BRIAN W. ALDISS
The monsters or Ingratitude IV
The day was so beautiful that I left the teleceptual studios during the lunch hour and walked along Terrazza Terrace. One delight about being on Ingratitude, of all the Zodiacal Planets, was that the Shield was faulty, giving superb solar distortions. Tourists came from parsecs around just to see the effect of supersonic peacocks plunging in and out of the sun, like javelins growing foliage before they burst into fire.
There on the terrace I turned suddenly and saw a man who stared at me through kookaburra glasses before coming forward and extending his hand. I recognized him by his handprint. "Lurido Ponds!" I said, "after all these years!" Where had I seen him last?
"Hazelgard Nef, incarnate and aglow . . . How are you, Nef?"
"In a state of rapture, dear boy. Let's have a nostril of striped aframosta, shall we?"
I sensed immediately that Ponds was going to be important to me; the wiring in the ulna of my left arm was signaling. As we sat down in the nearest afrohale bar, I tried him out with some trivial conversation. "I suppose you've heard about the new cult spreading through the Zodiacals? It claims that human beings are merely corpses, or revenants of foetuses, that what we think of as unborn children are in fact the dominant and adult stage of the human life cycle, and that what we have always called life is actually an Afterlife."
"What's the name of this cult?"
"I forget. Their leader calls himself Mister Queen Elizabeth."
. . .
