Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [301]
Pleasing though such excitements were, the mind was always aware that every danger, each remote vista, was imprisoned in a mirrored room no more than eighteen feet long by twelve feet wide.
At the conclusion of the holiday, Billy Xiao Pin went alone to his Advisor, to squat before him in the Humility position.
‘Silence recapitulates long conversations,’ said the Advisor. ‘In seeking life you will find death. Both are illusory.’
Billy knew that the Advisor did not wish him to leave the Avernus, for the profound reason that the Advisor feared any dynamism. He was devoured by the deadly illusionism which had become prevalent philosophy. In his youth, he had written a poetic treatise one hundred syllables long entitled, ‘On the Prolongation of One Helliconian Season Beyond One Human Life-Span’.
This treatise was a product of, and a sustaining factor in, the illusionism which gripped the Avernus. Billy had no intellectual way of fighting the philosophy, but now that he was about to leave the ship, he felt a hatred of it which he dared to voice.
‘I must stand in a real world and experience real joy, real hurt. If only for a brief while, I must endure real mountains and walk along stone streets. I must encounter people with real destinies.’
‘You still overuse that treacherous word “real”. The evidence of our senses is evidence only to our senses. Wisdom looks elsewhere.’
‘Yes. Well. I’m going elsewhere.’
But morbidity did not know where to stop. The aged man continued to lecture. Billy continued meekly to listen.
The old man knew that sex was at the bottom of it. He saw that Billy had a sensuous nature which needed to be curbed. Billy was giving up Rose to seek out Queen MyrdemInggala – yes, he knew Billy’s desires. He wished to see the queen of queens face to face.
That was a sterile idea. Rose was not a sterile idea. The real – to use that word – was to be found not extraneously but within the mystery of personality: in Billy’s case, Rose’s personality, perchance. And there were other considerations.
‘We have a role to fulfil, our role towards Earth the Obligation. Our deepest satisfaction comes from fulfilling that role. On Helliconia, you will lose role and society.’
Billy Xiao Pin dared raise his eyes so as to regard his old Advisor. The huddled figure was planted, each of his out-breaths directing his weight down to anchor against the floor, each in-breath lifting his head towards the ceiling. He could not be perturbed, not even by the loss of a favourite pupil.
This scene was being recorded by ever-watching cameras and broadcast to any of the six thousand who might care to flip to this chamber. There was no privacy. Privacy encouraged dissidence.
Watching the wise simian eyes, Billy saw that his Advisor no longer believed in Earth. Earth! – the subject Billy and his contemporaries discussed endlessly, the ever-interesting topic. Earth was not accessible like Helliconia. But Earth for the Advisor and hundreds like him had become a sort of ideal – a projection of the inner lives of those aboard.
As the voice shaped its crisp nothings, Billy thought he saw that the old man did not believe in the objective reality of Helliconia either. For him, ensconced in the sophistry of argument which formed so large a part of the station’s intellectual life, Helliconia was merely a projection, an hypothesis.
The great lottery prize was designed to counteract this withering of the senses. The youthful hope of the ship – which in magical ways centred about that great object of study disrobing its seasons below them – died, generation by generation, until the enforced imprisonment became voluntary imprisonment. Billy had to go and die that others might live.
He had to go to where that sloe-eyed queen thrust her body against the breath of the thordotter as she climbed to the castle.
The speech ceased at last. Billy took his chance.
‘Thousand thanks for all your care, Master.’ Bowing. Leaving. Breathing deeper.
His departure from the Avernus was stage-managed