Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [553]
And over the years the warmth of their empathy took effect. The fessups ceased to grieve, the gossies ceased to chide. Those of the living who communed through pauk were not reproved but comforted. An unpossessive love had triumphed.
IX
A Quiet Day Ashore
A biogas fire burned in the grate. Before it sat two brothers talking. Every now and again, the thin brother would reach out to pat the sturdy one, as the latter told his tale. Odirin Nan Odim, referred to by all his kin as Odo, was a year and six tenners older than Eedap Mun Odim. He much resembled his brother, except in the crucial matter of girth, for the Fat Death had yet to make its dread appearance in Rivenjk.
The two brothers had much to tell each other, and much planning to do. A ship bearing the Oligarch’s soldiery had recently arrived in the port, and the set of regulations against which Odim had fought was beginning to trouble Odo too. However, the Shiveninki were less ready than the Uskuti to take orders. Rivenjk was still a comfortable place in which to live.
The remaining precious porcelain which Odim had brought to his elder brother had been well received.
‘Soon such porcelain will become even more precious,’ said Odo. ‘Such fine quality may never be achieved again.’
‘Because the weather deteriorates towards winter.’
‘What follows from that, brother, is that fuel for firing the kilns will become short, and so increase in price. Also, as people’s lives grow harsher, they will be content with tin plates.’
‘What do you plan to do then, brother?’ asked Odim.
‘My trade links with Bribahr, the neighbouring country, are excellent. I even despatch my goods to Kharnabhar, far north of here. Porcelain and china are not the only goods that need to travel such routes. We must adapt, deal in other goods. I have ideas for—’
But Odirin Nan Odim was never allowed peace for long. He, like his brother, housed a number of relations. Some of them, voluble and voluminous, rushed to the fireside now, heads full of a quarrel that only Odo could settle. Some of Eedap Mun’s relations, surviving plague and voyage, had been billeted with their Rivenjk relations, and the old question had arisen of floor space being encroached upon.
‘Perhaps you would not mind coming with me to see what is happening,’ said Odo.
‘I would be pleased. From now on, I shall be your shadow, brother.’
Homesteads in Rivenjk were arranged round a courtyard and protected from the elements by a high wall. The more prosperous the family, the higher the wall. Round this courtyard lived the various branches of the Odim family – very little more enterprising here than the relatives in Koriantura had been.
With the families lived their domestic animals, housed in stalls adjoining the human habitations. Some of the animals had been crowded together to permit the newly arrived relatives shelter. This arrangement was the cause of the present quarrel: the resident relations prized their animals above the newly arrived relations – and with some justice.
The sanitary arrangements of most Shiveninki courtyard homesteads depended on a commensalism between animals and humans. All excretions from both house and stall were washed down into a bottle-shaped pit carved in the rock under the courtyard. The pit could be maintained from an inspection flap in the courtyard, through which all vegetable refuse was also thrown. As the refuse rotted underground, it gave off biogas, chiefly methane.
The biogas rising from the pit was trapped and piped into the houses, to be used for cooking and lighting.
This civilised system had been developed throughout Shivenink to cope with the extremes of the Weyr-Winter.
As the Odim brothers inspected the complaints of their relatives, they discovered that two cousins had been housed in a stall where there