Helliconia Spring

by Brian W Aldiss

  "What good's that going to do? You're only stirring up trouble."

  She said nothing, staring across at the river, on which was cast the last of the day's beggarly gold.

  "I ought to put you over my knee and spank you." He was standing below her on the bank, gazing up at her.

  She looked angrily at him. Almost immediately, a change came over her face. She laughed, revealing her teeth and the ribbed pink roof of her mouth, before covering them with her hand. "You really don't understand!"

  Using the moment, he took her strongly into his arms. "I′d try to coo for you, and more besides, Shay Tal. Because of your lovely spirit, and your eyes as bright as those waters. Forget this learning which all can do without, and become my woman."

  He whirled her around, her feet off the ground, and the geese scattered indignantly, stretching their necks towards the horizon.

  When she was standing again, she said, "Speak in an ordinary way to me, Aoz Roon, I beg. My life is twice precious, and I can give myself away once only. Knowledge is important to me – to everyone. Don't make me choose between you and learning."

  "I've loved you a long while, Shay Tal. I know you're vexed about Oyre, but you should not say no to me. Be my woman at once, or I'll find another, I warn you. I'm a hot-blooded man. Live with me, and you'll forget all about this academy."

  "Oh, you just repeat yourself. If you love me, try to bear what I'm saying." She turned and started to walk up the slope towards her tower. But Aoz Roon ran forward and caught up with her.

  "Are you going to leave me with no satisfaction, Shay Tal, after making me say all those silly things?" His manner was meek again, almost sly, as he added, "And what would you do if I were ruler here, Lord of Embruddock? It's not impossible. You'd have to be my woman then."

  In the way she looked at him, he saw why he pursued her; just momentarily, he felt to the essence of her as she said softly, "So that's how you dream, Aoz Roon? Well, knowledge and wisdom are another kind of dream, and we are fated each to pursue his own dream separately. I love you too, but no more than you do I want anyone to have power over me."

  He was silent. She knew he found her remark hard to accept – or thought he did; but he was pursuing another line of reasoning, and said, with a hard glance, "But you hate Nahkri, don't you?"

  "He doesn't interfere with me."

  "Ah, but he does with me."

  As usual when the hunt returned, a feast was held, with drinking and eating into the night. In addition to the customary rathel, newly fermented by the brewers corps, there was dark barley wine. Songs were sung, jigs danced, as the liquors took hold. When the intoxication was at its height, most men were drinking in the big tower, which commanded a view down the main street. The ground floor had been cleared, and a fire burned there, sending its smoke curling against the metal-lined rafters. Aoz Roon remained moody, and broke away from the singing. Laintal Ay watched him go, but was too busy pursuing Oyre to pursue her father. Aoz Roon climbed the stairs, through the various levels, to emerge on the roof and gulp the cool of the air.

  Dathka, who had no talent for music, followed him into the darkness. As usual, Dathka did not speak. He stood with his hands in his armpits, staring out at the vague looming shapes of night. A curtain of dull green fire hung in the sky overhead, its folds shading into the stratosphere.

  Aoz Roon fell back with a great roar. Dathka grasped him and steadied him, but the older man fought him away.

  "What ails you? Drunk, are you?"

  "There!" Aoz Roon pointed into the vacant dark. "She's gone now, damn her. A woman with the head of a pig. Eddre, the look in her eyes!"

  "Ah, you're seeing things. You're drunk."

  Aoz Roon turned angrily. "Don't you call me drunk, you shrimp! I saw her, I tell you. Naked, tall, thin-shanked, hair from slit to chin, fourteen dugs – coming towards me." He ran about the roof, waving his arms.

  Klils appeared through the trapdoor, staggering slightly, holding a femur of deer on which he was gnawing. "You two have no business up here. This is the Big Tower. Those who rule Oldorando come here."

  "You scumble," Aoz Roon said approaching. "You dropped the axe."

  Klils coshed him savagely on the side of the neck with the deer bone. With a roar, Aoz Roon grasped Klils by the throat and tried to throttle him. But Klils kicked his ankle, pummelled him under the heart, and drove him back against the parapet surrounding the roof, part of which crumbled and fell away. Aoz Roon sprawled with his head hanging over into space.

  "Dathka!" he called. "Help me!"

  Silently, Dathka came up behind Klils, took him with a firm grasp about the knees, and lifted his legs. He swung the man's body, angling it across the wall, and over the seven-floor drop.

  "No, no!" cried Klils, fighting furiously, locking his arms about Aoz Roon's neck. The three men struggled in the green dark, accompanied by the sound of singing from below, two of them – both befuddled by rathel – against the willowy Klils. Eventually they had him, prizing away his grip on life. With a last cry, he fell free. They heard his body strike the ground below.

  Aoz Roon and Dathka sat gasping on the parapet. "We got rid of him," Aoz Roon said finally. He hugged his ribs in pain. "I'm grateful, Dathka."

  Dathka answered nothing.

  At last, Aoz Roon said, "They'll kill us for this, the scumble. Nahkri will see to it they kill us. People hate me already." After another wait, he burst out angrily, "It was all that fool Klils' fault. He attacked me. It was his fault."

  Unable to endure the silence, Aoz Roon jumped up and paced about the roof, muttering to himself. He snatched up the gnawed femur and flung it far out into the gloom.

  Turning on the impassive Dathka, he said, "Look, go down and speak to Oyre. She'll do what I say. Get her to lead Nahkri up here. He'd wear a pig's nose if she suggested it – I've been watching the way that scumb's eyes go to her."

  Shrugging his shoulders, saying nothing, Dathka left. Oyre was currently working in Nahkri's household, much to Laintal Ay's disgust; being well-favoured, she had an easier time of it than other women.

  After Aoz Roon had hugged himself and shivered and paced the roof and projected oaths into the darkness, Dathka returned.

  "She's bringing him," he said shortly. "But it's ill-advised, whatever you have in mind. I'll have no part in it."

  "Keep quiet." It was the first time anyone had ever given Dathka that order. He slouched back in deepest shadow when figures started climbing through the trapdoor – three figures, the first of them being Oyre. After her came Nahkri, mug of drink in hand, then Laintal Ay, who had decided to stay close to Oyre. He looked angry, and his expression did not soften when he looked at Aoz Roon. The latter scowled back.

  "You stay downstairs, Laintal Ay. You need not be involved in this," said Aoz Roon harshly.

  "Oyre's here," replied Laintal Ay, as if that was sufficient, not budging.

  "He's looking after me, Father," said Oyre. Aoz Roon brushed her aside and confronted Nahkri, saying, "Now, you and I have always had a quarrel, Nahkri. prepare to fight it out with me directly, man to man."

  "Get off my roof," ordered Nahkri. "I will not have you here. Below's where you belong."

  "Prepare to fight."

  "You were ever insolent, Aoz Roon, and you dare to speak up again after your failure in the hunt. You've drunk too much pig's counsel." Nahkri's voice was thick from wine and rathel.

  "I dare and I dare and I do," cried Aoz Roon, and he flung himself at Nahkri.

  Nahkri threw the mug in his face. Both Oyre and Laintal Ay took Aoz Roon by the arms, but he shook himself free, and hit Nahkri across the face.

  Nahkri fell, rolled over, and brought a dagger from his belt. The only light to be had was a glow coming up from a fat wick burning on the floor below. It glinted on the blade. The green folds in the sky lent nothing more than a tincture to human affairs. Aoz Roon kicked at the knife, missed, and fell heavily on Nahkri, winding him. Groaning, Nahkri began to vomit, making
Aoz Roon roll away from him. Both men picked themselves up, panting.

  "Give it up, both of you!" cried Oyre, clinging to her father again.

  "What's the quarrel?" Laintal Ay asked. "You provoked him over nothing, Aoz Roon. The right's on his side, fool though he is."

  "You keep quiet if you want my daughter," roared Aoz Roon, and charged. Nahkri, still gasping for breath, had no defence. He had lost the dagger. Under a rain of blows, he was carried to the edge of the parapet. Oyre screamed. He tottered there for a moment, then his knees buckled. Then he was gone.

  They all heard him strike the ground at the foot of the tower. They stood frozen, guiltily regarding one another. Drunken singing came up to them from inside the building.

  "When I were all befuddock

  A-going to Embruddock,

  I saw a pig a-doing a jig,

  And fell down on me buddock…"

  Aoz Roon hung over the edge of the parapet. "That's done for you, I imagine, Lord Nahkri," he said in a sober voice. He clutched his ribs and panted. He turned to survey them, marking each with his wild eye.

  Laintal Ay and Oyre clung silently together. Oyre sobbed.

  Dathka came forward and said to them in a hollow voice, "You'll keep silent about this, Laintal Ay, and you, Oyre, if you care for your lives – you've seen how easily life's lost. I shall give out that I witnessed Nahkri and Klils arguing. They fought, and went over the edge together. We could not stop them. Remember my words, see the scene. Keep silent. Aoz Roon will be Lord of Embruddock and Oldorando."

  "I will, and I'll rule better than those fools did," said Aoz Roon, staggering.

  "You see you do," said Dathka quietly, "for we three here know the truth about this double murder. Remember we had no part in it: this was your doing, all of it. Treat us accordingly."

  •••

  The years in Oldorando under the lordship of Aoz Roon were to pass much as they had under previous leaders; life has a quality rulers cannot touch. Only the weather became more freakish. But that, like many other things, was beyond the control of any lord.

  The temperature gradients in the stratosphere altered, the troposphere warmed, ground temperatures began to climb. Lashing rains fell for weeks at a time. Snow disappeared from lowlands in tropical zones. Glaciers withdrew to higher ground. The earth turned green. Tall plants sprang up. Birds and animals never seen before came bounding over or past the stockades of the ancient hamlet. All patterns of life were reforming themselves. Nothing was as it had been.

  To many older people, these changes were unwelcome. They recalled untrammelled vistas of snow from their youth. The middle-aged welcomed the changes, but shook their heads and said that it was too good to last. The young had never known anything different. Life burned in them as in the air. They had a greater variety of things to eat; they produced more children; and fewer of those children died.

  As for the two sentinels, Batalix appeared the same as ever. But every week, every day, every hour, Freyr was growing brighter, hotter.

  Set amid this drama of climate was the human drama, which every living soul must play out, to his own satisfaction or disappointment. To most people, this weaving of minute circumstance was of the utmost importance, each seeing himself the centre of the stage. All over the great globe Helliconia, wherever small groups of men and women struggled to live, this was so.

  And the Earth Observation Station recorded everything.

  •••

  When be became Lord of Oldorando, Aoz Roon lost his lighthearted manner. He grew morose, for a while shunning even the witnesses and accomplices to his crime. Even those who maintained some access to him did not perceive how much his self-imposed isolation owed to ceaseless fermentation of guilt; people do not trouble to understand one another. Tabus against murder were strong; in a small community where all were related, even if distantly, and where the loss of even one able-bodied person was felt, consciousness was so precious that the dead themselves were not allowed to depart utterly from their fellows.

  It happened that neither Klils nor Nahkri had children by their women, so that only their women were left to communicate with their men's gossies. Both reported from the spirit world only raging anger. The anger of gossies is painful to endure, for it can never be relieved. The anger was attributed to a fury the brothers would naturally feel at an outburst of drunken fratricidal madness; the women were excused further communication. The brothers and their hideous end ceased to be a common topic of conversation. The secret of the murder was kept for the present.

  But Aoz Roon never forgot. On the dawn of the day after the killing, he had risen wearily and rinsed his face in icy water. The chill merely reinforced a fever he had been suppressing. His whole body raged with a pain that seemed to lumber from organ to organ.

  Shivering with an anguish he dared not communicate to his companions, he hurried from his tower, his hound Curd by his side. He got himself into the lane where, in the phantasmal mists of first light, only swathed bodies of women were to be seen, moving slowly to work. Avoiding them, Aoz Roon stumbled towards the north gate. He had to pass by the big tower. Before he knew it, he was confronting the broken body of Nahkri, sprawled at his feet, its eyes still open in terror. He found the ugly corpse of Klils, lying on the opposite side of the tower base. The bodies had not yet been discovered or the alarm given. Curd whimpered and jumped back and forth over Klils' sodden body.

  A thought pierced his daze. Nobody would believe that the brothers had killed each other if they were found lying on different sides of the tower. He grasped Klils' arm and tried to move the body. The corpse was stiff, and immobile as if it had rooted itself in the ground. He was forced to bend down, thrusting his face almost in the wet rotted hair, to pick up the body under its arms. He heaved again. Something had happened to his great careless strength. Klils would not move. Gasping, whimpering he went to the other end and tugged at the legs. Geese honked distantly, mocking his efforts.

  At last he shifted the corpse. Klils had fallen face downwards, and his hands and one side of his face had frozen to the mud. Now they broke away, and the body bumped over the dead ground. He dumped it by its brother, an unmoving, meaningless thing which he tried to wipe from his mental vision. Then he ran for the north gate.

  A number of ruinous towers stood beyond the barricades, often surrounded by – or indeed ruined by – the rajabarals that loomed above their remains. In one of these monuments to time, overlooking an icy stretch of the Voral, he found refuge. A littered room on the second floor was intact. Although the wooden stairs had disappeared long ago, he was able to scramble up a pile of rubble and pull himself through into the stone chamber. He stood panting, resting one hand against the wall for support. Then he took his dagger and commenced frantically to cut himself free from his skins.

  A bear had died in the mountains, to clothe Aoz Roon. No one else wore a similar black fur. He ripped it off heedlessly.

  At last he stood naked. Even to himself, the sight was shaming. Nudity had no part in the culture. The hound sat and panted, and watched, and whimpered.

  His body, with its hollow belly and marked muscle, was consumed with the flamelike pattern of a rash. The tongues lapped him all over. From his knees to his throat, he burned.

  Clutching his penis in misery, he ran about the room, crying in many kinds of pain.

  To Aoz Roon, the fire on his body was an imprimatur of guilt. Murder! Here was the effect; his dark mind leaped to the cause. Never for one moment did he cast his memory back to the incidents of the hunt, when he had been in close contact with the great white phagor. Never could he reflect that the lice which afflicted that shaggy species had transferred themselves to his body. He was without the knowledge to make such connections.

  •••

  The Earth Observation Station rode overhead, observing.

  Aboard it were instruments that enabled the observers to learn things about the planet beneath them that the inhabitants did not know. They compreh
ended the life cycle of the tick that had adapted itself to parasitism on both phagor and humanity. They had analysed the composition of the andesitic crust of Helliconia. From the smallest to the greatest, artifacts were there to be collected, analysed, and signalled back to Earth. It was as if Helliconia could be dismantled, atom by atom, and despatched to an alien destination across the galaxy. Certainly, it was in a sense being recreated on Earth, in encyclopaedias and Eductainment media.

  When, from the Avernus, the two suns were seen to rise in the east above the shoulders of the Nktryhk Range, some of whose peaks towered into the stratosphere, and glory and shadow burst from them, penetrating the depths of the atmosphere with mystery, there were romantics aboard the station who forgot their facts and longed to be part of the rude activities taking place down on the bed of the ocean of air.

  •••

  Grumbling and cursing, wrapped figures made their way through the murk to the big tower. A chill wind raged from the east, whistling between the ancient towers, slamming into their faces and conjuring rime on their bearded lips. Seven o'clock of a spring evening, and blackest night.

  Once they got inside the tower, they jammed the rickety wooden door behind them, straightened up, and exclaimed. Then they mounted the stone steps that led to Aoz Roon's room. This room was warmed by the hot water flowing through the stone pipes in the basement. Upper rooms towards the top of the tower, where Aoz Roon's slaves and some of his hunters slept, were farther from the heat source, and consequently colder. But tonight the wind, squirrelling in through a thousand cracks, made everything icy.

  Aoz Roon was holding his first council as Lord of Oldorando.