Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [190]
In a niche in the wall beside the map stood a little figurine which Dathka had brought her. She lifted it down now, cradling it in her palm rather abstractedly. It depicted a couple enjoying coition in a squatting position. Man and woman were carved out of one stone. The hands through which the object had passed had worn them into anonymity, age had rendered them both featureless. The carving represented the supreme act of being together, and Vry regarded it longingly as it rested in her hand. ‘That’s unity,’ she murmured, in a low voice.
For all her friends’ teasing, she wanted desperately what the stone represented. She also recognised, as Shay Tal had before her, that the path to knowledge was a solitary one.
Did the figurine portray a pair of real lovers whose names had been lost far in the past? It was impossible to tell.
In the past lay the answers to much that was in the future. She looked hopelessly at the astronomical clock she was trying to construct from wood, which lay on the table by her narrow window. Not only was she unused to working in wood, but she still had not grasped the principle that maintained the world, the three wandering worlds, and the two sentinels in their paths.
Suddenly, she perceived that a unity existed among the spheres – they were all of one material, as the lovers were of one stone. And a force as strong as sexual need bound them all mysteriously together, dictating their movements.
She sat down at her table, and commenced wrenching the rods and rings apart, trying to rearrange them in a new order.
She was thus engaged when there was a tap at her door. Raynil Layan sidled in, giving hasty looks about him to see that nobody else was in the room.
He saw her framed in the pale blue rectangle of window, the light brooding on her profile. She held a wooden ball in one hand. At his entrance, she half started up, and he saw – for he watched people closely – that her habitual reserve had left her for once. She smiled nervously, smoothing her hoxney skin over the definitions of her breast. He pushed the door closed behind him.
The master of the tanners had assumed grandeur these days. His forked beard was tied with two ribbons, in a manner he had learned from foreigners, and he wore trousers of silk. Recently, he had been paying Vry attention, presenting her with such items as the Ottaassaal map, acquired in Pauk, and listening closely to her theories. All this she found obscurely exciting. Although she mistrusted his smooth manners, she was flattered by them, and by his interest in all she did.
‘You work too hard, Vry,’ he said, cocking a finger and raising an eyebrow at her. ‘More time spent outdoors would put colour back into those pretty cheeks.’
‘You know how busy I am, running the academy now Amin Lim’s gone with Shay Tal, as well as doing my own work.’
The academy flourished as never before. It had its own building, and was largely run by one of Vry’s assistants. They engaged learned men to speak; anyone passing through Oldorando was approached. Many ideas were put into practical operation in the workshops under the lecture room. Raynil Layan himself kept a watch on all that was happening.
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