Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [189]
‘Throw your legs round him, not your arms, that’s my advice,’ Rol Sakil said, cackling with laughter. ‘There’s pretty women passing through Oldorando now – not like when we was all young, when flesh was in short supply. The things they get up to in the bazaar nowadays! No wonder they want a coinage. I know the slot they’ll stuff it in …’
‘That’s enough,’ Vry said, her cheeks red. ‘I’ll manage my own life without your crude advice. I respect Dathka but I am not at all fond of him. Change the subject.’
Laintal Ay took Vry’s arm with a consoling gesture, as Oyre emerged from behind her curtain, her hair piled on the top of her head. She had discarded her hoxney skins, which were now regarded as somewhat outmoded among a younger set in Oldorando. Instead, she wore a green woollen dress which trailed almost to the ground.
‘Vry’s being advised to take a man soon – just like you,’ Laintal Ay told her.
‘At least Dathka’s mature and knows his own mind.’
Laintal Ay scowled at this remark. Turning his back on Oyre, he said to Vry, ‘Explain to me about the twenty eclipses. I didn’t understand what you were saying. How is the universe a machine?’
She frowned and then said, ‘You’ve heard the elements before, but would not listen. You must be prepared to believe that the world is stranger than you give it credit for. I’ll try to explain clearly.
‘Imagine that the land-octaves extend into the air high above us, as well as into the ground. Imagine that this world, which the phagors call Hrl-Ichor, follows its own octave regularly. In fact its octave winds round and round Batalix. Hrl-Ichor goes round Batalix once every four hundred and eighty days – hence our year, as you know. Batalix does not move. It is we that move.’
‘What when Batalix sets every evening?’
‘Batalix is motionless in the sky. It is we that move.’
Laintal Ay laughed. ‘And the festival of Double Sunset? What moves then?’
‘The same. We move. Batalix and Freyr remain stationary. Unless you believe that, I can explain no further.’
‘We have all seen the sentinels move, my dear Vry, every day of our lives. So what follows, supposing I believe both of them to be turned to ice?’
She hesitated, then said, ‘Well, in fact Batalix and Freyr do move as Freyr grows brighter.’
‘Come – first you’d have me believe that they didn’t move, then that they did. Stop it Vry – I’ll believe your eclipses when they happen, not before.’
With a scream of impatience, she raised her scrawny arms above her head. ‘Oh, you’re such fools. Let Embruddock fall, what difference would it make? You can’t understand one simple thing.’
She left the room even more furiously than Dathka.
‘There are some simple matters she don’t understand either,’ Rol Sakil said, cuddling the small boy.
Vry’s old room showed the change that had come to Oldorando. No longer was it so bleak. Oddments gathered from here and there decked the room. She had inherited some of Shay Tal’s – and hence Loilanun’s – possessions. She had traded in the bazaars. A star chart of her making hung near the window, with the paths of the ecliptics of the two suns marked on it.
On one wall hung an ancient map, given her by a new admirer. It was painted in coloured inks upon vellum. This was her Ottaassaal map depicting the whole world, at which she never ceased to wonder. The world was depicted as round, its land masses encircled by ocean. It rested on the original boulder – bigger than the world – from which the world had sprung or been ejected. The simple outlined land masses were labelled Sibornal, with Campannlat below, and Hespagorat separate at the bottom. Some islands were formally indicated. The only town marked was Ottaassaal, set at the centre of the globe.
She wondered how far away one would have to be to see the actual world in such a way. Batalix and Freyr were two other round worlds, as she