Brian Aldiss - Helliconia

Warders wore heavy soles to their boots, which sounded on the pavements. The white-coated phagors which accompanied them wore nothing, able to rely on their natural protection.

Brother Yuli’s job was to work duty spells with one of the three guard lieutenants, a coarse thick man called Dravog, who walked as if he were crushing beetles and spoke as if he were chewing them. He constantly beat his leggings with his stave, making an irritating drumming noise. Everything that concerned the prisoners — including the prisoners themselves — was meant to be banged. All movements were executed to gongs, any delay was punished by application of a stave. Noise was the order of the day. The prisoners were a sullen lot. Yuli had to legitimise any violence and frequently patch its victims.

He soon found himself opposed to Dravog’s mindless brutality, while the unremitting hostility of the prisoners eroded his nerves. The days spent under Father Sifans had been happy even if he had not always appreciated that at the time. In these harsh new surroundings, he missed the dense dark, the silences, the piety, and even Sifans himself, with his cautious friendliness. Friendship was not a quality Dravog recognised.

One of the sectors of Punishment was a cavern called Twink. In Twink, squads of prisoners worked at demolishing the rear wall to enlarge the work space. The toil was endless. ‘They’re slaves, and you’ve got to beat them to keep them going,’ Dravog said. The remark gave Yuli an uncomfortable glimpse into history — probably much of Pannoval had been opened up in this way.

The rubble from the excavation was carried away in clumsy wooden carts, which needed the efforts of two men to shift. The carts trundled to a place somewhere in the warrens of the Holies where the Vakk ran far below ground level and a deep pit waited to receive the rubble.

Twink contained a farm worked by the prisoners. Noctiferous barley was grown for bread, fish were farmed in a pool fed by a stream which poured from the rock. A quota of larger fish was culled every day. Diseased fish were dug into long banks where enormous edible fungi grew. Their pungent odour cut across the senses of anyone entering Twink.

Nearby, in other caverns, were more farms, and chert mines. But Yuli’s movements were almost as circumscribed as those of the prisoners; Twink formed the limit of his beat. He was surprised when Dravog, in conversation with another warder, mentioned that one of the side passages leading from Twink would take him into Market. Market! The name conjured up a jostling world he had left behind in a different life, and he thought nostalgically of Kyale and his wife. ‘You’ll never be a proper priest,’ he told himself.

The gongs were struck, the wardens shouted, the prisoners strained their grudging bodies. The phagors shambled back and forth, sticking their milts up their slotted nostrils, and occasionally exchanging a grunted word with each other. Yuli hated their presence. He was watching four prisoners under the eye of one of Dravog’s warders trawl in the fish pool. To do this, the men were forced to get into the freezing water up to their stomachs. When their net was full, they were allowed to climb out and drag the catch onto the bank.

The fish were gout. They were a pale strawy white, with blind blue eyes. They struggled hopelessly as they were dragged from their natural element

A rubble cart was passing, pushed by two prisoners. One of its wheels struck a stone. The prisoner shouldering the nearside shaft staggered and fell. As he went, he struck one of the fishers, a youth stooping to get a hold on the end of the net, who plunged head first into the water.

The warder began to shout and struck about him with his stave. His phagor hopped forward and grasped the prisoner who had slipped, lifting him off his feet. Dravog and another warder came running up in time to beat the young prisoner about his head as he dragged himself from the pool.

Yuli grasped Dravog’s arm.

‘Leave him alone. It was an accident. Help him out.’

‘He’s not allowed in the pool on his own,’ Dravog said savagely, elbowing Yuli out of the way and striking again.

The prisoner climbed out with blood and water pouring from his head. Another warder rushed up, his brand hissing in the rain, his phagor behind him, eyes pink in the shadows. He shouted, sorry to have missed the excitement. He joined with Dravog and the other warders in booting the half-drowned prisoner back to his cell in the next cavern.

When the commotion had died and the mob disappeared, Yuli cautiously approached the cell, in time to hear a prisoner in the adjoining cell call, ‘Are you all right, Usilk?’

Yuli went to Dravog’s office and collected the master key. He unlocked the cell door, took a fat lamp from a niche in the passage, and entered.

The prisoner sprawled on the floor in a pool of water. He was supporting his torso with his arms, so that the outline of his shoulder blades stuck painfully through his shirt. Head and cheek were bleeding.

He turned a sullen look at Yuli, then, without change of expression, let his head droop again.

Yuli looked down at the soaked and battered skull. Tormented, he squatted by the man, setting the lamp down on the filthy floor.

‘Scumb off, monk,’ the man growled.

‘I’ll help you if I can.’

‘You can’t help. Scumb it!’

They remained in the same positions, without moving or speaking, and water and blood mingled in the puddle.

‘Your name’s Usilk, I believe?’

No response. The thin countenance remained pointing down at the floor.

‘Is your father’s name Kyale? Living in Vakk?’

‘Leave me alone.’

‘I know — I knew him well. And your mother. She looked after me.’

‘You heard what I said…’ With a sudden burst of energy, the prisoner flung himself on Yuli, beating at him rather feebly. Yuli rolled over and disengaged himself, jumping up like an asokin. He was about to fling himself into the attack when he paused. With an effort of will, he controlled himself and pulled back. Without a word more, he collected the lamp and left the cell.

‘A dangerous one, that,’ Dravog said to him, permitting himself a sly grin at the priest’s expense, seeing his flustered appearance. Yuli retreated to the brothers’ chapel, and prayed in the dark to an unresponsive Akha.

There was a story Yuli had heard in Market, a story not unknown to the ecclesiastics in the Holies, about a certain worm.

The worm was sent by Wutra, wicked god of the skies. Wutra put the worm into the labyrinth of passages in Akha’s holy mountain. The worm is large and long, its girth being about equal to that of a passageway. It is slimy, and it slides along noiselessly in the dark. Only its breathing can be heard, issuing from its flabby lips. It eats people. They are safe one moment; the next, they hear the evil breathing, the rustle of long whiskers, and then they are swallowed.

A spiritual equivalent of Wutra’s worm was now at large in the labyrinths of Yuli’s thought. He could not prevent himself seeing, in the thin shoulders and blood of the prisoner, the gulf that lay between preachments and practice in Akha. It was not that the preachments were so pious, for mainly they were practical, stressing service; nor was it that life was so bad; what troubled him was that they were at odds.

There returned to his memory something that Father Sifans had said to him. ‘It is not goodness and holiness that lead a man to serve Akha. More often it is sin such as yours.’ Which implied that many among the priesthood were murderers and criminals — little better than the prisoners. Yet they were set over the prisoners. They had power.

He went about his duties grimly. He smiled less than he had. He never felt happy working as a priest. The nights he spent in prayer, the days in thought — and in trying, when possible, to forge some sort of contact between himself and Usilk.