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

scores, the outer rings thousands of

globes adapted to life at some particular distance from the sun. Great

diversity, both physical and mental, would distinguish worlds even of

the same ring. Sometimes a comparatively old world, or even a whole ring

of worlds, would feel itself outstripped in mental excellence by younger

worlds and races, whose structure, physical and biological, embodied

increasing skill. Then either the superannuated world would simply

continue its life in a sort of backwater of civilization, tolerated,

loved, studied by the younger worlds; or it would choose to die and

surrender the material of its planet for new ventures.

 

One very small and rather uncommon kind of artificial world consisted

almost wholly of water. It was like a titanic bowl of gold-fish. Beneath

its transparent shell, studded with rocket-machinery and interplanetary

docks, lay a spherical ocean, crossed by structural girders, and

constantly impregnated with oxygen. A small solid core represented the

sea-bottom. The population of Ichthyoids and the visiting population of

Arachnoids swarmed in this huge encrusted drop. Each Ichthyoid would be

visited in turn by perhaps a score of partners whose working life was

spent on other worlds. The life of the Ichthyoids was indeed a strange

one, for they were at once imprisoned and free of all space. An

Ichthyoid never left his native ocean, but he had telepathic intercourse

with the whole Symbiotic race throughout the sub-galaxy. Moreover, the

one form of practical activity which the Ichthyoids performed was

astronomy. Immediately beneath the planet’s glassy crust hung

observatories, where the swimming astronomers studied the constitution

of the stars and the distribution of the galaxies.

 

These “gold-fish-bowl” worlds turned out to be transitional. Shortly

before the age of the mad empires the Symbiotics began to experiment for

the production of a world which should consist of a single physical

organism. After ages of experiment they produced a “gold-fish-bowl” type

of world in which the whole ocean was meshed by a fixed network of

Ichthyoid individuals in direct neural connection with one another. This

worldwide, living, polyp-like tissue had permanent attachments to the

machinery and observatories of the world. Thus it constituted a truly

organic world-organism, and since the coherent Ichthyoid population

supported together a perfectly unified mentality, each of these worlds

was indeed in the fullest sense a minded organism, like a man. One

essential link with the past was preserved. Arachnoids, specially

adapted to the new symbiosis, would visit from their remote planets and

swim along the submarine galleries for union with their anchored mates.

 

More and more of the stars of the outlying cluster or sub-galaxy came to

be girdled with rings of worlds, and an increasing number of these

worlds were of the new, organic type. Of the populations of the

sub-galaxy most were descendants of the original Ichthyoids or

Arachnoids; but there were also many whose natural ancestors were

humanesque, and not a few that had sprung from avians, insectoids or

plant-men. Between the worlds, between the rings of worlds, and between

the solar systems there was constant intercourse, both telepathic and

physical. Small, rocket-propelled vessels plied regularly within each

system of planets. Larger vessels or high-speed worldlets voyaged from

system to system, explored the whole sub-galaxy, and even ventured

across the ocean of emptiness into the main body of the galaxy, where

thousands upon thousands of planetless stars awaited encirclement by

rings of worlds.

 

Strangely, the triumphant advance of material civilization and

colonization now slowed down and actually came to a standstill. Physical

intercourse between worlds of the sub-galaxy was maintained, but not

increased. Physical exploration of the neighboring fringe of the

galactic “continent” was abandoned. Within the sub-galaxy itself no new

worlds were founded. Industrial activities continued, but at reduced

pressure, and no further advance was made in the standard of material

convenience. Indeed, manners and customs began to grow less dependent on

mechanical aids. Among the Symbiotic worlds, the Arachnoid populations

were reduced in number; the Ichthyoids in their cells of ocean lived in

a permanent state of mental concentration and fervor, which of course

was telepathically shared by their partners.

 

It was at this time that telepathic intercourse between the advanced

sub-galaxy and the few awakened worlds of the continent was entirely

abolished. During recent ages, communication had been very fragmentary.

The Sub-Galactics had apparently so far outstripped their neighbors that

their interest in those primitives had become purely archaeological, and

was gradually eclipsed by the enthralling life of their own community of

worlds, and by their telepathic exploration of remote galaxies. To us,

the band of explorers, desperately struggling to maintain contact

between our communal mind and the incomparably more developed minds of

these worlds, the finest activities of the Sub-Galactics were at present

inaccessible. We observed only a stagnation of the more obvious physical

and mental activities of these systems of worlds. It seemed at first

that this stagnation must be caused by some obscure flaw in their

nature. Was it, perhaps, the first stage of irrevocable decline? Later,

however, we began to discover that this seeming stagnation was a symptom

not of death but of more vigorous life. Attention had been drawn from

material advancement just because it had opened up new spheres of mental

discovery and growth. In fact the great community of worlds, whose

members consisted of some thousands of world-spirits, was busy digesting

the fruits of its prolonged phase of physical progress, and was now

finding itself capable of new and unexpected psychical activities. At

first the nature of these activities was entirely hidden from us. But in

time we learned how to let ourselves be gathered up by these superhuman

beings so as to obtain at least an obscure glimpse of the matters which

so enthralled them. They were concerned, it seemed, partly with

telepathic exploration of the great host of ten million galaxies, partly

with a technique of spiritual discipline by which they strove to come to

more penetrating insight into the nature of the cosmos and to a finer

creativity. This, we learned, was possible because their perfect

community of worlds was tentatively waking into a higher plane of being,

as a single communal mind whose body was the whole sub-galaxy of worlds.

Though we could not participate in the life of this lofty being, we

guessed that its absorbing passion was not wholly unlike the longing of

the noblest of our own human species to “come face to face with God.”

This new being desired to have the percipience and the hardihood to

endure direct vision of the source of all light and life and love. In

fact this whole population of worlds was rapt in a prolonged and

mystical adventure.

 

5. THE TRAGEDY OF THE PERVERTS

 

Such was the state of affairs when, in the main galactic “continent,”

the mad United Empires concentrated their power upon the few worlds that

were not merely sane but of superior mental rank. The attention of the

Symbiotics and their colleagues in the supremely civilized sub-galaxy

had long been withdrawn from the petty affairs of the “continent.” It

was given instead to the cosmos as a whole and to the inner discipline

of the spirit. But the first of the three murders perpetrated by the

United Empires upon a population far more developed than themselves

seems to have caused a penetrating reverberation to echo, so to speak,

through all the loftier spheres of existence. Even in the full flight of

their career, the Sub-Galactics took cognizance. Once more attention was

directed telepathically to the neighboring continent of stars. While the

situation was being studied, the second murder was committed. The

Sub-Galactics knew that they had power to prevent any further disaster.

Yet, to our surprise, our horror and incomprehension, they calmly

awaited the third murder. Still more strange, the doomed worlds

themselves, though in telepathic communication with the Sub-Galaxy, made

no appeal for help. Victims and spectators alike studied the situation

with quiet interest, even with a sort of bright exultation not wholly

unlike amusement. From our lowlier plane this detachment, this seeming

levity, at first appeared less angelic than inhuman. Here was a whole

world of sensitive and intelligent beings in the full tide of eager life

and communal activity. Here were lovers newly come together, scientists

in the midst of profound research, artists intent on new delicacies of

apprehension, workers in a thousand practical social undertakings of

which man has no conception, here in fact was all the rich diversity of

personal lives that go to make up a highly developed world in action.

And each of these individual minds participated in the communal mind of

all; each experienced not only as a private individual but as the very

spirit of his race. Yet these calm beings faced the destruction of their

world with no more distress seemingly than one of us would feel at the

prospect of resigning his part in some interesting game. And in the

minds of the spectators of this impending tragedy we observed no agony

of compassion, but only such commiseration, tinged with humor, as we

might feel for some distinguished tennis-player who was knocked out in

the first round of a tournament by some trivial accident such as a

sprained ankle.

 

With difficulty we came to understand the source of this strange

equanimity. Spectators and victims alike were so absorbed in

cosmological research, so conscious of the richness and potentiality of

the cosmos, and above all so possessed by spiritual contemplation, that

the destruction was seen, even by the victims themselves, from the point

of view which men would call divine. Their gay exaltation and their

seeming frivolity were rooted in the fact that to them the personal

life, and even the life and death of individual worlds, appeared chiefly

as vital themes contributing to the life of the cosmos. From the

cosmical point of view the disaster was after all a very small though

poignant matter. Moreover, if by the sacrifice of another group of

worlds, even of splendidly awakened worlds, greater insight could be

attained into the insanity of the Mad Empires, the sacrifice was well

worth while.

 

So the third murder was committed. Then came the miracle. The telepathic

skill of the Sub-Galaxy was far more developed than that of the

scattered superior worlds on the galactic “continent.” It could dispense

with the aid of normal intercourse, and it could overcome every

resistance. It could reach right down to the buried chrysalis of the

spirit even in the most perverted individual. This was not a merely

destructive power, blotting out the communal mind hypnotically; it was a

kindling, an awakening power, brought to bear on the sane but dormant

core of each individual. This skill was now exercised upon the galactic

continent with triumphant but also tragic effect; for even this skill

was not omnipotent. There appeared here and there among the mad worlds a

strange and spreading “disease” of the mind. To the orthodox

imperialists in those worlds themselves it seemed a madness; but it was

in fact a late and ineffectual waking into sanity on the part of beings

whose nature had been molded through and through for madness in a mad

environment.

 

The course of this “disease” of sanity in a mad world ran generally as

follows. Individuals here and there, while still playing their part in

the well-disciplined action and communal thought of the world, would

find themselves teased by private doubts and disgusts opposed to the

dearest assumptions of the world in which they lived, doubts of the

worth of record-breaking travel and record-breaking empire, and disgust

with the cult of mechanical triumph and intellectual servility and the

divinity of the race. As these disturbing thoughts increased, the

bewildered individuals would begin to fear for their own “sanity.”

Presently they would cautiously sound their neighbors. Little by little,

doubt would become more widespread and more vocal, until at last

considerable minorities in each