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.
“That reminds me,” Shoyshal said, looking up at the stars. “If my randomness theory is in any way correct, it might account for why the old race never found any other life forms out there, except on Helli- conia. Helliconia and Earth were lucky. We were accident-prone. On the other planets, everything went according to some geophysical plan. As a result, nothing ever happened. There was no story to tell.”
They stood looking up into the infinite distances of the sky.
A sigh escaped Trockern. “I always experience intense happiness when I look up at the galaxy. Always. On the one hand, the stars remind me that the whole marvellous complexity of the organic and inorganic universe resolves itself down to a few physical laws awesome in their simplicity—”
“And of course you are happy that the stars provide a text for a speech…” She imitated his posturing.
“And on the other hand, darling, and on the other hand… Oh, you know, I’m happy that I’m more complex than a worm or bluebottle, and thus able to read beauty into those few awesome physical laws.”
“All those age-old rumours about God,” Shoyshal said. “You can’t help wondering if there isn’t something in them. Perhaps the truth is that God’s a real old bore you wouldn’t want to be seen dead with…”
“…Sitting brooding for ever over planets piled with nothing but sand…”
“…And counting every grain,” finished Ermine. Laughing, they had to run to catch up with their room.
The years went by. It was simple. All one had to do was haul on the chains, and the years passed. And the Wheel moved through the starry firmament.
Despair gave way to resignation. Long after resignation came hope, flooding in without fanfares, like dawn.
The nature of the graffiti on the encompassing outer wall changed. There were representations of nude women, hopes and boasts about grandchildren, fears about wives. There were calendars counting down the final years, the figures growing larger as the tenners shrank.
Yet still there were religious sayings, sometimes repeated obsessively on every few metres of wall until, after many tenners, the writer grew tired. One such which Luterin read musingly was
ALL THE WORLD’S WISDOM HAS ALWAYS EXISTED: DRINK DEEP OF IT THAT IT MAY INCREASE.
Once, as he hauled on his chains with the rest of the unseen host, as trumpets blew and the whole structure shrieked on its pinions, Luterin Shokerandit was aware of a faint luminosity in his cell. He worked. Every hour hauled the mass of the Wheel under 10 centimetres forward, but every hour increased the luminosity. An halosis of yellow twilight crept in.
He thought himself in paradise. Throwing off his furs, he tugged at the ten-link chain with extra vigour, shouting for his unhearing fellows to do the same. Near the end of the twelve-and-a-half-hour work period, the cell’s leading wall slipped forward to reveal the merest slit of light. The cell became filled with a holy substance which flickered and flowed into the least corner of the cell. Luterin fell down on his knees and covered his eyes, crying and laughing.
Before the work period ceased, all of the slit was contained within his outer wall space. It was 240 millimetres wide—and there was now half a small year to go before Luterin had hauled his cell once more to the exit under Bambekk Monastery. Concisely engraved lettering in the granite read: