Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Winter

What most impressed him were her eyes. They had changed. The pupils seemed enormous—a sign of her attention, he believed. He could not see the whites in her eyes and thought, admiringly, Those irises show the depth of Insil’s soul.

But he said tenderly, “Two profiles in search of a face?”

“I’d forgotten that. Existence in Kharnabhar has grown narrower over the years—dirtier, grimmer, more artificial. As might be expected. Everything narrows. Souls included.” She rubbed her hands together in a gesture he did not recall.

“You still survive, Insil. You are more beautiful than I remembered.” He forced the insincerity from him, conscious of pressures on him to be a social being again. While it remained difficult to enter into a conver- sation, he was aware of old reflexes awakening—including his habit of being polite to women.

“Don’t lie to me, Luterin. The Wheel is supposed to turn men into saints, isn’t it? Notice I refrain from asking you about that experience.”

“And you never married, Sil?”

Her glare intensified. She lowered her voice to say with venom, “Of course I am married, you fool! The Esikananzis treat their slaves better than their spinsters. What woman could survive in this heap without selling herself off to the highest bidder?”

She stamped her foot. “We had our discussion of that glorious topic when you were one of the candidates.”

The dialogue was running too fast for him. “Selling yourself off, Sil! What do you intend to mean?”

“You put yourself completely out of the running when you stuck your knife into that pa you so revered… Not that I blame you, seeing that he killed the man who took away my cherished virginity—your brother Favin.”

Her words, delivered with a false brightness as she smiled at those around them, opened up an ancient wound in Luterin. As so often during his incarceration in the Wheel, he thought of the waterfall and his brother’s death. Always there remained the question of why Favin, a promising young army officer, should have made the fatal jump; the words of his father’s gossie on that subject had never satisfied him. Always he had shied away from a possible answer.

Not caring who was looking on among the pale-lipped crowd, he grasped Insil’s arm. “What are you saying about Favin? It’s known that he committed suicide.”

She pulled away angrily, saying, “For Azoiaxic’s sake, do not touch me. My husband is here, and watching. There can be nothing between us now, Luterin. Go away! It hurts to look at you.”

He stared about, his gaze darting over the crowd. Halfway across the chamber, a pair of eyes set in a long face regarded him in open hostility.

He dropped his glass. “Oh, Beholder… not Asperamanka, that opportunist!” The red liquid soaked into the white carpet.

As she waved to Asperamanka, she said, “We’re a good match, the Master and I. He wanted to marry into a proud family. I wanted to survive. We make each other equally happy.” When Asperamanka turned with a sign back to his colleagues, she said in venomous tones, “All these leather-clad men going off with their animals into the forests… why do they so love each other’s stink? Close under the trees, doing secret things, blood brothers. Your father, my father, Asperamanka… Favin was not like that.”

“I’m glad if you loved him. Can’t we escape from these others and talk?”

She deflected his offer of consolation. “What misery that brief happiness inherited… Favin was not one to ride into the caspiarns with his heavy males. He rode there with me.”

“You say my father killed him. Are you drunk?” There was something like madness in her manner. To be with her, to enter into these ancient agonies—it was as if time stopped. It was as if a fusty old drawer was being unlocked; its banal contents had become hallowed by their secret nature.

Insil scarcely bothered to shake her head. “Favin had everything to live for… me, for instance.”

“Not so loud!”

“Favin!” she shouted, so that heads turned in her direction. She began to pace through the crowd, and Luterin followed. “Favin discovered that your father’s ‘hunts’ were really journeys to Askitosh and that he was the Oligarch. Favin was all integrity. He challenged your father. Your father shot him down and threw him over the cliff by the waterfall.”

They were interrupted by officious women acting hostess, and separated. Luterin accepted another glass of yadahl, but had to set it down, so violently was his hand shaking. In a moment, he found his chance to speak to Insil again, breaking in on an ecclesiastic who was addressing her.

“Insil—this terrible knowledge! How did you discover about my father and Favin? Were you there? Are you lying?”

“Of course not. I found out later—when you were in your fit of prostration—by my customary method, eavesdropping. My father knew everything. He was glad— because Favin’s death punished me. … I could not believe I had heard aright. When he was telling my mother she was laughing. I doubted my senses. Unlike you, however, I did not fall into a year-long swoon.”

“And I suspected nothing … I was fatally innocent.”

She gave him one of her supercilious looks. Her irises appeared larger than ever.

“And you still are fatally innocent. Oh, I can tell…”

“Insil, resist the temptation to make everyone your enemy!”

But her look hardened and she burst out again. “You were never any help to me. My belief is that children always know intuitively the real natures of their parents, rather than the dissembled ones which they show the world. You knew your father’s nature intuitively, and feigned dead to avoid his vengeance. But I am the truly dead.”

Asperamanka was approaching. “Meet me in the corridor in five minutes,” she said hastily, as she turned, smiling and gaily raising a hand.

Luterin moved away. He leaned against a wall, struggling with his feelings. “Oh, Beholder…” he groaned.

“I expect you find the crowds overpowering after your solitude,” someone who passed by said pleasantly.

His whole inner life was undergoing revolution. Things had not been, he had not been, as he had pretended to himself. Even his gallantry on the field of battle—had that not been powered by ancient angers released, rather than by courage? Were all battles releases from frustration, rather than deeds of deliberate violence? He saw he knew nothing.

Nothing. He had clung to innocence, fearing knowledge.

Now he remembered that he had experienced the actual moment when his brother died. He and Favin had been close. He had felt the psychic shock of Favin’s death one evening: yet his father had announced the death as occurring on the following day. That tiny discrepancy had lodged in his young consciousness, poisoning it. Eventually—he could foresee—joy could come that he was delivered from that poison. But deliver)’ was not yet.

His limbs trembled.

In the turmoil of his thoughts, he had almost forgotten Insil. He feared for her in her strange mood. Now he hurried towards the corridor she had indicated—reluctant though he was to hear more from her.

His way was barred by bedizened dignitaries, who spoke to him and to each other roundly of the solemnity of this occasion, and of how much more appalling conditions would be henceforth. As they talked, they devoured little meat-filled pastries in the shape of birds. It occurred to Luterin that he neither knew nor cared about the ceremony in which he had become involved.

Their conversation paused as all eyes focussed on the other side of the chamber.

Ebstok Esikananzi and Asperamanka were leaving by a spiral stair which wound to an upper gallery.