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

of all stars are the desire to execute perfectly

their part in the communal dance, and the desire to press forward to the

attainment of full insight into the nature of the cosmos. The latter

desire was the factor in stellar mentality which was most comprehensible

to the minded worlds. The climax of a star’s life occurs when it has

passed through the long period of its youth, during which it is what

human astronomers call a “red giant.” At the close of this period it

shrinks rapidly into the dwarf state in which our sun now is. This

physical cataclysm seems to be accompanied by far-reaching mental

changes. Henceforth, though the star plays a less dashing part in the

dance-rhythms of the galaxy, it is perhaps more clearly and

penetratingly conscious. It is interested less in the ritual of the

stellar dance, more in its supposed spiritual significance. After this

very long phase of physical maturity there comes another crisis. The

star shrinks into the minute and the inconceivably dense condition in

which our astronomers call it a “white dwarf.” Its mentality in the

actual crisis proved almost impervious to the research of the minded

worlds. It appeared to be a crisis of despair and of reorientated hope.

Henceforth the stellar mind presents increasingly a strain of baffling

and even terrifying negativity, an icy, an almost cynical aloofness,

which, we suspected, was but the obverse of some dread rapture hidden

from us. However that may be, the aged star still continues meticulously

to fulfil its part in the dance, but its mood is deeply changed. The

aesthetic fervors of youth, the more serene but earnest will of

maturity, all maturity’s devotion to the active pursuit of wisdom, now

fall away. Perhaps the star is henceforth content with its achievement,

such as it is, and pleased simply to enjoy the surrounding universe with

such detachment and insight as it has attained. Perhaps; but the minded

worlds were never able to ascertain whether the aged stellar minded

eluded their comprehension through sheer superiority of achievement or

through some obscure disorder of the spirit. In this state of old age a

star remains for a very long period, gradually losing energy, and

mentally withdrawing into itself, until it sinks into an impenetrable

trance of senility. Finally its light is extinguished and its tissues

disintegrate in death. Henceforth it continues to sweep through space,

but it does so unconsciously, and in a manner repugnant to its still

conscious fellows.

 

Such, very roughly stated, would seem to be the normal life of the

average star. But there are many varieties within the general type. For

stars vary in original size and in composition, and probably in

psychological impact upon their neighbors. One of the commonest of the

eccentric types is the double star, two mighty globes of fire waltzing

through space together, in some cases almost in contact. Like all

stellar relations, these partnerships are perfect, are angelic. Yet it

is impossible to be certain whether the members experience anything

which could properly be called a sentiment of personal love, or whether

they regard one another solely as partners in a common task. Research

undoubtedly suggested that the two beings did indeed move on their

winding courses in some kind of mutual delight, and delight of close

cooperation in the measures of the galaxy. But love? It is impossible to

say. In due season, with the loss of momentum, the two stars come into

actual contact. Then, seemingly in an agonizing blaze of joy and pain,

they merge. After a period of unconsciousness, the great new star

generates new living tissues, and takes its place among the angelic

company. The strange Cepheid variables proved the most baffling of all

the stellar kinds. It seems that these and other variables of much

longer period alternate mentally between fervor and quietism, in harmony

with their physical rhythm. More than this it is impossible to say.

 

One event, which happens only to a small minority of the stars in the

course of their dance-life, is apparently of great psychological

importance. This is the close approach of two or perhaps three stars to

one another, and the consequent projection of a filament from one toward

another. In the moment of this “moth kiss,” before the disintegration of

the filament and the birth of planets, each star probably experiences an

intense but humanly unintelligible physical ecstasy. Apparently the

stars which have been through this experience are supposed to have

acquired a peculiarly vivid apprehension of the unity of body and

spirit. The “virgin” stars, however, though unblessed by this wonderful

adventure, seem to have no desire to infringe the sacred canons of the

dance in order to contrive opportunities for such encounters. Each one

of them is angelically content to play its allotted part, and to observe

the ecstasy of those that fate has favored. To describe the mentality of

stars is of course to describe the unintelligible by means of

intelligible but falsifying human metaphors. This tendency is

particularly serious in telling of the dramatic relations between the

stars and the minded worlds, for under the stress of these relations the

stars seem to have experienced for the first time emotions superficially

like human emotions. So long as the stellar community was immune from

interference by the minded worlds, every member of it behaved with

perfect rectitude and had perfect bliss in the perfect expression of its

own nature and of the common spirit. Even senility and death were

accepted with calm, for they were universally seen to be involved in the

pattern of existence; and what every star desired was not immortality,

whether for itself or for the community, but the perfect fruition of

stellar nature. But when at last the minded worlds, the planets, began

to interfere appreciably with stellar energy and motion, a new and

terrible and incomprehensible thing presumably entered into the

experiences of the stars. The stricken ones found themselves caught in a

distracting mental conflict. Through some cause which they themselves

could not detect, they not merely erred but willed to err. In fact, they

sinned. Even while they still adored the right, they chose the wrong.

 

I said that the trouble was unprecedented. This is not strictly true.

Something not wholly unlike this public shame seems to have occurred in

the private experience of nearly every star. But each sufferer succeeded

in keeping his shame secret until either with familiarity it became

tolerable or else its source was overcome. It was indeed surprising that

beings whose nature was in many ways so alien and unintelligible should

be in this one respect at least so startlingly “human.”

 

In the outer layers of young stars life nearly always appears not only

in the normal manner but also in the form of parasites, minute

independent organisms of fire, often no bigger than a cloud in the

terrestrial air, but sometimes as large as the Earth itself. These

“salamanders” either feed upon the welling energies of the star in the

same manner as the star’s own organic tissues feed, or simply prey upon

those tissues themselves. Here as elsewhere the laws of biological

evolution come into force, and in time there may appear races of

intelligent flame-like beings. Even when the salamandrian life does not

reach this level, its effect on the star’s tissues may become evident to

the star as a disease of its skin and sense organs, or even of its

deeper tissues. It then experiences emotions not wholly unlike human

fright and shame, and anxiously and most humanly guards its secret from

the telepathic reach of its fellows.

 

The salamandrian races have never been able to gain mastery over their

fiery worlds. Many of them succumb, soon or late, either to some natural

disaster or to internecine strife or to the self-cleansing activities of

their mighty host. Many others survive, but in a relatively harmless

state, troubling their stars only with a mild irritation, and a faint

shade of insincerity in all their dealings with one another. In the

public culture of the stars the salamandrian pest was completely

ignored. Each star believed itself to be the only sufferer and the only

sinner in the galaxy. One indirect effect the pest did have on stellar

thought. It introduced the idea of purity. Each star prized the

perfection of the stellar community all the more by reason of its own

secret experience of impurity.

 

When the minded planets began to tamper seriously with stellar energy

and stellar orbits, the effect was not a private shame but a public

scandal. It was patent to all observers that the culprit had violated

the canons of the dance. The first aberrations were greeted with

bewilderment and horror. Amongst the hosts of the virgin stars it was

whispered that if the result of the much prized interstellar contacts,

whence the natural planets had sprung, was in the end this shameful

irregularity, probably the original experience itself had also been

sinful. The erring stars protested that they were not sinners, but

victims of some unknown influence from the grains which revolved about

them. Yet secretly they doubted themselves. Had they long ago, in the

ecstatic sweep of star to star, after all infringed the canon of the

dance? They suspected, moreover, that in respect of the irregularities

which were now creating this public scandal, they could, if they had

willed firmly enough, have contained themselves, and preserved their

true courses in spite of the irritants that had affected them.

 

Meanwhile the power of the minded planets increased. Suns were boldly

steered to suit the purposes of their parasites. To the stellar

population it seemed, of course, that these erring stars were dangerous

lunatics. The crisis came, as I have already said, when the worlds

projected their first messenger toward the neighboring galaxy. The

hurtling star, terrified at its own maniac behavior, took the only

retaliation that was known to it. It exploded into the “nova” state, and

successfully destroyed its planets. From the orthodox stellar point of

view this act was a deadly sin; for it was an impious interference with

the divinely appointed order of a star’s life. But it secured the

desired end, and was soon copied by other desperate stars. Then followed

that age of horror which I have already described from the point of view

of the Society of Worlds. From the stellar point of view it was no less

terrible, for the condition of the stellar society soon became

desperate. Gone was the perfection and beatitude of former days. “The

City of God” had degenerated into a place of hatred, recrimination and

despair. Hosts of the younger stars had become premature and embittered

dwarfs, while the elders had mostly grown senile. The dance pattern had

fallen into chaos. The old passion for the canons of the dance remained,

but the conception of the canons was obscured. Spiritual life had

succumbed to the necessity of urgent action. The passion for the

progress of insight into the nature of the cosmos also remained, but

insight itself was obscured. Moreover, the former naive confidence,

common to young and mature alike, the certainty that the cosmos was

perfect and that the power behind it was righteous, had given place to

blank despair.

 

4. GALACTIC SYMBIOSIS

 

Such was the state of affairs when the minded worlds first attempted to

make telepathic contact with the minded stars. I need not tell the

stages by which mere contact was developed into a clumsy and precarious

kind of communication. In time the stars must have begun to realize that

they were at grips, not with mere physical forces, nor yet with fiends,

but with beings whose nature, though so profoundly alien, was at bottom

identical with their own. Our telepathic research obscurely sensed the

amazement which spread throughout the stellar population. Two opinions,

two policies, two parties seem to have gradually emerged.