Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [131]
She paused to observe the effect of her story on Amin Lim, who, having nothing else to do, was listening intently. Rol Sakil’s little eyes became almost hidden in wrinkles as she continued.
‘I’d never have thought a mite more of it – I likes a drop of pig’s counsel myself. But round the other side of the tower, what do I find but another body lying there. “That’s two fools drunk out of their wits, lying asleep on the ground,” says I to myself. And I’d never have thought a mite more of it, but when it’s given out that young Klils and his brother Nahkri were found dead together, lying at the bottom of their tower, why, that’s another matter …’ She sniffed.
‘Everyone said that’s where they were found.’
‘Ah, but I found them first, and they weren’t together. So they didn’t fight together, did they? That’s fishy, Amin Lim, isn’t it? So I says to myself, “Someone went and pushed them two brothers off the top of the tower.” Who might it be, who stood most to gain by their deaths? Well, girl, that’s something I leave to others to judge. All I says is, I says to our Dol, “You cultivate your fear of heights, Dol. Don’t you go near no edges of towers while you’re with Aoz Roon,” I says. “Don’t you go near no edges of towers and you’ll be all right …” That’s what I says.’
Amin Lim shook her head. ‘Shay Tal wouldn’t love Aoz Roon if he did that kind of thing. And she’d know. She’s wise, she’d know for sure.’
Rol Sakil rose and hobbled nervously about the stone room, shaking her head in doubt. ‘Where men’s concerned, Shay Tal is the same as the rest of us. She doesn’t always think with her harneys – sometimes she uses the thing between her legs instead.’
‘Oh, hush with you.’ Amin Lim looked sorrowfully down at her friend and mentor. Privately, she wished that Shay Tal’s life were ruled more in the way Rol Sakil indicated: she might then be happier.
Shay Tal lay stretched out stiffly on her left side, in the pauk attitude. Her eyes seemed barely closed. Her breathing was scarcely audible, punctuated by long-drawn-out sighs. Looking at the austere contours of that loved face, Amin Lim thought she was watching someone facing death with composure. Only the mouth, growing tighter occasionally, indicated the terror it was impossible to suppress in the presence of the denizens of the world below.
Although Amin Lim had once gone into pauk herself, under guidance, the fright of seeing her father again had been enough for her. The extra dimension was now closed; she would never again visit that world until her final call came.
‘Poor thing, poor little thing,’ she said as she stroked her friend’s head, lovingly regarding its grey hairs, hoping to ease her passage through the black realm lying below life.
Though the soul had no eyes, yet it could see in a medium where terror replaced vision.
It looked down, as it began to fall, into a space more enormous than the night sky. Into that space, Wutra could never come. This was a region of which Wutra the Undying had no cognisance. With his blue face, his undaunted gaze, his slender horns, he belonged to the great frosty battle taking place elsewhere. This region was hell because he was not. Every star that gleamed was a death.
There was no smell except terror. Every death had its immutable position. No comets flared down here; this was the realm of entropy absolute, without change, the event death of the universe, to which life could respond only with terror.
As the soul did now.
The land-octaves wound over real territory. They could be likened to paths, except that they more resembled winding walls, endlessly dividing the world, only their tops showing above the surfaces. Their real substance went down deep into the seamless ground, penetrating to the original boulder on which the disc of the world rested.
In the original boulder, at the bottom