Helliconia Spring h-1

by Brian Aldiss

  “He was a great man, my father, and I’ll fight anyone who criticises him,” shouted Nahkri, jumping up and shaking his fist. He shook it so energetically that he almost fell over backwards, and his brother had to prop him up.

  None speaks against Dresyl. From the top of his tower, he could survey our surrounding country, the higher ground to the north, where he had come from, the lower to the south, and the geysers and hot springs, then strange to him. In particular, he was struck by the Hour-Whistler, our magnificent regular geyser, bursting up and whistling like a devil wind.

  I recall he asked me about the giant cylinders, as he called them, spread all over the landscape. He had never seen rajabarals before. To him they looked like the towers of a magician, flat on top, made of strange wood. Though not a fool, he did not know them for trees.

  He was mainly for doing, not looking. He ordered where all his tribe from the frozen lake would be quartered, distributed in different towers. There he showed a wisdom we might all follow, Nahkri. Although many grumbled at the time, Dresyl saw to it that his people lived in with ours. No fighting was allowed, and everything fairly shared. That rule as much as anything has caused us to intermingle happily.

  While he was billetting families, he had everyone counted. He could not write, but our corpsmen kept a tally for him. The old tribe here numbered forty-one men, forty-five women, and eleven children under the age of seven. That made ninety- seven folk in all. Sixty-one folk from the frozen lake had survived the battle, which made one hundred and fifty-eight people all told. A goodly number. As a boy, I was glad to have some life round the place again. After the deaths, I mean.

  I said to Dresyl, “You’ll enjoy being in Embruddock.”

  “It’s called Oldorando now, boy,” he said. I can still remember how he looked at me.

  “Let’s hear more about Yuli,” someone called out, risking the wrath of Nahkri and Klils. The hunter sat down, puffing, and a younger man took his place.

  Little Yuli made a slow recovery from his wound. He became able to walk out a short way with his cousin-brother and survey the territory in which they found themselves, to see how it could best be hunted and defended.

  In the evenings, they talked with the old lord. He tried to teach them both the history of our land, but they were not always interested. He talked of centuries of history, before the cold descended. He told how the towers had once on a time been built of baked clay and wood, which the primitive peoples had developed in a time of heat. Then stone had been substituted for clay, but the same trusted pattern observed. And the stone withstood many centuries. There were some passages underground, and had been many more, in better times.

  He told them the sorrow of Embruddock, that we are now merely a hamlet. Once a noble city stood here, and its inhabitants ruled for thousands of miles. There were no phagors to be feared in those days, men say.

  And Yuli and his cousin-brother Dresyl would stride about the old lord’s room, listening, frowning, arguing, yet generally respectful. They asked about the geysers, whose hot springs supply warmth to us. Our old lord told them all about the Hour- Whistler, our unfailing symbol of hope.

  He told how the Hour-Whistler has blown punctually every hour ever since time began. It’s our clock, isn’t it? We don’t need sentinels in the sky.

  The Hour-Whistler helps the authorities keep written records, as the masters of corps are duty-bound to do. The cousin-brothers were astonished to find how we divide the hour into forty minutes and the minute into one hundred seconds, just as the day contains twenty-five hours and the year four hundred and eighty days. We learn such things on our mothers’ laps. They also had to learn that it was Year 18 by the Lordly calendar; eighteen years had our old lord ruled. No such civilized arrangements existed by the frozen lake.

  Mind, I say no word against the cousin-brothers. Barbarians though they were, they both soon mastered our system of makers corps, with the seven corps, each with different arts—the metal makers being the best, to which I’m proud to say, without boasting, I belong. The masters of each corps sat on the lord’s council then, as they do now. Though, in my opinion, there should be two representatives from the metal-makers corps, because we are the most important, make no mistake.

  Following a lot of jeering and laughter, the rathel was passed round again, and a woman in late middle age continued the legend.

  Now I’ll spin you a tale a lot more interesting than writing or time-keeping. You’ll be asking what befell Little Yuli when he got better of his wound. Well, I’ll tell you in a dozen words. He fell in love—and that proved worse than his wound, because the poor fellow never recovered from it.

  Our old Lord Wall Ein wisely kept his daughter—poor pampered Loil Bry Den, who was in such a pother today—out of harm’s way. He waited until he was sure that the invaders weren’t a bad lot. Loil Bry was then very lovely, and with a well- developed figure, enough for a man to get hold of, and she had a queenly way of walking, which you will all remember. So our old lord introduced her to Little Yuli one day, up in his room.

  Yuli had already seen her once. On that terrible night of the battle when, as we’ve heard, he nearly died of his wound. Yes, this was the black-eyed beauty with the ivory cheekbones and lips like a bird’s wing, whom our friend mentioned. She was the beauty of her day, for the women from lake Dorzin were a plain lot, to my mind. All her features were precisely drawn on the velvet of her skin, and those lips, so trimly curving, were painted in delicate cinnamon. To speak truth, I looked a bit like that myself when I was a young girl.

  Such was Loil Bry when Yuli first saw her. She was the greatest wonder of the town. A difficult, solitary girl—people didn’t care for her, but I liked her manner. Yuli was overwhelmed. He forever sought occasions when he could be alone with her—either outside or, better still, cloistered up close with her in her room in Big Tower where she still lives to this day, with that porcelain window. It was as if she gave him a fever. He could not control himself in her presence. He used to swagger about and boast and swear in front of her and make a real fool of himself. Many men get like that, but of course it doesn’t last.

  As for Loil Bry, she sat there like a little puppy, watching, smiling behind her high cheekbones, her hands folded in her lap. Of course, she encouraged him, needless to say. She wore a long heavy gown, decorated with beads, not furs like the rest of us. I heard that she wore furs underneath. But that gown was extraordinary, and reached almost to the ground. I’d like a gown like that…

  The way she speaks, it still is a bit of a mixture of poetry and riddles. Yuli’d never heard anything like it up on Lake Dorzin. It flummoxed him. He boasted all the more. He was bragging about what a hunter he was when she said—you know her musical voice—“We live out our lives in all kinds of darkness. Should we ignore them or explore them?”

  He just goggled at her, sitting there looking lovely in her cloth garment. It had beads stitched on it, as I said, lovely beads. He asked if it was dark in her room. She laughed at him.

  “Where do you think is the darkest place in the universe, Yuli?”

  Poor fool, he said, “I’ve heard that far Pannoval is dark. Our great ancestor, whose name I bear, came from Pannoval, and he said it was dark there. He said it was under a mountain, but I don’t believe that. It was just a way of speaking in those times.”

  Loil Bry regarded her fingertips, resting like little pink beads on the lap of that lovely garment.

  “I think the darkest place in the universe is inside human skulls.”

  He was lost. She made a proper fool of him. Still, I must watch my tongue about the dead, mustn’t I? He was a bit soft, though…

  She used to bemuse him with romantic talk. You know what she used to say? “Have you ever thought how we know so much more than we can ever tell?” It’s true, isn’t it? “I long to have someone,” she’d say, “someone to whom I could tell everything, someone for whom talk is like a sea on which to float. Then I’d hoist my dark sail…”
I don’t know what she said to him.

  And Yuli would lie awake, clutching his wound and who knows what else, thinking of this magical woman, thinking of her beauty, and her troubling words. “… Someone for whom talk is a sea on which to float …” Even the way she turned her sentence seemed to him to be Loil Bry’s way and no one else’s. He’d long to be on that sea, sailing with her, wherever it was.

  ’That’s enough of your womanly nonsense,” cried Klils, struggling to his feet. “She put a spell about him, Father said so. Father also told us of the good things Uncle Yuli did at first, before she made him stupid.” He went on to tell them.

  Little Yuli got to know every inch of Oldorando while he was recovering. He saw how it is laid out, with the big tower at one end of the main street and the old temple at the other. In between, the women’s house, the hunter’s homes on one side, the towers of the makers corps on the other. The ruins farther out. How all our towers have the heating system of stone pipes carrying hot water from springs through them. We couldn’t build anything half so marvellous today.

  When he saw how the place was, he saw how it should be. With the aid of my father, Yuli planned proper fortifications, so that there would be no more attacks—especially no more phagor attacks. You’ve heard how everyone was set to digging a mound with a ditch on its outer side and a stout palisade on top. It was a good idea, though it cost a few blisters. Regular lookouts were drilled and posted at the four corners, as they still are. That was Yuli’s and my father’s doing. The lookouts were given horns to blow in case of a raid—the self-same horns we use today.

  There were proper hunts as well as proper lookouts. People were almost starved before the merging of the tribes. Once the entire town was enclosed, Dresyl, my father, got the hunters breeding a proper hunting dog. Other scavengers could be kept out. Packs of hunting dogs could bring down game and run faster than we could. That was not much of a success, but we might try again some time.

  What else? The guilds were able to make up their numbers. The colour-makers corps enlisted some children among the newcomers. New mugs and platters were made for everyone from a vein of clay they know about. More swords were hammered out. Everyone had to work for the common good. No one went hungry. My father nearly worked himself to death. You drunken lot ought to remember Dresyl while you’re remembering his brother. He was a lot better than that one. He was, he was.

  Poor Klils broke into tears. Others also began to cry, or laugh, or fight. Aoz Roon, himself staggering slightly under the weight of rathel he had drunk, grabbed up Laintal Ay and Oyre, and hustled them off to bed and safety.

  He looked blurrily down at their passive faces, trying to think. Somewhere in the course of the telling of the legend of the past that was like a dream, the future of the lordship of Oldorando had been decided.

  III • A LEAP FROM THE TOWER

  On the day after Little Yuli’s burial and the celebrations marking that occasion, everyone had to go back to work as usual. Past glories and discomforts were forgotten for the time being, except perhaps by Laintal Ay and Loilanun; they were continually reminded of the past by Loil Bry, who, when she was not weeping, liked to recall the happier days of her youth.

  Her chamber was still hung with tapestries of ancient lineage, now as then. Ducts of hot water still gurgled under the floors. The porcelain window still gleamed. This was still a place of oils, powders, and perfumes. But there was no Yuli now, and Loil Bry herself had decayed into old age. Moths had got the tapestries. Her grandson was growing up.

  But before Laintal Ay’s time—in the days when the mutual love of his grandparents flowered—a trivial-seeming incident occurred which in its repercussions was to set a disastrous mark on Laintal Ay and on Embruddock itself: a phagor died.

  When he had recovered from his wound, Little Yuli took Loil Bry as his woman. A ceremonial was held to mark the great change that had come to Embruddock, for in this union the two tribes were symbolically united. It was agreed that the old lord, Wall Ein, and Yuli and Dresyl should rule Oldorando as a triumvirate. And the arrangement worked well, because everyone had to strive hard together to survive.

  Dresyl worked without cease. He took for his woman a thin girl whose father was a sword maker; she had a singing voice and a lazy glance. Her name was Dly Hoin Den. The storytellers never said that Dresyl soon grew disappointed with her; nor did they say that part of her initial attraction for Dresyl was that she represented a pretty but anonymous member of the new tribe into which he wished to integrate. For, unlike his cousin-brother, Yuli, he saw team spirit as the clue to survival. His work was never for himself; nor, in a sense, was Dly Hoin.

  Dly Hoin bore Dresyl two boys, Nahkri and, a year later, Klils. Although he could spare little time apart with them, Dresyl doted on his sons, lavishing on them a sentimental love denied him by the deaths of his parents, Iyfilka and Sar Gotth. He instilled in the boys and their friends many legends concerning their great-great- grandfather, Yuli, the priest from Pannoval who had defeated gods whose names were now forgotten. Dly Hoin taught them the rudiments of annotation but nothing more. Under their father’s care, both boys became adequate hunters. Their house was always full of noise and alarms. Fortunately, a clownish element in their characters—in Nahkri’s, in particular—was never perceived by their fond father.

  As if to defeat the predictions of those who had claimed that the cousin-brothers would meet one and the same fate, Little Yuli became self-absorbed to almost the extent that Dresyl absorbed himself in the community.

  Under the influence of Loil Bry, Yuli grew soft, and hunted less and less. He sensed the hostility of the community towards Loil Bry, with her exotic ideas, and withdrew himself from it. He sat in the big tower and let the storm winds blow outside. His woman and her ancient father taught him much that was mysterious, both about the world that was past and the world below.

  So it came about that Little Yuli embarked upon that sea of talk on which Loil Bry’s dark sail flew free, and lost all sight of land.

  Speaking of the world below, one day in the second quarter of the year, Loil Bry said to Little Yuli, gazing at him with her lustrous eyes, “My splendid one, you commune in your head with the memory of your parents. You see them sometimes as if they still walked the earth. Your imagination has the power to conjure up the forgotten sunlight in which they walked. Yet here in this empire of ours we have a method of communing direct with those who have gone before. They still live, sinking down in the world below towards the original boulder, and we can reach them, as a fish dives to feed on the riverbed.”

  He murmured in exchange, “I would like to talk to my father, Orfik, now that I am old enough to have sense. I would tell him of you.”

  “We also set store by our wonderful parents, and their parents, who had the strength of giants. You observe the stone towers in which we live. We cannot build them, yet our parents did. You see how scalding earthwater has been trapped in pipes to heat our towers. We cannot manage that art, yet our parents did. They are gone from our sight, yet they still exist as gossies and fessups.”

  “Teach me these things, Loil Bry.”

  “Because you are my lover, and my pulses rise up when I behold your flesh, I will teach you to speak direct to your father and, through him, to all your tribe who ever lived.”

  “Is it possible that I could speak even to my great-grandfather, Yuli of Pannoval?”

  “In our children our two tribes will merge, my lover, as they do in those infants of Dresyl’s. You shall learn to speak with Yuli, and mingle his wisdom with ours. You are a great person, my lover, and not a mere tribesman, like the poor fools outside; you shall be greater by speaking direct with the first Yuli.”

  Much though Loil Bry cared for Little Yuli, because she needed someone on whom to build a great love, she foresaw that he would fall further into her power if she taught him esoteric arts; with his protection she could remain in sumptuous idleness, as she had done before the invasion.

&n
bsp; Much though Little Yuli loved this indolent, intelligent woman, he perceived that she might bind him to her by such devices, and resolved to learn from her all he could and not be deceived. Something in their temperaments or their situation rendered him deceived nonetheless.

  Loil Bry gathered to her an old learned woman and an old learned man. With their aid, she taught Yuli the discipline of father-communing. Yuli gave up the hunt entirely in order to contemplate; Baruin and others provided their food. He began to practice pauk; in that trance state, he hoped to meet with the gossie of his father, Orfik, and commune through the gossie with fessups, the ancestral gossies sinking down through the lower world towards the original boulder, from which the world began.

  At this time, Yuli rarely went out. Such unmanly behaviour was a mystery in Oldorando.

  Loil Bry had roved greatly in the countryside about Embruddock when a girl, as her grandson, Laintal Ay, would come to do. She wished Yuli to see for himself how stones marking land-octaves trailed all round the continent.

  Accordingly, she engaged a grey, hawkish man, by name Asurr Tal Den. Asurr Tal was the grandfather of Shay Tal, later to play a great part in affairs. Loil Bry commanded Asurr Tal to take Yuli into the lands to the northeast of Oldorando. There she had once stood, watching day turn to dimday and dimday to brief night, and felt the pulse of the world flow through her.

  So Asurr Tal took Yuli on foot in a clement season. It was early winter, when Batalix rose well to the south of east, shining there alone for less than an hour—the interval diminishing day by day—before the second sentinel also rose. A wind blew, but the sky was as clear as brass. Although Asurr Tal was withdrawn and rather bent, he managed the distance better than Yuli, who was out of training. He made Yuli ignore the distant wolves and study all he saw in terms of esoteric art. Asurr Tal showed him stone posts, such as there had been by lake Dorzin. The posts were set solitary in wild places, each marked with a symbol of a wheel with a ring at its centre, and two lines connecting ring with wheel. He expounded their meaning in a singsong voice.