Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Summer

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’.”