Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [505]
Closing the volume, Fashnalgid said in his flat voice, ‘This is not a work you would have come across, Naipundeg. It’s a history of sacred architecture through the ages. I picked it up from a stall the other day. It was printed three hundred years ago, and it explains how there are secrets that we in these later days have forgotten. Secrets of contentment, for example. If you’re interested.’
‘No, I’m not interested, to be frank. It sounds wretchedly dull.’
Fashnalgid stood up, tucking the little book into a pocket of his uniform. He raised his glass and drained it dry. ‘There are such blockheads in our regiment. I never meet anyone interesting here. You don’t mind me saying that? You’re proud of being a blockhead, aren’t you? You’d find any book not about filth dull, wouldn’t you?’
He staggered slightly. Naipundeg, himself far gone in drink, began to bellow with rage.
It was then that Fashnalgid blurted out his hatred of the Oligarchy, and of the Oligarch’s increasing power.
Naipundeg, throwing another tumbler of fiery liquor down his throat, challenged him to a duel. Seconds were summoned. Supporting their primaries, they jostled them into the grounds of the mess.
There a fresh quarrel broke out. The two officers drove off their seconds and blazed away at each other.
Most of the bullets flew wild.
All except one.
That bullet hit Naipundeg’s face, shattering the zygomatic bone, entering the head by way of the left eye, and leaving through the rear of the skull.
In that casual military society, Fashnalgid was able to pass off the duel as an affair of honour regarding a lady. The court-martial convened under Priest-Militant Asperamanka was easily satisfied; Naipundeg, an officer from Bribahr, had not been popular. Fashnalgid was exonerated of blame. Only Fashnalgid’s conscience remained unappeased; he had killed a fellow officer. The less his drinking companions blamed him, the more he judged himself guilty.
He applied for leave of absence and went to visit his father’s estates in the undulating countryside to the north of Askitosh. There he intended to reform, to become less prodigal with women and drink. Harbin’s parents were growing senile, although both still rode daily – as they had done for the past forty years or more – about their fields and stands of timber.
Harbin’s two younger brothers ran the estate between them, aided by their wives. The brothers were shrewd, sowing coarser crops when finer ones failed, selecting strains with more rapid growth periods, planting cold-resistant caspiarn saplings where gales blew down established trees, building stout fences to keep out the herds of flambreg which came marauding from the northern plains. Sullen phagors worked under the brothers’ direction.
The estate had seemed a paradise to Harbin in his childhood. Now it became a place of misery. He saw how much labour was required to maintain a status quo threatened by the ever-worsening season, and wanted no part of it. Every morning, he endured his father’s repetitive conversation rather than join his brothers outdoors. Later, he retired to the library, to leaf moodily through old books which had once enchanted him and to allow himself the occasional little drink.
Harbin Fashnalgid had often grieved that he was ineffectual. He could not exert his will. He was too modest to realise how many people, women especially, liked him for this trait. In a more lenient age, he would have been a great success.
But he was observant. Within two days, he had noticed that his youngest brother had a quarrel with his wife. Perhaps the difference between them was merely temporary. But Fashnalgid began offering the woman sympathy. The more he talked to her, the weaker became his resolve to reform. He worked on her. He spun her exaggerated tales about the glamour of military life, at the same time touching her, smiling at her, and feigning a great sorrow which was only part feigned. So he won her confidence and became her lover. It was absurdly easy.
It was an irrational way to behave.
Even