Pallahaxi

by Michael Coney

  We sat on the bed and bounced a few times, then kissed. Somehow we fell backwards while kissing and, since it seemed more comfortable, we stayed that way. Then Browneyes said, “My legs are getting stiff, hung over the edge like this,” so I released her for a moment and she crawled right on to the bed; I followed and we lay together. I could feel the whole length of her body against me as we kissed again.

  “I love you, Browneyes,” I said for the first time.

  She was looking at me as I lay half across her and her face was indescribably lovely. She smiled and said, “That’s just as well, Drove, because we seem to be in bed together.”

  I smiled back but I think I may have coloured a little as the implication hit me. I kissed her again to cover what I was thinking, but then I found that my own body had betrayed me and she must know what was in my mind. She held me hard for a moment, wriggling against me just a little, then we moved apart mutually and she was looking worried. “Look here, Drove,” she said quietly. “Maybe we’d better stand up, huh? We…we shouldn’t be like this, we’re not old enough.”

  Hastily we scrambled from the bed and stood staring at each other. I could hear footsteps on the squeaky stairs.

  I said, “Anyway, we weren’t in the bed. We were on it.” And we laughed, and the awkward moment was over.

  Annlee came into the room. “Well, you two certainly look happy,” she said alarmingly. “Do you like your room, Drove?”

  “It’s the best room I’ve ever seen. Are you sure I can have it?”

  “If it’s good enough for the Regent it’s good enough for you,” she laughed.

  Browneyes was grinning at me. “I didn’t tell you, in case it put you off. The Regent slept here when he was in Pallahaxi once.”

  “Oh…” I regarded the bed with some awe. I wondered what the Regent thought about, while he was lying in it, and what he dreamed about when he slept. I wondered if there had been guards posted outside the door. I wondered if he hadn’t thought Browneyes was the prettiest girl in all Erto—and I thought: if he had, then I would assassinate the dirty freezer…

  “Of course, I don’t remember much about it,” said Brown-eyes. “I was only three at the time.” And I laughed.

  Later, after Annlee and Browneyes had had some sort of mother-todaughter private talk, Browneyes and I walked through the fishmarket towards the monument. The stones were slippery underfoot with fish scales and fishy water, so we held hands in case one of us fell.

  “The fish are getting bigger,” she observed. “You can tell the state of the grume by the size of the fish.” Men moved about with villainous spikes, spearing the fish and tossing them into baskets. We walked along the quayside.

  “What did your mother say to you?” I asked.

  She stopped, rested her arms on the rail and gazed at the water heaving stickily below. The usual assortment of strange objects floated there: odd lengths of rope, net corks, dead fish, soggy paper. Even in the detritus of Pallahaxi harbour there is romance. Browneyes had changed into a yellow pullover and blue jeans, and I’ll swear that she looked prettier than ever. I wondered if it was love that did it.

  “Mother said it wasn’t right for me to be in the bedroom with you,” she said. “So I said a bedroom was just like any other room, wasn’t it? And she said: well, not exactly, my dear…” Here Browneyes gave a remarkable imitation of her mother’s worried voice. “Anyway, the outcome was that I promised not to go into your room between the hours of sunset and sunrise, which are the dangerous times, it seems.”

  “Uh.” I was disappointed.

  “But mother’s a simple soul and she forgot to make me promise not to have you in my room.”

  “Fine.” I wanted to change the subject, now. I had a feeling that events in that direction were moving beyond my control. “What shall we do this morning?”

  “Call for Ribbon?”

  “Look, why not let’s go without Ribbon for a change? I think Wolff’s seeing her this morning, so she’ll be all right. Let’s take my skimmer out.”

  Browneyes agreed enthusiastically and we entered Silverjack’s yard. The man himself was nowhere in sight so we made our way through the wood shavings and upturned boats to the slipway. Soon we had rigged the skimmer and were slipping through the harbour. Browneyes lay in the bows while I sat at the tiller. We seemed to be looking at each other all the time, and every so often I would have to make a violent course correction to avoid running somebody down.

  People waved to us from the quay and called us by name from the other boats, and for the first time I realized how conspicious we were, how people noticed the son of a Parl and the daughter of an innkeeper constantly in each other’s company. At one time this would have caused me infinite embarrassment, but now I found I was enjoying it, feeling proud to be seen with my beautiful girl.

  We passed into the outer harbour and ran parallel to the breakwater. It was occurring to me that there was something different about Browneyes’ clothes, something to do with the yellow pullover.

  “Uh, Browneyes,” I said tentatively, “you look sort of…sexy, in that.”

  She gave a sudden broad grin and looked down at herself. I felt the pulse beating strongly in my throat, and my heart was thumping. “Do you really think so?” she asked happily. “I thought perhaps you might; that’s why I put it on. It’s too small for me, really. Next year I won’t be able to…Uh.

  “Drove, do you think there will be a next year for us? I love you so much, I get scared.”

  “I’m going to stay here all winter,” I said confidently. I’ll be here always, now that…” The thoughts came back…

  “I’m sorry to hear about Alika,” she said softly.

  “That’s all right. This is my home, now…” Yet in my mind there was an inevitability about leaving. Every year we had come to Pallahaxi for the summer, and every year we had gone away afterwards, before the drench started. This was the way things were. I could imagine my father ignoring my protests and dragging me off to some outpost in the wilds by main force, the way he always did when our verbal deliberations reached an impasse.

  We tacked at the end of the breakwater and headed towards Finger Point. The fishing boats were out in strength and there were three large skimmers of unusual outline further out to sea. Frequently we had to duck as grummets swooped past us, intent on the fish and ignoring anything else. We kept close in under the cliffs, watching the rocks slip by.

  “Drove…” said Browneyes after a long and comfortable silence, “I think there’s some sort of organization building up in Pallahaxi. I thought I ought to tell you. This morning in the Grummet people were talking about how the Members of Parliament were going to be staying here, and a lot of people were saying it wouldn’t work out. They said if Members were going to be around the place, with privileges and ignoring rationing and the curfew and living in our houses, then Members might pretty soon find themselves dead. I know it’s a horrible thing to say.”

  “It’s getting that bad, is it?” The townsfolk didn’t talk so freely in my presence, wrongly imagining that everything got back to my father.

  “It’s serious, I think. I mean, I couldn’t care less about the Members myself, but you were saying one of them is staying with your parents. I wouldn’t like to think of anything happening to your mother and father, for your sake.”

  There were plenty of cynical replies I could have made to that, but I refrained. Browneyes was too sweet to understand.

  “Look over there!” I pointed. “By the rocks.” There was something big at the water’s edge, moving gently with the waves.

  “Oh…” Browneyes looked away.

  I moved in closer. Hereabouts the rocks were jagged, and although the water held little motion, I had visions of ripping the boat open on some spike. The thing floated head down, buoyant on the dense water. It’s a lorin,” I said.

  “What a shame…What shall we do, Drove?”

  I was trying to m
ake up my mind when there was a curious whistling noise and a section of rock above us crumbled with a loud report and came cascading down, falling into the water with a subdued splashing which subsided instantly. I wheeled round to see the three steam skimmers we had noticed earlier, now close by, skirting the outside of the breakwater. Puffs of white arose from steam guns on their decks.

  They were Astan men-of-war. They were shelling Pallahaxi.

  Like the Ysabel they were paddlers, but here the resemblance ended. The Astan ships were skimmers. In the interests of manoeuvrability they bore no sails, but had two oversize paddlewheels on either side. Suddenly they all turned in unison almost in their own lengths, and darted out to sea again. With paddlewheels whirling they appeared almost to run over the surface of the grume like motorcarts. Their funnels beat a harsh quick chaff-chaff-chaff and columns of pale smoke fountained vertically as they accelerated, veered south, and came dashing back towards the harbour with guns thudding.

  Astan or not, they were magnificent machines. Each craft bore two tall funnels and a large superstructure amidships; the engines must have been huge. Being skimmers they had scant freeboard but, at full speed, it seemed that the hulls barely touched the water. There was a short mast forward at the head of which fluttered the sinister Astan flag: the gold stylized sugarplant on a red background. The decks bristled with steam guns.

  Men could be seen working rapidly at these great weapons as the Astans made another pass, I wondered why the enemy didn’t slow down and bombard the town at his leisure, but then realized that the Astans would be expecting answering fire at any moment. I actually caught a glimpse of a large ball travelling overhead; it smacked into the cliff near the floating body, but this time there was no landslide.

  Browneyes flinched. There was no fear in her eyes, only a sorrow and a deep concern as she saw the missiles arching over the outer harbour and disappearing into the town. “There’s nothing anyone can do,” she said helplessly. “Why won’t they give us guns, Drove?”

  “They said they will,” I muttered. I felt in someway responsible, being the son of a Parl. “These things take time, Browneyes.”

  “If they’ve hit the Grummet I’m going to kill Mestler!” she said heatedly.

  The attack was over. The skimmers were racing out to sea, overrunning several small fishing boats as they went. Soon they were lost in the haze of distance, a violent memory on the placid water. The grummets dived, the fish glittered and thrashed. The enemy was gone.

  The damage was slight. There was an impromptu meeting at the monument later in the afternoon, and it was reported that the only damage sustained had been two smashed loxcarts at the old cannery, three fishing boats sunk at sea and two more in the inner harbour, a ball through the roof of Olab’s bakery—and a lot of Pallahaxi pride. It was a stormy meeting and there was wild talk of a march on the new cannery, but Strongarm came sailing into the harbour and managed to calm them down. “The time will come,” he said ominously.

  Ribbon met us shortly before the curfew sent everyone hurrying for their houses. “Look, have either of you seen Silverjack?” she asked. “Father’s been trying to find him all day, ever since I told him he’d been piloting the Ysabel“

  “Uh…We saw him,” I replied unhappily.

  “I don’t remember that, Drove. Where?” Browneyes was puzzled.

  “He…Uh, you remember that body under the cliff? That wasn’t a lorin, Browneyes. I’m sure of it. The water rolled it and I saw the side of the face. I’ll swear it was Silverjack.”

  The girls regarded me in horror. “What shall we do about it, Drove?” asked Ribbon.

  “I’m going to tackle Mestler,” I said. I had a sudden terrible suspicion—and I remembered Mestler didn’t know we’d witnessed the sinking of the Ysabel…

  CHAPTER 15

  With the grume at its maximum the Government was faced with a practical difficulty in enforcing the curfew which, apparently, had not previously occurred to them. They were men from the interior, away to the south-east, from Alika and Horlox. Even Mestler, for all his astronomical knowledge, failed to remember that the time was approaching when the sun would shine continuously and there would be no darkness, no excuse for the curfew—and no secret hours for the mysterious comings and goings of Parls and supplies. Now, the trucks to and from the cannery thundered through the town in full view of everyone, and the military police were no longer able to carry out their clandestine missions under cover of darkness.

  Understandably, for a few days after the Astan attack Mestler and his men lay low. There were ominous mutterings in the town and hardly a standard day went by without an impromptu meeting at the monument. There were those who called on Strongarm to lead a deputation to the new cannery—which was now recognized as the focus of Parl activity—but the fisherman remained adamant. There was nothing to be gained; any such gatherings at the gates would, he knew, be turned away at gunpoint.

  I called on my parents on a couple of occasions to find their mood increasingly grave. On the second occasion there was a stranger in the house; father introduced him to me as Zeldon-Thrawn and I thought I vaguely recognized him from my infrequent visits to the Parliament buildings in Alika.

  “Are the other Members all here?” I asked. “I haven’t seen any strangers around town.”

  Father’s face hardened. “And you’re not likely to. I regret that there’s so much hostility among your friends in Pallahaxi that it’s not wise for decent men to enter the town. Zeldon-Thrawn is safe up here with us—but can you imagine a Member walking through the streets, with that animal Strongarm at large? Most certainly not. The Members are having to be accommodated at the cannery—in conditions of the utmost privation, I might add.”

  “Oh, come on, Burt,” said Thrawn, smiling. “It’s not that bad.”

  “I am ashamed to be associated with this town. The inhabitants are no more than ignorant louts with no respect whatever for their rulers!” Father was staring into my face, all set for a bout of temper and entirely forgetting the presence of Thrawn. “Horlex-Mestler is speaking to them today but I’ve told him it’s a waste of time and dangerous, too. But then…” He forced a smile, recalling himself. “Mestler’s like that. The man’s fearless, when it comes to the performance of his duties.”

  We talked some more and I formed the impression that Thrawn was a pleasant enough, sensible type of man who would recognize my father’s ridiculous tub-thumping for what it was. Later I spoke briefly to my mother in the kitchen and asked after the war map, but she was not disposed to discuss the subject and after a while I left, in some relief.

  I heard the blasting of the crier’s steam-whistle as I walked down to the town and by the time I reached the fishmarket Mestler was standing on an upturned crate, addressing a small crowd in informal fashion. He had forsaken the splendour of the temple for the grassroots approach—at the same time cutting out the advance publicity and relying on the smaller audience to convey his points to the rest of the town by word of mouth. In this manner he eliminated the possibility of organized opposition and consequent unpleasantness.

  The acoustics under the fishmarket roof were not good and grummets were constantly swooping in through the open sides, causing people to duck nervously, and disputing possession of morsels of fish with harsh cries. Nevertheless we were all able to gather the gist of Mestler’s oration.

  It seemed there had been an unavoidable delay in the supply of munitions for the protection of Pallahaxi due to the Astans having overrun key industrial cities inland. This was most unfortunate in view of the recent attack by Astan men-of-war—but the people were to consider themselves assured that the Government was doing everything in its power to rectify the situation. The Government was very grateful for the war efforts of our great town and in recognition of this were relaxing certain security measures which it fully realized were unpopular, but which had been very necessary at the time. The curfew was being countermanded. The military
police were being withdrawn.

  “I thought you said the police were for our protection!” someone shouted, but it was too late; Mestler, smiling and nodding, had stepped down from his box and was climbing into the waiting motorcart.

  I ran across, pushed my way through the crowd around the cart and called, “Can I have a word with you, Horlox-Mestler?”

  Already seated, he glanced up and saw me. He smiled, said something to his driver, then motioned me to climb in beside him. Soon we were moving through the streets of Pallahaxi while people jeered, hissed and threw stones; I found I was shivering, appalled by the concentrated hostility with which I was surrounded. I decided that maybe it wasn’t such a great thing to be a Parl, after all. For a while the stones rattled off the woodwork, then we were clear and climbing out of the town.

  Mestler told the driver to stop, then turned to me. “I don’t suppose you want to come to the cannery,” he said, smiling. “Now, what can I do for you, my lad?” His eyes were sparkling with charm and delight as he radiated his wonderful-with-kids personality at me. The antagonism from the town had hardly touched him; he had forgotten it already. My mother would have said: how kind of Horlox-Mestler to take the trouble to talk to you, dear.

  “Look here,” I said brutally. “Have you seen Silverjack?”

  There was a pause and I heard the exhaust of a truck harshen as it passed through the level main street and began to climb the hill behind us. There were few houses around here, although I saw an old woman watching us from the window of a tumbledown cottage opposite.

  “Silverjack was a friend of yours, wasn’t he?” asked Mestler, the twinkle gone.

  “Not exactly a friend. I knew him. Wait a moment.” The significance of our use of the past tense occurred to me and I wondered if I’d been led into a trap. “What do you mean, was? Are you saying he’s dead?” I thought I injected the right note of alarm in my voice.

  The truck was blasting on its whistle as it pounded up the hill towards us, but there was plenty of room for it to pass. Mestler frowned slightly.