Helliconia Summer

X Billy Changes Custody

Whether Akhanaba or the ‘crazed geometries’ were in charge of events in Matrassyl—whether those events were pre-ordained or the result of blind happenstance—whether free will or determinism determined—the fact was that the next twenty-five hours were miserable ones for Billy Xiao Pin. All the bright colours he had experienced in his early hours on Helliconia had faded. Nightmare took over.

On that winter’s day in the Great Summer when Chancellor SartoriIrvrash interrogated Billy and did not listen properly, there was a period of night of almost five hours’ duration when neither Freyr nor Batalix was in the sky.

YarapRombry’s Comet could be seen low on the northern horizon. Then it was swallowed by a freak fog. The thordotter did not blow, as expected, but sent fog in its stead.

The fog arrived the way the queen left, by river. It made itself felt first as a cold shiver down the naked spines of wharfmen, ferrymen, and others whose livelihood lay along the confluences of the Valvoral and the Takissa.

Some of those watermen, going home, took the insidious element with them into the houses which lined the poor streets behind the docks—and made them the poorer for it. Wives, peering out as they dragged shutters across windows, saw godowns dissolve into a universal sepia puddle.

The puddle rose higher, brimming over the cliffs, as cunning as ill health, and penetrated the castle walls.

There, soldiers in their thin uniforms, shaggy-coated phagors, stirred the infection after them as they patrolled, coughed into it, became devoured by it. The palace itself did not long resist the invasion, but took on the aspects of a ghost of a palace. Through the empty rooms where Queen MyrdemInggala had lived, the fog went mournfully without a sound.

The marauder also found entry to the world under the hill. It snuffled amid that nest of gongs and exclamations and prayers and prostrations and processions and suppressions where holiness was manufactured; there, its uncanny breath mingled easily with the exhalations of vigils and congregations and created purple haloes about devotional candles, as if here, and here alone, it found a kindred place where it was welcome. It coiled along floors among bare feet, and found out the secret places of the mountain.

To those secret places, Billy Xiao Pin was being escorted.

He rested his head wearily on his table once SartoriIrvrash had left him, letting tired thoughts run riot through his head. When he tried consciously to check on them, the thoughts were gone like criminals over a wall. Had he once described Helliconia as a ‘form of argument’? Well, there was no arguing with the reality. He recalled all his glib debates about reality with his Advisor, back on the Avernus. Now he had a dose of reality, and it would kill him.

The criminal thoughts crept into action again, to be checked when the doglike Lex placed a bowl of food before him.

“Do eating,” the ancipital commanded, as Billy looked mistily up at him.

The food was a porridge into which highly coloured fruit had been chopped. He took up a silver spoon and began to eat. The taste was insipid. After a few spoonfuls, drowsiness overcame him. He pushed the bowl away, groaning, and lay his head on the table again. Flies settled on the food, and on his undefended cheek.

Lex went to the wall opposite to the one by which he and the chancellor habitually entered, and tapped on one of the wooden panels. A countertap answered, to which he responded with two wide-spaced answering taps. A section of panelling opened into the room, scattering dust.

A female ancipital entered the cell, moving with the gliding movement of her kind. Without hesitation, she and Lex lifted the paralysed Billy and carried him into the narrow passage now revealed. She closed and bolted the panel door behind him.

The palace contained neglected passages in plenty; this one, in its unfinished state, gave every appearance of having been neglected for centuries. The two great ahumans filled it.

Phagor slaves were as common about Matrassyl Palace as phagor soldiers. When employed as stone masons, for which work they had a rough aptitude, they had walled in a retroversion in the great walls, roofed it over, and utilized it as one of their own convenient ways about the building.

Billy, in a state of paralysis, but still conscious, found himself being carried down stairs that went back and forth as if forever denied an exit. His head dangled over the gillot’s shoulder, knocking against her shoulderblade at every step.

At ground level, they paused. Damp hung in the air. Somewhere out of his sight, a torch smouldered. Hinges squeaked. He was being lowered down into the earth through a trapdoor. His terror could escape only in the faintest sigh.

The torch appeared as his head fell back, to be eclipsed by a shaggy head. He was somewhere underground and three-fingered hands were clutching him. Mauve and red pupils glowed in the gloom. Sickly smells and shuffling sounds surrounded him. A trapdoor slammed, its echoes shuttling away into distance.

His viewpoint showed little more than a monstrous back. Another door, more waiting, more stairs, more insane whispers. He passed out—yet remained aware of jolts of descent which continued for uncounted time.

They were making him walk like a drunken man. His feet were dead. Of course—they had drugged his food. Head rolling to one side, he gathered that they were in a large underground chamber, moving along a wooden walk set near the ceiling. Banners hung from the walk. Below, humans in long garments congregated, barefoot. He recalled their name in a moment: monks. They sat at long tables, where phagors in similar garments served them. Memories returned to Billy Xiao Pin; he recollected the monasteries under the hill where he had bought a waffle. He was being taken through the maze of holy ways carved in the rock beneath JandolAnganol’s palace.

The walking revived him. Two phagors escorted him, both gillots. Probably Lex had returned to do duty for the chancellor, who would now be asleep. He gave a feeble call to the monks below, but nobody heard him in the babble of voices. They left the lighted space.

More corridors. He tried to protest, but the females hustled him on. By his side, a band of carving braided the stone wall. He tried to grip it; his hand was snatched away.

Down again.

Total darkness, smelling of rivers and things unborn.

“Please let me go.” His first words. A gate opened.

He was marched into a different world, an underground ancipital kingdom. The very air was different, its sounds and stinks alien. Water lapped. Proportions were different: archways were wide and low, cavernous. The way was rough and uphill. It was like climbing into a dead mouth.

Nothing in the Avernus had prepared Billy for this adventure. Crowds of phagors were gathering to inspect him, thrusting their cow faces into his. They jostled him before a council of ancipitals, male and female. In niches round the walls were stacked their totems, aged phagors sinking further and further in tether; the oldest totem was like a little black doll, almost entirely composed of keratin. Leading the council was a young kzahhn, Ghht-Yronz Tharl.

Ghht-Yronz Tharl was no more than a creaght. The dense white coat over his shoulders was still red-tipped. His long curving horns were painted with a spiral design, and he kept his head thrust low, with a pugnacious gesture, so as not to scrape the tips of those horns on the roof of the chamber.

As for that chamber itself, though its roof was indeed rough and unfinished, its form was approximately circular. Indeed, the auditorium—if such a term was applicable among such an inhuman audience—was built in the shape of a wheel. Ghht-Yronz Tharl stood stiffly upright, puffing out his chest, at the hub of the wheel.

Stalls for the audience radiated like spokes from the hub. Most of the floor was divided into low stalls. Here members of the council stood motionless, or merely twitching a shoulder or ear. In each stall was a trough and a length of chain stapled into the stonework. Runnels for water or urine were cut in the floor and ran to ditches by the perimeter of the wheel.

The fog seemed to have penetrated here, or else the sickly breath of the ancipital race lent a blue aura to the torches. Taking in what he could of this scene as he was examined by rough hands, Billy saw ramps leading upwards, and others, their entrances unwelcoming, leading even further underground.

A perception came to him: in these caves, at this time, phagors gathered to escape the heat; the time would come when men huddled here, to escape the cold. The phagors would then take over the outside world.

Some kind of order was called, and interrogation began. It was evident that Lex had informed Ghht-Yronz Tharl of the content of Billy’s conversation with SartoriIrvrash.

Sitting by the kzahhn was a middle-aged female human, a shapeless woman in a dress of stammel, who translated a series of questions from the kzahhn into Olonets. The questions concentrated on Billy’s arrival from Freyr—the phagors would hear nothing of Avernus. If this son of Freyr had arrived from otherwhere, then it followed that he came from Freyr, whence, in ancipital eyes, all evil came.

He could hardly understand their questions. Nor could they understand his answers. He had had difficulties with the Borlienese chancellor; here the cultural difference was much wider—he would have said insuperable, except that occasionally he made himself understood. For instance, these nightmarish creatures grasped the point that Helliconia’s time of intensifying heat would pass in three or four human lifetimes, to be replaced by a long continued slide towards winter.

At this juncture, the questioning broke off, and the kzahhn sank into a trance in order to communicate with the ancestors of his component present. A human slave brought Billy flavoured water to drink. He begged to be allowed back to the palace, but in a short while his questioning was resumed.

It was curious that the phagors grasped what SartoriIrvrash could not, that Billy had travelled through space, though the Native Ancipital phrase for ‘space’ was an almost untranslatable conglomerate, meaning ‘immeasurable pathway of air-turns and great year procedures’. More briefly, they sometimes spoke of it as ‘Aganip pathway’.

They examined his watch without touching it. He was pushed from one to another of the audience, along the spokes of the council wheel, so that all could see it. His explanation that the three dials showed time on Earth, Helliconia and Avernus meant nothing to them. Like the phagors he had met outside Matrassyl, they made no attempt to take the instrument and soon reverted to other topics.

His eyes streamed, his nose ran—he had an allergy to their dense coats against which he had been forced to brush.

Between sneezes, Billy told them all he knew about the situation on Helliconia. His fear drove him to reveal everything. When they heard something they could absorb, or that interested them especially, the kzahhn would pass on the information to his keratinous ancestor, either for storage or information, Billy was not sure which—phagors had not come within his discipline on the Avernus.

Did they tell him at some point, when he laboured unnecessarily to explain how seasons came and went, that the monastic caverns in the hills were occupied at some seasons by phagors, at others by Sons of Freyr? Once, in a different existence, he had boasted that Avernus held too little otherness for him; now, in a mist of otherness, the curious line of language weaved between Hurdhu, Native, and Eotemporal, between scientific and figurative.

Like a child finding that animals can talk, Billy listened as they spoke to him. “Possibility for revenge against Sons of Freyr at inharmonious season-of-Great-Year has no being. Surviving alone must have all our duty. Watchfulness fills our harneys. All time exists till Freyr-death. Kzahhn JandolAnganol has protective arm for ancipital’s survival in lands of his component. Therefore, the order is for our legions to make formation in a reinforcement of Kzahhn JandolAnganol. Such is our present law of inharmonious season. Carefulness is what you Billy must take not to make a further torment for this kzahhn of weakness named JandolAnganol. Hast comprehension?”

With the noun-freighted sentences whirling in his head, he tried to declare his innocence. But questions of guilt, or freedom from it, were outside their umwelt. As he spoke, bafflement reinforced the hostility in the air.

Behind their hostility was fear of a kind, an impersonal fear. They saw JandolAnganol as weak, and they feared that when the alliance with Oldorando was sealed by dynastic marriage, their kind might become as subject to persecution in Borlien as in Oldorando. Their hatred of Oldorando was clear and, in particular, their hatred for its capital, which they called by the Eotemporal name of Hrrm-Bhhrd Ydohk.

While ancipital affairs were a mystery—a blank—to mankind, the ancipitals had a good grasp of mankind’s affairs. Such was mankind’s arrogant contempt of them that phagors were often present, though ignored, at the most delicate discussions of state. Thus the humblest runt could act effectively as a spy.

Confronting their stolid forms, Billy thought they intended to hold him to ransom, to influence the king against his new marriage; feebly he tried to convey that the king did not even know of his existence.

As soon as the words had left him, he saw that he had put himself in another danger. They might keep him here, in a worse prison than his previous one, if they realized that his presence in the palace was a secret. But the shaggy council was pursuing another line of thought, reverting once more to the question of Batalix’s capture by Freyr, an event which seemed of obsessive importance to them.

If not from Freyr, then was he from T’Sehn-Hrr? This question he could not understand. By T’Sehn-Hrr, did they mean the Avernus, Kaidaw? Evidently not. They tried to explain, he tried. T’Sehn-Hrr remained a mystery. He was one with the keratinous figures propped against the wall, doomed to say the same things many times, in an ever decreasing voice. Talking to phagors was like trying to wrestle with eternity.

The council passed him among them, pressing him here, turning him there. Again they were interested in looking at the three-faced watch on his wrist. Its writhing figures fascinated them. But they made no efforts to remove or even touch it, as if they sensed in it a destructive force.

Billy was still seeking for words when he realized that the kzahhn and his council were departing. Clouds gathered in his head again. He found himself staggering into a familiar chair, let his forehead rest on a familiar table. The gillots had returned him to his cell. A pale shrouded dawn was at hand.

Lex was there, without horns, emasculated and almost faithful.

“Steps are necessity to bed for a sleep-period,” he advised.

Billy started to weep. Weeping, he slept.

The fog reached far and wide and took a turn up the River Valvoral to view the jungles embracing either bank. Caring nothing for national frontiers, it penetrated far into Oldorando. There it met, among other river traffic, the Lordryardry Lady heading southeastward to Matrassyl and the distant sea.

With the last of its ice cargo sold profitably in Oldorando, the flat-bottomed boat now bore cargoes for the Borlienese capital or Ottassol: salt; silks; carpets of all descriptions; tapestries; blue gout from Lake Dorzin, boxed with smashed ice; carvings; clocks; with tusks, horns, and furs in variety. The small deck cabins were occupied by merchants who travelled with their goods. One merchant had a parrot, another a new mistress.

The best deck cabin was occupied by the boat’s owner, Krillio Muntras, famous Ice Captain of Dimariam, and his son, Div. Div, who was slack of jaw and, for all his father’s encouragement, would never rival his father’s success in life, sat gazing at the hazily sketched scenery. His bottom was planted on the deck. Occasionally, he spat into the passing water. His father sat solidly in a canvas chair and played on a double-clouth—perhaps with a deliberate sentimentality, for this was his last voyage before retirement. His last last voyage. Muntras matched a pleasant tenor voice to his tune.

The river flows and will not cease, no, No—not for love or life itself, oh…

The passengers roaming the deck included an arang, which was to provide the sailors with their supper. Except for the arang, the passengers were markedly respectful to the ice captain.

Fog curled like steam off the surface of the Valvoral. The water became darker still as they neared the cliffs of Cahchazzerh, whose steep faces overlooked the river. The cliffs, folded like old linen, rose a few hundred feet to be crowned with dense foliage which, in its exuberance, appeared to be lowering itself down the overhanging rock by means of creepers and lianas. Much of the cliff had been colonized by swallows and mourner birds. The latter launched themselves and came to investigate the Lordryardry Lady, wheeling above it with their melancholy shrieks as it prepared to moor.

Cahchazzerh was remarkable for nothing but its situation between cliff and river, and its apparent indifference to the falls of the one or the rise of the other. At the water’s edge, the town consisted of little but a wharf and a few godowns, one of which bore a rusty sign saying lordryardry ice trading co. A road led back to scattered houses and some cultivation on top of the cliffs. The town marked a last stop before Matrassyl on the downstream journey.

As the vessel moored up, a few dockhands bestirred themselves, while near-naked boys—indispensable adjuncts of such places—came running. Muntras put down his musical instrument and stood grandly in the bows, accepting the salutations of the men ashore, every one of whom he knew by name.

The gangplank went down. Everybody aboard disembarked to walk about and buy fruit. Two merchants whose journeys terminated here saw to it that the sailors unloaded their possessions safely. The boys dived for coins in the river.

An incongruous item in this sleepy scene was a table, laid with a gaudy cloth, which stood outside the Lordryardry warehouse, a white-clad waiter in attendance. Behind the table were four musicians who, on the instant of the boat’s side kissing the wharf, gave forth with a lively rendering of ‘What a Man the Master Is!’ This reception was the farewell present of the local staff of the ice company to their boss. There were three staff. They came forward, smiling, although they had been through the performance before, to conduct Captain Krillio and Div to their seats.

One of the three employees was a gangling youth, embarrassed by the whole affair; the other two were white-haired and older than the man they had served so long. The oldsters managed to shed a tear for the occasion, while covertly summing up young Master Div, in order to estimate to what extent their jobs were threatened by the change in command.

Muntras shook each of the trio by the hand and subsided into the waiting chair. He accepted a glass of wine, into which were dropped sparkling fragments of his own ice. He gazed out across the sluggish river. The far bank could scarcely be seen for mist. As a waiter served them little cakes, there was conversation consisting of sentences beginning, “Do you remember when—” and concluding with laughter.

The birds still wheeling overhead masked a sound of shouts and barking. As these noises became more obtrusive, the Ice Captain asked what was happening.

The young man laughed, as the two old men looked uneasy. “It’s a drumble up in the village, Captain.” He jerked a thumb towards the cliffs. “Killing off fuggies.”

“They’re great on drumbles in Oldorando,” Muntras said. “And often enough the priests use the drumbles as an excuse to kill off so-called heretics as well as phagors. Religion! Fgh!”

The men continued with reminiscences of the time when they had all been engaged in building up the inland ice trade, and of the Ice Captain’s dictatorial father.

“You’re lucky not to have a father such as he was, Master Div,” one of the old men said.

Div nodded as if he was not too sure on that point and left his chair. He ambled to the river’s edge and looked up the cliff, whence came distant shouts.

In a minute, he called to his father, “It’s the drumble.”

The others made no response and went on talking, until the youth called again. “The drumble, Pa. They’re just going to heave the fuggies over the cliffside.”

He pointed upwards. Some of the other boat travellers were also pointing, craning their necks to look up the cliff.

A horn gave a tantivy, and the baying of hounds intensified. “They’re great on drumbles in Oldorando,” the captain repeated, getting heavily to his feet and walking out to where his son stood, open-mouthed, on the bank.

“You see, it’s government orders, sir,” said one of the old men, following and peering into the Ice Captain’s face. “They kill off the phagors and take their land.”

“And then don’t work it properly,” added the Ice Captain. “They should leave the poor damned things alone. They’re useful, are phagors.”

Hoarse phagor shouting could be heard, but little action could be seen. However, in a short time, human shouts of triumph rang out and the riot of vegetation on the cliffs became disturbed. Broken branches flew, rocks tumbled, as a figure emerged from obscurity and plunged downwards, alternately flying and bouncing, to the enormous inconvenience of the mourner birds. The figure crashed onto the narrow bank under the cliff, made to sit up, and toppled into the water. A three-fingered hand was raised, to sink slowly as its owner was carried away by the flood.

Div broke into empty laughter. “Did you see that?” he exclaimed.

Another phagor, endeavouring to escape its human tormentors began well by leaping down the cliff. Then it slipped and crashed headlong, bouncing on a spur of rock and cartwheeling into the water. Other figures followed, some small, some large. For a spell, figures were raining down the cliff. At the crest of the cliff, where the underpinning was steeper, two phagors jumped free, clutching each other by the hand. They broke through the outermost branches of an overhanging tree, fell clear of the rock, and dropped into the river. An overadventurous dog followed them down, to crash on the bank.

“Let’s be away from here,” said Muntras. “I don’t care for this. Right, men, gangplank up. All aboard who’s getting aboard. Look lively!”

He shook hands with his old staff in a perfunctory way and strode towards the Lordryardry Lady to see his orders carried out.

One of the Oldorandan merchants said to him, “I’m glad to see that even in these benighted parts they’re trying to rid us of those shaggy vermin.”

“They do no harm,” said Muntras brusquely, his solid figure not pausing in its stride.

“On the contrary, sir, they are mankind’s oldest enemy, and during the Ice Age reduced our numbers almost to nothing.”

That was the dead past. We live in the present. Get aboard, everyone. We’re pushing off from this barbarous spot with all haste.”

The crew, like the captain, were men from Hespagorat. Without argument, they got the gangplank up and the boat under way.

As the Lady drifted into midstream, her passengers could see ancipital corpses floating in the water, surrounded by clouds of yellow blood. One of the crew called out. Ahead was a live phagor, making wretched attempts to swim.

A pole was quickly brought and thrust over the side. The boat had no sail up, for there was no wind, but the current was carrying it with increasing speed. Nevertheless, the phagor understood what was happening. After thrashing furiously, he grasped the end of the pole with both hands. The river brought him against the bulwarks, where he was hauled up to safety.

“You should have let him drown. Fuggies can’t stand the water,” said a merchant.

“This is my vessel, and my word is law here,” said Muntras, with a dark look. “If you have any objections to what goes on, I can put you off right now.”

The stallun lay panting on the deck in a spreading pool of water. Ichor ran from a wound in his head.

“Give him a dram of Exaggerator. He’ll survive,” said the captain. He turned away when the fierce Dimariamian liquor was brought forward and retired to his cabin.

Over his lifetime, he considered, his fellow human beings had grown nastier, more spiteful, less forgiving. Maybe it was the weather. Maybe the world was going to burn up. Well, at least he was going to retire in his own home town of Lordryardry, to a stout building overlooking the sea. Dimariam was always cooler than damned Campannlat. People were decent there.

He would call in on King JandolAnganol when in Matrassyl, on the principle that it was always wise to call on sovereigns of one’s acquaintance. The queen was gone, together with the ring he had once sold her; he must see about delivering her letter when he reached Ottassol. Meanwhile he would hear the latest news of the unfortunate queen of queens. Maybe he would also call on Matty; otherwise he would never see her again. He thought affectionately of her well-run whorehouse, better than all the squalid knocking-shops of Ottassol; although Matty herself had put on airs and went to church daily since the king rewarded her for her assistance after the Battle of the Cosgatt.

But what would he do in Dimariam when he was retired? That did need thought; his family was not a great source of comfort. Perhaps he could find some minor profitable mischief to keep him happy. He fell asleep with one hand resting on his musical instrument.

The stocky Ice Captain arrived at a city muted by the events recently played out on its stage.

The king’s problems were mounting. Reports from Randonan talked of soldiers deserting in companies. Despite constant prayer in the churches, crops were still failing. The Royal Armourer was having little success in manufacturing copies of the Sibornalese matchlocks. And Robayday returned.

JandolAnganol was in the hills with his hoxney Lapwing, walking through a copse beside his mount. Yuli trotted behind his master, delighted to be in the wilds. Two escorts rode behind at a distance. Robayday jumped from a tree and stood before his father.

He bowed deeply. “Why, it is the king himself, my master, walking in the woods with his new bride.” Leaves fell from his hair.

“Roba, I need you at Matrassyl. Why do you keep escaping?” The king did not know whether to be pleased or angry at this sudden apparition.

“To keep escaping is never to escape. Though what keeps me prisoner I know not. Difference must be between fresh air and grandfather’s dungeon… If I had no parents, then I might be free.” He spoke with a roving eye, unfocussed. His hair, like his speech, was tumbled. He was naked except for a kind of fur kilt over his genitals. His ribs showed, and his body was a tracery of scars and scratches. He carried a javelin.

This weapon he now stuck point first in the ground and ran to Yuli, clasping the runt’s arms, crying out in affection.

“My dearest queen, how wonderful you look, so well dressed in that white fur with the red tassels! To keep off the sun, to hide your delectable body from all but this lecherous Other, who swings on you, no doubt, as if you were a bough. Or a sow. Or a broken vow.”

“You make me hurted,” cried the little phagor, struggling to get free.

JandolAnganol reached out to take his son’s arm, but Robayday darted to one side. He tugged a flowering creeper which hung from a caspiarn and, with a quick movement, twined it round Yuli’s throat. Yuli ran about, calling hoarsely, lips curled back in alarm, as JandolAnganol took tight hold of his son.

“I don’t intend to hurt you, but cease this foolery and speak to me with the respect you owe me.”

“Oh me, oh me! Speak to me in respect of my poor mother. You have planted horns upon her, you gardener in bogs!” He gave a cry and fell back as his father struck him across the mouth.

“Cease this unkind nonsense at once. Be silent. If you have kept your sanity and had been acceptable to Pannoval then you might have married Simoda Tal in my place. Then we would have been spared much pain. Do you think only for yourself, boy?”

“Yes, as I make my own scumber!” He spat the words out.

“You owe me something, who made you a prince,” said the king with bitterness. “Or have you forgotten you’re a prince? We’ll lock you up at home until you come back to your right mind.”

With his free hand up to his bleeding mouth, Robayday muttered, There’s more comfort in my wrong mind. I’d rather forget my rights.”

By this time, the two lieutenants had come up, swords—out. The king turned, ordering them to put up their weapons, dismount, and take his son captive. As his attention was distracted, Robayday broke free of his father’s grasp and made off, with great leaps and whoops, among the trees.

One of the lieutenants put an arrow to his crossbow, but the king stopped him. Nor did he make any attempt to follow his son.

“I not have liking to Robay,” squealed Yuli.

Ignoring him, JandolAnganol mounted Lapwing and rode swiftly back to the palace. With his brows knitted, he resembled more than ever the eagle that gave him his nickname.

Back in the seclusion of his quarters, he submitted himself to pauk, as he rarely did. His soul sank down to the original beholder and he spoke with the gossie of his mother. She offered him full consolation. She reminded him that Robayday’s other grandmother was the wild Shannana, and told him not to worry. She said he should not hold himself guilty for the deaths of the Myrdolators, since they had intended treason to the state.

The fragile casket of dust offered JandolAnganol every verbal comfort. Yet his soul returned to his body troubled.

His wicked old father, still alive in the ponderous basements, was more practical. VarpalAnganol never ran out of advice.

“Warm up the Pasharatid scandal. Get our agents to spread rumours. You must implicate Pasharatid’s wife, who impudently remains here to carry her husband’s office. Any tale against the Sibornalese is readily believed.”

“And what am I to do regarding Robayday?”

The old man turned slightly in his chair and closed one eye. “Since you can do nothing about him, do nothing. But anything you could do to speed your divorce and get the marriage over with would be useful.”

JandolAnganol paced about the dungeon.

“As to that, I’m in the hands of the C’Sarr now.”

The old man coughed. His lungs laboured before he spoke again. “Is it hot outside? Why do people keep saying it’s hot? Listen, our friends in Pannoval want you to be in the C’Sarr’s hands. That suits them but it doesn’t suit you. Hurry matters if you can. What news of MyrdemInggala?”

The king took his father’s advice. Agents with an armed escort were dispatched to distant Pannoval City beyond the Quzints, with a long address beseeching the C’Sarr of the Holy Pannovalan Empire to hasten the bill of divorce. With the address went icons and other gifts, including holy relics fabricated for the occasion.

But the Massacre of the Myrdolators, as that affair was now called, continued to exercise the minds of people and scritina. Agents reported rebellious movements in the city, and in other centres such as Ottassol. A scapegoat was needed. It had to be Chancellor SartoriIrvrash.

SartoriIrvrash—the Rushven once beloved of the king’s family—would make a popular victim. The world mistrusts intellectuals, and the scritina had particular reason to hate both his high-handed ways and his long speeches.

A search of the chancellor’s suite would be certain to reveal something incriminating. There would be the notes of his breeding experiments with the Others, Madis, and humans he kept captive in a distant quarry. And there were the voluminous papers relating to his ‘Alphabet of History and Nature’. These papers would be full of heresies, distortions, lies against the All-Powerful. How both scritina and Church would lick their chops at that prospect! JandolAnganol sent in a guard, led by no less a personage than Archpriest BranzaBaginut of Matrassyl Cathedral.

The search was more successful than anticipated. The secret room was discovered (though not its secret exit). In that secret room was discovered a secret prisoner of curious quality. As he was dragged away, this prisoner screamed in accented Olonets that he came from another world.

Great piles of incriminating documents were taken into the courtyard. The prisoner was taken before the king.

Although it was now twenty past thirteen in the afternoon, the fog had not cleared; rather, it had deepened, taking on a yellowish tinge. The palace drifted in a world of its own, the ventilation devices on its chimneys like the masts of a sinking fleet. Perhaps claustrophobia played a part in the uncertainty of the king’s moods as he swung between meekness and anger, between calm and wild excitement. His hair stood dishevelled on his forehead. His nose bled by fits and starts, as if forced into the role of safety valve. About the corridors he went, followed by a train of unhappy courtiers who infuriated him with placatory smiles.

When SartoriIrvrash was brought forth and confronted by the trembling Billy, JandolAnganol struck the old man. After which he seized up his chancellor like an ancient rag doll, wept, begged forgiveness, and suffered another nose bleed.

It was while JandolAnganol was in a penitent mood that Ice Captain Muntras arrived at the palace to pay his respects.

“I will see the captain later,” said the king. “As a traveller, he may bring me news of the queen. Tell him to wait on me. Let the world wait.”

He wept and snarled. In a minute, he called back the messenger.

“Bring in the Ice Captain. He shall witness this curiosity of human nature.” This was said as he prowled about Billy Xiao Pin.

Billy shifted from foot to foot, half-inclined to blubber, unnerved by the bloody state of the royal nostrils. On the Avernus, such demonstrations of feeling, if they ever occurred, would take place in seclusion. “On the Prolongation of One Helliconian Season Beyond One Human Life-Span’ had been firm, if brief, on the subject of feeling. “Sensation: superfluous,” it said. The excitable Borlienese believed otherwise. Their king did not look like a sympathetic listener.

“Um—hello,” managed Billy, with an anguished smile. He gave a violent sneeze.

Muntras entered the room, bowing. They were in a cramped and ancient part of the palace which smelt of mortar, though it was mortar four hundred years old. The Ice Captain stood on his two flat feet and looked about curiously as he delivered his greetings.

The king barely acknowledged Muntras’s courtesies. Pointing to a pile of cushions, he said, “Sit there and don’t speak. Observe what we have found rotting in the recesses of this pile. The fruit of treachery!”

Turning abruptly back to Billy, he asked, “How many years have you festered in SartoriIrvrash’s clutches, creature?”

Disconcerted by the king’s regal brand of Olonets, Billy stammered. “A week—even eight days… I forget, Your Majesty.”

“Eight days is a week, slanje. Are you the poor results of an experiment?”

The king laughed, and all those present—less from humour than from a care for their lives—echoed him. Nobody wished to seem to be a Myrdolator.

“You smell like an experiment.” More laughing. He summoned up two slaves and told them to wash Billy and change his clothes. As this was done, food and wine appeared. Men came running, bent in the attitude of mobile bows, bearing warmed kid-meat served in orange rice.

While Billy ate, the king marched about the chamber, disdaining food. JandolAnganol occasionally pressed a silken cloth to his nose, or stared at his left wrist where his son, in escaping his grasp, had scratched his flesh. Pacing somewhat awkwardly by his side was the Archpriest BranzaBaginut, an enormous man whose bulk, rigged overall in saffron and scarlet canonicals, caused him to resemble a Sibornalese warship in full sail. His heavy face might have belonged to a village wrestler was it not for a lurking humour in his expression. He was widely respected as a shrewd man and one who supported the king as a benefactor of the Church.

BranzaBaginut loomed over the king, who wore by contrast only breeches, was unbooted and allowed his dirty white jacket to gape, revealing a boney chest.

The room itself was undecided in its role, being somewhere between a reception chamber and a storeroom. There were plenty of rugs and cushions of a mouldy sort, while old timbers were stacked in one corner. The windows looked out on a narrow passage; men passed that way occasionally, carrying piles of SartoriIrvrash’s papers into the courtyard.

“Let me question this person, sire, on religious matters,” said BranzaBaginut to the king. Receiving nothing in the way of disagreement, the dignitary sailed in the direction of Billy and asked, “Do you come from a world where Akhanaba the All-Powerful rules?”

Billy wiped his mouth, reluctant to cease eating.

“You know I can easily give you an answer to please you. Since I have no wish to displease you, or his majesty, may I offer it you, knowing it to be untrue?”

“Stand when you address me, creature. You give me your answer to my question and I tell you soon enough whether or not I am pleased by it.”

Billy stood before the massive ecclesiastic, still nervously wiping his mouth.

“Sir, gods are necessary to men at some stages of development… I mean, as children, we need, each of us, a loving, firm, just father, to help our growth to manhood. Manhood seems to require a similar image of a father, magnified, to keep it in good check. That image bears the name of God. Only when a part of the human race grows to a spiritual manhood, when it can regulate its own behaviour, does the need for gods disappear—just as we no longer need a father watching over us when we are adults and capable of looking after ourselves.”

The archpriest smoothed a large cheek with a hand, appearing struck by this explanation. “And you are from a world where you look after yourselves, without the need of gods. Are you saying that?”

“That is correct, sir.” Billy looked fearfully about him. The Ice Captain reclined nearby, filling his face with the royal food, but listening intently.

“This world you come from—Avernus, did I hear?—is it a happy one?”

The priest’s innocent-seeming question set Billy in a good deal of confusion. Had the same question been put to him a few weeks ago on the Avernus, and by his Advisor, he would have had no trouble answering. He would have responded that happiness resided in knowledge, not in superstition, in certainty, not in uncertainty, in control, not in chance. He would have believed that knowledge, certainty, and control were the singular benefits derived from and governing the lives of the population of the observation station. He would certainly have laughed—and even his Advisor would have spared a wintery chuckle—at the notion of Akhanaba as bringer of felicity.

On Helliconia, it was different. He could still laugh at the idolatrous superstition of the Akhanaban religion. And yet. And yet. He saw now the depth of meaning in the word ‘godless’. He had escaped from a godless state to a barbaric one. And he could see, despite his own misfortunes, in which world the hope of life and happiness more strongly lay.

As he was stuttering over his reply, the king spoke. JandolAnganol had been meditating Billy’s previous answer. He said challengingly, “What if we have no sound image of a father to guide us to manhood? What then?”

“Then, sir, Akhanaba may indeed be a support to us in our trouble. Or we may reject him completely, as we reject our natural father.”

This reply caused the king’s nose to bleed again.

Billy seized the moment to bluff his way out of replying to BranzaBaginut’s question by saying to him, with more confidence than he felt, “My lord, I am a person of importance, and have received bad treatment from this court. Let me go free. I can work with you. I can tell you details about your world you need to know. I have nothing to gain—”

The Archpriest clapped his large hands together, and said in a gentle voice, “Don’t deceive yourself. You are of no importance whatsoever, except when you condemn further Chancellor SartoriIrvrash of conspiring against his royal majesty.”

“You have made no attempt to assess my importance. Supposing I tell you that thousands of people are watching us at this moment? They wait to see how you behave towards me, to test you. Their judgement will influence how you are set down in history.”

Colour rose to the dignitary’s cheeks. “It is the All-Powerful who watches us, no one else. Your dangerous lies of godless worlds would overturn our state. Hold your tongue, or you will find yourself on a bonfire.”

In some desperation, Billy approached the king, displaying his watch with its three faces to him. “Your Majesty, I beg you to free me. Look on this artefact I wear. Every person on the Avernus wears a similar one. It tells the time on Helliconia, on Avernus, and on a distant controlling world, Earth. It is a symbol of the tremendous strides we have made in conquering our environment. To a sympathetic audience, I could convey marvels far in advance of anything Borlien could manage.”

Interest woke in the king’s eyes. He lowered his silk and asked, “Can you make me a functioning matchlock, the equal of Sibornal’s?”

“Why, matchlocks are nothing. I—”

“Wheel locks, then. You could produce a wheel lock?”

“Well, no, I—sir, it’s a question of the tensile strengths of the metal. I daresay I could devise—Such things are obsolete where I come from.”

“What kind of weapon can you make?”

“Sir, first interest yourself in this watch, which I beg you to accept as a present, in token of my faith.” He dangled the watch before the king, who showed no inclination to accept it. “Then let me free. Then let me work from first principles with some of your learned men, such as the Archpriest here. Very soon we might devise a good, accurate pistol, and radio, and an internal combustion engine…”

He saw the expressions on both the king’s and the archpriest’s face, changed his mind about what he was going to say, and instead held out the watch again in supplicatory fashion.

The little figures wriggled and changed under the king’s inspection. His majesty seized the timepiece; he and BranzaBaginut inspected it, whispering. Prophets had spoken of a time when magical machineries would appear and the state would be overthrown and the Empire destroyed.

“Will this jewel tell me how long I have left to reign? Can it inform me of the age of my daughter?”

“Sir, it is science, plain science, not magic. Its case is of platinum trawled from space itself…”

The king brushed it away with a sweep of his hand.

“The jewel is evil. I know it. Kings as well as deuteroscopists are cunning about the future. Why did you come here?” He threw the watch back to Billy.

“Your Majesty, I came to see the queen.”

JandolAnganol was disconcerted by this reply and stepped back as if he were confronting a ghost. Said BranzaBaginut, “So you are not only an atheist but a Myrdolator? And you expect to be welcome here? Why should his majesty tolerate any more of your riddling? You are neither lunatic nor jester. Where did you come from? SartoriIrvrash’s armpit?”

He advanced threateningly on Billy, who backed against a wall. Other members of the court began to close in, anxious to show their sovereign how they regarded unroasted Myrdolators.

Krillio Muntras rose from his cushions and advanced to where the king stood, looking about sharply in some indecision.

“Your majesty, why not ask your prisoner by what ship he arrived from this other world of his?”

The king looked as if undecided as to whether to become angry. Instead, he said, with his nose still covered. “Well, creature, to please our ice trader—by what vehicle came you here?”

Edging round the perimeters of BranzaBaginut, Billy said, “My ship was of metal, a ship entirely enclosed, carrying its own air. I can make all this comprehensible with the aid of diagrams. Our science is advanced, and could aid Borlien… The ship brought me down to Helliconia safely, and left, to return on its own to my world.”

“Has it a mind then, this vessel?”

That’s difficult to answer. Yes, it has a mind. It can calculate—navigate through space, perform a thousand actions by itself.”

JandolAnganol bent in a careless way and lifted up a wine jar, elevating it slowly until it was above his head. “Which of us is mad, creature, you or I? This vessel has a mind—yes, yes, it too can navigate all by itself. Look!” He flung it. The jar flew through the air, crashed into a wall and broke, splashing its contents all about. This small violence caused everyone to become as immobile as phagors.

“Your Majesty, I endeavoured to answer your—” He sneezed violently.

“It’s guilt and anger only that forces me to try and get reason out of you. But why should I bother? I’m deprived, I have nothing, this place is an empty larder, with rats for courtiers. All has been taken away, yet still more is asked of me. You too ask something of me… I am confronted by demons all the way… I must do penance again, Archpriest, and your hand must not be light upon me. This is SartoriIrvrash’s demon, I do believe. Tomorrow, I will endeavour to address the scritina and all will be changed. Today I am merely a father who bleeds a lot…”

He said in a lower voice, to himself. “Yes, that’s it, simply, I must change myself.”

He lowered his eyes and looked weary. A drip of blood fell to the floor.

Ice Captain Muntras gave a cough. As a practical man, he was embarrassed by the king’s outburst.

“Sire, I come on you at a bad time, as I see. I am just a trader, and so had best be on my way. For the past many years, I have brought you the best Lordryardry ice straight off the best slice of our glaciers, and at the best prices. Now, sire, I will give my grateful thanks for your custom and hospitality at the palace, and take my leave of you for ever. Despite the fog, it’s best I was off back home.”

The speech seemed in a measure to revive the king, who put a hand on the Ice Captain’s shoulder. The eyes of the latter were rounded in innocence.

“I would I had such men as you about me, talking plain sense all the time, Captain. Your service has been appreciated. Nor do I forget your assistance to me when I was wounded after that fearsome occasion in the Cosgatt—as I am wounded now. You are a true patriot.”

“Sire, I am a true patriot of my own country, of Dimariam. To which I am about to retire. This is my last trip. My son will carry on the ice trade with all the devotion I have shown you and the—hm—the ex-queen. As the weather grows hotter, your majesty will perhaps be needing additional loads of ice?”

“Captain, you good trader in better climates, you should be rewarded for your service. Despite my dreadful state of penury, and the meanness of my scritina, I ask—is there anything I might present you with as a token of our esteem?”

Muntras shuffled. “Sire, I am unworthy of reward, and do not seek one, but supposing I said to you that I would make an exchange? On the journey here from Oldorando, I, being a compassionate man, rescued a phagor from a drumble. He is recovered from a watery ordeal, often fatal to his kind, and must find a living away from Cahchazzerh, where he was persecuted. I will present this stallun to you as a slave if you will present me with your prisoner, whether demon or not. Is it a deal?”

“You may have the creature. Take it away, together with its mechanical jewel. You need give me nothing in return, Captain. I am in your debt if you will remove it from my kingdom.”

“Then I will take him. And you shall have the phagor, so that my son may call on you in the same civil terms as I have always done. He’s a good boy, sir, is Div, though with no more polish than his father.”

So Billy Xiao Pin passed into the keeping of the Ice Captain. And on the following day, when the fog was dispersing before a slight breeze, the king’s cloudiness also dispersed. He kept his promise to address the scritina.

To that body, who sat coughing in their pews, he presented the appearance of a changed man. Having attested to the wickedness of Chancellor SartoriIrvrash, and to his major role in the reverses recently suffered by the state, JangolAnganol launched into a confession.

“Gentlemen of the scritina, you swore fealty to me when I ascended the throne of Borlien. There have been reverses to our dearly beloved kingdom, that I do not deny. No king, however powerful, however benevolent, can greatly change the condition of his people—that I now realize. I cannot command droughts or the suns which bring such plagues to our land.

“In my desperation, I have committed crimes. Urged on by the chancellor, I was responsible for the deaths of the Myrdolators. I confess and ask your forgiveness. It was done to set the kingdom right, to stop further dissension. I have given up my queen, and with her all lust, all seeking for self. My marriage to the Princess Simoda Tal of Oldorando will be a dynastic one—chaste, chaste, I swear. I will not touch her except to breed. I will take thought for her years. I shall henceforth devote myself wholeheartedly to my country. Give me your obedience, gentlemen, and you will have mine.”

He spoke controlledly, with tears in his eyes. His audience sat in silence, gazing up at him sitting on the gilded throne of the scritina. Few felt pity for him; most saw only the opportunity to exploit this fresh instance of his weakness.

Despite the absence of a moon, there were tides on Helliconia. As Freyr drew nearer, the planet’s water envelope experienced an increase in tidal strength of some sixty percent above conditions at apastron, when Freyr was more than seven hundred astronomical units distant.

MyrdemInggala, in her new home, liked to walk alone by the shore of the sea. Her troubled thoughts blew away for a while. This was a marginal place, the strip between the kingdoms of the sea and the kingdoms of the land. It reminded her of her dimday garden left behind, placed between night and day. She was only vaguely aware of the constant struggle that went on at her feet, perhaps never to be entirely won or lost. She gazed towards the horizon, wondering as she did every day if the Ice Captain had delivered her letter to the general in the distant wars.

The queen’s gown was pale yellow. It went with the solitude. Her favourite colour was red, but she wore it no more. It did not go with old Gravabagalinien and its haunted past. The hiss of the sea demanded yellow, to her mind.

When she was not swimming, she left Tatro on the beach to play and walked below the high-tide line. Her lady-in-waiting reluctantly followed. Tough grasses grew from the sand. Some formed clumps. A step or two farther inland and other plants ventured. A little white daisy with armoured stem was among the first. There was a small plant with succulent leaves, almost like a seaweed. MyrdemInggala did not know its name, but she liked to pick it. Another plant had dark leaves. It straggled among the sand and grasses in insignificant clusters but, on occasions where conditions were right, raised itself into striking bushes with a lustrous sheen.

Behind these first bold invaders of the shore lay the litter of the tide line. Then came a haggard area, punctuated with tough, large-flowered daisies. Then less adventurous plants took over, and the beach was banished, though inlets of sand seamed the land for some way.

“Mai, don’t be unhappy. I love this place.”

The dawdling lady put on a sullen expression. “You are the most beautiful and fateful lady in Borlien.” She had never spoken to her mistress in this tone before. “Why could you not keep your husband?”

The queen made no answer. The two women continued along the shore, some way apart. MyrdemInggala walked among the lustrous bushes, caressing their tips with her hand. Occasionally, something under a bush would hiss and recoil from her step.

She was aware of Mai TolramKetinet, trailing dolefully behind her, hating exile. “Keep up, Mai,” she called encouragingly. Mai did not respond.