The World Above The World

by Brian Stableford

  Nothing permitted the belief that there had ever been kings, warriors, priests or savants. The vague idea grew, acquired substance, and became fixed. On Drymea, man, with all that he brought of good and evil, cruelty and inconstancy, anxiety and effort, remained an unknown. Although, on Earth, two sexes are opposed, there the Virgin Mary—the being so marvelous to us that a third of our humankind has set her on the altar35—reigned supreme.

  Hertha was silent for some time. Everything is possible, everything is probable, in the infinity of worlds. Then she looked at Greena’s smile and wondered: Are they happy? They’re different. They’re ignorant of amour, but not of maternity. For myself, I shall be obliged to grow old here, without ever smiling at my child. But I bring another light and I shall not live in vain.

  Speech, the emblem and sign of Humankind, resonated on Greena’s lips, naming one object, then another. She laughed and clapped her hand in a child-like manner when Hertha repeated words after her, and soon anticipated her thought by the interrogation of gesture. The small notebook seemed marvelous to her.

  When Hertha went to sleep, the little Drymean, ignorant of sleep on her doubly sunlit world, remained leaning over her, listening to her breath—and the virgins of the silver sun, anxious for once, watched over the resurrection of the pale stranger.

  In the warm hours, when the golden sun rose, Hertha awoke. The new life opened its unexpected doors. On Earth, old Helgar, Hertha’s father, governed the State of Liberty with a strong hand. Herrer, Hertha’s brother-in-law presided in Kartha, the new nation of North Africa. And the blonde virgin had gladly accepted the burden of a multiple power, a power that was not to be an end for her, but a means. An Instrument of the State, she was familiar with responsibility, fatigue, the pain of others, the power of evil, and the science of life that only informed dead lives. She had lived in 20 capitals, and she knew a great deal—especially that she did not know everything. She had few friends, but good ones. She had lived doubly; it is not the duration of life that counts, but what the days weave.

  In the midst of her memories, Greena called: “Nevea.” At the tender name, she found a welcoming group of virgins of the silver sun, and they left together. Outside the Royal Park, the countryside of Nirvanir was flourishing. Fresh water interrupted their footsteps in the shade. Quite simply, Hertha’s companions lifted up their tunics. The daughter of Earth was struck by their healthy beauty. The afflictions of our humankind had never oppressed Drymea. Consumption, alcohol, hopeless work, limitless poverty, haggard uncertainty: all of that subsists in what we, intrepid in our pride, call our civilization. That still does not exist, although we believe that we possess it.

  They swam marvelously. Greena was astonished to see Nevea remain immobile beneath her veils. An anxiety seemed to appear in her eyes. She was already imagining an ignorance or fear on the stranger’s part. With a smile, the tall daughter of the North, in order to reassure her, untied her garment and plunged into the slow waters of the river. Floating gardens and colored boats passed by. The golden sun rose into the sky. But old Eros was not there to lie in wait for the insouciant Drymeans, who feared no gaze.

  Only Hertha knew that the hunter existed, elsewhere. The law of Drymea did not know it. Her beauty was reflected in the eyes of Eden.

  II. Princess Nyve

  Five long months went by. Hertha’s life, which she initially organized herself, was full of continual labor. Every golden morning, she went into the Royal Park with Greena, whose gaiety and good will she loved. They bathed in the broad watercourses that ran down to the sea. In the summer-house on the terrace, by order of the Queen, impatient to hear the pale stranger tell the story of her previous existence, skilled sketch-artists and expert teachers awaited her. Hertha specified and corrected drawings and suggestions, sketching herself all that she judged it worthwhile to communicate regarding her life. She wisely hid the darker side of the Earth and the opposite sexes. No other humans had ever come to Drymea. It was impossible for her to identify the stellar system in which it was located—not a star close to Earth, at any rate.36

  In their turn, landscapes with one sun, female types, animals, cities and machines appeared before the curious eyes of the Drymeans. The Palace “books” were placed at her disposal. Capricious words were fixed in her brain. The enormous branch of our civilization constituted by books and newspapers does not exist on Drymea. Drawings with short captions, indefinitely multiplied, supplanted it from the outset, and they have not sought anything better.

  Hertha was beginning to speak the language of Nirvanir correctly when the Queen sent for her one golden morning. Alone in a room in the Palace she questioned her.

  “Stranger, does this realm please you?”

  Hertha replied, without lying, for she knew that there was only one sex on Drymea, ignorant of not only of the miseries of our women but of desire and sensuality, the great trap of mortals: “I have never seen its like on the world where I was born.”

  The Queen gazed at her attentively. “You’re telling the truth, I know that. Explain further. I’m curious to know more. You’ve already learned a great deal about our world. My people have named you Nevea—Purity—and that is what I shall call you. Your mind must be as pure as your face. The Goddess who protects this realm has saved you for our benefit.”

  If Nacrysa had been familiar with snow she would have named Hertha after that, but it was unknown on Drymea.

  “I thought,” the Queen continued, “that you came from one of the globes that follow us around the suns, which the sages believe to be inhabited, but your world has only one sun. Where do you come from, then?”

  Nacrysa knew nothing of stellar distances; she listened to Hertha talk about multitudes of stars. She believed her; her face relaxed in the presence of this daughter of another world, perhaps a friend. Her eyes became soft, when she saw that she was understood; Nevea received a favorable welcome.

  Sometimes, Nacrysa gazed at her city and, further away, her realm. Sixty Queens had already preceded her. Then, a proud authority reappeared in her face. Hertha knew that Nirvanir had three times of surface area of France and that the subjects of the dark-haired queen were counted in tens of millions; Nacryra undoubtedly believed that her realm would last until the end of time. No atrocious war or howling mob had ever been manifest on Drymea.

  The Queen questioned her for a long time and seemed satisfied. Every morning, Nacrysa wanted to see her. Sometimes, she had her bought down to the white room and, surrounded by advisors and artists, she asked for details of terrestrial inventions. Without the Memorandum, and the accumulation of facts and knowledge that it represented, and without her direct knowledge of the part of it to which she had been exposed, Hertha could not have satisfied the Queen. More than once, Helgar’s daughter saw the wall that limited her mind. Above all, Nacrysa was concerned with practical results: transportation, machines, cultivation. Unconscious of them, she paid no heed to the blonde virgin’s difficulties and fatigue.

  Finally, though, Hertha satisfied her. The Queen showed her manifest favor; she liked to keep her close at hand, among her favorites and dignitaries. Often, in the white room, near the Queen, with the gentle Greena by her side, Hertha was haunted by the idea of a voyage not in space but in time. This Queen in a tunic, the florid bays of the high palace and the warm sun suggested to her a world long lost. But it was sufficient to look at Nacrysa’s magnificent face, in which no cruelty or sensuality ever appeared, to feel that she was a long way from the Earth’s past.

  The Queen read something in her eyes; she summoned her and spoke to her softly. On one of the early days she said to her: “Daughter of another world, I feel sorry for you, but I feel sorrier for your mother.” And the white sovereign showed Hertha a quasi-maternal sentiment, for her heart knew pity. She invited her to royal festivals, ceremonies in honor of the Goddess of the realm. The ornament, the flowers, the young women of the silver sun—the golden sun was the emblem of mothers—offered a lovely spectacle, althou
gh Hertha understood nothing of the age-old rites.

  If it had not been for the memory of her family, her happiness would have been complete. Her blood ran smoothly in her vigorous body, her life unfolded, free of care in a beautiful setting, in the midst of the benevolence of all and the affection of a few. She did her best to be of service.

  One golden morning, Nacrysa came into Hertha’s room. Joy animated her beautiful features.

  “Nevea, my daughter, Princess Nyve, is coming to see you. I’ve been testing you for months; I’m satisfied with you. I want you to be her companion. Your responsibility will be heavy, for she is my heir. Be attentive to her. Promise me that if her caprice demands astonishing things that you are able to accomplish, you will warn me first. She’s coming back from her annual voyage through the realm.”

  As she finished speaking, Princess Nyve came in, clad in white with a silver diadem. She was not yet 16, and if her mother personified beauty, Nyve was charm. Grace and the enjoyment of the springtime of life radiated around her; she still love everything. Her soul was innocent of the pride of power. Her sapphire eyes, very rare in Nirvanir, settled on Hertha with infinite softness.

  Lord, she thought, what Prince Charming would merit this fairy princess?

  On Drymea, however, Prince Charmings have never existed. Nyve certainly had no suspicion of Nevea’s initial reflection in her regard. She said to her, politely: “Are you free, pale stranger? When will you be able to come to my palace, in the Summer Land? As soon as possible, for I have a thousand things to ask you—you who know everything.”

  “I will go with you,” Hertha replied.

  Nyve smiled. “Make your preparations quickly, Nevea; bring what you need to my ship. I’m very glad, for I’ve heard much talk about you and you please me marvelously, Nevea, who are as wise as you are beautiful.”

  The dark-haired Queen looked at Hertha silently. The tall blonde virgin was a head taller than Nacrysa, and Nyve only reached her shoulder. Nacrysa made a sign: “May your strength protect my daughter! I know your soul. We Queens can penetrate hearts. I have confidence in you, for I have looked into your eyes at length!”

  Hertha made her farewells according to ritual. Nyve’s ship, the Dragonfly, elegant and white—the royal color—with a raised deck in the bow, received the two young women. Hertha begged the Princess to bring Greena. Smiling, Nyve said: “Nevea, I wish you would ask me ten times as much, for I would be glad to grant it to you.”

  As soon as they were aboard, the Dragonfly set off, like a dream. Two women in grey tunics comprised her entire crew. Hertha now knew that they were wearing the costume of “the age of harvest”—that in which one leaves temporal life for art, science or the care of others.

  Nyve and Hertha found themselves side by side on the deck, and to be sure, total stranger as she was to our humankind, the daughter of other suns was a thousand times closer to her companion than a slave-driver of our world. In Nyve’s mind, there was none of the enormous and confused tumult of Earth. On could not, however, compare her to a joyful and rich child, for the latter is only happy by virtue of being ignorant. The princess had already traveled through her future realm, seen and felt a part of its life. Her rank, her power and her responsibility were clearly manifest to her eyes. Heavy certainties filled her gentle soul. She had been educated on the subjects of Drymea, the Goddess and her duty; no anxiety troubled her.

  After a long silence in which she had gazed at her, smiling, she said to Hertha: “You’re thinking about your past, Nevea. While the edifices of Nirvanir of the thousand gardens are passing before your eyes, you’re saying to yourself: How happy I would be if those I loved were here! I feel very sorry for you; I can’t do anything to help you, princess as I am. Your world shines far away, I believe?”

  “Thank the Goddess of Nirvanir for not having been born there, Princess Nyve. But you read my heart—I was thinking about my family.”

  “Tell me about them!” said Nyve. “I know that will console you, although I have not suffered. It’s good to have a listener when one is afflicted!”

  To please her, Hertha described her life, truly, but nevertheless altered—for she knew full well that it is necessary to guard one’s words, and even one’s thoughts, and that their pernicious power extends further than one knows. They appeared, her relative and friends on Earth, in affectionate words.

  “Your mother was a queen,” Nyve concluded, “since she governed a state, and you tell me that your sister reigned in Kartha, where you lived. You are, therefore, a Princess, like me. You should be one again here, in all justice, and you shall be my equal, my fellow princess from the stars!”

  Ships moved aside before the Dragonfly, at the sight of the royal colors. The daughters of Nirvanir said to one another: “There’s the Princess, and Nevea, the pale stranger.” They offered ritual greetings, and Nyve smiled.

  “I’ve heard,” she continued, “How you were picked up from the waves, out to sea off the northern coast. Those who opened your iron box found you cold and pale, like a dead woman. They took you to the nearest house of rest; people care for the sick and injured there, as the rules dictate. The Queen ordered the sages to study everything that you had with you. They spared no effort to wake you up. The Goddess permitted it, by her favor! For you have no suspicion, Nevea with the golden hair, of everything you have already done for Nirvanir. The sages, the builders and the workmistresses have studied your replies and your drawings. You have been extensively interrogated, for Queen Nacrysa’s first priority is the good of Nirvanir. All that you have revealed to us has been transmitted throughout the realm. You still have more to tell us.

  “It is true, since you have told us, that you travel through the air, descended beneath the waves, and that your speech traverses your entire world. You know the secrets of the heavens and the depths of the world. Why, then, have you come here?”

  “Because evil people wanted me dead,” said Hertha, “And entombed me alive in the machine that brought me to Drymea.”

  And, to redirect the ideas of the Princess with the soft eyes, she rapidly began to talk about the brighter aspects of her life. She concluded: “Out there, we have more power over inert matter than our own hearts. I have bitter knowledge, sad experience—but I ought not to regret anything, for it might serve you better!”

  Toward the end of the morning, the landscape became harsh and sterile. The murmur of the sea increased to the right, and a wall barred the Dragonfly’s route. A door slid aside in front of its prow; there was the cool obscurity of a bushy wood, then the profound horizon, around the lake they had just entered. In the background the princess’s palace rose up, reflected in the calm water. A flowery mass separate the inlet from the sea. The edifice presented a sequence of columns sustaining arcades; bays opened beneath their protection. Between polychromatic statues a stairway with large steps descended from the palace to the clear water, and there were bright flowers everywhere, scarcely interrupted by white marble paths. In the Drymean fashion, the terrace was also ornamented by an aerial garden.

  “You shall meet my companions,” Nyve said. “Helya, the wiser of the two, and Venja, as giddy as she is pretty—but her heart is very soft.”

  They appeared; by now, Hertha could easily distinguish these strange faces. Although they were favorites, they were not forgetful of Nyve’s rank, and their greeting showed it. Helya gave orders for Hertha’s room to be prepared. Venja and Green went off to pick flowers.

  “Are you glad to be here?” the Princess asked. “I can do nothing about your past, but a great future remains to us. On the far side of that life, you will see your family again. Here, except for my favorites and the two women who have been with my since childhood, I am alone. I’m only resting from my duty, for you know that I shall return to traveling throughout Nirvanir, as is the custom.

  “Don’t be astonished, Nevea, to find me so quickly favorable. Before meeting you, I knew you well. Since your awakening, everyone has tried to fathom your h
eart. You lived in the shadow of the Queen and my mother has experience and wisdom. I can repeat what she said about you: ‘There is in Nevea an invincible strength, and I want you to have the amity of this virgin with the golden hair. I have read the stranger’s worth in her eyes!’” And, very softly, the little Princess added: “I would not have needed the Queen’s advice. Friend with the profound eyes, I would like you to love me.”

  III. In the Summer Land

  The silver sun has risen 20 times since Hertha’s arrival in the palace. Handed down from mother to daughter, it belongs to the princess heir, along with 50 edifices, in order that she might learn to reign. On a marble tablet, the names can be read of those whose young joy has enlivened these places, who wore the crown and then disappeared from the world.

  The palace was built by a quasi-mythical Queen for a daughter charmed by the ardent climate of the South. “Summer Land” is an inexact translation for, on Drymea, whose axis is almost vertical—like that of Jupiter in our own system—there is nothing resembling our seasons. From year to year, the only changes are those of the winds and the silver sun, in its slow course through the sky, which takes more than a century.

  The life of the palace’s inhabitants was one of placid happiness. From her room, with walls painted with familiar scenes, Hertha could see the sea or the flowers, as she wished. By virtue of taste and reason, her life remained sober; besides, Drymea knew nothing of stimulants, or even the flesh of animals.