Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Summer

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.

The hapless Oldorandan king spent the rest of the afternoon shut in his wife’s compartments, with preets twittering round his head. Every so often, he sent Bathkaarnet-she out to attempt to discover where Milua Tal might be, or received messengers who spoke of shops being broken into and a pitched fight being held in one of the oldest monasteries.

“We’ve no soldiers,” wept Sayren Stund.

“And no faith,” said his wife, with some complacency. “You need both to keep order in this terrible city.”

“And I suppose JandolAnganol has fled to escape being killed. He should have stayed for the execution of his son.”

That thought cheered him until the arrival of Crispan Mornu in the evening. The advisor’s aspect showed that he had unsuspected reserves of gauntness in him. He bowed to his sovereign and said, “If I diagnose the confused situation correctly, Your Majesty, the central issue has shifted away from JandolAnganol. It now focusses on our faith itself. We must hope that this afternoon’s intemperate speech will soon be forgotten. Men cannot long endure to think of themselves as lower than phagor brutes.

“This might be a convenient time to see that JandolAnganol is removed altogether from our attention. In canon law, he remains undivorced, and this morning we exposed his pretentions for what they are. He is a spent force.

Therefore, we should remove him from the city before he can speak to the Holy C’Sarr—perhaps through Envoy Esomberr or Ulbobeg. The C’Sarr is going to have to face a larger issue, the problem of a spiritual crisis. The question of your daughter’s marriage is also one we can settle, with suitable parties.”

“Oh, I know what you’re hinting at, Crispan,” chirped Bathkaarnet-she. Mornu, in his oblique way, had been reminding his majesty that Milua Tal should be speedily married to Prince Taynth Indredd of Pannoval; in that way, a tighter religious grip over Oldorando could be established.

Crispan Mornu gave no sign that he had heard the queen’s remark.

“What will you do, Your Majesty?”

“Oh, really, I think I’ll take a bath…”

Crispan Mornu brought an envelope from the recesses of his dark gown.

“This week’s report from Matrassyl suggests that various problems there may come shortly to a head. Unndreid the Hammer, the Scourge of Mordriat, has died in a fall from his hoxney during a skirmish. While he threatened Borlien, some unity was preserved within the capital. Now with Unndreid dead and JandolAnganol away…” He let the sentence dangle and smiled with a cutting edge. “Offer JandolAnganol a fast ship, Your Majesty—two if necessary—to get himself and his Phagorian Guard back down the Valvoral as speedily as possible. He may accept. Urge on him that we have here a situation we cannot control, and that his precious beasts must be removed or massacred. He prides himself on going with circumstances. We will see that he does go.”

Sayren Stund mopped his forehead and pondered the matter.

“JandolAnganol will never take such good advice from me. Let his friends put it to him.”

“His friends?”

“Yes, yes, his Pannovalan friends. Alam Esomberr and that contemptible Guaddl Ulbobeg. Have them summoned while I have myself voluptuously bathed.” Addressing his wife, he asked, “Do you wish to come and enjoy the voluptuous sight, my dear?”

The mob was in action. Its gathering could be traced from the Avernus. Oldorando was full of idle hands. Mischief was always welcome. They came out of taverns, where they had been harmlessly occupied. They locked up shops and picked up sticks. They rose from outside churches, where they had been begging. They wandered along from hostels and billets and holy places. Just to have a share in whatever was going on.

Some hrattock had said they were inferior to fuggies. Those were fighting words. Where was this hrattock? Maybe it was that slanje standing talking over there…

Many Avernian watchers regarded the brawling, and the pretext for brawling, with contempt. Others who reflected more deeply saw another aspect of it. However preposterous, however primitive the issue that SartoriIrvrash had raised, it had its parallels aboard the Earth Observation Station—and there no rioting would solve it.

“Belief: an impermanence.” So it said in the treatise. “On the Prolongation of One Helliconian Season Beyond One Human Lifetime.” The belief in technological progress which had inspired the building of the Avernus had, over the generations, become a trap for those aboard it, just as the accretion of beliefs called Akhanabaism had become a trap.

Settled into an introspective quietism, those who ran the Avernus saw no escape from their trap. They feared the change they most needed. Patronizing though their attitude was to the unwashed who ran through Goose Street and Wozen Avenue, the unwashed had a hope denied those far above them. Hot with fight and drink, a man in Goose Street could use his fists or shout before the cathedral. He might be confused, but he did not endure the emptiness the advisors among the six families endured. Belief: an impermanence. It was true. Belief had largely died on the Avernus, leaving despair in its place.

Individuals despair, but not peoples. Even as the elders looked down on, and transmitted wearily back to Earth, scenes of confusion which seemed to reflect their own futility, another faction was taking bold shape on the station.

That faction had already named itself the Aganippers. Its members were young and reckless. They knew there was no chance for them to return to Earth or—as the recent example of Billy Xiao Pin had effectively demonstrated—to live on Helliconia. But on Aganip there was a chance for them. Avoiding the ever watching lenses, they accumulated their stores and marked out a shuttle they could appropriate which would transport them to the empty planet. In their hearts was a hope as bright as any to be found in Goose Street.