Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [396]
To add to the melancholy abandonment of their postures, the iguanas were commensal with a hairy twelve-legged crab, which scurried in its millions among the forms which kept watch on the breakers. The crabs devoured any fragment of food – seal or seaweed – dropped by the reptiles; nor were they averse to devouring infant iguanas. The characteristic noise of the Dimariamian seashore was a crunch and scrabble of armoured legs against scales; the ritual of their lives was playing out against this clamour, which was as endless as the sound of the waves.
The ice captain took no notice of these saturnine occupants of the shore, but stared out to sea, beyond Lordry, the whaling island. He had checked at the harbour and been told that a light sailing dinghy had been stolen overnight.
So his son was gone, taking the magic watch, either as talisman or for trade. Had sailed away, without so much as a good-bye.
‘Why did you do it?’ Muntras asked half aloud, staring over the purple sea on which a dead calm prevailed. ‘For the usual reasons a man leaves home, I suppose. Either you couldn’t bear your family any longer, or you just wanted adventure – strange places, amazements, strange women. Well, good luck to you, lad. You’d never have made the world’s foremost ice trader, that’s certain. Let’s hope you aren’t reduced to selling stolen rings for a living …’
Some of the women, humble worker’s wives, were calling to him to come behind the nets before high tide. He gave them a salute and trudged away from the milling iguana bodies.
Immya and Lawyer would have to take over the company. Not his favourite people, but they’d probably run the whole concern better than he ever did. You had to face facts. It was no use growing bitter. Although he had never been comfortable with his daughter, he recognised that she was a good woman.
At least he’d stand by a friend and see that BillishOwpin got a proper burial. Not that either Billish or he believed in any of the gods. But just for their own two sakes.
He trudged towards the safety of the nets, where the workmen stood.
‘You were all right, Billish,’ he muttered aloud. ‘You were nobody’s fool.’
The Avernus had company in its orbit about Helliconia. It moved among squadrons of auxiliary satellites. The main task of these auxiliaries was to observe sectors of the globe the Avernus itself was not observing. But it so happened that the Avernus, on its circumpolar orbit, was itself above Lordryardry and travelling north at the time of Billy’s funeral.
The funeral was a popular event. The fact is, human egos being frail, other people’s deaths are not entirely unpleasurable. Melancholy itself is among the more enjoyable of emotions. Almost everyone aboard the Avernus looked in: even Rose Yi Pin, although she watched the event from the bed of her new boyfriend.
Billy’s Advisor, dry-eyed, gave a homily in one hundred measured words on the virtues of submission to one’s lot. The epitaph served also as an epitaph to the protest movements. With some relief, they forgot difficult thoughts of reform and returned to their administrative duties. One of them wrote a sad song about Billy, buried away from his family.
There were now a good many Avernians buried on Helliconia, all winners of Helliconia Holidays. A question often asked aboard the Earth Observation Station was. How did this affect the mass of the planet?
On Earth, where the funeral of Billy provoked less interest, the event was seen more detachedly. Every living being is created from dead star-matter. Every living being must make its solitary journey upward from the molecular