Helliconia Summer h-2

by Brian Aldiss

  “Perhaps he’ll see the Great Wheel of Kharnabhar. It’s their sacred symbol, you know.” With a struggle, and only by letting his blanket slip, he managed to screw his stiff old neck round to look at his son. “It’s their sacred symbol, I said.”

  “I know it.”

  Then try and answer when I speak to you… What about that other fellow, the Uskuti, yes, Pasharatid? Did they catch him?”

  “No. His wife left too, a tenner ago.”

  The old man sank back into the chair, sighing. His hands twitched nervously at the blanket. “Sounds to me as if Matrassyl’s almost empty.”

  JandolAnganol turned his face away, towards the grey square of light. “Just me and the phagors.”

  “Did I tell you what Io Pasharatid used to do, Jan? When he was allowed to come and see me? Curious behaviour for a man of the northern continent. They are very self-controlled—not passionate, like the Borlienese.”

  “Did you scheme with him to overthrow me?”

  “I just sat here while he dragged a table through, a heavy table. He used to put it under that little window. Did you ever hear such a thing?”

  JandolAnganol began to pace about the cell, darting his gaze into the corners as if seeking a way of escape.

  “He wanted to admire the view from your luxurious apartment.”

  The figure in the chair gave a bleat of laughter. “Precisely so. Admiring the view. Well put. A good phrase. And the view was of… well, if you get the table yourself, lad, you will see. You will see the windows of MyrdemInggala’s apartments, and her verandah…” He broke off for a dry cough which rattled in his throat. The king paced faster. “You get a view of the reservoir where Cune used to swim naked with her ladies-in-waiting. Before you sent her away this was, of course…”

  “What happened, Father?”

  “Well, that’s what happened. I told you but you didn’t listen. The ambassador used to climb on to that table and watch your queen with nothing on, or wearing only a piece of muslin… Very… very unorthodox behaviour for a Sibornalese. A Uskuti. Or for anyone really.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this at the time?” He stood confronting the ancient shape of his father.

  “Heh. You would have killed him.”

  “I should have killed him. Yes. No one would have blamed me.”

  “The Sibornalese would have blamed you. Borlien would have been in worse trouble than it is already. You will not learn diplomatic sense. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

  JandolAnganol began to pace, “What a calculating old slanje you are! Surely you must have hated what Pasharatid was doing?”

  “No… what are women for? I have no objection to hate. It keeps you alive, keeps you warm of nights. Hate is what brings you down here. You came down here once, I forget what year it was, to talk about love, but I only know about—”

  “Enough!” cried JandolAnganol, stamping his boot on the flags. “I shall never speak of love again, to you or anyone. Why do you never help me? Why didn’t you tell me what Pasharatid was up to? Did he ever meet secretly with Cune?”

  “Why don’t you grow up?” Spite entered his voice. “I expect he crept in to her warm nest every night…”

  He cringed away, expecting a blow from his son’s raised hand. But JandolAnganol squatted by the chair instead.

  “I want you to look at something. Tell me what you would do.”

  He lifted the homemade matchlock which had cracked along the barrel and placed it on his father’s knee.

  “It’s heavy. I don’t want it. Her garden’s all neglected now…” The ex-king pushed it so that it fell on the floor. JandolAnganol let it lie there.

  “That gun was made by SlanjivalIptrekira’s corps. The barrel split on firing. Out of six guns, I had him make, only one worked properly. Of the previous batch, none has worked. What has gone wrong? How is it that our weapon-makers’ corps, which claims to trace its foundation back for centuries, cannot make a simple gun?”

  The old heap in the chair remained silent for a while, pulling ineffectually at its blanket. Then it spoke.

  Things don’t get better for being old. Look at me. Look at the figure behind you… It may be that too many institutions are too old… What was I going to say? Rushven told me that the various trades corps were founded to exist through the Great Winter, to hand on their knowledge in secret from generation to generation, so that their arts survived the black centuries until spring.”

  “I have heard him say as much… What follows?”

  VarpalAnganol’s wheezy voice strengthened. “Why, what follows spring is summer. What follows seasons is that the corps perpetuate themselves, maybe losing a little knowledge from one generation to another but not gaining new knowledge. They become hidebound… Try to imagine what those centuries of darkness and frost were like—much like being stuck down in this hole for eternity, I imagine. Trees died. No wood. No charcoal. No fires for smelting properly… Probably it’s the smelting process at fault, by the look of that barrel. The furnaces… they may need renewing. Better methods, as the Sibornalese have…”

  “I’ll flog them all for their idleness. Then perhaps we’ll see some results.”

  “Not idleness, tradition. Try chopping Slanji’s head off and then offering rewards. That will encourage innovation.”

  “Yes. Yes, possibly.” He picked up the gun and made for the door.

  The old man called feebly to him. “What do you want the guns for?”

  “The Cosgatt. The Western Wars. What else?”

  “Shoot the enemies nearest your doorstep first. Teach Unndreid a lesson. Darvlish. Then you’ll be safer to fight farther away.”

  “I don’t need your advice on how to wage war.”

  “You’re afraid of Darvlish.”

  “I’m afraid of no one. Of myself, sometimes.”

  “Jan.”

  “Yes?”

  “Ask them to send me logs which burn, will you?” He began to cough rackingly.

  JandolAnganol knew he was only shamming.

  To show himself properly humble, the king went to the great dome in the main square of Matrassyl. Archpriest BranzaBaginut greeted him at the North Door.

  JandolAnganol prayed publicly among his people. Without thought, he took with him his pet runt, who stood patiently by his master while the latter prostrated himself for an hour. Instead of pleasing his people, JandolAnganol displeased them by taking a phagor into the presence of Akhanaba.

  His prayer, however, was heard by the All-Powerful, who confirmed that he should take VarpalAnganol’s advice regarding the Ironmakers Corps.

  Yet JandolAnganol vacillated. He had enough enemies without taking on one of the corps, whose power in the land was traditional, and whose chiefs were represented on the scritina. After private prayer and scourging, he went lengthily into pauk, to be counselled by the fessup of his grandfather. The battered grey cage floating in obsidian comforted him. Again, he was encouraged to act.

  “To be holy is to be hard,” he said to himself. He had promised the scritina that he would devote himself wholeheartedly to his country. So it should be. Matchlocks were necessary. They would compensate for lack of manpower. Matchlocks would bring back the golden age.

  Accompanied by a mounted troop of the Royal First Phagorian Guard, JandolAnganol went to the quarters of the Ancient Corps of Ironmakers and Swordsmen and demanded admittance. The great shadowy place opened up to him. He entered their quarters, which led into the rock. Everything here spoke of long-dead generations. Smoke had come like age to blacken everything.

  He was greeted by officers with ancient halbards in some kind of uniform, who tried to bar his way. Chief Ironmaster SlanjivalIptrekira came running with ginger whiskers bristling—apologising, yes, bowing, yes, but stating firmly that no nonmember of the corps (barring possibly the odd woman) had ever entered these premises, and that they had centuries-old charters showing their rights.

  “Fall back! I am king. I will inspect!” sh
outed JandolAnganol. Giving a command to the phagorian guard, he moved forward. Still mounted on their armoured hoxneys, they surged into an inner courtyard, where the air stank of sulphur and tombs. The king climbed from his mount, going forward surrounded by a strong guard while other soldiers waited with the hoxneys. Corpsmen came running, paused, scurried this way and that, dismayed at the invasion.

  Red in the face, SlanjivalIptrekira still fell back before the king, protesting. JandolAnganol, showing his teeth in a holy snarl, drew his sword.

  “Run me through if you will,” shouted the armourer. “You are for ever cursed for breaking in here!”

  “Rhhh! You lurk underground like miserable fessups! Out of my way, slanje!”

  He pressed forward. The invading party went in under grey rock, thrusting into the entrails of the establishment.

  They came to the furnaces, six of them, pot-bellied, made of brick and stone, patched and repatched, towering up to a murky roof, where ventholes in the rock showed as blackened cavities. One of the furnaces was working. Boys were shovelling and kicking fuel into a gleaming eye of heat, as fire roared and raged. Men in leather aprons drew a tray of red-hot rods from the furnace door, set them on a mutilated table, and stepped back, tight-lipped to see what the excitement was.

  Further into the chamber, men were kneeling by anvils. They had been hammering away at iron rods. Their din stopped as they stood to see what was happening. At the sight of JandolAnganol, blank amazement covered their faces.

  For a moment, the king too was stopped. The terrible cavern astonished him. A captive stream gushed along a trough to work the enormous bellows placed by the furnace. Elsewhere were piled timbers and instruments as fearful as any used in torture. From a separate side cavern came wooden tubs bearing iron ore. Everywhere, blacksmiths, iron smelters, craftsmen—half naked—peered at him with pink-rimmed eyes.

  SlanjivalIptrekira ran before the king, his arms raised, waving, fists clenched.

  “Your Majesty, the ores are being reduced by charcoal. It is a sacred process. Outsiders—even royal personages—are not allowed to view these rites.”

  “Nothing in my kingdom is secret from me.”

  “Attack him, kill him!” cried the Royal Armourer.

  The men carrying glowing iron bars lifted them with thick leather gloves. They looked at each other, then set them down again. The king’s person was sacred. Nobody else moved.

  With perfect calm, JandolAnganol said, “Slanji, you have uttered a treasonable command against your sovereign, as all those here bear witness. I will have every member of the corps executed without exception if anybody dares make a move against my royal person.”

  Brushing past the armourer, he faced two men at a table.

  “You men, how old are these furnaces? For how many generations has metalcraft continued in this manner?”

  They could not answer for fear. They wiped their blackened faces with their blackened gloves, which effected no improvement in their appearance.

  It was SlanjivalIptrekira who answered, in a subdued voice. The corps was founded to perpetuate these sacred processes, Your Majesty. We but do as we are bid by our ancestors.”

  “You are answerable to me, not to your ancestors. I bid you make good guns and you failed.” He turned to the corpsmen who had gathered silently in the fumous chamber.

  “You men, all, and apprentices. You carry out old methods. Those old methods are obsolete. Haven’t you the wits to understand? There are new weapons available, better than we can make in Borlien. We need new methods, better metals, better systems.”

  They looked at him with dark faces and red-rimmed eyes, unable to understand that their world was ending.

  “These rotten furnaces will be demolished. More efficient ones will be built. They must have such furnaces in Sibornal, in the land of the Uskuti. We need furnaces like the Sibornalese. Then we shall make weapons like the Sibornalese.”

  He summoned up a dozen of his brute soldiery and commanded them to destroy the furnaces. The phagors seized crowbars and commenced without question to carry out their orders. From the live furnace, when its wall was broached, molten metal burst forth. It flashed across the floor. A young apprentice fell screaming under its flood. The metal set fire to wood shavings and timber. The corpsmen shrank away aghast.

  All the furnaces were broken. The phagors stood by for further orders.

  “Have them built anew, according to directions I shall send you. I will have no more useless guns!” With these words, he marched from the building. The corpsmen came to themselves and threw buckets of water over their blazing premises. SlanjivalIptrekira was arrested and jostled off into captivity.

  The following day, the Royal Armourer and Ironmaster was tried before the scritina and convicted of treason. Even the other corpsmasters could not save SlanjivalIptrekira. He had ordered his men to attack the person of his king. He was executed in the public view, and his head exhibited to the crowd.

  Enemies of the king in the scritina, and not his enemies only, nor only in the scritina, were nevertheless angered that he had ventured into premises by long tradition sacrosanct. This was another mad act which would never have been committed had Queen MyrdemInggala been near to keep his madness under control.

  JandolAnganol, however, sent a messenger to Sayren Stund, King of Oldorando, his future father-in-law. He knew that the destruction of the city of Oldorando, when it had been overcome by phagor invasion, had resulted in the craft corps’ being reformed, and their equipment renewed. Their foundries should therefore be more advanced than Borlien’s. He remembered at the last moment to send his neighbour a gift for Simoda Tal.

  King Sayren Stund sent JandolAnganol a dark hunchbacked man called Fard Fantil. Fard Fantil came with credentials showing him to be an expert in iron furnaces who understood new methods. JandolAnganol sent him to work immediately.

  Immediately, a delegation from the Ironmakers Corps, ashen of face, came before the king to complain of Fard Fantil’s ruthlessness and sullen ways.

  “I like sullen men,” roared JandolAnganol.

  Fard Fantil had the premises of the guild moved to a hillside outside Matrassyl. Here the timber was available for charcoal and the supply of running water was constant. The water was necessary to power stamping mills.

  No one in Borlien had ever heard of stamping mills. Fard Fantil explained in supercilious fashion that this was the only way to crush ore effectively. The corpsmen scratched their heads and grumbled. Fard Fantil cursed them. Furious at being turned out of their town quarters, the men did all they could to sabotage the new establishment and bring the foreigner into disgrace. The king still received no guns.

  When Dienu Pasharatid disappeared from the court so unexpectedly, following her husband to Uskutoshk, she had left behind some Sibornalese staff. These JandolAnganol had imprisoned. He ordered an Uskut brought before him and offered him his freedom if he would design an effective iron smelter.

  The cool young man had perfect manners, so perfect that he made a flourish whenever he addressed the king.

  “As your majesty knows, the best smelters come from Sibornal, where the art is advanced. There we use lignite instead of charcoal for fuel, and forge the best steel.”

  “Then I wish you to design a smelter for use here, and I shall reward you.”

  “Your majesty knows that the wheel, that great basic invention, came from Sibornal, and was not known in Campannlat until a few centuries ago. Also many of your new crops are from the north. Those furnaces which you destroyed—even that design came from Sibornal during a previous Great Year.”

  “Now we wish for something more up-to-date.” JandolAnganol restrained his temper.

  “Even when the wheel was brought to Borlien, Your Majesty, full use was never made of it, not only for transport, but in milling, pottery, and irrigation. You have no windmills in Borlien as we have in Sibornal. It has seemed to us, Your Majesty, that the nations of Campannlat have been slow to adopt the arts
of civilization.”

  It was noticeable that about the king’s jaw a roseate flush mounted as the sun of his anger was dawning.

  “I’m not demanding windmills. I want a furnace capable of producing steel for my guns.”

  “Your majesty possibly intends to say guns imitated from the Sibornalese model.”

  “No matter what I intend to say, what I do say is that I require you to build me a good furnace. Is that understood, or do you only speak Sibish?”

  “Forgive me, Your Majesty, I had thought you understood the position. Permit me to explain that I am not an artisan but an ambassadorial clerk, nimble with figures but not with brick and suchlike. I am if anything less able to build a furnace than your majesty.”

  Still the king received no guns.

  The king spent an increasing amount of time with his phagor soldiery. Knowing the necessity for repeating everything to them, he impressed upon them every day that they would accompany him in strength to Oldorando, in order to make a grand display in the foreign capital on the occasion of his marriage. Places were delegated in the palace grounds where king and phagor guard met on equal terms. No human entered the phagorian barracks. To this rule the king subscribed, as VarpalAnganol had before him. There was no question of his venturing beyond a certain point in the way he had invaded the traditional quarters of the Ironmakers Corps.

  His chief phagor major was a gillot by name Ghht-Mlark Chzarn, addressed by JandolAnganol as Chzarn. They conversed in Hurdhu.

  Knowing the ancipital aversion to Oldorando, the king explained once more why he required the presence of the First Phagorian at his forthcoming marriage.

  Chzarn responded.

  “Speech has been made with our ancestors in tether. Much speech has formed in our harneys. It is delivered that we make a goance with your sovereign body to Hrl-Drra Nhdo in the land Hrrm-Bhhrd Ydohk. That goance we make at command.”

  “Good. It is good we make goance together. I rejoice that those in tether are in agreement. Have you further to say?”