Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [192]
‘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