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

weed in the crevices of the coral, or build strongholds of coral

masonry. In time would appear traps, weapons, tools, submarine

agriculture, the blossoming of primitive art, the ritual of primitive

religion. Then would follow the typical fluctuating advance of the

spirit from barbarism to civilization.

 

One of these submarine worlds was exceptionally interesting. Early in

the life of our galaxy, when few of the stars had yet condensed from the

“giant” to the solar type, when very few planetary births had yet

occurred, a double star and a single star in a congested cluster did

actually approach one another, reach fiery filaments toward one another,

and spawn a planet brood. Of these worlds, one, an immense and very

aqueous sphere, produced in time a dominant race which was not a single

species but an intimate symbiotic partnership of two very alien

creatures. The one came of a fish-like stock. The other was in

appearance something like a crustacean. In form it was a sort of

paddle-footed crab or marine spider. Unlike our crustaceans, it was

covered not with a brittle carapace but with a tough pachydermatous

hide. In maturity this serviceable jerkin was more or less rigid, save

at the joints; but in youth it was very pliant to the still-expanding

brain. This creature lived on the coasts and in the coastal waters of

the many islands of the planet. Both species were mentally of human

rank, though each had specific temperament and ability. In primitive

times each had attained by its own route and in its own hemisphere of

the great aqueous planet to what might be called the last stage of the

subhuman mentality. The two species had then come into contact, and had

grappled desperately. Their battle-ground was the shallow coastal water.

The “crustaceans,” though crudely amphibian, could not spend long under

the sea; the “fish” could not emerge from it. The two races did not

seriously compete with one another in economic life, for the “fish” were

mainly vegetarian, the “crustaceans” mainly carnivorous; yet neither

could tolerate the presence of the other. Both were sufficiently human

to be aware of one another as rival aristocrats in a subhuman world, but

neither was human enough to realize that for each race the way of life

lay in cooperation with the other. The fish-like creatures, which I

shall call “ichthyoids,” had speed and range of travel. They had also

the security of bulk. The crab-like or spider-like “crustaceans,” which

I shall call “arachnoids,” had greater manual dexterity, and had also

access to the dry land. Cooperation would have been very beneficial to

both species, for one of the staple foods of the arachnoids was

parasitic to the ichthyoids.

 

In spite of the possibility of mutual aid, the two races strove to

exterminate one another, and almost succeeded. After an age of blind

mutual slaughter, certain of the less pugnacious and more flexible

varieties of the two species gradually discovered profit in

fraternization with the enemy.

 

This was the beginning of a very remarkable partnership. Soon the

arachnoids took to riding on the backs of the swift ichthyoids, and thus

gained access to more remote hunting grounds.

 

As the epochs passed, the two species molded one another to form a

well-integrated union. The little arachnoid, no bigger than a

chimpanzee, rode in a snug hollow behind the great “fish’s” skull, his

back being stream-lined with the contours of the larger creature. The

tentacles of the ichthyoid were specialized for large-scale

manipulation, those of the arachnoid for minute work. A biochemical

interdependence also evolved. Through a membrane in the ichthyoid’s

pouch an exchange of endocrine products took place. The mechanism

enabled the arachnoid to become fully aquatic. So long as it had

frequent contact with its host, it could stay under water for any length

of time and descend to any depth. A striking mental adaptation also

occurred in the two species. The ichthyoids became on the whole more

introvert, the arachnoids more extrovert.

 

Up to puberty the young of both species were free-living individuals;

but, as their symbiotic organization developed, each sought out a

partner of the opposite species. The union which followed was life-long,

and was interrupted only by brief sexual matings. The symbiosis itself

constituted a kind of contrapuntal sexuality; but a sexuality that was

purely mental, since, of course, for copulation and reproduction each

individual had to seek out a partner belonging to his or her own

species. We found, however, that even the symbiotic partnership

consisted invariably of a male of one species and a female of the other;

and the male, whichever his species, behaved with parental devotion to

the young of his symbiotic partner.

 

I have not space to describe the extraordinary mental reciprocity of

these strange couples. I can only say that, though in sensory equipment

and in temperament the two species were very different, and though in

abnormal cases tragic conflicts did occur, the ordinary partnership was

at once more intimate than human marriage and far more enlarging to the

individual than any friendship between members of distinct human races.

At certain stages of the growth of civilization malicious minds had

attempted to arouse widespread interspecific conflict, and had met with

temporary success; but the trouble seldom went as deep even as our “sex

war,” so necessary was each species to the other. Both had contributed

equally to the culture of their world, though not equally at all times.

In creative work of every kind one of the partners provided most of the

originality, the other most of the criticism and restraint. Work in

which one partner was entirely passive was rare. Books, or rather

scrolls, which were made from pulped seaweed, were nearly always signed

by couples. On the whole the arachnoid partners dominated in manual

skill, experimental science, the plastic arts, and practical social

organization. The ichthyoid partners excelled in theoretical work, in

literary arts, in the surprisingly developed music of that submarine

world, and in the more mystical kind of religion. This generalization,

however, should not be interpreted very strictly.

 

The symbiotic relationship seems to have given the dual race a far

greater mental flexibility than ours, and a quicker aptitude for

community. It passed rapidly through the phase of intertribal strife,

during which the nomadic shoals of symbiotic couples harried one another

like hosts of submarine-cavalry; for the arachnoids, riding their

ichthyoid mates, attacked the enemy with bone spears and swords, while

their mounts wrestled with powerful tentacles. But the phase of tribal

warfare was remarkably brief. When a settled mode of life was attained,

along with submarine agriculture and coral-built cities, strife between

leagues of cities was the exception, not the rule. Aided no doubt by its

great mobility and ease of communication, the dual race soon built up a

worldwide and unarmed federation of cities. We learned also with wonder

that at the height of the pre-mechanical civilization of this planet,

when in our worlds the cleavage into masters and economic slaves would

already have become serious, the communal spirit of the city triumphed

over all individualistic enterprise. Very soon this world became a

tissue of interdependent but independent municipal communes.

 

At this time it seemed that social strife had vanished forever. But the

most serious crisis of the race was still to come.

 

The submarine environment offered the symbiotic race no great

possibilities of advancement. All sources of wealth had been tapped and

regularized. Population was maintained at an optimum size for the joyful

working of the world. The social order was satisfactory to all classes,

and seemed unlikely to change. Individual lives were full and varied.

Culture, founded on a great tradition, was now concerned entirely with

detailed exploration of the great fields of thought that had long ago

been pioneered by the revered ancestors, under direct inspiration, it

was said, of the symbiotic diety. Our friends in this submarine world,

our mental hosts, looked back on this age from their own more turbulent

epoch sometimes with yearning, but often with horror; for in retrospect

it seemed to them to display the first faint signs of racial decay. So

perfectly did the race fit its unchanging environment that intelligence

and acuity were already ceasing to be precious, and might soon begin to

fade. But presently it appeared that fate had decreed otherwise.

 

In a submarine world the possibility of obtaining mechanical power was

remote. But the arachnoids, it will be remembered, were able to live out

of the water. In the epochs before the symbiosis their ancestors had

periodically emerged upon the islands, for courtship, parenthood, and

the pursuit of prey. Since those days the air-breathing capacity had

declined, but it had never been entirely lost. Every arachnoid still

emerged for sexual mating, and also for certain ritual gymnastic

exercises. It was in this latter connection that the great discovery was

made which changed the course of history. At a certain tournament the

friction of stone weapons, clashing against one another, produced

sparks, and fire among the sun-scorched grasses.

 

In startlingly quick succession came smelting, the steam engine, the

electric current. Power was obtained first from the combustion of a sort

of peat formed on the coasts by congested marine vegetation, later from

the constant and violent winds, later still from photo-chemical light

traps which absorbed the sun’s lavish radiation. These inventions were

of course the work of arachnoids. The ichthyoids, though they still

played a great part in the systematization of knowledge, were debarred

from the great practical work of scientific experiment and mechanical

invention above the seas. Soon the arachnoids were running electric

cables from the island power-stations to the submarine cities. In this

work, at least, the ichthyoids could take part, but their part was

necessarily subordinate. Not only in experience of electrical

engineering but also in native practical ability they were eclipsed by

their arachnoid partners.

 

For a couple of centuries or more the two species continued to

cooperate, though with increasing strain. Artificial lighting,

mechanical transport of goods on the ocean floor, and large-scale

manufacture, produced an immense increase in the amenities of life in

the submarine cities. The islands were crowded with buildings devoted to

science and industry. Physics, chemistry, and biology made great

progress. Astronomers began to map the galaxy. They also discovered that

a neighboring planet offered wonderful opportunities for settlement by

arachnoids, who might without great difficulty, it was hoped, be

conditioned to the alien climate, and to divorce from their symbiotic

partners. The first attempts at rocket flight were leading to mingled

tragedy and success. The directorate of extra-marine activities demanded

a much increased arachnoid population.

 

Inevitably there arose a conflict between the two species, and in the

mind of every individual of either species. It was at the height of this

conflict, and in the spiritual crisis in virtue of which these beings

were accessible to us in our novitiate stage, that we first entered this

world. The ichthyoids had not yet succumbed biologically to their

inferior position, but psychologically they were already showing signs

of deep mental decay. A profound disheartenment and lassitude attacked

them, like that which so often undermines our primitive races when they

find themselves struggling in the flood of European civilization. But

since in the case of the symbiotics the relation between the two races

was extremely intimate, far more so than that between the most intimate

human beings, the plight of the ichthyoids deeply affected the

arachnoids. And in the minds of the ichthyoids the triumph of their

partners was for long a source of mingled distress and exultation. Every

individual of both species was torn between conflicting motives. While

every healthy arachnoid longed to take part in the adventurous new life,

he or she longed also, through sheer affection and symbiotic

entanglement, to assist his or her ichthyoid mate to have an equal share

in that life. Further, all arachnoids were