Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [324]
The best deck cabin was occupied by the boat’s owner, Krillio Muntras, famous Ice Captain of Dimariam, and his son, Div. Div, who was slack of jaw and, for all his father’s encouragement, would never rival his father’s success in life, sat gazing at the hazily sketched scenery. His bottom was planted on the deck. Occasionally, he spat into the passing water. His father sat solidly in a canvas chair and played on a double-clouth – perhaps with a deliberate sentimentality, for this was his last voyage before retirement. His last last voyage. Muntras matched a pleasant tenor voice to his tune.
The river flows and will not cease, no,
No – not for love or life itself, oh …
The passengers roaming the deck included an arang, which was to provide the sailors with their supper. Except for the arang, the passengers were markedly respectful to the ice captain.
Fog curled like steam off the surface of the Valvoral. The water became darker still as they neared the cliffs of Cahchazzerh, whose steep faces overlooked the river. The cliffs, folded like old linen, rose a few hundred feet to be crowned with dense foliage which, in its exuberance, appeared to be lowering itself down the overhanging rock by means of creepers and lianas. Much of the cliff had been colonised by swallows and mourner birds. The latter launched themselves and came to investigate the Lordryardry Lady, wheeling above it with their melancholy shrieks as it prepared to moor.
Cahchazzerh was remarkable for nothing but its situation between cliff and river, and its apparent indifference to the falls of the one or the rise of the other. At the water’s edge, the town consisted of little but a wharf and a few godowns, one of which bore a rusty sign saying LORDRYARDRY ICE TRADING CO. A road led back to scattered houses and some cultivation on top of the cliffs. The town marked a last stop before Matrassyl on the downstream journey.
As the vessel moored up, a few deckhands bestirred themselves, while near-naked boys – indispensable adjuncts of such places – came running. Muntras put down his musical instrument and stood grandly in the bows, accepting the salutations of the men ashore, every one of whom he knew by name.
The gangplank went down. Everybody aboard disembarked to walk about and buy fruit. Two merchants whose journeys terminated here saw to it that the sailors unloaded their possessions safely. The boys dived for coins in the river.
An incongruous item in this sleepy scene was a table, laid with a gaudy cloth, which stood outside the Lordryardry warehouse, a white-clad waiter in attendance. Behind the table were four musicians who, on the instant of the boat’s side kissing the wharf, gave forth with a lively rendering of ‘What a Man the Master Is!’ This reception was the farewell present of the local staff of the ice company to their boss. There were three staff. They came forward, smiling, although they had been through the performance before, to conduct Captain Krillio and Div to their seats.
One of the three employees was a gangling youth, embarrassed by the whole affair; the other two were white-haired and older than the man they had served so long. The oldsters managed to shed a tear for the occasion, while covertly summing up young Master Div, in order to estimate to what extent their jobs were threatened by the change in command.
Muntras shook each of the trio by the hand and subsided into the waiting chair. He accepted a glass of wine, into which were dropped sparkling fragments of his own ice. He gazed out across the sluggish river. The far bank could scarcely be seen for mist. As a waiter served them little cakes, there was conversation consisting of sentences beginning, ‘Do you remember when—’ and concluding with laughter.
The birds still wheeling overhead masked