Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [643]
For something like a million years, the upheaval of capture bathed Helliconia in high UV radiation and X-ray levels. The result was a fairly rapid evolution of species. The human species evolved from a small Hespagorat ape. Some species perished – the childrim for one.
In evolving, the Others escaped from captivity, but remained in proximity with phagors in loose commensal communities, while going through a protognostic stage of development. Hence the survival of ancipital terms into the Olonets language (the main language of Campannlat). Phagors long retained a shadowy dominance (hence the god Akha). Eventually various tribes fled from Hespagorat and the Pegovin region, crossing to Campannlat. The crossing was effected via an ancient landbridge between the two continents.
East–West phagor migratory routes were established at the time of the crossing, or just thereafter.
The tribes crossing the landbridge were known as the Olle Onets. This name was derived from the glut of oil-fish found in the shallows on either side of the isthmus. It became in turn the name of the chief language of Campannlat, Olonets.
Many of the ‘winter’ tribes were driven eastwards before the advancing newcomers. Clans later occupying the lower Nktryhk, such as the Mordriats, are descendants of such defeated tribes.
Figure 3. The ancient landbridge
Landbridge in heavy outline. Present land configuration in light outline.
The isthmus between the Climent Ocean and the Narmosset Sea. The land on either side, following the destruction of the isthmus when the polar caps melted, eventually became the countries of Throssa and Radado, now separated by the Cadmer Straits.
THE MADIS
These transhumance peoples have never achieved a fully human consciousness. Madis are categorised as protognostics. Travel is their whole existence, pursued whether there is one sun in the sky or two. This fixed pattern of behaviour suggests that they existed before solar capture, living much as they do at present.
While not numerous, the Madis have made their mark on the landscape of Campannlat. They and their flocks leave behind them a trail of spores and seeds which grows into a continuous line of copse, or uct, to be traversed countless times by the tribes. The uct gives shelter to birds, rodents, and snakes, while serving in some places as a barrier between nations. The Madi have little understanding of time; time’s passage is expressed only by measures of distance.
Madis are meek creatures, easily victimised. They are frequently domesticated by humans, the females serving as sex slaves. Although small, they resemble humanity in most major aspects, and interbreeding is not unknown.
The Madi tribes call their language hr’Madi’h, which suggests pervasive phagor influence. hr’Modi’h is a sung language, complex but in fact incomplete. Nothing can be described accurately in it. It is circumscribed, like everything else in Madi existence, by the Ahd. There is no written form.
Additional words are occasionally imported from other languages, but to these the tribes are hostile – or at least fearful.
hr’Madi’h the language
Ahd life, the journey
uct the avenues seeded by migratory
passage
la’hrap flat unleavened bread
fhlebiht arang, a grazing animal of the flock
Other species and semi-species include the waist-high protognostics, the Nondads. Nondads are of subterranean habit. A peaceful people, they leave it to a warrior caste to fight. Thus, they discuss ultimate questions in a language of ‘clicks, whistles, and snorts’, while their warrior kings do battle in the Eighty Darknesses.
Nondads are hunted and eaten by Uskuts; when roast, they are known as treebries.
Nondads live in Campannlat, the Africa of Helliconia.
A related people, the Ondods, live in the harsher climates of the northern continent, Sibornal.
NECROGENES
Descending the evolutionary scale, the necrogenes represent a dead end to one line of pre-Freyr