Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Summer

“It was her arm I found first, sir,” said the guard, pleased to be mentioned. “The left arm, to be partic’lar, sir.”

“Rushven certainly paid for his knowledge. Roba, I have paid for mine. The time will come when you too have to pay a price. It won’t always be summer.”

Roba tore leaves from a bush as if he would destroy the bush, and wrapped the leaves about his wounded hand. The guard went to help him, but Roba kicked him away with a bare foot.

“This stinking place… these stinking cages… the stinking palace… Taking notes of dirty little ruttings… Once, look, before kings were born, the world was a big white ball in a black cup. Along came the great kzahhn of all ancipitals and mated with the queen of all the humans, split her open with his enormous prodo and filled her right up with golden spume. That rumbo so shook the world that it jarred it out of its winter frigidity and caused the seasons—”

He could not finish the sentence, so overcome was he by laughter. The old guard looked disgusted and turned to the king.

“I can assure you, sir, the chancellor never carried out no such experiment here, to my certain knowledge.”

The king remained rigid, eyes bright with contempt, not moving until his son’s outburst was over. He turned his back to him then, before speaking.

“We have no need of that, and no need of quarrelling, not in a time of grief. Let us return together to the palace. You can ride behind me on Lapwing, if you wish.”

Roba fell to his knees and covered his face with his hands. He made noises that were not weeping.

“Perhaps he’s hungry,” suggested the guard.

“Get out, man, or I’ll slice your head off.”

The guard fell back. “I still feed them faithfully every day, Your Majesty. Bring all the food up from the palace, and I’m not as young as I was.”

JandolAnganol turned back towards his kneeling son. “You know your grandfather is now one with the gossies?”

“He was tired. I saw his grave yawn.”

“I do my best, sir, but really I need a slave to assist me…”

“He died in his sleep—an easy death, for all his sins.”

“I said he was tired. Self-demented, mother-tormented, granddad-fermented… that’s three blows you’ve struck. Where next?”

The king folded his arms and tucked his hands into his armpits. “Three blows! You child—they’re my one wound. Why do you plague me with nonsense? Stay and comfort me. Since you’re unfit to marry even a Madi, stay.”

Roba put his hands on the dirt before him and began slowly to get to his feet. The guard seized his chance to say, “They don’t copulate any more, sir. Only among themselves, each cageful, as a way of passing time.”

“Stay with you, Father? Stay with you as Grandfather stayed, in the bowels of the palace? No, I’m going back to the—”

As he was speaking, the guard shuffled forward in supplicatory fashion and interposed himself between JandolAnganol and his son. The king struck him a blow which sent him staggering into a bush. The captives began a great to-do, hammering on their bars.

The king smiled, or at least showed his teeth, as he attempted to approach his son. Roba backed away. “You’ll never understand what your grandfather did to me. You’ll never understand his power over me—then—now—perhaps for ever—because I have no power over you. I could succeed only by putting him away.”

“Prisons flow like glaciers in your blood. I’m going to be a Madi, or a frog. I refuse to be human as long as you claim that title.”

“Rob, don’t be so cruel. See sense. I—am about to—have to—marry a Madi girl soon. That’s why I came to inspect the Madi here. Please stay with me.”

“Trittom your Madi-slave woman! Count progeny! Measure, make notes! Write it down, suffer, lock up the fertile ones, and never forget that there is one running loose about Helliconia fit to send you to an eternal prison…”

As he spoke, the youth was backing away, fingers trailing on the ground. Then he turned and darted away into the bushes. A moment later, the king spied his figure climbing over the quarry cliff. Then he was gone.

The king went and leaned against the trunk of a tree, closing his eyes.

It was the whimpering of the guard which roused him. He went over to where the old man sprawled, and assisted him to his feet.

“Sorry for that, sir, but perhaps a small slave, now I’m getting past it…”

Rubbing his forehead with a weary gesture, JandolAnganol said, “You can answer some questions, slanje. Tell me, please, which way is it that Madi women prefer copulation? From the rear, like animals, or face to face like humans? Rushven would have told me.”

The guard rubbed his hands on his tunic and laughed. “Oh, both ways, sir, to my observation, and I’ve seen it many times, working here with no help. But mainly from the rear, as do the Others. Some say as they mate for life, others as they are promiscuous, but cage life is different.”

“Do the Madi sexes kiss each other on the lips like humans?”

“I’ve not seen that, sir, no. Only humans.”

“Do they lick genitals before congress?”

“That is prevalent in all cages, sir. A lot of licking. Licking and sucking mostly, I’d say, very dirty.”

“Thank you. Now you may release the prisoners. They have served their purpose. Set them free.”

He left the quarry with a slow step, one hand on his sword, one on his brow.

Soft bars of shadow cast by the rajabarals moved across him as he headed back for the palace. Freyr was near to setting. The sky was yellow. Concentric haze aurioles of brown and orange, created by volcanic dust particles, encompassed the sun. It lay near the horizon like a pearl in a corrupt oyster. And the king said to Lapwing, “I can’t trust him. He’s wild, just as I was. I love him but I’d be better advised to kill him. If he had the sense to work with his mother forming an alliance in the scritina against me, I’d be finished… I love her, but I’d be better advised to kill her, too…”

The hoxney made no response. It moved towards the sunset with no ambition but to get home.

The king became aware of the vileness of his own thoughts.

Looking up at the flaring sky, he saw there the evil his religion taught him to see. “I must chasten myself,” he said. “Aid me, O All-Powerful One!”

He stuck a spur in Lapwing’s flank. He would go and see the First Phagorian Guard, They raised no difficult moral issues. With them he felt at peace.

The brown aureoles triumphed over the yellow. As Freyr disappeared, the oyster became ashen from its extremities inwards, changing minute by minute as the Batalix sunlight caught it. Its beauty lost, it became just a cloud formation among jumbled cloud as Batalix itself sloped westward. Akhanaba could be saying—and in no enigmatic fashion—that the whole complex scheme of things was about to end.

JandolAnganol returned to his silent palace, to find there an envoy from the Holy Pannovalan Empire. Alam Esomberr, all smiles, awaited his pleasure.

His bill of divorcement had arrived at last. He had but to present it to the queen of queens and he would be free to marry his Madi princess.

Summer of the small year had yielded to autumn in the southern hemisphere. The monsoons were gathering along the coasts of Hespagorat.

While on the pleasant northern coast of the Sea of Eagles Queen MyrdemInggala swam in the blue waters with her dolphins, on the dull southern coast of that same sea, where it merged with the waters of the Scimitar Sea, the Avernian prize-winner, Billy Xiao Pin, lay dying.

The port of Lordryardry was sheltered from open sea by the Lordry islands, two dozen in number, some of which were used as whaling stations. On these islands, and along the low-lying coasts of Hespagorat, marine iguanas lived in dense colonies. Wattled, warted, armoured, these inoffensive beasts grew to twenty feet in length and were sometimes to be seen swimming out to sea. Billy had observed them as the Ice Captain’s Lordryardry Lady brought him to Dimariam.