Star Maker, Olaf Stapledon [top rated books of all time .TXT] 📗

and indeed actually to hear the

sea-bottom’s configuration by means of the echoes that it cast up to the

underwater ears. It was strange and terrifying to be caught in a

hurricane, to feel the masts straining and the sails threatening to

split, while the hull was battered by the small but furious waves of

that massive planet. It was strange, too, to watch other great living

ships, as they plowed their way, heeled over, adjusted the set of their

yellow or russet sails to the wind’s variations; and very strange it was

to realize that these were not man-made objects but themselves conscious

and purposeful.

 

Sometimes we saw two of the living ships fighting, tearing at one

another’s sails with snake-like tentacles, stabbing at one another’s

soft “decks” with metal knives, or at a distance firing at one another

with cannon. Bewildering and delightful it was to feel in the presence

of a slim female clipper the longing for contact, and to carry out with

her on the high seas the tacking and yawing, the piratical pursuit and

overhauling, the delicate, fleeting caress of tentacles, which formed

the love-play of this race. Strange, to come up alongside, close-hauled,

grapple her to one’s flank, and board her with sexual invasion. It was

charming, too, to see a mother ship attended by her children. I should

mention, by the way, that at birth the young were launched from the

mother’s decks like little boats, one from the port side, one from the

starboard. Thenceforth they were suckled at her flanks. In play they

swam about her like ducklings, or spread their immature sails. In rough

weather and for long voyaging they were taken aboard. At the time of our

visit natural sails were beginning to be aided by a power unit and

propeller which were fixed to the stem. Great cities of concrete docks

had spread along many of the coasts, and were excavated out of the

hinterlands. We were delighted by the broad waterways that served as

streets in these cities. They were thronged with sail and mechanized

traffic, the children appearing as tugs and smacks among the gigantic

elders.

 

It was in this world that we found in its most striking form a social

disease which is perhaps the commonest of all world-diseases-namely, the

splitting of the population into two mutually unintelligible castes

through the influence of economic forces. So great was the difference

between adults of the two castes that they seemed to us at first to be

distinct species, and we supposed ourselves to be witnessing the victory

of a new and superior biological mutation over its predecessor. But this

was far from the truth.

 

In appearance the masters were very different from the workers, quite as

different as queen ants and drones from the workers of their species.

They were more elegantly and accurately stream-lined. They had a greater

expanse of sail, and were faster in fair weather. In heavy seas they

were less seaworthy, owing to their finer lines; but on the other hand

they were the more skilful and venturesome navigators. Their

manipulatory tentacles were less muscular, but capable of finer

adjustments. Their perception was more delicate. While a small minority

of them perhaps excelled the best of the workers in endurance and

courage, most were much less hardy, both physically and mentally. They

were subject to a number of disintegrative diseases which never affected

the workers, chiefly diseases of the nervous system. On the other hand,

if any of them contracted one of the infectious ailments which were

endemic to the workers, but seldom fatal, he would almost certainly die.

They were also very prone to mental disorders, and particularly to

neurotic self-importance. The whole organization and control of the

world was theirs. The workers, on the other hand, though racked by

disease and neurosis bred of their cramping environment, were on the

whole psychologically more robust. They had, however, a crippling sense

of inferiority. Though in handicrafts and all small-scale operations

they were capable of intelligence and skill, they were liable, when

faced with tasks of wider scope, to a strange paralysis of mind.

 

The mentalities of the two castes were indeed strikingly different. The

masters were more prone to individual initiative and to the vices of

self-seeking. The workers were more addicted to collectivism and the

vices of subservience to the herd’s hypnotic influence. The masters were

on the whole more prudent, far-seeing, independent, self-reliant; the

workers were more impetuous, more ready to sacrifice themselves in a

social cause, often more clearly aware of the right aims of social

activity, and incomparably more generous to individuals in distress.

 

At the time of our visit certain recent discoveries were throwing the

world into confusion. Hitherto it had been supposed that the natures of

the two castes were fixed unalterably, by divine law and by biological

inheritance. But it was now certain that this was not the case, and that

the physical and mental differences between the classes were due

entirely to nurture. Since time immemorial, the castes had been

recruited in a very curious manner. After weaning, all children born on

the port side of the mother, no matter what the parental caste, were

brought up to be members of the master caste; all those born on the

starboard side were brought up to be workers. Since the master class

had, of course, to be much smaller than the working class, this system

gave an immense superfluity of potential masters. The difficulty was

overcome as follows. The starboard-born children of workers and the

port-born children of masters were brought up by their own respective

parents; but the port-born, potentially aristocratic children of workers

were mostly disposed of by infant sacrifice. A few only were exchanged

with the starboard-born children of masters.

 

With the advance of industrialism, the increasing need for large

supplies of cheap labor, the spread of scientific ideas and the

weakening of religion, came the shocking discovery that port-born

children, of both classes, if brought up as workers, became physically

and mentally indistinguishable from workers. Industrial magnates in need

of plentiful cheap labor now developed moral indignation against infant

sacrifice, urging that the excess of port-born infants should be

mercifully brought up as workers. Presently certain misguided scientists

made the even more subversive discovery that starboard-born children

brought up as masters developed the fine lines, the great sails, the

delicate constitution, the aristocratic mentality of the master caste.

An attempt was made by the masters to prevent this knowledge from

spreading to the workers, but certain sentimentalists of their own caste

bruited it abroad, and preached a new-fangled and inflammatory doctrine

of social equality.

 

During our visit the world was in terrible confusion. In backward oceans

the old system remained unquestioned, but in all the more advanced

regions of the planet a desperate struggle was being waged. In one great

archipelago a social revolution had put the workers in power, and a

devoted though ruthless dictatorship was attempting so to plan the life

of the community that the next generation should be homogeneous and of a

new type, combining the most desirable characters of both workers and

masters. Elsewhere the masters had persuaded their workers that the new

ideas were false and base, and certain to lead to universal poverty and

misery. A clever appeal was made to the vague but increasing suspicion

that “materialistic science” was misleading and superficial, and that

mechanized civilization was crushing out the more spiritual

potentialities of the race. Skilled propaganda spread the ideal of a

kind of corporate state with “port and starboard flanks” correlated by a

popular dictator, who, it was said, would assume power “by divine right

and the will of the people.”

 

I must not stay to tell of the desperate struggle which broke out

between these two kinds of social organizations. In the worldwide

campaigns many a harbor, many an ocean current, flowed red with

slaughter. Under the pressure of a war to the death, all that was best,

all that was most human and gentle on each side was crushed out by

military necessity. On the one side, the passion for a unified world,

where every individual should live a free and full life in service of

the world community, was overcome by the passion to punish spies,

traitors, and heretics. On the other, vague and sadly misguided

yearnings for a nobler, less materialistic life were cleverly

transformed by the reactionary leaders into vindictiveness against the

revolutionaries.

 

Very rapidly the material fabric of civilization fell to pieces. Not

till the race had reduced itself to an almost subhuman savagery, and all

the crazy traditions of a diseased civilization had been purged away,

along with true culture, could the spirit of these “ship-men” set out

again on the great adventure of the spirit. Many thousands of years

later it broke through on to that higher plane of being which I have

still to suggest, as best I may.