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

toward them, and knew that they

themselves would soon be implicated. They had the knowledge and power to

defeat the enemy in war; they received desperate appeals for help; yet

they did nothing. These were worlds that were organized through and

through for peace and the activities proper to an awakened world. They

knew that, if they chose to remake their whole social structure and

reorientate their minds, they could ensure military victory. They knew

also that they would thereby save many worlds from conquest, from

oppression and from the possible destruction of all that was best in

them. But they knew also that in reorganizing themselves for desperate

warfare, in neglecting, for a whole age of struggle, all those

activities which were proper to them, they would destroy the best in

themselves more surely than the enemy would destroy it by oppression;

and that in destroying this they would be murdering what they believed

to be the most vital germ in the galaxy. They therefore forswore

military action.

 

When at last one of these more developed world-systems was itself

confronted by mad religious enthusiasts, the natives welcomed the

invaders, readjusted all their planetary orbits to accommodate the

incoming planets, pressed the foreign power actually to settle part of

its population in such of their own planets as afforded suitable

climatic conditions; and secretly, gradually, subjected the whole mad

race throughout the combined solar system to a course of telepathic

hypnotism so potent that its communal mind was completely disintegrated.

The invaders became mere uncoordinated individuals, such as we know on

Earth. Henceforth they were bewildered, short-sighted, torn by

conflicts, ruled by no supreme purpose, obsessed more by self than by

community. It had been hoped that, when the mad communal mind had been

abolished, the individuals of the invading race would soon be induced to

open their eyes and their hearts to a nobler ideal. Unfortunately the

telepathic skill of the superior race was not sufficient to delve down

to the long-buried chrysalis of the spirit in these beings, to give it

air and warmth and light. Since the individual nature of these forlorn

individuals was itself the product of a crazy world, they proved

incapable of salvation, incapable of sane community. They were therefore

segregated to work out their own unlovely destiny in ages of tribal

quarrels and cultural decline, ending in the extinction which inevitably

overtakes creatures that are incapable of adaptation to new

circumstances.

 

When several invading expeditions had been thus circumvented, there

arose among the worlds of the mad United Empires a tradition that

certain seemingly pacific worlds were in fact more dangerous than all

other enemies, since plainly they had a strange power of “poisoning the

soul.” The imperialists determined to annihilate these terrible

opponents. The attacking forces were instructed to avoid all telepathic

parley and blow the enemy to pieces at long range. This, it was found,

could be most conveniently performed by exploding the sun of the doomed

system. Stimulated by a potent ray, the atoms of the photosphere would

start disintegrating, and the spreading fury would soon fling the star

into the “nova” state, roasting all his planets.

 

It was our lot to witness the extraordinary calm, nay the exaltation and

joy with which these worlds accepted the prospect of annihilation rather

than debase themselves by resistance. Later we were to watch the strange

events which saved this galaxy of ours from disaster. But first came

tragedy.

 

From our observation points in the minds of the attackers and the

attacked, we observed not once but three times the slaughter of races

nobler than any that we had yet encountered by perverts whose own

natural mental rank was almost as high. Three worlds, or rather systems

of worlds, each possessed by a diversity of specialized races, we saw

annihilated. From these doomed planets we actually observed the sun

break out with tumultuous eruption, swelling hourly. We actually felt,

through the bodies of our hosts, the rapidly increasing heat, and

through their eyes the blinding light. We saw the vegetation wither, the

seas begin to steam. We felt and heard the furious hurricanes which

wrecked every structure and bowled the ruins before them. With awe and

wonder we experienced something of that exaltation and inner peace with

which the doomed angelic populations met their end. Indeed, it was this

experienced angelic exaltation in the hour of tragedy that gave us our

first clear insight into the most spiritual attitude to fate. The sheer

bodily agony of the disaster soon became intolerable to us, so that we

were forced to withdraw ourselves from those martyred worlds. But we

left the doomed populations themselves accepting not only this torture

but the annihilation of their glorious community with all its infinite

hopes, accepting this bitterness as though it were not lethal but the

elixir of immortality. Not till almost the close of our own adventure

did we grasp for a moment the full meaning of this ecstasy.

 

It was strange to us that none of these three victims made any attempt

to resist the attack. Indeed, not one inhabitant in any of these worlds

considered for a moment the possibility of resistance. In every case the

attitude to disaster seemed to express itself in such terms as these:

“To retaliate would be to wound our communal spirit beyond cure. We

choose rather to die. The theme of spirit that we have created must

inevitably be broken short, whether by the ruthlessness of the invader

or by our own resort to arms. It is better to be destroyed than to

triumph in slaying the spirit. Such as it is, the spirit that we have

achieved is fair; and it is indestructibly woven into the tissue of the

cosmos. We die praising the universe in which at least such an

achievement as ours can be. We die knowing that the promise of further

glory outlives us in other galaxies. We die praising the Star Maker, the

Star Destroyer.”

 

4. TRIUMPH IN A SUB-GALAXY

 

It was after the destruction of the third system of worlds, when a

fourth was preparing for its end, that a miracle, or a seeming miracle,

changed the whole course of events in our galaxy. Before telling of this

turn of fortune I must double back the thread of my story and trace the

history of the system of worlds which was now to play the leading part

in galactic events.

 

It will be remembered that in an outlying “island” off the galactic

“continent” there lived the strange symbiotic race of Ichthyoids and

Arachnoids. These beings supported almost the oldest civilization in the

galaxy. They had reached the “human” plane of mental development even

before the Other Men; and, in spite of many vicissitudes, during the

thousands of millions of years of their career they had made great

progress. I referred to them last as having occupied all the planets of

their system with specialized races of Arachnoids, all of which were in

permanent telepathic union with the Ichthyoid population in the oceans

of the home planet. As the ages passed, they were several times reduced

almost to annihilation, now by too daring physical experiments, now

through too ambitious telepathic exploration; but in time they won

through to a mental development unequaled in our galaxy. Their little

island universe, their outlying cluster of stars, had come wholly under

their control. It contained many natural planetary systems. Several of

these included worlds which, when the early Arachnoid explorers visited

them telepathically, were found to be inhabited by native races of

pre-utopian rank. These were left to work out their own destiny, save

that in certain crises of their history the Symbiotics secretly brought

to bear on them from afar a telepathic influence that might help them

to meet their difficulties with increased vigor. Thus when one of these

worlds reached the crisis in which Homo sapiens now stands, it passed

with seemingly natural ease straight on to the phase of world-unity and

the building of Utopia. Great care was taken by the Symbiotic race to

keep its existence hidden from the primitives, lest they should lose

their independence of mind. Thus, even while the Symbiotics were

voyaging among these worlds in rocket vessels and using the mineral

resources of neighboring uninhabited planets, the intelligent worlds of

pre-utopian rank were left unvisited. Not till these worlds had

themselves entered the full Utopian phase and were exploring their

neighbor planets were they allowed to discover the truth. By then they

were ready to receive it with exultation, rather than disheartenment and

fear. Thenceforth, by physical and telepathic intercourse the

young-utopia would be speedily brought up to the spiritual rank of the

Symbiotics themselves, and would cooperate on an equal footing in a

symbiosis of worlds.

 

Some of these pre-utopian worlds, not malignant but incapable of further

advance, were left in peace, and preserved, as we preserve wild animals

in national parks, for scientific interest. Aeon after aeon, these

beings, tethered by their own futility, struggled in vain to cope with

the crisis which modern Europe knows so well. In cycle after cycle

civilization would emerge from barbarism, mechanization would bring the

peoples into uneasy contact, national wars and class wars would breed

the longing for a better world-order, but breed it in vain. Disaster

after disaster would undermine the fabric of civilization. Gradually

barbarism would return. Aeon after aeon, the process would repeat itself

under the calm telepathic observation of the Symbiotics, whose existence

was never suspected by the primitive creatures under their gaze. So

might we ourselves look down into some rock-pool where lowly creatures

repeat with naive zest dramas learned by their ancestors aeons ago.

 

The Symbiotics could well afford to leave these museum pieces intact,

for they had at their disposal scores of planetary systems. Moreover,

armed with their highly developed physical sciences and with subatomic

power, they were able to construct, out in space, artificial planets for

permanent habitation. These great hollow globes of artificial

super-metals, and artificial transparent adamant, ranged in size from

the earliest and smallest structures, which were no bigger than a very

small asteroid, to spheres considerably larger than the Earth. They were

without external atmosphere, since their mass was generally too slight

to prevent the escape of gases. A blanket of repelling force protected

them from meteors and cosmic rays. The planet’s external surface, which

was wholly transparent, encased the atmosphere. Immediately beneath it

hung the photosynthesis stations and the machinery for generating power

from solar radiation. Part of this outer shell was occupied by

astronomical observatories, machinery for controlling the planet’s

orbit, and great “docks” for interplanetary liners. The interior of

these worlds was a system of concentric spheres supported by girders and

gigantic arches. Interspersed between these spheres lay the machinery

for atmospheric regulation, the great water reservoirs, the food

factories and commodity-factories, the engineering shops, the

refuse-conversion tracts, residential and recreational areas, and a

wealth of research laboratories, libraries and cultural centers. Since

the Symbiotic race was in origin marine, there was a central ocean where

the profoundly modified, the physically indolent and mentally athletic

descendants of the original Ichthyoids constituted the “highest brain

tracts” of the intelligent world. There, as in the primeval ocean of the

home planet, the symbiotic partners sought one another, and the young of

both species were nurtured. Such races of the sub-galaxy as were not in

origin marine constructed, of course, artificial planets which, though

of the same general type, were adapted to their special nature. But all

the races found it also necessary to mold their own nature drastically

to suit their new conditions. As the aeons advanced, hundreds of

thousands of worldlets were constructed, all of this type, but gradually

increasing in size and complexity. Many a star without natural planets

came to be surrounded by concentric rings of artificial worlds. In some

cases the inner rings contained