Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [612]
Other watery noises, drips and plops, coming more distantly, reminded him of the outside world of nature, of freedom, of the hunt. He could imagine himself wandering free in the caspiarn forests. But that illusion could not be sustained. Ever and again he saw his father’s face in its final agony. The brooks, waterfalls, torrents, disappeared from his mind’s eye, to be replaced by blood.
His lethargy was pierced only when he opened his daily woven bundle of food, and found a message in it.
He carried the scrap of paper over to the blue flame in the outer wall and peered at it. Someone had written in small script, ‘All is well here. Love.’
There was no signature, not even an initial. His mother? Toress Lahl? Insil? One of his friends?
The very anonymity of the message was an encouragement. There was someone outside who thought well of him and who could – at least on one occasion – communicate with him.
That day, when the priests’ trumpets sounded, he leaped up and seized hold of the chain hanging in its alcove in the outer wall. Bracing his feet against the partition wall, he heaved on the chain. His cell moved – the Wheel moved.
Another heave, and the movement was less reluctant this time. A few centimetres were gained.
‘Pull, you biwackers!’ he shouted.
The encouraging bugles sounded at intervals for twelve and a half hours, then fell silent as long. By the end of a day’s work, Luterin had advanced himself by some 119 centimetres, almost half the width of his cell. The flame which lit his cell was close to the dividing wall. By the end of another day’s work, it would be eclipsed – would be in the following cell – and a new one would be revealed.
A mass of 1284551.137 tons had to be shifted: that was the burden which holiness had placed on the incumbents of the Wheel. It appeared to be merely a physical labour. But, as the days were to pass, Luterin would find himself regarding it more and more as a spiritual task; while more and more it became apparent to him that there were indeed connections out from his heart, and from the Wheel, to Freyr and Batalix and to the far constellations. The perception would come that the Wheel contained not merely hardship but – as legend claimed – the beginnings of wisdom.
‘Pull!’ he shouted again. ‘Pull, you saints and sinners.’
From then on, he became fanatical, leaping up eagerly from his bunk as soon as the awaited bugle blew. He cursed those who, in his imagination, did not rise as swiftly to the task as he did. He cursed those who would not labour at their chains at all, as he had once done. It was beyond his understanding why the work periods were not longer.
At night – but here only night existed – Luterin lay down to sleep with a head full of the image of that great slow-grinding Wheel, crushing men’s lives away like a grindstone. The Wheel moved every day, as it had done since the great Architects had established it.
It revolved about a harsh irony. The captives, nested like maggots each in separate cells on the perimeter of the Wheel, were forced to propel themselves into the heart of the granite mountain. Only by submitting to that cruel journey, by actively collaborating in it, was it possible to emerge. Only by that collaboration was it possible to effect the revolution of the Wheel which meant freedom. Only by plunging deep into the entrails of the mountain was it possible to issue forth a free man.
‘Pull, pull!’ shouted Luterin, straining every muscle. He thought of the 1824 others, captive each in his separate cell, each bound to pull if ever they were to escape.
He knew not what crises prevailed in the outside world. He knew not what sequence of events he had precipitated. He knew not who lived or died. Increasingly, as the tenners went by, his mind was filled with loathing for those other prisoners – some perhaps sick or even dead – who did not pull with a whole heart. He felt that he alone was bearing the weight of rock on his sinews, he alone heaving the Wheel through its firmament