Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [244]
‘Why, my point is a sharp one. This same VryDen lady was an atheist, and therefore saw the world as it is, unobscured by imagined deities. Before her day, it was believed that Freyr and Batalix were two living sentinels who guarded our world against a war in heaven. With the aid of geometry, this same excellent lady was able to predict a series of eclipses which brought her era to a close.
‘Knowledge can build only on knowledge, and one never knows where the next step will lead. But it leads somewhere, whereas Church dogma leads only in a circle. The Church’s very emblem is that circle.’
‘Which I prefer to your fumbling steps into darkness.’
‘I found a way to see through the darkness into light. With the aid of our mutual acquaintance, SartoriIrvrash, I ground some lenses of glass like the lens in the eye.’ He described how they had constructed a telescope. Through this instrument, they studied the phases of Ipocrene and the other planets in the sky. This intelligence they kept to themselves, since the sky was not a popular subject in those nations under the religious sway of Pannoval.
‘One by one, these wanderers revealed their phases to us. Soon we could predict their changes exactly. There’s deuteroscopy! From there, SartoriIrvrash and I backed our observations by calculation. Thus we came on the laws of heavenly geometry, which we think must have been known to YarapRombry – but he suffered martyrdom at the hands of the Church. These laws state that the orbits of the worlds lie about the sun Batalix, and the orbit of Batalix lies about Freyr. And the radius vector of the solar movements covers equal areas of space in equal times.
‘We discovered also that the fast planet, called by VryDen Kaidaw, has its orbit not about Batalix but about Helliconia, and is therefore a satellite body or moon.’
The king stopped pacing to ask sharply, ‘Could people like us live on this Kaidaw?’
The question was so at variance with his previous reluctant interest that CaraBansity was surprised. ‘It is merely a silver eye, sire, not a true world, like Helliconia or Ipocrene.’
The king clapped his hands. ‘Enough. Explain no more. You could end as did YarapRombry. I understand nothing.’
‘If we could make these explanations clear to Pannoval, then we might change their out-of-date thinking. If the C’Sarr could be coaxed to understand celestial geometry, then he might come to appreciate a human geometry enough to allow humankind and ancipitals to revolve about each other as Batalix and Freyr do, instead of promulgating his holy drumbles, which upset orderly life.’
He was about to launch into further explanation, when the king made one of his impatient gestures.
‘Another day. I can’t listen to much heresy at a time, though I appreciate the cunning of your thought. You incline to go with circumstances, even as I do. Is this what you came here for?’
For a while, CaraBansity faced the sharp gaze of the king. Then he said, ‘No, Your Majesty, I came, like many of your faithful subjects, hoping to sell you something.’
He brought from his belt the bracelet with the three sets of numbers which he had discovered on the corpse, and presented it to his majesty.
‘Did you ever see a jewel like this before, Your Majesty?’
His majesty regarded it with surprise, turning it over in his hand.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I’ve seen this very bracelet before, in Matrassyl. It is indeed strange, and it came from a strange man, who claimed to have come from another world. From your Kaidaw.’ He closed his mouth after this mysterious speech, as if sorry to have spoken.
He watched the numbers in the piece of jewellery writhing and changing for a while, and said, ‘You can tell me at a more leisurely time how this arrived in your possession. Now this audience is closed. I have other matters to attend to.’
He closed his hand over the bracelet.
CaraBansity broke into pained protest. The king’s demeanour changed. Rage burned from his eyes, from every line of his face. He leaned forward like a predatory bird.
‘You atheists will never comprehend