Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [512]
‘If the Oligarch thinks so little of an individual, he will think no more of an army.’
‘No sane man would wipe out one of his own armies.’
Fashnalgid started to gesticulate.
‘You are younger than I. You have less experience. Sane men do the most damage. Do you believe that you live in a world where men behave with reason? What is rationality? Isn’t it merely an expectation that others will behave as we do? You can’t have been long in the army if you believe the mentalities of all men are alike. Frankly, I think my friends mad. Some were driven mad by the army, some were so mad they were attracted to that area of idiocy, some simply have a natural talent for madness. I once heard Priest-Militant Asperamanka preach. He spoke with such force that I believe him to be a good man. There are good men … But most officers are more like me, I can tell you – reprobates that only madmen would follow.’
There was silence after this outburst, before Shokerandit said coldly, ‘I certainly would not trust Asperamanka. He was prepared to let his own men die.’
‘“Wisdom to madness quickly turns, If suffering is all one learns,”’ quoted Fashnalgid, adding, ‘An army carrying plague. The Oligarchy would be happy to be rid of it, now there’s little danger of an attack from Campannlat. Also, it suits Askitosh to get rid of the Bribahr contingent …’
As if there was nothing more to be said, Fashnalgid turned his back on the other two and took a long swig from his flask. As Batalix descended towards the strip of distant sea, clouds drew across the sky.
‘So what do you propose doing, if we are not to be trapped between armies?’ Toress Lahl asked boldly.
Fashnalgid pointed into the distance. ‘A boat is waiting across the marshes, lady, with a friend of mine in it. That’s where I’m going. You are free to come if you wish. If you believe my story, you’ll come.’
He swung himself up slowly into the saddle, strapped his collar under his chin, smoothed his moustache, and gave a nod of farewell. Then he kicked his beast into action. The yelk lowered its head and started to move down the rocky slope in the direction of the distant glimmering sea.
Luterin Shokerandit called after the disappearing figure, ‘And where’s that boat of yours bound for?’
The wind stirring the low bushes almost drowned the answer that came back.
‘Ultimately, Shivenink …’
The gaunt figure on its yelk moved down into a maze of marshes which fringed the sea; whereupon birds rose up under the shaggy hoofs of the animal as small amphibians disappeared underneath them. Things hopped in rain-pocked puddles. Everything that could move fled from the man’s path.
Captain Harbin Fashnalgid’s mood was too bleak for him even to question why mankind’s position should remain so isolated in the midst of all other life. Yet that very question – or rather a failure to perceive the correct answer to the problem it posed – had brought into existence a world which moved above the planet in a circumpolar orbit.
The world was an artificial one. Its designation was Earth Observation Station Avernus. Circling the planet 1500 kilometres above the surface, it could be seen from the ground as a bright star of swift passage, to which the inhabitants of the planet had given the name Kaidaw.
On the station, two families supervised the automatic recording of data from Helliconia as it passed below them. They also saw to it that that data – in all its richness, confusion, and overwhelming detail – was transmitted to the planet Earth, a thousand light-years distant. To this end, the EOS had been established. To this end, human beings from Earth had been born to populate it. The Avernus was at this time only a few Earth years short of its four thousandth birthday.
The Avernus was an embodiment, cast in the most advanced technology of its culture, of the failure to perceive the answer to that age-old problem of why mankind was divorced from its environment. It was the ultimate token in that long divorce. It represented nothing less than the peak of achievement of an age when man had tried to conquer