As they viewed the immense figure of Aoz Roon, saw water blow from his lips and beard as he drank from his hands, they watched drops which had fallen a thousand years earlier. The human understanding of past generations had made past and present merge. For many years, the picture of Aoz Roon drinking from his hands became a popular ikon.
To the new generations, with their empathic feel for all life, it was natural to wonder whether they could assist Aoz Roon and those who lived with him. They had no idea of setting out in starships, as preglacial peoples might have done. Instead, they decided to focus their empathic sense and broadcast it outwards through conch shells.
So it was that signals went from Earth to Helliconia, responding for the first time to the signals which had long flowed in the opposite direction.
The characteristics of the human race were now drawn from a slightly different genetic pool than formerly. Those who had inherited the Earth were strong on empathy. Empathy had not been dominant in the preglacial world. That gift of entering into the personality of another, of experiencing sympathetically his or her state of mind, had never been rare. But the elite had despised it — or exploited it. Empathy ran against their interest as exploiters. Power and empathy were not happy teammates.
Now empathy was widely dispersed among the race. It became a dominant feature, with survival characteristics. There was nothing inhuman about it.
There was an inhuman aspect to the Helliconians. The terrestrials puzzled greatly about it. The Helliconians knew the spirits of their dead and communed regularly with them.
The new race on Earth took no particular account of death. They understood that when they died they were taken back and absorbed into the great Earth mother, their elementary particles to be re-formed into future living things. They were buried shallowly with flowers in their mouths, symbolising the force that would spring up from their decay. But it was different on Helliconia. They were fascinated by the Helliconians’ descent into pauk to commune with their gossies, those sparks of vital energy.
And it was observed that the ancipital race had a similar relationship with its dead. Dead phagors sank into a ‘tether’ state and appeared to linger, dwindling, for several generations. The phagors had no burial customs.
These macabre extensions to existence were regarded on Earth as a compensation for the extremities of climate which living things endured in the course of a Helliconian Great Year. There was, though, a marked difference between the defunct of the ancipital kind and the defunct of the human kind.
Phagors in tether supported their living descendants, formed a reservoir of wisdom and encouragement, comforted them in adversity. The spirits of humans visited in pauk, on the other hand, were unmitigatedly spiteful. No gossie ever spoke except to utter reproaches and to complain about a spoilt life.
Why this difference? asked the new intellects.
They answered from their own experience. They said: Dreadful though the phagors are, they are not estranged from the Original Beholder, the Helliconian Gaia figure. So they are not tormented by the spirits about them. The humans are estranged; they worship many useless gods who make them ill. So their spirits can never be at peace.
How happy for the Helliconian peoples — said the empathic ones among themselves — if they could have comfort from their gossies in the midst of all their other troubles.
So a determination developed. Those fortunate enough to experience life, to rise up from the molecular and surface into the great light of consciousness, like a salmon leaping from a stream to take a winged life, should radiate their happiness towards Helliconia.
The living of Earth, in other words, should beam empathy like a signal to Helliconia. Not to the living of Helliconia. The living, estranged from their Original Beholder, busy with their affairs, their lusts and hatreds, could not be expected to receive such a signal. But the gossies — forever hungry for contact — might respond! The gossies in their event-free existence, suspended in obsidian as they sank towards the Original Beholder, the gossies might be capable of receiving a beam of empathy.
A whole generation discussed the daringly visionary proposal.
Was the attempt worth making? went the question.
It would be a great unifying experience even if it failed, came the answer.
Could we possibly hope to affect alien beings — the very dead — so far away?
Through us, Gaia could address the Original Beholder. They are kin, not alien. Perhaps this amazing idea is not ours but hers. We must try.
But when we are so far distant in space and time…?
Empathy is a matter of intensity. It defies space and time. Do we not still feel for the exile of Iphigenia in that ancient story? Let’s try.
Shall we?
On all counts, it is worth it. The spirit of Gaia commands.
And so they tried.
The attempt was long-sustained. Wherever they sat and watched, wherever they came or went in their rough sandals, the living generations put away worldly things and radiated empathy towards the dead of Helliconia. And even when they could not resist including the living, such as Shay Tal or Laintal Ay, or whomever they might personally favour, they were still empathising with those long dead.
And over the years the warmth of their empathy took effect. The fessups ceased to grieve, the gossies ceased to chide. Those of the living who communed through pauk were not reproved but comforted. An unpossessive love had triumphed.
IX. A Quiet Day Ashore
A biogas fire burned in the grate. Before it sat two brothers talking. Every now and again, the thin brother would reach out to pat the sturdy one, as the latter told his tale. Odirin Nan Odim, referred to by all his kin as Odo, was a year and six tenners older than Eedap Mun Odim. He much resembled his brother, except in the crucial matter of girth, for the Fat Death had yet to make its dread appearance in Rivenjk.
The two brothers had much to tell each other, and much planning to do. A ship bearing the Oligarch’s soldiery had recently arrived in the port, and the set of regulations against which Odim had fought was beginning to trouble Odo too. However, the Shiveninki were less ready than the Uskuti to take orders. Rivenjk was still a comfortable place in which to live.
The remaining precious porcelain which Odim had brought to his elder brother had been well received.
‘Soon such porcelain will become even more precious,’ said Odo. ‘Such fine quality may never be achieved again.’
‘Because the weather deteriorates towards winter.’
‘What follows from that, brother, is that fuel for firing the kilns will become short, and so increase in price. Also, as people’s lives grow harsher, they will be content with tin plates.’
‘What do you plan to do then, brother?’ asked Odim.
‘My trade links with Bribahr, the neighbouring country, are excellent. I even despatch my goods to Kharnabhar, far north of here. Porcelain and china are not the only goods that need to travel such routes. We must adapt, deal in other goods. I have ideas for—’
But Odirin Nan Odim was never allowed peace for long. He, like his brother, housed a number of relations. Some of them, voluble and voluminous, rushed to the fireside now, heads full of a quarrel that only Odo could settle. Some of Eedap Mun’s relations, surviving plague and voyage, had been billeted with their Rivenjk relations, and the old question had arisen of floor space being encroached upon.