Helliconia Winter

by neetha Napew

  "You're drunk, Harbin!" He felt morally superior to this abject figure.

  "Besi's dead. What else matters?" He sprawled on the deck.

  Toress Lahl motioned to Shokerandit. They crept away.

  They took fire hatchets to break into cabins and went below.

  As Shokerandit reached the bottom of the companionway, a naked man threw himself on him. Shokerandit went down on one knee and was seized by the throat. His attacker - an Odim relation - snarled, more like a maddened animal than a human being. He clawed at Shokerandit without any coherent attempt to overcome him. Shokerandit stuck two knuckles in the man's eyes, straightened his arm, and pushed hard. As the man fell away, he kicked him in the stomach, jumped on him, and pinned him to the deck.

  "Now what do we do? Throw him to the phagors?"

  "We'll tie him up and leave him in a cabin."

  "I'm not taking any chances." He picked up the hatchet he had dropped and clouted the prone man across the temple with the handle. The man went limp.

  They tackled the captain's cabin in the stern. The lock broke under their assault, and they burst in. They found themselves in a comfortably appointed quarter galley with windows opening above the water.

  They drew up short. A man with an old-fashioned bell-mouthed musket was sitting with his back to the windows, aiming the gun at them.

  "Don't shoot," Shokerandit said. "We intend no harm."

  The man rose to his feet. He lowered the weapon.

  "I would have blasted you if you were loonies."

  He was proportioned in the unaccustomed thickset way. He had passed through the Fat Death. They recognised him then as the captain. His officers lay about the cabin, their hands tied. Some were gagged.

  "We've had a high old time here," said the captain. "Fortunately, I was the first to recover, and we have lost only the first mate - for eating purposes, that was, excuse the expression. A few more hours and these officers will be back in action."

  "Then you can leave them and see to the rest of your ship," said Shokerandit sharply. "We're beached, and there's a threat from phagors ashore."

  "How's Master Eedap Mun Odim?" asked the captain, as he accompanied them from the cabin, his gun under his arm.

  "We haven't found Odim yet."

  They found him later. Odim had locked himself in his cabin with a supply of water, dried fish, and ship's biscuits as he felt the first fever upon him. He had undergone the metamorphosis. He was now a few inches shorter, and of much more rounded bulk than before. His characteristic straight-backed stance had disappeared. He wore a floppy sailor's garb, his own clothes having become too tight for him. Blinking, he emerged on deck like a hibernatory bear from its cave.

  He looked round quickly frowning, as they hailed him. Shokerandit approached slowly, well aware that it was he who had passed the Fat Death to all aboard. He humbly reminded Odim of his name.

  Ignoring him, Odim went to the rail and gestured over the side of the ship. When he spoke, his voice choked with rage.

  "Look at this barbarism! Some wretch has thrown my best plate overboard. It's an atrocity. Just because there's illness on the ship, it doesn't excuse... Who did it? I demand to know. The culprit is not going to sail with me."

  "Well..." said Toress Lahl.

  "Er..." said Shokerandit. He took a grip on himself and said, "Sir, I have to confess that I did it. We were being attacked by phagors at the time."

  He pointed to where phagors could be seen by the rock.

  "You shoot phagors, you do not throw precious plates at them, you imbecile," Odim said. He reined in his temper. "You were mad - is that your excuse?"

  "The ship has no weapons with which to defend itself. We saw that the phagors were going to attack - they will try again if they get desperate. I threw the plate over the side deliberately, to cover the sand spit. As I expected, the fuggies believed they were treading on thin ice, and retreated. I'm sorry about your porcelain, but it saved the ship."

  Odim said nothing. He stared down at the deck, up at the mast. Then he brought a little black notebook out of his pocket and perused it. "That service would have fetched a thousand sibs in Shivenink," he said in low tones, darting swift glances at them.

  "It has saved all the rest of the porcelain on the ship," Toress Lahl said. "Your other crates are intact. How is the rest of your family?"

  Muttering to himself, Odim made a pencilled note. "Perhaps more than a thousand... Thank you, thank you ... I wonder when such fine ware will again be manufactured? Probably not until the spring of next Great Year, many centuries in the future. Why should any of us care about that?"

  He turned bemusedly, to shake hands with Shokerandit while looking elsewhere. "My gratitude for saving the ship."

  "Now we'll get it afloat again," said the captain.

  The noise of the flambreg herd was louder now. They turned to see the animals pour by, not more than a mile inland. Odim disappeared unnoticed.

  Only later did they discover the reason for his slightly eccentric behaviour. It was not his dear Besi's death alone which had unsettled Odim. Of his three children, only the eldest boy, Kenigg, had survived the ravages of the Fat Death. His wife was also dead. Little was found of her bar skull, torso, and a pile of bones.

  The flotation was not to come about for several hours. With the captain and a few crew on their feet again, some attempt was made to bring the ship back into order. Those still sick were settled as comfortably as possible in the surgeon's cabin. The injured were tended. The convalescent were brought to fresh air. The dead were wrapped in blankets and lined up in a row on the upper deck. The dead numbered twenty-eight. The survivors were twenty-one in number, including the captain and eleven of his crew.

  When everyone had been accounted for and order prevailed, the fit assembled for a service of thanksgiving for their survival to God the Azoiaxic, who ordered all things.

  In their innocent hymns, they did not see that the complexity of their survival was beyond the capacity of any local deity.

  Helliconia was at this period receding towards something like the original conditions which had existed before its parent sun Batalix became locked into the gravitational field of the A-type supergiant. The planet had then carried a remarkable number of phyla, ranging in size from viruses to whales, while being denied the energy levels or the complexity to support beings with that intensity of cellular organisation required as building blocks for higher mental functions - the thinking, deducing, perceiving functions associated with full consciousness. The ancipitals were Helliconia's supreme effort in this respect.

  The ancipitals were a part of the integrated living system of Helliconia's biosphere. One of the functions of that systemic gestalt - of which, needless to say, its component parts were entirely unaware - was to maintain optimum conditions for the survival of all. As the yellow-striped fly could not live without the flambreg, so ultimately, the flambreg could not live without the yellow-striped fly. All life was interdependent.

  The capture of Batalix by the supergiant was only an event of the first magnitude and not a catastrophe for Helliconian life, although it was catastrophic for many phyla and many individuals. The impact of the capture was gradual enough for the biosphere to sustain it. The planet looked after its own. Its moon was lost; its vital processes continued, although through a disruption which brought storms and blizzards raging for hundreds of years.

  The fierce output of high-energy radiation from the new sun caused more damage. More phyla were eradicated, while others survived only through genetic mutation. Among the new species were some which were, in evolutionary terms, hastily developed; they survived in the new environment only at some cost to themselves. The assatassi in the sea, which were born as maggots from the decaying bodies of their parents; the yelk and biyelk, necrogenes which resembled mammals but were without wombs; and human stock; these were among the new creatures which rose to abundance under the energy-rich conditions which came about eight million years befor
e the present.

  The new creatures were products of the biospheric striving for unity, land cobbled into it at the time of maximum change. Before its capture by Freyr, Helliconia's atmosphere had contained a large amount of carbon dioxide, protecting its life with a greenhouse effect, and producing a mean temperature of -7° C. After capture, the atmospheric carbon dioxide was much reduced, combining at periastron with water to form carbonate rocks. Oxygen levels increased to amounts suitable for the new creatures: humans could not live in the oxygen-scarce Nyktryhk, as phagors did. In the seas, greater concentrations of macromolecules led to stepped-up activity all along the food chain. All these new parameters for existence came within the regulatory functions of Helliconia's biosphere.

  The humans, as the most complex life form, were the most vulnerable. However they might rebel against the idea, their corporate lives were never more than part of the equipoise of the planet to which they belonged. In that, they were no different from the fish, the fungi, or the phagors.

  In order that they might function at optimum efficiency in Helliconia's extremes, evolutionary pressure had introduced a system for regulating the masses of the humans. The pleomorphic helico virus had as its vector a species of arthropoda, a tick, which transferred itself readily from phagor to human. The virus was endemic during two periods of the Helliconian year, in the Spring and in the late Autumn of the Great Year, with minor epicycles between these cycles. These two pandemics were known as bone fever and the Fat Death.

  Sexual dimorphism between the sexes was negligible; but both sexes showed seasonal dimorphism. Male and female could be said to average approximately one hundred and twelve pounds over an entire Great Year. But spring and autumn brought dramatic variations in body weight.

  Survivors of the spring scourge of bone fever weighed a lanky ninety-six pounds, and presented a skeletal appearance to those who were brought up to the old way of things. This decreased body weight was an inheritable factor. It persisted throughout the generations as a crucial survival trait during the increasing heat. But the effect slowly became less apparent, until populations achieved the median of one hundred and twelve pounds.

  Towards winter, the virus returned, partly in obedience to glandular signals. Survivors of these attacks increased in bulk, rather than losing it, generally gaining an average of about fifty percent body weight. For a few generations, the population averaged one hundred and sixty-eight pounds. They had transformed from ectomorph at one extreme to endomorph at the other.

  This pathological process performed a vital function in preserving the human stock, with a side effect which benefitted the entire biosphere. As the expanding energy quota of the spring planet demanded a much more variegated biomass for efficient systemic working, so the contracting energy quota of winter required a decrease in total biomass. The virus culled the human population to conform with the total food-chain organisation of the biosphere.

  Human existence was not possible without the virus, just as the flambreg herds would have ceased ultimately to exist without the curse of the yellow-striped fly.

  The virus destroyed. But it was a life-giving destruction.

  VIII

  THE RAPE OF THE MOTHER

  The stiff breeze blew off the coast. The clouds parted, revealing Batalix overhead. The sea sparkled, tossing up foam made of finest pearl. The New Season raced west by southwest, with music in her shrouds.

  Along the Loraj coast on the north stood the Autumn Palaces, terrace after terrace of them. The dreams of forgotten tyrants were imprisoned in their stone, extending along the shore in distance and time. According to legend, King Denniss had once lived within their hallowed walls. Since the days of their fashioning, the Palaces, like some inconclusive human relationship, had never been entirely occupied or entirely deserted. They had proved too grandiose for those who created them and for those who followed after. Yet they were used still, long after whatever autumn had first seen the rise of their towers above the granite strand. Human beings - whole tribes of beings - lived in them like birds under neglected eaves.

  The learned, who are always attracted to the past, lodged also in the Autumn Palaces. For them, the Palaces were the greatest archaeological site in the world, their ruinous cellars taproots to an earlier age of man. And what cellarage! Mazes of almost infinite depth stretched down into the rock, as if to syphon up warmth from the heart of Helliconia. Here were reckonings inscribed on stone and clay, pot shards, skeletons of leaves from vanished forests, skulls to be measured, teeth to be fitted to jawbones, middens, weapons dissolving in rust... the history of a planet patiently awaiting interpretation, yet as tantalisingly beyond complete comprehension as a vanished human life.

  The Palaces lay pallid with distance, and the New Season passed them far to starboard.

  The depleted crew occasionally saw other ships. As they sailed by the port of Ijivibir, they passed fleets of herring-coaches about their business. Farther out to sea, an occasional warship was sighted, reminding them that the quarrel between Uskutoshk and Bribahr was still active. Nobody molested them or even signalled to them. Ice dolphins sported alongside the vessel.

  After Clusit, the captain decided to make a landing on the coast. He was familiar with these waters and determined to stock the ship with food before they made the last part of the run for the Shivenink port of Rivenjk. His passengers were doubtful about the wisdom of going ashore after their recent close encounter with the phagor band, but he reassured them.

  This part of Loraj was within the northern tropics and still fertile. Behind the coast lay a glittering country of woods, lakes, rivers, and marshes, scarcely inhabited by mankind. Behind that country stood ancient eldawon and caspiarn forests, stretching all the way to the ice cap.

  On the shore, helmeted seals basked, roaring as the passengers and crew of the New Season walked among them. They offered no resistance as they were clubbed to death. This clubbing was done with an oar. The oar had to hit the creature under the jaw in the vulnerable part of its throat. With its air passages blocked, the seal died of suffocation. This took some while. The passengers averted their gaze while the seals rolled in agony. Their mates often tried to help them, whimpering pitifully.

  The heads of the seals were covered by something resembling a helmet. The helmet was an adaptation of horns, the seals having been land animals in the distant past, driven back into the oceans by the cold of Weyr-Winter. The adaptation protected the ears and eyes of the creatures, as well as the skull.

  As the human party turned away from the seals they were killing, legged fish heaved themselves out of the waves and rushed up the steeply shelving shingle. They began attacking the dying seals, tearing chunks of their blubbery flesh.

  "Hey!" shouted Shokerandit, and struck out at the fish.

  Some scattered and ran under stones. One lay wounded by Shokerandit's blow. He picked it up and showed it to Odim and Fashnalgid.

  The fish was the best part of a metre long. Its six "legs" were finlike. It had a lantern jaw, behind which trailed a number of fleshy whiskers. As its head flicked from side to side, jaw snapping, its filmy grey eyes stared at its captor.

  "See this creature? It's a scupperfish," said Shokerandit. "Soon these creatures will be coming ashore in the thousands. Most of them get eaten by birds. The others survive and tunnel into the earth for safety. Later, they'll become longer than snakes, once the Weyr-Winter's here."

  "They're Wutra's worms, that's what they're called," said the captain. "Best throw it away, sir. They're not fit even for the sailors to eat."

  "The Lorajans eat them."

  The captain said, deferentially but firmly, "Sir, the Lorajans do eat the worms as a delicacy, that's true. They are poison nonetheless. The Lorajans cook them with a poisonous lichen, and 'tis said that the two poisons cancel each other out. I've eaten the dish myself, sir, when wrecked on this coast some years past. But I still hate the sight and taste of the things, and certainly don't want my men filling their bell
ies with them."

  "Very well." Shokerandit flung the still wriggling scupperfish out to sea.

  Cowbirds and other sorts of birds were wheeling above them, screaming. The sailors cut up six of the helmeted seals as quickly as possible and carried the chunks of meat over to the jolly boat. The offal was left to the other predators.

  Toress Lahl was weeping in silence.

  "Get back in the boat," Fashnalgid said. "What are you weeping for?"

  "What a horrible place this is," the woman said, turning her face away. "Where things with legs crawl from the sea and everything eats some other living thing."

  "That's how the world is, lady. Jump in."

  They rowed back towards the ship, and the birds followed, crying, crying.

  The New Season hoisted sail and began to move over the still water, its bows swinging towards Shivenink. Toress Lahl tried to speak to Shokerandit, but he brushed her to one side; he and Fashnalgid had matters to attend to. She stood by the rail, hand to brow, watching the coastline dwindle.

  Odim came up and stood beside her.

  "You need not be sorrowful. We'll soon reach the safety of the harbour of Rivenjk. There my brother will take us in, and we can rest and recover from our various shocks."

  Her tears burst forth again. "Do you believe in a god?" she asked, turning a tear-stained face towards him. "You've undergone such sorrow this voyage."

  He was silent before answering. "Lady, all my life until now I have lived in Uskutoshk. I behaved like an Uskuti. I believed like an Uskuti. I conformed - which means that I regularly worshipped God the Azoiaxic, the God of Sibornal. Now that I have come away from that place, or have been driven away, as one might say, I can see that I am no Uskuti. What is more, I find I have absolutely no belief in God. At his passing, I felt a weight lifting." He patted his chest in illustration. "I can say this to you, since you are not an Uskuti."

  She gestured towards the shore they were leaving. "This hateful place... those dreadful creatures ... all I've been through ... my husband killed in battle... the gruesomeness of this ship... Everything just gets steadily worse, year by year... Why wasn't I born in the spring? I'm sorry, Odim - this isn't like me...."