Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [275]
‘Admit it, Rushven, your history will never be finished,’ said YeferalOboral, the queen’s brother, using an old nickname. ‘It simply gives you an excuse to sleep all afternoon.’
The chancellor sighed; the queen’s brother had not his sister’s brains. He said severely, ‘If you stopped kicking your heels about the court, you could set up an expedition and sail round the world. How that would add to our knowledge!’
‘I wish that Robayday had done some such thing,’ said MyrdemInggala. ‘Who knows where the lad is now?’
SartoriIrvrash was not going to waste sympathy on the queen’s son. ‘I made one new discovery yesterday,’ he said. ‘Do you wish to hear of it or not? Will I bore you? Will the mere sound of such botherations of knowledge cause you to jump from the ramparts?’
The queen laughed her silvery laugh and held his hand. ‘Come, Yef and I are no dolts. What’s the discovery? Is the world getting colder?’
Ignoring this facetiousness, SartoriIrvrash asked, frowning, ‘What colour is a hoxney?’
‘I know that,’ cried the young princess. ‘They’re brown. Everyone knows hoxneys are brown.’
Grunting, SartoriIrvrash lifted her up into his arms. ‘And what colour were hoxneys yesterday?’
‘Brown, of course.’
‘And the day before that?’
‘Brown, you silly Rushven.’
‘Correct, you wise little princess. But if that is the case, then why are hoxneys depicted as being striped in two brilliant colours in the illuminations in ancient chronicles?’
He had to answer his own question. ‘That is what I asked my friend Bardol CaraBansity down in Ottassol. He flayed a hoxney and examined its skin. And what has he discovered? Why, that a hoxney is not a brown animal as we all believe. It is a brown-striped animal, with brown stripes on a brown background.’
Tatro laughed. ‘You’re teasing us. If it’s brown and brown, then it’s brown, isn’t it?’
‘Yes and no. The lie of the coat shows that a hoxney is not a plain brown animal. It consists of brown stripes. What possible point could there be to that?
‘Well, I have hit upon the answer, and you will see how clever I am. Hoxneys were once striped in brilliant stripes, just as the chronicles show. When was that? Why, in the spring of the Great Year, when suitable grazing was available again. Then the hoxneys needed to multiply as rapidly as possible. So they put on their most brilliant sexual display. Nowadays, centuries later, hoxneys are well established everywhere. They don’t need to breed exponentially, so mating display is out. The stripes are dulled down to neutral brown – until the spring of the next Great Year calls them out again.’
The queen made a moue. ‘If there is another Great Year spring, and we don’t all tumble into Freyr.’
SartoriIrvrash clapped his hands pettishly together. ‘But don’t you see, this – this adaptive geometry of the hoxneian species is a guarantee that we don’t tumble into Freyr – that it comes near every great summer, and then again recedes?’
‘We’re not hoxneys,’ said YeferalOboral, gesturing dismissively.
‘Your Majesty,’ said the chancellor, addressing himself earnestly to the queen, ‘my discovery also shows that old manuscripts can often be trusted more than we think. You know the king your husband and I are at odds. Intercede for me, I pray. Let a ship be commissioned. Let me be allowed two years away from my duties to sail about the world, collecting manuscripts. Let us make Borlien a centre of learning, as it once was in the days of YarapRombry of Keevasien. Now my wife is dead, there’s little to keep me here, except your fair presence.’
A shadow passed over her face.
‘There is a crisis in the king, I feel it. His wound has healed in his flesh but not in his mind. Leave your thought with me, Rushven, and let it wait until this anxious meeting with the Pannovalans is over. I fear what is in store.’
The queen smiled at the old man with considerable warmth. She easily endured his irritability, for she understood its source. He was not entirely good – indeed, she considered some of his experiments pure