Aldiss, Brian - The Dark Light Years

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The Dark Light Years

Brian Aldiss

v1.0 Initial release

v1.1 Fixed broken paragraphs, standardized indents/formatting, Misc formatting/editing

TITLES BY BRIAN ALDISS AVAILABLE IN PANTHER BOOKS

New Arrivals, Old Encounters

Helliconia Spring

Frankenstein Unbound

Moreau's Other Island

Enemies of the System

Brothers of the Head

Earthworks

Cryptozoic

Starswarm

Hothouse

Space, Time and Nathaniel

Barefoot in the Head

The Dark Light Years

Galaxies Like Grains of Sand

Last Orders

The Malacia Tapestry

The Primal Urge

Moment of Eclipse

Greybeard

Brian Aldiss was born in Norfolk in 1925. During the Second World War he served in the British

Army in the Far East. He began his professional career as a bookseller in Oxford and then went

on to become Literary Editor of the Oxford Mail. For many years Brian Aldiss was a film

reviewer and poet. The three outspoken and bestselling novels making up The Horatio Stubbs

Saga (The Hand-Reared Boy (1970), A Soldier Erect (1971), and A Rude A wakening (1978))

brought his name to the attention of the general book-buying public, but in the science fiction

world his reputation as an imaginative and innovative writer had long been established. Non-Stop,

his first SF novel, was published in 1958, and among his many other books in this genre are

Hothouse (published in 1962 and winner of the Hugo Award for the year's best novel), The Dark

Light Years (1964), Greybeard (1964) and Report on Probability A (1968). In 1965, the title story

of The Saliva Tree, written as a celebration of the centenary of H. G. Wells, won a Nebula

Award. In 1968, Aldiss was a voted the United Kingdom's most popular SF writer by the British

Science Fiction Association. And in 1970, he was voted 'World's Best Contemporary Science

Fiction Author'. Brian Aldiss has also edited a number of anthologies, a picture book on fantasy

illustration (Science Fiction Art(l975)) and has written a history of science fiction, Billion Year

Spree (1973). The first two volumes of the epic Helliconia trilogy, published to critical acclaim,

are Helliconia Spring (1981) and Helliconia Summer (1983).

By the same author

Fiction

The Brightfounl Diaries

The Primal Urge

The Male Response

The Hand-Reared Boy

A Soldier Erect

A Rude Awakening

The Malacia Tapestry

Science Fiction and Fantasy

Non-Stop

Galaxies Like Grains of Sand

Equator

Hothouse

Greybeard

Earthworks

The Saliva Tree

Cryptozoic

Barefoot in the Head

The Eighty-Minute Hour:

A Space Opera Report on Probability A Frankenstein Unbound Brothers of the Head Moreau's

Other Island

The Helliconia Trilogy Helliconia Spring Helliconia Summer Helliconia Winter

Stories

Space, Time and Nathaniel

Starswarm

The Best SF Stories of Brian

Aldiss Intangibles Inc., and

Other Stories

The Moment of Eclipse

Cosmic Inferno

Last Orders

New Arrivals, Old Encounters

Non-fiction

Cities and Stones

The Shape of Further Things

Billion Year Spree

Hell's Cartographers

(with Harry Harrison) Science Fiction Art (Editor) This World and Nearer Ones

Anthologies and Series

(as Editor) Best Fantasy Stories Introducing Science Fiction The Penguin Science Fiction

Omnibus Space Opera Space Odysseys Evil Earths

Galactic Empires 1 & 2 Perilous Planets

With Harry Harrison Nebula A ward Stories 2 Farewell, Fantastic Venus! The Year's Best

Science Fiction

(annually from 1968) The Astounding Analog

Reader (2 volumes) Decade 1940s Decade 1950s Decade 1960s The SFs Masters Series

BRIAN ALDISS

The Dark Light Years

PANTHER

Granada Publishing

Panther Books

Granada Publishing Ltd

8 Grafton Street, London W1X 3LA

Published by Panther Books 1979 Reprinted 1984

First published in Great Britain by Faber&Faber Ltd 1964

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Collins, Glasgow

Set in Intertype Times

transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or

otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,

re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of

binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including

this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A few light years with artificial flavouring

for

HARRY HARRISON

poet, philosopher, pacemaker, pieman

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark, The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the

vacant, The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters, The generous patrons of art, the

statesmen and the rulers....

T. S. ELIOT

CHAPTER ONE

On the ground, new blades of grass sprang up in chlorophyll coats. On the trees, tongues of

green protruded from boughs and branches, wrapping them about - soon the place would look

like an imbecile Earthchild's attempt to draw Christmas trees - as spring again set spur to the

growing things in the southern hemisphere of Dapdrof.

Not that nature was more amiable on Dapdrof than elsewhere. Even as she sent the warmer

winds over the southern hemisphere, she was sousing most of the northern in an ice-bearing

monsoon.

Propped on G-crutches, old Aylmer Ainson stood at his door, scratching his scalp very

leisurely and staring at the budding trees. Even the slenderest outmost twig shook very little, for

all that a stiffish breeze blew.

This leaden effect was caused by gravity; twigs, like everything else on Dapdrof. weighed

three times as much as they did on Earth. Ainson was long accustomed to the phenomenon. His

body had grown round-shouldered and hollow-chested accustoming him to it. His brain had

grown a little round-shouldered in the process.

Fortunately he was not afflicted with the craving to recapture the past that strikes down so

many humans even before they reach middle age. The sight of infant green leaves woke in him

only the vaguest nostalgia, roused in him only the faintest recollection that his childhood had

been passed among foliage more responsive to April's zephyrs - zephyrs, moreover, a hundred

light years away. He was free to stand in the doorway and enjoy man's richest luxury, a blank

mind.

Idly, he watched Quequo. the female utod, as she trod between her salad beds and under the

ammp trees to launch her body into the bolstering mud. The ammp trees were evergreen, unlike

the rest of the trees in Ainson's enclosure. Resting in the foliage on the crest of them were big

four-winged white birds, which decided to take off as Ainson looked at them, fluttering up like

immense butterflies and splashing their shadows across the house as they passed.

But the house was already splashed with their shadows. Obeying the urge to create a work of

art that visited them perhaps only once in a century, Ainson's friends had broken the white of his

walls with a scatterbrained scattering of silhouetted wings and bodies, urging upwards. The lively

movement of this pattern seemed to make the low-eaved house rise against gravity; but that was

appearance only, for this spring found the neoplastic rooftree sagging and the supporting walls

considerably buckled at the knees.

This was the fortieth spring Ainson had seen flow across his patch of Dapdrof. Even the ripe

stench from the mid-denstead now savoured only of home. As he breathed it in, his grorg or

parasite-eater scratched his head for him; reaching up, Ainson returned the compliment and

tickled the lizard-like creature's cranium. He guessed what the grorg really wanted, but at that

hour, with only one of the suns up, it was too chilly to join Snok Snok Karn and Quequo Kifful

with their grorgs for a wallow in the mire.

"I'm cold standing out here. I am going inside to lie down," he called to Snok Snok in the

utodian tongue.

The young utod looked up and extended two of his limbs in a sign of understanding. That was

gratifying. Even after forty years* study, Ainson found the utodian language full of conundrums.

He had not been sure that he had not said. "The stream is cold and I am going inside to cook it."

Catching the right whistling inflected scream was not easy: he had only one sound orifice to Snok

Snok's eight. He swung his crutches and went in.

"His speech is growing less distinct than it was," Quequo remarked. "We had difficulty enough

teaching him to communicate. He is not an efficient mechanism, this manlegs. You may have

noticed that he is moving more slowly than he did."

"I had noticed it, Mother. He complains about it himself. Increasingly he mentions this

phenomenon he calls pain."

"It is difficult to exchange ideas with Earthlegs because their vocabularies are so limited and

their voice range minimal, but I gather from what he was trying to tell me the other night that if

he were a utod he would now be almost a thousand years old."

"Then we must expect he will soon evolve into the carrion stage."

"That, I take it. is what the fungus on his skull signified by changing to white."

This conversation was carried out in the utodian language, while Snok Snok lay back against

the huge symmetrical bulk of his mother and soaked in the glorious ooze. Their grorgs climbed

about them, licking and pouncing. The stench, encouraged by the sun's mild shine, was gorgeous.

Their droppings, released in the thin mud, supplied valuable oils which seeped into their hides,

making them soft.

Snok Snok Karn was already a large utod, a strapping offspring of the dominant species of the

lumbering world of Dapdrof. He was in fact adult now, although still neuter: and in his mind's

lazy eye he saw himself as a male for the next few decades anyhow. He could change sex when

Dapdrof changed suns; for that event, the periodical entropic solar orbital disestablishment. Snok

Snok was well prepared. Most of his lengthy childhood had been taken up with disciplines

preparing him for this event. Quequo had been very good on disciplines and on mindsuckle;

secluded from the world as the two of them were here with Manlegs Ainson, she had given them

all of her massive and maternal concentration.

Languidly, he deretracted a limb, scooped up a mass of slime and mud. and walloped it over

his chest Then, recollecting his manners, he hastily sloshed some of the mixture over his mother's

back.

"Mother, do you think Manlegs is preparing for esod?" Snok Snok asked, retracting the limb

into the smooth wall of his flank. Manlegs was what they called Aylmer; esod was a convenient

way of squeaking about entropic solar orbital disestablishmentism.

"It's hard to tell, the language barrier being what it is," Quequo said, blinking through mud.

"We have tried to talk about it, but without much success. I must try again; we must both try. It

would be a serious matter for him if he were not prepared - he could be suddenly converted into

the carrion stage. But they must have the same sort of thing happening on the Manlegs planet."

"It won't be long now, Mother, will it?"

When she did not bother to answer, for the grorgs were trotting actively up and down her

spine, Snok Snok lay and thought about that time, not far off now, when Dapdrof would leave its

present sun, Saffron Smiler, for Yellow Scowler. That would be a hard period, and he would need

to be male and fierce and tough. Then eventually would come Welcome White, the happy star,

the sun beneath which he had been born (and which accounted for his lazy and sunny good

nature); under Welcome White, he could afford to take on the cares and joys of motherhood, and

rear and train a son just like himself.

Ah. but life was wonderful when you thought deeply about it. The facts of esod might seem

prosaic to some, but to Snok Snok, though he was only a simple country boy (simply reared too,

without any notions about joining the priesthood and sailing out into the star-realms), there was a

glory about nature. Even the sun's warmth, that filled his eight-hundred-and-fifty pound bulk,

held a poetry incapable of paraphrase. He heaved himself to one side and excreted into the

midden, as a small tribute to his mother. Do to others as you would be dung by.

"Mother, was it because the priesthood had dared to leave the worlds of the Triple Suns that

they met the Manlegs Earthmen?"

"You're in a talkative mood this morning. Why don't you go in and talk to Manlegs? You know

how his version of what happens in star-realms amuses you."

"But, Mother, which version is true, his or ours?"

She hesitated before giving him her answer; it was a wretchedly difficult answer, yet only

through it lay an understanding of the world of affairs. She said: "Frequently there are several

versions of truth."

He brushed the remark aside.

"But it was the priesthood that went beyond the Triple Suns who first met the Manlegs, wasn't

it?"

"Why don't you lie still and ripen up?"

"Didn't you tell me they met on a world called Grud-grodd, only a few years after I was born?"

"Ainson told you that in the first place."

"It was you who told me that trouble would come from the meeting.

The first encounter between utod and man occurred ten years after the birth of Snok Snok. As

Snok Snok said, this encounter was staged on the planet his race called Grudgrodd. Had it

happened on a different planet, had different protagonists been involved, the outcome of the

whole matter might have been other than it was. Had someone ... but there is little point in

embarking on conditionals. There are no "ifs" in history, only in the minds of observers

reviewing it, and for all the progress we make, nobody has proved that chance is other than a

statistical delusion invented by man. We can only say that events between man and utod fell out

in such and such a way.

This narrative will chronicle these events with as little comment as possible, leaving the reader

on his honour to remember that what Quequo said applies as much to man as to aliens: truths

arrive in as many forms as lies.

Grudgrodd looked tolerable enough to the first utods who inspected it.

Autodian star-realm-ark had landed in a wide valley, inhospitable, rocky, cold, and covered

with knee-high thistles for the greater part of its length, but nevertheless closely resembling some

of the benighted spots one happened on in the northern hemisphere of Dapdrof. A pair of grorgs

were sent out through the hatch, to return in half an hour intact and breathing heavily. Odds were,

the place was habitable.

Ceremonial filth was shovelled out on to the ground and the Sacred Cosmopolitan was induced

to excrete out of the hatch, in the universal gesture of fertility.

"I think it's a mistake," he said. The utodian for "a mistake" was Grudgrodd (as far as an atonal

grunt can be rendered at an into terrestrial script), and from then on the planet was known as

Grudgrodd.

Still inclined to protest, the Cosmopolitan stepped out, followed by his three Politans, and the

planet was claimed as an appendage of the Triple Suns.

Four priestlings scurried busily about, clearing a circle in the thistles on the edge of the river.

With all their six limbs deretracted, they worked swiftly, two of them scooping soil out of the

circle, and then allowing the water to trickle in from one side, while the other two trod the

resulting mud into a rich rebarbative treacle.

Watching the work abstractedly with his rear eyes, the Cosmopolitan stood on the edge of the

growing crater and argued as strongly as ever a utod could on the rights and wrongs of landing on

a planet not of the Triple Suns. As strongly as they could, the three Politans argued back.

"The Sacred Feeling is quite clear," said the Cosmopolitan. "As children of the Triple Suns,

our defecations must touch no planets unlit by the Triple Suns; there are limits to all things, even

fertility." He extended a limb upwards, where a large mauve globe as big as an ammp fruit peered

coldly at them over a bank of cloud. "Is that apology for a sun Saffron Smiler? Do you take it for

Welcome White? Can you even mistake it for Yellow Scowler? No, no, my friends, that mauve

misery is an alien, and we waste our substance on it."

The first Politan said, "Every word you say is incontrovertible. But we are not here entirely by

option. We ran into a star-realm turbulence that carried us several thousand orbits off course. This

planet just happened to be our nearest haven."

"As usual you speak only the truth," the Cosmopolitan said. "But we needn't have landed here.

A month's flight would have taken us back to the Triple Suns and Dapdrof, or one of her sister

planets. It does seem a bit unholy of us."

"I don't think you need worry too much about that, Cosmopolitan," said the second Politan. He

had the heavy greyish green skin of one born while an esod was actually taking place, and was

perhaps the easiest going of all the priesthood. "Look at it this way. The Triple Suns round which

Dapdrof revolve only form three of the six stars in the Home Ouster. Those six stars possess

between them eight worlds capable of supporting life as we know it. After Dapdrof, we count the

other seven worlds as equally holy and fit for utodammp, though some of them - Buskey for

instance - revolve round one of the three lesser stars of the cluster. So the criterion of what is

utodammp-' worthy is not that it has to revolve about one of the Triple Suns. Now we ask -"

But the Cosmopolitan, who was a better speaker than a listener, as befitted a utod in his

position, cut his companion short

"Let us ask no more, friend. I just observed that it seemed a bit unholy of us. I didn't mean any

criticism. But we are setting a precedent." He scratched his grorg judicially.

With great tolerance, the third Politan (whose name was Blue Lugug) said, "I agree with every

word you say, Cosmopolitan. But we do not know if we are setting a precedent Our history is so

long that it may be that many and many a crew branched out into the star-realm and there, on

some far planet, set up a new swamp to the glory of utodammp. Why, if we look around, we may

even find utods established here.'1

"You persuade me utterly; in the Revolution Age, such a thing could easily have happened,"

said the Cosmopolitan, in relief. Stretching out all six of his limbs, he waved them ceremonially

to include ground and sky. "I pronounce all this to be land belonging to the Triple Suns. Let

defecation commence."

They were happy. They grew even happier. And who could not be happy? With ease and

fertility at hand, they were at home.

The mauve sun disappeared in disgrace, and almost at once a snowball-bright satellite wearing

a rakish halo of dust sprang out of the horizon and rose swiftly above them. Used to great

changes of temperature, the eight utods did not mind the increasing cold of night. In their newly-

built wallow, they wallowed. Their sixteen attendant grorgs wallowed with them, clinging with

sucker fingers tenaciously to their hosts when the utods submerged beneath the mud.

Slowly they imbibed the feel of the new world. It lapped at their bodies, yielded up meanings

incapable of translation into their terms.

In the sky overhead gleamed the Home Cluster, six stars arranged in the shape - or so the least

intellectual of the priestling claimed - of one of the grails that swam the tempestuous seas of

Smeksmer.

"We needn't have worried," said the Cosmopolitan happily. "The Triple Suns are still shining

on us here. We needn't hurry back at all. Perhaps at the end of the week we'll plant a few ammp

seeds and then move homewards."

"... Or at the end of the week after next," said the third Politan. comfortable in his mud bath.

To complete their contentment, the Cosmopolitan gave them a brief religious address. They lay

and listened to the web of bis discourse as it was spun out of his eight orifices. He pointed out

how the ammp trees and the utods were dependent upon each other, how the yield of the one

depended on the yield of the other. He dwelt on the significances of the word "yield" before

going on to point out how both the trees and the utods (both being the manifestations of one

spirit) depended on the light yield that poured from whichever of the Triple Suns they moved

about. This light was the droppings of the suns, which made it a little absurd as well as

miraculous. They should never forget, any of them, that they also partook of the absurd as well as

the miraculous. They must never get exalted or puffed up; for were not even their gods formed in

the divine shape of a turdling?

The third Politan much enjoyed this monologue. What is most familiar is most reassuring.

He lay with only the tip of one snout showing above the bubbling surface of the mud, and

spoke in his submerged voice, through his ockpu orifices. With one of his unsub- merged eyes, he

gazed across at the dark bulk of their star-realm-ark, beautifully bulbous and black against the

sky. Ah, life was good and rich, even so far away from beloved Dapdrof. Come next esod. he'd

really have to change sex and become a mother; he owed it to his line; but even that... well, as

he'd often heard his mother say, to a pleasant mind all was pleasant. He thought lovingly of his

mother, and leant against her. He was as fond of her as ever since she had changed sex and

become a Sacred Cosmopolitan.

Then he squealed through all orifices. Behind the ark, lights were flashing. The third Politan

pointed this out to his companions. They all looked where he indicated. Not lights only. A

continuous growling noise. Not only one light Four round sources of light, cutting through the

dark, and a fifth light that moved about restlessly, like a fumbling limb. It came to rest on the ark.

"I suggest that a life form is approaching," said one of the priestlings.

As he spoke, they saw more clearly. Heading along the valley towards them were two chunky

shapes. From the chunky shapes came the growling noise. The chunky shapes reached the ark and

stopped. The growling noise stopped.

"How interesting! They are larger than we are," said the first Politan.

Smaller shapes were climbing from the two chunky objects. Now the light that had bathed the

ark turned its eye on to the wallow. In unison, to avoid being dazzled, the utods moved thek

vision to a more comfortable radiation band. They saw the smaller shapes - four of them there

were, and thin-shaped - line up on the bank.

"If they make their own light, they must be fairly intelligent," said the Cosmopolitan. "Which

do you think the life forms are - the two chunky objects with eyes, or the four thin things?"

"Perhaps the thin things are their grorgs." suggested a priestling.

"It would be only polite to get out and see," said the Cosmopolitan. He heaved his bulk up and

began to move towards the four figures. His companions rose to follow him. They heard noises

coming from the figures on the bank, which were now backing away.

"How delightful!" exclaimed the second Politan, hurrying to get ahead. "I do believe they are

trying in their primitive way to communicate!"

"What fortune that we came!" said the third Politan. but the remark was, of course, not aimed

at the Cosmopolitan.

"Greetings, creatures!" bellowed two of the priestlings.

And it was at that moment that the creatures on the bank raised Earth-made weapons to their

hips and opened fire.

CHAPTER TWO

Captain Bargerone struck a characteristic posture. Which is to say that he stood very still with

his hands hanging limply down the seams of his sky blue shorts and rendered his face without

expression. It was a form of self-control he had practised several times on this trip, particularly

when confronted by his Master Explorer. "Do you wish me to take what you are saying seriously.

"Ainson?" he asked. "Or are you merely trying to delay take-off?"

Master Explorer Bruce Ainson swallowed; he was a religious man, and he silently summoned

the Almighty to help him get the better of this fool who saw nothing beyond his duty.

"The two creatures we captured last night have definitely attempted to communicate with me,

sir. Under space exploration definitions, anything that attempts to communicate with a man must

be regarded as at least subhuman until proved otherwise."

"That is so, Captain Bargerone," Explorer Phipps said, fluttering his eyelashes nervously as he

rose to the support of his boss.

"You do not need to assure me of the truth of platitudes, Mr. Phipps." the Captain said. "I

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TheDarkLightYearsByBrianAldissv1.0Initialreleasev1.1Fixedbrokenparagraphs,standardizedindents/formatting,Miscformatting/editingTITLESBYBRIANALDISSAVAILABLEINPANTHERBOOKSNewArrivals,OldEncountersHelliconiaSpringFrankensteinUnboundMoreau'sOtherIslandEnemiesoftheSystemBrothersoftheHeadEarthworksCryptoz...

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Aldiss, Brian - The Dark Light Years

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