Pallahaxi Read online

  PALLAHAXI

  MICHAEL CONEY

  Hello Summer, Goodbye

  Copyright © 2012 by the estate of Michael G. Coney

  The right of Michael Coney to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Originally published in printed book form by PS Publishing Ltd in December 2007. This electronic version published in January 2012 by PS by arrangement with the author. All rights reserved by the author.

  FIRST EBOOK EDITION

  ISBN 978-1-848632-27-1

  I Remember Pallahaxi

  Copyright © 2007 & 2011 by Michael Coney’s Estate

  Introduction © 2007 by Eric Brown

  Originally published in printed book form by PS Publishing Ltd. in December 2007. This electronic version published in July 2011 by PS by arrangement with the authors. All rights reserved by the authors.

  FIRST EBOOK EDITION

  ISBN 978-1-848631-68-7

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  PS Publishing Ltd

  Grosvenor House

  1 New Road

  Hornsea / HU18 1PG

  East Yorkshire / England

  http://www.pspublishing.co.uk

  [email protected]

  ePub v1.2

  This eBook is a unofficial omnibus edition of Pallahaxi series, contains: Hello Summer, Goodbye and I Remember Pallahaxi.

  First published in 1975, Hello Summer, Goodbye is a minor classic of the SF field. Set on a planet whose elliptical orbit creates intense summers and long, cold winters, it tells of the love between Drove and the girl Pallahaxi-Browneyes, whose affair is set against civil war and the dread approach of winter. It's also a brilliant depiction of an alien world, with bizarre tidal effects and even stranger native creatures. As Coney states in the Author's Note: "This is a love story, and a science-fiction story, and more besides." It's also a beautifully-written, lyrical adventure story with one of the finest closing lines in the genre.

  I Remember Pallahaxi is the previously unpublished sequel to Michael Coney's classic Hello Summer, Goodbye. Set hundreds of years after the events recounted in Hello, I Remember Pallahaxi is a mystery story: a murder mystery on one level, and on another level a mystery about the origins of the native aliens. It's also a critique of colonialism; for the human race has arrived on the alien homeworld, with fatal consequences. As lyrical and lovingly envisioned as Hello Summer, Goodbye, I Remember Pallahaxi not only continues but expands the story of life on a far-flung world where many things are familiar, but others are totally bizarre.

  HELLO SUMMER, GOODBYE

  Michael Coney

  CHAPTER 1

  I often think of that day in Alika when my father, my mother and myself hurried to and fro, assembling a pile of possessions on the front porch in preparation for our holiday in Pallahaxi. Although I had barely reached puberty, I had learned enough of the ways of adults to keep out of the way during this annual event which always constituted, for some reason, a panic situation. My mother scuttled around with quick movements and vacant eyes, constantly asking the whereabouts of vital items then answering her own questions. My father, tall and dignified stalked up and down the cellar steps with cans of distil for his prize possession, the self-propelled motorcart. Whenever my parents caught sight of me, there was no love in their eyes.

  So I kept out of their way, while nevertheless making sure that my own possessions were not forgotten. I had already secreted in the pile my slingball, my Circlets board, my model grume-skimmer and my fishing net, unassembled. During a furtive visit to the motorcart I slipped my cage of pet drivets behind the back seat. At that moment father emerged from the house with yet another can in his hand, scowling.

  “If you want to make yourself useful, you might fill the tank.” He set the can beside the cart and handed me a brass funnel. “Don’t spill it. It’s valuable stuff, these days.”

  He was referring to the shortage resulting from the war. It seemed to me that he hardly ever referred to anything else. As he strode back into the house I unscrewed the cap, sniffing at the heady aroma of distil. The stuff had always fascinated me; it seemed incredible to my juvenile mind that a liquid, particularly a liquid bearing a close resemblance to water, should be capable of burning. Once, at the suggestion of a friend, I had tried drinking it. The basis of distil, this friend had told me, is similar to that of beer and wine and all those other exciting, forbidden drinks served at inns.

  So I crept down to the cellar one night, hugging a hot brick to keep the fear away, and opened a can, and drank. Judging by the way the distil burned my mouth and throat as it went down, I was not surprised that it was capable of propelling a steam engine. But I couldn’t believe people gained pleasure from drinking it. Sick and dizzy, I spent some time groaning against the outside wall while the cold crept into my spine; my shivering was due as much to fear as sickness. It was winter and the cold planet Rax watched me like an evil eye; in Alika, the icy nights of winter can be terrifying.

  But I always associated Pallahaxi with summer and warmth, and that was where we were going, that day. I shoved the spout of the funnel into the tank of the motorcart and tilted the can, and the distil gobbled out. Across the road three small girls watched, dirty mouths hanging open with awe and envy at the sight of the magnificent vehicle. I set the empty can down with a flourish and took up another. One of the kids threw a stone which clanged against the polished paintwork, then they all ran off down the road, yelling.

  Beyond the houses opposite I could see the tall spires of Parliament Buildings, where the Regent presided over the House of Members, and where my father worked in a dingy little office as Secretary to the Minister of Public Affairs. My father is a Parl and the motorcart bore a crest to that effect—hence the kids’ resentment. I could sympathize with them over that—but it seemed a shame to vent spite on the cart, rather than my father.

  I turned to look at our house. It was a large structure in local yellow stone; my mother flitted past a window on some obscure mission of panic. A few sentient flowers groped for elusive insects in the garden, and I remember wondering why the yard looked so neglected this year. Spreadweed was everywhere, proliferating cancerously and strangling the last of the bluepods with emerald garottes. There was something relentless in the visible creep of that weed and I shivered suddenly, thinking that by the time we returned from our holiday it would have taken over the house and would creep from the wainscot at night, throttling us in our sleep.

  “Drove!”

  My father towered over me, holding out another can. As I looked up at him guiltily he shrugged, his expression odd. “Never mind, Drove.” He too was regarding the house. “I’ll carry on here. You go and collect your things.”

  Back in my room I took a quick look around. I’d always found that I needed to take very few belongings to Pallahaxi; it was a different world there, and there were different things to do. I heard mother scuttling about in the next room.

  On the window-sill stood the glass jar containing my ice-goblin. I had nearly forgotten it. I examined it closely, imagining I saw a faint film of crystals on the surface of the thick liquid. I looked around, found a stick, and poked the ice-goblin gingerly. Nothing happened.

  During the previous winter, when the distant sun fled tiny across the sky and Rax was visible as a fearful cold stone at night, there had been a craze among the neighbourhood kids for ice-goblins. Like most such enthusiasms it was not clear exactly how it started, but suddenly everyone had their glass jars ful
l of saturated solutions, each day dropping in a little more of the strange crystals which came from the flat marshy lands of the coast where the ice-devils lived.

  “I hope you’re not thinking of taking that awful thing with you,” mother exclaimed as I emerged from my room carrying the goblin.

  “Well, I can’t leave him, can I? He’s almost ready.” Sensing the fear in her voice I elaborated. “I started him at the same time as Joelo down the street, and Joelo’s goblin came alive two days ago, and nearly had his finger off. Look!” I jiggled the jar under her nose and she backed away.

  “Take that freezing thing away from me!” she cried, and I stared at her in astonishment. I’d never heard mother swear before. I heard my father coming and put the goblin quickly on a nearby table, turning away and busying myself in the corner with a pile of clothes.

  “What’s going on here? Was that you screaming, Fayette?”

  “Oh…Oh, it’s all right. Drove frightened me for a moment, that’s all. It’s nothing, really, Burt.”

  I felt my father’s hand on my shoulder and turned reluctantly to face him. His cold eyes stared into mine. “Let’s get this straight, Drove. You want to come to Pallahaxi, then you behave yourself, right? I’ve got enough to think about without you playing the fool. Go and carry the things out to the cart.”

  I always used to think it unfair that my father was capable of imposing his will on me by force. By the age of puberty a person’s intelligence is fully developed and from that time on he begins to go downhill. So it was with father, I told myself resentfully as I loaded the motorcart. The pompous old fool, aware of his inability to defeat me intellectually, resorts to threats. In a sense, I had won the small battle.

  The trouble was that father was not aware of the fact. He moved to and fro from the various rooms to the porch, ignoring me as I struggled to keep pace—ineffectually, for the pile of boxes continued to grow. I gained some small satisfaction by dropping his things heavily into the luggage space in the cart, while placing my own stuff carefully on the spare seat. I found myself wondering why I liked to frighten my mother from time to time, and decided it was because, subconsciously, I resented her stupidity. She used her superstitions like weapons, brandishing them in argument like clubs of incontrovertible fact.

  We are all terrified of cold—such a fear is natural and no doubt evolved as a means of warning us against the night and the winter and the things cold can do to you. But mother’s fear of cold is unreasoning and, quite possibly, hereditary. Whenever I press her on the subject she purses her lips and says: “That is a thing I’d rather you didn’t ask me, ever, Drove.” In a way this little speech is perfect, in content, in intonation, in the hurt, mysterious expression on her face. It is pure exalted theatre.

  What she means is that they put her sister away. It is a simple thing and it happens to a lot of people, but mother has succeeded in investing the affair with tragedy and drama. Nobody suffered more over the Aunt Zu business than I; yet I have almost been able to forget the terror which possessed me at the time, and see the funny side of it.

  I always thought Aunt Zu had a thing for my father; anyway, she persuaded him to lend her the motorcart—which was an achievement beyond anything my mother had accomplished. Aunt Zu, who was unmarried, wanted to show me off to some distant relatives; it was a long drive in her lox-drawn buggy so, quite simply, she borrowed the motor-cart. It was winter.

  We were about half-way back, in totally uninhabited country, when we ran out of distil and the motorcart hissed to a shambling halt.

  “Oh dear,” said Aunt Zu mildly. “We shall have to walk, Drove. I hope your little legs are strong enough,” I remember the exact words she used.

  So we began to walk. I knew we would never make it home before dark, and I knew that with the dark would come the cold, and we were not dressed for it. I was intelligent enough—despite the way she talked down to me—to weigh up the possibilities and realize that she was right, that we couldn’t stay with the motorcart. Despite father’s exalted government position even he could not afford an enclosed vehicle such as that used by the Regent.

  “Oh dear,” said Aunt Zu some time later as the sun disappeared and the sinister orb of Rax glittered on the horizon, “it’s getting cold.”

  We passed a group of feeding lorin, sitting amongst the branches as they munched noisily, and I remember thinking to myself that if I became really cold—terrified cold—I could snuggle up to one, burrowing into the warm long hair. Lorin are harmless, friendly creatures and around Alika they are chiefly used as companions for the lox. On cold days the lox can become torpid and semi-paralysed with fear and the presence of the lorin has a soothing effect. Some say it is a form of telepathy. I looked longingly at the lorin that evening, envying their silky fur and their air of indolent good nature. Although young, I knew what life was all about, and I knew enough to be frightened of Aunt Zu just a little…

  Rax had risen above the trees, reflecting counterfeit light with no warmth. “I wish I’d remembered to bring my fur coat,” murmured Aunt Zu.

  “We could cuddle up to the lorin,” I suggested nervously.

  “Whatever gave you the idea that I would countenance approaching such an animal?” snapped Aunt Zu, fear feeding her temper. “Do you think me no better than a lox?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Why are you walking on so fast? You must be warm in that coat. My clothes are so thin.”

  I should have been as frightened as she; we were a long way from home and despite my coat the cold was beginning to bite like fangs. I stuffed my hands into my pockets and hurried on, not speaking. As a child I was more primitive and at the back of my mind was still the thought of the lorin; if all else failed—including Aunt Zu—the animals would look after me.

  They always did…

  “Lend me your scarf to wrap my hands in, Drove. I don’t have pockets.”

  I paused, unwinding the woollen scarf from my neck. I handed it to her, still without speaking. I didn’t want to give her a hook to hang her terror on. As we topped a hill I could see lights far in the distance; too far. The winter wind whipped against my bare legs and the blood ran icy towards my heart. I could hear Aunt Zu mumbling.

  “Phu…Ph…” she prayed to the sun-god. “Phu, I’m cold. Warm me, warm me…Help me.”

  There were low hedges beside the road composed of spiky, insensate plants. Knowing our fear, sensing it in their strangeway, lorin stood close by the far side, their shaggy heads a pale blur in the raxlight as they watched us inquisitively and waited for the cold to crack the civilization away from our shuddering bodies.

  “I must have your coat, Drove. I’m older than you, and I can’t stand the cold so well.”

  “Please, let’s go to the lorin, Aunt Zu.”

  “Drove, I’ve told you before! I refuse to go near those disgusting brutes. Give me your coat, you disobedient little boy!” Her hands were on me like claws.

  “Let me go!” I struggled but she was much bigger than I, wiry and strong. She stood behind me, tugging and jerking at the coat, and I could feel the rigidness and terror of her.

  “I’ll speak to your father about you, you little beast. He’ll know how to deal with you—I’m sure I don’t. Now give—me—that—coat!” She punctuated her words with fierce jerks and suddenly I was standing in my underthings, the warmth evaporating away from me. Aunt Zu babbled to herself as she knotted the sleeves around her shoulders; I saw the light from Rax flash in her eyes and she was regarding me cunningly. “Just give me your pants and I won’t tell your father, Drove.”

  I was running but I could hear her close behind, and hear the whining screech of her breath as she gasped and shouted at the same time. Then suddenly the hard iciness of the road hit me and she was on top of me, tearing at my clothes and screaming an incomprehensible babble of terror. In my fear I had drifted into a dreamlike state and soon I was hardly aware that I was naked, hardly aware of her receding f
ootsteps. While I lay there I felt the lorin take hold of me, and dimly knew the reason for the warmth in my mind. Then they were carrying me, enfolding me, soothing me with their murmurings which I half understood.

  As I fell asleep, the image of Aunt Zu bounding and screeching along the raxlit road faded from my mind.

  The lorin had taken me home the next day, delivering me naked to the doorstep in the warmth of the sun Phu, then fading about their duties. As I came to my senses I saw a few of them; one straddled a lox, urging the beast into motion between the shafts of a night-soil cart; another squatted in a field, fertilizing the crops. A third swung from the branches of a nearby obo tree, munching winternuts. I opened the door and went into the house. My mother bathed me a lot that day; she said I stank. It was a long time later that I heard they’d locked Aunt Zu away.

  Later I remembered the night-soil cart; it is a vehicle one rarely sees; and I asked mother why we didn’t spread the dung on the fields instead of dumping it in the town pit. I mentioned the fact that we encouraged lorin to excrete among the crops.

  “Don’t be disgusting, Drove,” she admonished me. “You know perfectly well that’s an entirely different matter. And by the way, I’d rather you kept away from the lorin.”

  To return to the day of our departure for Pallahaxi. In due course all our belongings were loaded into the motorcart, which now smelled intriguingly of distil. It is my father’s policy to drain the tank after using the vehicle, ever since he discovered it empty one morning and surmised that the lorin had drunk the contents. The vehicle is used rarely; it spends most of its time standing outside the house mutely identifying my father’s position by means of the Erto flag emblazoned on its flank.

  I slipped back to the house intending to say goodbye to my room, but was waylaid by mother. She was spreading bread with winternut paste; a pot of cocha juice stood on the table.