Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Summer

There was in particular the problem of the suns, which he had not taken into account. On the Avernus, light and dark were largely matters of temperament; here, one had no choice. As dimday was followed by night, Billy felt for the first time the ancient precariousness of his kind. Long ago, mankind had built huddling places against the dark. Cities had developed, had grown to metropolises, and had taken off into space; now he felt himself back at the beginning of history.

He survived the night. Despite himself, he had fallen asleep, to wake unharmed. Doing his accustomed morning exercises brought him back to a sense of himself. He was enough in control to walk from the shelter of the cluster of trees and to rejoice in the morning. After drinking and eating from his rations, he set off in the direction of Matrassyl.

Walking along a jungle path, bemused by bird calls, he became aware of a footstep behind him. He turned. A phagor froze to instant immobility, only a few paces away.

Phagors were part of the mythology of the Avernus.

Their portraits and models of them were accessible everywhere. This one, however, had the presence and individuality of life. It chewed as it regarded Billy, saliva leaking from its broad lower lip. Over its bulky figure was a one-piece garment, dyed here and there with saffron. Tufts of its long white hair were similarly dyed, giving it an unhealthy appearance. A dead snake was knotted over one shoulder—evidently a recent catch. In its hand it carried a curved knife. This was neither an idealized museum replica nor a child’s cuddly toy. As it stepped nearer, it exuded a rancid odour which made Billy giddy.

He faced it squarely and spoke slowly in Hurdhu. “Can you give me directions to Matrassyl?”

The creature went on ruminating. It appeared to be chewing on some kind of scarlet nut; juice of that colour trickled from its mouth. A drop sprayed onto Billy Xiao Pin. He reached up and brushed it from his cheek.

“Matrassyl,” it said, pronouncing the word leadenly as “Madrazzyl.”

“Yes. Which way is Matrassyl?”

“Yes.”

The look in its cerise eyes—impossible to determine whether it was meek or murderous. He wrenched his gaze away, to find that more phagors stood near, bushlike among the befoliaged shadow.

“Can you understand what I say?” His sentences came from the phrasebook. He was bewildered by the unreality of the situation.

“A taking to a place is within ability.”

From a creature that had the natural force of a boulder, good sense was hardly to be expected, but Billy was left in little doubt as to its intentions. The creature rolled forward with an easy motion and pushed Billy along the path. Billy moved. The other figures tramped among the undergrowth, keeping pace.

They reached a broken slope. Here the jungle had been cleared—some trees had been hacked down, and scuttling pigs saw to it that further growth would never reach maturity. Among casual attempts at cultivation were huts, or rather, roofs supported by posts.

In the shade provided by these huts, lumpish figures lay like cattle. Some rose and came towards the foragers, one of whom sounded a small horn to announce their arrival. Billy was surrounded by male and female ancipitals, creaghs and gillots and runts, glaring up at him inquisitively. Some runts ran on all fours.

Billy dropped into the Humility position.

“I’m trying to get to Matrassyl,” he said. The absurdity of the sentence made him laugh; he had to check himself before he became hysterical, but the noise had the effect of making everyone stand back.

“The lower kzahhn has proximity for inspection,” a gillot said, touching his arm and making a motion of her head. He followed her across a stone-strewn dell, and everyone else followed him. Everything he passed—from tender green shoots to rounded boulders—was rougher than he could have visualized.

Under an awning set against the dell’s low cliff sprawled an elder phagor, arms bent at impossible angles. It sat up in smooth movements and revealed itself as an ancient gillot, with prominent withered dugs and black hairs sprouting from her coat. A necklace of polished gwing-gwing stones hung about her neck. She wore a face bracelet buckled across the prow of her nose as mark of rank. This was evidently the ‘lower kzahhn’.

Remaining seated, she looked up at Billy.

She spoke to him questioningly.

Billy had been a junior in the great sociological clan of Pin, and not a conscientious one at that. He worked in the division which studied the family of Anganols, generation by generation. There were those among his superiors who were conversant with the histories of the present king’s predecessors back to the previous spring, some sixteen generations past. Billy Xiao Pin spoke Olonets, the main language of Compannlat and Hespagorat, and several of its variants, including Old Olonets. But he had never attempted the ancipital tongue, Native; nor had he properly mastered the language the lower kzahhn was speaking, Hurdhu, the bridge language used in these times between man and phagor.

“I don’t understand,” he said, in Hurdhu, and felt a strange sensation when she understood, as if he had stepped from the real world into some strange fairy story. “Understanding is to me of you being from a far place,” she said, translating her own language, noun-choked, into Hurdhu. “What situation is that far place?” Perhaps they had seen the space-craft land. He gestured vaguely, and recited a prepared speech. “I come from a distant town in Morstrual, where I am the kzahhn.” Morstrual was even more remote than Mordriat, and safe to name. “Your people will be rewarded if they escort me to King JandolAnganol in Matrassyl.”

“King JandolAnganol.”

“Yes.”

She became immobile, gazing ahead. A stallun squatting nearby passed her a leather bottle from which she drank in slobbering fashion, letting the liquid spill. It smelt pungent and spiritous. Ah, he thought, raffel: a deleterious drink distilled by ancipitals. He had fallen in with a poor tribe of phagors. Here he was, dealing capably with these enigmatic beasts, and on the Avernus everyone would be watching him through the optical system. Even his old advisor. Even Rose.

The heat and the short walk over rough ground had taxed him. But a more self-conscious motive made him sit down on a flat stone and spread his legs, resting his elbows on his knees, to stare nonchalantly at the creature confronting him. The most incredible occurrences became everyday when there was no alternative.

“Ancipital race carry much spears for his crusade for King JandolAnganol.” She paused. Behind her was a cave. In its shade, dim cerise eyes gleamed. Billy guessed that tribal ancestors would be stored there, sinking through tether to pure keratin. At once ancestor and idol, every undead phagor helped direct its successors through the painful centuries when Freyr dominated.

“Sons of Freyr fight other Sons of Freyr each season, and we lend spears.”

He recognized the traditional phagorian term for humankind. The ancipitals, unable to invent new terms, merely adapted old ones.

“Order two of your tribe to escort me to King JandolAnganol.”

Again her stillness—and all the others, as Billy looked round, conspiring to that same immobility. Only the pigs and curs trundled about, forever searching for titbits in the dirt.

The old gillot then began a long speech which defied Billy’s understanding. He had to halt her in the middle of her ramblings, asking her to start again. Hurdhu tasted as pungent as goat’s cheese on his tongue. Other phagors came up, closing round him, choking him with their dense smell—but not as unpleasant as anticipated, he thought—all aiding their leader with her explanation. As a result, nothing was explained.