Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Summer

They lay in stifling misery, while beneath them the great boulder shook as if still travelling on the glacier which had deposited it on the plain. Another day went by. Another dimday, another night.

Batalix rose again to a scene of rain and mist. At last the force of the herd slackened. The main body had gone by. Stragglers still passed, often mother flambreg with yearlings. The torment of flies lessened. Towards the northeast, the thunder of the disappearing herd still sounded. Many flambregs still milled about along the coastline.

Trembling and stiff, the humans climbed and slid to the ground. There was nothing for it but to make their way back to the shore on foot. With the stench of animal in their nostrils, they staggered forward, assailed by flies every inch of the way. Not a word passed between them.

The ship sailed on. They left Persecution Bay. The four who had been stranded in the midst of the stampede lay below decks in a fever induced by exposure and the bites of the flies.

Through SartoriIrvrash’s delirious brain travelled the herd, ever on, covering the world. The reality of that mass presence would not go away, struggle against it as he would. It remained even when he recovered.

As soon as he was strong enough, he went without ceremony to talk to Odi Jeseratabhar. The Priest-Militant Admiral was pleased to see him. She greeted him in a friendly fashion and even extended a hand, which he took.

She sat in her bunk covered only by a red sheet, her fair hair wild about her shoulders. Out of uniform, she looked gaunter than ever, but more approachable.

“All ships sailing long distances call in at Persecution Bay,” she said. They pick up new victuals, meat chiefly. The Priest-Sailors Guild contains few vegetarians. Fish. Seal. Crabs. I have seen the flambreg stampedes before. I should have been more alert. They draw me. What do you think of them?”

He had noticed this habit in her before. While weaving a spell of Sibish tenses about herself, she would suddenly break out with a question to disconcert the listener.

“I never knew there were so many animals in the world…”

“There are more than you can imagine. More than anyone can/should imagine. They live all around the skirts of the great ice cap, in the bleak Circumpolar lands. Millions of them. Millions and millions.”

She smiled in her excitement. He liked that. He realized how lonely he was when she smiled.

“I assume they were migrating.”

“Not that, to the best of my knowledge. They come down to the water, but do not stay. They travel at all times of the year, not just in spring. They may simply be driven by desperation. They have only one enemy.”

“Wolves?”

“Not wolves.” She gave a wolflike grin, glad to have caught him out. “Flies. One fly in particular. That fly is as big as the top joint of my thumb. It has yellow stripes—you can’t mistake it. It lays its eggs in the skin of the wretched bovidae. When the larvae hatch, they burrow through the hide, enter the bloodstream, and eventually lie in pockets under the skin on the back. There the grubs grow big, in a sore the size of a large fruit, until eventually they burst out of their crater and fall to the ground to begin the life cycle again. Almost every flambreg we kill has such a parasite—often several.

“I have seen individual animals run in torment till they dropped, or cast themselves off tall cliffs, to escape that yellow-striped fly.”

She regarded him benevolently, as if this account gave her some inward satisfaction.

“Madame, I was shocked when your men shot a few cows on the shore. Yet it was nothing, I see now. Nothing.”

She nodded.

“The flambreg are a force of nature. Endless. Endless. They make humanity appear as nothing. The estimated population of Sibornal is twenty-five million at present.

There are many times—perhaps a thousand times—that number of flambreg on the continent. As many flambreg as there are trees. It is my belief that once all Helliconia consisted only of those cattle and those flies, ceaselessly coming and going throughout the continents, the bovidae perpetually suffering a torment they perpetually tried to escape.”

Before this vision, both parties fell silent. SartoriIrvrash returned to his cabin. But a few hours later, Odi Jeseratabhar sought him out. He was embarrassed to receive her in his stinking cubbyhole.

“Did my talk of unlimited flambreg make you gloomy?” There was coquetry in her question, surely.

“On the contrary. I am delighted to meet with someone like you, so interested in the processes of this world. I wish they were more clearly understood.”

“They are better understood in Sibornal than elsewhere.” Then she decided to soften the boast by adding, “Perhaps because we experience more seasonal change than you do in Campannlat. You Borlienese can forget the Great Winter in Summer. One sometimes fears/fearing when alone that, if next Weyr-Winter becomes just a few degrees colder, then there will be no humans left. Only phagors, and the myriad mindless flambreg. Perhaps mankind is—a temporary accident.”

SartoriIrvrash contemplated her. She had brushed her hair free to her shoulders. “I have thought the same myself. I hate phagors, but they are more stable than we. Well, at least the fate of mankind is better than that of the ceaselessly driven flambreg. Though we certainly have our equivalents of the yellow-striped fly…” He hesitated, wanted to hear more from her, to test her intelligence and sensibilities. “When I first saw the flambreg, I thought how closely they resembled ancipitals.”

“Closely, in many respects. Well, my friend, you pass for learned. What do you make of that resemblance?” She was testing him, as her pleasantly teasing manner indicated. By common consent, they sat down side by side on his bunk.

“The Madis resemble us. So do Nondads and Others, though more remotely. There seems to be no family connection between humans and Madis, though Madi-human matings are sometimes fertile of offspring. Princess Simoda Tal is one such sport. I never heard that phagors mate with flambreg.” He gave a dry laugh at his uncertainty.

“Supposing that the genethic divinities who shape us have made a family connection, as you call it, between humankind and Madikind? Would you then accept that there was a connection between flambreg and phagors?”

“That would have to be determined by experiment.” He was on the brink of explaining his breeding experiments in Matrassyl, then decided to reserve that topic for another time. “A genetic relationship implies outward similarities. Phagors and flambreg have had golden blood as a protection against cold.”

“There is proof without experiment. I do not believe as most people do that every species is created separately by God the Azoiaxic.” She lowered her voice as she said this. “I believe the boundaries blur with time, as the boundary between human and Madi will blur again when your JandolAnganol weds Simoda Tal. You see where I lead?”

Was she secretly an atheist, as he was? To SartoriIrvrash’s amazement, the thought gave him an erection. Tell me.”

“I have not heard of phagors and flambreg mating, that’s true. However, I have good reason to believe that once this world held nothing but flambreg and flies—both in countless and mindless millions. Through genetic change, ancipitals developed from flambreg. They’re a refined version. What do you think? Is it possible?”

He tried to match her manner of argument.

“The similarities may be several, but they are mainly surface ones, apart from blood colour. You might as well say men and phagors are alike because both species talk. Phagors stand erect like us. They have their own cast of intelligence. Flambreg have nothing of the kind—unless galloping madly back and forth across a continent is intelligent.”