Helliconia: Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer, Helliconia Winter (91 page)

‘But your ice melts, Captain.’

‘That’s so, and many the jokes people make about it. But Lordryardry ice, being pure off the glacier, melts less rapidly than other ices sold by other traders.’ He was enjoying himself in her presence, though he had not failed to notice a clouded air about her, so different from her normal disposition.

‘I’ll put another point to you. You are devout in the religion of your country, Madam Queen, so I do not need to remind you of redemption. Well, my ice is like your redemption. The less there is, the scarcer it becomes, and the scarcer it becomes, the more it costs. My boats now sail all the way from Dimariam, across the Sea of Eagles, up the Takissa and Valvoral rivers to Matrassyl and Oldorando City, as well as along the coast to Keevasien and the ports of the deadly assatassi.’

She smiled, perhaps not entirely pleased to hear religion and trade intermingled. ‘Well, I’m glad someone fares well in a bad age.’ She had not forgotten the time when she as a young girl on her first visit to Oldorando had met the Dimariamian in the bazaar. He was in rags, but he had a smile; and he had produced from an inner pocket the most beautiful ring she had ever seen. Shannana, her mother, had given her the money. She had returned the next day to buy it, and had worn it ever since.

‘You overpaid me for that ring,’ Krillio Muntras said, ‘and with the profit I went home and bought a glacier. So I have been in your debt ever since.’ He laughed, and she joined in. ‘Now, Madam Queen, you come here not to bargain about ice, since that I supply through the palace majordomo. Can I do you a favour?’

‘Captain Muntras, I am in a difficult situation, and I need help.’

He looked suddenly cautious. ‘I do not want to lose the royal favour which permits me, a foreigner, to trade here. Otherwise …’

‘I appreciate that. All I ask of you is reliability, and of that you will surely avail me. I wish you to deliver a letter for me, secretly. You mention Keevasien, on the border with Randonan. Can you reliably deliver a letter to a certain gentleman fighting in Randonan in our Second Army?’

Muntras’s expressive face looked so glum that his cheeks tightened themselves round his mouth. ‘In war, everything is
doubtful. The news is that the Borlienese army fares badly, and Keevasien too. But – but – for you, Madam Queen … My boats go up the Kacol River above Keevasien, as far as Ordelay. Yes, I could send a messenger from there. Provided it’s not too dangerous. He’d need paying, of course.’

‘How much?’

He thought. ‘I have a boy who would do it. When you’re young, you don’t fear death.’ He told her how much it would cost. She paid out willingly enough and handed over the pouch with the letter to General TolramKetinet.

Muntras made her another bow. ‘I’m proud to do it for you. First, I must deliver a freight to Oldorando. That’s four days upriver, two days there and two days back. A week in all. Then I’ll be back here and straight south for Ottassol.’

‘Such delay! Do you have to go to Oldorando first?’

‘Have to, ma’am. Trade’s trade.’

‘Very well, I’ll leave it to you, Captain Muntras. But you understand that this is of vital importance and absolutely secret, between you and me? Carry out this mission faithfully, and I’ll see you have your reward.’

‘I’m grateful for the chance to help, Madam Queen.’

When they parted, and the queen had taken another glass of refreshing wine, she was more cheerful and battled almost gaily back to the palace with her lady-in-waiting, the sister of the general to whom her letter was now despatched. She could hope, whatever the king had decided.

Throughout the palace, doors banged and curtains fluttered in the wind. Pale of face, JandolAnganol talked to his religious advisors. One of them finally said to him, ‘Your Majesty, this state is holy, and we believe that you have already in your heart come to a decision. You will cement this new alliance for holy reasons, and we shall bless you for it.’

The king replied vehemently, ‘If I make this alliance, it will be because I am wicked, and welcome wickedness.’

‘Not so, my lord! Your queen and her brother conspired against Sibornal, and must be punished.’ They were already halfway to believing the lie he had set in circulation; it was his
old father’s lie, but now it had become common property and possessed them one by one.

In their own chambers, the visiting statesmen, awaiting the king’s word, complained about the discomfort of this miserable little palace and of the poverty of the hospitality. The advisors quarrelled amongst themselves, jealous of each other’s privileges; but one thing they agreed on. They agreed that if and when the king divorced his queen and married Simoda Tal, the question of the large phagor population of Borlien should be reopened.

Old histories told how ancipital hordes had once descended on Oldorando and burned it to the ground. That hostility had never died. Year by year, the phagor population was being reduced. It was necessary that Borlien should follow the same policy. With Simoda Tal and her ministers at JandolAnganol’s side, the issue could be pressed harder.

And with MyrdemInggala gone, with her softhearted ways, it would be convenient to introduce drumbles.

But where was the king, and what was his decision?

The time was a few minutes after fourteen o’clock, and the king stood naked in an upper chamber. A great pendulum of pewter swung solemnly against one wall, clicking out seconds. Against the other wall hung an enormous mirror of silver. In the shadows stood serving wenches, waiting with vestments to dress JandolAnganol to appear before the diplomats.

Between the pendulum and the mirror JandolAnganol stood or paced. In his indecision, he ran his finger down the scar on his thigh, or pulled the pallid length of his prodo, or regarded the reflection of those bloody devotional stripes which stretched from his shoulderblades down to his thin buttocks. He snarled at the lean whipped thing he saw.

The king could easily send the diplomats packing; his rage, his khmir, were fully equal to such a deed. He could easily snatch up the thing dearest to him – the queen – and brand her mouth with hot kisses, vowing never to allow her from his sight. Or he could do the opposite – be a villain in private and become a saint in the eyes of many, a saint ready to throw everything away for his country.

Some of those who observed him from afar, such as the Pin
family on the Avernus, who studied the cross-continuities of the king’s family, claimed that the decision was made for the king in a distant past. In their records lay the history of JandolAnganol’s family through sixteen generations, back to the time when most of Campannlat lay under snow, back to a distant ancestor of the king’s, AozroOn, who had ruled over a village called Oldorando. Along that line, untraced by those who were part of it, lay a story of division between father and son, submerged in some generations but never absent.

That pattern of division lay deep in JandolAnganol’s psyche, so deep he did not notice it in himself. Beneath his arrogance was an even older self-contempt. His self-contempt made him turn against his dearest friends and consort with phagors; it was an alienation which early years had fostered. It was buried, but not without voice, and it was about to speak.

He turned abruptly from the mirror, from that shadowy figure who lurked there in silver, and summoned up the maids. He raised his arms and they dressed him.

‘And my crown,’ he said, as they brushed his flowing hair. He would punish the waiting dignitaries by his distance from them.

A few minutes later, the dignitaries found relief from their boredom by rushing to the windows when marching feet were heard outside. They looked down on great rough heads crowned by gleaming horns, on muscular shoulders and coarse bodies, on hoofs that echoed and war harness that creaked. The Royal First Phagorian Guard was parading – a sight that caused unease in most human spectators, since the ancipitals were so hinged at knee and elbow that lower leg and lower arm could turn in all directions. The march was uncanny, with an impossible forward flexure of the leg at every step.

A sergeant called an order. The platoons halted, going from movement to the instant immobility characteristic of phagors.

The scorching wind stirred the trailing hairs of the platoon. The king stepped from between platoons and marched into the palace. The visiting statesmen regarded each other uneasily, thoughts of assassination in their heads.

JandolAnganol entered the room. He halted and surveyed them. One by one, his guests rose. As if he struggled to speak,
the king let the silence lengthen. Then he said, ‘You have demanded of me a harsh choice. Yet why should I hesitate? My first duty is solemnly pledged to my country.

‘I am resolved not to let my personal feelings enter the matter. I shall send away my queen, MyrdemInggala. She will leave this day, and retire to a palace on the seacoast. If the Holy Pannovalan Church, whose servant I am, grants me a bill of divorcement, I shall divorce the queen.

‘And I shall marry Simoda Tal, of the House of Oldorando.’

Clapping and murmurs of congratulation rose. The king’s face was expressionless. As they were approaching, before they could reach him, he turned on his heel and left the room.

The thordotter slammed the door behind him.

Billy Xiao Pin’s face was round, as were, in general disposition, his eyes and nose. Even his mouth was a mere rosebud. His skin was smooth and sallow. He had left the Avernus only once previously, when close members of the Pin family had taken him on an Ipocrene fly-past.

Billy was a modest but determined young man, well-mannered like all members of his family, and it was believed that he could be relied upon to face his death with equanimity. He was twenty Earth years old, or just over fourteen by Helliconian reckoning.

Although the Helliconia Holiday Lottery was ruled by chance, it was generally agreed – at least among the thousand-strong Pin family – that Billy was an excellent choice as winner.

When his good fortune was announced, he was sent on a tour of the Avernus by his doting family. With him went his current girl friend, Rose Yi Pin. The moving corridors of the satellite were event-oriented, and those who travelled them often found themselves caught in technological typhoons, or surrounded by animated computer graphics, sometimes of a malignant kind. The Avernus had been in its orbit for 3269 years; every facility available was mustered to counteract the killing disease which threatened its occupants: lethargy.

Together with a group of friends, Billy took a holiday in a mountain resort. There they slept in a log hut high above the ski slopes. Such synthetic pleasure spots had once been based on real Earth resorts; now they were rejigged to imitate Helliconian locations. Billy and his friends appeared to ski in the High Nktryhk.

Later, they sailed the Ardent Sea to the east of Campannlat.
Setting out from the one harbour on a thousand miles of coast, they had as background the eternal cliffs of Mordriat, rising out of the foam straight to heights of almost six thousand feet, their shoulders wreathed in cloud. The Scimitar waterfall fell and paused and fell again in its plunge of over a mile towards the racing sea.

Pleasing though such excitements were, the mind was always aware that every danger, each remote vista, was imprisoned in a mirrored room no more than eighteen feet long by twelve feet wide.

At the conclusion of the holiday, Billy Xiao Pin went alone to his Advisor, to squat before him in the Humility position.

‘Silence recapitulates long conversations,’ said the Advisor. ‘In seeking life you will find death. Both are illusory.’

Billy knew that the Advisor did not wish him to leave the Avernus, for the profound reason that the Advisor feared any dynamism. He was devoured by the deadly illusionism which had become prevalent philosophy. In his youth, he had written a poetic treatise one hundred syllables long entitled, ‘On the Prolongation of One Helliconian Season Beyond One Human Life-Span’.

This treatise was a product of, and a sustaining factor in, the illusionism which gripped the Avernus. Billy had no intellectual way of fighting the philosophy, but now that he was about to leave the ship, he felt a hatred of it which he dared to voice.

‘I must stand in a real world and experience real joy, real hurt. If only for a brief while, I must endure real mountains and walk along stone streets. I must encounter people with real destinies.’

‘You still overuse that treacherous word “real”. The evidence of our senses is evidence only to our senses. Wisdom looks elsewhere.’

‘Yes. Well. I’m going elsewhere.’

But morbidity did not know where to stop. The aged man continued to lecture. Billy continued meekly to listen.

The old man knew that sex was at the bottom of it. He saw that Billy had a sensuous nature which needed to be curbed. Billy was giving up Rose to seek out Queen MyrdemInggala – yes, he knew Billy’s desires. He wished to see the queen of queens face to face.

That was a sterile idea. Rose was not a sterile idea. The real – to use that word – was to be found not extraneously but within the mystery of personality: in Billy’s case, Rose’s personality, perchance. And there were other considerations.

‘We have a role to fulfil, our role towards Earth the Obligation. Our deepest satisfaction comes from fulfilling that role. On Helliconia, you will lose role and society.’