Helliconia Summer h-2

by Brian Aldiss

  As for that king, so distant from his army disintegrating in Randonan, he was suffering from difficulties almost as elaborate as the mechanisms of the jungle. The bureaucracies of Pannoval were more enduring than the jungle and so had longer to develop their entanglements. The queen of queens had been gone from JandolAnganol’s capital for many weeks, and still his bill of divorcement had not arrived from the capital of the Holy Empire.

  As the heat intensified, Pannoval stepped up the drumble against the ancipital species living on its lands. Fleeing phagor tribes sought refuge in Borlien, against the general wishes of the mass of people, who both hated and feared the shaggies.

  The king felt differently. In a speech given in the scritina, he welcomed the refugees, promising them land in the Cosgatt on which they would be allowed to settle if they would join the army and fight for Borlien. By this means, the Cosgatt, now safe from the shadow of Darvlish, could be cultivated at low cost, and the newcomers effectively removed from the presence of the Borlienese.

  This human hand extended to the phagors pleased no one in Pannoval or Oldorando, and the bill of divorcement was again delayed.

  But JandolAnganol was pleased with himself. He was suffering enough to appease his conscience.

  He put on a bright jacket and went to see his father. Again he walked through the winding ways of his palace and down through the guarded doors to the cellarage where he kept the old man. The chambers of the prison seemed more dank than ever. JandolAnganol paused in the first chamber which had once served as mortuary and torture chamber. Darkness enclosed him. The sounds of the outer world were stilled.

  “Father!” he said. His own voice sounded unnatural to his ears.

  He went through the second chamber and into the third, where pallid light filtered in. The log fire smouldered as usual. The old man, wrapped as usual in his blanket, sat before the fire as usual, chin resting on chest. Nothing down here had altered for many years. The only thing that had altered now was that VarpalAnganol was dead.

  The king stood for a while with one hand on his father’s shoulder. Thin though it was, the flesh was unyielding.

  JandolAnganol went and stood under the high barred window. He called to his father. The skull with its wispy hair never moved. He called again, louder. No movement.

  “You’re dead, aren’t you?” said JandolAnganol, in tones of contempt. “Just one more betrayal… By the beholder, wasn’t I miserable enough with her gone?”

  No answer came. “You’ve died, haven’t you? Gone away to spite me, you old hrattock…”

  He strode over to the fireplace and kicked the logs all over the cell, filling it with smoke. In his fury, he knocked the chair over and the frail body of his father fell to the stones, remaining in its huddled position.

  The king stooped over this tiny effigy, as if contemplating a snake, and then, with a sudden movement, fell to his knees—not to engage in prayer, but to seize the body by its dry throat and pour a flood of words upon it, in which the accusation that this dead thing had long ago turned his mother against him, quenching her love, was repeated in many forms, hissed forth with spiteful examples, until the words died and the king remained there bent over the body, wrapped in heavy coils of smoke. He beat the flagstones with his fist, then crouched motionless.

  The logs strewn across the floor were extinguished by damp, each one by itself. At last, red-eyed, the king took himself away from the darkened place, going upwards with a hurried pace as if pursued, up to warmer regions.

  Among the many denizens of the palace was an ancient nurse who lived in the servants’ quarters and was bedridden most of the day. JandolAnganol had not entered the servants’ quarters since he was a child. He found his way without hesitation through the mean corridors and confronted the old woman, who jumped out of bed and clung to one of its posts in terror. She glared at him aghast, pulling hair before her eyes.

  “He’s dead, your master and lover,” JandolAnganol said, without expression. “See that he is prepared for burial.”

  Next day, a week of mourning was declared, and the Royal First Phagorian Guard paraded through the city in black.

  The common people, starved of excitement by their poverty, were quick to spy upon the king’s mood, at second or third hand if need be. Their connections with the palace were close, if subterranean. All knew someone who knew someone who was in the royal employ; and they smelt out JandolAnganol’s alternating moods of excitement and despair. Bareheaded under the suns, they flocked to the holy ground where VarpalAnganol, with the pomp due to a king, was to be buried on his correct land-octave.

  The service was presided over by the Archpriest of the Dome of Striving, BranzaBaginut. The members of the scritina were there, housed in a stand erected for the occasion, and draped with the banners of the house of Anganol. These worthies showed on their faces more the heaviness of disapproval of the living king than grief for the dead one; but they attended nevertheless, fearing the consequences if they did not, and their wives attended them, for the same reason.

  JandolAnganol made an isolated figure as he stood by the open grave. He gave an occasional darting glance round, as if hoping for sight of Robayday. This nervous glance became more frequent as the body of his father, wrapped in a gold cloth, was placed on its side in the place dug for it. Nothing went down with him. All present knew what waited below, in the world of the gossies, where material things were needed no more. The only concession to the rank of the departed was when twelve women of the court came forward to cast flowers down upon the still form.

  Archpriest BranzaBaginut closed his eyes and chanted.

  “The seasons in their processes bear us away to our final octaves. As there are two suns, the lesser and the greater, so we have two phases of being, life and death, the lesser and the greater. Now a great king has gone from us into the greater phase. He who knew the light has gone down into the dark…”

  And as his high voice silenced the whispering of the crowd, who strained forward eagerly as the dogs which also attended the ceremony were straining their noses toward the grave, the first handfuls of earth were thrown. At that moment, the king’s voice rang out. This villain ruined my mother and myself. Why do you pray for such a villain?”

  He took a great leap across the lips of the pit, pushed the Archpriest aside, and ran, still shouting, towards the palace, the shoulders of which loomed above the hill. Beyond sight of the crowd, he ran still, and would not stop until he was at his stables and on his hoxney and riding madly out into the woods, leaving Yuli to mewl far behind.

  This disgraceful episode, this insult to the established religion by a religious man, delighted the common population of Matrassyl. It was talked about, laughed over, praised, condemned, in the rudest hut.

  “He’s a joker, is Jandol,” was often the carefully considered verdict, arrived at in taverns after a long evening’s drinking, where death was not regarded with much affection. And the reputation of the joker rose accordingly, to the vexation of his enemies on the scritina.

  To the wrath not only of the joker’s enemies but to that of a slender young man, bronzed of skin and dressed in rags, who attended the burial and witnessed the king’s departure. Robayday had been not far away, living on a fisherman’s island among the reedy waters of a lake, when news of his grandfather’s death reached him. He had returned to the capital with the alertness of a deer which attempts a closer inspection of a lion.

  Seeing the joker’s retreat, he was emboldened to follow and leaped on a hoxney, taking a track that had been familiar to him since his youth. He had no intention of confronting his father and did not even know what was in his own mind. The joker, who had anything but humour on his mind, took a path he had not taken since SartoriIrvrash had been expelled. It led to a quarry, hidden by the soft waxy stems of young rajabaral trees; these saplings, with hundreds of years of growth in them, were scarcely recognizable as the redoubtable wooden fortresses they would become when the summer of the Great Year yield
ed once more to winter. His fever over, the king tied Lapwing to a young tree. He rested a hand on the smooth wood, and his head on his hand. To his mind came a memory of the queen’s body and of the cadency which had once lit their love. Such good things had died, and he had not known.

  After a while in silence, he led Lapwing past the stump of the parent rajabaral, as black as an extinct volcano. Ahead stood the wooden palisade which barred entry to the quarry. No one challenged him. He pushed his way in.

  All was untended in the forecourt. Weeds thrived. The lodge was in disrepair; a short neglect was leading it to a long decay. An old man with a straggling white beard came forward and bowed low to his majesty.

  “Where’s the guard? Why isn’t the gate locked?” But there was carelessness in his challenge, which he uttered over one shoulder, in the act of approaching the cages ahead.

  The old man, accustomed to the king’s moods, was too wise to adopt a matching carelessness, and followed with a lengthy explanation of how all but he were withdrawn from the quarry once the chancellor was disgraced. He was alone and still tended the captives, hoping thereby to incur the king’s pleasure.

  Far from showing pleasure, the king clasped his hands behind his back and assumed a melancholy face. Four large cages had been built against the cliffs of the quarry, each divided into various compartments for the greater comfort of its prisoners. Into these cages JandolAnganol sent his dark regard.

  The first cage contained Others. They had been swinging there by hands, feet or tails as a way of passing time; when the king moved towards their prison, they dropped down and came running to the bars, thrusting out their handlike paws, oblivious to the exalted status of their visitor.

  The occupants of the second cage shrank away at the stranger’s approach. Most of them flitted into their compartments, out of sight. Their prison was built on rock, so that they could not tunnel into the earth. Two of their number came forward and stood against the bars, looking up into JandolAnganol’s face. These protognostics were Nondads, small elusive creatures often confused with Others, to whom they bore a resemblance. They stood waist-high to a human and their faces, with protruding muzzles, resembled Others. Scanty loincloths covered their genitals; their bodies were covered with light sandy hair.

  The two Nondads who came forward addressed the king, flitting nervously about as they did so. A strange amalgam of whistles, clicks, and snorts served them for language. The king regarded them with an expression between contempt and sympathy before passing on to the third cage.

  Here were imprisoned the more advanced form of protognostic, the Madis. Unlike the occupants of the first two cages, the Madis did not move when the king approached. Robbed of their migratory existence, they had nowhere to go; neither the settings of the suns nor the comings and goings of kings held meaning for them. They tried to hide their faces in their armpits as JandolAnganol regarded them.

  The fourth cage was built of stone, rough-hewn from the quarry, as a tribute to the greater firmness of will of its occupants, which were human—mainly men and women of Mordriat or Thribriatan tribes. The women slunk back into the shadows. Most of the men pressed forward and began eloquently to implore the king to release them, or at worst to allow no more experiments on them.

  “There’s nothing for it now,” said the king to himself, moving about as restlessly as those imprisoned.

  “Sir, the indignities we have suffered…”

  Ash from Rustyjonnik still lay in odd corners, where weeds thrust from it, but the eruptions had ceased as suddenly as they began. The king kicked at the ash, raising a small dust storm with his boots.

  Although he was most interested in the Madis and studied them from all angles, sometimes squatting to do so, he was too restless to remain in one place. Madi males struggled forward with one of their females, naked, and offered her to him as a condition of their release.

  JandolAnganol broke away in disgust, his face working.

  Bursting from behind the stone cage into the sunlight, he came face to face with RobaydayAnganol. Both became rigid like two cats, until Roba began to gesticulate, arms and fingers spread. Behind him came the white-haired old guard, shuffling his feet and complaining.

  “Imprisoning them for the good of their sanity, mighty king,” said Roba.

  But JandolAnganol moved swiftly forward, flung an arm about his son’s neck, and kissed him on the lips, as though he had decided on this approach a while ago.

  “Where have you been, my son? Why so wild?”

  “Can a boy not grieve among leaves, but must come to court to do so?” His Words were indistinct as he backed away from his father, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. As he bumped into the third cage, his other hand went behind him to support himself.

  Immediately, one Madi reached out and grasped his forearm. The naked female who had been offered to the king bit him savagely in the ball of his thumb. Roba screamed with pain. The king was at once at the cage with his sword drawn. The Madis fell back and Roba was released.

  “They’re as hungry for royal blood as Simoda Tal,” said Roba, hopping about with his hands clutched between his legs. “You saw how she bit me in the balls! What a stepmotherly act was there!”

  The king laughed as he sheathed his sword.

  “You see what happens when you put your hand in other people’s affairs.”

  “They’re very vicious, sir, and certain they’ve been wronged,” said the old guard from a safe distance.

  “Your nature inclines towards captivity as frogs incline towards pools,” Roba told his father, still skipping. “But free these wretched beings! They were Rushven’s folly, not yours—you had greater follies afoot.”

  “My son, I have a phagor runt I care for, and perhaps he cares for me. He follows me for affection. Why do you follow me for abuse? Cease it, and live a sane life with me. I will not harm you. If I have wounded you, then I regret it, as you have long given me cause to regret it. Accept what I say.”

  “Boys are particularly difficult to bring up, sir,” commented the guard.

  Father and son stood apart, regarding each other. JandolAnganol had hooded his eagle gaze, and appeared calm. On Roba’s smooth face was a smouldering rage.

  “You need another runt following you? Haven’t you captives enough in this infamous quarry? Why did you come up here to gloat over them?”

  “Not to gloat. To learn. I should have learned from Rushven. I need to know—what Madis do… I understand, boy, that you fear my love. You fear responsibility. You always have. Being a king is all responsibility…”

  “Being a butterfly is a butterfly’s responsibility.”

  Irritated by this remark, the king again took to pacing before the cages. “Here was all SartoriIrvrash’s responsibility. Maybe he was cruel. He made the occupants of these four cages mate with each other in prescribed combinations in order to see what resulted. He wrote all down, as was his fashion. I burnt it all—as is my fashion, you will add. So, then.

  “By his experiments, Rushven found a rule which he called a cline. He proved that the Others in Cage One could sometimes produce progeny when mated with Nondads. Those progeny were infertile. No, the progeny of the Nondads breeding with Madis were infertile. I forget details. Madis could produce progeny when mated with the humans in Cage Four. Some of those progeny are fertile.

  “He carried on his experiments for many years. If Others and Madis were forced to copulate, no issue resulted. Humans mating with Nondads produce no issue. There is a grading, a cline. These facts he discovered. Rushven was a gentle person. He did what he did for the sake of knowledge.

  “You probably blame him, as you blame everyone but yourself. But Rushven paid for his knowledge. One day, two years ago—you were absent then, in the wilds as usual—his wife came to the quarry to feed the captives, and the Others broke out of their cage. They tore her to pieces. This old guard will tell you…”

  “It was her arm I found first, sir,” said the guard, plea
sed to be mentioned. “The left arm, to be partic’lar, sir.”

  “Rushven certainly paid for his knowledge. Roba, I have paid for mine. The time will come when you too have to pay a price. It won’t always be summer.”

  Roba tore leaves from a bush as if he would destroy the bush, and wrapped the leaves about his wounded hand. The guard went to help him, but Roba kicked him away with a bare foot.

  “This stinking place… these stinking cages… the stinking palace… Taking notes of dirty little ruttings… Once, look, before kings were born, the world was a big white ball in a black cup. Along came the great kzahhn of all ancipitals and mated with the queen of all the humans, split her open with his enormous prodo and filled her right up with golden spume. That rumbo so shook the world that it jarred it out of its winter frigidity and caused the seasons—”

  He could not finish the sentence, so overcome was he by laughter. The old guard looked disgusted and turned to the king.

  “I can assure you, sir, the chancellor never carried out no such experiment here, to my certain knowledge.”

  The king remained rigid, eyes bright with contempt, not moving until his son’s outburst was over. He turned his back to him then, before speaking.

  “We have no need of that, and no need of quarrelling, not in a time of grief. Let us return together to the palace. You can ride behind me on Lapwing, if you wish.”

  Roba fell to his knees and covered his face with his hands. He made noises that were not weeping.

  “Perhaps he’s hungry,” suggested the guard.

  “Get out, man, or I’ll slice your head off.”

  The guard fell back. “I still feed them faithfully every day, Your Majesty. Bring all the food up from the palace, and I’m not as young as I was.”