Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Summer

He bowed deeply. “Why, it is the king himself, my master, walking in the woods with his new bride.” Leaves fell from his hair.

“Roba, I need you at Matrassyl. Why do you keep escaping?” The king did not know whether to be pleased or angry at this sudden apparition.

“To keep escaping is never to escape. Though what keeps me prisoner I know not. Difference must be between fresh air and grandfather’s dungeon… If I had no parents, then I might be free.” He spoke with a roving eye, unfocussed. His hair, like his speech, was tumbled. He was naked except for a kind of fur kilt over his genitals. His ribs showed, and his body was a tracery of scars and scratches. He carried a javelin.

This weapon he now stuck point first in the ground and ran to Yuli, clasping the runt’s arms, crying out in affection.

“My dearest queen, how wonderful you look, so well dressed in that white fur with the red tassels! To keep off the sun, to hide your delectable body from all but this lecherous Other, who swings on you, no doubt, as if you were a bough. Or a sow. Or a broken vow.”

“You make me hurted,” cried the little phagor, struggling to get free.

JandolAnganol reached out to take his son’s arm, but Robayday darted to one side. He tugged a flowering creeper which hung from a caspiarn and, with a quick movement, twined it round Yuli’s throat. Yuli ran about, calling hoarsely, lips curled back in alarm, as JandolAnganol took tight hold of his son.

“I don’t intend to hurt you, but cease this foolery and speak to me with the respect you owe me.”

“Oh me, oh me! Speak to me in respect of my poor mother. You have planted horns upon her, you gardener in bogs!” He gave a cry and fell back as his father struck him across the mouth.

“Cease this unkind nonsense at once. Be silent. If you have kept your sanity and had been acceptable to Pannoval then you might have married Simoda Tal in my place. Then we would have been spared much pain. Do you think only for yourself, boy?”

“Yes, as I make my own scumber!” He spat the words out.

“You owe me something, who made you a prince,” said the king with bitterness. “Or have you forgotten you’re a prince? We’ll lock you up at home until you come back to your right mind.”

With his free hand up to his bleeding mouth, Robayday muttered, There’s more comfort in my wrong mind. I’d rather forget my rights.”

By this time, the two lieutenants had come up, swords—out. The king turned, ordering them to put up their weapons, dismount, and take his son captive. As his attention was distracted, Robayday broke free of his father’s grasp and made off, with great leaps and whoops, among the trees.

One of the lieutenants put an arrow to his crossbow, but the king stopped him. Nor did he make any attempt to follow his son.

“I not have liking to Robay,” squealed Yuli.

Ignoring him, JandolAnganol mounted Lapwing and rode swiftly back to the palace. With his brows knitted, he resembled more than ever the eagle that gave him his nickname.

Back in the seclusion of his quarters, he submitted himself to pauk, as he rarely did. His soul sank down to the original beholder and he spoke with the gossie of his mother. She offered him full consolation. She reminded him that Robayday’s other grandmother was the wild Shannana, and told him not to worry. She said he should not hold himself guilty for the deaths of the Myrdolators, since they had intended treason to the state.

The fragile casket of dust offered JandolAnganol every verbal comfort. Yet his soul returned to his body troubled.

His wicked old father, still alive in the ponderous basements, was more practical. VarpalAnganol never ran out of advice.

“Warm up the Pasharatid scandal. Get our agents to spread rumours. You must implicate Pasharatid’s wife, who impudently remains here to carry her husband’s office. Any tale against the Sibornalese is readily believed.”

“And what am I to do regarding Robayday?”

The old man turned slightly in his chair and closed one eye. “Since you can do nothing about him, do nothing. But anything you could do to speed your divorce and get the marriage over with would be useful.”

JandolAnganol paced about the dungeon.

“As to that, I’m in the hands of the C’Sarr now.”

The old man coughed. His lungs laboured before he spoke again. “Is it hot outside? Why do people keep saying it’s hot? Listen, our friends in Pannoval want you to be in the C’Sarr’s hands. That suits them but it doesn’t suit you. Hurry matters if you can. What news of MyrdemInggala?”

The king took his father’s advice. Agents with an armed escort were dispatched to distant Pannoval City beyond the Quzints, with a long address beseeching the C’Sarr of the Holy Pannovalan Empire to hasten the bill of divorce. With the address went icons and other gifts, including holy relics fabricated for the occasion.

But the Massacre of the Myrdolators, as that affair was now called, continued to exercise the minds of people and scritina. Agents reported rebellious movements in the city, and in other centres such as Ottassol. A scapegoat was needed. It had to be Chancellor SartoriIrvrash.

SartoriIrvrash—the Rushven once beloved of the king’s family—would make a popular victim. The world mistrusts intellectuals, and the scritina had particular reason to hate both his high-handed ways and his long speeches.

A search of the chancellor’s suite would be certain to reveal something incriminating. There would be the notes of his breeding experiments with the Others, Madis, and humans he kept captive in a distant quarry. And there were the voluminous papers relating to his ‘Alphabet of History and Nature’. These papers would be full of heresies, distortions, lies against the All-Powerful. How both scritina and Church would lick their chops at that prospect! JandolAnganol sent in a guard, led by no less a personage than Archpriest BranzaBaginut of Matrassyl Cathedral.

The search was more successful than anticipated. The secret room was discovered (though not its secret exit). In that secret room was discovered a secret prisoner of curious quality. As he was dragged away, this prisoner screamed in accented Olonets that he came from another world.

Great piles of incriminating documents were taken into the courtyard. The prisoner was taken before the king.

Although it was now twenty past thirteen in the afternoon, the fog had not cleared; rather, it had deepened, taking on a yellowish tinge. The palace drifted in a world of its own, the ventilation devices on its chimneys like the masts of a sinking fleet. Perhaps claustrophobia played a part in the uncertainty of the king’s moods as he swung between meekness and anger, between calm and wild excitement. His hair stood dishevelled on his forehead. His nose bled by fits and starts, as if forced into the role of safety valve. About the corridors he went, followed by a train of unhappy courtiers who infuriated him with placatory smiles.

When SartoriIrvrash was brought forth and confronted by the trembling Billy, JandolAnganol struck the old man. After which he seized up his chancellor like an ancient rag doll, wept, begged forgiveness, and suffered another nose bleed.

It was while JandolAnganol was in a penitent mood that Ice Captain Muntras arrived at the palace to pay his respects.

“I will see the captain later,” said the king. “As a traveller, he may bring me news of the queen. Tell him to wait on me. Let the world wait.”

He wept and snarled. In a minute, he called back the messenger.

“Bring in the Ice Captain. He shall witness this curiosity of human nature.” This was said as he prowled about Billy Xiao Pin.

Billy shifted from foot to foot, half-inclined to blubber, unnerved by the bloody state of the royal nostrils. On the Avernus, such demonstrations of feeling, if they ever occurred, would take place in seclusion. “On the Prolongation of One Helliconian Season Beyond One Human Life-Span’ had been firm, if brief, on the subject of feeling. “Sensation: superfluous,” it said. The excitable Borlienese believed otherwise. Their king did not look like a sympathetic listener.