by neetha Napew
The death of his midnight messenger warned the Oligarch that the return of Asperamanka's army would bring the plague from the Savage Continent. So a rational decision had been arrived at: the army must not return. The First Guard, of which Fashnalgid was an officer, was in Koriantura for one reason only: to annihilate Asperamanka's army as it approached the frontier. The antiplague regulations, the Restrictions of Persons in Abodes Act, imposed on the city and on Eedap Mun Odim, were moves to make the massacre when it came more acceptable to the population.
These terrible reflections ran through Harbin Fashnalgid's head as he lay in his billet under Odim's roof. Unlike Major Gardeterark, he was not an early riser. But he could not escape into sleep from the vision in his head. The Oligarchy he now saw as a spider, sitting somewhere in the darkness, sustaining itself through the ages at whatever cost to ordinary people.
That was the implication behind his father's remark that he had bought the promise of the future. He had bought it with his son's life. His father had ensured his own safety as an ex-Member of the Oligarchy, at no matter what expense to others.
"I'll do something about it," Fashnalgid said, as he finally dragged himself out of bed. Light was filtering through his small window. All round him, he could hear Odim's vast family beginning to stir.
"I'll do something about it," he said as he dressed. And when, a few hours later, the girl Besi Besamitikahl entered his office, he read in the unconscious gestures of her body a willingness to do his will. In that moment, he saw how he might make use of her and Odim to disrupt the Oligarch's plan and save Asperamanka's army.
The escarpment to the east of Koriantura, which tumbled down to the Isthmus of Chalce, marked the point where the continents of Sibornal and Campannlat joined. The broken land south of the escarpment - through which any army must make its way if approaching Uskutoshk - was bounded to the west by marshes which led eventually to the sea, and was terminated after a few miles by the Ivory Cliffs, standing like sentries before the steppes of Chalce.
Harbin Fashnalgid and the three common soldiers under him reined their yelk at the foot of the Ivory Cliffs and dismounted. They discovered a cave from which to shelter from the stiff breeze, and Fashnalgid ordered one of the men to light a small fire. He himself took a pull from a pocket flask.
He had already made some use of Besi Besamitikahl. She had shown him a way through the back alleys of Koriantura which curved downhill. The route avoided the rest of the First Guard mustering along the ramparts of the escarpment. Fashnalgid was now technically a deserter.
He gave a little misleading information to his detail. They would wait here until Asperamanka's army came from the south. They were in no danger. He had a special message from the Oligarch for Asperamanka himself.
They tethered their yelk in lying positions so that they could crouch against the animals and derive benefit from their body warmth. There they waited for Asperamanka. Fashnalgid read a book of love poetry.
Several hours elapsed. The men began to complain to each other. The fog cleared, the sky became a hazy blue. In the distance, they heard the sound of hoofs. Riders were approaching from the south.
The Ivory Cliffs were the bastions of the inhospitable spine of the highlands which curled about the Gulf of Chalce. They formed canyons through which all travellers must go.
Fashnalgid stuffed the poetry volume into his pocket and jumped up.
He felt - as so often in the past - the feebleness of his own will. The hours of waiting, not to mention the languorous tenor of the verse, had sapped his determination to act. Nevertheless, he gave crisp orders to his men to position themselves out of sight and stepped from concealment. He expected to see the vanguard of an army. Instead, two riders appeared.
The riders came on slowly. Both slumped wearily in the saddles of their yelk. They were in army uniform, the yelks were half-shaved, in the military fashion. Fashnalgid ordered them to halt.
One of the riders dismounted and came forward slowly. Although he was little more than a stripling, his face was grey with dust and fatigue. "Are you from Uskutoshk?" he called, in a hoarse voice.
"Yes, from Koriantura. Are you of Asperamanka's army?"
"We're a good three days ahead of the main body. Maybe more."
Fashnalgid considered. If he let them through, the two riders would be stopped by Major Gardeterark's lookouts, and might reveal his whereabouts. He did not consider himself capable of shooting them in cold blood - why, this young fellow was a lieutenant ensign. The only way to halt them was to tell them of the fate which hung over the army, and enlist their cooperation.
He stepped one pace nearer the lieutenant. The latter immediately produced a revolver and braced it against his crooked left arm to aim. As he squinted down the barrel, he said, "Come no nearer. You have other men with you."
Fashnalgid spread wide his hands. "Look, don't do that. We mean you no harm. I want to talk. You look as if you might like a drink."
"We'll both stay where we are." Without ceasing to squint down his gun barrel, the lieutenant called to his companion, "Come and get this man's gun."
Licking his lips nervously, Fashnalgid hoped that his men would come to his rescue; on the other hand, he hoped they would not, since that might lead to his being shot. He watched the second rider dismount. Boots, trousers, cloak, fur hat. Face pale, fine-featured, beardless. Something in her movements told Fashnalgid, an expert in such matters, that this was a woman. She came hesitantly towards him.
As she got to him, Fashnalgid pounced, grasping her outstretched wrist, twisting her arm and swinging her violently about. Using her as a shield between him and the other man, he pulled his own gun from its holster.
"Throw your weapon down, or I'll shoot you both." When his order was obeyed, Fashnalgid called to his men. The soldiers emerged cautiously, looking unwarlike.
The rider, having dropped his gun, stood confronting Fashnalgid. Fashnalgid, still pointing his revolver, reached inside his captive's coat with his left hand, and had a feel of her breasts.
"Who the sherb are you?" He burst out laughing, even as the woman began to weep. "You're evidently a man who likes to ride with his creature comforts... and a well-developed creature it is."
"My name is Luterin Shokerandit, Lieutenant. I am on an urgent mission for the Supreme Oligarch, so you'd better let me through."
"Then you're in trouble." He ordered one of his men to collect Shokerandit's pistol, turned the woman about, and removed her hat so that he could get a better look at her. Toress Lahl stood before him, her eyes heavy with anger. He patted her cheek, saying to Shokerandit, "We have no quarrel. Far from it. I have a warning for you. I'll put my gun away and we will shake hands like proper men."
They shook hands warily, looking each other over. Shokerandit took Toress Lahl's arm and drew her beside him, saying nothing. As for Fashnalgid, the feel of breasts had heartened him; he was beginning to congratulate himself on his handling of a difficult situation when one of his men, keeping lookout, called that riders were approaching from the north, from the direction of Koriantura.
A line of mounted men was nearing the Ivory Cliffs, a banner flying in its midst. Fashnalgid whipped a spyglass from his coat pocket and surveyed the advance.
He uttered a curse. Leading the advance was none other than his superior, Major Gardeterark. Fashnalgid's first thought was that Besi had betrayed him. But it was more likely that one of the citizens of Koriantura had seen him leaving the city and reported the fact.
The figures were still some distance away.
He had no doubt what his fate would be if he was caught, but there was still time to act. His manner as much as his words persuaded Shokerandit and the woman that they would be safer joining him than trying to escape - particularly when Fashnalgid offered them two of his fresh yelk to ride. Shouting to his men to stand their ground and tell the major that there was a large body of armed men at the other end of the Cliffs, Fashnalgid flung himself onto his yelk and
galloped off at full speed, Shokerandit and Toress Lahl following. He kicked one of the unmounted yelk before him.
Some way along the narrow defile of the Cliffs was a side passage. Fashnalgid drove the unmounted yelk straight forward, but led the other down the defile. He calculated that the sound of the escaping yelk would lead the enemy force to ride straight on.
The defile dwindled to a mere fissure. By setting their mounts determinedly forward, they could scramble up the crumbling slope onto higher ground. They emerged in a confusion of broken rock where small trees and bushes, arched over by the prevailing wind, pointed southwards. From somewhere below them came the thunder of the major's troop galloping past.
Fashnalgid wiped the cold sweat from his brow and picked a course westward among the rocks. Both the suns lay close in the sky, Freyr low as ever in the southwest, Batalix sinking to the west.
The three riders urged their mounts through a series of eroded buttes and round a shattered boulder the size of a house, where there were signs of past human habitation. In the distance, beyond where the land fell away, was the glint of the sea. Fashnalgid halted and took a drink from his flask. He offered it to Shokerandit, but the latter shook his head.
"I've taken you on trust," he said. "But now that we have eluded your friends, you had better tell me what is on your mind. My job is to get word to the Oligarch as soon as possible."
"My job is to evade the Oligarch. Let me tell you that if you present yourself before him, you will probably be shot." He told Shokerandit of the reception being arranged for Asperamanka. Shokerandit shook his head.
"The Oligarchy ordered us into Campannlat. If you believe that they would massacre us on our return, then you are plainly crazed."
"If the Oligarch thinks so little of an individual, he will think no more of an army."
"No sane man would wipe out one of his own armies."
Fashnalgid started to gesticulate.
'You are younger than I. You have less experience. Sane men do the most damage. Do you believe that you live in a world where men behave with reason? What is rationality? Isn't it merely an expectation that others will behave as we do? You can't have been long in the army if you believe the mentalities of all men are alike. Frankly, I think my friends mad. Some were driven mad by the army, some were so mad they were attracted to that area of idiocy, some simply have a natural talent for madness. I once heard Priest-Militant Asperamanka preach. He spoke with such force that I believe him to be a good man. There are good men... But most officers are more like me, I can tell you - reprobates that only madmen would follow."
There was silence after this outburst, before Shokerandit said coldly, "I certainly would not trust Asperamanka. He was prepared to let his own men die."
" 'Wisdom to madness quickly turns, if suffering is all one learns,' " quoted Fashnalgid, adding, "An army carrying plague. The Oligarchy would be happy to be rid of it, now there's little danger of an attack from Campannlat. Also, it suits Askitosh to get rid of the Bribahr contingent..."
As if there was nothing more to be said, Fashnalgid turned his back on the other two and took a long swig from his flask. As Batalix descended towards the strip of distant sea, clouds drew across the sky.
"So what do you propose doing, if we are not to be trapped between armies?" Toress Lahl asked boldly.
Fashnalgid pointed into the distance. "A boat is waiting across the marshes, lady, with a friend of mine in it. That's where I'm going. You are free to come if you wish. If you believe my story, you'll come."
He swung himself up slowly into the saddle, strapped his collar under his chin, smoothed his moustache, and gave a nod of farewell. Then he kicked his beast into action. The yelk lowered its head and started to move down the rocky slope in the direction of the distant glimmering sea.
Luterin Shokerandit called after the disappearing figure, "And where's that boat of yours bound for?"
The wind stirring the low bushes almost drowned the answer that came back.
"Ultimately, Shivenink..."
The gaunt figure on its yelk moved down into a maze of marshes which fringed the sea; whereupon birds rose up under the shaggy hoofs of the animal as small amphibians disappeared underneath them. Things hopped in rain-pocked puddles. Everything that could move fled from the man's path.
Captain Harbin Fashnalgid's mood was too bleak for him even to question why mankind's position should remain so isolated in the midst of all other life. Yet that very question - or rather a failure to perceive the correct answer to the problem it posed - had brought into existence a world which moved above the planet in a circumpolar orbit.
The world was an artificial one. Its designation was Earth Observation Station Avernus. Circling the planet 1500 kilometres above the surface, it could be seen from the ground as a bright star of swift passage, to which the inhabitants of the planet had given the name Kaidaw.
On the station, two families supervised the automatic recording of data from Helliconia as it passed below them. They also saw to it that that data - in all its richness, confusion, and overwhelming detail - was transmitted to the planet Earth, a thousand light-years distant. To this end, the EOS had been established. To this end, human beings from Earth had been born to populate it. The Avernus was at this time only a few Earth years short of its four thousandth birthday.
The Avernus was an embodiment, cast in the most advanced technology of its culture, of the failure to perceive the answer to that age-old problem of why mankind was divorced from its environment. It was the ultimate token in that long divorce. It represented nothing less than the peak of achievement of an age when man had tried to conquer space and to enslave nature while remaining himself a slave.
For this reason, the Avernus was dying.
Over the long centuries of its existence, the Avernus had gone through many crises. Its technology had not been at fault; far from it - the great hull of the station, which had a diameter of one thousand metres, was designed as a self-servicing entity, and small servomechanisms scuttled like parasites over its skin, replacing tiles and instruments as required. The servomechanisms moved swiftly, signalling to each other with asymmetrical arms, like crabs on an undiscovered germanium shore, communicating with each other in a language only the WORK computer which controlled them understood. In the course of forty centuries, the servomechanisms continued to serve. The crabs had proved untiring.
Squadrons of auxiliary satellites accompanied the Avernus through space, or dived off in all directions, like sparks from a fire. They crossed and recrossed in their orbits, some no bigger than an eyeball, others complex in shape and design, coming and going about their automatic business, the gathering of information. Their metaphorical throats were parched for an ever flowing stream of data. When one of them malfunctioned, or was silenced by a passing speck of cosmic debris, a replacement floated free from the service hatches of the Avernus and took its place. Like the crabs, the sparklike satellites had proved untiring.
And inside the Avernus. Behind its smooth plastic partitioning lay the equivalent of an endomorphic skeleton or, to use a more suitably dynamic comparison, a nervous system. This nervous system was infinitely more complex than that of any human. It possessed the inorganic equivalent of its own brains, its own kidneys, lungs, bowels. It was to a large extent independent of the body it served. It resolved all problems connected with overheating, overcooling, condensation, microweather, wastes, lighting, intercommunication, illusionism, and hundreds of other factors designed to make life tolerable physiologically for the human beings on the ship. Like the crabs and the satellites, the nervous system had proved untiring.
The human race had tired. Every member of the eight families - later reduced to six, and now reduced to two - was dedicated, through whatever speciality he or she pursued, to one sole aim: to beam as much information about the planet Helliconia as possible back to distant Earth.
The goal was too rarified, too abstract, too divorced from the bloodstream.
Even the planet before their view, the glorious and changing balloon of Helliconia, burning in the light of its two suns and trailing its cone of darkness like a wind sock behind it, even Helliconia became an abstract. Helliconia could not be visited. To visit it meant death. Although the human beings on its surface, scrutinised so devotedly from above, appeared identical to Earthlings, they were protected from external contact by a complex virus mechanism as untiring as the mechanisms of the Avernus. That virus, the helico virus, was lethal to the inhabitants of the Avernus at all seasons. Some men and women had gone down to the planet's surface. They had walked there for a few days, marveling at the experience. And then they had died.
On the Avernus, a defeated minimalism had long prevailed. The attenuation of the spirit had been embraced.
With the slow crawl of autumn across the planet below, as Freyr receded day by day and decade by decade from Helliconia and its sister planets - as the 236 astronomical units of periastron between Batalix and Freyr lengthened to the formidable 710 of apastron - the young on the Observation Station rose up in despair and overthrew their masters. What though their masters were themselves slaves? The era of asceticism was gone. The old were slain. Minimalism was slain. Eudaemonism ruled in its stead. Earth had turned its back on the Avernus. Very well, then Avernus would turn its back on Helliconia.
At first, blind indulgence in sensuality had been sufficient. Just to have broken the sterile bonds of duty was glory enough. But - and in that "but" lies possibly the fate of the human race - hedonism proved insufficient. Promiscuity proved as much of a dead end as abstention.
Cruel perversions grew from the sullied beds of the Avernus. Woundings, slashings, cannibalism, pederasty, paedophilia, intestinal rape, sadistic penetrations of infants and the ageing became commonplace. Flayings, public mass fornications, buggery, irrumation, mutilation - such was the daily diet. Libido waxed, intellect waned.