Helliconia: Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer, Helliconia Winter

by Brian Aldiss

  A knock came at her door. She rose and went to it.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘The Royal Vicar, ma’am, begging entrance.’

  She hesitated, sighing. She slid back the bolt. Alam Esomberr entered the room, grinning.

  ‘Well, not quite the vicar, ma’am, but a near neighbour, and offering more comfort than is perhaps within our poor vicar’s power.’

  ‘Please leave. I do not wish to talk with you. I am unwell. I shall call the guard.’ She was pale. Her hand trembled as she rested it against the wall. She mistrusted the smile on his face.

  ‘Everyone’s drunk. Even I – even I, model of excellence that I am, son of my worthy father as I am, am just slightly squiffed.’

  He kicked the door shut behind him and grasped her arm, pushing her before him until she was forced to sit down on the couch.

  ‘Now – don’t be so inhospitable, ma’am. Make me welcome, because I am on your side. I have come to warn you that your ex-husband means to kill you. Your circumstances are difficult, and you and your daughter need protection. I can give you that protection, if you behave kindly to me.’

  ‘I was not being unkind. I am merely frightened, sir – but I am not to be frightened into anything I would regret later.’

  He took her into his arms, despite her struggles. ‘Later! There’s the difference between our sexes, ma’am – that for women there’s always a later. The prevalence of pregnancy among you must account for all the laters. Let me into your fragrant nest tonight and I swear you shall not regret any laters. Meanwhile, I will have my nows.’

  MyrdemInggala hit him across the face. He sucked his lips.

  ‘Listen to me. You wrote a letter to the C’Sarr in my care, did you not, my lovely ex-queen? In it, you said that King Jan intended to kill you. Your delivery boy betrayed you. He sold the letter to your ex-husband, who has read every mischievous word you wrote.’

  ‘ScufBar betrayed me? No, he’s always been in my service.’

  Esomberr took her by the arms.

  ‘In your new position, you have no one you can depend on. No one except me. I will be your protector if you behave.’

  She broke into weeping. ‘Jan loves me still, I know it. I understand him.’

  ‘He hates you, and lusts for the embrace of Simoda Tal.’

  He unfastened his clothes. At that moment the door opened and Bardol CaraBansity lumbered in and marched to the centre of the room. He stood with his hands on his hips, fingers of his right hand over the hilt of his knife.

  Esomberr jumped up, clutching his trousers, and ordered the deuteroscopist out. CaraBansity stood his ground. His face was heavy and flushed. He looked like a man accustomed to butchery.

  ‘I must ask you to cease consoling this poor lady immediately, sir. I venture to trouble you because there is no guard on the palace and an army approaches from the north.’

  ‘Find someone else.’

  ‘This is an emergency. We are about to be slaughtered. Come.’

  He led along the corridor. Esomberr looked back at MyrdemInggala, who stood rigid, staring at him with defiant gaze. He cursed and hurried after CaraBansity.

  At the end of the corridor was a balcony which overlooked the rear of the palace. He followed CaraBansity onto it and stared out into the night.

  The air was warm and heavy, and seemed to hug the sea noise to itself. The horizon lay under the weight of the enormous sky.

  Near at hand were small moving tongues of flame, winking in and out of existence. Esomberr stared at them uncomprehendingly, still half drunk.

  ‘Men approaching through trees,’ CaraBansity said, at his elbow. ‘Perhaps only two of them by my count. In my alarm I must have overestimated their numbers.’

  ‘What do they want?’

  ‘A searching question, sire. I will go down and discover its answer, if you will be all right here, sire. Stay and I shall return with intelligence.’ He gave the escort a crafty sidelong glance.

  Esomberr, leaning on the balcony rail, staggered as he looked down, and leant back against the wall for safety. He heard CaraBansity’s shout and a reply from the newcomers. He closed his eyes, listening to their voices. There were many other voices, some angry, calling to him in accusing manner, though he could not grasp what they were saying. The world swayed.

  He roused to hear CaraBansity calling him from below.

  ‘What’s that you say?’

  ‘It’s bad news, sire, not to be shouted aloud. Please come down.’

  ‘What is it?’ But CaraBansity gave no answer, speaking in a low voice to the newcomers. Esomberr got himself moving, went into the corridor, and nearly fell down the stairs.

  ‘You’re drunker than I thought, you fool,’ he said aloud.

  Making his way out through an open door, he almost barged into CaraBansity and a haggard man, covered in dust, who carried a flambeau. Behind him, another man, equally dust-covered, looked about into the dark as if in fear of pursuit.

  ‘Who are these men?’

  The haggard man, eyeing Esomberr with distrust, said, ‘We’re from Oldorando, Your Highness, from the court of His Majesty King Sayren Stund, and a hard journey we’ve had of it, with the unrest in the countryside. I have a message for King JandolAnganol and none other.’

  ‘The king’s asleep. What do you want with him?’

  ‘It’s bad news, sir, which I was entrusted to give to him direct.’

  Esomberr, growing angry, announced who he was. The messenger eyed him stonily. ‘If you’re who you say you are, sir, then you’ll have the authority to lead me to the king.’

  ‘I could escort him, sire,’ suggested CaraBansity.

  They all went into the palace, dowsing their flambeaux on the ground before entering. CaraBansity led the way into the main chamber, where sleeping figures lay in confusion on the floor. He went over to where the king slept, and shook his arm without ceremony.

  JandolAnganol roused and jumped immediately to his feet, hand on sword.

  The haggard man bowed. ‘I am sorry to awaken you, sire, and I regret coming late. Your soldiers killed two of my escort, and I barely escaped with my life.’ He produced documents to prove his identity. He had begun to shake violently, knowing the fate of messengers who bring bad tidings.

  The king barely glanced at the documents.

  ‘Tell me your news, man.’

  ‘It’s the Madis, Your Majesty.’

  ‘What of them?’

  The messenger shuffled his feet and put a hand to his face to stop his jaw rattling. ‘The Princess Simoda Tal is dead, sire. The Madis killed her.’

  There was a silence. Then Alam Esomberr began to laugh.

  IV

  An Innovation in the Cosgatt

  Alam Esomberr’s bitter laughter eventually reached the ears of those who lived on Earth. Despite the enormous gulf between Helliconia and Earth, that response to the labouring of fate met with immediate comprehension.

  Between Earth and Helliconia a kind of relay was interposed, the Earth Observation Station called Avernus. The Avernus had its orbit about Helliconia as Helliconia had its orbit about Batalix, and as Batalix had its orbit about Freyr. Avernus was the lens through which terrestrial observers experienced events on Helliconia.

  The human beings who worked on the Avernus dedicated their lives to a study of all aspects of Helliconia. That dedication was not of their choosing. They had no alternative.

  Beneath that dominating injustice, a general justice prevailed. There was no poverty on the Avernus, no one starving physically. But it was a narrow domain. The spherical station had a diameter of only one thousand metres, most of its inhabitants living on the inside of the outer shell, and within that compass a kind of inanition prevailed, sapping life of its joy. Looking down does not exalt the spirit.

  Billy Xiao Pin was a typical representative of Avernian society. Outwardly, he subscribed to all the norms; he worked without industry; he was engaged to an attractive girl; he took regula
r prescribed exercise; he had an Advisor who preached to him the higher virtues of acceptance. Yet inwardly Billy craved only one thing. He longed to be down on the Helliconian surface, 1500 kilometres below, to see Queen MyrdemInggala, to touch her, speak with her, and make love to her. In his dreams, the queen invited him into her arms.

  The distant observers on Earth had other concerns. They followed continuities of which Billy and his kind were unaware. As they watched, suffering, the divorce at Gravabagalinien, they were able to trace the genesis of that division back to a battle which had taken place to the east of Matrassyl, in a region known as the Cosgatt. JandolAnganol’s experiences in the Cosgatt influenced his later actions and led – so it appeared by hindsight – inexorably to divorce.

  What became known as the Battle of the Cosgatt took place five tenners – 240 days, or half a small year – before the day that the king and MyrdemInggala severed their marriage bonds by the sea.

  In the region of the Cosgatt, the king received a physical wound which was to lead to the spiritual severance.

  Both the king’s life and his reputation suffered in the battle. And they were threatened, ironically, by nothing more than a rabble, the raggle-taggle tribes of Driats.

  Or, as the more historically minded of terrestrial observers said, by an innovation. An innovation which changed not only the life of the king and queen but of all their people. A gun.

  What was most humiliating for the king was that he held the Driats in contempt; as did every follower of Akhanaba in Borlien and Oldorando. For the Driats, it was conceded, were human – but only just.

  The threshold between non-human and human is shadowy. On one side of it lies a world full of illusory freedoms, on the other a world of illusory captivity. The Others remained animal, and stayed in the jungles. The Madis – tied to a migratory way of life – had reached the threshold of sapience, but remained protognostic. The Driats had just crossed the threshold, and there abided throughout recorded time, like a bird frozen on the wing.

  The adverse conditions of the planet, the aridity of their share of it, contributed to the Driats’ permanent backwardness. For the Driat tribes occupied the dry grasslands of Thribriat, a country to the east of Borlien, across the wide Takissa. The Driats lived among herds of yelk and biyelk which pastured in those high regions during the summer of the great year.

  Customs regarded as offensive by the outside world furthered the survival of the Driats. They practised a form of ritual murder, by which the useless members of a family were killed after failing certain tests. In times of near-famine, the slaughter of the ancients was often the salvation of the innocents. This custom had given the Driats a bad name among those whose existence was cast in easier pastures. But they were in reality a peaceful people – or too stupid to be warlike in an effective way.

  The eruption of various nations southwards along the ranges of the Nktryhk – particularly those warrior nations temporarily banded together behind Unndreid the Hammer – had changed that. Under pressure, the Driats bestirred their bivouacs and went marauding into the lower valleys of Thribriat, which lie in the rain shadow of the massive Lower Nktryhk.

  A cunning warlord, known as Darvlish the Skull, had brought order to their ragged ranks. Finding that the simple Driat mind responded to discipline, he formed them into three regiments and led them into the region known as the Cosgatt. His intention was to attack JandolAnganol’s capital, Matrassyl.

  Borlien already had the unpopular Western Wars on its hands. No ruler of Borlien, not even the Eagle, could hope really to win against either Randonan or Kace, since those mountainous countries could not be occupied or governed even if conquered.

  Now the Fifth Army was recalled from Kace and sent into the Cosgatt. The campaign against Darvlish was not dignified with the title of war. Yet it ate up as much manpower as a war, cost as much, was fought as passionately. Thribriat and the wilderness of the Cosgatt were nearer to Matrassyl than the Western Wars.

  Darvlish had a personal animus against JandolAnganol and his line. His father had been a baron in Borlien. He had fought by his father’s side when JandolAnganol’s father, VarpalAnganol, had appropriated his land. Darvlish had seen his father cut down by a youthful JandolAnganol.

  When a leader died in battle, that was the end of fighting. No man would continue. Darvlish’s father’s army turned and ran. Darvlish retreated to the east with a handful of men. VarpalAnganol and his son pursued them, hunting them like lizards among the stoney mazes of the Cosgatt – until the Borlienese forces refused to go further because no more loot was forthcoming.

  After almost eleven years in the wilderness, Darvlish had another chance, and took it: ‘The vultures shall praise my name!’ became his war cry.

  Half a small year before the king divorced his queen – before the idea even invaded his mind – JandolAnganol was forced to muster new troops and march at the head of them. Men were in short supply and required pay or the loot the Cosgatt would not yield. He used phagors. The phagor auxiliaries were promised freedom and land in return for service. They were formed into the First and Second Regiments of the Royal Phagorian Guard of the Fifth Army. Phagors were ideal in one respect: both the male and female fought, and their young went into battle with them.

  JandolAnganol’s father before him had also rewarded ancipital troops with land. It was as a result of this policy – forced on the kings by manpower shortage – that phagors lived more comfortably in Borlien than in Oldorando, and were less subject to persecution.

  The Fifth Army marched eastwards, through jungles of stone. The invaders melted away before it. Most skirmishes were confined to dimday – neither side would fight either during darkness or when both suns were high. But the Fifth Army, under KolobEktofer, was forced to travel during full day.

  It travelled through earthquake country, where ravines ran obliquely across its path. Habitation was scanty. The ravines were a tangle of vegetation, but there, if anywhere, water was to be found – as well as snakes, lions, and other creatures. The rest of the land was pocked with umbrella cactus and scrub. Progress across it was slow.

  Living off the land was hard. Two kinds of creature dominated the plain, numberless ants and the ground-sloths which lived off the ants. The Fifth caught the sloths and roasted them, but the flesh was bitter in flavour.

  Still the cunning Darvlish withdrew his forces, luring the king away from his base. Sometimes he left behind smouldering campfires or dummy forts on elevated sites. Then a day would be wasted as the army investigated them.

  Colour-Major KolobEktofer had been a great explorer in his youth and knew the wilds of Thribriat, and the mountains above Thribriat, where the air finished.

  ‘They will stand, they will stand soon,’ he told the king one evening when a frustrated Eagle was cursing their difficulties. ‘The Skull must soon fight, or the tribes will turn against him. He understands that well. Once he knows we’re far enough from Matrassyl to be without our supply trains, he’ll make his stand. And we must be ready for his tricks.’

  ‘What kind of tricks?’

  KolobEktofer shook his head. ‘The Skull is cunning, but not clever. He’ll try one of his father’s old tricks, and much good they did him. We’ll be ready.’

  The next day, Darvlish struck.

  As the Fifth Army approached a deep ravine, forward scouts sighted the Driat host drawn up in battle lines on the far bank. The ravine ran from northeast to southwest, and was choked with jungle. It was more than four times a javelin’s throw across from one bank to the other.

  Using hand signals, the king mustered his army to face the enemy across the ravine. The Phagorian guards were stationed in front because the ranks of motionless beasts would bring anxiety into the dim minds of the tribesmen.

  The tribesmen were of spectral aspect. It was just after dawn: twenty minutes past six. Freyr had risen behind cloud. When the sun broke free of the cloud, it became apparent that the enemy and part of the ravine would be in shadow
for the next two or more hours; the Fifth Army would be exposed to Freyr’s heat.

  Crumbling cliff slopes backed the Driat array, with higher country above. On the royal left flank was a spur of high ground, its angles jutting towards the ravine. A rounded mesa stood between the spur and the cliffs, as if it had been set there by geological forces to guard the Skull’s flank. On top of the mesa, the walls of a crude fort could be seen; its walls were of mud, and behind the ramparts an occasional pennant was visible.

  The Eagle of Borlien and the colour-major studied the situation together. Behind the colour-major stood his faithful sergeant-at-arms, a taciturn man known as Bull.

  ‘We must find out how many men are in that fort,’ JandolAnganol said.

  ‘It’s one of the tricks he learnt from his father. He hopes we’ll waste our time attacking that position. I’ll wager no Driats are up there. The pennants we see moving are tied to goats or asokins.’

  They stood in silence. From the enemy’s side of the ravine, under the cliffs, smoke rose in the shadowed air, and an aroma of cooking drifted across to remind them of their own hungry state.

  Bull took his officer to one side and muttered in his ear.

  ‘Let’s hear what you have to say, sergeant,’ the king said.

  ‘It’s nothing, sire.’

  The king looked angry. ‘Let’s hear this nothing, then.’

  The sergeant regarded him with one eyelid drooping. ‘All I was saying, sire, is that our men will be disappointed. It’s the only way a common man – by which I mean myself – can advance himself, sire, to join the army and hope to grab what is going. But these Driats aren’t worth looting. What’s more they don’t appear to have females – by which I mean women, sire – so that the incentive to attack is … well sire, on the low side.’