Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Summer

“Wrong, sir. Sixty-four million people, and thirty-five million phagors. In the time of VryDen, whom you like to quote, the figures were eight million humans and twenty-three million phagors. The biomass relates directly to the amount of energy arriving at the planetary surface. In Sibornal there are—”

SartoriIrvrash waved his hands. “Enough—you try to vex me… Return to the geometry of the suns. Do you dare claim there is no blood relationship between Freyr and Batalix?”

From gazing down at his hands, Billy looked askance at the old man who sat beyond his reach. “If I tell you what really happened, honoured Chancellor, would you believe me?”

“That depends whether your tale is within credence.” He puffed out a cloud of smoke.

Billy Xiao Pin said, “I caught only a glimpse of your beautiful queen. So what is the point of my being here, dying here, if I fail to tell you this one great truth?” He thought of MyrdemInggala passing, glorious in her floating muslins.

And he began. The phagor stood by the stained wall, the old man sat in his creaking chair. The flies buzzed. No sounds came from the outside world.

“On my way here, I saw a banner saying, in Olonets, ‘All the world’s wisdom has always existed’. That is not so. It may be a truth for the religious, but for the scientific it is a lie. Truth resides in facts which must be painfully discovered and hypotheses which must be continually checked—although where I come from, facts have obliterated truth. As you say, there are many impediments to knowledge, and to the metastructure of knowledge we call science.

“Avernus is an artificial world. It is a creation of science and the application of science we call—you have no such word— technology. You may be surprised to hear that the race from which I come, which evolved on a distant planet called Earth, is younger than you Helliconians. But we suffered fewer natural disadvantages than you.”

He paused, almost shocked to hear that charged word, Earth, pronounced in these surroundings.

“So I shall not lie to you—though I warn you you may find that what I say does not fit into your world-picture, Chancellor. You may be shocked, even though you are the most enlightened of your race.”

The chancellor stubbed out his veronikane on the top of the table and pressed a hand to his head. It ached. The prison room was stifling. He could not follow the young stranger’s speech, and his mind wandered to the king, naked, and the sword embedded dangerously in a beam above them. The prisoner talked on.

Where Billy came from, the cosmos was as familiar as a back garden. He spoke in matter-of-fact tones about a yellow G4-type star which was some five thousand million years old. It was of low luminosity and a temperature of only 5600K. This was the sun now called Batalix. He went on to describe its only inhabited planet, Helliconia, a planet much like distant Earth, but cooler, greyer, older, its life processes slower. On its surface, over many eons, species developed from animal to dominant being.

Eight million years ago by Earth reckoning, Batalix and its system moved into a crowded region of space. Two stars, which he called A and C, were orbiting each other. Batalix was drawn within the massive gravitational field of A. In the series of perturbations which followed, star C was lost, and A acquired a new companion, Batalix.

A was a very different sun from Batalix. Although between only ten and eleven million years old, it had evolved away from the main sequence of stars and was entering stellar old age. Its radius was over seventy times the radius of Batalix, its temperature twice as great. It was an A-type supergiant.

Try as he might, the chancellor could not listen attentively. A sense of disaster enveloped him. His vision blurred, his heart beat with an irregular throb which seemed to fill the room. He pressed his scantiom sachet to his nose to help his breathing.

“That’s enough,” he said, breaking into Billy’s discourse. “Your kind is known in history, talking in strange terms, mocking the understandings of wise men. Perhaps it is a delusion we suffer from… Small wonder if we do. Only two days ago—only fifty hours—the queen of queens left Matrassyl, charged with conspiracy, and sixty-one Myrdolators were cruelly murdered… And you talk to me of suns swooping here and there as fancy takes them…”

Billy drummed the fingers of one hand on the table and fanned away flies with the other. Lex stood nearby, motionless as furniture, eyes closed.

“I’m a Myrdolator myself. I’m much to blame for these crimes. Too used to serving the king… as he’s too used to serving religion. Life was so placid… Now who knows what fresh botherations will happen tomorrow?”

“You are too sunk in your own little affairs,” Billy said. “You’re as bad as my Advisor on the Avernus. He doesn’t entirely believe in the reality of Helliconia. You don’t entirely believe in the reality of the universe. Your umwelt is no larger than this palace.”

“What’s an umwelt?”

“The region emcompassed by your perceptions.”

“You pretend to know so much. Is it correct, as I perceive, that the hoxney is a brown-striped animal which wore coloured stripes in the spring of the Great Year?”

“That is correct. Animals and plants adopt different strategies to survive the vast changes of a Year. There are binary biologies and botanies, some follow one star, as previously, some the other.”

“Now you return to your perambulating suns. In my belief, established over thirty-seven years, our two suns are set in our skies as a constant reminder of our dual nature, spirit and body, life and death, and of the more general dualities which govern human life—hot and cold, light and dark, good and evil.”

“You say my kind is known in history, Chancellor. Maybe those were other visitors from the Avernus, also trying to reveal the truth, and being ignored.”

“Revelations through some crazed geometries? Then they perished!” SartoriIrvrash rose, resting his fingers on the table, frowning.

Billy also laboriously rose, rattling his chains. The truth would free you, Chancellor. Whatever you think, those ‘crazed geometries’ rule the universe. You half-know this. Respect your intellect. Why not go further, break from your umwelt ? The life that teems on Helliconia is a product of those crazed geometries you scoff at.

“That A-type sun you know as Freyr is a gigantic hydrogen fusion-reactor, pouring out high-energy emissions. When Batalix and its planets took up orbits round it, eight million years ago, they were subjected to bombardments of X rays and ultraviolet radiation. The effect on the then-sluggish Helliconian biosphere was profound. There was rapid genetic change. Dramatic mutations occurred. Some new forms survived. One animal species in particular rose to challenge the supremacy previously enjoyed by a much older species—”

“No more of this,” cried SartoriIrvrash, waving a hand in dismissal. “What is this about species changing into other species? Can a dog become an arang, or a hoxney a kaidaw? Everyone knows at least that every animal has its place, and humans their place. So the All-Powerful has ordained.”

“You’re an atheist! You don’t believe in the All-Powerful!”

Confused, the chancellor shook his head. “I’d prefer to be ruled by the All-Powerful than by your crazed geometries… I had hoped to make a present of you to King JandolAnganol, but you would drive him madder than he is already.”

Wearily, SartoriIrvrash realized that the king could not be placated at present by rational means. SartoriIrvrash himself felt far from rational. Listening to Billy, he was reminded of another young madman—the king’s son, Robayday. Once a charming child, then overtaken by a kind of mad fancy, espousing the desert like a parched mother, expert at killing game, at times hardly making sense… the plague of his royal parents.