by Brian Aldiss
“I’ll take your watch off for you,” Div said. He unstrapped it clumsily and laid it on a table out of Billy’s line of sight.
“The trees,” Billy said, through gritted teeth.
“I want a word with you,” said Div threateningly, clenching his fists. “You remember on the Lordryardry Lady, that girl AbathVasidol? The Matrassyl girl?” he asked of Billy, sitting near him, speaking low, looking at the door as he did so. “That really beautiful girl with beautiful chestnut hair and big breasts?”
“The trees.”
“Yes, the trees—they’re apricot trees. Father distils his Exaggerator from the fruit of those trees. Billish, that girl Abathy, you remember her, Abathy?”
“They’re dying.”
“Billish, you’re dying. That’s why I want to talk to you. You remember how Father humiliated me with that girl? He gave her to you, Billish, rot you. That was his way of humiliating me, as he always tries to humiliate me. You understand? Where did my father take Abathy, Billish? If you know, tell me. Tell me, Billish. I never did you any harm.”
His elbow joints creaked. “Abathy. Summer ripeness.”
“I won’t hold it against you because you’re foreign rubbish. Now listen. I want to know where Abathy is. I love her. I shouldn’t have come back here, should I? Being humiliated by my father and that sister of mine. She’ll never let me take over the company. Billish, listen, I’m leaving. I can make it on my own—I’m no fool. Find Abathy, start my own trade. I’m asking you, Billish—where did Father take her? Quick, man, before they come.”
“Yes.” The stark gesturing trees at the window were trying to spell out a name. “Deuteroscopist.”
Div leant forward, grasping Billy’s knotted shoulders. “CaraBansity? He took Abathy to CaraBansity?”
From the dying man came a whispered affirmative. Div let him fall back as if he were a plank of wood. He stood flicking his fingers, muttering to himself. Hearing a sound in the passage, he ran to the window. He balanced his bulk momentarily on the sill. Then he jumped out and was gone.
Eivi Muntras returned. She fed Billy with fragments of a delicate white meat from a bowl. She forced and coaxed; he ate ravenously. In the world of the sick, Eivi was perfectly in command. She bathed his face and brow with a sponge. She drew a gauze curtain over the window to cut down the light. Through the gauze, the trees became ghost trees.
“I’m hungry,” he said, when all the food was gone.
“I’ll bring you some more iguana soon, dear. You liked it, didn’t you? I cooked it in milk especially.”
Tm hungry,” he screamed.
She left, looking distressed. He heard her talking to other people. His neck contorted, cords standing out on it as his hearing paid out like a harpoon to fix on what was said. The words made no sense to him. He was lying upside down, so that the sentences entered his ear the wrong way up. When he flipped himself over, everything was perfectly audible.
Immya’s voice said, in impartial tones, “Mother, you are being silly. These homemade nostrums cannot cure Billish. He has a rare disease which we scarcely know of except in history books. It is either bone fever or the fat death. His symptoms are unclear, possibly because he conies from that other world as he claims, and therefore his cellular composition may differ in some way from ours.”
“I don’t know about that, Immya dear. I just think that a little more meat would be good for him. Perhaps he’d like a gwing-gwing…”
“He may go into a state of bulimia, coupled with an overactive disposition. Those would be symptomatic of fat death. In that case, we would have to tie him down to the bed.”
“Surely that won’t be necessary, dear? He’s so gentle.”
“It is not a case of his disposition, Mother, but of the disposition of his disease.” That was a male voice, charged with half-concealed contempt, as if a practical point were being explained to a child. It belonged to Immya’s husband, Lawyer.
“Well, I don’t know about that, I’m sure. I just hope it isn’t catching.”
“We don’t believe that either fat death or bone fever is infectious at this time of the Great Year,” said Immya’s voice. “We think Billish must have been with phagors, with whom these illnesses are generally associated.”
There was more of the kind, and then Immya and Lawyer were in the room, gazing down at Billy.
“You may recover,” she said, bending slightly at the waist to deliver her words and releasing them one by one. “We shall take care of you. We may have to tie you down if you get violent.”
“Dying. Inevitable.” With a great effort, he pretended not to be a tree and said, “Bone fever and fat death—I can explain. Just one virus. Germ. Different effects. According to time. Of Great Year. True.”
Further effort was beyond him. The rigors set in. Yet for a moment he had it all in mind. Although it had not been his subject, the helico virus was a legend on the Avernus, though a dying one, confined to video-texts, since its last outbreak in pandemic form had occurred several lifetimes before those now alive on the station. Those who now looked down helplessly on him from above were witnessing an old story brought back into currency only as the conclusion to every Helliconia Holiday.
The visitations of the virus caused immense suffering but were fortunately confined to two periods in the Great Year: six local centuries after the coldest time of that year, when planetary conditions were improving, and in the late autumn, after the long period of heat into which Helliconia had now entered. In the first period, the virus manifested itself as bone fever; in the second, as fat death. Almost no one escaped these scourges. The mortality rate of each approached fifty percent. Those who survived became, respectively, fifty percent lighter or fifty percent heavier in body weight, and thus were better equipped to face the hotter and colder seasons.
The virus was the mechanism by which human metabolisms adjusted to enormous climatic changes. Billy was being changed.
Immya was silent, standing by Billy’s bedside. She folded her arms over her grand bosom.
“I don’t understand you. How do you know such things? You’re no god, or you would not be ill…”
Even the sound of voices drove him deeper into the entrails of a tree. He managed again. “One disease. Two… opposed systems. You as doctor understand.”
She understood. She sat down again. “If it were so… and yet—why not? There are two botanies. Trees that flower and seed only once in 1825 small years, other trees that flower and seed every small year. Things that are divided yet united…”
She closed her mouth tightly as if afraid of releasing a secret, aware that she stood on the brink of something beyond her understanding. The case of the helico virus was not exactly similar to that of Helliconia’s binary botanies. Yet Immya was correct in her observations on the divergent habits of plant life. At the time of Batalix’s capture by Freyr, some eight million years previously, Batalix’s planets had been bathed in radiation, leading to genetic divergences in multitudinous phyla. While some trees had remained flowering and fruiting as before—so that they attempted to produce seed 1825 times during the Great Year, whatever the climatic conditions—others had adapted a metabolism better geared towards the new regime, and propagated themselves only once in 1825 small years. Such were the rajabarals. The apricot trees outside Billy’s window had not adapted and were, as it happened, dying off in the unusual heat.
Something in the lines which formed about Immya’s mouth suggested she was attempting to chew over these weighty matters; but she switched instead to a contemplation of Billy’s remarks. Her intelligence told her that if the statement proved true, it would be of great importance—if not immediately, then a few centuries ahead, when, the scanty records suggested, fat death pandemics were due.
Thinking so far into the future was not a local habit. She gave him a nod and said, “I will think about it, Billish, and bring your perception before our medical society when next we meet. If we understand the true nature of thi
s malady, perhaps we can find a cure.”
“No. Disease essential for survival…” He could see that she would never accept and he could never explain his point. He compromised by forcing out, “I told your father.”
The remark deflected her interest from medical questions. She stared away from him, swathing herself in silence, seeming to shrink into herself. When she spoke again, her voice was deeper and harsher, as if she too had to communicate from within an imprisonment.
“What else did you do with my father? In Borlien. Was he drunk? I want to know—did he have a young woman on the boat from Matrassyl? Did he have carnal knowledge of her? You must tell me.” She leaned over him, to grasp him as her brother had done. “He’s drinking now. There was a woman, wasn’t there? I ask you for my mother’s sake.”
The intensity with which these words were spoken frightened Billy; he strove to sink deeper into the tree, to feel the rough bark gripping his eddre. Bubbles came from his mouth.
She shook him. “Did he have carnal knowledge? Tell me. Die if you will, but tell me.”
He tried to nod.
Something in his distorted expression confirmed her guess. A look of vindictive satisfaction came on her face.
“Men! That’s how they take advantage of women. My poor mother has suffered from his debauchery for years, poor innocent thing. I found out years ago. It was an awful shock. We Dimariamians are respectable people, not like the inhabitants of the Savage Continent, which I hope never to have to visit…”
As her voice died, Billy attempted an inarticulate protest. It served to rekindle the fire of Immya’s animosity. “And what about the poor innocent girl involved? And her innocent mother? I long ago made that brother of mine, the bane of my life, confess to me everything my father does… Men are pigs, ruled by lust, unable to keep faith…”
“The girl.” But Abathy’s name became entangled with the knots in his larynx.
Gloaming enveloped Lordryardry. Freyr sank to the west. Bird songs became fewer. Batalix took up a position low on the horizon, where it could glare across the water at the scaley things piled on the shore. Mists thickened, obscuring the stars and the Night Worm.
Eivi Muntras brought Billy some soup before she retired to bed. As he drank, terrible hungers rose from his very eddre. His immobility was overcome, he sprang at Eivi, bit her shoulder and tore flesh from it. He ran about the room screaming. This was the bulimia associated with the late stages of fat death. Other members of the family came running, slaves brought lights. Billy was cursed and cuffed and strapped down to his bed.
For an hour he was left, while the sound of ministrations came from the other end of the house. He endured visions of eating Eivi whole, of sucking her brains. He wept. He imagined that he was back on the Avernus. He imagined he was eating Rose Yi Pin. He wept again. His tears fell like leaves.
Boards creaked in the corridor. A dim lamp appeared, behind it a man’s face floating as if on a stream of darkness. The Ice Captain, breathing heavily. Fumes of Exaggerator entered the room with him.
“Are you all right? I’d have to throw you out if you weren’t dying, Billish.” He steadied himself, breathing heavily. “I’m sorry it’s come to this… I know you’re some kind of angel from a better world, Billish, even when you bite like a devil. A man’s got to believe there’s a better world somewhere. Better than this one, where no one cares about you. Avernus… I would take you back there, if I could. I’d like to see it.”
Billy was back in his tree, his limbs part and parcel of its agonized branches.
“Better.”
“That’s right, better. I’m going to sit in the courtyard, Billish, just outside your window. Have a drink. Think about things. It’ll soon enough be time to pay the men. If you want me, just give a call.”
He was sorry that Billish was dying, and the Exaggerator made him sorry for himself. It was puzzling the way he always felt more comfortable with strangers, even with the queen of queens, than he did with his own family. With them he was constantly at a disadvantage.
He settled himself down outside the window, placing a jug and glass on the bench beside him. In the milky light, the stones resembled sleeping animals. The albic climbing the walls of the house opened its blooms, the blooms opened their beaks like parrots; a tranquil scent floated on the air.
After his plan to bring Billish here in secrecy had succeeded, he found himself unable to proceed further. He wanted to tell everyone that there was more to life than they knew, that Billish was a living example of that truth. It was not just that Billish was dying; Muntras suspected, somewhere in a cold corner of his being, that there might be less to life than he knew. He wished he had remained a wanderer. Now he was back home for good…
After a while, sighing, the Ice Captain pulled himself to his feet and peered through the open window. “Billish, are you awake? Have you seen Div?”
A gurgle in response.
“Poor lad, he’s not really fit for the job, that’s the truth…” He sat down again on the bench, groaning. He took up his glass and drank. Too bad Billish didn’t like Exaggerator.
The milky light thickened. Dusk-moths purred among the albic. In the sleeping house at his back boards creaked.
“There must be a better world somewhere…’Muntras said, and fell asleep with an unlit veronikane between his lips.
The sound of voices. Muntras roused. He saw his men gathering in the court to be paid. It was daylight. Dead calm prevailed.
Muntras stood and stretched. He looked in through the window at Billish’s contorted form, motionless on the couch.
“This is assatassi day, Billish—I’d forgotten, with you here. The monsoon high tide. You ought to see this. It’s quite a local event. There’ll be celebrations tonight, and no half measures.”
From the couch came a single word, forced from a locked jaw. “Celebrations.”
The workmen were rough, dressed in rough overalls. They cast their gaze down on the worn paving stones in case their master took offence at being discovered asleep. But that was not Muntras’s way.
“Come on, men. I’ll not be paying you out much longer. It’ll be Master Div’s turn. Let’s get it over with promptly, and then we’ll prepare for the festivities. Where’s my pay clerk?”
A small man with a high collar and hair brushed in the opposite direction to anyone else’s came darting forward. He had a ledger under his arm and was followed by a stallun carrying a safe. The clerk made a great business of pushing through the workers. This he did with his eyes constantly on his employer and his lips working as if he was already calculating what each man should be paid. His arrival caused the men to shuffle into a line to await their modest remuneration. In the unusual light, their features were without animation.
“You lot are going to collect your wages, and then you’re going to hand it over to your wives or get drunk as usual,” Muntras said. He addressed the men near him, among whom he saw only common-hire labourers and none of his master craftsmen. But at once a mixture of indignation and pity seized him and he spoke louder, so that all could hear. “Your lives are going by. Here you’re stuck. You’ve been nowhere. You know of the legends of Pegovin, but have you ever been there? Who’s been there? Who’s been to Pegovin?”
They leaned back against the rounded stones, muttering.
“I’ve been all over the world, I’ve seen it all. I’ve been to Uskutoshk, I’ve visited the Great Wheel of Kharnabhar. I’ve seen old ruined cities and sold junk in the bazaars of Pannoval and Oldorando. I’ve spoken with kings and queens as fair as flowers. It’s all out there, waiting for the man who dares. Friends everywhere. Men and women. It’s wonderful. I’ve loved every minute of it.
“It’s bigger than you can ever imagine, stuck here at Lordryardry. This last voyage, I met a man who came from another world. There’s more than just this world, Helliconia. There’s another circling around us, Avernus. And others beyond that, worlds to be visited. Earth, for instance.”
“I tell you there are other worlds. Use your imagination.” Muntras struck the table. “Don’t you feel the wanderlust occasionally? I did when I was a young ’un, I tell you. Inside my house even now I have a young man from one of these other worlds. He’s ill or he’d come out and speak to you. He can tell you miraculous things that happen lifetimes away.”
“Does he drink Exaggerator?”
The voice came from within the ranks of the waiting men. It stopped Muntras in full burst. He paced up and down the line, red of face. Not an eye met his.
“I’ll prove what I’m saying,” Muntras shouted. “You’ll have to believe me then.”
He turned and stamped into the house. Only the clerk showed some impatience, drumming his little fingers on the plank table, staring about, pulling his sharp nose, and looking up at the heavy sky.
Muntras ran in to where Billy was, terribly distorted, without motion. He seized Billy’s petrified wrist, only to find that the watch had gone.
“Billish,” he said. He went over to the invalid, looked down at him, called his name more gently. He felt the cold skin, tested the twisted flesh.
“Billish,” he said again, but now it was merely a statement. He knew that Billish was dead—and he knew who had stolen the watch, that three-faced timepiece which JandolAnganol had once held. There was only one person who would do such a thing.