Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Winter

“Your father has a mania for locking things,” she said, half laughing. “Don’t be silly. He is the Keeper. This place has to be fortress as well as home.”

He found what he wanted and picked out a rusted key almost a hand’s span long.

“Nobody will miss this,” he said, locking up the cupboard. “Take it. Hide it. It is the key to that chapel built by your countryman, the king-saint. You remember, in the woods? There may be a little trouble—I can’t tell what. Perhaps about pauk. I don’t want you harmed. If anything happens to me, you will be in danger of arrest at the least. Go and hide in the chapel. Take a slave with you—they’re all longing to escape. Choose a woman who knows Kharnabhar, preferably a peasant.” She slipped the key into the pocket of her new clothes. “What can happen to you?” She clutched his hand. “Nothing, probably, but—I just feel an apprehension…” He heard a door opening. Hounds came scurrying, nails clicking on the tiles. He pushed Toress Lahl into the shadows behind the cupboard, and stepped forth into the hall. His father was emerging. Behind him came half a dozen of the conspiratorial men, bells clanking.

“We’ll speak together,” said Lobanster, lifting one finger. He led into a small wooden room on the ground floor. Luterin followed, and the conspiratorial men moved in behind them. The last one in locked the door on the inside. The biogas hissed when turned up.

This room had a wooden bench and table and little else in the way of furniture. People had been interrogated here. There was also a wooden door fortified with iron straps, which was kept locked. It was a private way down into the vaults, where the well was whose waters never froze. Legend had it that precious brood animals had been preserved down there in the coldest centuries.

“Whatever we discuss should be said privately, Father,” Luterin said.

“I don’t even know who these other gentlemen are, though they make free in our house. They are not your huntsmen.”

“They are returned from Bribahr,” said Lobanster, speaking the words as if they gave him a cold pleasure. “Eminent men need bodyguards in these times. You are too young to understand how plague can cause the dissolution of the state. It breaks up first small communities and then large. The fear of it disintegrates nations.”

The conspiratorial men all looked very serious. In the limited space, it was impossible to stand away from them. Only Lobanster was separate, poised without movement behind the table, on the surface of which he played his fingers.

“Father, it is an insult that we should have to converse before strangers. I resent it. But I say to you— and to them, if they are capable of hearing—that although there may be truth in what you say, there is a greater truth you neglect. There are other ways of disintegrating nations than by plague. The harsh measures being brought against pauk—the common people, the Church—the cruelty behind those measures—will eventually bring greater destruction than the Fat Death—”

“Cease, boy!” His father’s hands went to the region of his throat. “Cruelty is also part of nature. Where is mercy, except with men? Men invented mercy, but cruelty was here before them, in nature. Nature is a press. Year by year, it squeezes us tighter. We cannot fight it but by bringing to bear cruelty of our own. The plague is nature’s latest cruelty, and must be fought with its own weapons.”

Luterin could not speak. He could not find, under that chill, pale gaze, words to explain that while there might be a casual cruelty in circumstances, to formulate cruelty into a moral principle was a perversion of nature. To hear such pronouncements from his father turned him sick. He could only say, “You have swallowed utterly the words of the Oligarch.”

One of the conspiratorial men spoke in a loud, rough voice. “That is everyone’s duty.”

The sound of this stranger’s voice, the claustrophobia of the room, the tension, his father’s coldness, all mounted to Luterin’s brain. As if from afar, he heard himself shouting, “I hate the Oligarch! The Oligarch is a monster. He murdered Asperamanka’s army. I’m here as a fugitive instead of a hero. Now he will murder the Church. Father, fight this evil before you are yourself devoured by it.”

This he said and more, in a kind of seizure. He was scarcely aware of their bringing him from the room and helping him outside. He felt the bite of the chill wind. There was snow in his face. He was pushed through a courtyard where the biogas inspection pit was, and into a harness room.

The stablemen were sent away, the conspiratorial men were sent away. Luterin was alone with his father. Still he could not bear to look at him, but sat clutching his head, groaning. After a while he listened to what his father was saying.

“…only son left to me. You I must groom to take over the role of Keeper. For you there are particular challenges, and you must meet them. You must be strong—”

“I am strong! I defy the system.”

“If the order is to wipe out pauk, then we must wipe it out. If to destroy all phagors, then we must destroy all phagors. Not to do so is weakness. We cannot live without a system—all else is anarchy.

“I hear from your mother that you have a female slave who has influence over you. Luterin, you are a Shokerandit and you must be strong. That slave must be destroyed, and you will marry Insil Esikananzi, as we have planned since your childhood. There is no question but that you must obey. You obey not for my sake, but for the sake of freedom and Sibornal.”

Luterin gave a laugh. “What freedom would there be in such circumstances? Insil hates me, I believe, but for you that’s neither here nor there. There’s no freedom under the laws now being imposed.”

Lobanster moved as if for the first time. It was a simple gesture, a mere removal of one hand from the throat, to extend it in appeal towards Luterin.

“The laws are harsh. That’s understood. But there is no freedom, nor any life, without them. Without laws firmly applied, we shall die. Just as Campannlat dies without law, though the climate favours it above Sibornal. Campannlat already disintegrates under the coming of the Great Winter. Sibornal can survive.

“Let me remind you, my son, that there are one thousand eight hundred and twenty-five small years in a Great Year. This Great Year has but five hundred and sixteen more years to run before its death, before the time of greatest cold, the winter solstice, when Freyr is farthest from us.

“We have to live like iron men until that time. Then the plague will be gone, and conditions will improve once more. We have known these facts since birth, for we hold Kharnabhar. The life of the Great Wheel is dedicated to getting us through that black time, to bringing us again to the light and warmth—”

Now Luterin confronted his father and spoke composedly.

“Agreed, the Wheel does as you say, Father. Why, then, do you approve—as I gather you must—these wicked deeds whereby Chubsalid, Priest-Supreme of our Church, is burnt and the Church in general attacked?”

“Because the Wheel is an anachronism.” Lobanster made a throaty noise resembling a laugh, so that his goitre trembled under its black covering. “It is an anachronism, without meaning. It cannot save Helli- conia. It cannot save Sibornal. It is a sentimental concept. It functioned properly only when it imprisoned murders and debtors. It conflicts with the scientific laws of the Oligarchy. Those laws, and those alone, can bring us through the Weyr-Winter which will be upon our children. We cannot have two sets of laws in conflict. Therefore the Church must be demolished. It was as a first step towards that demolition that the Act against pauk was passed.” Again Luterin found no words.