Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [531]
Odim wiped her eyes and made soothing noises. When Besi was calmer, he asked seriously, ‘Have you a real affection for this Captain Harbin?’
Again she clutched him. ‘Not any more.’
They stood in silence. Koriantura was sinking in the distance. The New Season was sailing past a cluster of broad-beamed herring-coaches. The herring-coaches had their curtain nets out, trawling for fish. Behind the fishermen were salters and coopers, who would gut and preserve the catch as soon as it was hauled aboard.
Amid sniffs, Besi said, ‘You’ll never forget what happened when you – when that man died on the kiln, will you, dear master?’
He stroked her hair. ‘Life in Koriantura is over. I have put everything that belonged to Koriantura behind me, and would advise you to do the same. Life will begin again when we reach my brother’s home in Shivenink.’
He kissed her and returned to his wife.
The next morning, Fashnalgid sought Odim out. His tall clumsy figure dominated Odim’s slender and tightly parcelled form.
‘I’m grateful to you for your kindness in taking me aboard,’ he said. ‘You’ll be paid in full when we get to Shivenink, I assure you.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Odim said, and said no more. He did not know how to deal with this officer, now a deserter, except by his usual method of dealing with people – through politeness. The ship was crowded with people who had begged to be allowed aboard to escape the oligarchic legislation; all had paid Odim. His cabin was stacked with treasures of one sort of another.
‘I mean what I say – you will be paid in full,’ Fashnalgid repeated, looking heavily down at Odim.
‘Good, good, yes, thank you,’ said Odim, and backed away. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Toress Lahl coming on deck, and went over to her to escape from Fashnalgid’s attentions. Besi followed him. She had avoided Fashnalgid’s gaze.
‘How is your patient?’ Odim asked the Borldoranian woman.
Toress Lahl leaned against the rail, closed her eyes, and took a few deep breaths. Her pale, clear features had taken on a translucent quality under strain. The skin below her eyes looked puckered and dirty. She said, without opening her eyes, ‘He’s young and determined. I believe he will live. Such cases generally do.’
‘You shouldn’t have brought a plague case aboard. It endangers all our lives,’ Besi said. She spoke with a new boldness; she would never have dared speak out previously in front of Odim: but on the voyage all relationships changed.
‘“Plague” is not the scientifically exact term. The plague and the Fat Death are different things, although we use the terms interchangeably. Obscene though the symptoms of the Fat Death are, the majority of young, healthy people who contract it recover.’
‘It spreads like the plague, doesn’t it?’
Without turning her head to reply, Toress Lahl said, ‘I could not leave Shokerandit to die. I am a doctor.’
‘If you’re a doctor, you should know the dangers involved.’
‘I do, I do,’ said Toress Lahl. Shaking her head, she rushed from them and hurried down the companionway below decks.
She paused outside the door of the closet in which she kept Shokerandit. As she rested her head on her arm, she was vouchsafed a glimpse of the turn her life had taken, the misery in which she now lived, and the uncertainty which surrounded all on the ship. What was the reason for this gift of consciousness, which even phagors did not have, this awareness that one was aware, when it was incapable of changing what one did?
She was nursing the man who had taken her husband’s lifeblood. And – oh, yes, she felt it – she was already infected with his disease. She knew it could easily leap to everyone else in the confines of this ship; the insanitary conditions on the New Season made it a haven for contagion. Why did life happen – and was it possible that, even now, some detached part of her was enjoying life?
She unlocked the door, set her shoulder against its resistance, and entered the closet. There