Helliconia Summer

IX Some Botheration for the Chancellor

There was an old country saying among the peasants of the land still known locally as Embruddock concerning the continent on which they lived: ‘Not an acre is properly habitable, and not an acre is uninhabited.’

The saying represented at least an approach to the truth. Even now, when millions believed that the world was to die in flames, travellers of all kinds crossed and recrossed Campannlat. From whole tribes, like the migrant Madis and the nomadic nations of Mordriat, down to pilgrims, who counted out their pilgrimage not in miles but in shrines; robber bands, who counted territory in throats and purses; and solitary traders, who travelled leagues to sell a song or a stone for a greater price than it would fetch at home—all these found fulfilment in movement.

Even the fires that consumed the interior of the continent, stopping short only at rivers or deserts, did not deter travellers. Rather, they added to their numbers, contributing refugees in quest for new homes.

One such group arrived in Matrassyl down the Valvoral in time to see Queen MyrdemInggala leave for exile. The royal press gang gave them little time to gape. Its officers descended on the new arrivals in their leaky tub and marched the men away to serve in the Western Wars.

That afternoon, the natives of Matrassyl had temporarily forgotten the wars—or shelved the thought of them in favour of this newer drama. Here was the most dramatic moment of many dull lives: poverty, committing them to mere endurance, forced them to live vicariously through the illustrious. For this reason, they appointed and tolerated the vices of their kings and queens, so that shock or delight might enter their existences.

Smoke drifted over the town, shrouding the crowds mute along the quayside. The queen came in her coach. It moved between lines of people. Flags waved. Also banners, saying repent ye! and the signs are in the sky. The queen looked neither to right nor to left.

Her coach stopped by the river. A lackey jumped down and opened the door for her majesty. She put forth a dainty foot and stepped down upon the cobbles. Tatro followed, and the lady-in-waiting.

MyrdemInggala hesitated and looked round. She wore a veil, but the aura of her beauty was about her like a perfume. The lugger that was to take her and her entourage downstream to Ottassol, and thence to Gravabagalinien, awaited her. A minister of the Church in full canonicals stood on deck to greet her. She walked up the gangplank. A sigh escaped the crowd as she left Matrassylan soil.

Her head was low. Once she had gained the deck and accepted the minister’s greeting, she pulled back her veil and lifted a hand in farewell, her head high.

At the sight of that peerless face, a murmur rose from the wharves and walks and roofs nearby, a murmur which rumbled into a cheer. This was Matrassyl’s inarticulate farewell to its queen of queens.

She gave no further sign, letting the veil drop, turning on her heel and going below, out of sight.

As the ship weighed anchor, a young court gallant ran forward to stand on the edge of the quay and declaim a popular poem, “And Summer’s Self She Is.” There was no music, no more cheering.

No one standing there in silent farewell knew of the events at the court that afternoon, though news of fearful deeds would leak out soon enough. The sails were hoisted. The ship of exile moved slowly from the quayside and began its journey downstream. The queen’s vicar stood on the deck and prayed. Nobody in the watching crowd, on the street, on the cliffs, or perched on rooftops, stirred. The wooden hull began to shrink with distance, its detail to be lost.

The people went silently away to their homes, taking their banners with them.

The Matrassyl court swarmed with factions. Some factions were unique to the court; others had nationwide support. The best-supported of the latter groups was undoubtedly the Myrdolators. This ironically named clique opposed the king on most issues and supported the queen of queens on all.

Within the major groupings were minor groupings. Self-interest saw to it that each man was divided in some way against his brother. Many reasons could be invented for supporting or opposing a closer union with Oldorando, in the continual jockeying for position in court.

There were those—haters of women perhaps—who hoped to see Queen MyrdemInggala disgraced. There were those—dreaming of possessing her perhaps—who wished to see her remain. Of those who wished to see her remain, some of the most fervent Myrdolators believed that she should stay and the king should go. After all, they argued, to look at the affair legalistically—and to ignore her physical attractions—the queen’s claim to the throne of Borlien was as valid as the Eagle’s.

Envy saw to it that the enemies of both king and queen were perpetually active. On the day of departure of the queen many were ready to take up arms.

On the morning of that day, JandolAnganol had moved against the malcontents.

By a ruse, the king and SartoriIrvrash had the Myrdolators meet together in a chamber in the palace. Sixty-one of them foregathered, some of them greybeards who had professed loyalty to MyrdemInggala’s parents, RantanOboral and Shannana the Wild. They stormed indignantly in to the meeting. The Household Guard slammed the doors on them and guarded the chamber. While the Myrdolators screamed and fainted in the heat, the Eagle, with malicious glee on his face, went to a final meeting with his lovely queen.

MyrdemInggala was still overwhelmed by the turn in her fortunes. Her cheeks were pale. There was a feverish look in her eyes. She could not eat. She started at small things. When the king came upon her, she was walking with Mai TolramKetinet, discussing prospects for her children. If she was threatened so were they. Tatro was small, and a girl. It was upon Robayday that the brunt of the king’s vengeance might fall. Robayday had disappeared on one of his wild excursions. She perceived that she would not even be able to say good-bye to him. Nor would her brother be here to exert influence over his wilful nephew.

The two women walked in MyrdemInggala’s dimday garden. Tatro was playing with Princess Simoda Tal—an irony which could be borne if not contemplated closely.

This garden the queen had created herself, directing her gardeners. Heavy trees and artificial cliffs screened the walks from Freyr’s eyes. There was sufficient shade for genetic sports and melanic forms of vegetation to flourish.

Dimday plants flowered beside fullday ones. The jeodfray, a fullday creeper with light pink-and-orange flowers, became the stunted albic, hugging the ground. The albic occasionally put forth grotesque scarlet-and-orange buds along a fleshy stem, to attract the attention of dimday moths. Nearby were olvyl, yarrpel, idront, and spikey brooth, all relishing shade. The ground-loving vispard produced hooded blossoms. It was the adaptation of a nocturnal species, the zadal bush, and had moved towards lighter conditions rather than darker.

Such plants had been brought by her subjects from different parts of the kingdom. She had no great understanding of the astronomy which SartoriIrvrash tried to instil in her, or of the slow protracted manoeuvres of Freyr along the heavens, except through her appreciation of these plants, which represented an instinctive vegetable response to those confusingly abstract ellipses of which the chancellor loved to talk.

Now she would visit this favoured place no more. The ellipses of her own life were moving against her.

The king and his chancellor appeared at the gate. She sensed their wish for formality even from a distance. She saw the tension in the king’s stance. She laid a hand on her lady-in-waiting’s wrist in alarm.

SartoriIrvrash approached and bowed formally. Then he took the lady-in-waiting off with him, in order to leave the royal couple alone.

Mai instantly broke into anxious protests.

“The king will murder Cune. He suspects she loves my brother Hanra, but it is not so. I’d swear to it. The queen has done nothing wrong. She is innocent.”

“His calculations run otherwise, and he will not murder her,” said SartoriIrvrash. He hardly looked the figure to comfort her. He had shrunk inside his charfrul and his face was grey. “He rids himself of the queen for political reasons. It has been done before.”

He brushed a butterfly impatiently from his sleeve.

“Why did he have Yeferal murdered, then?”

“That piece of botheration is not to be laid at the king’s door but rather at mine. Cease your prattle, woman. Go with Cune into exile and look after her. I hope to be in touch some time, if my own situation continues. Gravabagalinien is no bad place to be.”

They entered into an archway and were immediately embraced within the stuffy complexities of the building.

Mai TolramKetinet asked in a more even voice, “What has overcome the king’s mind?”

“I know only of his ego, not his mind. It is bright like a diamond. It will cut all other egos. It cannot easily tolerate the queen’s gentleness.”

When the young woman left him, he stood at the bottom of the stairwell, trying to steady himself. Somewhere above him, he heard the voices of the visiting diplomats. They waited with indifference to hear how the matter worked out and would be departing soon, whatever happened.

“Everything finally goes…” he said to himself. In that moment, he longed for his dead wife.

The queen, meanwhile, stood in her garden, listening to the low, hasty voice of JandolAnganol, trying to thrust his emotions upon her. She recoiled, as from a great wave.

“Cune, our parting is forced on me for the survival of the kingdom. You know my feelings, but you also know that I have duties which must be performed…”

“No, I won’t have it. You obey a whim. It is not duty but your khmir speaking.”

He shook his head, as if trying to shake away the pain visible in his face.

“What I do I have to do, though it destroys me. I have no wish for anyone at my side but you. Give me a word that you understand that much before we part.”

The lines of her face were rigid. “You have traduced the reputation of my dead brother and of me. Who gave the order for the spreading of that lie but you?”

“Understand, please, what I have to do for my kingdom. I have no will that we part.”

“Who gave the order for our parting but you? Who commands here but you? If you don’t command, then anarchy has come, and the kingdom is not worth saving.”

He gave her a sideways look. The eagle was sick. This is policy I must carry through. I am not imprisoning you but sending you to the beautiful palace of Gravabagalinien, where Freyr does not dominate the sky so greatly. Be content there and don’t scheme against me, or your father will answer for it. If the war news improves, who knows but we may be together again.”

She rounded on him, by her vehemence making him look into her overflowing face.

“Do you then plan to wed that lascivious child of Oldorando this year and divorce her next, as you do me this? Have you an endless series of matrimonies and divorcements in mind by which to save Borlien? You talk of sending me away. Be warned that when I am sent, I remain forever away from you.”

JandolAnganol reached out a hand, but dared not touch her.

“I’m saying that in my heart—if you believe I have one—I am not sending you away. Will you understand that? You live only by religion and principle. Have some understanding of what it means to be king.”

She plucked a twig of idront and then flung it from her.

“Oh, you’ve taught me what it is to be a king. To incarcerate your father, to drive off your son, to defame your brother-in-law, to dismiss me to the ends of the kingdom—that’s what it is to be king! I’ve learnt the lesson from you well.

“So I will answer you, Jan, after your own fashion. I cannot prevent your exiling me, no. But when you put me away, you inherit all the consequences of that act. You must live and die by those consequences. That is religion speaking, not I. Don’t expect me to alter what is unalterable.”

“I do expect it.” He swallowed. He seized her arm tightly and would not let it go, despite her struggles. He walked her along the path, and butterflies rose up. “I do expect it.

I expect you to love me still, and not to stop simply from convenience. I expect you to be above humanity, and to see beyond your suffering to the suffering of others.

“So far, in this pitiless world, your beauty has saved you from suffering. I have guarded you. Admit it, Cune, I have guarded you through these dreadful years. I returned from the Cosgatt only because you were here. By will I returned… Won’t your beauty become a curse when I am not by to act as shield? Won’t you be hunted like a deer in a forest, by men the likes of whom you have never known? What will your end be without me?

“I swear I will love you still, despite a thousand Simoda Tals, if you will tell me now—just tell me, as we kiss good-bye—that you still hold me dear, despite what I have to do.”

She broke from him and steadied herself against a rock, her face in shadow. Both of them were pale and sweated.

“You mean to frighten me, and so you do. The truth is, you drive me away because you do not understand yourself. Inwardly, you know that I understand you and your weaknesses as does no one else—except possibly your father. And you cannot bear that. You are tortured because I have compassion for you. So, yes, damn you, since you wrench it from me, yes, I do love you and will do so until I am merged with the original beholder. But you can’t accept that, can you? It’s not what you desire.”

He blazed up. “There! You hate me, really! Your words lie!”

“Oh, oh, oh!” She uttered wild cries and began to run. “Go away! Go away! You’re crazed. I declare what you ask and it maddens you! You want my hatred. Hatred is all you know! Go away—I hate you, if that satisfies your soul.”

JandolAnganol did not attempt to pursue her.

“Then the storm will come,” he said.

So smoke began to flow down and fill the bowl of Matrassyl. The king was like a man possessed after parting from MyrdemInggala. He ordered straw from the stables and had it piled about the doors of the chamber in which the Myrdolators were still imprisoned. Jars of purified whale oil were brought. JandolAnganol himself snatched a burning brand from a slave and hurled it into the kindling.

With a roar, flames burst upwards.

That afternoon, as the queen sailed, the fire raged. Nobody was allowed to check it. Its fury went unabated.

Only that night, when the king sat with his runt drinking himself insensible, were servants able to come with pumps and quench the blaze.

When pale Batalix rose next morning, the king, as was his custom, rose and presented himself to his people by the dawn light.

A larger crowd than usual awaited him. At his appearance, a low inarticulate growl arose, like the noise a wounded hound might make. In fear of the many-headed beast, he retired to his room and flung himself down on his bed. There he stayed all day, neither eating nor speaking.

On the succeeding day, he appeared to be himself again. He summoned ministers, he gave orders, he bade farewell to Taynth Indredd and Simoda Tal. He even appeared briefly before the scritina.

There was reason for him to act. His agents brought news that Unndreid the Hammer, Scourge of Mordriat, was again moving southwestwards, and had formed an alliance with Darvlish, his enemy.

In the scritina, the king explained how Queen MyrdemInggala and her brother, YeferalOboral, had been planning to assassinate the ambassador from Sibornal, who had made his escape. It was for this reason that the queen was being sent into exile; her interference in state affairs could not be tolerated. Her brother had been killed.

This conspiracy must be an object lesson to all in this time of peril for the nation. He, the king, was drawing up a plan by which Borlien would become more closely linked to its traditional friends, the Oldorandans and Pannovalans. These plans he would disclose fully in good time. His challenging gaze swept round the scritina.

SartoriIrvrash then rose, to demand that the scritina look upon new developments in the light of history.

“With the battle of the Cosgatt still fresh in our minds, we know that there are new artilleries of attack available. Even the barbarous tribes of Driats have these new—guns, as they are called. With a gun, a man can kill an enemy as soon as he can see him. Such things are mentioned in old histories, although we cannot always trust what we read in old histories.

“However. We are concerned with guns. You saw them demonstrated. They are made in the great northern continent by the nations of Sibornal, who have a preeminence in manufacturing arts. They possess deposits of lignite and metal ores which we do not. It is necessary for us to remain on good terms with such powerful nations, and so we have put down firmly this attempt to assassinate the ambassador.”

One of the barons at the back of the scritina shouted angrily, “Tell us the truth. Wasn’t Pasharatid corrupt? Didn’t he have a liaison with a Borlienese girl in the lower town, contravening our laws and his?”

“Our agents are investigating,” said SartoriIrvrash, and went on hastily. “We shall send a deputation to Askitosh, capital of the nation Uskutoshk, to open a trade route, hoping that the Sibornalese will be more friendly than hitherto.

“Meanwhile, our meeting with the distinguished diplomats from Oldorando and Pannoval was successful. We have received a few guns from them, as you know. If we can send sufficient quantities of guns to our gallant General Hanra TolramKetinet, then the war with Randonan will be quickly over.”

Both the king’s speech and SartoriIrvrash’s were received coldly. Supporters of Baron RantanOboral, MyrdemInggala’s father, were present in the scritina. One of them rose and asked, “Are we to understand that it is these new weapons which are responsible for the deaths of sixty-one Myrdolators? If so, they are powerful weapons indeed.”

The chancellor’s reply was uncertain.

“An unfortunate fire broke out at the castle, started by the ex-queen’s supporters, many of whom lost their lives in the blaze they had themselves caused.”

As SartoriIrvrash and the king left the chamber, a storm of noise broke out.

“Give them the wedding,” said SartoriIrvrash. “They’ll forget their anger as they coo over the prettiness of the child bride. Give them the wedding as soon as possible, Your Majesty. Make the fools forget one swindle with another.”

He looked away to hide his revulsion for his own role.

Tension hung over all who lived in the castle of Matrassyl, except for the phagors, whose nervous systems were immune to expectation. But even the phagors were uneasy, for the stench of burning still clung to everything.

Scowling, the king retired to his suite. A section of the First Phagorian stood duty outside his door, and Yuli remained with them while JandolAnganol prayed in his private chapel with his Royal Vicar. After prostrating himself in prayer, he had himself scourged.

While being bathed by his female servants, he summoned his chancellor back to him. SartoriIrvrash appeared after a third summons, clad in an ink-stained flowered charfrul and rush slippers. The old man looked aggrieved, and stood before the king without speaking, smoothing his beard.

“You’re vexed?” JandolAnganol addressed him from the pool. The runt sat a short distance away, its mouth open.

“I’m an old man, Your Majesty, and have endured deep botheration this day. I was resting.”

“Writing your damned history, more likely.”

“Resting and grieving for the murdered sixty-one, if truth be told.”

The king struck the water with the flat of his hand. “You’re an atheist. You have no conscience to appease. You don’t have to be scourged. Leave that to me.”

SartoriIrvrash showed a tooth in a display of circumspection.

“How can I serve your majesty now?”

JandolAnganol stood up, and the women swathed him in towels. He stepped from the bath.

“You have done enough in the way of service.” He gave SartoriIrvrash one of his darkly brilliant looks. “It’s time I put you out to pasture, like the old hoxneys of which you are so fond. I’ll find someone more to my way of thought to advise me.”

The women huddled by the earthenware pitchers which had brought the royal bathwater, and listened complacently to the drama.

“There are many here who will pretend to think as you wish them to think, Your Majesty. If you care to put trust in such, that is your decision. Perhaps you will say how I have failed to please. Have I not supported all your schemes?”

The king flung away his towels, and paced naked and dangerous about the room. His gaze was as hasty as his walk. Yuli whined in sympathy.

“Look at the trouble about my ears. Bankrupt. No queen. Unpopular. Mistrusted. Challenged in the scritina. Don’t tell me I’ll be a favourite of the mob when I wed that chit from Oldorando. You advised me to do this, and I have had sufficient of your advice.”

SartoriIrvrash had backed against the wall, where he was fairly safe from the king’s pacing. He wrung his hands in distress.

“If I may speak… I have faithfully served you and your father before you. I have lied for you. I lied today. I have implicated myself in this gruesome Myrdolator’s crime for your sake. Unlike other chancellors you might elect, I have no political ambitions—You are good enough to splash me, your majesty!”

“Crime! Your sovereign is a criminal, is he? How else was I to put down a revolt?”

“I have advised you with your good in mind, rather than my advancement, sire. Never less than in this sorry matter of the divorcement. You will recall that I told you you would never find another woman like the queen and—”

The king seized a towel and wrapped it about his narrow waist. A puddle formed round his feet. “You told me that my first duty lay with my country. So I made the sacrifice, made it at your suggestion—”

“No, Your Majesty, no, I distinctly—” He waved his hands distractedly.

“ ‘I dizztingtly’,” said Yuli, picking up a new word.

“You merely want a scapegoat on which to vent your rage, sire. You shall not dismiss me like this. It’s criminal.”

The words echoed about the bath chamber. The women had made as if to escape from the scene, then had frozen in cautionary gestures, lest the king turn upon them.

He turned on his chancellor.

As his face flushed with rage, the colour chased itself down his jaw to his throat. “Criminal again! Am I criminal? You old rat, you dare give me your orders and insults! I’ll settle with you.”

He marched over to where his clothes lay spread.

Fearing that he had gone too far, SartoriIrvrash said in a shaking voice, “Your Majesty, forgive me, I see your plan. By dismissing me, you can then be free to blame me before the scritina for what has occurred, and thus show yourself innocent in their eyes. As if truth can be moulded that way… It is a well-tried tactic, well-tried—transparent, too—but surely we can agree on how precisely—”

He faltered and fell silent. A sickly evening light filled the room. Traces of an auroral storm flickered in the cloud mass outside. The king had drawn his sword from its scabbard where it lay on the table. He flourished it.

SartoriIrvrash backed away, knocking over a pitcher of scented water, which rushed to escape in a flood across the tiled floor.

JandolAnganol began a complex pattern of swordplay with an invisible enemy, feinting and lunging, at times appearing hard pressed, at times pressing hard himself. He moved rapidly about the room. The women huddled against the wall, tittering with nervousness.

“Heigh! Yauh! Ho! Heigh!”

He switched direction, and the naked blade darted at the chancellor.

As it stopped an inch from his collarbone, the king said, “So, where’s my son, where’s Robayday, then, you old villain? You know he’d have my life?”

“Well I know the history of your family, sire,” said SartoriIrvrash, ineffectually covering his chest with his hands.

“I must deal with my son. You have him hidden in the warren of your apartments.”

“No, sire, that I do not.”

“I am told you do, sire, the phagor guard told me. And he whispered, sire, that you still have some blood in your eddre.”

“Sire, you are overtaxed by the ordeals you have undergone. Let me get—”

“Get nothing, sire, but steel in the gullet. So reliable! You have a visitor in your rooms.”

“From Morstrual, sire, a boy, no more.”

“So, you keep boys now…” But the subject seemed to lose its interest. With a shout, the king flung up his sword so that it embedded itself in the beams overhead. When he reached up and grasped its hilt, the towel fell from him.

SartoriIrvrash stooped to retrieve it for his majesty, saying, falteringly, “I understand from whence your madness comes, and allow—”

Instead of seizing the towel, the king seized the old man’s charfrul and swung him about by it. The towel went flying. The chancellor uttered a cry of alarm. His feet slipped from under him, and they fell together heavily in the flood of water.

The king was back on his feet as nimbly as a cat, motioning to the women to help SartoriIrvrash up. The chancellor groaned and clutched his back as two of them assisted him.

“Now go, sire,” said the king. “Get packing—before I demonstrate to you just how mad I am. Remember, I know you for an atheist and a Myrdolator!”

In his own chambers, Chancellor SartoriIrvrash had a woman slave annoint his back with ointments, and indulged in some luxurious groans. His personal phagor guard, Lex, looked on impassively.

After a while, he called for some squaanej juice topped with Lordryardry ice, and then laboriously wrote a letter to the king, clutching his spine between sentences.

He paused. No, as usual he was going too far. The king in his anger would destroy him if he read that sentence. Laboriously, he took a fresh sheet of parchment and wrote a modified version of his first letter. He charged Lex with delivering it.

Then he sat and wept.

He dozed. Later, he awoke to find Lex standing over him, his milt flicking up the slots of his nostrils. He had long grown used to the silence of phagors; though he hated the creatures, they were less bothersome than human slaves about the place.

His table clock told him it was near the twenty-fifth hour of the day. He yawned, stretched, and put on a warmer garment. Outside, the aurora flickered over an empty courtyard. The palace was asleep—except perhaps for the king…

“Lex, we’ll go and speak with our prisoner. Have you fed him?”

The phagor, immobile, said, “The prisoner has his food, sir.” He spoke in a low voice, buzzingly, so that the honorific came out as ‘zzorr’. His Olonets was limited, but SartoriIrvrash, in his abhorrence, refused to learn Hurdhu.

Among the shelves covering most of a long wall stood a cupboard. Lex swung it away from the wall to reveal an iron door. Clumsily, the ancipital inserted a key in the lock and turned it. He pulled the door open; man and phagor entered a secret cell.

This had once been an independent room. In the days of VarpalAnganol, the chancellor had had its external door plastered over. Now the only means of entry lay through his study. Stout bars had been fixed over the window. From outside, the window was lost in the muddle of the castle facade.

Flies buzzed in the room, or hung as if sleeping in the thick air. They crawled over the table, and over the hands of Billy Xiao Pin.

Billy sat on a chair. He was chained to a strong eye anchored in the floor. His clothes were stained with sweat. The stench in the room was overwhelming.

Producing a sachet of scantiom, pellamountain, and other herbs, SartoriIrvrash pressed it to his nose and gestured towards a cessbucket standing in a corner of the room.

“Empty that.” Lex moved to obey.

The chancellor took a chair and placed it beyond the reach of any lunge his prisoner might make. He sat down carefully, nursing his back and grunting. He lit a long veronikane before he spoke.

“Now, BillishOwpin, you have been here for two days. We shall have another discussion. I am the Chancellor of Borlien, and, if you lie to me, it is well within my powers to torture you. You introduced yourself to me as the mayor of a town on the Gulf of Chalce. Then, when I locked you up, you claimed that you were a much grander person, who came from a world above this one. Who are you today? The truth now!”

Billy wiped his face on his sleeve and said, “Sir, believe me, I knew of this secret room before I arrived here. Yet I am ignorant of many aspects of your manners. My initial mistake was to pose as someone I am not—which I did because I doubted if you would believe the truth.”

“I may say without vanity that I happen to be one of the foremost seekers after truth of my generation.”

“Sir, I know it. Therefore set me free. Let me follow the queen. Why lock me up when I mean no harm?”

“I lock you up because I may get some good out of you. Stand up.”

The chancellor surveyed his captive. Certainly, there was something odd about the fellow. His physiology was not the attenuated one of a Campannlatian, nor had he the barrel shape of those freak humans, sometimes displayed at fairs, whose ancestors (according to medical thought) had escaped the near-universal bone fever.

His friend CaraBansity in Ottassol would have said that underlying bone structure accounted for the peculiar rounded quality of the captive’s features. The man’s skin texture was smooth, with a notable pallor, though his button nose was sunburnt. His hair was fine.

And there were more subtle differences, such as the quality of the captive’s gaze and its duration. He seemed to look away to listen, and regarded SartoriIrvrash only when he spoke—although fear could account for that. His eyes were often cast upward, instead of down. In particular, he spoke Olonets in a foreign style.

All this the chancellor observed before saying, “Give me an account of this world above from which you claim to come. I am a rational man, and I shall listen without prejudice to what you have to say.” He drew upon his kane and coughed.

Lex returned with an empty bucket and stood motionless against one wall, fixing his cerise glare on an undefined point in the middle distance.

When Billy sat down, his chains rattled. He placed his weighted wrists on the table before him and said, “Merciful sir, I come, as I told you, from a much smaller world than yours. A world perhaps of the size of the great hill upon which Matrassyl Castle stands. That world is called Avernus, though your astronomers have long known it as Kaidaw. It lies some fifteen hundred kilometres above Helliconia, with an orbital period of 7770 seconds, and its—”

“Wait. On what does this hill of yours lie? On air?”

“There is no air about Avernus. In effect, the Avernus is a metal moon. No, you don’t have that word in Olonets, sir, since Helliconia possesses no natural moon. Avernus orbits Helliconia continually, as Helliconia orbits Batalix. It travels through space, as Helliconia does, and moves continually, as Helliconia does. Otherwise, it would fall under the pull of gravitation. I think you understand this principle, sir? You know of the true relationships between Helliconia on the one hand and Batalix and Freyr on the other.”

“I understand what you say very well.” He slapped at a fly crawling over his bald pate. “You are addressing the author of ‘The Alphabet of History and Nature’, in which I seek to synthesize all knowledge. It is understood by few men—but I happen to be one of them—that Batalix and Freyr revolve about a common focus, while Copaise, Aganip, and Ipocrene revolve with Helliconia about Batalix. The haste of our sister worlds in their orbits is commensurate with their stature and their distance from the parent body Batalix. Furthermore, cosmology informs us that these sister worlds sprang from Batalix, as men spring from their mothers and Batalix sprang from Freyr, which is its mother. In the realm of the heavens, you will find me suitably informed, I flatter myself.”

He looked up at the ceiling and blew smoke among the flies.

Billy cleared his throat. “Well, it’s not quite like that. Batalix and its planets form a relatively aged solar system which was captured by a much larger sun, which you call Freyr, some eight million years ago, as we reckon time.”

The chancellor moved restlessly, crossing and uncrossing his legs, with a peevish expression on his face. “Among the impediments to knowledge are the persecutions of those who seek power, the difficulties of investigation, and—this in particular—a failure to recognize what should be investigated. I set all this out in my first chapter.

“You clearly have some knowledge, yet you betray it by mingling it with falsehood for your own reasons. Remember that torture is a friend of truth, BillishOwpin. I’m a patient man, but this wild talk of millions angers me. You won’t impress me by mere numbers. Anyone can invent figures out of thin air.”

“Sir, I do not invent. How many people inhabit all Campannlat?”

The chancellor looked flustered. “Why, some fifty million, according to best estimates.”

“Wrong, sir. Sixty-four million people, and thirty-five million phagors. In the time of VryDen, whom you like to quote, the figures were eight million humans and twenty-three million phagors. The biomass relates directly to the amount of energy arriving at the planetary surface. In Sibornal there are—”

SartoriIrvrash waved his hands. “Enough—you try to vex me… Return to the geometry of the suns. Do you dare claim there is no blood relationship between Freyr and Batalix?”

From gazing down at his hands, Billy looked askance at the old man who sat beyond his reach. “If I tell you what really happened, honoured Chancellor, would you believe me?”

“That depends whether your tale is within credence.” He puffed out a cloud of smoke.

Billy Xiao Pin said, “I caught only a glimpse of your beautiful queen. So what is the point of my being here, dying here, if I fail to tell you this one great truth?” He thought of MyrdemInggala passing, glorious in her floating muslins.

And he began. The phagor stood by the stained wall, the old man sat in his creaking chair. The flies buzzed. No sounds came from the outside world.

“On my way here, I saw a banner saying, in Olonets, ‘All the world’s wisdom has always existed’. That is not so. It may be a truth for the religious, but for the scientific it is a lie. Truth resides in facts which must be painfully discovered and hypotheses which must be continually checked—although where I come from, facts have obliterated truth. As you say, there are many impediments to knowledge, and to the metastructure of knowledge we call science.

“Avernus is an artificial world. It is a creation of science and the application of science we call—you have no such word—technology. You may be surprised to hear that the race from which I come, which evolved on a distant planet called Earth, is younger than you Helliconians. But we suffered fewer natural disadvantages than you.”

He paused, almost shocked to hear that charged word, Earth, pronounced in these surroundings.

“So I shall not lie to you—though I warn you you may find that what I say does not fit into your world-picture, Chancellor. You may be shocked, even though you are the most enlightened of your race.”

The chancellor stubbed out his veronikane on the top of the table and pressed a hand to his head. It ached. The prison room was stifling. He could not follow the young stranger’s speech, and his mind wandered to the king, naked, and the sword embedded dangerously in a beam above them. The prisoner talked on.

Where Billy came from, the cosmos was as familiar as a back garden. He spoke in matter-of-fact tones about a yellow G4-type star which was some five thousand million years old. It was of low luminosity and a temperature of only 5600K. This was the sun now called Batalix. He went on to describe its only inhabited planet, Helliconia, a planet much like distant Earth, but cooler, greyer, older, its life processes slower. On its surface, over many eons, species developed from animal to dominant being.

Eight million years ago by Earth reckoning, Batalix and its system moved into a crowded region of space. Two stars, which he called A and C, were orbiting each other. Batalix was drawn within the massive gravitational field of A. In the series of perturbations which followed, star C was lost, and A acquired a new companion, Batalix.

A was a very different sun from Batalix. Although between only ten and eleven million years old, it had evolved away from the main sequence of stars and was entering stellar old age. Its radius was over seventy times the radius of Batalix, its temperature twice as great. It was an A-type supergiant.

Try as he might, the chancellor could not listen attentively. A sense of disaster enveloped him. His vision blurred, his heart beat with an irregular throb which seemed to fill the room. He pressed his scantiom sachet to his nose to help his breathing.

“That’s enough,” he said, breaking into Billy’s discourse. “Your kind is known in history, talking in strange terms, mocking the understandings of wise men. Perhaps it is a delusion we suffer from… Small wonder if we do. Only two days ago—only fifty hours—the queen of queens left Matrassyl, charged with conspiracy, and sixty-one Myrdolators were cruelly murdered… And you talk to me of suns swooping here and there as fancy takes them…”

Billy drummed the fingers of one hand on the table and fanned away flies with the other. Lex stood nearby, motionless as furniture, eyes closed.

“I’m a Myrdolator myself. I’m much to blame for these crimes. Too used to serving the king… as he’s too used to serving religion. Life was so placid… Now who knows what fresh botherations will happen tomorrow?”

“You are too sunk in your own little affairs,” Billy said. “You’re as bad as my Advisor on the Avernus. He doesn’t entirely believe in the reality of Helliconia. You don’t entirely believe in the reality of the universe. Your umwelt is no larger than this palace.”

“What’s an umwelt?”

“The region emcompassed by your perceptions.”

“You pretend to know so much. Is it correct, as I perceive, that the hoxney is a brown-striped animal which wore coloured stripes in the spring of the Great Year?”

“That is correct. Animals and plants adopt different strategies to survive the vast changes of a Year. There are binary biologies and botanies, some follow one star, as previously, some the other.”

“Now you return to your perambulating suns. In my belief, established over thirty-seven years, our two suns are set in our skies as a constant reminder of our dual nature, spirit and body, life and death, and of the more general dualities which govern human life—hot and cold, light and dark, good and evil.”

“You say my kind is known in history, Chancellor. Maybe those were other visitors from the Avernus, also trying to reveal the truth, and being ignored.”

“Revelations through some crazed geometries? Then they perished!” SartoriIrvrash rose, resting his fingers on the table, frowning.

Billy also laboriously rose, rattling his chains. The truth would free you, Chancellor. Whatever you think, those ‘crazed geometries’ rule the universe. You half-know this. Respect your intellect. Why not go further, break from your umwelt? The life that teems on Helliconia is a product of those crazed geometries you scoff at.

“That A-type sun you know as Freyr is a gigantic hydrogen fusion-reactor, pouring out high-energy emissions. When Batalix and its planets took up orbits round it, eight million years ago, they were subjected to bombardments of X rays and ultraviolet radiation. The effect on the then-sluggish Helliconian biosphere was profound. There was rapid genetic change. Dramatic mutations occurred. Some new forms survived. One animal species in particular rose to challenge the supremacy previously enjoyed by a much older species—”

“No more of this,” cried SartoriIrvrash, waving a hand in dismissal. “What is this about species changing into other species? Can a dog become an arang, or a hoxney a kaidaw? Everyone knows at least that every animal has its place, and humans their place. So the All-Powerful has ordained.”

“You’re an atheist! You don’t believe in the All-Powerful!”

Confused, the chancellor shook his head. “I’d prefer to be ruled by the All-Powerful than by your crazed geometries… I had hoped to make a present of you to King JandolAnganol, but you would drive him madder than he is already.”

Wearily, SartoriIrvrash realized that the king could not be placated at present by rational means. SartoriIrvrash himself felt far from rational. Listening to Billy, he was reminded of another young madman—the king’s son, Robayday. Once a charming child, then overtaken by a kind of mad fancy, espousing the desert like a parched mother, expert at killing game, at times hardly making sense… the plague of his royal parents.

He wondered at his own long struggle to make sense of the world. How was it that such an omnipresent problem oppressed so few?

Billy might be a figment of his tired imagination, the darker side of rationality, sent to plague him.

He turned to the phagor. “Lex, guard him. I’ll think how to dispose of him and his umwelts on the morrow.”

In his bedchamber, loneliness overwhelmed the chancellor. The king had seized him and flung him to the floor! He felt the bumps of his bruised spine, felt how ugly his body was growing as the years squeezed it dry. The days contained so much shame.

His slave woman came at his call, looking reluctant as he had looked reluctant when summoned before the king.

“Massage my back,” he ordered.

She lay against him, running a rough but gentle hand from his skull to his pelvis. He smelt of veronikane, phagors, and piss. She was Randonanese, with tribal marks cut in her cheeks. She smelt of fruit. After a while, he rolled over to face her, his prodo stirring. There was one comfort given to believers and atheists alike, one refuge from abstraction. The chancellor thrust one hand between the dark exiled thighs and reached with the other into her shift, to clasp the slave woman’s breasts.

She drew him close.

Petitions were being signed on the Avernus for a party to descend to the Helliconian surface and rescue Billy Xiao Pin. No serious notice was taken of the petitions. Billy’s contract clearly stated that, whatever difficulties he found himself in, no help would be forthcoming. Which did not prevent many young ladies of the Pin family from threatening to commit suicide if the government did not act at once. But the work of the station continued as usual, as it had done for the previous thirty-two centuries. Little the Avernians knew how Earth’s technocrats had programmed them for obedience. The great families continued to analyse all incoming data, and the automatic systems continued to broadcast signals to distant Earth.

Gigantic auditoria shaped like conch shells stood all round that far-away planet.

To the people of Earth, Helliconian events were news. The signals were received first of all on Charon, on the extreme fringes of the solar system. There again they were analysed, classified, stored, transmitted. The most popular transmission went to Earth via the Eductainment Channel, which carried various continuous dramas from the binary system. The events at King JandolAnganol’s court were at present the highest-rating news. And that news was a thousand years old.

Those who listened to that news formed part of a global society undergoing a change as profound as any on Helliconia. The Decline of the Modern Ages had been hastened by greatly increased glaciation at the terrestrial poles, leading to the Great Ice Age. In the ninth century of the sixth millennium after the birth of Christ, the glaciers were again retreating, and the people’s of Earth moving northwards in their wake. Old racial and national antipathies were in abeyance. A mood appropriate to the congenial climate of Earth prevailed, in which sophisticated sensibilities were directed to exploring the relationship between the biosphere, its living things, and the gubernatory globe itself.

For once, leaders and statesmen arose who were worthy of their people. They shared a true vision and inspired the populace. They saw to it that the drama of the distant planet Helliconia was studied as an object lesson in folly as well as an endless tapestry of circumstance.

To the great conch shells, millions of terrestrials had come to watch the departure of the queen, the burning of the Myrdolators, the quarrel between the king and his chancellor. These were contemporary events, in that they influenced the emotional climate of those who looked up at the gigantic images. But the events were also fossil events, compressed within the strata of light on which they had arrived. They seemed to burst up with renewed heat and life on reaching the consciousness of terrestrial human beings, as long-buried trees of Earth’s Carboniferous Age yield the sun’s energies when coal burns in a grate.

Those fires did not touch everyone. In some quarters, Helliconia was regarded as the relic of an age long past, a period of troubled history best forgotten, when human affairs had been little better managed on Earth than on Helliconia. The new men turned their faces to a new way of life in which the human and its engines were not to be the ultimate arbiter. Some who worked towards those goals found time still to cheer for crabbed SartoriIrvrash, or to become Myrdolators.

The terrestrial followers of the queen were many, even in the new lands. Day and night, they awaited their fossil news.