Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [237]
‘You perverse man. Religion is eternal, stinks aren’t.’
‘On the contrary, my leggiandrous beauty, religions change all the time. It’s stinks which go on unchanged for ever.’
‘You rejoice in that?’
He was drying the wonderful object on a cloth and did not answer. ‘Look at this.’
She came and rested a hand on his shoulder.
‘By the boulder!’ he exclaimed in awe. He passed it to Bindla, and she gasped.
A strap of cunningly interwoven metal, much like a bracelet, supported a transparent panel in which three sets of numbers glowed.
They read the numbers aloud as he pointed to them with a blunt finger.
06 : 16 : 55 12 : 37 : 76 19 : 20 : 14
The numbers writhed and changed as they watched. The CaraBansitys looked at each other in mute astonishment. They watched again.
‘I never saw such a talisman before,’ Bindla said in awe.
They had to look again, fascinated. The figures were black on a yellow background. He read them aloud.
06 : 20 : 25 13 : 00 : 00 19 : 23 : 44
As CaraBansity put the mechanism to his ear to see if it made any noise, the pendulum clock on the wall behind began to chime thirteen. This clock was an elaborate one, built by CaraBansity himself in his younger days. It showed in pictorial form the rising and setting times of the two suns, Batalix and Freyr, as well as the divisions of the year, the 100 seconds in a minute, the forty minutes in an hour, the twenty-five hours in a day, the eight days in a week, the six weeks in a tenner, and the ten tenners in a year of four hundred and eighty days. There was also an indicator to show the 1825 small years in a Great Year; that pointer now stood at 381, the present date by the Borlien-Oldorando calendar.
Bindla listened to the mechanism, and heard nothing. ‘Is it a clock of some kind?’
‘Must be. Middle numbers make it thirteen o’clock, Borlien time …’
She always knew when he was at a loss. He chewed his knuckle like a child.
There was a row of studs along the top of the bracelet. She pressed one.
A different series of numbers appeared in the three apertures.
6877 828 3269
(1177)
‘The middle one’s the year, by some ancient calendar or other. How can that work?’
He pressed the stud and the previous series appeared. He set the bracelet down on the bench and stared at it, but Bindla picked it up and slipped it over her hand. The bracelet immediately adjusted itself, fitting snuggly to her plump wrist. She shrieked.
CaraBansity went across to a shelf of worn reference books. He passed over an ancient folio copy of The Testament of RayniLayan, and pulled out a calf-bound Seer’s and Deuteroscopist’s Calendrical Tables. After fluttering through several pages, he settled on one and ran his finger down a column.
Although the year by the Borlien-Oldorando calendar was 381, this reckoning was not universally accepted. Other nations used other reckonings, which were listed in the Tables; 828 was listed. He found it under the ancient, discarded ‘Denniss Calendar’, now associated with witchcraft and the occult. Denniss was the name of a legendary king supposed to have ruled all Campannlat.
‘The central panel of the bracelet refers to local time …’ He tested out his knuckle again. ‘And it has survived inundation in the sea. Where are there craftsmen now who could manufacture such a jewel? Somehow it must have survived from the time of Denniss …’
He held his wife’s wrist and they watched the numbers busy with their changes. They had found a timepiece of unparalleled sophistication, probably of unparalleled value, certainly of unparalleled mystery.
Wherever the craftsmen were who had made the bracelet, they must be secure from the desperate state to which King JandolAnganol had brought Borlien. Things still held together in Ottassol because it was a port, trading with other lands. Conditions elsewhere were worse, with drought, famine, and lawlessness. Wars and skirmishes wasted the country’s lifeblood. A better statesman than the king, advised by a less corrupt scritina, or parliament, would make peace with Borlien’s enemies and see to the welfare