Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Summer

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Helliconia Summer: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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The exotic world of Helliconia continues… The detailed interplay of climate, geography, race, religion and politics is ingeniously interwoven in a tapestry which leave the indelible impression of a teeming civilisation which exists in space and time…
confirms and even outstrips the promise of the first award-winning volume… The completed work seems certain to be accepted as a classic of its kind.

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“I don’t know about that, Immya dear. I just think that a little more meat would be good for him. Perhaps he’d like a gwing-gwing…”

“He may go into a state of bulimia, coupled with an overactive disposition. Those would be symptomatic of fat death. In that case, we would have to tie him down to the bed.”

“Surely that won’t be necessary, dear? He’s so gentle.”

“It is not a case of his disposition, Mother, but of the disposition of his disease.” That was a male voice, charged with half-concealed contempt, as if a practical point were being explained to a child. It belonged to Immya’s husband, Lawyer.

“Well, I don’t know about that, I’m sure. I just hope it isn’t catching.”

“We don’t believe that either fat death or bone fever is infectious at this time of the Great Year,” said Immya’s voice. “We think Billish must have been with phagors, with whom these illnesses are generally associated.”

There was more of the kind, and then Immya and Lawyer were in the room, gazing down at Billy.

“You may recover,” she said, bending slightly at the waist to deliver her words and releasing them one by one. “We shall take care of you. We may have to tie you down if you get violent.”

“Dying. Inevitable.” With a great effort, he pretended not to be a tree and said, “Bone fever and fat death—I can explain. Just one virus. Germ. Different effects. According to time. Of Great Year. True.”

Further effort was beyond him. The rigors set in. Yet for a moment he had it all in mind. Although it had not been his subject, the helico virus was a legend on the Avernus, though a dying one, confined to video-texts, since its last outbreak in pandemic form had occurred several lifetimes before those now alive on the station. Those who now looked down helplessly on him from above were witnessing an old story brought back into currency only as the conclusion to every Helliconia Holiday.

The visitations of the virus caused immense suffering but were fortunately confined to two periods in the Great Year: six local centuries after the coldest time of that year, when planetary conditions were improving, and in the late autumn, after the long period of heat into which Helliconia had now entered. In the first period, the virus manifested itself as bone fever; in the second, as fat death. Almost no one escaped these scourges. The mortality rate of each approached fifty percent. Those who survived became, respectively, fifty percent lighter or fifty percent heavier in body weight, and thus were better equipped to face the hotter and colder seasons.

The virus was the mechanism by which human metabolisms adjusted to enormous climatic changes. Billy was being changed.

Immya was silent, standing by Billy’s bedside. She folded her arms over her grand bosom.

“I don’t understand you. How do you know such things? You’re no god, or you would not be ill…”

Even the sound of voices drove him deeper into the entrails of a tree. He managed again. “One disease. Two… opposed systems. You as doctor understand.”

She understood. She sat down again. “If it were so… and yet—why not? There are two botanies. Trees that flower and seed only once in 1825 small years, other trees that flower and seed every small year. Things that are divided yet united…”

She closed her mouth tightly as if afraid of releasing a secret, aware that she stood on the brink of something beyond her understanding. The case of the helico virus was not exactly similar to that of Helliconia’s binary botanies. Yet Immya was correct in her observations on the divergent habits of plant life. At the time of Batalix’s capture by Freyr, some eight million years previously, Batalix’s planets had been bathed in radiation, leading to genetic divergences in multitudinous phyla. While some trees had remained flowering and fruiting as before—so that they attempted to produce seed 1825 times during the Great Year, whatever the climatic conditions—others had adapted a metabolism better geared towards the new regime, and propagated themselves only once in 1825 small years. Such were the rajabarals. The apricot trees outside Billy’s window had not adapted and were, as it happened, dying off in the unusual heat.

Something in the lines which formed about Immya’s mouth suggested she was attempting to chew over these weighty matters; but she switched instead to a contemplation of Billy’s remarks. Her intelligence told her that if the statement proved true, it would be of great importance—if not immediately, then a few centuries ahead, when, the scanty records suggested, fat death pandemics were due.

Thinking so far into the future was not a local habit. She gave him a nod and said, “I will think about it, Billish, and bring your perception before our medical society when next we meet. If we understand the true nature of this malady, perhaps we can find a cure.”

“No. Disease essential for survival…” He could see that she would never accept and he could never explain his point. He compromised by forcing out, “I told your father.”

The remark deflected her interest from medical questions. She stared away from him, swathing herself in silence, seeming to shrink into herself. When she spoke again, her voice was deeper and harsher, as if she too had to communicate from within an imprisonment.

“What else did you do with my father? In Borlien. Was he drunk? I want to know—did he have a young woman on the boat from Matrassyl? Did he have carnal knowledge of her? You must tell me.” She leaned over him, to grasp him as her brother had done. “He’s drinking now. There was a woman, wasn’t there? I ask you for my mother’s sake.”

The intensity with which these words were spoken frightened Billy; he strove to sink deeper into the tree, to feel the rough bark gripping his eddre. Bubbles came from his mouth.

She shook him. “Did he have carnal knowledge? Tell me. Die if you will, but tell me.”

He tried to nod.

Something in his distorted expression confirmed her guess. A look of vindictive satisfaction came on her face.

“Men! That’s how they take advantage of women. My poor mother has suffered from his debauchery for years, poor innocent thing. I found out years ago. It was an awful shock. We Dimariamians are respectable people, not like the inhabitants of the Savage Continent, which I hope never to have to visit…”

As her voice died, Billy attempted an inarticulate protest. It served to rekindle the fire of Immya’s animosity. “And what about the poor innocent girl involved? And her innocent mother? I long ago made that brother of mine, the bane of my life, confess to me everything my father does… Men are pigs, ruled by lust, unable to keep faith…”

“The girl.” But Abathy’s name became entangled with the knots in his larynx.

Gloaming enveloped Lordryardry. Freyr sank to the west. Bird songs became fewer. Batalix took up a position low on the horizon, where it could glare across the water at the scaley things piled on the shore. Mists thickened, obscuring the stars and the Night Worm.

Eivi Muntras brought Billy some soup before she retired to bed. As he drank, terrible hungers rose from his very eddre. His immobility was overcome, he sprang at Eivi, bit her shoulder and tore flesh from it. He ran about the room screaming. This was the bulimia associated with the late stages of fat death. Other members of the family came running, slaves brought lights. Billy was cursed and cuffed and strapped down to his bed.

For an hour he was left, while the sound of ministrations came from the other end of the house. He endured visions of eating Eivi whole, of sucking her brains. He wept. He imagined that he was back on the Avernus. He imagined he was eating Rose Yi Pin. He wept again. His tears fell like leaves.

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