Helliconia, page 44
He shouted to the phagors. They halted. They stood where they were, without moving. Only the burdens on their shoulders creaked slightly.
The group was standing on a narrow track with thickets of dog-thrush on either side. A child had been eaten near here a few days earlier; evidence suggested a sabre-tongue had been the killer – the predators came in close to settlements now that wild hoxneys were scarce. So there were few people about.
Laintal Ay struck in among the bushes. He got the phagors to carry their sick masters into the thicket and set them down. The monsters did so carelessly, so that the men rolled on the ground, still in locked positions.
Their lips were blue, peeled back to reveal yellow teeth and gums. Their limbs were distorted, their bones creaked. They were in some way aware of their position, yet unable to cease a constant motor movement, making their eyeballs roll horribly in their stretched facial skin.
‘You know what’s the matter with these men?’ Laintal Ay asked.
Goija Hin nodded his head and smiled evilly to demonstrate his mastery over human knowledge. ‘They’re ill,’ he said.
Nor did Laintal Ay forget the fever he had once caught off a phagor.
‘Kill the men. Make the phagors scrape out graves with their hands. As fast as you can.’
‘I understand.’ The slave master came heavily forward.
Laintal Ay stood with a branch pressing in his back, watching the fat old man do as he was bid, as Goija Hin had always done. At each step in the proceedings, Laintal Ay gave an order and it was executed. He felt himself fully implicated in everything and would not let himself look away. Goija Hin drew a short sword and stabbed it twice through the hearts of the sick men. The phagors scraped graves with their horny hands – two white phagors, and Myk, as obese as his master, prickled with the black hairs of age and working very slowly.
All the phagors had shackles on their legs. They rolled the corpses into their graves and kicked dirt over them, then stood without movement, as was their fashion, awaiting the next order. They were commanded to scrape three more graves under the bushes. This they did, working like mute animals. Goija Hin ran his sword between the ribs of the two strange phagors, afterwards smearing the yellow ichor on their coats as they lay face down, in order to clean his blade.
Myk was made to push them in their graves and cover them with dirt.
As he stood up, he faced Laintal Ay, sliding his pale milt up the slot of his right nostril.
‘Not kill now Myk, master. Strike off my chains and allow me to go away to die.’
‘What, let you loose, you old scumble, after all these years?’ Goija Hin said angrily, raising the sword.
Laintal Ay stopped him, staring at the ancient phagor. The creature had given him rides on his back when he was a boy. It touched him that Myk did not attempt to remind him of the fact. There was no feeble appeal to sentiment. Instead, he stood without movement, awaiting whatever would befall.
‘How old are you, Myk?’ Sentiment, he thought, my sentiment. You couldn’t face giving the necessary order to kill, could you?
‘I prisoner, don’t count years.’ The s’s were dragged like bees from his throat. ‘Once, we ancipitals ruled Embruddock, and you Sons of Freyr were our slaves. Ask Mother Shay Tal – she knew.’
‘She told me. And you killed us as we kill you.’
The crimson eyes blinked once. The creature growled, ‘We kept you alive through the centuries when Freyr was sick. Much foolish. Now you Sons will all die. You strike away my chains, leave me go to die in tether.’
Laintal Ay gestured to the open grave. ‘Kill him,’ he ordered Goija Hin.
Myk put up no struggle. Goija Hin kicked the huge body into the depression and piled dirt about it with his boot. Then he stood among the tanglewood, facing Laintal Ay, moistening his lips and looking uneasy.
‘I knew you when you was a little boy, sir. I was good to you. Myself, I always said you should be Lord of Embruddock – you ask my mates if I didn’t.’
He made no attempt to defend himself with his sword. It fell from his hands and he went down on his knees, blubbering, bowing his hoary head.
‘Myk’s probably right,’ Laintal Ay said. ‘We’ve probably got the plague in us. We’re probably too late.’ Without another glance, he left Goija Hin where he was and strode back to the crowded city, angry with himself for not striking the fatal blow.
It was late when he entered his room. He stared round it without relaxing his black expression. Horizontal rays of Freyr-light lit the far corner, flaring up brightly, casting the rest of the room into unlikely shade.
He rinsed his face and hands in the basin, scooping up the cool water, letting it run over his brow, his eyelids, his cheeks, and drip from his jaw. He did it repeatedly, breathing deeply, feeling the heat leave him and the self-anger remain. As he smoothed his face, he noted with satisfaction that his hands had ceased to tremble.
The light in the corner slid to one wall and faded to a smouldering yellow, making a square no bigger than a box in which the world’s gold decayed. He went round the room, collecting a few items to take with him, scarcely giving a thought to the task.
There was a knock on the door. Oyre looked in. As if sensing immediately the tension in the room, she paused on the threshold.
‘Laintal Ay – where have you been? I’ve been waiting for you.’
‘There was something I had to do.’
She paused with her hand still on the latch, watching, breathing a sigh. With the light behind him, she could not decipher his expression through the thick dusk gathering in the room, but she caught the abruptness in his voice.
‘Is anything the matter, Laintal Ay?’
He stuffed his old hunter’s blanket into a pack, punching it down.
‘I’m leaving Oldorando.’
‘Leaving … ? Where are you going?’
‘Oh … let’s say I’m going to look for Aoz Roon.’ He spoke bitterly. ‘I’ve lost interest in – in everything here.’
‘Don’t be silly.’ She moved a step forward as she spoke, to see him better, thinking how large he seemed in the low-ceilinged room. ‘How will you seek him in the wilderness?’
He turned to face her, slinging the pack over one shoulder. ‘Do you think it’s sillier to seek him in the real world or to go down in pauk among the gossies to find him, as you do? You were always telling me I had to do something great. Nothing satisfied you … Well, now I’m off, to do or die. Isn’t that something great?’
She laughed feebly, and said, ‘I don’t want you to go. I want—’
‘I know what you want. You think Dathka is mature and I’m not. Well, to hell with that. I’ve had enough. I’m going, as I always longed to do. Try your luck with Dathka.’
‘I love you, Laintal Ay. Now you’re acting like Aoz Roon.’
He took hold of her. ‘Stop comparing me with other people. Perhaps you’re not as clever as I thought, or you’d know when you were hurting me. I love you too, but I’m going …’
She screamed. ‘Why are you so brutal?’
‘I’ve lived with brutes long enough. Stop asking stupid questions.’
He put his arms round her, dragging her close, and kissed her hard on the mouth, so that her lips were forced back and their teeth slid together.
‘I hope to be back,’ he said. He laughed sharply at the stupidity of his own remark. With a final glance, he left, slamming the door behind him, leaving her in the empty room. The gold had died to ashes. It was almost dark, though she saw points of fire in the street outside.
‘Oh scumb,’ she exclaimed. ‘Curse you – and curse me, too.’
Then she recovered herself, ran to the door, and flung it open, shouting to him. Laintal Ay was running down the stairs and did not respond. She ran after him, clutching his sleeve.
‘Laintal Ay, you idiot, where are you going?’
‘I’m going to saddle up Gold.’
He said it so angrily, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, that she remained where she was. Then the thought occurred to her that she must get Dathka at once. Dathka would know how to deal with his friend’s madness.
Just recently, Dathka had become elusive. Sometimes he slept in the unfinished building across the Voral, sometimes in one tower or another, sometimes in one of the doubtful new places springing up. All she could think of at this hour was to run to Shay Tal’s tower to see if he was with Vry. Fortunately, he was. He and Vry were in the middle of a quarrel; her cheek burned and she cowered almost as if Dathka had struck her. Dathka looked pale with fury, but Oyre broke in on them and poured out her tale, oblivious to their troubles. Dathka gave a choking noise.
‘We can’t let him leave now, just when everything’s falling apart.’
With one deadly glance at Vry, he ran from the room.
He ran all the way to the stables, and was in time to catch Laintal Ay walking out, leading Gold. They confronted each other.
‘You’re plain mad, friend – behave sensibly. No one wants you to go. Come to your senses and look after your own interests.’
‘I am sick of doing what everyone wants me to do. You want me here because you need me to play a role in your schemes.’
‘We need you to see that Tanth Ein and his mate, and that slimy toad Raynil Layan, don’t take control of everything we’ve got.’ His expression was bitter.
‘You don’t stand a chance. I’m going to find Aoz Roon.’
Dathka sneered. ‘You’re mad. Nobody knows where he is.’
‘I believe he went with Shay Tal to Sibornal.’
‘You fool! Forget Aoz Roon – his star’s set, he’s old. Now it’s us. You’re getting out of Oldorando because you’re afraid, aren’t you? It so happens I still have a few friends who haven’t betrayed me, including one at the hospice.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I know as much as you know. You’re getting out because you’re afraid of the plague.’
Afterwards, Laintal Ay repeated obsessively the angry words they exchanged, realising that Dathka was not his ordinary rather emotionless self. At the time, he simply acted on reflex. He struck Dathka with all his might, bringing up his open right hand and dealing his friend an upward blow under the nose with the edge of his palm. He heard the bone go.
Dathka fell back immediately, clutching his face. Blood flowed, and dripped from his knuckles. Laintal Ay swung himself up into the saddle, spurred Gold, and edged through the gathering crowd. Chattering with excitement, the crowd swarmed round the injured man, who staggered about, cursing and bent double with pain.
His temper still raging within him, Laintal Ay rode out of town. He had brought few of the things he intended to bring. In his present mood, it felt good to be leaving with little but his sword and a blanket.
As he went, he felt in his pocket and brought out a small carved object. In the twilight, he could scarcely make out its shape – but it was familiar to him since boyhood. It was a dog which moved its jaw when its tail was worked up and down. He had had it since the day his grandfather died.
He pitched it into the nearest bush.
XIV
Through the Eye of a Needle
Humankind feared the bite of the phagor, but the bite of a phagor tick was more to be dreaded.
The bite of a phagor tick causes a phagor no irritation, and scarcely more to a human. Its mouthparts have adapted over the millennia to piercing skin tissue with a minimum of damage, and to sucking up painlessly the fluid food it requires to further its own complex reproductive cycle.
The tick possesses elaborate genital organs and no head. Its mouth parts are divided into two pairs. One pair consists of modified pincers which penetrate and inject a cocktail of local anaesthetic and anticoagulant into the flesh, the other of sensory organs bearing a complex blade covered with teeth which, projecting backwards, anchor the tick comfortably into position on its host.
There the tick clings, resisting dislodgement, to drop off only when gorged – unless the questing beak of a cowbird discovers it and gobbles it down as a delicacy.
Multitudinous Embruddocks for the helico virus are provided in the cells of the tick. And there the virus tarries, inert, awaiting a certain harmonic which will draw it into the orchestra of life, although it is sparked to quasi-activity if female phagor hosts are on oestrus. Only twice in the cycle of the great Helliconian year does that harmonic trigger the active phase of the virus.
A chain of events then operates that will eventually decide the fate of whole nations. Wutra, the philosophical might claim, is a helical virus.
Obedient to the external signal, the virus streams forth from the cells of the tick, down its mouthparts, and into the body of a human host, where it makes its way along the bloodstream. As if tracing its own air-octaves, the invading force moves through the body until it reaches its new host’s brain stem and flows into the hypothalamus, causing severe inflammation of the brain, and frequently death.
Once in the hypothalamus, that ancient sector of awareness, the seat of rage and lust, the virus replicates itself with a reproductive fury which may be likened to a storm over the Nktryhk.
The invasion of the human cell represents an incursion of one genetic system into the precincts of another; the invaded cell capitulates and becomes virtually a new biological unit, complete with its own natural history, much as a city may change hands in a prolonged war, belonging first to one side, then to the other.
Invasion, furious replication: then the outward signs of those events. The victim manifests that manic stiffening and tightening in the sinews witnessed by Laintal Ay at the hospice – and many of his kind before him. On the whole, those who witnessed it left no record, for obvious reasons.
These facts had been established by patient observation and careful deduction. The scholarly families of the Avernus were trained in such matters, and supported by superb instrumentation. The disability of being unable to visit the planetary surface was thus to some extent overcome.
But their imprisonment on the Avernus had drawbacks other than the obvious psychological ones. Firsthand verification of hypotheses was not possible.
Their understanding of the incursions of the so-called bone fever had recently become confused by further knowledge. The situation was again open to debate. For the Pin family had pointed out that it was during the time of the twenty eclipses and the incursions of the virus when – in Oldorando at least – a major change of human diet took place. Rathel had gone out of fashion. The brassimip crop, full of vitamins, which had sustained the community throughout centuries of winter, had fallen from general favour. Was it, the Pins suggested, that this dietary change rendered the humans more susceptible to the bite of the tick, or to the tick’s parasite, the virus? The matter was under discussion – often heated. Once more, there were hotheads who voted for an illegal expedition down to the Helliconian surface, despite the dangers.
*
Not all who contracted bone fever died. It was noticeable that those stricken fell in different ways. Some people were aware of the approach of illness, and had time to suffer apprehension or make their peace with Wutra, according to their disposition; others collapsed in the midst of an activity, unwarned – while talking to friends, when walking in the fields, even when lying in love’s embrace. Neither gradual nor sudden succumbing was any warrant for survival. However they sickened, only half recovered. For the rest, it was a lucky corpse – like the patients from Ma Scantiom’s hospice – which found a shallow grave; many in the general terror that assailed any stricken community, were left as carrion, while whole populations fled from their homes towards a pestilence that would embrace them on the road.
So it had been as long as there had been human beings on Helliconia. The survivors of the pandemic lost a third of their normal body weight – although ‘normal’ was here a relative term. They never regained the lost weight, nor did their children, nor their children’s children. Spring had arrived at last, summer was ahead – when adaptation would lie in ectomorphism. The leaner shape persisted throughout many generations, though gradually with less marked effect as subcutaneous fat again built up, the disease remaining latent, carried in the nerve cells of the survivors.
This status quo continued until late summer of the Great Year. Then the Fat Death struck.
As if in compensation for such extreme seasonal dimorphic contrasts, the two sexes on Helliconia were similar in stature and in body and brain weight. Both sexes when adult weighed on average about twelve staynes, to use the old Oldorandan measure. If they lived through bone fever, they would emerge as a lanky eight staynes or less. The next generation adjusted to its new skeletal appearance. Succeeding generations then slowly increased average body weight – until the ravages of the more obscene Fat Death brought about another dramatic change.
Aoz Roon was one who survived the first onslaught of this cycle of the pandemic. After him, many hundreds of thousands were destined to suffer and die or pull through. Some, hidden in remote corners of the world wilderness, might entirely escape the plague. But their descendants would be disadvantaged in a new world, would be treated as freaks, would stand small chance of continuance. The two great diseases, to which the phagor tick played vector, were in reality one disease: and that one disease, that Shiva of diseases, that destroyer and saviour, carried on its bloodied sword survival for mankind in the extravagant conditions of the planet.
Twice in two and a half thousand Earth years, Helliconian humanity had to go through the eye of the needle plied by the phagor tick. It was the price of their survival, of their continued development. From the carnage, from the apparent disharmony, came an underlying harmony – as if, among the screams of agony, a reassurance rose from the deepest springs of being to murmur that all was ineffably well.
Only those who could believe would believe such reassurance.
When the sound of cracking muscle faded, in floated a strange watery music. A principle of fluidity established itself over the barrens of pain, manifest first of all to Aoz Roon’s hearing. All that presented itself to his returning vision was a collection of rounded shapes, speckled, striated, or of dull uniform hue. They had no meaning, nor did he seek for meaning. He simply remained where he was, back arched, mouth open, waiting until his eyeballs ceased jerking and he could focus his sight.
