Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Winter

As Trockern raised both his left hand and his voice for emphasis, the old man sleeping away the afternoon on a nearby bunk muttered irritably, snorted, and rolled over onto his other side.

“Again, darling, there were plenty of societies without slaves,” Shoyshal said. “And plenty of societies which abhorred the idea.”

“They said they abhorred it, but they kept servants when they could

—possessed them as far as possible. Later they employed androids. Officially nonslave societies went in for multiple possessions instead. Possessions, possessions … It was a form of madness.”

“They were not mad,” Shoyshal said. “Just different from us. They’d probably find us pretty strange. Besides, it was the adolescence of mankind. I’ve listened to your preaching often enough, Trockern, and can’t deny I’ve enjoyed it—more or less. Now listen to what I am going to say.

“We’re here because of astonishing luck. Forget about the Hand of God, about which the Helliconians are always agonising. There’s just luck. I don’t mean only luck that a few humans survived the nuclear winter—though that’s a part of it. I mean by luck the series of Earth’s cosmic accidents. Think of the way plantlike bacteria released oxygen into an otherwise unbreathable atmosphere. Think of the accident of fish developing backbones. Think of the accident of mammals developing placenta —so much cleverer than eggs — though eggs, too, were winners in their day. Think of the accident of the bombardment which altered conditions so sharply that the dinosaurs failed, to give mammals their chance. I could go on.”

“You always could,” said her sister half-admiringly.

“Our old adolescent ancestors feared accident. They feared luck. Hence gods and fences and marriage and nuclear arms and all the rest. Not your possessiveness, but the fear of accident. Which eventually befell them. Perhaps such prophecies are self-fulfilling.”

“Plausible. Yes. I’ll agree, if you will allow that possessiveness itself might have been a symptom of that fear of accidents.”

“Oh, well, Trockern, if you’re going to agree, let’s get back to the subject of sex.” They all laughed. Outside their windows, the mobile city could be seen trundling on its inelegant way, drinking egonicity from the white polyhedrons.

Ermine put an arm about her sister’s shoulder and stroked her hair.

“You talk about one person possessing another- I suppose you would say that the old institution of marriage was like that. Yet marriage still sounds rather romantic to me.”

“Most squalid things are romantic if you get far enough away from them” Shoyshal said. “Anything seen through a haze… But marriage is the supreme example of love as a political act. The love was just a pretence, or at best an illusion.”

“I don’t see what you mean. Men and women did not have to marry, did they?”

“It was voluntary in a way, yes, but there was the pressure of society to marry. Sometimes moral pressure, sometimes economic pressure. The man got someone to work for him and have sex with. The woman got someone to earn money for her. They pooled their cupidities.”

“How awful!”

“All those romantic postures,” continued Shoyshal, enjoying herself. “Those raptures, those love songs, that sticky music, that literature they so prized, the suicide pacts, the tears, the vows—all just social mating displays, the baiting of the trap they couldn’t see they were setting or falling into.”

“You make it sound awful.”

“Oh, it was worse than that, Ermine, I assure you. No wonder so many women chose prostitution. I mean, marriage was another version of the power struggle, with both husband and wife battling for supremacy over the other. The man had the bludgeon of the purse strings, the woman the secret weapon between her legs.”

They all burst out in laughter. The old man on the other bunk, Sartorilrvrash by name, began to snore in self-defence.

“It’s a long while since yours was secret,” Trockern said.

When a city became too crowded for someone’s liking, it was not difficult to change to another geonaut and head off in a new direction. There were many other cities, other alternatives. Some people liked to follow the long light days; others travelled to enjoy spectacular scenery; others developed longings to view the sea or the desert. Every environment offered a different kind of experience.

And those kinds of experience were of a different order from the kinds that once had been. No longer did the people cry out. Their agile brains had at last led their emotions to accept a role of modesty, subor- dinate but never acquiescent to Gaia, spirit of Earth. Gaia did not seek to possess them, as their imagined gods had once done. They were themselves part of that spirit. They had a vision.

In consequence, death ceased to play the leading role of Inquisitor in human affairs, as once it had done. Now it was no more than an item in the homely accounting which included mankind: Gaia was a common grave from which fresh increment continually blossomed.

There was also the dimension of a real involvement with Helliconia. From watchers, men and women had graduated to participators. As the images failed to arrive from the Avernus, as the mere pictures died in the shell-like auditoria, so the empathic link was forged ever more strongly. In a sense, humankind — humanmind — leaped across space to become the eye of the Original Beholder, to lend strength to their distant fellows on the other planet.

What the future might bring to that spiritual extension of being was a matter for expectation.

By accepting a role proper and comfortable to them, the terrestrials had again entered the magic circle of being. They had forsworn their old greeds. Theirs was the world, as they were the world’s.

When it was growing dark, Ermine said, “Talking about love as a political act. It takes a little getting used to. But what was that legalistic arrangement the old race suffered when a marriage broke up? Jandol-Anganol had one? Oh, a divorce. That was a quarrel over possessions, wasn’t it?”

“And over who possessed the children,” Shoyshal said. “That’s an example of love all entangled in economics and politics. They didn’t understand that the random cannot be escaped. It’s one of the caprices by which Gaia keeps herself up to date.”

Trockern glanced out the window and gestured at the geonaut. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Gaia hasn’t sent that object to supersede us,” he said, with an air of mock gloom. “After all, geonauts are more beautiful and more functional than we are—present company excepted.”

As the stars came out, the three climbed down onto the earth and walked by the side of their slow- trundling room. Ermine linked arms with the other two.

“We can judge from the example of Helliconia how many lives of the old race were ruined by territoriality and the lust to possess those who were loved. No matter that it killed love. At least the nuclear winter freed our race from that sort of territoriality. We have risen to a better kind of life.”

“I wonder what else is wrong with us that we don’t know about?” Trockern said, and laughed.

“In your case we know,” said Ermine, teasingly. He bit her ear. Inside the room, Sartorilrvrash stirred on his bunk and grunted, as if in approval, as if he would have relished biting that pink lobe himself. It was about the hour when he generally decided to wake and enjoy the hours of tropical darkness.