Helliconia Winter

by neetha Napew

  Only when he was outside, as Besi closed the gate after him, did Odim display emotion. There, pasted to his wall, were two posters. He made a convulsive clutch at his beard.

  The first poster warned that the plague was threatening the lives of the citizens of Uskutoshk. The plague was particularly active in ports, and most especially in the renowned and ancient city of Koriantura. Citizens were warned that public meetings were henceforth banned. More than four people gathering together in public places would be subject to severe punishment.

  Further regulations designed to restrict the spread of the fat death would be introduced shortly. By order of the Oligarch.

  Odim read this notice through twice, very seriously. Then he turned to the second poster.

  The restrictions of persons in abodes act. After several clauses in obscurantist language, a bolder clause stood out:

  these limitations as regards houses, demesnes, lodgings, rooms, and other Dwellings apply in particular to any household where the Householder is not of Uskuti blood. Such Persons are shown to be particularly liable to conduct the Spread of the Plague. Their numbers will henceforth be limited to One Person per Two Square Metres floorspace. By order of the Oligarch.

  The announcement was not unexpected. It was aimed at doing away with the more bohemian quarters of the city, where the Oligarchy found no favour. Odim's friends on the local council had warned him of its coming.

  Once more, the Uskuti were demonstrating their racial prejudices - prejudices of which the Oligarchy was quick to take advantage. Phagors had been banned from walking untended in Sibornalese cities long ago.

  It made no difference that Odim and his forebears had lived in this city for centuries. The Restrictions of Persons in Abodes Act rendered it impossible for him to protect his family any longer.

  Looking quickly about him, Odim tore the poster from the wall, screwed it up, and thrust it under his suede coat.

  This action alarmed Besi almost as much as the captain's oath had done the previous evening. She had never seen Odim step outside the law before. His unswerving obedience to what was legal was well-known. She gasped and stared at him with her mouth open.

  "The winter is coming," was all he said. His face was drawn into bitter lines.

  "Take my arm, girl," he said huskily. "We shall have to do something ..."

  The fog rendered the quayside a place of beauty where a copse of swaying masts floated in the sepia glow. The sea lay entranced. Even the customary slap of rigging against mast was silent.

  Odim wasted no time admiring the view, turning in at the substantial arcade above which a sign bore the words; Odim Finest Export Porcelains. Besi followed him past bowing clerks into his inner sanctum.

  Odim stopped abruptly.

  His office had been invaded. An army officer stood there, warming himself before the lignite fire and picking his teeth with a match. Two armed private soldiers stood close, their faces impervious in usual bodyguard fashion.

  By way of greeting, the major spat the match on the floor and tucked his hands behind his back. He was a tall man in a lumpy coat. He had grey in his hair and a lumpish protruding mouth, as if his teeth, imbued with true military spirit, were waiting to burst through his lips and bite a civilian.

  "What can I do for you?" asked Odim.

  Without answering the question, the major announced himself in a way that exercised his teeth prominently.

  "I am Major Gardeterark of the Oligarch's First Guard. Well-known, not liked. From you I will have a list of all times of sailing for ships in which you have an interest. Today and coming week." He spoke in a deep voice, giving each syllable an equal weight, as if words were feet to be firmly planted on a long march.

  "I can do that, yes. Will you sit and take some tea?"

  The major's teeth moved a little further forward.

  "I want that list, nothing else."

  "Certainly, sir. Please make yourself comfortable while I get my chief clerk-"

  "I am comfortable. Don't delay me. I have waited six minutes for your arrival as it is. The list."

  Whatever its disadvantages, the northern continent of Sibornal had reserves of minerals and seams of lignite unmatched elsewhere. It also boasted a variety of clays.

  Both china and glass drinking vessels had been in regular use in Koriantura while the little lords of the Savage Continent were still quaffing their rathel from wooden bowls. As early as the spring of the Great Year, potteries as far afield as Carcampan and Uskutoshk were producing porcelains fired in lignite-fuelled kilns at temperatures of 1400° C. Through the centuries, these fine wares were increasingly sought after and collected.

  Eedap Mun Odim took little part in porcelain manufacture, though there were auxiliary kilns on his premises. He exported fine china. He exported the local, prized Korianturan porcelain to Shivenink and Bribahr, but mainly to ports in Campannlat, where, as a man of Kuj-Juveci descent, he was more welcome than his Sibornalese competitors. He did not own the ships which carried his wares. He made his business from the entrepreneurial trade, and from banking and financing; he even lent money to his rivals and made a profit.

  Most of his wealth came from the Savage Continent, from ports along its northern coastline, from Vaynnwosh, Dorrdal, Dowwel, and from even farther afield, Powachet and Popevin, where his competitors would not trade. It was precisely this adventurous element of Odim's business which made his hand tremble slightly as he handed his sailing timetable over to the major. He knew without being told that foreign names would be bad for the soldier's liver.

  The gaze of the major, as brown and foggy as the air outside, travelled down the printed page.

  "Your trade goes mainly to alien ports," he said at last, in the leathery voice. "Those ports are all thick with the plague. Our great Oligarch, whom the Azoiaxic preserve, fights to save his peoples from the plague, which has its source in the Savage Continent. There will be no more sailings for any Campannlat port from now on."

  "No more sailings? But you can't-"

  "I can, and I say no more sailings. Until further notice."

  "But my trade, my business, good sir..."

  "Lives of women and children are more important than your trade. You are a foreigner, aren't you?"

  "No. I am not a foreigner. I and my family have lived in Uskutoshk for three generations."

  "You're no Uskutoshi. Your looks, your name, tell me that."

  "Sir! I am Kuj-Juveci only by distant origins."

  "From today, this city is under military law. You obey orders, understand? If you don't, if one of your cargoes leaves this port for foreign parts, you are liable to be tried by military court and sentenced..."

  The major let the words hang in the air before adding two further words in his best leather: "...to death."

  "It will mean ruin to me and my family," Odim said, trying to wrench a smile out of himself.

  The major beckoned to one of the privates, who produced a document from his tunic.

  The major flung it on the table.

  "It's all down there. Sign it to prove you've understood." He let his teeth air while Odim blindly signed, before adding, "Yes, as a foreigner, you report every morning in future to my under officer in charge of this whole area. He has just established an office in the warehouse next door, so you've not far to go."

  "Sir, let me repeat, I am not a foreigner. I was born round the corner. I am chairman of the local trades committee. Ask them."

  As he made a supplicatory gesture, the wadded-up poster fell from under his coat. Besi stepped forward and put it carefully on the fire. The major ignored her, as he had all along. He merely stuck his tongue between teeth and upper lip, as if considering Odim's impertinence, and then said, "You report every morning in future to my under officer, as I just said. He's Captain Fashnalgid and he is next door." At the mention of this name, Besi leant over the fire. It must have been the flames from the burning poster which caused a brief ruddiness in her cheeks.

  When M
ajor Gardeterark and his escort had left, Odim shut the door into the packinghouse and sat down by the fire. Very slowly he leaned forward, picked a chewed match from the carpet, and tossed it to the back of the grate. Besi knelt beside him and held his hand. Neither spoke for a long while.

  At last Odim said, with an attempt at brightness, "Well, my dear little Besi, we are in difficulty. How can we meet it? Where can we all live? Here, possibly. Perhaps we could do away with that kiln we scarcely use and house some relations in there. The room could be made nice... But if I am not allowed to trade, then... well, ruin faces us all. They know that, the scoundrels. These Uskuti would have us all for slaves..."

  "Wasn't he horrible, that man? His eyes, his teeth... like a crab."

  Odim sat up in his chair and clicked his fingers. "One stroke of luck, though. First, we start work with this Fashnalgid in the next warehouse. By good fortune, that very captain is at present billeted with me - you may have caught a glimpse of him. He reads books and perhaps he's civilised. And my wife feeds him well. Perhaps we could persuade him to help us."

  He lifted up Besi's chin so that she was forced to look him in the eye.

  "Always something can be done, my chick. Go round to this nice Captain Fashnalgid and invite him here. Say I have a present for him. He'll bend the regulations for us, for sure. And, Besi... he's as ugly as a mountain devil, but never mind. Very very sweet to him, eh, chick? As sweet as you can be, and that's very sweet. Even a little tempting - you know? Even if you have to go to the limit. Our lives depend on such things..."

  He tapped his long nose and smiled coaxingly.

  "Run along, my dove. And remember - stop at nothing to win him over."

  IV

  AN ARMY CAREER

  The Restrictions of Persons in Abodes Act met with the mixed reception customary for proclamations from the Oligarchy. In the more privileged sectors of the city people nodded their heads and said, "How wise - what a good idea." Nearer the docks, they exclaimed, "So that's what the biwackers are up to now!"

  Eedap Mun Odim gave no overt expression to his dismay when he returned to his crowded five-storey home. He knew that the police would call soon enough to inform him that he was contravening the new law.

  That night, he patted his children, settled his modest anatomy beside the slumbrous bulk of his wife, and prepared his mind for pauk. He had said nothing to his spouse, knowing that her display of anguish, her tears, her undoubted rushing from one end of the room to the other, kissing her three children with huge hydropic kisses en route, would do nothing to resolve the problem. As her breath became as regular as a balmy breeze over the autumn valleys of Kuj-Juvec, Odim gathered together his inner resources and underwent that small death which forms the entrance gate to pauk.

  For the poor, the troubled, the persecuted, there was always that refuge: the trance state of pauk. In pauk lay communication with those of the family whose life on earth was ended. Neither State nor Church had jurisdiction over the region of the dead. That vast dimension of death placed no restriction on persons; nor did God the Azoiaxic prevail there. Only gossies and the more remote fessups existed in orderly oblivion, sinking towards the unrisen sun of the Original Beholder, she who took to her bosom all who lived.

  Like a feather, the tremulous soul of Eedap Mun Odim sank down, to hold what intercourse it might with the gossie of its father, recently departed the world above.

  The father now resembled a kind of ill-made gilt cage. It was difficult to see it through the obsidian of nonexistence, but Odim's soul made its obeisances, and the gossie twinkled a little in response. Odim poured out his troubles.

  The gossie listened, expressing consolation in little dreadful gasps of bright dust. It in its turn communed with the guttering ranks of ancestors below it. Finally it uttered advice to Odim.

  "Gentle and beloved son, your forebears honour you for your tender duty towards our family. Family must rely upon family, since governments do not comprehend families. Your good brother Odirin Nan lives distantly from you, but he, like you, shares an abiding fondness for our poor people. Go to him. Go to Odirin Nan."

  The voiceless voice sank away in an eddy. To which Odim faintly responded that he loved his brother Odirin Nan, but that brother lived in far Shivenink; might it not be better instead to cross the mountains and return to a remote branch of the family which still lived in the vales of Kuj-Juvec?

  "These here with me who still can make voice advise no return to Kuj-Juvec. The way over the mountains becomes more hazardous every month, as new arrivals here report." The tenuous framework guttered even as it spoke. "Also, the valleys are becoming stonier, and the cattle herds grow thin of flank. Sail westwards to your brother, beloved one, most dutiful of young men. Be advised."

  "Father, to hear the melody of your voice is to obey its music."

  With tender expressions on either side, the soul of Odim drifted upwards through obsidian, like an ember through a starry void. The ranks of past generations were lost to view. Then came the pain of finding a feeble human body lying inert on a mattress, and seeking entry to it.

  Odim returned to his mortal body, weakened by the excursion but strengthened by the wisdom of his father. Beside him, his ample wife breathed on, undistressed in her sleep. He put an arm about her and snuggled into her warmth, like a child against its mother.

  There were those - lovers of secrecy - who rose almost at the time that Odim was settling to sleep. There were those - lovers of night - who liked to be about before dawn, in order to get ahead of their fellow men. There were those - lovers of chill - whose constitutions were such that they found satisfaction in the small hours when human resistance is at its lowest.

  At the chime of three in the morning, Major Gardeterark stood in his leather trousers, keeping a watchful eye on his reflection in the mirror while he shaved.

  Major Gardeterark would have no nonsense with pauk. He regarded himself as a rationalist. Rationalism was his creed, and his family's. He had no belief in the Azoiaxic - Church Parade was a different matter - and less than a belief in pauk. It would never occur to the major that his thinking had confined him to an umwelt of living obsidian, through which no light shone.

  At present, with each stroke of his cut-throat razor, he contemplated how to make miserable the lives of the inhabitants of Koriantura, as well as the existence of his under officer, Captain Harbin Fashnalgid. Gardeterark believed he had rational family reasons for hating Fashnalgid, over and above the motive of the latter's inefficiency. And he was a rational man.

  A great king had once ruled in Sibornal, before the last Weyr-Winter. His name had come down as King Denniss. King Denniss's court had been held in Old Askitosh, and his retreat had been in the mighty edifices now known as the Autumn Palaces. So legend had it.

  To his court, King Dennis had summoned learned men from all quarters of the globe. The great king had fought for Sibornal's survival through the grim centuries of Weyr-Winter, and had launched an invasion force across the seas to attack Pannoval.

  The king's scholars had compiled catalogues and encyclopaedias. Everything that lived had been named, listed, categorised. Only the slow-pulsed world of the dead had been excluded, in deference to the Church of the Formidable Peace.

  A long period of confusion followed the death of King Denniss. The winter came. Then the great families of the seven Sibornalese nations had joined together to form an Oligarchy, in an attempt to rule the continent on rational and scientific lines, as proposed by King Denniss. They had sent learned men abroad to enlighten the natives of Campannlat, even as far afield as the old cultural centre of Keevasien, in the southwest of Borlien.

  The autumn of the present Great Year had witnessed one of the most enlightened of the Oligarchy's decrees. The Oligarchy had altered the Sibornalese calendar. Previously, Sibornalese nations, with the exception of backwaters like Upper Hazziz, had adhered to a "so many years after the coronation of Denniss" formula. The Oligarchy abolished such prescriptions
.

  Henceforth, the small years were numbered as the astronomers directed, in precedence following the small year in which Helliconia and its feebler luminary, Batalix, were most distant from Freyr: in other words, the year of apastron.

  There were 1825 small years, each of 480 days, in a Great Year. The present year, the year of Asperamanka's incursion into Chalce, was 1308 After Apastron. Under this astronomical system, nobody could forget where they stood with regard to the seasons. It was a rational arrangement.

  And Major Gardeterark rationally finished shaving, dried his face, and commenced in a rational way to brush his formidable teeth, allowing so many strokes for each tooth in front, so many for each behind.

  The innovation of the calendar alarmed the peasantry. But the Oligarchy knew what it was doing. It became secretive; it amassed secrets. It deployed its agents everywhere. Throughout the autumn it developed a secret police force to watch over its interests. Its leader, the Oligarch, gradually became a secret person, a figment, a dark legend hovering over Askitosh, whereas - or so the stories said - King Denniss had been loved by his people and seen everywhere.

  All the acts and edicts promulgated by the Oligarchy were backed by rational argument. Rationality was a cruel philosophy when practised by the likes of Gardeterark. Rationality gave him good reason for bullying people. He drank to rationality every evening in the mess, sinking his huge teeth deep over the rim of his glass as the liquor ran down his throat.

  Now, having finished his toilet, he allowed his servant to help him into his boots and greatcoat. Rationally clad, he went out into the frosty predawn streets.

  His under officer, Captain Harbin Fashnalgid, was not rational, but he drank.

  Fashnalgid's drinking had begun as an amiable social habit, indulged in with other young subalterns. As Fashnalgid's hatred of the Oligarch grew, so did his need for drink. Sometimes, the habit got out of hand.