Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Spring

But Raynil Layan, as was his style, had changed tack. After a moment’s silence, he moved his leg, cleared his throat, and spoke seriously.

“Vry, among the pilgrims just arrived from Pannoval is a man not as blinded with religion as the rest of his crowd. He makes clocks, working them precisely from metal. Wood is no good for your purpose. Let me bring this craftsman to you, and you can instruct him as you will to build your model expertly.”

“Mine’s no mere clock, Raynil Layan,” she said, looking up at him as he stood against her chair, wondering if she and he could in any way be regarded as being made of the same stone.

“That I understand. You instruct the man about your machine. I’ll pay him in coin. I shall soon take up an important post, with power to command as I will.”

She stood up, the better to assess his response.

“I hear you are to run an Oldorandan mint.”

He narrowed his eyes and surveyed her, half-smiling, half-angry. “Who told you that?”

“You know how news travels.”

“Faralin Ferd has been blabbing out of turn again.”

“You don’t think greatly of him or Tanth Ein, do you?”

He made a dismissive gesture and seized her hands. “I think of you all the while. I will have power and, unlike those other fools—unlike Aoz Roon—I believe that knowledge can be wedded to power to reinforce it… Be my woman and you shall have what you wish. You shall live better. We will discover all things. We will split open the pyramid that my predecessor, Datnil Skar, never managed to do, for all his prattle.”

She hid her face, wondering if her thin body, her torpid queme, could entice and hold a man.

Pulling her wrists from his grasp, she backed away. Her hands, now free, flew like birds to her face to try to conceal the agitation she felt.

“Don’t tempt me, don’t play with me.”

“You need tempting, my doe.”

Narrowing his eyes, he opened the purse at his belt, and brought forth some coins. These he extended towards her, like a man tempting a wild hoxney with food. She came cautiously to inspect them.

“The new currency, Vry. Coins. Take them. They’re going to transform Oldorando.”

The three coins were improperly rounded and crudely stamped. There was a small bronze coin stamped “Half Roon,” a larger copper coin stamped “One Roon,” and a small gold coin stamped “Five Roons.” In the middle of each coin was the legend:

Vry laughed with excitement as she examined them. Somehow, the money represented power, modernity, knowledge. “Roons!” she exclaimed. “That’s rich.”

“The very key to riches.”

She set them on her worn table. “I’ll test your intelligence with them, Raynil Layan.”

“What a way you do court a man!” He laughed, but saw by her narrow face that she was serious.

“Let the Half Roon be our world, Hrl-Ichor. The big One Roon is Batalix. This little gold one is Freyr.” With her finger, she made the Half Roon circle about the Roon. “This is how we move through the upper air. One circle is one year—in which time, the Half Roon has revolved like a ball four hundred and eighty times. See? When we think we see the Roon move, it is we who move on the Half Roon. Yet the Roon is not still. There’s a general principle involved, much like love. As a child’s life revolves about its mother, so does the Half Roon’s about the Roon—and so also does the Roon, I have decided, about the Five Roons.”

“You have decided? A guess?”

“No. Simple observation. But no observation, however simple, can be made except by those predisposed to make it. Between winter and spring solstices, the Half Roon moves its maximum to either side of the Roon.” She demonstrated the diameter of its orbit. “Imagine that behind the Five Roons there are a number of tiny sticks standing to represent fixed stars. Then imagine you are standing on the Half Roon. Can you imagine that?”

“More, I can imagine you standing there with me.”

She thought how quick he was, and her voice shook as she said, “There we stand, and the Half Roon goes first this side of the Roon, then the other… What do we observe? Why, that the Five Roons appears to move against the fixed stars behind it.”

“Only appears?”

“In that respect, yes. The movement shows both that Freyr is close compared to the stars, and that it is we who really move and not the sentinels.”

Raynil Layan contemplated the coins.

“But you say that the two small denominations move about the Five Roons?”

“You know that we share a guilty secret. There’s the matter of your predecessor illegally presenting Shay Tal with information from your corps book… From King Denniss’s dating we know that this is the year he would call 446. That is the number of years after someone—Nadir…”

“I’ve had a better chance than you to puzzle that dating out, my doe, and other dates to compare it with. The date Zero is a year of maximum cold and dark, according to the Denniss calendar.”

“Exactly what I believe. It is now 446 years since Freyr was at its feeblest. Batalix never changes its light intensity. Freyr does—for some reason. Once, I believed that it grew bright or dim at random. But now I think that the universe is no more random than a stream is random. There are causes for things; the universe is a machine, like this astronomical clock which seeks to imitate it. Freyr is getting brighter because it approaches—no, vice versa—we approach Freyr. It’s hard to shake off the old ways of thought when they are embedded in the language. In the new language, the Half Roon and the Roon are approaching the Five Roons.

He fiddled with the little ribbons on his beard. Vry watched him thinking over her statement.

“Why is the approach theory preferable to the dim-bright theory?”

She clapped her hands. “What a clever question to ask. If Batalix doesn’t fluctuate from dim to bright, why should Freyr? The Half Roon always approaches the Roon, though the Roon always moves out of the way. So I think the Roon approaches the Five Roons in the same way—taking the Half-Roon with it. Which brings us to the eclipses.” She circulated the two lower denomination coins again.

“You see how the Half Roon reaches a point each year where observers on it—you and I—would not see the Five because the One would get in the way? That is an eclipse.”

“So why isn’t there an eclipse every year? It spoils all your theory if one part of it is wrong, just as a hoxney won’t run with only three legs.”

You’re smart, she thought—much smarter than Dathka or Laintal Ay—and I like clever men, even when they’re unscrupulous.

“Oh, there’s a reason for it, which I can’t properly demonstrate. That’s why I am trying to build this model. I’ll show you soon.”

He smiled and took her slender hand again. She trembled as if she were down the brassirrup tree.

“You shall have that craftsman here tomorrow, working in gold to your specifics, if you will agree to be mine and let me publish the news. I want you close—in my bed.”

“Oh, you’ll have to wait … please … please …” She fell trembling into his arms as he clutched her. His hands moved over her body seeking her narrow contours. He does want me, she thought, in a whirl, he wants me in a way Dathka doesn’t dare. He’s more mature, far more intelligent. He’s not half so bad as they make out. Shay Tal was wrong about him. She was wrong about a lot of things. Besides, manners are different in Oldorando now and, if he wants me, he shall have me…

“The bed,” she gasped, tearing at his clothes. “Quick, before I change my mind. I’m so divided… Quick, I’m ready. Open:’