Helliconia, page 43
His eye missed nothing. Catching sight of the stone figurine among the litter on her table, he scrutinised it closely. She flushed and fidgeted.
‘It’s very old.’
‘And still very popular.’
She giggled. ‘I meant the object itself.’
‘I meant their objective.’ He set it down, looking archly at her, and settled his body against the edge of the table so that their legs were touching.
Vry bit her lip and looked down. She had her erotic fantasies about this man she did not greatly like, and they came crowding back to her now.
But Raynil Layan, as was his style, had changed tack. After a moment’s silence, he moved his leg, cleared his throat, and spoke seriously.
‘Vry, among the pilgrims just arrived from Pannoval is a man not as blinded with religion as the rest of his crowd. He makes clocks, working them precisely from metal. Wood is no good for your purpose. Let me bring this craftsman to you, and you can instruct him as you will to build your model expertly.’
‘Mine’s no mere clock, Raynil Layan,’ she said, looking up at him as he stood against her chair, wondering if she and he could in any way be regarded as being made of the same stone.
‘That I understand. You instruct the man about your machine. I’ll pay him in coin. I shall soon take up an important post, with power to command as I will.’
She stood up, the better to assess his response.
‘I hear you are to run an Oldorandan mint.’
He narrowed his eyes and surveyed her, half-smiling, half-angry. ‘Who told you that?’
‘You know how news travels.’
‘Faralin Ferd has been blabbing out of turn again.’
‘You don’t think greatly of him or Tanth Ein, do you?’
He made a dismissive gesture and seized her hands. ‘I think of you all the while. I will have power and, unlike those other fools – unlike Aoz Roon – I believe that knowledge can be wedded to power to reinforce it … Be my woman and you shall have what you wish. You shall live better. We will discover all things. We will split open the pyramid that my predecessor, Datnil Skar, never managed to do, for all his prattle.’
She hid her face, wondering if her thin body, her torpid queme, could entice and hold a man.
Pulling her wrists from his grasp, she backed away. Her hands, now free, flew like birds to her face to try to conceal the agitation she felt.
‘Don’t tempt me, don’t play with me.’
‘You need tempting, my doe.’
Narrowing his eyes, he opened the purse at his belt, and brought forth some coins. These he extended towards her, like a man tempting a wild hoxney with food. She came cautiously to inspect them.
‘The new currency, Vry. Coins. Take them. They’re going to transform Oldorando.’
The three coins were improperly rounded and crudely stamped. There was a small bronze coin stamped ‘Half Roon’, a larger copper coin stamped ‘One Roon’, and a small gold coin stamped ‘Five Roons’. In the middle of each coin was the legend:
O L D
O R A N
D O
Vry laughed with excitement as she examined them. Somehow, the money represented power, modernity, knowledge. ‘Roons!’ she exclaimed. ‘That’s rich.’
‘The very key to riches.’
She set them on her worn table. ‘I’ll test your intelligence with them, Raynil Layan.’
‘What a way you do court a man!’ He laughed, but saw by her narrow face that she was serious.
‘Let the Half Roon be our world, Hrl-Ichor. The big One Roon is Batalix. This little gold one is Freyr.’ With her finger, she made the Half Roon circle about the Roon. ‘This is how we move through the upper air. One circle is one year – in which time, the Half Roon has revolved like a ball four hundred and eighty times. See? When we think we see the Roon move, it is we who move on the Half Roon. Yet the Roon is not still. There’s a general principle involved, much like love. As a child’s life revolves about its mother, so does the Half Roon’s about the Roon – and so also does the Roon, I have decided, about the Five Roons.’
‘You have decided? A guess?’
‘No. Simple observation. But no observation, however simple, can be made except by those predisposed to make it. Between winter and spring solstices, the Half Roon moves its maximum to either side of the Roon.’ She demonstrated the diameter of its orbit. ‘Imagine that behind the Five Roons there are a number of tiny sticks standing to represent fixed stars. Then imagine you are standing on the Half Roon. Can you imagine that?’
‘More, I can imagine you standing there with me.’
She thought how quick he was, and her voice shook as she said, ‘There we stand, and the Half Roon goes first this side of the Roon, then the other … What do we observe? Why, that the Five Roons appears to move against the fixed stars behind it.’
‘Only appears?’
‘In that respect, yes. The movement shows both that Freyr is close compared to the stars, and that it is we who really move and not the sentinels.’
Raynil Layan contemplated the coins.
‘But you say that the two small denominations move about the Five Roons?’
‘You know that we share a guilty secret. There’s the matter of your predecessor illegally presenting Shay Tal with information from your corps book … From King Denniss’s dating we know that this is the year he would call 446. That is the number of years after someone – Nadir …’
‘I’ve had a better chance than you to puzzle that dating out, my doe, and other dates to compare it with. The date Zero is a year of maximum cold and dark, according to the Denniss calendar.’
‘Exactly what I believe. It is now 446 years since Freyr was at its feeblest. Batalix never changes its light intensity. Freyr does – for some reason. Once, I believed that it grew bright or dim at random. But now I think that the universe is no more random than a stream is random. There are causes for things; the universe is a machine, like this astronomical clock which seeks to imitate it. Freyr is getting brighter because it approaches – no, vice versa – we approach Freyr. It’s hard to shake off the old ways of thought when they are embedded in the language. In the new language, the Half Roon and the Roon are approaching the Five Roons …’
He fiddled with the little ribbons on his beard. Vry watched him thinking over her statement.
‘Why is the approach theory preferable to the dim-bright theory?’
She clapped her hands. ‘What a clever question to ask. If Batalix doesn’t fluctuate from dim to bright, why should Freyr? The Half Roon always approaches the Roon, though the Roon always moves out of the way. So I think the Roon approaches the Five Roons in the same way – taking the Half-Roon with it. Which brings us to the eclipses.’ She circulated the two lower denomination coins again.
‘You see how the Half Roon reaches a point each year where observers on it – you and I – would not see the Five because the One would get in the way? That is an eclipse.’
‘So why isn’t there an eclipse every year? It spoils all your theory if one part of it is wrong, just as a hoxney won’t run with only three legs.’
You’re smart, she thought – much smarter than Dathka or Laintal Ay – and I like clever men, even when they’re unscrupulous.
‘Oh, there’s a reason for it, which I can’t properly demonstrate. That’s why I am trying to build this model. I’ll show you soon.’
He smiled and took her slender hand again. She trembled as if she were down the brassimip tree.
‘You shall have that craftsman here tomorrow, working in gold to your specifics, if you will agree to be mine and let me publish the news. I want you close – in my bed.’
‘Oh, you’ll have to wait … please … please …’ She fell trembling into his arms as he clutched her. His hands moved over her body seeking her narrow contours. He does want me, she thought, in a whirl, he wants me in a way Dathka doesn’t dare. He’s more mature, far more intelligent. He’s not half so bad as they make out. Shay Tal was wrong about him. She was wrong about a lot of things. Besides, manners are different in Oldorando now and, if he wants me, he shall have me …
‘The bed,’ she gasped, tearing at his clothes. ‘Quick, before I change my mind. I’m so divided … Quick, I’m ready. Open.’
‘Oh, my trousers, have a care …’ But he was pleased by her haste. She felt, she saw, his rising excitement, as he lowered his bulk onto her. She groaned as he laughed. She had a vision of the two of them, one flesh, whirling among the stars in the grip of a great universal power, anonymous, eternal …
The hospice was new and not yet complete. It stood near the fringes of the town, extending from what had been called Prast’s Tower in the old days. Here came those travellers who had fallen sick on their journeyings. Across the street was the establishment of a veterinary surgeon which received sick animals.
Both hospice and surgery had a bad name – it was claimed that the tools of their respective trades were interchangeable; but the hospice was efficiently run by the first woman member of the apothecary’s corps, a midwife and teacher at the academy known to all as Ma Scantiom, after the flowers with which she insisted on decking the wards under her command.
A slave took Laintal Ay to her. She was a tall sturdy person of middle age, with plenty of bosom, and a kindly expression on her face. One of her aunts had been Nahkri’s woman. She and Laintal Ay had been on good terms for many years.
‘I’ve two patients in an isolation ward I want you to see,’ she said, selecting a key from a number that hung at her belt. She had discarded hoxneys in favour of a long saffron apron-dress which hung almost to the floor.
Ma Scantiom unlocked a sturdy door at the rear of her office.
They went through into the old tower and climbed the ramps until they were at the top.
From somewhere below them came the sound of a clow, played by a convalescent patient. Laintal Ay recognised the tune: ‘Stop, Stop, Voral River.’ The rhythm was fast, yet with a melancholy which matched the useless exhortation of the chorus. The river ran and would not stop, no, not for love or life itself …
Each floor of the tower had been divided into small wards or cells, each with a door with a grille set in it. Without a word, Ma Scantiom slid back the cover over the grille and indicated that Laintal Ay was to look through.
There were two beds in the cell, each bearing a man. The men were almost naked. They lay in locked positions, nearly rigid but never entirely still. The man nearest the door, who had a thick mane of black hair, lay with his spine arched and his hands clenched together above his head. He was grinding his knuckles against the stone wall so that they seeped blood, which ran down the blue-veined paths of his arms. His head rolled stiffly at awkward angles. He caught sight of Laintal Ay at the grille, and his eyes tried to fix on him, but the head insisted on its continued slow-motion movement. Arteries in his neck stood out like cord.
The second patient, lying below the window, held his arms folded tight into his chest. He was curling himself into a ball and then unrolling, at the same time waggling his feet back and forth so that the little bones cracked. His gaze, distraught, moved between floor and ceiling. Laintal Ay recognised him as the man who had collapsed in the street.
Both men were deathly pale and glistening with sweat, the pungent smell of which filtered out of the cell. They continued to wrestle with invisible assailants as Laintal Ay drew the cover across the grille.
‘The bone fever,’ he said. He stood close to Ma Scantiom, seeking out her expression in the thick shadow.
She merely nodded. He followed down the ramps behind her.
The clow was still wearily playing.
Why do you hurry so?
Pray this longing takes me to her
Or else lets me go …
Ma Scantiom said over her shoulder, ‘The first of them arrived two days ago – I should have called you yesterday. They starve themselves; they can hardly be persuaded to take water. It’s like a prolonged muscular spasm. Their minds are affected.’
‘They’ll die?’
‘Only about half survive attacks of bone fever. Sometimes, when they have lost a third of their body weight they simply pull out of it. They then normalise at their new weight. Others go mad and die, as if the fever got in their harneys and killed them.’
Laintal Ay swallowed, feeling his throat dry. Back in her office, he took a deep inhalation of a bunch of scantiom and raige on the window sill to cleanse the stench in his nostrils. The room was painted white.
‘Who are they? Traders?’
‘They have both come from the east, travelling with different groups of Madis. One’s a trader, one’s a bard. Both have phagor slaves, which are at present in the vet’s surgery. You probably know that bone fever can spread fast and become a major plague. I want those patients out of my hospice. We need somewhere away from town where we can isolate them. These won’t be the only cases.’
‘You’ve spoken to Faralin Ferd about it?’
She frowned. ‘Worse than useless. First of all, he and Tanth Ein said the sick must not be moved from here. Then they suggested killing them and dumping the bodies in the Voral.’
‘I’ll see what I can do. I know a ruined tower about five miles away. Perhaps that would be suitable.’
‘I knew you’d help.’ She put a hand on his sleeve, smiling. ‘Something brings the disease. Under favourable conditions, it can spread like a fire. Half the population would die – we know of no cure. My belief is that those filthy phagors carry it. Perhaps it is the scent of their pelts. There are two hours of Freyr-dark tonight; in that time, I am going to have the two phagors in the vet’s surgery killed and buried. I wanted to tell someone in authority, so I’m telling you. I knew you’d be on my side.’
‘You think they will spread bone fever further?’
‘I don’t know. I just don’t wish to take any risks. There may be another cause entirely – the blindness may bring it. Wutra may send it.’
She tucked her lower lip in. He read the concern in her homely face.
‘Bury them deep where the dogs can’t scratch them up again. I’ll see about the ruined tower for you. Are you expecting’ – he hesitated – ‘more cases soon?’
Without changing her expression, she said, ‘Of course.’
As he left, the clow was still playing its plaintive tune, remote in the depths of the building.
Laintal Ay did not think of complaining to Ma Scantiom, although he had laid other plans for the two hours of Freyr-dark.
Dathka’s speech of the morning, when Oyre had returned from her pauk-induced spell of father-communing, troubled him deeply. He saw the strength of the argument which said that he and Oyre together represented invincible claimants to the leadership of Oldorando. In general, he wanted what was rightfully his, as anyone else did. And he certainly wanted Oyre. But did he want to rule Oldorando?
It seemed that Dathka’s speech had subtly changed the situation. Perhaps be could now win Oyre only by taking power.
This line of thought occupied his mind as he went about Ma Scantiom’s business, which was everyone’s business. Bone fever was no more than a legend, yet the fact that nobody had experienced the reality made the legend all the more dark. People died. Plague was like the manic stepping-up of a natural process.
So he worked without complaint, conscripting help from Goija Hin. Together, Laintal Ay and the slave driver collected the two phagors belonging to the bone fever victims and sent them into the isolation cell. There, the phagors were made to roll their sick masters into rush mats and carry them away from the hospice. The innocuous-looking mat rolls would cause no panic.
The small group moved with its burdens out of town towards the ruined tower Laintal Ay knew of. With them shuffled the ancient slave phagor, Myk, to take an occasional turn carrying the diseased men. This was designed to hasten the proceedings, but Myk had become so ancient that progress was slow.
Goija Hin, also bent with age, his hair growing so long and stiff over his shoulders that he resembled one of his miserable captives, lashed Myk savagely. Neither lash nor curses hastened the old burdened slave. He staggered onward without protest, though his calves above his fetters were raw from whipping.
‘My trouble is, I neither want to wield the lash nor feel it,’ Laintal Ay told himself. Another layer of thought arose in his mind, like mist on a still morning. He reflected that he lacked certain qualities. There was little he wished for. He was content with the days as they fled.
I’ve been too content, I suppose. It was enough to know that Oyre loved me, and to lie in her arms. It was enough that once Aoz Roon was almost like a father to me. It was enough that the climate changed, enough that Wutra ordered his sentinels to keep their place in the sky.
Now Wutra has left his sentinels to stray. Aoz Roon has gone. And what was that cutting thing Oyre said earlier – that Dathka was mature, implying I was not? Oh, that silent friend of mine, is that maturity, to be a mass of cunning plots inside? Wasn’t contentment maturity enough?
There was too much of his grandfather, Little Yuli, in him, too little of Yuli the Priest. And for the first time in a long while, he recalled his mild grandfather’s enchantment with Loil Bry, and of how they had stayed together happily in the room with the porcelain window. It was another age. Everything had been simpler then. They had been so content then, with so little.
He was not content to die now. Not content to be killed by the lieutenants if they thought him involved with Dathka’s plotting. And not content either to die of the bone fever, contracted from these two wretches they were carrying away from the city. It was still three miles to the old tower he had in mind.
He paused. The phagors and Goija Hin trudged on automatically with their vile burdens. Here he was again, once more meekly doing what was asked of him. There was no reason for it. His stupid habit of obedience had to be broken.
