‘Father, I come before you, your unworthy son, to beg your forgiveness for my crimes to you.’ So spoke the soul of JandolAnganol, hanging where no air was.
‘My dear son, you are welcome here, welcome whenever you can find time to visit your father, now among the ranks of the dead. I have no reproach for you. You were always my dear son.’
‘Father, I shall not mind your reproaches. Rather, I welcome your most bitter rebukes, for I know how great is my sin against you.’
The silences between their speeches were immeasurable because no breath was exhaled.
‘Hush, my son, nobody needs to talk of sin among this company. You were my loving son, and that suffices. No more need be said. Grieve not.’
When it seemed time to speak, a dusty fire, the mere death of a candle flame, issued from where a mouth had been. Its smoke could be seen ascending between the cage of the ribs and up the stack of the throat.
The soul spoke again. ‘Father, I beg you to pour your wrath upon me for all that I did against you in your life, and for causing your death. Lessen my guilt. It is too much to bear.’
‘You are innocent, my son, as innocent as the wave that splashes on the shore. Feel no guilt for the happiness you brought into my life. Now in the residue of that life, I have no wrath to bring against you.’
‘Father, I kept you imprisoned ten years in a dungeon of the castle. In what way can I earn forgiveness for that act?’
The flame moved upwards, issuing as sparks.
‘That time is forgotten, son. I scarcely remember a time of imprisonment, for you were always there to speak with me. Those occasions were cherished, for you asked advice of me — which I freely gave, as far as it was in my capacity.’
‘It was a melancholy place.’
‘It gave me time to think over the failings of my own life, to prepare myself for what was to come.’
‘Father, how your forgiveness wounds me!’
‘Come closer, my boy, and let me comfort you.’
But for the living to touch the dead was forbidden in the realm of the original beholder. If that ultimate duality was breached, then both were consumed. The soul floated lightly away from the thing that hung before it in the abyss.
‘Comfort me with more advice, Father.’
‘Speak.’
‘First of all, let me know whether that tormented son of mine has fallen among you. I fear the instability of his life.’
‘I shall welcome the boy when he arrives, never worry — but as yet he still journeys in the world of light.’
After a moment, the soul communicated again.
‘Father, you perceive my position among the living. Advise me where I am to go. Am I to return to Matrassyl? Should I remain in Gravabagalinien? Or shall I continue to Oldorando? Where does my most fruitful future lie?’
‘In each place there are those who await you. But there is one who awaits you in Oldorando whom you know not. That one holds your destiny. Go to Oldorando.’
‘Your advice will guide my actions.’
From among the sparkling battalions of the dead, the soul rose, slowly at first, and then with a great urgency. Somewhere, a drum was sounding. The sparks dissolved below, sinking back into the original beholder.
The inanimate anatomy on the floor in the belfry began slowly to move. Its limbs twitched. It sat up. Its eyes opened in a blank face.
The only living thing to meet its gaze was Yuli, who crawled nearer and said, ‘My poor king in tether.’
Without answering, JandolAnganol ruffled the runt’s fur and let it snuggle against him.
‘Oh, Yuli, what a thing is life.’
After a minute, he patted the ancipital across the shoulders. ‘You’re a good boy. No harm in you.’
As the creature snuggled against him, the king felt an object against his side, and drew from his pocket the watch with three faces which he had taken from CaraBansity. Whenever he looked at it, his thoughts became troubled, yet he could not find it in himself to throw it away.
Once, the timepiece had belonged to Billy, the creature who claimed to come from a world not ruled by Akhanaba. It was necessary to banish Billy from consciousness (as one banished the thought of those damned Myrdolators), for Billy was a challenge to the whole elaborate structure of belief by which the Holy Pannovalan Empire stood. Sometimes, the fear came to the king that he might become bereft of his religious faith, as he had become bereft of so much else. Only his faith and this humble inhuman pet were left to him.
He groaned. With a great effort, he got to his feet again.
Within the hour, King JandolAnganol was at the head of his force, riding Lapwing with Envoy Alam Esomberr beside him. Behind came the king’s captains, then Esomberr’s party, and after them the body of the First Royal Phagorian Guard, ears atwitch, scarlet eyes fixed ahead, marching as their kind had done many centuries before towards the city of Oldorando.
The king’s departure from the wooden palace, with all its underlying sense of anxiety, made a due impression on the watchers on the Avernus. They were glad to divert their attention from the sight of the king in pauk. Even the devoted female admirers of his majesty felt uncomfortable at the sight of him lying prone with his spirit away from his body.
Throughout the human population of Helliconia, pauk, or pater-placation, came as naturally as spitting. It had no particular religious significance, although it often existed alongside religion. Just as women became pregnant with future lives, so people were pregnant with the lives of those who had gone before them.
On the Avernus, the mysterious Helliconian practice of pauk was regarded as a religious function roughly equivalent to prayer. As such, it embarrassed the six families. The families suffered no inhibitions concerning sex: constant monitoring had ensured that long since; for them love and the higher emotions were no more than side effects of daily functions, to be ignored where possible; but religion was particularly difficult to deal with.
The families regarded religion as a primitive obsession, an illness, an opiate for those who could not think straight. They hoped perpetually that SartoriIrvrash and his kind would become more militant in their atheism and bring about the death of Akhanaba, thus contributing to a happier state of affairs. They neither liked nor understood pauk. They wished it did not happen.
On Earth, other opinions prevailed. Life and death could be perceived as an inseparable whole; death was never feared where life was properly lived. The terrestrials regarded with the liveliest interest the Helliconian activity of pauk. During the first years of contact with Helliconia, they had regarded the trance state as a kind of astral projection of the Helliconian soul, rather similar to a state of meditation. Later, a more sophisticated viewpoint had developed; understanding grew that the people of Helliconia possessed an ability peculiar to them, to shift beyond and return from the boundary set between life and death. This continuity had been given them in compensation for the remarkable discontinuities of their Great Year. Pauk had evolutionary value, and was a point of union between the humans and their changeable planet.
For this reason, the terrestrials were particularly interested in pauk. They had at this period discovered their own unity with their own planet, and related that unity to increasing empathy with Helliconia.