Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [304]
Phagors were part of the mythology of the Avernus. Their portraits and models of them were accessible everywhere. This one, however, had the presence and individuality of life. It chewed as it regarded Billy, saliva leaking from its broad lower lip. Over its bulky figure was a one-piece garment, dyed here and there with saffron. Tufts of its long white hair were similarly dyed, giving it an unhealthy appearance. A dead snake was knotted over one shoulder – evidently a recent catch. In its hand it carried a curved knife. This was neither an idealised museum replica nor a child’s cuddly toy. As it stepped nearer, it exuded a rancid odor which made Billy giddy.
He faced it squarely and spoke slowly in Hurdhu. ‘Can you give me directions to Matrassyl?’
The creature went on ruminating. It appeared to be chewing on some kind of scarlet nut; juice of that colour trickled from its mouth. A drop sprayed onto Billy Xiao Pin. He reached up and brushed it from his cheek.
‘Matrassyl,’ it said, pronouncing the word leadenly as ‘Madrazzyl.’
‘Yes. Which way is Matrassyl?’
‘Yes.’
The look in its cerise eyes – impossible to determine whether it was meek or murderous. He wrenched his gaze away, to find that more phagors stood near, bushlike among the befoliaged shadow.
‘Can you understand what I say?’ His sentences came from the phrasebook. He was bewildered by the unreality of the situation.
‘A taking to a place is within ability.’
From a creature that had the natural force of a boulder, good sense was hardly to be expected, but Billy was left in little doubt as to its intentions. The creature rolled forward with an easy motion and pushed Billy along the path. Billy moved. The other figures tramped among the undergrowth, keeping pace.
They reached a broken slope. Here the jungle had been cleared – some trees had been hacked down, and scuttling pigs saw to it that further growth would never reach maturity. Among casual attempts at cultivation were huts or, rather, roofs supported by posts.
In the shade provided by these huts, lumpish figures lay like cattle. Some rose and came towards the foragers, one of whom sounded a small horn to announce their arrival. Billy was surrounded by male and female ancipitals, creaghs and gillots and runts, glaring up at him inquisitively. Some runts ran on all fours.
Billy dropped into the Humility position.
‘I’m trying to get to Matrassyl,’ he said. The absurdity of the sentence made him laugh; he had to check himself before he became hysterical, but the noise had the effect of making everyone stand back.
‘The lower kzahhn has proximity for inspection,’ a gillot said, touching his arm and making a motion of her head. He followed her across a stone-strewn dell, and everyone else followed him. Everything he passed – from tender green shoots to rounded boulders – was rougher than he could have visualised.
Under an awning set against the dell’s low cliff sprawled an elder phagor, arms bent at impossible angles. It sat up in smooth movements and revealed itself as an ancient gillot, with prominent withered dugs and black hairs sprouting from her coat. A necklace of polished gwing-gwing stones hung about her neck. She wore a face bracelet buckled across the prow of her nose as a mark of rank. This was evidently the ‘lower kzahhn’.
Remaining seated, she looked up at Billy.
She spoke to him questioningly.
Billy had been a junior in the great sociological clan of Pin, and not a conscientious one at that. He worked in the division which studied the family of Anganols, generation by generation. There were those among his superiors who were conversant with the histories of the present king’s predecessors back to the previous spring, some sixteen generations past. Billy Xiao Pin spoke Olonets, the main language of Campannlat and Hespagorat, and several of its variants, including Old Olonets. But he had never attempted the ancipital tongue, Native; nor had he properly mastered the language the lower kzahhn was speaking, Hurdhu, the bridge language