Helliconia Summer

by neetha Napew

  'We have a rare treat this afternoon. We are to be present at an advancement of history and natural philosophy. Of recent generations, we among the enlightened nations have come to understand how the history of our cultures is at best intermittent. It is caused by our Great Year of 1825 small years, and not by wars as the idle have claimed. The Great Year contains a period of intense heat and several centuries of intense cold. These are punishments from the All-Powerful for the sinfulness of mankind. While the cold prevails for so long, civilization is difficult to maintain.

  'We are to hear from one who has pierced through these disruptions to bring us news of distant matters which concern us urgently today. In particular, they refer to our relationship with those beasts which the All-Powerful sent to chasten us, the phagors.

  'I beg you, gentles all, to listen well to the scholar Master SartoriIrvrash.'

  Languidly polite clapping went about the lawn. On the whole, music and tales of bawdy were preferred to intellectual effort.

  As the clapping died, SartoriIrvrash came forth. Although he smoothed his whiskers with a familiar gesture and looked rather furtively to left and right, he did not appear nervous. By his side walked Odi Jeseratabhar in a flowered chagirack. She had recovered from her assatassi wounds and carried herself alertly. Much of her Uskuti arrogance remained in the gaze with which she surveyed the assembly. Her expression was gentler when she looked at SartoriIrvrash.

  The latter had adopted a linen hat to cover his baldness. He carried some books which he deposited carefully on the table before he spoke. The magisterial cairn with which he began betrayed nothing of the consternation he was about to spread.

  'I am grateful to his majesty, King Sayren Stund, for giving me sanctuary in the Oldorandan court. In my long life, vicissitudes have been many, and even here, even here, I have not been free of botheration from those who are the enemies of knowledge. All too often, those who hate learning are the very people on whom we should most rely to promote it.

  'For many years, I served as chancellor to King VarpalAnganol, and later to his son, who dares to be present here despite his encounter with justice this morning. By him I was unfairly dismissed from office. During my years in Matrassyl, I was compiling a survey of our world, entitled "The Alphabet of History and Nature", in which I sought to integrate and distinguish between myth and reality. And it is on that subject I speak now.

  'When I was dismissed, all my papers were most cruelly burnt, and my life's work destroyed. The knowledge I carry in my head was not destroyed. With it, with my experiences since, and in particular with the assistance of this lady by my side, Odi Jeseratabhar, Priest-Militant Admiral of the Sibornalese fleet, I have come to understand much that was previously a mystery.

  'One mystery in particular. A cosmological mystery, one which touches on our everyday lives. Bear with me, hot though it is, for I shall be as brief as possible, although I am told that is not always my habit.'

  He laughed and looked about him. Everywhere was attention, real or feigned. Encouraged, he plunged into his argument.

  'I hope to offend no one by what I say. I speak in the belief that men love truth above all things.

  'We are so bound to our human concerns that we rarely catch sight of the great business of the planet about us. It is more marvellous than we can credit. It abounds with life. Whatever the season, winged and footed life is everywhere, from pole to pole. Endless herds of flambreg, each herd numbered in millions of beasts, rove ceaselessly across the vast continent of Sibornal. Such a sight is unforgettable. Where have the beasts come from? How long have they been there? We have no answers to such questions. We can only remain mute with awe.

  'The secrets of antiquity could be unlocked if only we ceased our warring. If all kings had the wisdom of Sayren Stund.'

  He bowed in the direction of the Oldorandan king, who smiled back, unaware of what was to come. There were scattered handclaps.

  'While life was peaceful at the Matrassyl court, I was privileged in enjoying the company of MyrdemInggala, called by her subjects the queen of queens - merely because they knew not of Queen Bathkaarnet-she, of course - and her daughter, TatromanAdala. Tatro had a collection of fairy tales which I used to read to her. Although all my papers were destroyed, as I have said, Tatro's fairy tales were not destroyed, not even when her cruel father banished her to the coast. We have a copy of Tatro's book here.'

  At this point, Odi solemnly raised the little book aloft and held it for all to see.

  'In Tatro's storybook is a tale called "The Silver Eye". I read it many times without perceiving its inner meaning. Only when I travelled could I grasp its elusive truth. Perhaps because the herds of flambreg reminded me strongly of primitive ancipitals.'

  Until this point, SartoriIrvrash's delivery, free of his old pedantry, had kept his audience listlessly attentive. Many of the audience lounging on the lawn were drumble organizers, with a natural hatred of phagors; at the word 'ancipitals' they showed interest.

  'There is an ancipital in the story of the Silver Eye.

  'The ancipital is a gillot. Her role is advisor to a king in a mythical country, Ponpt. Well, not so mythical: Ponpt, now called Ponipot, still exists to the west of the Barrier Mountains. This gillot is superior to the king, and provides him with the wisdom whereby he rules. He depends on her as a son on a mother. At the end of the story, the king kills the gillot.

  'The Silver Eye itself is a body like a sun, but silver and shining only by night. Like a close star, without heat. When the gillot is slain, the Silver Eye sails away and is lost for ever.

  'What did all that signify? I asked myself. Where was the meaning of the tale?'

  He leaned over the podium, hunching his shoulders and pointing at the audience in his eagerness to tell the tale.

  'The key to the puzzle came when I was on an Uskuti sailing vessel. The vessel was becalmed in the Cadmer Straits. Odi, this lady here, and I landed on Gleeat Island, where we managed to capture a wild gillot with a black pelage. The females of the ancipital species have a one-day flow of menses from the uterus as a prelude to the oestral cycle, when they go into rut. Because of my prejudice against the species, I have no knowledge of Native Ancipital or even Hurdhu, but I discovered then that the gillot's word for her period was "tennhrr". That was the key! Forgive me if such a subject seems too disgusting to contemplate.

  'In my studies - all destroyed by the great King JandolAnganol - I had noted that even phagors preserved one or two legends. They could hardly be expected to make sense. In particular, there is a legend which says Helliconia once had a sister body circling about it, just as Batalix circles about Freyr. This sister body flew away as Freyr arrived and as mankind was born. So the legend goes. And the name of the escaping body in Native is T'Sehn-Hrr.

  'Why should "tennhrr" and "T'Sehn-Hrr" be virtually the same word? That was the question I asked myself.

  'A gillot's tennhrr occurs ten times in a small year -every six weeks. We may therefore assume that this heavenly eye or moon served as a timing mechanism for the periods. But did the moon "T'Sehn-Hrr", supposing it existed, circle Helliconia once every six weeks? How to check on something which happened so long ago that human history has no record of it?

  'The answer lay in Tatro's story.

  'Her story says that the silver eye in the sky opened and shut. Possibly that means it grew bigger or smaller, according to distance, as does Freyr. It became wide open or full ten times a year. That was it. Ten times again. The pieces of the puzzle fitted.

  'You understand the unmistakable conclusion to which I was drawn?'

  Gazing at his audience, SartoriIrvrash saw that indeed many of them did not understand. They waited politely for him to be done. He heard his voice rise to a shout.

  'This world of ours once had a moon, a silver moon, which was lost at a time of some kind of disturbance in the heavens. It sailed away, we don't as yet know how. The moon was called T'Sehn-Hrr - and T'Sehn-Hrr is a phagor name.'


  He looked at his notes, he conferred briefly with Odi, as the listeners stirred. He resumed his discourse with a note of asperity in his voice.

  'Why should the moon have only an ancipital name? Why is there no human record of this missing body? The answer leads us into the mazes and botherations of antiquity.

  'For when I looked about, I found that missing moon. Not in the sky, but shining forth from our everyday speech. For how is our calendar divided? Eight days in a week, six weeks in a tenner, ten tenners in a year of four hundred and eighty days... We never question it. We never question why a tenner is called a tenner, because there are ten of them in a year.

  'But that is not the whole truth. Our word "tenner" commemorates the time when the silver eye was open and the moon was full. It does so because humanity adopted the phagor word "tennhrr". "Tenner" is "tennhrr" is "T'Sehn-Hrr".'

  The murmurings from the crowd were louder. Sayren Stund was plainly uncomfortable. But SartoriIrvrash held up Tatro's book and called for silence. So engrossed was he that he failed to see the trap opening before him.

  'Hear the whole conclusion, my friends. There stands King JandolAnganol among you, and he must hear the truth as well - he who has so long encouraged the noxious ahumans to breed on his territories.'

  But no one was interested in JandolAnganol at present. Their angry faces turned to SartoriIrvrash himself.

  'The conclusion is clear, inescapable. The ancipital race, to which we can ascribe many of our human difficulties over the ages, is not a race of new invaders, like the Driats. No. It is an ancient race. It once covered Helliconia as flambreg cover the Circumpolar Regions.

  'The phagors did not emerge out of the last Weyr-Winter, as the Sibornalese call it. No. That story is based on ignorance. The real story, the fairy story tells the truth. Phagors long preceded mankind.

  'They were here on Helliconia before Freyr appeared -possibly long before. Mankind came later. Mankind depended on the phagors. Mankind learned language from the phagors and still uses phagor words. "Khmir" is the Native word for "rut". "Helliconia" itself is an old ancipital term.'

  JandolAnganol found his voice at last. The speech was such an onslaught on his religious sensibilities that he had stood as if in a trance, his mouth open, more resembling fish than eagle.

  'Lies, heresy, blasphemy!' he shouted. The cry of blasphemy was taken up by other voices. But Sayren Stund had ordered his guard to see that JandolAnganol did not interrupt. Burly men closed in on him - to be met by JandolAnganol's captains with drawn swords. A struggle broke out.

  SartoriIrvrash raised his voice. 'No, you see your glory diminished by the truth. Phagors preceded mankind. Phagors were the dominant race on our world, and probably treated our ancestors as animals until we rebelled against them.'

  'Let's hear him. Who dares say the man is wrong?' shrilled Queen Bathkaarnet-she. Her husband struck her in the mouth.

  The hubbub from the audience rose. People were standing and shouting or kneeling to pray. Fresh guards ran to the scene, while some court ladies tried to escape. A fight had broken out round JandolAnganol. The first stone was thrown at SartoriIrvrash. Brandishing his fist, he continued to speak.

  In that courtly crowd, now moved to fury, there was at least one cool observer, the envoy Alam Esomberr. He was detached from the human drama. Unable to be deeply moved by events, he could derive only amusement from their effects.

  Those on Earth, distant in time and space, viewed the scene on King Sayren Stund's lawn with less detachment. They knew that SartoriIrvrash spoke truth in general, even if his details were sometimes incorrect. They also knew that men did not love truth above all things, as he claimed. Truth had constantly to be fought for, for it was constantly being lost. Truth could sail away like a silver eye, never to be seen again.

  When T'Sehn-Hrr sailed away, no human being had witnessed the event. Cosmologists on the Avernus and on Earth had reconstructed the event, and believed they understood it. In the great disruptions which had overtaken the system eight million Earth years previously, the gravitational forces of the star now called Freyr, with a mass 14.8 times that of the Sun, had wrenched T'Sehn-Hrr away from Helliconia's pull.

  Calculations indicated that T'Sehn-Hrr had a radius of 1252 km, against Helliconia's 7723 km. Whether the satellite had been capable of supporting life was doubtful.

  What was certain was that the events of that epoch had been so near catastrophic that they had remained etched in the eotemporal minds of the phagors. The sky had fallen in and no one had forgotten it.

  More impressive to human minds was the way in which life on Helliconia had survived even the loss of its moon and the cosmological events which had caused that loss.

  'Yes, I know. This sounds like sacrilege and I am sorry,' shouted SartoriIrvrash, as Odi moved close to him and the noise grew. 'What is true should be said - and heard. Phagors were once the dominant race and will become so again if allowed to live. The experiments I conducted show, I believe, that we were animals. Genethlic divinities bred mankind from Others - Others who were ancipital pets before the upheaval. Mankind developed from Others as phagors developed from flambreg. As phagors developed from flambreg, they may again cover the earth one day. They are still waiting, wild, with kaidaws, in the High Nktryht, to descend in vengeance. They will wipe you out. Be warned then. Increase the drumbles. Intensify them. Ancipitals must be wiped out in the summer, when mankind is strong. When winter comes, the wild kaidaws return!

  'My final word to you: We must not waste energy fighting each other. We should fight the older enemy - and those humans who protect them!'

  But the humans were already fighting each other. The most religious members of the audience were often those, like Crispan Mornu, who were most in favour of drumbles. Here was an outsider offending their deepest religious principles, yet encouraging their violent instincts. The first one to throw a stone was attacked by his neighbour. Missiles were flying all over the garden. Soon the first dagger bit into flesh. A man ran among the flower beds, bleeding, and fell on his face. Women screamed. Fighting became more general as tempers and fears mounted. The awning collapsed.

  As Alam Esomberr quietly left the scene, a miniature history of warfare was enacted on the palace lawn.

  The chief cause of the commotion looked on aghast. It was beyond belief how people responded to scholarship. Holy idiots! A flying stone caught him in the mouth, and he collapsed.

  Odi Jeseratabhar threw herself on SartoriIrvrash, crying and trying to ward off more stones.

  She was dragged aside by a group of young monks, who punched her and then began to beat and kick the prostrate ex-chancellor. They at least refused to hear the name of Akhanaba defiled.

  Crispan Mornu, in fear that matters were getting so out of hand, stepped forward and raised his arms, opening the black wings of his keedrant. It was slashed by a sword blade. Odi turned and ran; her garments were seized by a woman as she passed, and next moment she was struggling for her life amid a dozen angry women.

  The clamour grew, a clamour that before the hour was out would spread into the city. Indeed the monks themselves spread the clamour. Before very long, they emerged bloodstained from the precincts of the palace, bearing above their heads the broken corpses of SartoriIrvrash and his Sibornalese companion, screaming as they went, 'Blasphemy is dead! Long live Akhanaba!'

  After the fighting in the garden, there was a rush to the streets, and more scuffles there, while the dead bodies were paraded down Wozen Avenue before finally being thrown to the dogs. Then a terrible quiet fell. Even the First Phagorian in the park seemed to be waiting.

  Sayren Stund's plan had terribly misfired.

  SartoriIrvrash had intended merely to be revenged on his ex-master and to have the First Phagorian slain. That was his conscious aim. His love of knowledge for its own sake, his hatred of his fellow men, had betrayed him. He had failed to understand his audience. As a result, religious belief was set at an intolerable crisis - and that on the d
ay before the Emperor of Holy Pannoval, the great C'Sarr Kilandar IX, was to arrive in Oldorando to bestow the unction of Akhanaba upon the faithful.

  The most living words spring from dead martyrs. The monks unwittingly propagated the heresies of SartoriIrvrash, which found ready soil on which to grow. Within a few days, it would be the monks themselves who were under attack.

  What had goaded the crowd into such fury was the aspect of his disclosures to which SartoriIrvrash himself was blind. His listeners would make a connection through their faith of which, with his limited sympathies, SartoriIrvrash was incapable.

  They perceived that the rumour long suppressed by the Church now confronted them nakedly. All the world's wisdom had always existed. Akhanaba was - and they themselves, and their fathers before them, had spent their lives in the worship of - a phagor. They prayed to the very beast they persecuted. 'Ask not therefore if I am man or animal or stone,' said the scriptures. Now the comfortable enigma fell before the banal fact. The nature of their vaunted god, the god that held the political system together, was ancipital.

  Which should the people now deny in order to make their lives tolerable? The intolerable truth? Or their intolerable religion?

  Even the servants of the palace neglected their duties, asking each other, 'Are we slaves of slaves?' Over their masters, a spiritual crisis prevailed. Those masters had taken it for granted that they were masters of their world. Suddenly the planet had become another place - a place where they were comparative newcomers, and lowly newcomers at that.

  Heated debates took place. Many of the faithful threw out SartoriIrvrash's hypothesis entirely, affecting to dismiss it as a tissue of lies. But, as ever in such situations, there were others who subscribed to it and added to it, and even claimed they had known the truth all along. The torment mounted.

  Sayren Stund took only a practical interest in faith. It was not to him the living thing it was to JandolAnganol. He cared for it only as oil which smoothed his rule. Suddenly, everything was in question.