Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [606]
Again Luterin found no words.
‘Is that what you brought me here to tell me?’ he asked at last.
‘I was not going to have others hear our discussion. I’m chiefly concerned with your contempt for the laws concerning pauk and the extermination of phagors, as reported by Evanporil. If you weren’t my son, I would have killed you. Do you understand?’
Luterin shook his head once. He cast his gaze to the floor of the tack room. As in childhood, he was unable to face his father’s eyes.
‘Do you understand?’
Still Luterin could not speak. He was utterly dismayed by his father’s imperviousness to his feelings.
Lobanster wiped his shining brow and crossed to the table, on which lay a saddle bag among other pieces of harness. He flicked open the buckle on the saddle bag so that a wad of posters came spilling out. He handed one to his son.
‘Since you are so fond of Acts, have a look at the latest one.’
Sighing, Luterin took it. He barely glanced at it before letting it drop. The sheet sailed into a corner of the room. It stated in black letters that, as a further measure to prevent plague, persons found in a metamorphosed state would be put to death. By Order of the Oligarch. Luterin said nothing.
His father spoke. ‘You see that if you do not obey my wishes I cannot protect you. Can I?’
At last Luterin stared at his father in misery. ‘I have served you, Father. I have done as you wished all my life. I went into the army without protest – and acquitted myself well. I have been – and desired nothing better than to be – your possession. No doubt something of the same was in Favin’s mind when he leaped to his death. But now I have to oppose you. Not for my sake. Not even for religion’s sake, or for the State. After all, what are they but abstractions? I must oppose you for your own sake. Either the season or the Oligarch himself has driven you mad.’
A terrible fire shone on his father’s face, while the eyes remained as stoney as ever.
He snatched a long black shoeing knife from the table and held it out to his son. ‘Take this, you fool, and come outside with me. You must be made to see who is mad.’
The snow was coming down fast, whirling round a grey angle of the mansion as if bent on filling up the courtyard to the very top of its walls as soon as possible. The conspiratorial men stood in a group, hands tucked under their belts, waiting under a porch, heels knocking together for warmth. To one side stood yelk, still saddled, with an anxious stableman still standing among them. Near at hand was a pile of phagor corpses; they had been dead for some while: the snow settled on them without steaming.
To one side, close to an outer gate, a row of rusty iron hooks stuck out from the wall above head level. The naked bodies of four men and a woman dangled by ropes from the hooks.
Lobanster pushed his son in the back, urging him forward. The touch was like fire.
‘Cut these dead things down and look at them. Have a good look at their monstrousness and then ask if the Oligarch is not just. Go on.’
Luterin drew near. The killing appeared recent. Moisture stood on the distorted faces of the dead. All five corpses were of people who had survived the Fat Death and metamorphosed.
‘Laws have to be obeyed, Luterin, obeyed. Laws are what make society, and without society men are only animals. We caught these people on the way to Kharnabhar today, and we hanged them here because of the law. They died so that society can survive. Do you now think the Oligarch mad?’
As Luterin hesitated, his father said harshly, ‘Go on, cut them down, look at the agony in their faces, and then ask yourself if you prefer that state to life. When you reach an answer, you can get down on your knees to me.’
The lad looked in appeal at his father. ‘I loved you as a dog its master. Why do you make me do this?’
‘Cut them down!’ One hand flew convulsively to the throat.
Choking, Luterin came level with the