Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Summer

The weather continued dry. The coaches made fair progress over the low hills. They arrived at a small trading town called Oysha—“Quite probably a corruption of the Local Olonets word ‘osh’, meaning simply ‘town’,” SartoriIrvrash explained to the company. Explanations that could be attached to things made the journey more enjoyable. However the word was derived, at Oysha the Takissa, rushing down from the east, met up with its formidable tributary, the Madura. Both rivers had their sources high in the limitless Nktryhk. Beyond Oysha to the north stretched the Madura Desert.

In Oysha, the coaches were exchanged for kaidaw geldings. The Pointer volubly made the deal, during which much striking of foreheads took place. The kaidaw was a reliable animal when it came to crossing deserts. The rust-coloured brutes stood in the dusty market square of Oysha, indifferent to the deal being negotiated beside them.

The ex-chancellor sat on a chest while the trading was in progress. He mopped his brow and coughed. The outfall from Mount Rustyjonnik had given him a sore throat and fever he could not shake off. He stared at the long haughty faces of the kaidaws—those legendary steeds of the warrior phagors in the Great Winter. It was hard to see in these slow beasts the whirlwind which, with phagors astride it, had brought destruction upon Oldorando and other Campannlatian cities in the time of cold.

In the Great Summer, the animals stored water in their single hump. This made them suitable for desert conditions. They looked meek enough now, but excited SartoriIrvrash’s sense of history.

“I should purchase a sword,” he told RobaydayAnganol. “I was quite a swordsman in my younger day.”

Roba turned a cartwheel. “You turn the year upside down, now that you are free of the Eagle. You’re right to defend yourself, of course. In those hills lives the accursed Unndreid—our herdsmen here sleep with his multitudinous daughters every night. Murder’s as frequent hereabouts as scorpions.”

“The people seem friendly.”

Roba squatted before SartoriIrvrash and put on a cunning leer. “Why are they outwardly so friendly? Why is Unndreid now armed to the teeth with Sibornalese bang-bangs? Have you discovered why the big black Io Pasharatid left the court so suddenly?”

He took SartoriIrvrash’s arm and led him behind one of the coaches for privacy, where only the guileless eyes of the kaidaws were upon them.

“Even my father cannot buy friendship or love. These Sibornalese buy friendship. It’s their way. They’d trade their mothers for peace. They have been greasing their safe passage to Borlien by presenting the chiefs along the route with matchlocks, as they say. I say there is no match for them. Even Akhanaba’s favourite king, JandolAnganol, son of VarpalAnganol, father of a Madi-lover—but not so mad in that direction as he—even that monarch of Matrassyl was no match for matchlocks. They did for him in the Battle of the Cosgatt. Did you ever see the wounds in his thigh?”

“It kept your father abed. I saw only its effects, not the wound.”

“He goes without a limp. Lucky not to go without a hard-on! That wound was a kiss from Sibornal.”

Lowering his voice, SartoriIrvrash said, “You well know that I never trusted the Sibs. When the matchlocks were demonstrated in court, I advised that no Sibs should be present. My word went unheeded. It was shortly after the demonstration that Io Pasharatid disappeared.”

Roba lifted a cautionary finger and wagged it slowly. “Disappeared because his swindles were then revealed—revealed to his wife, our fair companion, and his own ambassadorial staff. There was a local young lady involved, who acted as go-between… and whom I also go between, on occasions… that’s how I know all about Io Pasharatid.”

He laughed. “The matchlocks which Taynth Indredd had in his possession—which he presented so arrogantly to my eagle-father—which my eagle-father took so pusillanimously, because he would take a plague scab from a beggar if it was offered—those matchlocks were sold to Taynth Indredd cheap by Pasharatid. Why cheap? Because they were not his to sell, in which case he could not avoid making a profit. The guns were the property of his government, intended to buy friendship with such as the rogues you see here, and with such as Dervlish the Skull, who has proved his friendship a thousand times over.”

“Unusual behaviour for a Sib. Especially one in high office.”

“High office, low character. It was because of the young lady. Did you never see the way he eyed my fair mother—I mean, she who was my mother before she went away without farewell?”

“Pasharatid would have been put to death if your father had discovered his crime. I assume he is now back in Sibornal.”

RobaydayAnganol shrugged eloquently. “We are following him. Madame Dienu is after his blood. To understand his lust for other ladies, simply contemplate union with her. Would you couple with a matchlock?… He’ll be busy concocting a lying tale, to cover his sins. She will arrive and seek to destroy it. Ah, Rushven, no drama like a family drama! They will have old Io locked up in the Great Wheel of Kharnabhar, mark my words. It was a place of religion, now they lock up criminals there. Well, monks are also prisoners… What a drama to come. You know the old saying, ‘More than an arm up a Sibornalese sleeve.’ I almost wish I were coming with you, to see what happens.”

“But you are coming! My dear boy!”

“Ah, unky, no affection! Not for Anganols! No protests. I’m leaving you here. You go north with Madame. I go back south with this coach. I have my parents to look after… my ex-parents…”

SartoriIrvrash’s face showed his distress. “Don’t leave me, lad, not with these villains. I shall be dead in no time.”

Making funny running-away gestures, the prince said, “Well, that’s escaping from being human, isn’t it? I’m going to be a Madi in no time. Another escape, another escapade. It’s the Ahd for me.”

He jumped forward and kissed SartoriIrvrash on his bald pate.

“Good luck in your new career, old uncle. Green things will grow from us both!”

He leaped into the coach, cracked his whip over the hoxneys, and was away at a great pace. The tribesmen fell back in alarm, cursing him in the name of the sacred rivers. A cloud of dust swallowed the speeding vehicle.

The Madura Desert: Matrassyl began to seem a long way off. But the stars came nearer overhead and, on clear nights, the sickle of YarapRombry’s Comet blazed like a signpost on their way.

SartoriIrvrash stood shivering in the small hours when the fire had died and the other travellers were sleeping. He could not entirely lose his fever. He thought of BillishOwpin. His story of having come from another world seemed more likely here than it had done at the palace.

He walked by the tethered kaidaws and encountered the Pointer of the Way, standing silently smoking. The two men talked in low voices. The kaidaws uttered sniggering grunts.

“The animals are quiet enough,” SartoriIrvrash said. “History pictures them as almost unmanageable brutes. To be ridden only by phagors. I’ve never seen a phagor riding one, any more than I have ever seen a cowbird with a phagor. Perhaps history was wrong on that point, too. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to disentangle history from legend.”

“Perhaps they aren’t so different,” the Pointer said. “I can’t read a single letter, so I have no strong opinion in the matter. But we smoke these kaidaws when they’re mere calves—puff a veronikane up their nostrils. It seems to make them calm.

“I’ll tell you a tale, since you can sleep no more than I.” He sighed heavily in preparation for the burden of narrative. “Many years ago now, I went eastwards with my master, through the provinces controlled by Unndreid, up into the wilderness of the Nktryhk. It’s a different world up there, very harsh world, with little air to breathe, yet people remain fit.”