Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [455]
‘This world of ours once had a moon, a silver moon, which was lost at a time of some kind of disturbance in the heavens. It sailed away, we don’t as yet know how. The moon was called T’Sehn-Hrr – and T’Sehn-Hrr is a phagor name.’
He looked at his notes, he conferred briefly with Odi, as the listeners stirred. He resumed his discourse with a note of asperity in his voice.
‘Why should the moon have only an ancipital name? Why is there no human record of this missing body? The answer leads us into the mazes and botherations of antiquity.
‘For when I looked about, I found that missing moon. Not in the sky, but shining forth from our everyday speech. For how is our calendar divided? Eight days in a week, six weeks in a tenner, ten tenners in a year of four hundred and eighty days … We never question it. We never question why a tenner is called a tenner, because there are ten of them in a year.
‘But that is not the whole truth. Our word “tenner” commemorates the time when the silver eye was open and the moon was full. It does so because humanity adopted the phagor word “tennhrr”. Tenner’ is “tennhrr” is “T’Sehn-Hrr”.’
The murmurings from the crowd were louder. Sayren Stund was plainly uncomfortable. But SartoriIrvrash held up Tatro’s storybook and called for silence. So engrossed was he that he failed to see the trap opening before him.
‘Hear the whole conclusion, my friends. There stands King JandolAnganol among you, and he must hear the truth as well – he who has so long encouraged the noxious ahumans to breed on his territories.’
But no one was interested in JandolAnganol at present. Their angry faces turned to SartoriIrvrash himself.
‘The conclusion is clear, inescapable. The ancipital race, to which we can ascribe many of our human difficulties over the ages, is not a race of new invaders, like the Driats. No. It is an ancient race. It once covered Helliconia as flambreg cover the Circumpolar Regions.
‘The phagors did not emerge out of the last Weyr-Winter, as the Sibornalese call it. No. That story is based on ignorance. The real story, the fairy story, tells the truth. Phagors long preceded mankind.
‘They were here on Helliconia before Freyr appeared – possibly long before. Mankind came later. Mankind depended on the phagors: Mankind learned language from the phagors and still uses phagor words. “Khmir” is the Native word for “rut”. “Helliconia” itself is an old ancipital term.’
JandolAnganol found his voice at last. The speech was such an onslaught on his religious sensibilities that he had stood as if in a trance, his mouth open, more resembling fish than eagle.
‘Lies, heresy, blasphemy!’ he shouted. The cry of blasphemy was taken up by other voices. But Sayren Stund had ordered his guard to see that JandolAnganol did not interrupt. Burly men closed in on him – to be met by JandolAnganol’s captains with drawn swords. A struggle broke out.
SartoriIrvrash raised his voice. ‘No, you see your glory diminished by the truth. Phagors preceded mankind. Phagors were the dominant race on our world, and probably treated our ancestors as animals until we rebelled against them.’
‘Let’s hear him. Who dares say the man is wrong?’ shrilled Queen Bathkaarnet-she. Her husband struck her in the mouth.
The hubbub from the audience rose. People were standing and shouting or kneeling to pray. Fresh guards ran to the scene, while some court ladies tried to escape. A fight had broken out round JandolAnganol. The first stone was thrown at SartoriIrvrash. Brandishing his fist, he continued to speak.
In that courtly crowd, now moved to fury, there was at least one cool observer, the envoy Alam Esomberr. He was detached from the human drama. Unable to be deeply moved by events, he could derive only amusement from their effects.
Those on Earth, distant in time and space, viewed the scene on King Sayren Stund’s lawn with less detachment. They knew that SartoriIrvrash spoke truth in general, even if his details were sometimes incorrect. They also knew that men did