by Brian Aldiss
‘Oh yes, indeed. The medieval idea that one species can turn into another was foolish at that time; now, with the gradual accumulation of cosmic radiation in planetary bodies and its effect on genetic stability, it is correct to a certain definable extent. She is endeavouring to show that cellular bondage can be –’
‘Yes, yes, and this serious talk is an eyesore in Eyebright! Do you think I can hear of her when I want to talk of you? You are locked away, Derek, doing your sterile deeds of heroism and never entering the real world. If you imagine you can live with her much longer and then come to me, you are mistaken. Your walls grow higher about your ears every century, till I cannot – oh, it’s the wrong metaphor! – cannot scale you!’
Even in his pain, the texture of her fur was joy to his warmsight. Helplessly he shook his head in an effort to brush her clattering words away.
‘Look at you being big and brave and silent – even now! You’re so arrogant,’ she said – and then, without perceptible change of tone, ‘Because I still love the bit of you inside the castle, I’ll make once more my monstrous and petty offer to you.’
‘No, please, Eva!’
‘But yes! Forget this tedious bondage of Abrogun and Endehabven, forget this ghastly matriarchy, live here with me. I don’t want you for ever. You know I am a eudemonist and judge by standards of pleasure – our liaison need be only for a century or two. In that time, I will deny you nothing your senses may require.’
‘Eva!’
‘After that, our demands will be satisfied. You may then go back to the Lady Mother of Endehabven for all I care.’
‘Eva, you know I spurn this belief, this eudemonism.’
‘Forget your creed! I’m asking you nothing difficult. Who are you to haggle? Am I fish, to be bought by weight, this bit selected, that rejected?’
He was silent.
‘You don’t really need me,’ he said at last. ‘You have everything already: beauty, wit, sense, warmth, feeling, balance, comfort. She has nothing. She is shallow, haunted, cold – oh, she needs me, Eva.’
‘You are apologising for yourself, not her.’
She had already turned with the supple movement of a velure and was running down the staircase. Lighted chambers drifted up about them like bubbles.
His laboured attempt to explain his heart turned to exasperation. He ran down after her, grasping her arm.
‘Listen to me!’
‘No one in Pyrylyn would listen to such masochistic nonsense! You are an arrogant fool, Derek, and I am a weak-willed one. Now release me!’
As the next room came up, she jumped through its entrance and disappeared into the crowd.
V
Not all the drifting chambers of Eyebright were lighted. Some pleasures come more delightfully with the dark, and these were coaxed and cosseted into fruition in halls where illumination cast only the gentlest ripple on the ceiling and the gloom was sensuous with perfumes. Here Derek found a place to weep.
Sections of his life slid before him as if impelled by the same mechanisms that moved Eyebright. Always, one presence was there.
Angrily he related to himself how he always laboured to satisfy her – yes, in every sphere laboured to satisfy her! And how when that satisfaction was accorded him it came as though riven from her, as a spring sometimes trickles down the split face of a rock. Undeniably there was satisfaction for him in drinking from that cool source – but no, where was the satisfaction when pleasure depended on such extreme disciplining and subduing of self?
‘Mistress, I love and hate your needs!’
And the discipline had been such … so long … that now when he might enjoy himself far from her, he could scarcely strike a trickle from his own rock. He had walked here before, in this city where the hedonists and eudemonists reigned, walked among the scents of pleasure, walked among the ioblepharous women, the beautiful guests and celebrated beauties, with My Lady always in him, feeling that she showed even on his countenance. People spoke to him; somehow he replied. They manifested gaiety; he tried to do so. They opened to him; he attempted a response. All the time he hoped they would understand that his arrogance masked only shyness – or did he hope that it was his shyness that masked arrogance? He did not know.
Who could presume to know? The one quality holds much of the other. Both refuse to come forward and share.
He roused from his meditation knowing that Eva Coll-Kennerley was again somewhere near. She had not left the building!
Derek half-rose from his position in a shrouded alcove. He was baffled to think how she could have traced him here. On entering Eyebright, visitors were given sonant-stones, by which they could be traced from room to room; but judging that no one would wish to trace him, Derek had switched his stone off even before leaving Belix Sappose’s party.
He heard Eva’s voice, its unmistakable overtones not near, not far …
‘You find the most impenetrable bushels to hide your light under –’
He caught no more. She had sunk down among tapestries with someone else. She was not after him at all! Waves of relief and regret rolled over him … and when he paid attention again, she was speaking his name.
With shame on him, he crouched forward to listen. At once his warmsight told him to whom Eva spoke. He recognised the pattern of the antlers; Belix was there, with Jupkey sprawled beside him on some elaborate kind of bed.
‘… useless to try again. Derek is too far entombed within himself,’ Eva said.
‘Entombed rather within his conditioning,’ Belix said. ‘We found the same. It’s conditioning, my dear – all conditioning with these Abrogunnans. Look at it scientifically: Abrogun is the last bastion of a bankrupt culture. The Abrogunnans number mere thousands now. They disdain social graces and occasions. They are served by parthenogenically bred slaves. They themselves are inbred. In consequence, they have become practically a species apart. You can see it all in friend Ende. A tragedy, Eva, but you must face up to it.’
‘You’re probably right,’ Jupkey inserted lazily. ‘Who but an Abrogunnan would do what Derek did on Festi?’
‘No, no!’ Eva said. ‘Derek’s ruled by a woman, not by conditioning. He’s –’
‘In Ende’s case they are one and the same thing, my dear, believe me. Consider their social organisation. The partheno slaves have replaced all but a handful of true men. They live on their great estates, ruled by a matriarch.’
‘Yes, I know, but Derek –’
‘Derek is caught in the system. They have fallen into a mating pattern without precedent in Starswarm. The sons of a family marry their mothers, not only to perpetuate their line but because a productive female has become rare by now. Derek Ende’s “mistress” is both mother and wife to him. Add the factor of longevity and you ensure an excessive emotional rigidity that almost nothing can break – not even you, my sweet Eva!’
‘He was on the point of breaking tonight!’
‘I doubt it,’ Belix said. ‘Ende may want to get away from his claustrophobic home, but the same forces that drive him off will eventually lure him back.’
‘I tell you he was on the point of breaking – but I broke first.’
‘Well as Teer Ruche said to me many centuries ago, only a pleasure-hater knows how to shape a pleasure-hater. I would say you were lucky he did not break – you would only have had a baby on your hands.’
Her answering laugh did not ring true.
‘My Lady of Endehabven, then, must be the one to do it. I will never try again – though he seems under too much stress to stand for long. Oh, it’s really immoral! He deserves better!’
‘A moral judgement from you, Eva!’ Jupkey exclaimed amusedly.
‘My advice to you, Eva, is to forget all about the fellow. Apart from everything else, he is scarcely articulate – which would not suit you for a season.’
The unseen listener could bear no more. A sudden rage – as much against himself for hearing as against them for speaking – burst over him. Straighte
ning up, he seized the arm of the couch on which Belix and Jupkey nestled, wildly supposing he could tip them onto the floor.
Too late, his warmsight warned him of the real nature of the couch. Instead of tipping, it swivelled, sending a wave of liquid over him. The two unglaats were lying in a warm bath scented with essences.
Eva shouted for lights. Other occupants of the hall cried back that darkness must prevail at all costs.
Leaving only his dignity behind, Derek ran for the exit, abandoning the confusion to sort itself out as it would. Burningly, disgustedly, he made his way dripping from Eyebright. The hastening footsteps of Jon followed him like an echo all the way to the space field.
Soon he would be back at Endehabven. Though he would always be a failure in his dealings with other humans, there at least he knew every inch of his bleak allotted territory.
ENVOI
Had there been a spell over all Endehabven, it could have been no quieter when My Lord Derek Ende arrived home.
I informed My Lady the moment his lightpusher arrived and rode at orbit. In the receptor bowl I watched him and Jon come home, alighting by the very edge of the island, by the fjord with its silent waters.
All the while the wind lay low as if under some stunning malediction, and none of our tall arborials stirred.
‘Where is my Mistress, Hols?’ Derek asked me, as I went to greet him and assist him out of his suit.
‘She asked me to tell you that she is confined to her chambers and cannot see you, My Lord.’
He looked me in the eyes as he did so rarely. ‘Is she ill?’
‘No. She simply said she could not see you.’
Without waiting to remove his suit, he hurried on into the building.
Over the next two days, he was about but little, preferring to remain in his room while My Lady insisted on remaining in hers. Once he wandered among the experimental tanks and cages. I saw him net a fish and toss it into the air, watching it while it struggled into new form and flew away until it was lost in a jumbled background of cumulus; but it was plain he was less interested in the riddles of stress and transmutation than in the symbolism of the carp’s flight.
Mostly he sat compiling the spools on which he imposed the tale of his life. All one wall was covered with files full of these spools – the arrested drumbeats of past centuries. From the later spools I have secretly compiled this record; for all his unspoken self-pity, he never knew the sickness of merely observing.
We parthenos will never understand the luxuries of a divided mind. Surely suffering as much as happiness is a kind of artistry?
On the day that he received a summons from Star One to go upon another quest, Derek met My Lady in the Blue Corridor.
‘It is good to see you about again, Mistress,’ he said, kissing her cheek. ‘To remain confined to your room is bad for you.’
She stroked his hair. On her nervous hand she wore one ring with an amber stone; her gown was of olive and umber.
‘Don’t reproach me! I was upset to have you go away from me. This world is dying, Derek, and I fear its loneliness. You have left me alone too often. However, I have recovered and am glad to see you back.’
‘You know I am glad to see you. Smile for me and come outside for some fresh air. The sun is shining.’
‘It’s so long since it shone. Do you remember how once it always shone? I can’t bear to quarrel any more. Take my arm and be kind to me.’
‘Mistress, I always wish to be kind to you. And I have all sorts of things to discuss with you. You’ll want to hear what I have been doing, and –’
‘You won’t leave me alone any more?’
He felt her hand tighten on his arm. She spoke very loudly.
‘That was one of the things I wished to discuss – later,’ he said. ‘First let me tell you about the wonderful life form with which I made contact on Festi.’
As they left the corridor and descended the paragravity shaft, My Lady said wearily, ‘I suppose that’s a polite way of telling me that you are bored here.’
He clutched her hands as they floated down. Then he released them and clutched her face instead, cupping it between his palms.
‘Understand this, Mistress mine, I love you and want to serve you. You are in my blood; wherever I go I never can forget you. My dearest wish is to make you happy – this you must know. But equally you must know that I have needs of my own.’
‘I know those needs will always come first with you, whatever you say or pretend.’
She moved ahead of him, shaking off the hand he put on her arm. He had a vision of himself running down a golden staircase and stretching out that same detaining hand to another girl. The indignity of having to repeat oneself, century after century.
‘You’re being cruel!’ he said.
Gleaming, she turned. ‘Am I? Then answer me this – aren’t you already planning to leave Endehabven again?’
He said haltingly, ‘Yes, yes, it’s true I am thinking … But I have to – I reproach myself. I could be kinder. But you shut yourself away when I come back, you don’t welcome me –’
‘Trust you to find excuses rather than face up to your own nature,’ she said contemptuously, walking briskly into the garden. Amber and olive and umber, and sable of hair, she walked down the path, her outlines sharp in the winter air. In the perspectives of his mind she did not dwindle.
For some minutes he stood in the threshold, immobilised by antagonistic emotions.
Finally he pushed himself out into the sunlight.
She was in her favourite spot by the fjord, feeding an old badiger from her hand. Only her increased attention to the badiger suggested that she heard him approach.
His boscises twitched as he said, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t mind what you do.’
Walking backward and forward behind her, he said, ‘When I was away, I heard some people talking. On Pyrylyn this was. They were discussing the mores of our matrimonial system.’
‘It’s no business of theirs.’
‘Perhaps not. But what they said suggested a new line of thought to me.’
She put the badiger back in his cage without comment.
‘Are you listening, Mistress?’
‘Do go on.’
‘Try to listen sympathetically. Consider all the history of galactic exploration – or even before that, consider the explorers of worlds without space flight. They were brave men, of course, but wouldn’t it be strange if most of them only ventured into the unknown because the struggle at home was too much for them?’
He stopped. She had turned to him; the half-smile was whipped off his face by her look of fury.
‘And you’re trying to tell me that that’s how you see yourself – a martyr? Derek, how you must hate me! Not only do you go away, but you secretly blame me because you go away. It doesn’t matter that I tell you a thousand times I want you here – no, it’s all my fault! I drive you away! That’s what you tell your charming friends on Pyrylyn, isn’t it? Oh, how you must hate me!’
Savagely he grasped her wrists. She screamed to me for aid and struggled. I came near but halted, playing my usual impotent part. He swore at her, bellowed for her to be silent, whereupon she cried the louder, shaking furiously in his arms, both of them tumultuous in their emotions.
He struck her across the face.
At once she was quiet. Her eyes closed almost, it would seem, in ecstasy. Standing there, she had the pose of a woman offering herself.
‘Go on, hit me! You want to hit me!’ she whispered.
With the words, with the look of her, he too was altered. As if realising for the first time her true nature, he lowered his fists and stepped back, staring at her sick-mouthed. His heel met no resistance. He twisted suddenly, spread out his arms as if to fly, and fell over the cliff edge.
Her scream pursued him down.
Even as his body hit the waters of the fjord, it began to change. A flurry of foam marked some sort of painful struggle beneat
h the surface. Then a seal plunged into view, dived below the next wave, and swam towards the open sea, over which an already freshening breeze blew.
Tyrants’ Territory
From the heavy and turbulent cloud layers of Askanza VI, rain fell solemnly. It pattered on the roof of the overlander making its way down into a coastal valley. Craig Hodges, sitting at the wheel, nodded reflectively to himself. If he and his Planetary Ecological Survey Team (PEST for short) passed this world as safe for habitation, future colonists would still have plenty to worry about from the weather alone. Askanza, the sun, never broke through VI’s clouds.
Craig smiled. He had little sympathy for colonists at the best of times. All his affections went to these unexplored planets on the fringe of Earth’s ever-expanding spatial frontiers. Each of them, however luxuriant, however barren, presented its own special problems and guarded its own special secrets.
Bumping its way down a mile-long slope, the overlander came onto a plateau. From here, but for the rain which now gave signs of abating, there should have been a good view ahead. Craig stopped on the edge of the plateau, peering forward. He was reluctant to leave the advantage of high ground without knowing what he was going into, particularly in a coastal region. Coasts were focal areas for life on almost any planet, and a lifetime of PEST service had taught Craig caution.
Craig was not exactly anticipating anything momentous in the way of life on this moonless, tideless, grassless ball; still, any form of anticipation could be misleading on a new world.
The dwindling curtains of rain parted, dimpling away across an expanse of grey water. So Craig got his first glimpse of the sea, and his first surprise.
From the quiet face of the waters rose tall and thin pillar-like structures. Irregularly spaced, they varied in height, and rose from a few yards off shore to about a mile out to sea.
Adjusting his binoculars, Craig studied them with interest. In the glasses, the pillars glinted with a diversity of subdued colour. Some were
opaque, some semitranslucent. Their surfaces, as far as he could make out, were by no means regular. Some looked sharp-edged and geometrical, some haphazardly ragged, some rounded. Some were as much as fifty feet high.