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

>to the life of his own race a swarm-mind was capable of true community,

the realization of the enemy as being not monstrous but essentially

humane, was enough to annihilate the will to fight.

 

The “key” minds on either side, enlightened by “divine messengers,”

heroically preached peace. And though many of them were hastily

martyred, their cause triumphed. The races made terms with each other;

all save two formidable and culturally rather backward peoples. These we

could not persuade; and as they were by now highly specialized for war,

they were a very serious menace. They regarded the new spirit of peace

as mere weakness on the part of the enemy, and they were determined to

take advantage of it, and to conquer the rest of that world. But now we

witnessed a drama which to terrestrial man must surely seem incredible.

It was possible in this world only because of the high degree of mental

lucidity which had already been attained within the bounds of each race.

The pacific races had the courage to disarm. In the most spectacular and

unmistakable manner they destroyed their weapons and their munition

factories. They took care, too, that these events should be witnessed by

enemy-swarms that had been taken prisoner. These captives they then

freed, bidding them report their experiences to the enemy. In reply the

enemy invaded the nearest of the disarmed countries and set about

ruthlessly imposing the military culture upon it, by means of propaganda

and persecution. But in spite of mass executions and mass torture, the

upshot was not what was expected. For though the tyrant races were not

appreciably more developed in sociality than Homo sapiens, the victims

were far superior. Repression only strengthened the will for passive

resistance. Little by little the tyranny began to waver. Then suddenly

it collapsed. The invaders withdrew, taking with them the infection of

pacifism. In a surprisingly short time that world became a federation,

whose members were distinct species.

 

With sadness I realized that on the Earth, though all civilized beings

belong to one and the same biological species, such a happy issue of

strife is impossible, simply because the capacity for community in the

individual mind is still too weak. I wondered, too, whether the tyrant

races of insectoids would have had greater success in imposing their

culture on the invaded country if there had been a distinct generation

of juvenile malleable swarms for them to educate.

 

When this insectoid world had passed through its crisis, it began to

advance so rapidly in social structure and in development of the

individual mind that we found increasing difficulty in maintaining

contact. At last we lost touch. But later, when we ourselves had

advanced, we were to come upon this world again.

 

Of the other insectoid worlds, I shall say nothing, for not one of them

was destined to play an important part in the history of the galaxy.

 

To complete the picture of the races in which the individual mind had

not a single, physically continuous, body, I must refer to a very

different and even stranger kind. In this the individual body is a cloud

of ultramicroscopic sub-vital units, organized in a common radio-system.

Of this kind is ‘the race which now inhabits our own planet Mars. As I

have already in another book described these beings and the tragic

relations which they will have with our own descendants in the remote

future, I shall say no more of them here; save that we did not make

contact with them till a much later stage of our adventure, when we had

acquired the skill to reach out to beings alien to ourselves in

spiritual condition.

 

3. PLANT MEN AND OTHERS

 

Before passing on to tell the story of our galaxy as a whole (so far as

I can comprehend it) I must mention another and a very alien kind of

world. Of this type we found few examples, and few of these survived

into the time when the galactic drama was at its height; but one at

least had (or will have) a great influence on the growth of the spirit

in that dramatic era.

 

On certain small planets, drenched with light and heat from a near or a

great sun, evolution took a very different course from that with which

we are familiar. The vegetable and animal functions were not separated

into distinct organic types. Every organism was at once animal and

vegetable.

 

In such worlds the higher organisms were something like gigantic and

mobile herbs; but the violent flood of solar radiation rendered the

tempo of their life much more rapid than that of our plants. To say that

they looked like herbs is perhaps misleading, for they looked equally

like animals. They had a definite number of limbs and a definite form of

body; but all their skin was green, or streaked with green, and they

bore here or there, according to their species, great masses of foliage.

Owing to the slight power of gravitation on these small planets, the

plant-animals often supported vast super-structures on very slender

trunks or limbs. In general those that were mobile were less generously

equipped with leaves than those that were more or less sedentary.

 

In these small hot worlds the turbulent circulation of water and

atmosphere caused rapid changes in the condition of the ground from day

to day. Storm and flood made it very desirable for the organisms of

these worlds to be able to move from place to place. Consequently the

early plants, which owing to the wealth of solar radiation could easily

store themselves with energy for a life of moderate muscular activity,

developed powers of perception and locomotion. Vegetable eyes and ears,

vegetable organs of taste, scent and touch, appeared on their stems or

foliage. For locomotion, some of them simply withdrew their primitive

roots from the ground and crept hither and thither with a kind of

caterpillar action. Some spread their foliage and drifted on the wind.

From these in the course of ages arose true fliers. Meanwhile the

pedestrian species turned some of their roots into muscular legs, four

or six, or centipedal. The remaining roots were equipped with boring

instruments, which on a new site could rapidly proliferate into the

ground. Yet another method of combining locomotion and roots was perhaps

more remarkable. The aerial portion of the organism would detach itself

from its embedded roots, and wander off by land or air to strike root

afresh in virgin soil. When the second site was exhausted the creature

would either go off in search of a third, and so on, or return to its

original bed, which by now might have recovered fertility. There, it

would attach itself once more to its old dormant roots and wake them

into new activity.

 

Many species, of course, developed predatory habits, and special organs

of offense, such as muscular boughs as strong as pythons for

constriction, or talons, horns, and formidable serrated pincers. In

these “carnivorous” creatures the spread of foliage was greatly reduced,

and all the leaves could be tucked snugly away along the back. In the

most specialized beasts of prey the foliage was atrophied and had only

decorative value. It was surprising to see how the environment imposed

on these alien creatures forms suggestive of our tigers and wolves. And

it was interesting, too, to note bow excessive specialization and

excessive adaptation to offense or defense ruined species after species;

and how, when at length “human” intelligence appeared, it was achieved

by an unimposing and inoffensive creature whose sole gifts were

intelligence and sensibility toward the material world and toward its

fellows. Before describing the efflorescence of “humanity” in this kind

of world I must mention one grave problem which faces the evolving life

of all small planets, often at an early stage. This problem we had

already come across on the Other Earth. Owing to the weakness of

gravitation and the disturbing heat of the sun, the molecules of the

atmosphere very easily escape into space. Most small worlds, of course,

lose all their air and water long before life can reach the “human”

stage, sometimes even before it can establish itself at all. Others,

less small, may be thoroughly equipped with atmosphere in their early

phases, but at a much later date, owing to the slow but steady

contraction of their orbits, they may become so heated that they can no

longer hold down the furiously agitated molecules of their atmosphere.

On some of these planets a great population of living forms develops in

early aeons only to be parched and suffocated out of existence through

the long-drawn denudation and desiccation of the planet. But in more

favorable cases life is able to adapt itself progressively to the

increasingly severe conditions. In some worlds, for instance, a

biological mechanism appeared by which the remaining atmosphere was

imprisoned within a powerful electromagnetic field generated by the

world’s living population. In others the need of atmosphere was done

away with altogether; photosynthesis and the whole metabolism of life

were carried on by means of liquids alone. The last dwindling gases were

captured in solution, stored in huge tracts of spongy growths among the

crowded roots, and covered with an impervious membrane.

 

Both these natural biological methods occurred in one or other of the

plant-animal worlds that reached the “human” level. I have space only to

describe a single example, the most significant of these remarkable

worlds. This was one in which all free atmosphere had been lost long

before the appearance of intelligence.

 

To enter this world and experience it through the alien senses and alien

temperament of its natives was an adventure in some ways more

bewildering than any of our earlier explorations. Owing to the complete

absence of atmosphere, the sky, even in full sunlight, was black with

the blackness of interstellar space; and the stars blazed. Owing to the

weakness of gravitation and the absence of the molding action of air and

water and frost on the planet’s shrinking and wrinkled surface, the

landscape was a mass of fold-mountains, primeval and extinct volcanoes,

congealed floods and humps of lava, and craters left by the impact of

giant meteors. None of these features had ever been much smoothed by

atmospheric and glacial influences. Further, the ever-changing stresses

of the planet’s crust had shattered many of the mountains into the

fantastic forms of ice-bergs. On our own earth, where gravity, that

tireless hound, pulls down its quarry with so much greater strength,

these slender, top-heavy crags and pinnacles could never have stood.

Owing to the absence of atmosphere the exposed surfaces of the rock were

blindingly illuminated; the crevasses and all the shadows were black as

night.

 

Many of the valleys had been turned into reservoirs, seemingly of milk;

for the surfaces of these lakes were covered with a deep layer of a

white glutinous substance, to prevent loss by evaporation. Round about

clustered the roots of the strange people of this world, like

tree-stumps where a forest has been felled and cleared. Each stump was

sealed with the white glue. Every stretch of soil was in use; and we

learned that, though some of this soil was the natural result of past

ages of action by air and water, most was artificial. It had been

manufactured by great mining and pulverizing processes. In primitive

times, and indeed throughout all “pre-human” evolution, the competitive

struggle for a share of the rare soil of this world of rock had been one

of the main spurs to intelligence.

 

The mobile plant-men themselves were to be seen by day clustered in the

valleys, their foliage spread to the sun. Only by night did we observe

them in action, moving over the bare rock or busy with machines and

other artificial objects, instruments of their civilization. There were

no buildings,