Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon (best mobile ebook reader TXT) 📖

of

life at last began to spread over this distressed world. It could not do

so till the super-tribes had been disintegrated by the economic forces

of mechanized industry, and by their own frenzied conflict. Then at last

the individual mind became once more free. The whole prospect of the

race now changed.

 

It was in this world that we first experienced that tantalizing loss of

contact with the natives just at that point where, having established

something like a social Utopia throughout their planet, they were beset

by the first painful stirrings of the spirit before advancement to some

mental plane beyond our reach, or at least beyond such comprehension as

we then had.

 

Of the other “Echinoderm” worlds in our galaxy, one, more promising than

the average, rose early to brilliance, but was destroyed by astronomical

collision. Its whole solar system encountered a tract of dense nebula.

The surface of every planet was fused. In several other worlds of this

type we saw the struggle for the more awakened mentality definitely

fail. Vindictive and superstitious herd-cults exterminated the best

minds of the race, and drugged the rest with customs and principles so

damaging that the vital sources of sensitivity and adaptability on which

all mental progress depends were destroyed forever.

 

Many thousands of other quasi-human worlds, besides those of the

“Echinoderm” type, came to an untimely end. One, which succumbed to a

curious disaster, perhaps deserves brief notice. Here we found a race of

very human kind. When its civilization had reached a stage and character

much like our own, a stage in which the ideals of the masses are without

the guidance of any well-established tradition, and in which natural

science is enslaved to individualistic industry, biologists discovered

the technique of artificial insemination. Now at this time there

happened to be a widespread cult of irrationalism, of instinct, of

ruthlessness, and of the “divine” primitive “brute-man.” This figure was

particularly admired when he combined brutishness with the power of the

mob-controller. Several countries were subjected to tyrants of this

type, and in the so-called democratic states the same type was much

favored by popular taste.

 

In both kinds of country, women craved “brute-men” as lovers and as

fathers for their children. Since in the “democratic” countries women

had attained great economic independence, their demand for fertilization

by “brute-men” caused the whole matter to be commercialized. Males of

the desirable type were taken up by syndicates, and graded in five ranks

of desirability. At a moderate charge, fixed in relation to the grade of

the father, any woman could obtain “brute-man” fertilization. So cheap

was the fifth grade that only the most abject paupers were debarred from

its services. The charge for actual copulation with even the lowest

grade of selected male was, of course, much higher, since perforce the

supply was limited.

 

In the non-democratic countries events took a different turn. In each of

these regions a tyrant of the fashionable type gathered upon his own

person the adoration of the whole population. He was the godsent hero.

He was himself p divine. Every woman longed passionately to have him, if

not as a lover, at least as father of her children. In some lands

artificial insemination from the Master was permitted only as a supreme

distinction for women of perfect type. Ordinary women of every class,

however, were entitled to insemination from the authorized aristocratic

stud of “brute-men.” In other countries the Master himself condescended

to be the father of the whole future population.

 

The result of this extraordinary custom, of artificial fatherhood by

“brute-men,” which was carried on without remission in all countries for

a generation, and in a less thorough manner for a very much longer

period, was to alter the composition of the whole quasi-human race. In

order to maintain continued, adaptability to an ever-changing

environment a race must at all costs preserve in itself its slight but

potent salting of sensibility and originality. In this world the

precious factor now became so diluted as to be ineffective. Henceforth

the desperately complex problems of the world were consistently bungled.

Civilization decayed. The race entered on a phase of what might be

called pseudo-civilized barbarism, which was in essence subhuman and

incapable of change. This state of affairs continued for some millions

of years, but at last the race was destroyed by the ravages of a small

rat-like animal against which it could devise no protection.

 

I must not stay to notice the strange fortunes of all the many other

quasi-human worlds. I will mention only that in some, though

civilization was destroyed in a succession of savage wars, the germ of

recovery precariously survived. In one, the agonizing balance of the old

and the new seemed to prolong itself indefinitely. In another, where

science had advanced too far for the safety of an immature species, man

accidentally blew up his planet and his race. In several, the

dialectical process of history was broken short by invasion and conquest

on the part of inhabitants of another planet. These and other disaster,

to be described in due course, decimated the galactic population of

worlds.

 

In conclusion I will mention that in one or two of these quasi-human

worlds a new and superior biological race emerged naturally during the

typical world crisis, gained power by sheer intelligence and sympathy,

took charge of the planet, persuaded the aborigines to cease breeding,

peopled the whole planet with its own superior type, and created a human

race which attained communal mentality, and rapidly advanced beyond the

limits of our exploring and overstrained understanding. Before our

contact failed, we were surprised to observe that, as the new species

superseded the old and took over the vast political and economic

activity of that world, it came to realize with laughter the futility of

all this feverish and aimless living. Under our eyes the old order began

to give place to a new and simpler order, in which the world was to be

peopled by a small “aristocratic” population served by machines, freed

alike from drudgery and luxury and intent on exploration of the cosmos

and the mind.

 

This change-over to a simpler life happened in several other worlds not

by the intervention of a new species, but simply by the victory of the

new mentality in its battle against the old.

 

3. NAUTILOIDS

 

As our exploration advanced and we gathered more and more helpers from

the many worlds that we entered, our imaginative insight into alien

natures increased. Though our research was still restricted to races

which were in the throes of the familiar spiritual crisis, we gradually

acquired the power of making contact with beings whose minds were very

far from human in texture. I must now try to give some idea of the main

types of these “non-human” intelligent worlds. In some cases the

difference from humanity, though physically striking, and even mentally

very remarkable, was not nearly so far-reaching as the cases to be

described in the next chapter.

 

In general the physical and mental form of conscious beings is an

expression of the character of the planet on which they live. On certain

very large and aqueous planets, for instance, we found that civilization

had been achieved by marine organisms. On these huge globes no

land-dwellers as large as a man could possibly thrive, for gravitation

would have nailed them to the ground. But in the water there was no such

limitation to bulk. One peculiarity of these big worlds was that, owing

to the crushing action of gravitation, there were seldom any great

elevations and depressions in their surface. Thus they were usually

covered by a shallow ocean, broken here and there by archipelagos of

small, low islands.

 

I shall describe one example of this kind of world, the greatest planet

of a mighty sun. Situated, if I remember rightly, near the congested

heart of the galaxy, this star was born late in galactic history, and it

gave birth to planets when already many of the olders stars were

encrusted with smoldering lava. Owing to the violence of solar radiation

its nearer planets had (or will have) stormy climates. On one of them a

mollusc-like creature, living in the coastal shallows, acquired a

propensity to drift in its boat-like shell on the sea’s surface, thus

keeping in touch with its drifting vegetable food. As the ages passed,

its shell became better adapted to navigation. Mere drifting was

supplemented by means of a crude sail, a membrane extending from the

creature’s back. In time this nautiloid type proliferated into a host of

species. Some of these remained minute, but some found size

advantageous, and developed into living ships. One of these became the

intelligent master of this great world.

 

The hull was a rigid, stream-lined vessel, shaped much as the

nineteenth-century clipper in her prime, and larger than our largest

whale. At the rear a tentacle or fin developed into a rudder, which was

sometimes used also as a propeller, like a fish’s tail. But though all

these species could navigate under their own power to some extent, their

normal means of longdistance locomotion was their great spread of sail.

The simple membranes of the ancestral type had become a system of

parchment-like sails and bony masts and spars, under voluntary muscular

control. Similarity to a ship was increased by the downward-looking

eyes, one on each side of the prow. The mainmast-head also bore eyes,

for searching the horizon. An organ of magnetic sensitivity in the brain

afforded a reliable means of orientation. At the fore end of the vessel

were two long manipulatory tentacles, which during locomotion were

folded snugly to the flanks. In use they formed a very serviceable pair

of arms. It may seem strange that a species of this kind should have

developed human intelligence. In more than one world of this type,

however, a number of accidents combined to produce this result. The

change from a vegetarian to a carnivorous habit caused a great increase

of animal cunning in pursuit of the much speedier submarine creatures.

The sense of hearing was wonderfully developed, for the movements of

fish at great distances could be detected by the underwater ears. A line

of taste-organs along either bilge responded to the ever-changing

composition of the water, and enabled the hunter to track his prey.

Delicacy of hearing and of taste combined with omnivorous habits, and

with great diversity of behavior and strong sociality, to favor the

growth of intelligence.

 

Speech, that essential medium of the developed mentality, had two

distinct modes in this world. For short-range communication, rhythmic

underwater emissions of gas from a vent in the rear of the organism were

heard and analyzed by means of underwater ears. Longdistance

communication was carried on by means of semaphore signals from a

rapidly agitating tentacle at the mast head.

 

The organizing of communal fishing expeditions, the invention of traps,

the making of lines and nets, the practice of agriculture, both in the

sea and along the shores, the building of stone harbors and work-shops,

the use of volcanic heat for smelting metals, and of wind for driving

mills, the projection of canals into the low islands in search of

minerals and fertile ground, the gradual exploration and mapping of a

huge world, the harnessing of solar radiation for mechanical power,

these and many other achievements were at once a product of intelligence

and an opportunity for its advancement.

 

It was a strange experience to enter the mind of an intelligent ship to

see the foam circling under one’s own nose as the vessel plunged through

the waves, to taste the bitter or delicious currents streaming past

one’s flanks, to feel the pressure of air on the sails as one beat up

against the breeze, to hear beneath the water-line the rush and murmur

of distant shoals of fishes,