Helliconia Winter h-3

by Brian Aldiss

  Next morning, the wind had dropped, and Koriantura was enveloped in a soft brown fog, through which the two suns gleamed intermittently. Besi watched the thin, parched form of Eedap Mun Odim as he ate breakfast. She was allowed to eat only when he had finished. He did not speak, but she knew that he was in his usual resigned good humour. Even while she recollected the pleasures that Captain Fashnalgid could offer, she knew that she was, despite everything, fond of Odim.

  As if to test out his humour, he allowed upstairs one of his distant relations, a second cousin who professed to be a poet, to speak to him.

  “I have a new poem, cousin, an Ode to History,” said the man, bowing, and began to declaim.

  “Whose is my life? Is history

  To be considered property

  Only of those who make it?

  May not my finer fancy take it

  Into my heart’s morality

  And shape it just as it shapes me?”

  There was more of the same. “Very good,” said Odim, rising and wiping his bearded lips on a silken napkin. “Fine sentiments, well displayed. Now I must get down to the office, if you will excuse me— refreshed by your ornamental thoughts.”

  “Your praise overwhelms me,” said the distant cousin, and withdrew.

  Odim took another sip of his tea. He never touched alcohol.

  He summoned Besi to his side as a servant came forward to help him into his outdoor coat. His progress down the stairs, Besi obediently following, was slow, as he underwent the barrage of his relations, those Odims who squawked like starlings on every stair, cajoling but not quite begging, jostling but not quite pushing, touching but not quite impacting, calling but not quite shrieking, lifting tiny befrocked Odims for inspection but not exactly thrusting them in his face, as he performed his daily spiral downwards.

  “Uncle, little Ghufla can do his arithmetic so well…”

  “Uncle, I am so shamed that I must tell you of yet another infidelity when we are private together.”

  “Darling Unky, stop a while while I tell you of my terrifying dream in which some terrible shining creature like a dragon came and devoured us all.”

  “Do you admire my new dress? I could dance in it for you?”

  “Have you news from my creditor yet, please?”

  “Despite your orders, Kenigg kicks me and pulls my hair and makes my life a misery, Unky. Please let me be your servant and escape him.”

  “You forget those who love you, darling Eedap. Save us from our poverty, as we have pleaded so often.”

  “How noble and handsome you look today, Unk Eedap…”

  The merchant showed neither impatience at the constant supplications nor pleasure at the forced compliments.

  He pushed slowly through the thickets of Odim flesh, the odours of Odim sweat and perfume, saying a word here and there, smiling, permitting himself once to squeeze the mangolike breasts proffered by a young great-niece, sometimes even going so far as to press a silver coin into a particularly protruding hand. It was as if he considered—and indeed he did—that life could be got through only by sufferance, dispensing as few advantages to others as possible but nevertheless retaining a general humanity for the sake of one’s self-respect.

  Only when he was outside, as Besi closed the gate after him, did Odim display emotion. There, pasted to his wall, were two posters. He made a convulsive clutch at his beard.

  The first poster warned that the PLAGUE was threatening the lives of the citizens of Uskutoshk. The PLAGUE was particularly active in ports, and most especially in THE RENOWNED AND ANCIENT CITY OF KORIANTURA. Citizens were warned that public meetings were henceforth banned. More than four people gathering together in public places would be subject to severe punishment.

  Further regulations designed to restrict the spread of THE FAT DEATH would be introduced shortly. BY ORDER OF THE OLIGARCH.

  Odim read this notice through twice, very seriously. Then he turned to the second poster. THE RESTRICTIONS OF PERSONS IN ABODES ACT.

  After several clauses in obscurantist language, a bolder clause stood out:

  THESE LIMITATIONS as regards houses, demesnes, lodgings, rooms, and other Dwellings apply in particular to any household where the Householder is not of Uskuti blood. Such Persons are shown to be particularly liable to conduct the Spread of the Plague. Their numbers will henceforth be limited to One Person per Two Square Metres floorspace. BY ORDER OF THE OLIGARCH.

  The announcement was not unexpected. It was aimed at doing away with the more bohemian quarters of the city, where the Oligarchy found no favour. Odim’s friends on the local council had warned him of its coming.

  Once more, the Uskuti were demonstrating their racial prejudices-prejudices of which the Oligarchy was quick to take advantage. Phagors had been banned from walking untended in Sibornalese cities long ago.

  It made no difference that Odim and his forebears had lived in this city for centuries. The Restrictions of Persons in Abodes Act rendered it impossible for him to protect his family any longer.

  Looking quickly about him, Odim tore the poster from the wall, screwed it up, and thrust it under his suede coat.

  This action alarmed Besi almost as much as the captain’s oath had done the previous evening. She had never seen Odim step outside the law before. His unswerving obedience to what was legal was well- known. She gasped and stared at him with her mouth open.

  “The winter is coming,” was all he said. His face was drawn into bitter lines.

  “Take my arm, girl,” he said huskily. “We shall have to do something…”

  The fog rendered the quayside a place of beauty where a copse of swaying masts floated in the sepia glow. The sea lay entranced. Even the customary slap of rigging against mast was silent.

  Odim wasted no time admiring the view, turning in at the substantial arcade above which a sign bore the words ODIM FINEST EXPORT PORCELAINS. Besi followed him past bowing clerks into his inner sanctum.

  Odim stopped abruptly.

  His of Ece had been invaded. An army officer stood there, warming himself before the lignite fire and picking his teeth with a match. Two armed private soldiers stood close, their faces impervious in usual bodyguard fashion.

  By way of greeting, the major spat the match on the floor and tucked his hands behind his back. He was a tall man in a lumpy coat. He had grey in his hair and a lumpish protruding mouth, as if his teeth, imbued with true military spirit, were waiting to burst through his lips and bite a civilian.

  “What can I do for you?” asked Odim.

  Without answering the question, the major announced himself in a way that exercised his teeth prominently.

  “I am Major Gardeterark of the Oligarch’s First Guard. Well-known, not liked. From you I will have a list of all times of sailing for ships in which you have an interest. Today and coming week.” He spoke in a deep voice, giving each syllable an equal weight, as if words were feet to be firmly planted on a long march.

  “I can do that, yes. Will you sit and take some tea?”

  The major’s teeth moved a little further forward.

  “I want that list, nothing else.”

  “Certainly, sir. Please make yourself comfortable while I get my chief clerk—”

  “I am comfortable. Don’t delay me. I have waited six minutes for your arrival as it is. The list.”

  Whatever its disadvantages, the northern continent of Sibornal had reserves of minerals and seams of lignite unmatched elsewhere. It also boasted a variety of clays.

  Both china and glass drinking vessels had been in regular use in Koriantura while the little lords of the Savage Continent were still quaffing their rathel from wooden bowls. As early as the spring of the Great Year, potteries as far afield as Carcampan and Uskutoshk were producing porcelains fired in lignite-fuelled kilns at temperatures of 1400° C. Through the centuries, these fine wares were increasingly sought after and collected.

  Eedap Mun Odim took little part in porcelain manufacture, though there
were auxiliary kilns on his premises. He exported fine china. He exported the local, prized Korianturan porcelain to Shivenink and Bribahr, but mainly to ports in Campannlat, where, as a man of Kuj-Juveci descent, he was more welcome than his Sibornalese competitors. He did not own the ships which carried his wares. He made his business from the entrepreneurial trade, and from banking and financing; he even lent money to his rivals and made a profit.

  Most of his wealth came from the Savage Continent, from ports along its northern coastline, from Vaynnwosh, Dorrdal, Dowwel, and from even farther afield, Powachet and Popevin, where his competitors would not trade. It was precisely this adventurous element of Odim’s business which made his hand tremble slightly as he handed his sailing timetable over to the major. He knew without being told that foreign names would be bad for the soldier’s liver.

  The gaze of the major, as brown and foggy as the air outside, travelled down the printed page.

  “Your trade goes mainly to alien ports,” he said at last, in the leathery voice. “Those ports are all thick with the plague. Our great Oligarch, whom the Azoiaxic preserve, fights to save his peoples from the plague, which has its source in the Savage Continent. There will be no more sailings for any Campannlat port from now on.”

  “No more sailings? But you can’t—”

  “I can, and I say no more sailings. Until further notice.”

  “But my trade, my business, good sir…”

  “Lives of women and children are more important than your trade. You are a foreigner, aren’t you?”

  “No. I am not a foreigner. I and my family have lived in Uskutoshk for three generations.”

  “You’re no Uskutoshi. Your looks, your name, tell me that.”

  “Sir! I am Kuj-Juveci only by distant origins.”

  “From today, this city is under military law. You obey orders, understand? If you don’t, if one of your cargoes leaves this port for foreign parts, you are liable to be tried by military court and sentenced…”

  The major let the words hang in the air before adding two further words in his best leather: “…to death.”

  “It will mean ruin to me and my family,” Odim said, trying to wrench a smile out of himself.

  The major beckoned to one of the privates, who produced a document from his tunic.

  The major flung it on the table.

  “It’s all down there. Sign it to prove you’ve understood.” He let his teeth air while Odim blindly signed, before adding, “Yes, as a foreigner, you report every morning in future to my under officer in charge of this whole area. He has just established an office in the warehouse next door, so you’ve not far to go.”

  “Sir, let me repeat, I am not a foreigner. I was born round the corner. I am chairman of the local trades committee. Ask them.”

  As he made a supplicatory gesture, the wadded-up poster fell from under his coat. Besi stepped forward and put it carefully on the fire. The major ignored her, as he had all along. He merely stuck his tongue between teeth and upper lip, as if considering Odim’s impertinence, and then said, “You report every morning in future to my under officer, as I just said. He’s Captain Fashnalgid and he is next door.” At the mention of this name, Besi leant over the fire. It must have been the flames from the burning poster which caused a brief ruddiness in her cheeks.

  When Major Gardeterark and his escort had left, Odim shut the door into the packinghouse and sat down by the fire. Very slowly he leaned forward, picked a chewed match from the carpet, and tossed it to the back of the grate. Besi knelt beside him and held his hand. Neither spoke for a long while.

  At last Odim said, with an attempt at brightness, “Well, my dear little Besi, we are in difficulty. How can we meet it? Where can we all live? Here, possibly. Perhaps we could do away with that kiln we scarcely use and house some relations in there. The room could be made nice… But if I am not allowed to trade, then… well, ruin faces us all. They know that, the scoundrels. These Uskuti would have us all for slaves…”

  “Wasn’t he horrible, that man? His eyes, his teeth… like a crab.”

  Odim sat up in his chair and clicked his fingers. “One stroke of luck, though. First, we start work with this Fashnalgid in the next warehouse. By good fortune, that very captain is at present billeted with me— you may have caught a glimpse of him. He reads books and perhaps he’s civilised. And my wife feeds him well. Perhaps we could persuade him to help us.”

  He lifted up Besi’s chin so that she was forced to look him in the eye.

  “Always something can be done, my chick. Go round to this nice Captain Fashnalgid and invite him here. Say I have a present for him. He’ll bend the regulations for us, for sure. And, Besi… he’s as ugly as a mountain devil, but never mind. Very very sweet to him, eh, chick? As sweet as you can be, and that’s very sweet. Even a little tempting— you know? Even if you have to go to the limit. Our lives depend on such things…”

  He tapped his long nose and smiled coaxingly.

  “Run along, my dove. And remember—stop at nothing to win him over.”

  IV

  AN ARMY CAREER

  The Restrictions of Persons in Abodes Act met with the mixed reception customary for proclamations from the Oligarchy. In the more privileged sectors of the city people nodded their heads and said, “How wise—what a good idea.” Nearer the docks, they exclaimed, “So that’s what the biwackers are up to now!”

  Eedap Mun Odim gave no overt expression to his dismay when he returned to his crowded five-storey home. He knew that the police would call soon enough to inform him that he was contravening the new law.

  That night, he patted his children, settled his modest anatomy beside the slumbrous bulk of his wife, and prepared his mind for pauk. He had said nothing to his spouse, knowing that her display of anguish, her tears, her undoubted rushing from one end of the room to the other, kissing her three children with huge hydropic kisses en route, would do nothing to resolve the problem. As her breath became as regular as a balmy breeze over the autumn valleys of Kuj-fuvec, Odim gathered together his inner resources and underwent that small death which forms the entrance gate to pauk.

  For the poor, the troubled, the persecuted, there was always that refuge: the trance state of pauk. In pauk lay communication with those of the family whose life on earth was ended. Neither State nor Church had jurisdiction over the region of the dead. That vast dimension of death placed no restriction on persons; nor did God the Azoiaxic prevail there. Only gossies and the more remote fessups existed in orderly oblivion, sinking towards the unrisen sun of the Original Beholder, she who took to her bosom all who lived.

  Like a feather, the tremulous soul of Eedap Mun Odim sank down, to hold what intercourse it might with the gossie of its father, recently departed the world above.

  The father now resembled a kind of ill-made gilt cage. It was difficult to see it through the obsidian of nonexistence, but Odim’s soul made its obeisances, and the gossie twinkled a little in response. Odim poured out his troubles.

  The gossie listened, expressing consolation in little dreadful gasps of bright dust. It in its turn communed with the guttering ranks of ancestors below it. Finally it uttered advice to Odim.

  “Gentle and beloved son, your forebears honour you for your tender duty towards our family. Family must rely upon family, since governments do not comprehend families. Your good brother Odirin Nan lives distantly from you, but he, like you, shares an abiding fondness for our poor people. Go to him. Go to Odirin Nan.”

  The voiceless voice sank away in an eddy. To which Odim faintly responded that he loved his brother Odirin Nan, but that brother lived in far Shivenink; might it not be better instead to cross the mountains and return to a remote branch of the family which still lived in the vales of Kuj-Juvec?

  “These here with me who still can make voice advise no return to Kuj-Juvec. The way over the mountains becomes more hazardous every month, as new arrivals here report.” The tenuous framework guttered even as it spok
e. “Also, the valleys are becoming stonier, and the cattle herds grow thin of flank. Sail westwards to your brother, beloved one, most dutiful of young men. Be advised.”

  “Father, to hear the melody of your voice is to obey its music.”

  With tender expressions on either side, the soul of Odim drifted upwards through obsidian, like an ember through a starry void. The ranks of past generations were lost to view. Then came the pain of finding a feeble human body lying inert on a mattress, and seeking entry to it.

  Odim returned to his mortal body, weakened by the excursion but strengthened by the wisdom of his father. Beside him, his ample wife breathed on, undistressed in her sleep. He put an arm about her and snuggled into her warmth, like a child against its mother.

  There were those—lovers of secrecy—who rose almost at the time that Odim was settling to sleep. There were those—lovers of night—who liked to be about before dawn, in order to get ahead of their fellow men. There were those—lovers of chill—whose constitutions were such that they found satisfaction in the small hours when human resistance is at its lowest.

  At the chime of three in the morning, Major Gardeterark stood in his leather trousers, keeping a watchful eye on his reflection in the mirror while he shaved.

  Major Gardeterark would have no nonsense with pauk. He regarded himself as a rationalist. Rationalism was his creed, and his family’s. He had no belief in the Azoiaxic—Church Parade was a different matter— and less than a belief in pauk. It would never occur to the major that his thinking had confined him to an umwelt of living obsidian, through which no light shone.

  At present, with each stroke of his cut-throat razor, he contemplated how to make miserable the lives of the inhabitants of Koriantura, as well as the existence of his under officer, Captain Harbin Fashnalgid. Gardeterark believed he had rational family reasons for hating Fashnalgid, over and above the motive of the latter’s inefficiency. And he was a rational man.