Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Spring

One evening, after service, Yuli left Lathorn with an acquaintance, a shriven fellow priest by the name of Bervin, and they walked together through the tomblike avenues of the Holies, to run their fingers over new carvings even then being created by the three Brothers Kilandar. It chanced that they encountered Father Sifans, also strolling, reciting a litany to himself in a nervous undertone. They greeted each other cordialy. Bervin politely excused himself, so that Yuli and Father Sifans could parade and talk together.

“I don’t enjoy my feelings about my day’s work, Father. I was glad of the service.”

As was his fashion, Sifans responded to this only obliquely.

“I hear marvellous reports of your work, Brother Yuli. You will have to seek further advancement. When you do, I will help you.”

“You are kind, Father. I recall what you told me”—he lowered his voice—“about the Keepers. An organisation for which one can volunteer, you said?”

“No, I said one could only be elected to the Keepers.”

“How could I put my name forward?”

“Akha will aid you when it is necessary.” He sniffed with laughter. “Now you are one of us, I wonder … have you heard a whisper of an order above even the Keepers?”

“No, Father. You know I don’t listen to whispers.”

“Hah, you should. Whispers are a blind man’s sight. But if you are so virtuous, then I will say nothing of the Takers.”

“The Takers? Who are they?”

“No, no, don’t worry, I will say not a word. Why should you bother your head with secret organisations or tales of hidden lakes, free of ice? Such things may be lies, after all. Legends, like Wutra’s worm.”

Yuli laughed. “Very well, Father, you have worked me up to sufficient interest. You can tell me everything.”

Sifans made tsking noises with his thin lips. He slowed his step, and sidled into an alcove.

“Since you force me. Very regrettable … You may remember how the rabble lives in Vakk, its rooms all a huddle, one on top the next, without order. Suppose this mountain range in which Pannoval lives is like Vakk—better, like a body with various interconnected parts, spleen, lungs, vitals, heart. Suppose there are caverns just as large as ours above us and below us. It’s not possible is it?”

“No.”

“I’m saying it is possible. It’s a hypothesis. Let us say that somewhere beyond Twink there exists a waterfall, falling from a cavern above ours. And that waterfall falls to a level below ours, some way below. Water plays where it will. Let us say that it falls into a lake, the waters of which are pure and too warm for ice to form on them… Let us imagine that in that desirable and secure place live the most favoured, the most powerful, the Takers. They take everything of the best, the knowledge and the power, and treasure it for us there, until the day of Akha’s victory.”

“And keep those things from us …”

“What’s that? Fillips, I missed what you said, Brother. Well, it’s just an amusing story I tell you.”

“And does one have to be elected to the Takers?”

The father made little clicking noises with his tongue. “Who could penetrate such privilege, supposing it existed? No, my boy, one would have to be born to it—a number of powerful families, with beautiful women to keep them warm, and perhaps secret ways to come and go, even beyond Akha’s domains… No, it would need—why, it would need a revolution to get near such a hypothetical place.”

He stuck his nose in the air and giggled.

“Father, you tease the poor simple priests below you.”

The old priest’s head went to one side, judicially. “Poor you are, my young friend, and will most like remain so. Simple you are not—and that is why you will always make a flawed priest, as long as you continue. That is why I love you.”

They parted. The priest’s declaration troubled Yuli. Yes, he was a flawed priest, as Sifans said. A music lover, nothing more.

He washed his face in icy water as his thoughts burned. All these hierarchies of priesthoods—if they existed—led only to power. They did not lead to Akha. Faith never explained precisely, with a verbal precision to rival the precision of music, how devotion could move a stone effigy; the words of faith led only to a foggy obscurity called holiness. The rcalisation was as rough as the towel on which he dried his cheeks.

Lying in the dormitory far from sleep, he saw how old Sifans’ life had been stripped from the old man, real love had been starved from him, until he was left only with teasing ghosts of affection. He did not really care—had perhaps ceased to care a while ago—whether those beneath him had faith or not. His hints and riddles expressed a deep-rooted dissatisfaction with his own life.

In sudden fear, Yuli told himself that it would be better to die a man in the wilderness than a dry mouth here in the shadowy safeties of Pannoval. Even if it meant leaving behind his fluggel and the strains of “Oldorando.”

The fear made him sit up, casting off his blanket. Dark winds, the restless inhabitants of the dormitory, blew about his head. He shivered.

With a kind of exultation matching the exultation he had experienced on entering Reek long ago, he whispered aloud, “I don’t believe, I believe nothing.”

Power over others he believed. He saw it in action every day. But that was purely human. Perhaps he had actually ceased to believe in other than human oppression during that ritual in State, when men had allowed a hated phagor to bite the words from young Naab’s throat. Perhaps Naab’s words might still triumph, and the priests reform themselves until their lives held meaning. Words, priests—they were actual. It was Akha that was nothing.

Into the moving dark be whispered the words, “Akba, you are nothing!”

He did not die, and the winds still rustled in his hair.

He jumped up and ran. Fingers unwinding the wall-scroll, he ran and ran until he was exhausted, and his fingertips raw. He turned back, panting. Power he wanted, not subjection.

The war in his mind was stilled. He returned to his blanket. Tomorrow, he would act. No more priests.

Dozing, he started up once again. He was back on a frozen hillside. His father had left him, taken by the phagors, and he flung his father’s spear contemptuously into a bush. He recalled it, recalled the movement of his arm, the hiss of the spear as it embedded itself among the tattered branches, the knife-sharp air in his lungs.

Why did he suddenly recollect that insignificant detail?

Since he had no powers of self-analysis, the question remained unanswered as he drifted into sleep.

The morrow was the last day of his interrogation of Usilk, interrogations were permitted for only six days consecutively, then the victim was allowed to rest. Rules in this respect were strict, and the militia kept a suspicious eye on the priesthood in all these matters.

Usilk had said nothing useful, and was unresponsive alike to beating and cajolery.

He stood before Yuli, who was seated on an inquisitorial chair carved elaborately from a solid chunk of timber; it served to emphasise the difference between the state of the two men, Yuli outwardly at ease, Usilk half-starved, ragged, shoulders bowed, face wan and without expression.

“We know that you were approached by men who threaten the security of Pannoval. All we wish is their names and then you can go free, back to Vakk”

“I did not know them. It was a word in the crowd.”

Both question and answer had become conventional.

Yuli rose from his chair and walked round the prisoner, giving no sign of his emotions.

“Usilk, listen. I feel no enmity for you. I respect your parents, as I told you. This is our last session together. We shall not meet again, and you will certainly die in this miserable place, for no reason.”