Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [572]
At a night’s stop, everything had to be made ready for the evening meal inside fifteen minutes.
‘It’s not possible. What’s the point?’ Fashnalgid complained.
‘The point is that it’s possible and must be done,’ Shokerandit said. ‘Stretch the tent, hold tight.’
They were stiff with cold. Their noses were peeling, their cheeks blackened by frost.
The sledge had to be unloaded. The tent was pitched over it and secured, which often entailed a battle against wind. Skins were stretched across the sledge. On this, the five of them slept, to be off the ground. Belongings required overnight were arranged nearby: food, stove, knives, oil lamp. Although the temperature in the tent generally remained below zero, they found themselves sweating in the confined space, after the cold of the journey.
When Uuundaamp entered on the first night, he found the three humans quarrelling.
‘No more speak. Be good. Anger bring smrtaa.’
‘I can’t stand four weeks of this,’ Fashnalgid said.
‘If you disobey him, he will simply leave,’ Shokerandit said. ‘All he asks is that you put your personality away to sleep for the journey. The cold will not allow quarrels, or death will strike.’
‘Let the sherb leave.’
‘We’d die here without him – can’t you understand that?’
‘Occhara soon, soon,’ said Uuundaamp, nudging Fashnalgid. He handed Moub a pair of silver foxes to cook. They came from traps he had set on his previous journey.
A pleasant fug arose in the tent. The meat smelt good. They ate with filthy hands, afterwards drinking melted snow water from a communal mug.
‘Food ishto?’ asked Moub.
‘Gumtaa,’ they said.
‘She bad cook,’ Uuundaamp said, as he lit up pipes of occhara and handed them round. The lamp was providently extinguished and they smoked in peace. The howl of the wind seemed to die away. Good feelings overcame them. The smoke filtering through their nostrils was the breath of a mysterious better life. They were the children of the mountain and it had them in its care. No harm comes to those who have eaten silver fox. For all the differences between men and women, and between men and men, all have this good thing in common – that the divine smoke pours from their noses, and perhaps from eyes and ears and other orifices. Sleep itself is but another orifice in the mountain god. Sometimes in sleep men become the dream of the silver fox.
In the morning, when they struggled in the dull, bitter air to fold the tent, Toress Lahl said secretly to Shokerandit, ‘How degraded you are and how I hate you! Last night, you biwacked with that bag of lard, Moub. I heard you. I felt the sledge tremble.’
‘I was being courteous to Uuundaamp. Pure courtesy. Not pleasure.’
He had discovered that the Ondod female was far gone with child.
‘No doubt your courtesy will be rewarded with a disease.’
Uuundaamp came up smiling with the two silver fox tails. ‘Carry these at teeth. Gumtaa. Keep off cold from face.’
‘Loobiss. Have you one for Fashnalgid?’
‘That man, he got tail grow along face,’ said Uuundaamp, indicating the captain’s moustache, and laughing merrily.
‘At least he means to be kind,’ Toress Lahl said, hesitatingly placing the tail between her teeth to protect her chapped nose and cheeks.
‘Uuundaamp is kind. And when we stop tonight you must be kind to him. Return his favour.’
‘Oh, no … Luterin … not that, please. I thought you had some feeling for me.’
He turned savagely on her. ‘I have some feeling for getting us safe to Kharnabhar. I know the conventions of these people and these journeys and you don’t. It’s a code, a matter of survival. Stop thinking you are so special.’
Bitterly hurt, she said, ‘So you don’t care, I suppose, that Fashnalgid rapes me whenever your back is turned.’
He dropped the tent and grasped her jacket.
‘Are you lying to me? When did he do it? Tell me when. Then and when else. How many times?’
He listened bleakly as she told him.
‘Very well, Toress Lahl.’ He spoke in no more than a whisper, his face hard. ‘He has