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

aware of subtle dependence on

their mates, a dependence at once physiological and psychological. It

was the ichthyoids who mostly contributed to the mental symbiosis the

power of self-knowledge and mutual insight, and the contemplation which

is so necessary to keep action sweet and sane. That this was so was

evident from the fact that already among the arachnoids internecine

strife had appeared. Island tended to compete with island, and one great

industrial organization with another.

 

I could not help remarking that if this deep cleavage of interests had

occurred on my own planet, say between our two sexes, the favoured sex

would have single-mindedly trampled the other into servitude. Such a

“victory” on the part of the arachnoids did indeed nearly occur. More

and more partnerships were dissolved, each member attempting by means of

drugs to supply his or her system with the chemicals normally provided

by the symbiosis. For mental dependence, however, there was no

substitute, and the divorced partners were subject to serious mental

disorders, either subtle or flagrant. Nevertheless, there grew up a

large population capable of living after a fashion without the symbiotic

intercourse. Strife now took a violent turn. The intransigents of both

species attacked one another, and stirred up trouble among the

moderates. There followed a period of desperate and confused warfare. On

each side a small and hated minority advocated a “modernized symbiosis,”

in which each species should be able to contribute to the common life

even in a mechanized civilization. Many of these reformers were martyred

for their faith.

 

Victory would in the long run have gone to the arachnoids, for they

controlled the sources of power. But it soon appeared that the attempt

to break the symbiotic bond was not as successful as it had seemed. Even

in actual warfare, commanders were unable to prevent widespread

fraternization between the opposed forces. Members of dissolved

partnerships would furtively meet to snatch a few hours or moments of

each other’s company. Widowed or deserted individuals of each species

would timidly but hungrily venture toward the enemy’s camps in search of

new mates. Whole companies would surrender for the same purpose. The

arachnoids suffered more from the neuroses than from the weapons of the

enemy. On the islands, moreover, civil wars and social revolutions made

the manufacture of munitions almost impossible.

 

The most resolute faction of the arachnoids now attempted to bring the

struggle to an end by poisoning the ocean. The islands in turn were

poisoned by the millions of decaying corpses that rose to the sea’s

surface and were cast up on the shores. Poison, plague, and above all

neurosis, brought war to a standstill, civilization to ruin, and the two

species almost to extinction. The deserted sky-scrapers that crowded the

islands began to crumble into heaps of wreckage. The submarine cities

were invaded by the submarine jungle and by shark-like subhuman

ichthyoids of many species. The delicate tissue of knowledge began to

disintegrate into fragments of superstition.

 

Now at last came the opportunity of those who advocated a modernized

symbiosis. With difficulty they had maintained a secret existence and

their individual partnerships in the more remote and inhospitable

regions of the planet. They now came boldly forth to spread their gospel

among the unhappy remnants of the world’s population. There was a rage

of interspecific mating and remating. Primitive submarine agriculture

and hunting maintained the scattered peoples while a few of the coral

cities were cleared and rebuilt, and the instruments of a lean but

hopeful civilization were refashioned. This was a temporary

civilization, without mechanical power, but one which promised itself

great adventures in the “upper world” as soon as it had established the

basic principles of the reformed symbiosis.

 

To us it seemed that such an enterprise was doomed to failure, so clear

was it that the future lay with a terrestrial rather than a marine

creature. But we were mistaken. I must not tell in detail of the heroic

struggle by which the race refashioned its symbiotic nature to suit the

career that lay before it. The first stage was the reinstatement of

power stations on the islands, and the careful reorganization of a

purely submarine society equipped with power. But this reconstruction

would have been useless had it not been accompanied by a very careful

study of the physical and mental relations of the two species. The

symbiosis had to be strengthened so that interspecific strife should in

future be impossible. By means of chemical treatment in infancy the two

kinds of organism were made more interdependent, and in partnership more

hardy. By a special psychological ritual, a sort of mutual hypnosis, all

newly joined partners were henceforth brought into indissoluble mental

reciprocity. This interspecific communion, which every individual knew

in immediate domestic experience, became in time the basic experience of

all culture and religion. The symbiotic deity, which figured in all the

primitive mythologies, was reinstated as a symbol of the dual

personality of the universe, a dualism, it was said, of creativity and

wisdom, unified as the divine spirit of love. The one reasonable goal of

social life was affirmed to be the creation of a world of awakened, of

sensitive, intelligent, and mutually understanding personalities, banded

together for the common purpose of exploring the universe and developing

the “human” spirit’s manifold potentialities. Imperceptibly the young

were led to discover for themselves this goal.

 

Gradually and very cautiously all the industrial operations and

scientific researches of an earlier age were repeated, but with a

difference. Industry was subordinated to the conscious social goal.

Science, formerly the slave of industry, became the free colleague of

wisdom.

 

Once more the islands were crowded with buildings and with eager

arachnoid workers. But all the shallow coastal waters were filled with a

vast honeycomb of dwelling-houses, where the symbiotic partners took

rest and refreshment with their mates. In the ocean depths the old

cities were turned into schools, universities, museums, temples, palaces

of art and of pleasure. There the young of both kinds grew up together.

There the full-grown of both species met constantly for recreation and

stimulation. There, while the arachnoids were busy on the islands, the

ichthyoids performed their work of education and of refashioning the

whole theoretical culture of the world. For it was known clearly by now

that in this field their temperament and talents could make a vital

contribution to the common life. Thus literature, philosophy, and

non-scientific education were carried out chiefly in the ocean; while on

the islands industry, scientific inquiry, and the plastic arts were more

prominent.

 

Perhaps, in spite of the close union of each couple, this strange

division of labor would have led in time to renewed conflict, had it not

been for two new discoveries. One was the development of telepathy.

Several centuries after the Age of War it was found possible to

establish full telepathic intercourse between the two members of each

couple. In time this intercourse was extended to include the whole dual

race. The first result of this change was a great increase in the

facility of communication between individuals all over the world, and

therewith a great increase in mutual understanding and in unity of

social purpose. But before we lost touch with this rapidly advancing

race we had evidence of a much more far-reaching effect of universal

telepathy. Sometimes, so we were told, telepathic communion of the whole

race caused something like the fragmentary awakening of a communal

world-mind in which all individuals participated.

 

The second great innovation of the race was due to genetic research. The

arachnoids, who had to remain capable of active life on dry land and on

a massive planet, could not achieve any great improvement in brain

weight and complexity; but the ichthyoids, who were already large and

were buoyed up by the water, were not subject to this limitation. After

long and often disastrous experiment a race of “super-ichthyoids” was

produced. In time the whole ichthyoid population came to consist of

these creatures. Meanwhile the arachnoids, who were by now exploring and

colonizing other planets of their solar system, were genetically

improved not in respect of general brain complexity but in those special

brain centers which afforded telepathic intercourse. Thus, in spite of

their simpler brain-structure, they were able to maintain full

telepathic community even with their big-brained mates far away in the

oceans of the mother-planet. The simple brains and the complex brains

formed now a single system, in which each unit, however simple its own

contribution, was sensitive to the whole.

 

It was at this point, when the original ichthyoid race had given place

to the super-ichthyoids, that we finally lost touch. The experience of

the dual race passed completely beyond our comprehension. At a much

later stage of our adventure we came upon them again, and on a higher

plane of being. They were by then already engaged upon the vast common

enterprise which, as I shall tell, was undertaken by the Galactic

Society of Worlds. At this time the symbiotic race consisted of an

immense host of arachnoid adventurers scattered over many planets, and a

company of some fifty thousand million super-ichthyoids living a life of

natatory delight and intense mental activity in the ocean of their great

native world. Even at this stage physical contact between the symbiotic

partners had to be maintained, though at long intervals. There was a

constant stream of space-ships between the colonies and the

mother-world. The ichthyoids, together with their teeming colleagues on

a score of planets, supported a racial mind. Though the threads of the

common experience were spun by the whole symbiotic race, they were woven

into a single web by the ichthyoids alone in their primeval oceanic

home, to be shared by all members of both races.

 

2. COMPOSITE BEINGS

 

Sometimes in the course of our adventure we came upon worlds inhabited

by intelligent beings, whose developed personality was an expression not

of the single individual organism but of a group of organisms. In most

cases this state of affairs had arisen through the necessity of

combining intelligence with lightness of the individual body. A large

planet, rather close to its sun, or swayed by a very large satellite,

would be swept by great ocean tides. Vast areas of its surface would be

periodically submerged and exposed. In such a world flight was very

desirable, but owing to the strength of gravitation only a small

creature, a relatively small mass of molecules, could fly. A brain large

enough for complex “human” activity could not have been lifted.

 

In such worlds the organic basis of intelligence was often a swarm of

avian creatures no bigger than sparrows. A host of individual bodies

were possessed together by a single individual mind of human rank. The

body of this mind was multiple, but the mind itself was almost as firmly

knit as the mind of a man. As flocks of dunlin or redshank stream and

wheel and soar and quiver over our estuaries, so above the great

tide-flooded cultivated regions of these worlds the animated clouds of

avians maneuvered, each cloud a single center of consciousness.

Presently, like our own winged waders, the little avians would settle,

the huge volume of the cloud shrinking to a mere film upon the ground, a

sort of precipitate along the fringe of the receding tide.

 

Life in these worlds was rhythmically divided by the tides. During the

nocturnal tides the bird-clouds all slept on the waves. During the

daytime tides they indulged in aerial sports and religious exercises.

But twice a day, when the land was dry, they cultivated the drenched

ooze, or carried out in their cities of concrete cells all the

operations of industry and culture. It was interesting to us to see how

ingeniously, before the tide’s return, all the instruments of

civilization were sealed from the ravages of the water.