Pallahaxi

by Michael Coney

  “Commonsense,” said Smith. “Particularly in these hard times. They’ve built caverns and all sorts at Pallahaxi, and furnished them. A thousand people could sit out the freeze in comfort. It’s stupid to treat the place like some kind of untouchable shrine.”

  Smitha brought us plates of fried meat and flat fried bread. Uncle Stance was spluttering with too much outrage to enjoy his food. “If I hear you’ve been despoiling Pallahaxi, Smith, I’ll—”

  “You’ll what? You have no authority over us, Stance. We’re travelers. We’re tied to no village.” Popping a strip of meat into his mouth he squatted before our chief, staring him in the face. “You want your motorcart repaired or not?” he asked, indistinctly.

  Discretion subdued Uncle Stance’s tantrum. “That’s your trade, Smith.”

  “Even if I have to replace your spring with a spare I took from a barn in Pallahaxi?”

  “We’re not to know where the spare came from,” said Dad quickly, before Stance could condemn us all to death with a foolish word. “It’s no concern of ours.”

  “It’s light enough now,” said Smith. “Time to start work.”

  THE THAW

  So Smith repaired our motorcart, that last freeze before everything happened, and saved our lives.

  He couldn’t find a spare spring from among the pile of assorted metal in his cart, so he removed the broken leaf and heated and riveted and hammered the bits together at the anvil beside his brazier. Dad and I helped. The frequent trips outside to try the leaf for size were scary; it was bitterly cold out there. Eventually all was ready, Smith gave us some coal for the motorcart’s fire, and we puffed back to Yam. Spring ran to meet us, crying for joy, hugging Dad and then me. It was supremely embarrassing, but luckily everyone else was shut up tight indoors, huddled before their fires.

  Little else of interest happened during the freeze. We were frequently hungry but the Noss fish saved us from starvation. A small faction found something in a stardream that suggested food rationing was against the will of the Great Lox, and stormed the storage barn. The alarm was given in time and they were beaten off. Nursing their bruises they crept back to their huts, muttering that the sun-god Phu must have a good reason for forsaking us. It was the deepest freeze in memory, so they said. And if Phu was capable — in the form of the Great Lox — of dragging the world from the clutches of the ice-devil Rax, then he was equally capable of dragging it the other way if we’d annoyed him. I was told they brought this up at the next temple meeting. It made a queer kind of sense — to those stupid enough to believe in religion in the first place.

  Then one day the world was shining wet, and Phu shone more convincingly, and our spirits began to lift. The thaw had come at last. The first of the game animals was sighted within a few days.

  Wand led the women into the fields earlier that year, to make sure the crops had the longest possible growing season. There were objections from the more religious, naturally; Uncle Stance among them. I was privileged to catch the start of one such conversation.

  Uncle Stance was shouting, “We’ve never sown so early before. It goes against every Yam memory!”

  “To Rax with the mistakes of the past!” retorted Wand. “We have to eat!”

  Then they saw me, and took their ground-breaking argument elsewhere.

  I must explain that our cultural practices and customs are almost inviolate. As a result of our vivid ancestral memories, change will always be resisted. Wand’s early sowing might seem eminently practical to a human, but in our terms it was almost frightening in its novelty. She would prevail, of course. She was the womanchief, and therefore in charge of agriculture. But Uncle Stance never shirked fighting battles he couldn’t win. This is why he challenged Dad’s commonsense views so often. Trigger was just the same.

  The days grew warmer, the hunting team brought in fresh meat, and the abortive motorcart trip to Devon Station began to look like needless panic. I sometimes wonder what my sons and grandsons will make of it, as they relive that fearful night in their stardreams. I’m ashamed of the episode but I haven’t put it under geas; there’s a lesson to be learned. We’re responsible to our descendants and should not risk our lives without good reason. They will judge us, in times to come.

  As soon as the weather permitted I went to my stardreaming pool. It was wonderful to be out of the hut and away from the constant presence of Dad and the frequent presence of Uncle Stance and Trigger. Dad and I got along really well, but it had been a long winter and it was quite natural that we should be a little edgy with each other by the thaw.

  Phu was warm and the palpaters were pleasant, massaging my skin gently as I lay back with my hands behind my head. Wisps of fragrant smoke drifted from my pipe of hatch. I composed myself to stardream, alone and at peace.

  A face appeared in my mind’s eye. Brown eyes watched me.

  Charm was there again.

  No! This was ridiculous. I’d spent a whole freeze trying to stop thinking about that web-footed flounder girl. Now spring was here, surely she’d leave me in peace!

  Determinedly, I tried recalling my first pipe of hatch.

  “Don’t force it,” Dad had said. Uncle Stance was there too, and Wand, and other village notables. A boy becomes a man with his first pipe. It’s symbolic of his ability to pass on his genes. Often stardreaming doesn’t happen on this occasion, because a fellow is too nervous. But I’d looked at Dad smiling down at me proudly, and I’d drawn on the pipe and relaxed, and suddenly someone had been speaking in my mind, clear as the summer sky.

  “Come to me, Bruno.”

  Spring’s face had looked up at me, much younger, oddly intent, her lips slightly swollen. I/Bruno had leaned forward, holding her… .

  I’d felt my cheeks go hot; I’d been about to stardream my own moment of conception in front of all those people. Worse, I’d been feeling the sexual attraction of my own mother; a confusing situation. I’d backtracked hastily and found I could easily slip into Dad’s memories at an earlier point. So I’d relived a hunt through his eyes, minute by minute, and made the kill, and smelled the blood and felt the moment of arrogance and heard the congratulations. That’s how real it was.

  “Well done, Bruno! Enough meat there for a few days.”

  My first stardream! I’d come out of it and grinned up at the expectant faces. “Good hunting, Dad!” I’d said, and he’d smiled his pride.

  I’d stardreamed further back since that day, and was reasonably familiar with the memories of four generations. Now, on this first real spring day, I felt too lazy to break new ground so I ambled through Dad’s early years. Actually, it’s considered bad manners to investigate the memories of living ancestors, but Dad would never know.

  I was mildly puzzled over his relationship with Uncle Stance. Having no brothers of my own, I’d often wondered how Dad really felt about the man who, by his very birth, had snatched the chiefship from Dad’s grasping fingers.

  I found a friendly contempt allied to a fierce loyalty. Dad clearly thought his brother was a bit of a jackass — by now the word had become a part of my vocabulary — but he was very protective of him, as you would expect of an elder brother. He supported Uncle Stance in his leadership of Yam men. He recognized his weaknesses and corrected his mistakes unobtrusively. I was able to jump from memory to memory on this basis; we call it riding a leader. It’s similar to Mister McNeil using the search capability of his computer. I followed a series of examples of Dad helping Uncle Stance out of trouble, and one thing emerged from those memories loud and clear.

  Dad would have made a better chief than Uncle Stance.

  I pondered this. Their ancestral experience was almost identical; Uncle Stance outmemoried Dad by just two years. And his demeanor was more impressive than clumsy old Dad’s. He looked the part and he acted the part. But it was acting, nothing more. He was weak and superstitious and I could tell that Dad — probably out of loyalty — had suppressed his memories of fur
ther shortcomings. Uncle Stance was a jackass, pure and simple. He lacked only the long ears.

  I sat up and regarded the still water of my pool. I knelt and splashed the water over my face; a fellow can sweat a bit, stardreaming. The water was cool, the air warm. I took off my clothes and jumped in, and splashed about happily, shouting at the trees. Phu smiled down at me. Rax was a long way off, invisible in the day sky.

  Then I heard a derisive yelling. Trigger and Caunter stood on the bank, laughing and pointing.

  A fellow feels vulnerable without clothes; are humans the same? I felt as though I’d been caught doing something shameful, like praying. I scrambled out of the pool and dragged clothes over my wet skin.

  “You’re all soaking!” Trigger screeched with laughter, the fool.

  He was Uncle Stance’s son and he would be chief one day, barring accidents.

  “I’m telling you, Stance, we’re not getting the germination,” said Wand.

  “I knew it! I knew it!” He sounded almost pleased at this disaster. “Early sowing is an insult to the goatparent. It implies mistrust. Now you’ve got us in deep trouble.”

  “What do you think the cause is?” Dad asked Wand, ignoring Uncle Stance’s foolery.

  “Perhaps the last of the thaw rotted the seed. And there was a plague of drivets in the barn; perhaps they peed over the seed. Perhaps the seed is naturally weak because it comes from last year’s poor crop. I don’t know.”

  “One thing we do know,” said Uncle Stance. “It’s your fault, Wand.”

  “I accept that. It doesn’t help the situation, though.”

  Wand, Uncle Stance, Dad and I stood in the middle of the field known as Low Prospect; usually our most productive bit of land apart from Silly May’s nursery. It lay to the north of Yam on a south-facing slope, well drained and sunny, surrounded by a dense hedge of sticklebushes to keep the wild lox, loats and other ruminants out. Here the women tended our grain crop. A number of them were out now, pulling weeds from among anemic-looking shoots.

  “The root crops don’t look any better, either,” added Wand.

  “You should have known. Rax, we tried early sowing ten, eleven generations ago. It failed then just as it’s failing now.”

  At these words Wand went a funny color. She glared at Uncle Stance. I wouldn’t have liked to be the recipient of that look; her eyes were like twin Raxes.

  “We did not suffer a crop failure, neither ten nor eleven years ago, Stance. They were warm years and the yield was excellent. I must remind you that my ancestor was womanchief at the time. What do you hope to gain by such stupid lying?”

  Time stood still. Uncle Stance looked not one whit abashed. He’d committed the ultimate crime of bad manners: inventing a memory to prove a point. But he stared blandly over the head of the furious woman as though she was a small yapping animal beneath contempt.

  “More relevant,” he said, “is how are we going to repay the loan of fish from Noss?”

  I felt as though we’d all been holding our breath, and we all exhaled at once.

  “You’ll have to explain the situation to them,” said Wand, recovering. At least she had the good manners not to press home her point.

  “Not I,” said Uncle Stance, somehow conveying in two short words that her suggestion was inappropriate, even immature. “The failure lies within your field of responsibility, Wand.”

  “I did not negotiate the loan.”

  All eyes turned to poor old Dad.

  “All right,” he said amiably. “I’ll go to Noss and do the groveling if it’ll keep the peace here.”

  My heart jolted. Charm smiled at me in my mind’s eye. “Can I come too, Dad?”

  “Of course. This is going to be an excellent lesson in how to eat humble pie. I wouldn’t want you to miss it.”

  Matters should have ended there, but Wand was still fuming. “By the way,” she said nastily, “an interesting suggestion came up the other day. Oddly enough, it was Silly May who thought of it.”

  Stance stiffened. Whatever the suggestion was, he was against it. “Yes?”

  “She thought we might try domesticating other animals beside lox. We could keep them in large fenced paddocks, and breed for tractability. Loats, snorters, that kind of thing.”

  “But those are game animals!”

  “All animals except lox are game animals.”

  “Impossible. We’ve never domesticated game animals. Out of the question. I won’t hear of it.”

  “Actually it’s not within your jurisdiction, Stance. Domestic animals are women’s work. Just bring back a few live young animals from the next hunt, will you? We’ll see to the rest of it.”

  “Absolutely not!” I could see his problem. If we raised herds of domestic animals, the hunt would become unnecessary. Stance would lose the most spectacular aspect of his responsibilities.

  Wand ignored him. “We’ll give it some thought,” she said.

  That was the end of the episode as regards decision-making, but there was a curious aftermath. Dad and Uncle Stance walked back toward the village and I hurried ahead to check out my boat. I intended to take it with me on the trip to Noss and maybe leave it there in the care of someone. This would establish a permanent connection. Although it was basically a skimmer for the grume, the Noss boatbuilders make a false bottom that can be pegged underneath the hull, making the boat seaworthy in normal water conditions. I planned to persuade Dad to get me one.

  The boat lay in our yard, covered with skins against the worst effects of the past freeze. I crawled underneath to check it out; the extreme drying effects of the freeze can cause timbers to split. Noss people keep the smaller boats in their cottages during cold weather and I’d suggested this to Dad, but I’d been outvoted.

  I was relieved to find the boat had suffered no harm. There were a few fine cracks at the joints, but these would take up once the boat was in the water. I could hardly see the place where Dad and I had repaired last year’s damage. As I crouched there I heard footsteps approach, and Dad’s voice, thick with unusual anger.

  “Try that again and you won’t get any support from me, Stance!”

  It was too late to reveal my presence. I’d already heard too much. A top-level quarrel was in progress.

  “An unguarded moment, nothing more,” replied Uncle Stance airily.

  “No, I’m serious. I’ve backed you all the way up to now, but this is far enough.”

  “I know, I know.” Now his tone was conciliatory. “Good of you to make the Noss trip, Bruno. I appreciate it.”

  There was a pause before Dad spoke. I could tell he was weighing the satisfaction of ranting and raving against the need to get on with life. The practical approach won out. “It won’t be easy. Lonessa’s a tough nut… .”

  Their voices faded. I crouched there, pondering. What was it all about? Dad didn’t lose his temper without good reason. What had Uncle Stance done? Was it his silly lie about the historic crops? Or was there more to it? Perhaps there’d been a further conversation after I’d left them. My curiosity was aroused. I’d wait for an opportune moment, and pry it out of talkative old Dad.

  One thing had come through loud and clear, though: the extent to which Uncle Stance depended on him. Without Dad, the village would fall apart.

  In years to come I’d be called upon to support the idiotic Trigger in just the same way. Would I be capable of showing the same forbearance and commonsense as Dad?

  Uncle Stance had planned a hunting trip, so the motorcart was available for our trip to Noss.

  Years ago Uncle Stance had tried using the motorcart for hunting, and I well remember his triumphant return, the back of the cart laden with carcasses, the rest of the hunting party trailing far behind on foot. The villagers had gathered around, cheering. Only later had it emerged that the motorcart had become disabled when he’d driven it off the beaten track in pursuit of game and, in the enthusiasm of the chase, tried to leap a small
ravine with it. The hunting party had set up their tents and labored three days and nights with poles and rocks to lever the motorcart back onto level ground. The carcasses, which Uncle Stance had displayed so proudly, were those of a herd of snorters that had been so amazed by the sight of their lumbering pursuer that they’d fallen into the ravine themselves. “Which proves my point,” said Uncle Stance, when the true story of the hunt became common knowledge.

  Significantly, the motorcart had never since been used for hunting although the possibility was always left open. “No… . I don’t think we’ll take the motorcart this time,” Uncle Stance would say thoughtfully, as though he’d given the matter mature consideration.

  It was a fine morning and the long shadows were hard and sharp as people gathered to see us off. Like most villages, Yam is situated at a junction of well-worn routes: north to the moors and the ancient town of Alika, south to the coast and Noss, and east to the coast again at the holy town of Pallahaxi. West lies the river and a ford. The village consists of a straggle of cottages beside these roads, widening to an open square at the junction. This junction also marks the boundary between the men’s cottages to the north, and the women’s to the south.

  Here in the square, Dad and I sat on the motorcart receiving the good wishes of the villagers. Dad cut an impressive figure in his negotiating cloak; I a lesser one in my ragged old tunic. Spring hovered close, plump hands pawing at Dad. Uncle Stance marched by at the head of his hunting team. He raised his spear with its chief’s tassels in salute.

  “Good luck, Bruno!” he called, strutting on, his men in single file behind him. Why they always marched in single file through the village I don’t know, unless it was to give visible evidence that Uncle Stance was the leader. I do know that once they were out of sight they would degenerate into a shambling troupe, chatting and play-fighting and dropping behind to urinate. I’ve been with them out there. They spend more time chasing lost members of their own team than they spend chasing game.