Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [591]
Shokerandit spread the poster out on his desk.
‘You did not tell me about this when I was here earlier. How’s that?’
‘You did not ask me, Master Luterin.’
‘How many ancipitals do we employ on the estate?’
The secretary answered without hesitation. ‘Six hundred and fifteen.’
‘It would be a tremendous loss to slaughter them. The new Act is not to be complied with. First, I am going into town to see what the other landlords make of it.’
Secretary Evanporil coughed behind his fingers. ‘I wouldn’t advise a visit to town just now. We have reports of some disturbance there.’
‘What kind of disturbance?’
‘The clergy, Master Luterin. The live cremation of Priest-Supreme Chubsalid has caused a great deal of disaffection. A tenner has passed since his death, and I’m given to understand that the occasion was marked this morning by the burning of an effigy of the Oligarch. Member Ebstok Esikananzi led some men to quell the display, but there has been trouble since.’
Shokerandit sat himself on the edge of the desk.
‘Evanporil, tell me, do you consider that we can afford to kill over six hundred phagors out of hand?’
‘That’s not for me to say, Master Luterin. I am only an administrator.’
‘But the Act – it’s so arbitrary. Don’t you think so?’
‘I would say, since you ask me, Master Luterin, that, if scrupulously carried out, the Act will rid Sibornal of the ancipital kind for ever. An advantage, wouldn’t you say?’
‘But the immediate loss of cheap labour to us … I don’t imagine my father will be best pleased.’
‘That may be, sir, but for the general good …’ The secretary let the sentence hang.
‘Then we will not implement the Act until my father returns. I shall write to Esikananzi and the other landlords to that effect. See that the managers are clear on that score immediately.’
Shokerandit spent the afternoon happily riding about the estate, ensuring that no more phagors were harmed. He rode out some miles to call on his father’s cousins, who had another estate in a mountainous region. With his mind full of plans, he forgot entirely about his mother.
That night he made love to Toress Lahl as usual. Something in the words he uttered, or in the way he touched her, woke a response in her. She became a different person, yielding, imaginative, fully alive. An exhilaration beyond mere happiness filled Luterin. He thought he had won a great gift. All the pains of life were worth such delight.
They spent the whole night in the closest embraces, moving slowly, moving wildly, moving scarcely at all. Their spirits and bodies were one.
Towards morning, Luterin fell asleep. He was immediately in the dreamworld.
He was walking through a sparse landscape almost bereft of trees. It was marshy underfoot. Ahead lay a frozen lake whose immensity could not be judged. It was the future: all-powerful night prevailed in a small winter during the Weyr-Winter. Neither sun was in the sky. A lumbering animal with rasping breath followed him.
It was also the past. On the shores of the lake were camped all the men who had died violently in the Battle of Isturiacha. Their wounds still remained, disfiguring them. Luterin saw Bandal Eith Lahl there, standing apart with his hands in his pockets, gazing down at the ground.
Under the ice of the lake, something gigantic was penned. He recognised that this was where the breathing came from.
The being surged forth from the ice. The ice did not break. The being was a huge woman with a lustrous black skin. She rose and rose into the sky. No one saw her but Luterin.
She cast a benevolent gaze on Luterin and said, ‘You will never have a woman to make you entirely happy. But there will be much happiness in the pursuit.’
Much more she said, but this was all Luterin could remember when he woke up.
Toress Lahl lay beside him. Not only were her eyes shut: her whole countenance presented a closed appearance. A lock of hair lay across her face; she bit it, as recently she had bitten the fox tail to