Helliconia: Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer, Helliconia Winter

by Brian Aldiss

  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, puffing 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 recognisable as the redoubtable wooden fortresses they would become when the summer of the Great Year yielded 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 this 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, pleased 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.’

  JandolAnganol turned back towards his kneeling son. ‘You know your grandfather is now one with the gossies?’

  ‘He was tired. I saw his grave yawn.’

  ‘I do my best, sir, but really I need a slave to assist me …’

  ‘He died in his sleep – an easy death, for all his sins.’

  ‘I said he was tired. Self-demented, mother-tormented, granddad-fermented … that’s three blows you’ve struck. Where next?’

  The king folded his arms and tucked his hands into his armpits. ‘Three blows! You child – they’re my one wound. Why do you plague me with nonsense? Stay and comfort me. Since you’re unfit to marry even a Madi, stay.’

  Roba put his hands on the dirt before him and began slowly to get to his feet. The guard seized his chance to say, ‘They don’t copulate any more, sir. Only among themselves, each cageful, as a way of passing time.’

  ‘Stay with you, Father? Stay with you as Grandfather stayed, in the bowels of the palace? No, I’m going back to the—’

  As he was speaking, the guard shuffled forward in supplicatory fashion and interposed himself between JandolAnganol and his son. The king struck him a blow which sent him staggering into a bush. The captives began a great to-do, hammering on their bars.

  The king smiled, or at least showed his teeth, as he attempted to approach his son. Roba backed away. ‘You’ll never understand what your grandfather did to me. You’ll never understand his power over me – t
hen – now – perhaps for ever – because I have no power over you. I could succeed only by putting him away.’

  ‘Prisons flow like glaciers in your blood. I’m going to be a Madi, or a frog. I refuse to be human as long as you claim that title.’

  ‘Rob, don’t be so cruel. See sense. I – am about to – have to – marry a Madi girl soon. That’s why I came to inspect the Madi here. Please stay with me.’

  ‘Trittom your Madi-slave woman! Count progeny! Measure, make notes! Write it down, suffer, lock up the fertile ones, and never forget that there is one running loose about Helliconia fit to send you to an eternal prison …’

  As he spoke, the youth was backing away, fingers trailing on the ground. Then he turned and darted away into the bushes. A moment later, the king spied his figure climbing over the quarry cliff. Then he was gone.

  The king went and leaned against the trunk of a tree, closing his eyes.

  It was the whimpering of the guard which roused him. He went over to where the old man sprawled, and assisted him to his feet.

  ‘Sorry for that, sir, but perhaps a small slave, now I’m getting past it …’

  Rubbing his forehead with a weary gesture, JandolAnganol said, ‘You can answer some questions, slanje. Tell me, please, which way is it that Madi women prefer copulation? From the rear, like animals, or face to face, like humans? Rushven would have told me.’

  The guard rubbed his hands on his tunic and laughed. ‘Oh, both ways, sir, to my observation, and I’ve seen it many times, working here with no help. But mainly from the rear, as do the Others. Some say as they mate for life, others as they are promiscuous, but cage life is different.’

  ‘Do the Madi sexes kiss each other on the lips like humans?’

  ‘I’ve not seen that sir? no. Only humans.’

  ‘Do they lick genitals before congress?’