by Brian Aldiss
Together with a group of friends, Billy took a holiday in a mountain resort. There they slept in a log hut high above the ski slopes. Such synthetic pleasure spots had once been based on real Earth resorts; now they were rejigged to imitate Helliconian locations. Billy and his friends appeared to ski in the High Nktryhk.
Later, they sailed the Ardent Sea to the east of Campannlat. Setting out from the one harbour on a thousand miles of coast, they had as background the eternal cliffs of Mordriat, rising out of the foam straight to heights of almost six thousand feet, their shoulders wreathed in cloud. The Scimitar waterfall fell and paused and fell again in its plunge of over a mile towards the racing sea.
Pleasing though such excitements were, the mind was always aware that every danger, each remote vista, was imprisoned in a mirrored room no more than eighteen feet long by twelve feet wide.
At the conclusion of the holiday, Billy Xiao Pin went alone to his Advisor, to squat before him in the Humility position.
“Silence recapitulates long conversations,” said the Advisor. “In seeking life you will find death. Both are illusory.”
Billy knew that the Advisor did not wish him to leave the Avernus, for the profound reason that the Advisor feared any dynamism. He was devoured by the deadly illusionism which had become prevalent philosophy. In his youth, he had written a poetic treatise one hundred syllables long entitled, “On the Prolongation of One Helliconian Season Beyond One Human Life-Span’.
This treatise was a product of, and a sustaining factor in, the illusionism which gripped the Avernus. Billy had no intellectual way of fighting the philosophy, but now that he was about to leave the ship, he felt a hatred of it which he dared to voice.
“I must stand in a real world and experience real joy, real hurt. If only for a brief while, I must endure real mountains and walk along stone streets. I must encounter people with real destinies.”
“You still overuse that treacherous word ‘real’. The evidence of our senses is evidence only to our senses. Wisdom looks elsewhere.”
“Yes. Well. I’m going elsewhere.”
But morbidity did not know where to stop. The aged man continued to lecture. Billy continued meekly to listen.
The old man knew that sex was at the bottom of it. He saw that Billy had a sensuous nature which needed to be curbed. Billy was giving up Rose to seek out Queen MyrdemInggala—yes, he knew Billy’s desires. He wished to see the queen of queens face to face.
That was a sterile idea. Rose was not a sterile idea. The real—to use that word—was to be found not extraneously but within the mystery of personality: in Billy’s case, Rose’s personality, perchance. And there were other considerations.
“We have a role to fulfil, our role towards Earth the Obligation. Our deepest satisfaction comes from fulfilling that role. On Helliconia, you will lose role and society.”
Billy Xiao Pin dared raise his eyes so as to regard his old Advisor. The huddled figure was planted, each of his out-breaths directing his weight down to anchor against the floor, each in-breath lifting his head towards the ceiling. He could not be perturbed, not even by the loss of a favourite pupil.
This scene was being recorded by ever-watching cameras and broadcasts to any of the six thousand who might care to flip to this chamber. There was no privacy. Privacy encouraged dissidence.
Watching the wise simian eyes, Billy saw that his Advisor no longer believed in Earth. Earth!—the subject Billy and his contemporaries discussed endlessly, the ever-interesting topic. Earth was not accessible like Helliconia. But Earth for the Advisor and hundreds like him had become a sort of ideal—a projection of the inner lives of those aboard.
As the voice shaped its crisp nothings, Billy thought he saw that the old man did not believe in the objective reality of Helliconia either. For him, ensconced in the sophistry of argument which formed so large a part of the station’s intellectual life, Helliconia was merely a projection, an hypothesis.
The great lottery prize was designed to counteract this withering of the senses. The youthful hope of the ship—which in magical ways centred about that great object of study disrobing its seasons below them—died, generation by generation, until the enforced imprisonment became voluntary imprisonment. Billy had to go and die that others might live.
He had to go to where that sloe-eyed queen thrust her body against the breath of the thordotter as she climbed to the castle.
The speech ceased at last. Billy took his chance.
“Thousand thanks for all your care, Master.” Bowing. Leaving. Breathing deeper.
His departure from the Avernus was stage-managed as a great event. Everyone felt strongly about his going. This was the actual proof that Helliconia existed. The six thousand were becoming less able to live imaginatively beyond the station, in spite of all the instruments which were devised to enable them to do so. The prize was a gesture of supreme worth, even to the losers.
Rose Yi Pin turned her neat small face up to Billy’s and wrapped her arms round him for the last time. “I believe you will live for ever down there, Billy. I shall watch you as I grow old and ugly. Just beware of their silly religions. Life here is sane. Down there they are mad in the head with religious notions—even that so beautiful queen of yours.”
He kissed her lips. “Live your orderly life. Don’t fret.”
Suddenly fury burst from her. “Why do you ruin my life? Where’s the order, with you gone?”
He shook his head. That you must discover for yourself.”
The automated craft was waiting to take him from purgatory. Billy climbed through the passage into the little shell, and the door hissed shut behind him. Terror gripped him; he strapped himself into the seat and enjoyed the emotion.
The choice as to whether to make the descent with the windows shuttered or not was his. He pressed a button. Up flew the shutters and he was rewarded with a view of a magical whale from whose flank he was now excommunicated. A belt of irregular stars spread into the distance like the curl of a comet’s tail. Gasping, he realized that these stars were unprocessed rubbish ejected from the Avernus, falling into orbit about the station.
At one moment, the Avernus was an immensity, its eighteen million tons obscuring the field of vision; at the next, it was dwindling, and Billy forgot to look. Helliconia was in view, as familiar as his own face in a mirror, but now seen more nakedly, with cloud drifting across its lit crescent and the peninsula of Pegovin striking like a club into the central sea. The great southern ice cap dazzled.
He looked for the two suns of the binary system as the windows darkened to fend off their light.
Batalix, the nearer sun, was lost behind the planet, only 1.26 astronomical units away.
Freyr, visible as a grey ball behind the opaqued glass, was immensely bright at 240 astronomical units. When at 236 astronomical units distance, Helliconia would reach perihelion, its nearest point to Freyr; that time was only 118 Earth years away. Then once more Batalix and its planets would be carried away on their orbits, not to come so close to the dominant member of the system for another 2592 Earth years.
To Billy Xiao Pin, this set of astronomical figures, which he had learned along with his alphabets at the age of three, made a neat diagram. He was about to land where the diagram became an untidy question of history, of crises and challenges.
His round face elongated at the thought. Although Helliconia had been under constant observation for such a long while, it remained in many ways a mystery.
Billy knew that the planet would survive perihelion, that temperatures at the equator would soar to 150 degrees but nothing worse; that Helliconia had an extraordinary system of homeostasis, at least as powerful as Earth’s, which would maintain as steady a state of equilibrium as possible. He did not share the superstitious fears of the peasantry that Freyr was about to devour them—though he understood how such fears might arise.
What he did not know was whether various nations would survive the testing heat. Tropical countr
ies like Borlien and Oldorando were most threatened.
The Avernus had been in existence and observing since before the spring of the previous Great Year. It had once experienced the slow spread of the Great Winter on the planet below, had witnessed multitudes dying and nations going down. How precisely that pattern would be repeated in the Winter still far distant remained to be seen. The Earth Observation Station would have to function and the six families to exist for another fourteen Earth centuries before that mystery was resolved.
To this awe-inspiring world, Billy had committed his soul.
Trembling took Billy in every limb. He was to embrace this world, he was to be born.
The craft made two orbits of the planet, braking as it did so, and landed on a plateau to the east of Matrassyl.
Billy rose from his seat and stood listening. At last he remembered to breathe. An android had been sent down with him, an alter ego to defend him. The Avernians felt their vulnerability. The product of generations of soft-bred men, Billy was reckoned to need protection. The android was programmed to be aggressive. It carried defensive weapons. It looked human, and indeed its face was moulded to resemble Billy’s, which it did in all but mobility; its expressions changed sluggishly, giving it a permanent air of gloom. Billy disliked it. He looked at it as it stood expectantly in a recess shaped to its body.
“Stay where you are,” Billy said. “Go back to the Avernus with the craft.”
“You need my protection,” said the android.
“I will manage as best I can. It’s my life now.” He pressed a delay switch which would ensure automatic liftoff in an hour’s time. Then he activated the door and climbed from the craft.
He stood on the wished-for planet, breathing its scents, letting a thousand strange sounds come to his ears. The unfiltered air bruised his lungs. Dizziness assailed him.
He looked up. All above him stretched a sky of most beautiful resonant blue, without feature. Billy was accustomed to looking at space; paradoxically, the arch of sky appeared vaster. The eye was drawn forever into it. It covered the living world and was its most beautiful expression.
To the west, Batalix in aurioles of gold and tan was preparing to set. Freyr, its disc only thirty percent the size of Batalix’s, burned with splendid intensity almost at zenith. All around it swam the great blue envelope which was the first of Helliconia to be seen from space, and the unmistakable imprimatur of it as a life-bearing planet. The visiting life-form lowered his head and passed a hand over his eyes.
At a short distance stood a group of five trees, overhung with fleshy creepers. Towards them Billy made his way, walking as if gravity had only just been invented. He fell against the nearest trunk, embracing it, to have his hands torn by thorns. Nevertheless, he clung tight, closing his eyes, flinching from every inexplicable sound. He could not move. When the craft lifted for its return to the mother station, he wept.
Here was the real, with a vengeance. It penetrated all his senses.
By clinging to the tree, lying on the ground, hiding beside a fallen trunk, he accustomed himself to the experience of being on an immense planet. Distant objects, clouds, and a line of hills, in particular, terrified him with their implications of size and—yes—reality. Just as alarming were all the small live things with random inclinations of their own, whole phyla absent from existence aboard the Avernus. He looked down in anguish as a small winged creature alighted on his left hand and used it as a highway to his sleeve. What was most alarming was the knowledge that all these things were beyond his control; no touch of a switch could tame them.
There was in particular the problem of the suns, which he had not taken into account. On the Avernus, light and dark were largely matters of temperament; here, one had no choice. As dimday was followed by night, Billy felt for the first time the ancient precariousness of his kind. Long ago, mankind had built huddling places against the dark. Cities had developed, had grown to metropolises, and had taken off into space; now he felt himself back at the beginning of history.
He survived the night. Despite himself, he had fallen asleep, to wake unharmed. Doing his accustomed morning exercises brought him back to a sense of himself. He was enough in control to walk from the shelter of the cluster of trees and to rejoice in the morning. After drinking and eating from his rations, he set off in the direction of Matrassyl.
Walking along a jungle path, bemused by bird calls, he became aware of a footstep behind him. He turned. A phagor froze to instant immobility, only a few paces away.
Phagors were part of the mythology of the Avernus.
Their portraits and models of them were accessible everywhere. This one, however, had the presence and individuality of life. It chewed as it regarded Billy, saliva leaking from its broad lower lip. Over its bulky figure was a one-piece garment, dyed here and there with saffron. Tufts of its long white hair were similarly dyed, giving it an unhealthy appearance. A dead snake was knotted over one shoulder—evidently a recent catch. In its hand it carried a curved knife. This was neither an idealized museum replica nor a child’s cuddly toy. As it stepped nearer, it exuded a rancid odour which made Billy giddy.
He faced it squarely and spoke slowly in Hurdhu. “Can you give me directions to Matrassyl?”
The creature went on ruminating. It appeared to be chewing on some kind of scarlet nut; juice of that colour trickled from its mouth. A drop sprayed onto Billy Xiao Pin. He reached up and brushed it from his cheek.
“Matrassyl,” it said, pronouncing the word leadenly as “Madrazzyl.”
“Yes. Which way is Matrassyl?”
“Yes.”
The look in its cerise eyes—impossible to determine whether it was meek or murderous. He wrenched his gaze away, to find that more phagors stood near, bushlike among the befoliaged shadow.
“Can you understand what I say?” His sentences came from the phrasebook. He was bewildered by the unreality of the situation.
“A taking to a place is within ability.”
From a creature that had the natural force of a boulder, good sense was hardly to be expected, but Billy was left in little doubt as to its intentions. The creature rolled forward with an easy motion and pushed Billy along the path. Billy moved. The other figures tramped among the undergrowth, keeping pace.
They reached a broken slope. Here the jungle had been cleared—some trees had been hacked down, and scuttling pigs saw to it that further growth would never reach maturity. Among casual attempts at cultivation were huts, or rather, roofs supported by posts.
In the shade provided by these huts, lumpish figures lay like cattle. Some rose and came towards the foragers, one of whom sounded a small horn to announce their arrival. Billy was surrounded by male and female ancipitals, creaghs and gillots and runts, glaring up at him inquisitively. Some runts ran on all fours.
Billy dropped into the Humility position.
“I’m trying to get to Matrassyl,” he said. The absurdity of the sentence made him laugh; he had to check himself before he became hysterical, but the noise had the effect of making everyone stand back.
“The lower kzahhn has proximity for inspection,” a gillot said, touching his arm and making a motion of her head. He followed her across a stone-strewn dell, and everyone else followed him. Everything he passed—from tender green shoots to rounded boulders—was rougher than he could have visualized.
Under an awning set against the dell’s low cliff sprawled an elder phagor, arms bent at impossible angles. It sat up in smooth movements and revealed itself as an ancient gillot, with prominent withered dugs and black hairs sprouting from her coat. A necklace of polished gwing-gwing stones hung about her neck. She wore a face bracelet buckled across the prow of her nose as mark of rank. This was evidently the ‘lower kzahhn’.
Remaining seated, she looked up at Billy.
She spoke to him questioningly.
Billy had been a junior in the great sociological clan of Pin, and not a conscientious one at that. He worked in the di
vision which studied the family of Anganols, generation by generation. There were those among his superiors who were conversant with the histories of the present king’s predecessors back to the previous spring, some sixteen generations past. Billy Xiao Pin spoke Olonets, the main language of Compannlat and Hespagorat, and several of its variants, including Old Olonets. But he had never attempted the ancipital tongue, Native; nor had he properly mastered the language the lower kzahhn was speaking, Hurdhu, the bridge language used in these times between man and phagor.
“I don’t understand,” he said, in Hurdhu, and felt a strange sensation when she understood, as if he had stepped from the real world into some strange fairy story. “Understanding is to me of you being from a far place,” she said, translating her own language, noun-choked, into Hurdhu. “What situation is that far place?” Perhaps they had seen the space-craft land. He gestured vaguely, and recited a prepared speech. “I come from a distant town in Morstrual, where I am the kzahhn.” Morstrual was even more remote than Mordriat, and safe to name. “Your people will be rewarded if they escort me to King JandolAnganol in Matrassyl.”
“King JandolAnganol.”
“Yes.”
She became immobile, gazing ahead. A stallun squatting nearby passed her a leather bottle from which she drank in slobbering fashion, letting the liquid spill. It smelt pungent and spiritous. Ah, he thought, raffel: a deleterious drink distilled by ancipitals. He had fallen in with a poor tribe of phagors. Here he was, dealing capably with these enigmatic beasts, and on the Avernus everyone would be watching him through the optical system. Even his old advisor. Even Rose.
The heat and the short walk over rough ground had taxed him. But a more self-conscious motive made him sit down on a flat stone and spread his legs, resting his elbows on his knees, to stare nonchalantly at the creature confronting him. The most incredible occurrences became everyday when there was no alternative.
“Ancipital race carry much spears for his crusade for King JandolAnganol.” She paused. Behind her was a cave. In its shade, dim cerise eyes gleamed. Billy guessed that tribal ancestors would be stored there, sinking through tether to pure keratin. At once ancestor and idol, every undead phagor helped direct its successors through the painful centuries when Freyr dominated.