Galaxies Like Grains of Sand

by Brian W Aldiss

  “Not at all,” Davi said, trying to check his anger.

  “Well, it confounded well should be!”

  “Not at all!” Davi bellowed. “Good God, Bergharra fought the Goraggs in the last war. One of our bravest men was a Field Captain Goragg, but we didn’t lock him in the nearest button-biter’s barge just because of his unfortunate name!”

  There was an icy silence.

  “I believe,” Uatt said, “that the disgusting term for mental-health ships that you employed has ceased to be polite usage even in the low comedy halls.”

  “You cannot dismiss everything as coincidence, Mr Dael,” Shansfor said hurriedly, waving his hands as if to hush his superior. “You must try to regard this from the viewpoint of mind-healing. We do not believe in coincidence. Let me proceed to the next and last point, on which the crux of the matter may be said to rest.

  “The etiquette of this incredible galactic squabble, Ishrail claims, renders an admiral or similar large fry liable to exile for life if he is captured by the enemy. As we might expect in this case, the exiling itself is a complicated business, a mixture of leniency and harshness. The exile concerned — by which we mean Ishrail — has his name struck off the rolls of civilization and is left on a planet absolutely bare-handed and bare-backed. Before he is landed, he is taught by hypnotic means to be fluent in the language of the planet or country to which he is banished. Which neatly absolves Ishrail from the difficulty of having to pretend to speak a strange tongue.”

  “You make him sound such a liar!” Davi said bitterly.

  “No,” Shansfor contradicted. “That is a basic misconception. We are convinced he genuinely believes all he says. But remember — and this is another loophole for him — he cannot speak the galactic tongue because that was erased when his enemies forced our language down his throat.

  “Damning though that is, it is the lesser half of the exile edict. It was stipulated, according to Ishrail, that exiles should only be landed on planets outside the galactic federation, planets too primitive to have developed more than the rudiments of what he calls ‘mechanical’ space travel; there they have to survive among hostile natives as best they can. In other words, Bergharra, and Earth, is Ishrail’s galactic idea of hell.”

  “Just why do you find that so damning?” Davi asked.

  “Why? Because it is all too plainly the fabrication of a guilty mind trying to punish itself by inflicting eternal suffering on itself. It is a punishment pattern we meet with here time after time.”

  Before Davi could recover himself sufficiently to answer, Uatt got to his feet, smoothed an imaginary hair over his bald head, and spoke.

  “So there you have the Ishrail case, Dael,” he said. “He is a sick creature, haunted by the spectre of persecution. I trust you appreciate, though I fear you don’t, the great pains we have been to in this matter, and the neat way in which we have tied up all the loose ends.”

  “Plausible though Ishrail is,” Shansfor said, also standing and buttoning his tunic to conclude the meeting, “he is clearly revealed as hopelessly, even dangerously, unbalanced. Quite candidly, there’s hardly a disorder in the book that isn’t present in greater or lesser degree. And we’ve not unravelled them all yet. This sort of thing takes time and patience.”

  “Give the police a little longer to trace him,” the Arch-Brother said with relish, “and we shall probably find he’s a common murderer with amnesia actuated by guilt.”

  Oh, Ishrail! You a common murderer! The hostile natives have indeed got you in their nets! You should have come fifty million years ago — the Neanderthals would have shown more understanding, more mercy!

  Davi screwed his eyes up and raised his fists slowly before his face. Blood swam and roared in his veins like a waterfall. For a moment, he thought of throwing himself at Inald Uatt. Then hopelessness dropped neatly over him. He lowered his hands.

  “I must see Ishrail,” he said dully.

  “That will not be possible,” Uatt said. “We have had to remove him to a quieter place; he threatened to get violent.”

  “Do you wonder?” Davi said. With stiff, formal fingers he buttoned his tunic.

  The Arch-Brother and Shansfor remained side by side by the fire, waiting politely for him to leave. Davi stood defeated before them, the only man to believe in Ishrail, rocking unintelligently from one foot to another, his jaw slack. At last he sighed, turning to leave without a word of thanks. He caught sight of the tired buttercup pinned to his chest; how it must have amused these people! Yet Davi felt obscurely that it was his slender link with sanity and the Galaxy.

  Suddenly he saw the planned cruelty of Ishrail’s exile, the bitterness of being among a people without understanding.

  “I’m going to call the New Union newsjells to see if they will help me!” he said resolutely.

  “An excellent idea! Emotionalism and sensationalism are just their meat,” the Arch-Brother replied, but Davi had gone.

  Finding his way blindly down a gangplank, he headed for the city. A cold wind met him, and he recalled that he had left his fur cloak somewhere in the ship. Now it was too late to return for it. Overhead, through thinning cloud, galactic stars shone with terrible urgency.

  The Star Millennia

  How many times the whole history of a world is altered by one small-seeming event is, of course, beyond computation. Fortune has a myriad hidden faces. Dael — and, through Dael, Earth — was fortunate. He found men who believed as he did, who also thought Ishrail should have another hearing. By their united pressures, Ishrail was made free. He was treated — though not by all — as a sane man, and his story believed. The account of his life, as he had delivered it, became one of the world’s most precious documents, and the five fat volumes a new gospel of hope.

  So wandering man returned to Earth. Ishrail, although he did not know it, was a remote descendant of those few explorers who had braved the journeys to the stars, long, long ago, in the time of the Robot Millennia.

  This is no place for the story of man’s gradual expansion into the Galaxy; we must confine ourselves to brief and occasional glimpses of Earth. Something must nevertheless be said of that expansion, if only to render the following fragment more readily understandable.

  Of the original interstellar ships, vast arklike vessels, an experimental one was launched in the twenty-third century; christened Big Dog, it set out for Procyon; its story was tragic. After that, no more such ships were launched until the eightieth century. These journeys were in some degree successful.

  On the new-found planets, themselves widely dispersed, the colonists established colonies and battled with environments they had never been intended to face. Inevitably, it was a stimulus. The colonies began to flourish; centuries passed; they in their turn put forth little tentacles into the unknown. World after world pullulated with vigorous bipeds.

  Consider the case of these worlds. Consider the case of Galcondar. Galcondar was colonized from Koramandel two thousand years after Koramandel’s first colonization from Luggate III. The Galcondaran colonists attempted to establish themselves on the strange planet along a pleasant stretch of coastline in a savanna belt, but failed because of the activities of a rapid-flying fish.

  This species of fish, the coastal assatassi, is equipped with a sharp, dartlike snout quite capable of piercing a man to the heart when the fish is in full flight. For most of the Galcondaran year, the coastal assatassi behaves like an ordinary flying fish, using its wings merely for evasive action from marine predators. Toward the breeding season, a change in its habits becomes noticeable. The assatassi is hermaphrodite, capable of fertilizing its own eggs; from the eggs hatch small worms that move into the intestine of the parent fish. Goaded by the irritation of this process, the assatassi assemble some five miles out to sea — the distance depending on the depth of the water — and execute the curious contortions known as “fettling,” both above and below the water. Such brood-maddened shoals may cover several acres of sea and contain sev
eral hundred thousandfish. Their antics attract various species of gull and cormorant, which wheel over the shoal, filling their bellies at leisure.

  When the density of the shoal reaches its peak, fettling ceases. Taking flight in their thousands, the assatassi wing their way shoreward, flying low over the water and achieving estimated velocities of over 1,850 yards per minute. At this speed, they hit the land and are killed.

  Far from being a morbid instinct, this behaviour is another example of nature’s versatility in perpetuating species. The piscicolous assatassi progeny can feed only on carrion. Embedded safely in the parental intestine, this worm stage survives the impact which kills its carrier to feed upon the parental corpse as it decays. When the parent is devoured, the worms metamorphose into a legged larval stage, which crawls back to sea so assatassi cycle is reborn.

  This minor curiosity in galactic natural history had a disproportionately weighty effect upon the future of Galcondar. The colonists, arriving at last at their promised land, were bombarded by high-speed fish. By ill luck, they had chosen the suicide season in which to pitch camp. A fifth of their number was killed or wounded by the first death flights. The remainder split into two groups, one travelling inland north, one south, in search of a less lethal environment.

  So the two great empires of Galdid and Gal-Dundar were founded. For nearly two hundred years they flourished without any intertraffic between them. When contact was re-established, it was to the great subsequent enrichment of their cultural life. In the renaissance that followed, many new art forms were born, and spaceships (the technological expression of what is frequently an aesthetic impulse) were launched for the nearer planets. On one of these planets a friendly race of humanoids, the Lapracants, were discovered.

  The congress that took place between the wise men of Lapraca and the savants of Galdid and Gal-Dundar marked one of the turning points of the expanding interplanetary concourse. During these congresses were laid the foundations of the first cosmic language: Galingua.

  Many centuries later, a Galingua-speaking junta marooned Ishrail on Earth.

  The more one investigates this exiling of Ishrail, the more interesting the whole affair becomes.

  Two facets in particular need attention here: one, the galactic position vis-a-vis Earth, and the other, the curiously codified war maintained among the “new” planets.

  Man’s civilization spread outward from planet to planet; in the course of forty million years, some twenty thousand worlds came to foster human settlements of widely varying standards. Yet — at least at first — all had one salient feature in common: they were out of touch or barely in touch with each other. Communication over a multitude of light years was all but impossible. It was this factor, coupled with the variety of new environments, which bred such a diversity of cultures from one original Earth-type stock. And inevitably, under these conditions, the whereabouts of Earth became forgotten.

  Spreading outward at random, the progeny of Earth left their womb world far behind. As world after world grew to seniority, the idea of a mother planet was scorned, or distorted, or completely mislaid. On the other hand, some worlds — Droxy is a well-known instance — retained the idea of Earth as a kind of supermyth, building their main religion about the conception of a matriarchal figure. The Droxian articles of faith postulated a sort of pastoral female deity called Lady Earth, who had thrown away some bad apples which displeased her; if the apples grew into fine trees, Lady Earth would come to them and walk among them, forgiving and praising them.

  Such myths thrived, especially in the early days. Yet, however ardently man in his meditative periods might liken himself to maggots in an apple, in his everyday moods he continued to behave like a lord of creation. Though he abased himself, he continued to conquer.

  When the planets finally bound themselves together into a multiplanet federation, attempts were made, by rationalizing the myths, to find one common source-planet for man. The movement failed, not least because there were more than a dozen score of worlds cheerfully calling themselves Earth, as well as others whose legends claimed for them the dubious glory of being source-planet.

  As the nonmaterial or interpenetrator type of travel was developed, communication between the federated planets greatly improved. Interplanetary relations correspondingly deteriorated. Man — it is at once his making and his undoing — is a competitive animal. Although, for various reasons — most of which are immediately obvious when one considers the distances involved — interstellar war was impossible, states of hostility sprang up all around. Intercourse between planets, both commercial and cultural, suffered in consequence. The federation was on the verge of falling back into an unrelated series of provincial outposts.

  From this crisis was evolved the Self-perpetuating Galactic War which, besides being no war at all in the orthodox sense, created a revolution in human understanding. The gerontocracy which devised this sagacious formula for interstellar communitism finally acknowledged the competitive nature of man, for which any international or interstellar culture must make full allowance or perish. The unstable history of every planet revealed mankind rebelling against its destiny by striving to live in peace-geared communities which eventually lapsed into barbarous wars. Now this situation was reversed. By establishing a perpetually warring culture, man would have both the stability and the stimulation needful for him to produce the fruits of peace.

  Such a war had to be severely conventionalized, its risks modified, its fatalities curtailed; its harshest penalties had to fall upon those most actively engaged, rather than those innocently involved. Above all, its methods had to be as socially valuable as was possible, and its end made unforeseeable and inaccessible.

  The gerontocracy planned well. The mock war began.

  By the time Ishrail was exiled on Earth, the war was as much a part of galactic life as was Galingua. It fitted like a light harness over everyman’s affairs, binding together the civilized universe as an ivy will cover a giant sequoia. And just as ivy will ruin the finest tree, so this humane and irresolvable war was destined eventually to pull down the most prodigious of all cultures.

  As yet, however, in its thousandth millenary, only the war’s advantages were observable. True, trade and invention had reached a lull which the Galactics believed to be temporary; true, too, that art had become a series of formalities, that politics had dwindled to a hobby, that theologies were again replacing natural piety, that salvation seemed a more valuable goal than self-knowledge; but by the rules of the war, the federation still expanded, and adventure at least was not dead. Though the cities slept, there was always a new jungle to explore. Though the arteries hardened, new blood flowed in them.

  For one of the most rewarding devices of the Self-perpetuating War was that system of exiling defeated warriors to which Ishrail fell victim. The exiles, stripped of all proof of their former way of life, were marooned on unfederated planets. There they had to battle with what the uninvestigated local life had to offer.

  After a decade, however, inspectors were dispatched to see what had become of the exile. Often they found him dead; often they found him lord of a local tribe. If the former, nothing was lost except obsequies; if the latter, much might be gained, for the natives were being helped toward a point where they might be deemed fit to join the federation. When the inspectors, after the statutory decade, came to look for Ishrail, they found him still surviving; indeed, the natives had by now impelled him into a top income bracket.

  Reports on the situation flashed back to Galactic HQ. Stipulations, specifications, recommendations circulated around the solemn tables of the Galactic Council. Motions were proposed, facts were tabulated, statistics were discussed, files were filed. The debate creaked to a conclusion. Ishrail was dead when Earth was voted into the Federation.

  If it could be said that a stale air lay over the heart of government, few would have ventured to detect it elsewhere. For most people; as ever, the past was no more than a time in which their
grandfathers lived, the future meant the next few decades. Hope manifested itself everywhere, like phosphorescence in a dark sea; and why not?

  For it was — again, as ever — a time of miracles.

  The ocean seemed to be breathing shallowly, like a child asleep, when the first lemmings reached it. In all the wide sea, no hint of menace existed. Yet the first lemmings paused daintily on the very verge of the water, peering out to sea and looking about as though in indecision. Unavoidably, the pressure of the marching column behind pushed them into the tiny wavelets. When their paws became wet, it was as if they resigned themselves to what was to come. Swimming strongly, the leaders of the column set off from the shore. All the other lemmings followed, only their heads showing above water. A human observer would have said they swam bravely; and unavoidably he would have asked himself: To what goal do the lemmings imagine they are heading? For what grand illusion are they prepared to throw away their lives?

  All down the waterway, craft moved. Farro Westerby stood at the forward port of his aquataxi, staring ahead and ignoring the water traffic moving by him. His two fellow Isolationists stood slightly apart, not speaking. Farro’s eye was on the rising structure on the left bank ahead. When the aquataxi moored as near to this structure as possible, Farro stepped ashore; glancing back impatiently, he waited for one of his companions to pay the fare.

  “Wonderful, isn’t it?” the taxi man said, nodding toward the strange building as he cast off. “I can’t ever see us putting up anything like it.”

  “No,” Farro said flatly, walking away ahead of his friends.

  They had disembarked in that sector of the capital called Horby Clive Island. Located in the government centre of New Union, most of it had been ceded to the Galactics a year earlier. In that brief time, using Earth labour for the rough work, they had transformed the place. Six of their large, irregular buildings were already completed. The seventh was now going up, creating a new wonder for the world.