth in his paw and went to the threshold of the doorless room. There he paused, looking back.

Metty had not lingered over her pellamountain, but diluted it with cold water and gulped it down. Now she pulled on black gloves which came up to her elbow, adjusting the lace round her wrinkling skin.

Catching his glance, she said, “You can go back to bed. No one stirs in this house yet awhile.”

“We’ve always got on well together, you and I, Metty.” Determined to win a word of affection from her, he added, “I get on better with you than with my own wife and daughter.”

She heard such confessions every day.

“Well, I hope to see Div next trip, then, Krillio. Goodbye.” She spoke briskly, moving forward so that he had to get out of her way. He stepped back into her cabin and she swept past, still fiddling with the top of one glove. She made it clear that the notion of there being any affection between them was just his fantasy. Her mind was on something excluding him.

Carrying his cup back to the bed, he sipped the hot tea. He pushed open the shutter for the pleasure or pain or whatever it was of seeing her walk down the silent street. The crowded houses were pale and closed; something in their aspect diquieted him. Darkness still hung in side alleys. Only one person was to be seen—a man who progressed like a sleepwalker, supporting himself with a hand against the walls. Behind him came a small phagor, a runt, whimpering. Metty emerged from a door beneath the ice trader’swindow, took a step into the street. She paused when she saw the man approaching. She knew all about drunks, he thought. Booze and loose women went together, on every continent. But this man was no drunk. Blood ran from his leg to the cobbles.

“I’m coming down, Metty,” he called. In another minute, still shirtless, he joined her in the ghostly street. She had not moved.

“Leave him, he’s injured. I don’t want him in my place. He’ll cause trouble.”

The injured man groaned, stumbling against the wall. He paused, lifted his head and stared at the ice trader.

The latter gasped in astonishment. “Metty, by the beholder! It’s the king, no less… King JandolAnganol!”

They ran to him and supported him to the shelter of the whorehouse.

Few of the king’s force returned to Matrassyl. The Battle of the Cosgatt, as it came to be called, inflicted a terrible defeat. The vultures praised Darvlish’s name that day.

On his recovery—when he had been nursed at the palace by his devoted queen, MyrdemInggala—the king claimed in the scritina that a great force of enemy had been routed. But the ballads the peddlers sold declared otherwise. The death of KolobEktofer was particularly mourned. Bull was remembered with admiration in the lower quarters of Matrassyl. Neither returned home.

In those days when JandolAnganol lay in his chamber, faint from his wounds, he came to the conclusion that if Borlien was to survive he must form a closer alliance with the neighbouring members of the Holy Pannovalan Empire, in particular Oldorando and Pannoval. And he must at all costs acquire that hand artillery which the bandits of the borderland had used so devastatingly.

All this he discussed with his advisors. In their concurrence was laid the seeds of that plan for a divorce and a dynastic marriage which was to bring JandolAnganol to Gravabagalinien half a year later. Which was to estrange him from his beautiful queen. Which was to estrange him from his son. And which, by an even odder fatality, was to confront him with another death, this one attributed to the protognostic race known as the Madis.

The Madis of the continent of Campannlat were a race apart. Their customs were separate from those of either mankind or the ancipital kind. And their tribes were separate from each other.

One tribe was progressing slowly westwards, through a region of Hazziz which had become desert, several days’ journey north of Matrassyl.

The tribe had been on its travels for longer than anyone could tell. Neither the protognostics themselves nor any of the nations which saw them pass could say when or where the Madis began their journeyings. They were nomads. They gave birth while on the move, they grew up and married on the move, they were finally lost to life on the move.

Their word for Life was Ahd, meaning the Journey.

Some humans who took an interest in the Madis—and they were few—believed that it was Ahd which kept the Madis apart. Others believed that it was their language. That language was a song, a song where melody seemed to dominate words. There was about the Madi tongue a complexity and yet an incompleteness which seemed to bind the tribe to its way, and which certainly entangled any human who tried to learn it.