Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Summer

That pattern of division lay deep in JandolAnganol’s psyche, so deep he did not notice it in himself. Beneath his arrogance was an even older self-contempt. His self-contempt made him turn against his dearest friends and consort with phagors; it was an alienation which early years had fostered. It was buried, but not without voice, and it was about to speak.

He turned abruptly from the mirror, from that shadowy figure who lurked there in silver, and summoned up the maids. He raised his arms and they dressed him.

“And my crown,” he said, as they brushed his flowing hair. He would punish the waiting dignitaries by his distance from them.

A few minutes later, the dignitaries found relief from their boredom by rushing to the windows when marching feet were heard outside. They looked down on great rough heads crowned by gleaming horns, on muscular shoulders and coarse bodies, on hoofs that echoed and war harness that creaked. The Royal First Phagorian Guard was parading—a sight that caused unease in most human spectators, since the ancipitals were so hinged at knee and elbow that lower leg and lower arm could turn in all directions. The march was uncanny, with an impossible forward flexure of the leg at every step.

A sergeant called an order. The platoons halted, going from movement to the instant immobility characteristic of phagors.

The scorching wind stirred the trailing hairs of the platoon. The king stepped from between platoons and marched into the palace. The visiting statesmen regarded each other uneasily, thoughts of assassination in their heads.

JandolAnganol entered the room. He halted and surveyed them. One by one, his guests rose As if he struggled to speak, the king let the silence lengthen. Then he said, “You have demanded of me a harsh choice. Yet why should I hesitate? My first duty is solemnly pledged to my country.

“I am resolved not to let my personal feelings enter the matter. I shall send away my queen, MyrdemInggala. She will leave this day, and retire to a palace on the seacoast. If the Holy Pannovalan Church, whose servant I am, grants me a bill of divorcement, I shall divorce the queen.

“And I shall marry Simoda Tal, of the House of Oldorando.”

Clapping and murmurs of congratulation rose. The king’s face was expressionless. As they were approaching, before they could reach him, he turned on his heel and left the room.

The thordotter slammed the door behind him.

Billy Xiao Pin’s face was round, as were, in general disposition, his eyes and nose. Even his mouth was a mere rosebud. His skin was smooth and sallow. He had left the Avernus only once previously, when close members of the Pin family had taken him on an Ipocrene fly-past.

Billy was a modest but determined young man, well-mannered like all members of his family, and it was believed that he could be relied upon to face his death with equanimity. He was twenty Earth years old, or just over fourteen by Helliconian reckoning.

Although the Helliconia Holiday Lottery was ruled by chance, it was generally agreed—at least among the thousand-strong Pin family—that Billy was an excellent choice as winner.

When his good fortune was announced, he was sent on a tour of the Avernus by his doting family. With him went his current girl friend, Rose Yi Pin. The moving corridors of the satellite were event-oriented, and those who travelled them often found themselves caught in technological typhoons, or surrounded by animated computer graphics, sometimes of a malignant kind. The Avernus had been in its orbit for 3269 years; every facility available was mustered to counteract the killing disease which threatened its occupants: lethargy.

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.