Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Winter

Luterin took the opportunity to slip into the corridor. Insil joined him in a minute, her narrow body leaning forward in the haste of her walk. She held her skirt up from the floor in one pale hand, her jewellery glittering like frost.

“I must be brief,” she said, without introduction. “They watch me continually, except when they are in drink, or holding their ridiculous ceremonies—as now. Who cares if the world is plunged into darkness? Listen, when we are free to leave here, you must proceed to the fish seller in the village. It stands at the far end of Sanctity Street. Understand? Tell no one. ‘Chastity’s for women, secrecy’s for men,’ as they say. Be secret.”

“What then, Insil?” Again he was asking her questions.

“My dear father and my dear husband plan to kick you out. They will not kill you, as I understand—that might look bad for them, and that much they owe you for your timely disposal of the Oligarch. Simply evade them after the ceremony and go down Sanctity Street.”

He stared impatiently into her hypnotic eyes.

“And this secret meeting—what is it about?”

“I am playing the role of messenger, Luterin. You still remember the name of Toress Lahl, I suppose?”

Trockern and Ermine were asleep. Shoyshal had gone somewhere. The geonaut they preceded had come to a halt, and stood gently breathing out its little white hexagonal offspring.

Sartorilrvrash woke and stretched, yawning as he did so. He sat up on his bunk and scratched his white head. It was his habit to sleep for the second half of the day, waking at midnight, thinking through the dark hours, when his spirit could commune with the travelling Earth, and teaching from dawn onwards. He was Trockern’s teacher. He had named himself after a dangerous old sage who once lived on Helliconia, whose gossie he had met empathically.

After a while, he heaved himself up and went outside. He stood for a long while looking at the stars, enjoying the feel of the night. Then he padded back into the room and roused Trockern.

“I’m asleep,” Trockern said.

“I could hardly waken you if you weren’t.”

“Zzzz.”

“You stole something of mine, Trockern. You stole my explanation of why things went awry on Earth, in order to impress your ladies.”

“As you see, I impressed fifty percent of them.” Trockern indicated t he peacefully sleeping Ermine, whose lips were pursed as if she was awaiting the chance to kiss someone in her midsummer dream.

“Unfortunately you got my argument wrong. That possessiveness which was once such a feature of mankind was not a product of fear, as you claimed — although I believe you called it ‘perpetual unease.’ It was a product of innate aggressiveness. The old races did not fear enough: otherwise they would never have built the weapons they knew would destroy them. Aggression was at the root of it all.”

“Isn’t aggression born of fear?”

“Don’t get sophisticated before you can walk. If you take Helliconia as an example, you can see how every generation ritualises its aggression and its killing. The earlier terrestrial generations you were talking about did not seek to possess only territory and one another, as you were claiming.”

“In truth, Sartorilrvrash, you cannot have slept well this afternoon.”

“In truth I sleep, as I wake in truth.” He put an arm about the younger man’s shoulders. “The argument can be taken to greater heights. Those ancient people sought to possess the Earth also, to enslave it under concrete. Nor did their ambitions die there. Their politicians strove to make space their dominion; while the ordinary people created fantasies wherein they invaded the galaxy and ruled the universe. That was aggression, not fear.”

“You could be right.”

“Don’t abandon your point of view so easily. If I could be right I could be wrong. We ought to know the truth about our forebears who, wicked though they were, have given us our chance on the scene.”

Trockern climbed from his bunk. Ermine sighed and turned over, still sleeping.

“It’s warm — let’s take a stroll outside,” said Sartorilrvrash.

As they went out into the night, with the star field above them, Trockern said, “Do you think we improve ourselves, master, by rethinking?”

“We shall always be as we are, biologically speaking, but we can improve our social infrastructures, with any luck. I mean by that the sort of work our extitutions are working on now — a revolutionary new integration of the major theorems of physical science with the sciences of mankind, society, and existence. Of course, our main function as biological beings is as part of the biosphere, and we are most useful in that role if we remain unaltered; only if the biosphere in some way altered again could our role change.”

“But the biosphere is altering all the time. Summer is different from winter, even here so close to the tropics.”

Sartorilrvrash was looking towards the horizon, and said, rather absently, “Summer and winter are functions of a stable biosphere, of Caia breathing in and out in her stride. Humanity has to operate within the l imits of her function. To the aggressive, that always seemed a pessimistic point of view; yet it is not even visionary, merely common-sensical. It fails to be common sense only if you have been indoctrinated all your life to believe, first, that mankind is the centre of things, the Lords of Creation, and, second, that we can improve our lot at the expense of something else.

“Such an outlook brings misery, as we see on our poor sister planet out there. We have only to step down from the arrogance of believing that the world or the future is somehow ‘ours’ and immediately life for everyone is enhanced.”

Trockern said, “I suppose each of us has to find that out for our-self.” He found it delightful to be humble after sunset.

With sudden exasperation, Sartorilrvrash said, “Yes, unfortunately that’s so. We have to learn by bitter experience, not blithe example. And that’s ridiculous. Don’t imagine that I think the state of affairs is perfect. Gaia is an absolute ninny to let us loose in the first place. At least on Helliconia the Original Beholder planted phagors to keep mankind in check!” He laughed and Tockern joined in.

“I know you think me wanton,” the latter said, “but isn’t Gaia herself a wanton, spawning so riotously in all directions?”

His senior shot him a foxy look. “Everything else must bring forth in abundance, so that everything else can eat it. It’s not the best of arrangements, perhaps — cooked up and cobbled together on the spur of the moment from a chemical broth. That doesn’t mean to say we can’t imitate Gaia and adopt, like her, our own homeostasis.”

The moon in its last quarter shone overhead. Sartorilrvrash pointed to the red star burning low by the horizon.

“See Antares? Just north of it is the constellation Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer. In Ophiuchus is a large dark dust cloud about seven hundred light-years away, concealing a cluster of young stars. Among them lies Freyr. It would be one of the twelve brightest stars in the sky, were it not for the dust cloud. And that’s where the phagors are.”

The two men contemplated the distance without speaking. Then Trockern said, “Have you ever thought, master, how phagors vaguely resemble the demons and devils which used to haunt the imagination of Christians?”