Helliconia Winter h-3 Read online

  When Luterin shook his head, they climbed into the sleigh, and slaves bundled furs round them. They set off into the gale among cliSs of snow.

  When they turned north, the wind bit into their faces. To the twenty degrees of frost, a considerable chill factor had to be added.

  But the sky was clear and, as they drove through the shuttered village, a great irregular mass appeared through its veils to loom over Mount Kharnabhar.

  “Shivenink, the third highest peak on the planet,” said Asperamanka, pointing it out. “What a place!” He made a moue of distaste.

  Just for a minute the mountain’s naked ribbed walls were visible; then it was gone again, the ghost that dominated the village.

  The passengers were driven up a winding track to the gates of Bam-bekk Monastery. They entered and dismounted. Slaves assisted them into the vaulted halls, where a number of official-looking people had already gathered.

  At a sign, they proceeded up several staircases. Luterin took no interest in their progress. He was listening to a rumble far below, which carried through the monastery. Obsessively, he tried to imagine every corner of his cell, every scratch on its enclosing walls.

  The party came at last to a hall high in the monastery. It was circular in shape. Two carpets covered the floor, one white, one black. They were separated by an iron band which ran across the floor, dividing the chamber in half. Biogas shed a dim light. There was one window, facing south, but it was covered by a heavy curtain.

  Embroidered on the curtain was a representation of the Great Wheel being rowed across the heavens, each oarsman sitting in a small cell in its perimeter, wearing cerulean garments, each smiling blissfully.

  Now at last I understand those blissful smiles, thought Luterin.

  A group of musicians was playing solemn and harmonious music at the far side of the room. Lackeys with trays were dispensing drinks to all and sundry.

  Keeper of the Wheel Esikananzi appeared, raising his hand graciously in greeting. Smiling, half-bowing to all, he made his portly way towards where the Master of Kharnabhar and Luterin stood.

  When they had greeted each other, Esikananzi asked Asperamanka, “Is our friend any more sociable this morning?” On receiving a negative, he said to Luterin, with an attempt at geniality, “Well, the sight you are about to witness may loosen your tongue.”

  The two men became surrounded by hangers-on, and Luterin gradually edged his way out of the centre of the group. A hand touched his sleeve. He turned to meet the scrutiny of a pair of wide eyes. A thin woman of guarded mien had approached, to observe him with a look of real or feigned astonishment. She was dressed in a sober russet gown, the hem of which touched the floor, the collar of which rioted in lace. Although she was near middle age and her face was gaunter than in bygone times, Luterin recognised her immediately.

  He uttered her name.

  Insil nodded as if her suspicions were confirmed and said, “They claimed that you were being difficult and refusing to recognise people. What a habit this lying is! And you, Luterin, how unpleasant to be recalled from the dead to mingle with the same mendacious crowd— older, greedier… more frightened. How do I appear to you, Luterin?”

  In truth, he found her voice harsh and her mouth grim. He was surprised by the amount of jewellery she wore, in her ears, on her arms, on her fingers.

  What most impressed him were her eyes. They had changed. The pupils seemed enormous—a sign of her attention, he believed. He could not see the whites in her eyes and thought, admiringly, Those irises show the depth of Insil’s soul.

  But he said tenderly, “Two profiles in search of a face?”

  “I’d forgotten that. Existence in Kharnabhar has grown narrower over the years—dirtier, grimmer, more artificial. As might be expected. Everything narrows. Souls included.” She rubbed her hands together in a gesture he did not recall.

  “You still survive, Insil. You are more beautiful than I remembered.” He forced the insincerity from him, conscious of pressures on him to be a social being again. While it remained difficult to enter into a conver- sation, he was aware of old reflexes awakening—including his habit of being polite to women.

  “Don’t lie to me, Luterin. The Wheel is supposed to turn men into saints, isn’t it? Notice I refrain from asking you about that experience.”

  “And you never married, Sil?”

  Her glare intensified. She lowered her voice to say with venom, “Of course I am married, you fool! The Esikananzis treat their slaves better than their spinsters. What woman could survive in this heap without selling herself off to the highest bidder?”

  She stamped her foot. “We had our discussion of that glorious topic when you were one of the candidates.”

  The dialogue was running too fast for him. “Selling yourself off, Sil! What do you intend to mean?”

  “You put yourself completely out of the running when you stuck your knife into that pa you so revered… Not that I blame you, seeing that he killed the man who took away my cherished virginity—your brother Favin.”

  Her words, delivered with a false brightness as she smiled at those around them, opened up an ancient wound in Luterin. As so often during his incarceration in the Wheel, he thought of the waterfall and his brother’s death. Always there remained the question of why Favin, a promising young army officer, should have made the fatal jump; the words of his father’s gossie on that subject had never satisfied him. Always he had shied away from a possible answer.

  Not caring who was looking on among the pale-lipped crowd, he grasped Insil’s arm. “What are you saying about Favin? It’s known that he committed suicide.”

  She pulled away angrily, saying, “For Azoiaxic’s sake, do not touch me. My husband is here, and watching. There can be nothing between us now, Luterin. Go away! It hurts to look at you.”

  He stared about, his gaze darting over the crowd. Halfway across the chamber, a pair of eyes set in a long face regarded him in open hostility.

  He dropped his glass. “Oh, Beholder… not Asperamanka, that opportunist!” The red liquid soaked into the white carpet.

  As she waved to Asperamanka, she said, “We’re a good match, the Master and I. He wanted to marry into a proud family. I wanted to survive. We make each other equally happy.” When Asperamanka turned with a sign back to his colleagues, she said in venomous tones, “All these leather-clad men going off with their animals into the forests… why do they so love each other’s stink? Close under the trees, doing secret things, blood brothers. Your father, my father, Asperamanka… Favin was not like that.”

  “I’m glad if you loved him. Can’t we escape from these others and talk?”

  She deflected his offer of consolation. “What misery that brief happiness inherited… Favin was not one to ride into the caspiarns with his heavy males. He rode there with me.”

  “You say my father killed him. Are you drunk?” There was something like madness in her manner. To be with her, to enter into these ancient agonies—it was as if time stopped. It was as if a fusty old drawer was being unlocked; its banal contents had become hallowed by their secret nature.

  Insil scarcely bothered to shake her head. “Favin had everything to live for… me, for instance.”

  “Not so loud!”

  “Favin!” she shouted, so that heads turned in her direction. She began to pace through the crowd, and Luterin followed. “Favin discovered that your father’s ‘hunts’ were really journeys to Askitosh and that he was the Oligarch. Favin was all integrity. He challenged your father. Your father shot him down and threw him over the cliff by the waterfall.”

  They were interrupted by officious women acting hostess, and separated. Luterin accepted another glass of yadahl, but had to set it down, so violently was his hand shaking. In a moment, he found his chance to speak to Insil again, breaking in on an ecclesiastic who was addressing her.

  “Insil—this terrible knowledge! How did you discover about my father and Favin? Were you there? Are you lying?�
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  “Of course not. I found out later—when you were in your fit of prostration—by my customary method, eavesdropping. My father knew everything. He was glad—because Favin’s death punished me. … I could not believe I had heard aright. When he was telling my mother she was laughing. I doubted my senses. Unlike you, however, I did not fall into a year-long swoon.”

  “And I suspected nothing … I was fatally innocent.”

  She gave him one of her supercilious looks. Her irises appeared larger than ever.

  “And you still are fatally innocent. Oh, I can tell…”

  “Insil, resist the temptation to make everyone your enemy!”

  But her look hardened and she burst out again. “You were never any help to me. My belief is that children always know intuitively the real natures of their parents, rather than the dissembled ones which they show the world. You knew your father’s nature intuitively, and feigned dead to avoid his vengeance. But I am the truly dead.”

  Asperamanka was approaching. “Meet me in the corridor in five minutes,” she said hastily, as she turned, smiling and gaily raising a hand.

  Luterin moved away. He leaned against a wall, struggling with his feelings. “Oh, Beholder…” he groaned.

  “I expect you find the crowds overpowering after your solitude,” someone who passed by said pleasantly.

  His whole inner life was undergoing revolution. Things had not been, he had not been, as he had pretended to himself. Even his gallantry on the field of battle—had that not been powered by ancient angers released, rather than by courage? Were all battles releases from frustration, rather than deeds of deliberate violence? He saw he knew nothing.

  Nothing. He had clung to innocence, fearing knowledge.

  Now he remembered that he had experienced the actual moment when his brother died. He and Favin had been close. He had felt the psychic shock of Favin’s death one evening: yet his father had announced the death as occurring on the following day. That tiny discrepancy had lodged in his young consciousness, poisoning it. Eventually—he could foresee—joy could come that he was delivered from that poison. But deliver)’ was not yet.

  His limbs trembled.

  In the turmoil of his thoughts, he had almost forgotten Insil. He feared for her in her strange mood. Now he hurried towards the corridor she had indicated—reluctant though he was to hear more from her.

  His way was barred by bedizened dignitaries, who spoke to him and to each other roundly of the solemnity of this occasion, and of how much more appalling conditions would be henceforth. As they talked, they devoured little meat-filled pastries in the shape of birds. It occurred to Luterin that he neither knew nor cared about the ceremony in which he had become involved.

  Their conversation paused as all eyes focussed on the other side of the chamber.

  Ebstok Esikananzi and Asperamanka were leaving by a spiral stair which wound to an upper gallery.

  Luterin took the opportunity to slip into the corridor. Insil joined him in a minute, her narrow body leaning forward in the haste of her walk. She held her skirt up from the floor in one pale hand, her jewellery glittering like frost.

  “I must be brief,” she said, without introduction. “They watch me continually, except when they are in drink, or holding their ridiculous ceremonies—as now. Who cares if the world is plunged into darkness? Listen, when we are free to leave here, you must proceed to the fish seller in the village. It stands at the far end of Sanctity Street. Understand? Tell no one. ‘Chastity’s for women, secrecy’s for men,’ as they say. Be secret.”

  “What then, Insil?” Again he was asking her questions.

  “My dear father and my dear husband plan to kick you out. They will not kill you, as I understand—that might look bad for them, and that much they owe you for your timely disposal of the Oligarch. Simply evade them after the ceremony and go down Sanctity Street.”

  He stared impatiently into her hypnotic eyes.

  “And this secret meeting—what is it about?”

  “I am playing the role of messenger, Luterin. You still remember the name of Toress Lahl, I suppose?”

  XVII

  SUNSET

  Trockern and Ermine were asleep. Shoyshal had gone somewhere. The geonaut they preceded had come to a halt, and stood gently breathing out its little white hexagonal offspring.

  Sartorilrvrash woke and stretched, yawning as he did so. He sat up on his bunk and scratched his white head. It was his habit to sleep for the second half of the day, waking at midnight, thinking through the dark hours, when his spirit could commune with the travelling Earth, and teaching from dawn onwards. He was Trockern’s teacher. He had named himself after a dangerous old sage who once lived on Helliconia, whose gossie he had met empathically.

  After a while, he heaved himself up and went outside. He stood for a long while looking at the stars, enjoying the feel of the night. Then he padded back into the room and roused Trockern.

  “I’m asleep,” Trockern said.

  “I could hardly waken you if you weren’t.”

  “Zzzz.”

  “You stole something of mine, Trockern. You stole my explanation of why things went awry on Earth, in order to impress your ladies.”

  “As you see, I impressed fifty percent of them.” Trockern indicated the peacefully sleeping Ermine, whose lips were pursed as if she was awaiting the chance to kiss someone in her midsummer dream.

  “Unfortunately you got my argument wrong. That possessiveness which was once such a feature of mankind was not a product of fear, as you claimed—although I believe you called it ‘perpetual unease.’ It was a product of innate aggressiveness. The old races did not fear enough: otherwise they would never have built the weapons they knew would destroy them. Aggression was at the root of it all.”

  “Isn’t aggression born of fear?”

  “Don’t get sophisticated before you can walk. If you take Helliconia as an example, you can see how every generation ritualises its aggression and its killing. The earlier terrestrial generations you were talking about did not seek to possess only territory and one another, as you were claiming.”

  “In truth, Sartorilrvrash, you cannot have slept well this afternoon.”

  “In truth I sleep, as I wake in truth.” He put an arm about the younger man’s shoulders. “The argument can be taken to greater heights. Those ancient people sought to possess the Earth also, to enslave it under concrete. Nor did their ambitions die there. Their politicians strove to make space their dominion; while the ordinary people created fantasies wherein they invaded the galaxy and ruled the universe. That was aggression, not fear.”

  “You could be right.”

  “Don’t abandon your point of view so easily. If I could be right I could be wrong. We ought to know the truth about our forebears who, wicked though they were, have given us our chance on the scene.”

  Trockern climbed from his bunk. Ermine sighed and turned over, still sleeping.

  “It’s warm—let’s take a stroll outside,” said Sartorilrvrash.

  As they went out into the night, with the star field above them, Trockern said, “Do you think we improve ourselves, master, by rethinking?”

  “We shall always be as we are, biologically speaking, but we can improve our social infrastructures, with any luck. I mean by that the sort of work our extitutions are working on now—a revolutionary new integration of the major theorems of physical science with the sciences of mankind, society, and existence. Of course, our main function as biological beings is as part of the biosphere, and we are most useful in that role if we remain unaltered; only if the biosphere in some way altered again could our role change.”

  “But the biosphere is altering all the time. Summer is different from winter, even here so close to the tropics.”

  Sartorilrvrash was looking towards the horizon, and said, rather absently, “Summer and winter are functions of a stable biosphere, of Caia breathing in and out in her stride. Humanity has to operate within t
he limits of her function. To the aggressive, that always seemed a pessimistic point of view; yet it is not even visionary, merely common-sensical. It fails to be common sense only if you have been indoctrinated all your life to believe, first, that mankind is the centre of things, the Lords of Creation, and, second, that we can improve our lot at the expense of something else.

  “Such an outlook brings misery, as we see on our poor sister planet out there. We have only to step down from the arrogance of believing that the world or the future is somehow ‘ours’ and immediately life for everyone is enhanced.”

  Trockern said, “I suppose each of us has to find that out for our-self.” He found it delightful to be humble after sunset.

  With sudden exasperation, Sartorilrvrash said, “Yes, unfortunately that’s so. We have to learn by bitter experience, not blithe example. And that’s ridiculous. Don’t imagine that I think the state of affairs is perfect. Gaia is an absolute ninny to let us loose in the first place. At least on Helliconia the Original Beholder planted phagors to keep mankind in check!” He laughed and Tockern joined in.

  “I know you think me wanton,” the latter said, “but isn’t Gaia herself a wanton, spawning so riotously in all directions?”

  His senior shot him a foxy look. “Everything else must bring forth in abundance, so that everything else can eat it. It’s not the best of arrangements, perhaps—cooked up and cobbled together on the spur of the moment from a chemical broth. That doesn’t mean to say we can’t imitate Gaia and adopt, like her, our own homeostasis.”

  The moon in its last quarter shone overhead. Sartorilrvrash pointed to the red star burning low by the horizon.

  “See Antares? Just north of it is the constellation Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer. In Ophiuchus is a large dark dust cloud about seven hundred light-years away, concealing a cluster of young stars. Among them lies Freyr. It would be one of the twelve brightest stars in the sky, were it not for the dust cloud. And that’s where the phagors are.”

  The two men contemplated the distance without speaking. Then Trockern said, “Have you ever thought, master, how phagors vaguely resemble the demons and devils which used to haunt the imagination of Christians?”