Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Summer

Becalmed or otherwise, in those long hot days on the stationary ship, SartoriIrvrash had been content. He had escaped from his study into the wide world. During dimdays, there were long intellectual conversations to be enjoyed with the lady Priest-Militant Admiral, Odi Jeseratabhar. The two of them had become closer. Odi Jeseratabhar’s first intricacy of language had dissolved into something less formal. The involuntary proximities enforced by their narrow quarters had become wished for, treasured. They turned into circumspect lovers. And the circumnavigation of the Savage Continent had become a circumnavigation also of souls.

Sitting together on deck during that enchanted becalmment, the aging lovers, Borlienese and Uskuti, surveyed the almost unmoving sea. The Radado mainland hung mistily in the background. Nearer at hand, Gleeat Island lay to port. Away to starboard, three other islands, submerged mountain peaks, seemed to float on the bosom of the water.

Odi Jeseratabhar pointed to starboard. “I can almost imagine I can make out the coast of Hespagorat—the land called Throssa, to be precise. All round us is the evidence that Hespagorat and Campannlat were once joined by a land bridge, which was destroyed in some upheaval. What do you think, Sartori?”

He studied the hump of Gleeat Island. “If we can believe the legends, phagors originated in a distant part of Hespagorat, Pegovin, where the black phagors live. Perhaps the phagors of Campannlat migrate to Radado because they still hope to discover the ancient bridge back to their homeland.”

“Have you ever seen a black phagor in Borlien?”

“Once in captivity.” He drew on his veronikane. “The continents keep their separate kinds of animals. If there was once a land bridge, then we might expect to find the iguanas of Hespagorat on the coast of Radado. Are they there, Odi?”

With a sudden inspiration, she said, “I think they are not, because the humans might have killed them off—Radado is a barren place; anything serves as food. But what about Gleeat? While we are becalmed, we have time to spare, time in which we might add to the fund of human knowledge. You and I will go on an expedition in the longboat and see what we find.”

“Can we do that?”

“If I say so.”

“Remember our near disaster on the Persecution Bay expedition?”

“You thought I was crazy then.”

“I think you’re crazy now.”

They both laughed, and he clutched her hand.

The Admiral summoned the bo’sun. Slaves were set to work. The longboat was launched. Odi Jeseratabhar and SartoriIrvrash climbed aboard. They were rowed two miles across to the island, over a sea of glass. With them went a dozen armed soldiers, delighted at this chance to leave the hated confines of the ship.

Gleeat Island measured five miles across. The ship’s boat beached on a steep sandy shelf at the southeast corner. A guard was set on it, while the rest of the expedition moved forward.

Iguanas basked on the rocks. They showed no fear of humans, and several were speared to be taken back to the ship as welcome addition to the diet. They were puny beside the giant black iguanas of Hespagorat. These rarely attained more than five feet in length. Their colour was a mottled brown. Even the crabs that lived commensally with them were small and had only eight legs.

As SartoriIrvrash and Odi Jeseratabhar were searching the rocks for iguana eggs, the party came under attack.

Four phagors rushed from cover, spears in hand, and fell on them. They were ragged beasts, their coats in tatters, their ribs showing.

With surprise on their side, the phagors managed to kill two of the soldiers, bearing the men down into the water with the force of their charge. But the other soldiers fought back. Iguanas scattered, gulls rose screaming, there was a brief pursuit over the rocks, and the scrimmage was finished. The phagors were dead—except for a gillot whose life Odi Jeseratabhar spared.

The gillot was larger than her companions and covered in a dense black coat. With her arms bound firmly behind her, she was made captive and taken back in the boat to the Golden Friendship.

Odi and Sartori embraced each other in private, congratulating themselves on confirming the truth of the old legend of the land bridge. And on surviving.

A day later, the monsoon winds blew, and the fleet was on its way eastwards again. The coast of Randonan was now passing in all its wild splendour on the port side; but SartoriIrvrash spent most of his time below decks, studying their captive, whom he called Gleeat.

Gleeat spoke only Native Ancipital, and that in a dialect. Knowing no Native, or even Hurdhu, SartoriIrvrash had to work through an interpreter. Odi came down into the cramped dark hold to see what he was doing, and laughed.

“How can you bother with this smelly creature? We have proved our point, that Radado and Throssa were once connected. God the Azoiaxic was on our side. The small colony of iguanas isolated on Gleeat Island are an inferior strain, isolated from the main body of iguanas on the southern continent. This creature, living among white phagors, probably represents some kind of survival of the Hespagorat-Pegovin black strain. Doubtless they’re dying out on such a small island.”

He shook his head. While admiring her quick brain, he perceived that she reached conclusions too hastily.

“She claims that her party were on a ship which was wrecked on Gleeat in an earlier monsoon.”

“That’s clearly a lie. Phagors do not sail. They hate water.”

“They were slaves on a Throssan galley, she says.”

Odi patted his-shoulder. “Listen, Sartori, it’s my belief that we could have proved that the two continents were once linked just by looking at the old charts in the chartroom. There’s Purporian on the Radado shore and a port called Popevin on the Throssa shore. ‘Poop’ means ‘bridge’ in Pure Olonets, and ‘Pup’ or ‘Pu’ the same in Local Olonets. The past is locked up in language, if one knows how to look.”

Although she laughed, he was vexed by her superior Sibornalese style. “If the smell is overcoming you, dear, you had better go back on deck.”

“We shall soon be approaching Keevasien. A coastal town. As you know, ‘ass’ or ‘as’ is Pure Olonets for ‘sea’—the equivalent of ‘ash’ in Pontpian.” With that burst of knowledge, smiling, she retired, climbing the ladder to the quarterdeck in practical fashion.

He was surprised next day to find that Gleeat was wounded. There was a golden pool of blood on the deck where she lay. He questioned her through the interpreter. Although he watched her closely, he could detect nothing resembling emotion when she answered.

“No, she is not wounded. She says she is coming on oestrus. She has just undergone her menstrual period.” The interpreter looked his distaste but made no personal comment, being of inferior rank.

Such was his hatred for phagors—but it was gone now, like much else from his past life, he realized—that SartoriIrvrash had always neglected their history, just as he had refused to learn their language. Such matters he had left to JandolAnganol—JandolAnganol with his perverse trust in the creatures. However, the sexual habits of phagors had been a target for prurient jest to the very urchins in the Matrassyl streets; he recalled that the female ancipital, neither human nor beast, delivered something like a one-day menstrual flow from the uterus as prelude to the oestral cycle when she came on heat. It might be memories of those old whispers which caused him to imagine that his captive emitted a more pungent odour on this occasion.

SartoriIrvrash scratched his cheek. “What was that word used for catamenia? Her word in Native?”

“She calls oestrus ‘tennhrr’ in her language. Shall I have her hosed down?”