Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Summer

To some souls venturing there, the ranks of the departed were terrifying. For the queen they held consolation. She looked down upon them, those mouths pickled in obsidian, and was reassured to believe that at least some wreckage remained from existence, and would ever remain until the planet was consumed by fire. And who knew if even then…

For venturing souls, no compass bearings seemed possible. Yet there was direction. The beholder was a lodestone. All here had been collected according to plan, as stones on seashores are graded according to size. The ranks of fessups stretched below the whole earth, leading beyond Borlien and Oldorando to far Sibornal and even to the remote parts of Hespagorat, to semi-legendary Pegovin beyond the Climent Sea, even to the poles.

The soul barque moved to a breeze that did not blow, finally drifting to the gossie of what had once been her mother, the wild Shannana, wife to RantanOboral, ruler of Matrassyl. The maternal gossie resembled a battered birdcage, its ribs and hipbones forming tentative golden patterns against the darkness, like a leaf crushed long ago in a child’s book. It spoke.

Gossies and fessups were tormenting things. As negatives of being, they recalled only the incidents in their lives which were pleasant. The good had been interred with them; the evil, the dross, lost along with freedom of action.

“Dear Moth, I come dutifully before you again, to see how you fare.” Her ritual salutation.

“My dear daughter, there are no troubles here. All is serene, nothing can go awry. And when you appear, everything is gained. My joyous and beautiful one, how did I squeeze such an offspring from my unworthy loins? Your grandmother is also here, delighted also to be back in your presence.”

“It is a comfort to be in your presence, too, Moth.” But the words were a formula against entropy.

“Oh, no, but you must not say that, because the delight is all ours, and often I think how in the hurried days of my life I never cherished you enough, certainly not as much as your virtue warranted. There was always so much to be done, and another battle fought, and one may wonder now why energy was spent on those unimportant things, whereas the real joy of life was being close with you and seeing you grow up into—”

“Mother, you were a kind parent, and I not a dutiful enough child. I was always headstrong—”

“Headstrong!” exclaimed the old gossie. “No, no, you did nothing to offend. One sees these things differently in this stage of existence, one sees what the true things are, what’s important. A few little peccadillos are nothing, and I’m only sorry if I made a fuss at the time. That was just my stupidity—I knew all along that you were my greatest treasure. Not to pass on life, that’s the failure—as those down here without offspring will testify in endless dole.”

She continued joyfully in this vein, and the queen let her ramble on, placated by her words, for the fact was that in life she had found her mother self-absorbed and without more than perfunctory kindness. It delighted her to find that this battered cage should remember events of her childhood which she had forgotten. Flesh had died; memory was embalmed here.

At last she interrupted her. “Moth, I came down here half-prepared to meet with YeferalOboral, expecting his soul to have joined you and grandmother.”

“Ah… then my dear son has come to the end of earthly years? Oh, praise be, that’s good news indeed, how glad we shall be to be united with him, since he has never mastered pater-placation as you have, you clever girl. How glad you make us.”

“Dear Mother, he was shot by a Sibornalese gun.”

“Splendid! Splendid! The sooner the better, as far as I’m concerned. That is a treat… And when do we expect him?”

“His mortal remains will be buried within a few hours.”

“We shall watch for him, and what a welcome we shall give to him. You’ll be here with us one day, too, never fear…”

“I look forward to it, Moth. And I have a request, which you must pass to your fellow fessups. It is a difficult question. There is one on the surface still who loves me, though he has never spoken his love; I have felt it radiating from him. I feel I can trust him as I can trust few men. He has been sent from Matrassyl to fight in a distant land.”

“We have no wars down here, sweet child.”

“This trusted friend of mine is often in pauk. His father is here in the world below. My friend’s name is Hanra TolramKetinet. I want you to pass a message on to his father, to ask Hanra’s whereabouts, for it is essential that I get a message to him.”

A hissing silence before the shade of Shannana spoke again.

“My sweet child, in your world nobody communicates fully with another. So much is unknown. Here we have completion. There can be no secrets when the flesh is divested.”

“I know, Moth,” said the soul. It feared that kind of completion. It had heard the statement many times. It explained once more what it required from the revered gossie. After many a diversion, understanding was reached, and the soul’s enquiry was passed along the ranks, like a breeze rustling the dead leaves of a forest.

For the soul, there was difficulty in sustaining herself. Phantasms of the upper world seeped in, and a noise like frying. A curtain blew, something rattled with a deadly music. The soul began drifting, despite the cajolings of her mother’s gossie.

At last a message returned to her through the obsidian. Her friend was still among the living. The gossies of his family declared that he had spoken with them recently, when his corporeal part was near a village called Ut Pho in the jungles of the Chwart Heights on the eastern margins of the land called Randonan.

“My thanks for what I needed to know,” cried the soul. As it poured forth its gratitude, the maternal gossie puffed dust from its throat and spoke again.

“Here we pity your poor disrupted lives, when physical sight blinds you. We can communicate with a greater voice beyond your knowledge, where many voices are one. Come soon and hear for yourself. Join us!”

But the frail soul knew these claims of old. The dead and the living were opposing armies; pauk was only a truce.

With many cries of affection, it left the spark which had once been Shannana, to sail upwards towards the spectrums of movement and breath.

When MyrdemInggala was strong enough, she dismissed SartoriIrvrash from her suite with suitable courtesies and no mention of what she had learned in pauk.

She summoned Mai TolramKetinet, sister to the friend of whom she had been enquiring in the world below. Mai aided her through the ritual of a post-pauk bath. The queen sluiced down her body with extra care, as if it had been sullied by its journey towards death.

“I wish to go into the city, Mai—in disguise. You will accompany me. The princess will remain here. Prepare two sets of peasant clothes.”

When she was alone, MyrdemInggala wrote a letter to General TolramKetinet, apprising him of the threatening events at court. She signed the letter, sealed it with her seal, enclosed it in a leather pouch, and sealed that with a stronger seal.

Dismissing feelings of faintness, she dressed in the peasant clothes Mai brought, and concealed the message pouch in them.

“We shall leave by the side gate.”

The side gate attracted less attention. There were always beggars and other importuners at the main gate. There were also heads of criminals on poles at present, which stank.

The guard let them through indifferently, and the women walked down the winding road to the city. At this hour, JandolAnganol was probably asleep. It was his habit, learnt from his father, to rise at dawn and show himself, crowned, on his balcony, for all to see. Not only did this gesture induce a feeling of security in the nation; it impressed everyone with the long hours the king worked—’like a one-legged peasant’, as the expression was. But the king generally went back to bed after his appearance.