Helliconia Spring h-1

by Brian Aldiss

  “Don’t be afraid of us, Master Datnil,” Shay Tal said.

  He caught the note of impatience in her voice. “It’s only of your intolerance I’m afraid, ma’am,” he replied, and some of the women squatting on the floor hid smiles behind their hands.

  “You know what we do in our corps, because some of you work for me,” Datnil Skar said. “Membership in the corps is for men only, of course, for the secrets of our profession are handed down from generation to generation. In particular, a master teaches all he knows to his personal novice or chief boy. When a master dies or retires, then the chief boy becomes master in his turn, as Raynil Layan will soon take over my position…”

  “A woman could do that just as well as any man,” said one of the women, Cheme Phar. “I’ve worked for you long enough, Datnil Skar. I know all the secrets of the brine pits. I could pickle myself, if need arose.”

  “Ah, but we have to have order and continuity, Cheme Phar,” said the Master mildly.

  “I could give the orders all right,” said Cheme Phar, and everyone laughed, then looked at Shay Tal.

  “Tell us about the continuity,” the latter said. “We know, as Loilanun taught us, that some of us are descended from Yuli the Priest, who came from the north, from Pannoval and lake Dorzin. That’s one continuity. What about continuity within the corps, Master Datnil?”

  “All members of our corps were born and bred in Embruddock, even before it was Oldorando. To many generations.”

  “How many generations?”

  “Ah, a good many …”

  “Tell us how you know this.”

  He wiped his hands on his trousers.

  “We have a record. Each master keeps a record.”

  “In writing?”

  “That’s correct. Writing in a book. The art is passed on. But the records are not to be disclosed to others.”

  “Why do you think that is?”

  “They don’t want the women taking over their jobs and doing it better,” someone called, and again there was laughter. Datnil Skar smiled with embarrassment, and said no more.

  “I believe that secrecy served a protective purpose at one time,” Shay Tal said. “Certain arts, like metal forging and tannery, had to be kept alive in bad times, despite starvation or phagor raids. Probably there were very bad times in the past, and some arts were lost. We cannot make paper any longer. Perhaps there was once a paper-makers corps. Glass. We cannot make glass. Yet there are pieces of glass about—you all know what glass is. How is it that we are more stupid than our ancestors? Are we living, working, under some disadvantage we don’t fully understand? That’s one of the big questions we must keep in mind.”

  She paused. No one said anything, which always vexed her. She longed for any comment that would push the argument forward.

  Datnil Skar said, “Mother Shay, you speak true, to the best of my belief. You understand that as master I am under oath to disclose secrets of my art to nobody; it’s an oath I take to Wutra and to Embruddock. But I know that there were once bad times, of which I am not supposed to speak…”

  When he fell silent, she helped him with a smile. “Do you believe that Oldorando was once bigger than it is now?”

  He looked at her with his head on one side. “I know you call this town a farmyard. But it survives… It’s the centre of the cosmos. Well that’s not answering your question. My friends, you found rye and oats growing north of here, so let’s speak of them. To the best of my belief, that place was once carefully tended fields, enclosed against wild beasts. The fields belonged to Embruddock. Many other cereals grew there and were cultivated. Now you cultivate them again, which is wise.

  “You know we need bark for our tanning. We have a job to get hold of it. I do believe—well, I know …” He fell silent, then he said quietly, “Great forests of tall trees, which yield bark and wood, grew to the west and north. The region was called Kace. It was hot then, and there was no cold.”

  Someone said, “The time of heat—that’s a legend left over from the priesthood. The sort of tale we’re supposed to get out of our minds in the academy. We do know that it was once colder than it is now. Ask my grandma.”

  “What I’m saying is that, to the best of my belief, it was hot before it was cold,” Datnil Skar said, slowly scratching the back of his grey head. “You should try to understand these things. Many lives go by, many years. There’s a lot of history vanished. I know you women think that men are against you learning, and it may be so; but I speak sincerely when I say that you should support Shay Tal, despite various difficulties. As a master, I know how precious knowledge is. It seems to run out of the bottom of a community like water out of a sock.”

  They stood and clapped him politely when he left.

  At Freyr-set, two days later, Shay Tal was pacing restlessly in her room in the isolated tower. A shout came from below. Immediately she thought of Aoz Roon, though the voice was not his.

  She wondered who would venture beyond the barricades when light was growing dim. Putting her head out of the window, she saw Datnil Skar, his figure insubstantial in the dusk.

  “Oh, come up, my friend,” she cried. She went down to meet him. He appeared clutching a box, smiling nervously. They sat down facing each other on her stone floor, and she poured him a measure of rathel.

  After some idle conversation, he said, “I think you know that I am due to retire soon as master of the tawyers and tanners corps? My chief boy will take my place. I’m getting old and he long ago knew all I have to teach.”

  “You come here because of that?”

  He smiled and shook his head. “I come here, Mother Shay, because I—I experience an old man’s admiration for you, for your person and your worth… No, let me say it. I have always served and loved this community, and I believe you do the same, though you have the opposition of many men. So I wanted to do you a good turn while I was able to.”

  “You’re a good man, Datnil Skar. Oldorando knows it. The community needs good people.”

  Sighing, he nodded. “I have served Embruddock—or Oldorando as we should call it—every day of my life, and have never left it. Yet scarcely a day’s gone by …” He broke off in his shy way, smiled, and said, “I believe I am speaking to a kindred spirit when I say that scarcely a day has gone by since I was a lad when I haven’t wondered … wondered what was happening in other places, far away from here.”

  He paused, cleared his throat, then said more briskly, “I’ll tell you a tale. It’s only brief. I remember one terrible winter when I was a lad when the phagors attacked, and disease and famine followed. Many people died. And the phagors were dying too, although we didn’t know it at the time. It was so dark, I swear days are brighter now… Anyhow, the phagors left behind a human boy during the slaughter. His name was—I’m ashamed to, say I’ve forgotten it, but to the best of my belief it was something like Krindlesheddy. A long name. Once I knew it clearly. The years have made me forget.

  “Krindlesheddy had come from a country a long way to the north, Sibornal. He said that Sibornal was a land of perpetual glaciers. I was selected to be chief boy in my corps, and in Sibornal he was to be a priest, so we were both dedicated to our calling. He—Krindlesheddy or whatever his name was—thought our life was easy. The geysers kept Oldorando warm.

  “As a young member of the priesthood, my friend had belonged with some colonists who moved south to escape the cold. They came to a better land by a river. There they had to fight with the local inhabitants of a realm called—well, the name has gone after these many years. A great battle raged, in which Krindlesheddy—if that was his name—was injured. The survivors fled, only to be caught by raiding phagors. It was mere fortune that he escaped them here. Or perhaps they left him because he was wounded.

  “We did what we could to help the lad, but he died after a month. I cried for him. I was only young. Yet even then I envied him because he’d seen something of the world. He told me that in Sibornal the ice came in many colours a
nd was beautiful.”

  As Master Datnil finished his story, sitting meekly beside Shay Tal, Vry entered the room, on her way to the floor above.

  He smiled kindly at her, saying to Shay Tal, “Don’t send Vry away. I know she’s your chief boy and you trust her, as I wish I could trust my chief boy. Let her hear what I have to say.” He laid his wooden box on the floor in front of him. “I have brought the Master Book of our corps for you to see.”

  Shay Tal looked as if she would faint. She knew that if this borrowing was discovered, the makers corps would kill the master without hesitation… She could guess at the inner struggle the old man had gone through before bringing it. She wrapped her thin arms about him and kissed him on his wrinkled forehead.

  Vry came and knelt down by him, excitement on her face.

  “Let’s have a look!” she exclaimed, reaching out a hand, forgetting her diffidence.

  He put his hand over hers, detainingly.

  “Notice first the wood of which the box is made. It’s not from a rajabaral; the grain is too beautiful. Notice how it’s carved. Notice the delicate metal chasing that binds the corners. Could our metal-makers corps do such fine work today?”

  When they had examined the details, he opened the box. He brought out a large tome bound in heavy leather, tooled with an elaborate design.

  “This I did myself, Mother. I rebound the book. It’s the inside that’s old.”

  The pages inside were carefully, often elaborately, written by a number of different hands. Datnil Skar turned the pages rapidly, even now reluctant to reveal too much. But the women clearly saw dates, names, lists, and various entries and figures.

  He looked up into their faces, smiling a grave smile. “In its way, this volume gives a history of Embruddock over the years. And each surviving corps has a similar volume, of that I am certain.”

  “The past is gone. We’re trying now to look outward to the future,” said Vry. “We don’t want to be stuck in the past. We want to go out …”

  Indecisively, she let the sentence die, regretting that in her excitement she had brought herself to their attention. Looking at the faces of the other two, she saw they were older and would never agree with her. Although their aims were in general agreement, a difference existed that could never be bridged.

  “The clue to the future lies in the past,” Shay Tal said, comfortingly but dismissively, for she had made such remarks to Vry before. Turning to the old man, she said, “Master Datnil, we greatly appreciate your brave gesture in letting us look at the secret book. Perhaps some day we may examine it more thoroughly. Would you tell us how many masters there have been in your corps since records commenced?”

  He closed the book and began packing it in its box. Saliva trickled from his old mouth, and his hands shook badly.

  “The rats know the secrets of Oldorando … I’m in danger, bringing this book here. Just an old fool … Listen, my dears, there was a great king who ruled over all Campannlat in the old days, called King Denniss. He foresaw that the world—this world which the ancipitals call Hrrm-Bhhrd Ydohk—would lose its warmth, as a bucket slops water when you carry it down a lane. So he set about founding our corps, with iron rules to be enforced. All the makers corps were to preserve wisdom through dark times, until warmth returned.”

  He spoke chantingly, as from memory.

  “Our corps has survived since the good king’s time, though in some periods it had no wherewithal to tan leather. According to the record here, its numbers once sank to a master and an apprentice, who lived below ground a distance away… Dreadful times. But we survived.”

  As he was wiping his mouth, Shay Tal asked what period of time they were discussing.

  Datnil Skar gazed at the darkening rectangle of window as if contemplating flight from the question.

  “I don’t understand all the notations in our book. You know our confusions with the calendar. As we can understand from our own day, new calendars represent considerable dislocations… Embruddock—forgive me, I fear telling you too much—it didn’t always belong to … our sort of people.”

  He shook his head, darting his gaze nervously round the rooth. The women waited, motionless as phagors in the old dull room. He spoke again.

  “Many people have died. There was a great plague, the Fat Death. Invasions … the Seven Blindnesses … tales of woe. We hope our present Lord—” again a glance round the room—“will prove as wise as King Denniss. The good king founded our corps in a year called 249 Before Nadir. We do not know who Nadir was. What we do know is that I—allowing for a break in the record—am the sixty- eighth master of the tanners and tawyers corps. The sixty-eighth …” He peered shortsightedly at Shay Tal.

  “Sixty-eight …” Trying to hide her dismayed astonishment, she gathered her furs about her with a characteristic gesture. “That’s many generations, stretching back to antiquity.”

  “Yes, yes, stretching right back.” Master Datnil nodded complacently, as if personally acquainted with vast stretches of time. “It’s nearly seven centuries since our corps was founded. Seven centuries, and still it freezes of nights.”

  Embruddock in its surrounding wilderness was a beached ship. It still gave the crew shelter, though it would never sail again.

  So greatly had time dismantled a once proud city that its inhabitants did not realise that what they regarded as a town was nothing more than the remains of a palace, which had stood in the middle of a civilisation obliterated by climate, madness, and the ages.

  As the weather improved, the hunters were forced to go in increasingly long expeditions in search of game. The slaves planted fields and dreamed of impossible liberty. The women stayed at home and grew neurotic.

  While Shay Tal fasted and became more solitary, Vry became full of a repressed energy and developed her friendship with Oyre. With Oyre, she talked over all that Master Datnil had said, and found a sympathetic listener. They agreed that there were puzzling riddles in history, yet Oyre was lightly sceptical.

  “Datnil Skar is old and a bit gaga—Father always says so,” she said, and limped round the room in parody of the Master’s gait exclaiming in a piping voice, “ ‘Our corps is so exclusive we didn’t even let King Denniss join…’ ”

  When Vry laughed, Oyre said, more seriously, “Master Datnil could be executed for showing his corps Master Book about—that’s proof he’s gaga.”

  “And even then he wouldn’t let us look at it properly.” Vry was silent, and then burst out, “If only we could put all the facts together. Shay Tal just collects them, writes them down. There must be a way of making a—a structure from them. So much has been lost—Master Datnil is right there. The cold was so bitter, once on a time, that almost everything inflammable was burnt—wood, paper, all records. You realise we don’t even know what year it is?—Though the stars might tell us. Loil Bry’s calendar is stupid, calendars should be based on years, not people. People are so fallible … and so am I. Oh, I’ll go mad, I swear!”

  Oyre burst out laughing and hugged Vry.

  “You’re the sanest person I know, you idiot.” They fell to discussing the stars again, sitting on the bare floor close together. Oyre had been with Laintal Ay to look at the fresco in the old temple. “The sentinels are clearly depicted, with Batalix above Freyr as usual, but almost touching, above Wutra’s head.”

  “Every year, the two suns get closer,” Vry said, decisively. “Last month, they virtually touched as Batalix overtook Freyr, and no one paid any notice. Next year, they will collide. What then? … Or maybe one passes behind the other.”

  “Perhaps that’s what Master Datnil meant by a Blindness? It would suddenly be dimday, wouldn’t it, if one sentinel disappeared? Perhaps there will be Seven Blindnesses, as once before.” She looked frightened, and moved nearer her friend. “It will be the end of the world. Wutra will appear, looking furious, of course.”

  Vry laughed and jumped to her feet. “The world didn’t end last time and won’t do so this tim
e. No, perhaps it will mark a new beginning.” Her face became radiant. “That’s why the seasons are growing warmer. Once Shay Tal has done her ghastly pauk, we will tackle the question anew. I shall work at my mathematics. Let the Blindnesses come—I embrace them!”

  They danced round the room, laughing wildly.

  “How I long for some great experience!” Vry cried.

  Shay Tal, meanwhile, showed more clearly than before the little bird bones below her flesh, and her dark skins hung more loosely about her body. Food was brought her by the women, but she would not eat.

  “Fasting suits my ravenous soul,” she said, pacing about her chilly room, when Vry and Oyre remonstrated with her, and Amin Lim stood meekly by. “Tomorrow I will go into pauk. You three and Rol Sakil can be with me. I will dredge up ancient knowledge from the well of the past. Through the fessups I will reach to that generation which built our towers and corridors. I will descend centuries if necessary, and confront King Denniss himself.”

  “How wonderful!” Amin Lim exclaimed.

  Birds came to perch on her crumbling window sill and be fed the bread Shay Tal would not touch.

  “Don’t sink into the past, ma’am,” Vry counselled her. “That’s the way of old men. Look ahead, look outward. There’s no profit in interrogating the dead.”

  So unused to argument had Shay Tal grown that she had difficulty in refraining from scolding her chief disciple. She looked and saw, almost with startlement, that the diffident young thing was now a woman. Her face was pallid, with shadows under her eyes, and Oyre’s the same.

  “Why are you two so pale? Are you ill?”

  Vry shook her head.

  “Tonight there’s an hour of darkness before dimday. I’ll show you then what Oyre and I are doing. While the rest of the world was sleeping, we have been working.”

  The evening was clear at Freyr-set. Warmth departed from the world as the younger women escorted Shay Tal up to the roof of the ruinous tower. A lens of ghost light stretched upwards from the horizon where Freyr had set, reaching halfway to zenith. There was little cloud to conceal the heavens; as their eyes became accustomed to the darkness, the stars overhead flashed out in brilliance. In some quarters of the sky, the stars were relatively sparse, in others they hung in clusters. Overhead, trailing from one horizon to the other, was a broad, irregular band of light, where the stars were as thick as mist and there occasional brilliances burned.