by Brian Aldiss
Atmospheric carbon dioxide is thus reduced, so too the benefit of a ‘greenhouse’ effect is reduced, yielding a mean temperature of + 10°C.
In other words, pre-capture conditions were better than might be expected, while post-capture conditions are more severe.
Orbital Motions
Helliconia’s ‘Small Year’, that is to say its annual orbit about its parent Star B, is equal to 1.42 Earth years.
The motions of stars A and B are such that B orbits A in the equivalent of 2592 Earth years. Star B, in accordance with Kepler’s laws, moves in its orbit at a varying speed, slowing as it reaches the most distant point (apastron) from Star A, speeding up when it nears Star A (at periastron). In consequence, its planets, Helliconia included, spend less time enjoying maximum energy than they do receiving minimum energy.
Fig. 2 shows the ‘Great Year’ of Helliconia about the giant primary, where t = time in Earth years from apastron.
It is the Great Year which has predominant influence over Helliconia’s climate, and Star A which provides most of Helliconia’s heat and energy.
Figure 2. Orbit.
The x1 to x2 sector marks the 500 E years of deepest winter on either side of apastron.
The y1 to y2 sector marks the period at periastron when Star A appears brighter than Star B in Helliconia’s skies.
Points V1, V2, and V3 indicate approximately the periods in which the three books of the volume are set.
The time from 311 to 633 E years marks a period of fairly rapid improvement in climatic conditions. After that, a slow warming process sets in towards periastron. From 1929 E years, a fairly rapid decline takes place. On either side of apastron is a period of over five E centuries when the climate is either severe or unsettled; a minor ice age is either building up or else in slow decline. This contrasts with a more brief 238 E years of high summer, over periastron.
The orbits of the four Star B planets are at the following (E) distances from their primary:
Copaise 0.31AU Aganip 0.82AU
Helliconia 1.26AU Ipocrene 1.53AU
An Avernian shrine stands on Aganip (Bk.2x), it marks the spot where the 512 future occupants of the Avernus satellite were housed during the construction of the Earth Observation Station.
HELLICONIA’S MOON
The Helliconian satellite lost during the period of capture was known to the phagors as T’Sehn-Hrr. It holds the key to one of the discomfiting secrets of human life on Helliconia. (The truth is uncovered by SartoriIrvrash in Vol.2, xxi, to his detriment.)
Helliconian humans divide their small year of 480 days into weeks and tenners. One week is eight days. One tenner is 6 weeks (i.e. 48 days). So the year is divided into ten equal parts.
AVERNUS AS SATELLITE
Avernus is a satellite placed in orbit about Helliconia by the terrestrial expedition. It is designated Earth Observation Station. Its function is to relay data on all facets of Helliconia back to Earth. To the inhabitants of Helliconia, the OES is known as Kaidaw, because of its perceived rapid motion against the stars.
Avernus has an almost circular circumpolar orbit, its mean distance above planetary surface being:
Orbital radius measured from centre of planet 5731 miles
Orbital period 2hrs 9mins 30 secs
Shape: spherical Diameter 0.62 miles
Mass 18,000,000 tonnes
(1.8 × 1010 Kg)
Depending on the latitude of an observer, Avernus takes about 20-24 minutes to cross the sky, from rising to setting. From the ground, its maximum angular diameter when overhead presents 137.5 seconds of arc. Inhabitants can observe Avernus undergoing rather complex phases when it is passing overhead.
Some Avernus History
When the starship from earth was closing into orbit about Star B, 512 colonists were hatched, almost full-grown (i.e. as late adolescents). The DNA of fertilised human egg cells was computer-stored in nanowombs. The colonists were reared in six ‘families’ or clans, each destined for specific duties.
Once they had been landed at a base on Aganip, automated construction units began the building of the EOS, using local stellar material. Owing to difficulties and set-backs, construction took eight E-years. The colonists were then ferried to their new home on Avernus to begin an intensive study of Helliconia.
Information transmitted back to Earth takes a thousand years to reach its target. So the early signals sent in Spring are received on Earth in approximately AD 6344.
By the time of ‘Helliconia Summer’, Avernus has been in orbit for thirty-two E-centuries. Its population now numbers close to 6000 people. Copulation is taught from the age of eight, but all procreation is by extra-uterine birth.
Among the six clans, the PIN family is the ‘Cross-Continuity Family’. Its duty is to follow the unfolding of one or two Helliconian family groupings through generations over the cycle of a Great Year (60 generations).
The GO family deals with questions of theology, philosophy, ontogeny, phylogeny, etc.
The TAN family studies the origins of long-standing quarrels, from personal to national and specific.
As a safety valve against confinement sickness, Avernians can enter a ‘Helliconia Holiday’ lottery; winners are allowed to visit the planet below. This is a one-way ticket.
Helliconia and Earth: Relative Dates
The colonising starship left Earth in the year AD 2100, arriving in the vicinity of Star B in AD 3600. The journey of 1000 light years took 1500 years to accomplish. Avernus was operative by AD 3608. On the Helliconian Great Year, this is 500 years After Aphelion.
In Book 1 Avernus has already been operative for more than a Great Year.
i.e. about 2592 + 134 E years = 2726 E years
In Book 2 Avernus operative for a further 543 years = 3269 E years
So dates now will be: On Earth, AD 6877
On Helliconia, 1177 E years AA
On Avernus, 3269
In Book 3 Avernus operative for a further 696 years = 3965 E years
So dates will now be: On Earth, AD 7573
On Helliconia, 1873 E years AA
On Avernus, 3965
Myrkwyr is an ominous day in 1873. Freyr sinks below the horizon on the Polar Circle, not to rise again for a further eighteen or so human generations.
CALENDARS
Helliconian Time reckoned as Earth Time
Helliconia units Equivalent Earth units
1 small year 480 days or 10 tenners
1 day 25.92 hours
1 hour 1.04 hours (62.4 minutes)
1 minute 1.56 minutes
1 second 0.936 seconds
A Helliconian inhabitant living to the ripe old age of 70 would be 99.4 E years old
The Earth–Avernus method of reckoning Helliconian years is simply to date them After Apastron (AA). On Helliconia itself, various nations have, at various times, their own means of reckoning calendar time. Generally, such calendars begin from the start of the reign of a local despot.
For example, in ‘Summer’ four different calendars are mentioned. Taking these into account, Book 2 opens in
(Terrestrial dateline AD 6877)
Earth years AA 1177
Helliconia year AA
‘Denniss’ calendar 8281
Oldorando-Borlien After Union 381 (some claim 408)
Ancipital year 7492
HUMAN AGES COMPARED
Because the Small Year on Helliconia is longer than a terrestrial year, age differentials exist.
The following table (years) gives comparable ages of humans on the two planets.
Earth Helliconia
5 3.5
10 7
12 8.45
15 10.56
18 12.67
20 14
22 15.49
25 17.6
30 21
35 24.67
40 28
50 35.21
60 42
70 49
75 52.8
80 56
Life spans are longer i
n summers of the Great Year
1 The legendary King Denniss was ruling in Year 249 before apastron, and foresaw disaster.
His calendar has been discarded.
2 The full and correct name of this year in the Ancipital calendar, forged in the ancipital cotemporal brain, is:
‘Year After Small Apotheosis of Great year 5,634,000 Since catastrophe’.
That is, since Freyr’s capture of Batalix, some 8,000,280 years previously.
APPENDIX 2
Phagors
The struggle for supremacy on Helliconia is between humans and phagors. Phagors, a two-horned, shaggy-coated species, were the original dominant inhabitants of the planet before Batalix (Star B) was captured by Freyr, the supergiant sun (Star A). They are also known as ancipitals (two-edged), a reference to their sharp horns.
This cowlike species probably evolved from flambreg, vast herds of which graze the northern wilds of Sibornal. They are kin to older pre-Freyr species, such as the kaidaws.
Kaidaws are the large horned animals, somewhat resembling horses, which phagors ride. These older species have physical traits in common, such as ball-joints at knees and elbows. This greater dexterity is counterbalanced by a sporadically firing nervous system; hence frequent bursts of immobility.
Phagors stand upright and possess three fingers on each hand.
BRAIN
A major distinction between phagor and human lies in brain structure. A phagor brain is uni-hemispheric, unlike a human brain with its two hemispheres. There is no equivalent to the neocortex. Inasmuch as the phagor brain resembles a human’s, it consists largely of hypothalamus, overlaid with a kind of cerebellum controlling motion.
It may be said in consequence that phagors live in their own perceptual Umwelts. Theirs is an eotemporal consciousness (Eos was the goddess of dawn, sister to Selene), where endings and beginnings cannot be distinguished from one another. For them, time is no indicator of progression as registered in a human mind. Events are monitored as a series of milestones from which direction has been obliterated; thus a trail is indicated, without an arrow of perception to point direction. A rudimentary nervous system permits only action and reaction. But tether (See Appendix 4) greatly extends ancipital awareness.
Ancipitals were masters of the cool dawn world before Freyr capture. With their cowbirds, commensal avians which feed in part on their hosts’ parasites, they dominated a world, from the lowlands of Pegovin to Mt Estakhadok in the High Nktryhk. In those remote ages, they kept Others as pets.
BLOOD
Ancipital blood is golden, containing as it does an anti-freeze system which (together with their stiff pelage) renders the phagors impervious to cold. Cowbirds, kaidaws, and other dawn animals, share this characteristic. Red blood, free of anti-freeze, represents a more recent evolutionary development.
Moss forms a large part of phagor diet during cold periods. Mosses contain high percentages of arachidonic acid, which is highly polyunsaturated. A concentration of this fatty acid in the phospholipids of cell membranes makes the membranes more fluid. This serves to lower the temperature at which the lipid in the membranes undergoes a phase shift from liquid-crystalline to a more solid or gel-like state. Hence the acid from the moss protects cell membranes from the effects of cold; the cell is then able to function at low temperatures. Humanity, of course, has no such reinforcement.
SEXES
Linked with their sporadic endocrine system, female phagors come on heat ten times a year (tenners is the Eotemporal term, equivalent to the terrestrial term ‘monthlies’). Phagors copulate infrequently. As with terrestrial gorillas, the penis is small. Phagors never commit rape; that is a piece of human mythology. Females are viviparous and lactate; parturition takes place one small (or Batalix) year after conception. Both sexes carry the helico virus within the mitochondria of their cells.
stallun adult male
creaght young male
gillot adult mare
fillock young mare
runt child, either sex
LANGUAGE
Phagors used two intertwined languages. Native ancipital is an everyday language, employing only one tense, the continuous present. Eotemporal is a sacred speechform, also used for counting on the base three. It is supposedly the language spoken by those ancipitals sunk in tether.
Language, phagor-to-phagor, is generally accompanied by gesture. Thus the exhortation on parting is ‘Hold horns high’, accompanied by the ceremony of both sides leaning forward, arms to side, foreheads touching, harneys meeting. Then smartly away.
APPENDIX 3
Other species
Following the capture by Freyr of Batalix and its planetary system, the proximity of the A-type supergiant bathed the planets in high-energy radiation.
The effect on the atmospheric composition of Helliconia was to raise the oxygen level, due to the photolysis of CO2, H2O, etc. The oceans were also affected. Greater concentrations of macromolecules led to increased activity all the way up the food chain.
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 – o
r 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 development.
These species of fish and animals give birth only through their own death. Examples are the assatassi (fish or, more properly, fish-lizards) yelk, biyelk, and gunnadu.
Necrogenes are hermaphrodite, without such mammalian adjuncts as ovaries and wombs.
For instance, assatassi, a sharp-beaked fish, semi-winged at maturity, flies ashore in its millions during the great summer along the coasts of the Sea of Eagles. Their mating grounds lie deep in the Ardent Sea. After mating they swarm eastwards, against the ocean currents, through the Cadmer Straits, working up considerable speeds for their death flight.
They then launch themselves onto the shores of Hespagorat, some managing to fly a distance inland. Where they fall, there they die. The young have been carried in their bellies. They live as maggots on the decaying bodies of their mothers, before metamorphosing to a legged and tailed form, and crawling back to the sea. [Assatassi first feature in terrestrial literature in ‘Star Millenia’, in Galaxies Like Grains of Sand (Signet Books, New York, 1960).]