Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Summer

Between sneezes, Billy told them all he knew about the situation on Helliconia. His fear drove him to reveal everything. When they heard something they could absorb, or that interested them especially, the kzahhn would pass on the information to his keratinous ancestor, either for storage or information, Billy was not sure which—phagors had not come within his discipline on the Avernus.

Did they tell him at some point, when he laboured unnecessarily to explain how seasons came and went, that the monastic caverns in the hills were occupied at some seasons by phagors, at others by Sons of Freyr? Once, in a different existence, he had boasted that Avernus held too little otherness for him; now, in a mist of otherness, the curious line of language weaved between Hurdhu, Native, and Eotemporal, between scientific and figurative.

Like a child finding that animals can talk, Billy listened as they spoke to him. “Possibility for revenge against Sons of Freyr at inharmonious season-of-Great-Year has no being. Surviving alone must have all our duty. Watchfulness fills our harneys. All time exists till Freyr-death. Kzahhn JandolAnganol has protective arm for ancipital’s survival in lands of his component. Therefore, the order is for our legions to make formation in a reinforcement of Kzahhn JandolAnganol. Such is our present law of inharmonious season. Carefulness is what you Billy must take not to make a further torment for this kzahhn of weakness named JandolAnganol. Hast comprehension?”

With the noun-freighted sentences whirling in his head, he tried to declare his innocence. But questions of guilt, or freedom from it, were outside their umwelt. As he spoke, bafflement reinforced the hostility in the air.

Behind their hostility was fear of a kind, an impersonal fear. They saw JandolAnganol as weak, and they feared that when the alliance with Oldorando was sealed by dynastic marriage, their kind might become as subject to persecution in Borlien as in Oldorando. Their hatred of Oldorando was clear and, in particular, their hatred for its capital, which they called by the Eotemporal name of Hrrm-Bhhrd Ydohk.

While ancipital affairs were a mystery—a blank—to mankind, the ancipitals had a good grasp of mankind’s affairs. Such was mankind’s arrogant contempt of them that phagors were often present, though ignored, at the most delicate discussions of state. Thus the humblest runt could act effectively as a spy.

Confronting their stolid forms, Billy thought they intended to hold him to ransom, to influence the king against his new marriage; feebly he tried to convey that the king did not even know of his existence.

As soon as the words had left him, he saw that he had put himself in another danger. They might keep him here, in a worse prison than his previous one, if they realized that his presence in the palace was a secret. But the shaggy council was pursuing another line of thought, reverting once more to the question of Batalix’s capture by Freyr, an event which seemed of obsessive importance to them.

If not from Freyr, then was he from T’Sehn-Hrr? This question he could not understand. By T’Sehn-Hrr, did they mean the Avernus, Kaidaw? Evidently not. They tried to explain, he tried. T’Sehn-Hrr remained a mystery. He was one with the keratinous figures propped against the wall, doomed to say the same things many times, in an ever decreasing voice. Talking to phagors was like trying to wrestle with eternity.

The council passed him among them, pressing him here, turning him there. Again they were interested in looking at the three-faced watch on his wrist. Its writhing figures fascinated them. But they made no efforts to remove or even touch it, as if they sensed in it a destructive force.

Billy was still seeking for words when he realized that the kzahhn and his council were departing. Clouds gathered in his head again. He found himself staggering into a familiar chair, let his forehead rest on a familiar table. The gillots had returned him to his cell. A pale shrouded dawn was at hand.

Lex was there, without horns, emasculated and almost faithful.

“Steps are necessity to bed for a sleep-period,” he advised.

Billy started to weep. Weeping, he slept.

The fog reached far and wide and took a turn up the River Valvoral to view the jungles embracing either bank. Caring nothing for national frontiers, it penetrated far into Oldorando. There it met, among other river traffic, the Lordryardry Lady heading southeastward to Matrassyl and the distant sea.

With the last of its ice cargo sold profitably in Oldorando, the flat-bottomed boat now bore cargoes for the Borlienese capital or Ottassol: salt; silks; carpets of all descriptions; tapestries; blue gout from Lake Dorzin, boxed with smashed ice; carvings; clocks; with tusks, horns, and furs in variety. The small deck cabins were occupied by merchants who travelled with their goods. One merchant had a parrot, another a new mistress.

The best deck cabin was occupied by the boat’s owner, Krillio Muntras, famous Ice Captain of Dimariam, and his son, Div. Div, who was slack of jaw and, for all his father’s encouragement, would never rival his father’s success in life, sat gazing at the hazily sketched scenery. His bottom was planted on the deck. Occasionally, he spat into the passing water. His father sat solidly in a canvas chair and played on a double-clouth—perhaps with a deliberate sentimentality, for this was his last voyage before retirement. His last last voyage. Muntras matched a pleasant tenor voice to his tune.

The river flows and will not cease, no, No—not for love or life itself, oh…

The passengers roaming the deck included an arang, which was to provide the sailors with their supper. Except for the arang, the passengers were markedly respectful to the ice captain.

Fog curled like steam off the surface of the Valvoral. The water became darker still as they neared the cliffs of Cahchazzerh, whose steep faces overlooked the river. The cliffs, folded like old linen, rose a few hundred feet to be crowned with dense foliage which, in its exuberance, appeared to be lowering itself down the overhanging rock by means of creepers and lianas. Much of the cliff had been colonized by swallows and mourner birds. The latter launched themselves and came to investigate the Lordryardry Lady, wheeling above it with their melancholy shrieks as it prepared to moor.

Cahchazzerh was remarkable for nothing but its situation between cliff and river, and its apparent indifference to the falls of the one or the rise of the other. At the water’s edge, the town consisted of little but a wharf and a few godowns, one of which bore a rusty sign saying lordryardry ice trading co. A road led back to scattered houses and some cultivation on top of the cliffs. The town marked a last stop before Matrassyl on the downstream journey.

As the vessel moored up, a few dockhands bestirred themselves, while near-naked boys—indispensable adjuncts of such places—came running. Muntras put down his musical instrument and stood grandly in the bows, accepting the salutations of the men ashore, every one of whom he knew by name.

The gangplank went down. Everybody aboard disembarked to walk about and buy fruit. Two merchants whose journeys terminated here saw to it that the sailors unloaded their possessions safely. The boys dived for coins in the river.

An incongruous item in this sleepy scene was a table, laid with a gaudy cloth, which stood outside the Lordryardry warehouse, a white-clad waiter in attendance. Behind the table were four musicians who, on the instant of the boat’s side kissing the wharf, gave forth with a lively rendering of ‘What a Man the Master Is!’ This reception was the farewell present of the local staff of the ice company to their boss. There were three staff. They came forward, smiling, although they had been through the performance before, to conduct Captain Krillio and Div to their seats.