Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [317]
‘Sir, I do not invent. How many people inhabit all Campannlat?’
The chancellor looked flustered. ‘Why, some fifty million, according to best estimates.’
‘Wrong, sir. Sixty-four million people, and thirty-five million phagors. In the time of VryDen, whom you like to quote, the figures were eight million humans and twenty-three million phagors. The biomass relates directly to the amount of energy arriving at the planetary surface. In Sibornal there are—’
SartoriIrvrash waved his hands. ‘Enough – you try to vex me … Return to the geometry of the suns. Do you dare claim there is no blood relationship between Freyr and Batalix?’
From gazing down at his hands, Billy looked askance at the old man who sat beyond his reach. ‘If I tell you what really happened, honoured Chancellor, would you believe me?’
‘That depends whether your tale is within credence.’ He puffed out a cloud of smoke.
Billy Xiao Pin said, ‘I caught only a glimpse of your beautiful queen. So what is the point of my being here, dying here, if I fail to tell you this one great truth?’ He thought of MyrdemInggala passing, glorious in her floating muslins.
And he began. The phagor stood by the stained wall, the old man sat in his creaking chair. The flies buzzed. No sounds came from the outside world.
‘On my way here, I saw a banner saying, in Olonets, “All the world’s wisdom has always existed.” That is not so. It may be a truth for the religious, but for the scientific it is a lie. Truth resides in facts which must be painfully discovered and hypotheses which must be continually checked – although where I come from, facts have obliterated truth. As you say, there are many impediments to knowledge, and to the metastructure of knowledge we call science.
‘Avernus is an artificial world. It is a creation of science and the application of science we call – you have no such word – technology. You may be surprised to hear that the race from which I come, which evolved on a distant planet called Earth, is younger than you Helliconians. But we suffered fewer natural disadvantages than you.’
He paused, almost shocked to hear that charged word, Earth, pronounced in these surroundings.
‘So I shall not lie to you – though I warn you you may find that what I say does not fit into your world-picture, Chancellor. You may be shocked, even though you are the most enlightened of your race.’
The chancellor stubbed out his veronikane on the top of the table and pressed a hand to his head. It ached. The prison room was stifling. He could not follow the young stranger’s speech, and his mind wandered to the king, naked, and the sword embedded dangerously in a beam above them. The prisoner talked on.
Where Billy came from, the cosmos was as familiar as a back garden. He spoke in matter-of-fact tones about a yellow G4-type star which was some five thousand million years old. It was of low luminosity and a temperature of only 5600K. This was the sun now called Batalix. He went on to describe its only inhabited planet, Helliconia, a planet much like distant Earth, but cooler, greyer, older, its life processes slower. On its surface, over many eons, species developed from animal to dominant being.
Eight million years ago by Earth reckoning, Batalix and its system moved into a crowded region of space. Two stars, which he called A and C, were orbiting each other. Batalix was drawn within the massive gravitational field of A. In the series of perturbations which followed, star C was lost, and A acquired a new companion, Batalix.
A was a very different sun from Batalix. Although between only ten and eleven million years old, it had evolved away from the main sequence of stars and was entering stellar old age. Its radius was over seventy times the radius of Batalix, its temperature twice as great. It was an A-type supergiant.
Try as he might, the chancellor could not listen attentively.