Return to Eden

by Harry Harrison

  Therefore I sought the fundamental facts of our existence and questioned them. But when I did I received only pragmatic answers. Answers such as when this certain thing is done that certain thing will result. But this is an observation and not a reason. The most basic and most important questions about our lives were never asked. Not only were they not asked, they were never even considered. Although all of life is taken under observation and shown to be mutable, our own existence as Yilanè was considered to be an exception. Yet this is impossible since we are one with all other life.

  Seeing this and understanding this I took the process of asking questions, then seeking the true answers, as my model of mental discipline and mind development. My first consideration was the most important consideration of all: life and death. Yilanè live and die as all creatures live and die. With a single major exception. A Yilanè abolished from her city by her eistaa will fall and die without a blow being struck. Yet this same Yilanè when obeying a benevolent order by her eistaa to leave the city, and then return, will not die. Why? What is the special control over life and death that the eistaa have? What could it be?

  It could not be physical, for only communication is exchanged. But it had to be something shared by all Yilanè. Could it be that there is a higher or more basic force, invisible, unseen, yet universal? If so, what must this force be like? Is it unique to Yilanè or is it a force that unites all forms of life, even though we have never sought for it or attempted to examine it before? Is there a unity of some kind on which all depends, something that all forms of life have in common that is much more significant than our apparent differences? If one could know such a source, become consciously aware of it, would one not then become better able to affirm life and the strength of life, and thus be better able to understand the reality behind or within the various appearances of everyday life, existence and struggle?

  SIX

  There is an Order of Interdependence within and sustaining all living things, an Order that is more than those living things themselves, but also an Order in which all living things participate, knowingly or unknowingly—an Order that has existed since the Egg of Time.

  With the new vision of mind, we see the Order of Interdependence of all things. When seen in its entirety and observed to be functioning correctly, this Order is a coordinated totality of parts functioning in harmonious relativity.

  In this harmonious relationship within the Order, competition occurs only as the result of ignorance of the complexity of interrelationships, as well as from seeing only a part of the totality and one’s self as a distinct, separate part—as if one were the whole and independent of others and other parts. In all truth, in this interdependent order, one’s own worth is achieved and realized by helping others to realize their own worth.

  The worth of self must be understood and realized in relation to the whole. This provides for and fosters self-affirmation as the appropriate good, but a self-affirmation of Life wherein one affirms self as part of the whole, which is the Way of Life. This is quite different from, and moves well beyond, the egoism of an eistaa and the pragmatism of Yilanè cities. It is more like the warm relationship of efenselè within the seaborne efenburu, where such peaceful cooperation and harmony seem natural. But it is natural and without conscious consideration. Though unremarked until now this Order has existed since the Egg of Time.

  We can know this Order and understand it because there is a correlation of rational order between the workings of the developed mind and the order of all things in the domain of the Spirit of Life. The laws of our nature are part of the pervasive order of the Way of Life. It is an illusion to think of personal uniqueness in the sense of individual isolation. Each individual is equal in being part of the whole. Individuality is real, but individuality only within the equality in belonging to the City of Life, being part of that city as a Yilanè is part of a physical city, not as separated entities. Our minds are limited instances of the Spirit of Life as expressed through thought; our bodies are instances of the Spirit of Life as expressed through extension; our lives are instances of the Spirit of Life as expressed through affirmation of life.

  Insofar as we understand these interrelationships of minds to minds, of bodies to bodies, of lives to lives, our minds are enlarged and in this way lose their limitations and the restrictions manifested when we tend to consider them uniquely ours. By knowing and understanding this Order and living in accord with it, we become affirmers of that Order and of life.

  SEVEN

  Daughters of Life are enabled and obligated, by the recognition and understanding of that Order and in loyalty to the Spirit of Life, to live for peace and affirmation of life.

  Once seen, known and understood, the newness, strangeness and beauty of this Way and Order of Life and of Efeneleiaa may tempt us to suspend our activities and reside only in meditation or ecstatic enthrallment of the vision. Thus did I live until I became aware of the dangers of this isolation. For to do this only would be to overlook and ignore the way that each of us can benefit self and others and fulfill self and whole. This may be accomplished by working peacefully with others in cooperative harmony to affirm Life.

  Since the whole operates better when all parts consciously operate together for the affirmation of the whole which is the reaffirmation of the parts, all Daughters of Life—we who know and understand the Way and Order—by the very fact of our awareness, also have an obligation to spread this knowledge of Life and the Spirit of Life to others. Efeneleiaa’s way is the way of harmony, the way of peace and cooperation among all citizens of her City.

  EIGHT

  Daughters of Life bear the responsibility to help all others to know the Spirit of Life and the Truth of the Way of Life.

  We who know the Way must help others to learn and understand, to consciously follow the Spirit of Life. However when this truth is stated two immensely important questions arise. Firstly, how can we do this in the face of those who will our deaths? Secondly, how can we maintain the peace and harmony that affirms while we continue to live by causing death? Must we cease to eat to avoid killing that which nourishes us?

  Firstly, just as every day has two parts, a dark side and a bright side, so do we have two opposed forces dwelling within us. The darkness of the will to death and the brightness of the will to life. So even those who hate us the most have within them the will of life as well, and this is in accord with Efeneleiaa. Our affirmation of life will change those who live in affirmation of death, just as this knowledge changed us.

  The answer to the second is that if we do not eat we will die. We sit at the summit of a great vine of interrelated life that begins with insensate plants, continues up through more complex forms of plants to the herbivores to the carnivores, to us. It appears ordained that each cell in this vine of life must exist to nourish the cell above that culminates in Yilanè, then in us, the only part of the vine to understand the totality of it. Therefore there is no act of killing or of death but only the act of nourishing. Taking the life of an animal or fish for food is not the negation of life but a form of the affirmation of life. That life contributes to sustaining another life and thus becomes a way of strengthening life. So it is and so it has been with all life forms in the sea, on land and in the air since the Egg of Time.

  Yet to take life needlessly, or to kill for reasons other than the need for food, is the negation of life, the violation of the Way of Life and an offense to the Spirit of Life. It is to avoid such violation and negation that the Daughters of the City of Life must follow this Way and teach others to follow the Way of harmony and peace and the affirmation of Life—for Peace is the Way of Life that reigns in the domain of the Spirit of Life.

  Translator’s Note

  Here the translation from the Yilanè ends.

  THE TANU

  * * *

  The history of the Earth is written in its stones. While the are still unanswered questions, the overall history of our planet from the Palaeozoic Era up to today
is recorded in fossil remains. This was the age of ancient life, 605 million years ago, when the only creatures in the warm and shalllow seas were worms, jellyfish and other backboneless animals. The continents then were still joined together in a single large landmass that has been named Pangea.

  Even then some of the sea creatures were using lime to build shells for protection and support. The development of internal skeletons came later, with the first fish. Later fish had lungs and lobe-like fins that could be used to support them when they emerged from the sea and ventured onto the land. From these the amphibians developed about 290 million years ago, the ancestors of the first reptiles.

  The first dinosaurs appeared on Earth just over 205 million years ago. By the time the first sea-filled cracks were appearing in Pangea 200 million years ago, the dinosaurs had spread all over the world, to every part of the first giant continent that would later separate into the smaller continents we know today. This was their world, where they filled every ecological niche, and their rule was absolute for 135 million years.

  It took a worldwide disaster to disturb their dominance. A ten-kilometer-wide meteor that struck the ocean and hurled millions of tons of dust and water high into the atmosphere. The dinosaurs died. Seventy percent of all species then living died. The way was open for the tiny, shrew-like mammals—the ancestors of all mammalian life today—to develop and populate the globe.

  It was galactic chance, the dice-game of eternity, that this great piece of rock hit at that time, in that manner, and caused the global disturbance that it did.

  But what if it had missed? What if the laws of chance had ruled otherwise and this bomb from space had not hit the Earth? What would the world be like today?

  The first and most obvious difference would be the absence of Iceland, for these volcanic islands mark the place where the meteor struck and penetrated to the mantle below.

  The second greatest difference would be in the history of global climate, still not completely understood. We know that different ice ages came and went—but we do not know why. We know that the polarity of the Earth has changed in the past, with the north magnetic pole where the south is now—but we do not know why. It seems a certainty that if the meteor had not hit and the incredible atmospheric change had not occurred, that the same progression of ice ages and accompanying continent building would not have occurred in precisely the same manner.

  Look at our world as it might have been.

  The rule of the dinosaurs is unbroken. The world is theirs and they are dominant on every continent—and the Yilanè rise above them all.

  Except in the western hemisphere. Although South America is dominated by reptiles this is not completely true to the north. The land bridge of Central America, that connects North and South America, has been sunk beneath the ocean at different geological times. At one crucial time the break coincided with the spread of the vast sea that covered most of North America. The ice sheet of the glaciers that next came south stretched almost to the edge of this inland sea so that for millions of years the climate was northern, barely temperate in midsummer. The cold-blooded species died out and the warm-blooded species became dominant. They expanded and developed and became the dominant life-forms of this land mass.

  In time, as the ice sheets withdrew, the mammals expanded north. By the time the land bridge of Central America rose from the sea again the warm-blooded creatures ruled the continent between the oceans. Yet they could not stand against the slow return of the reptiles. There is no defense, other than retreat, from armored creatures weighing 80 tons or more.

  Only in the north, in the foothills and the mountains, could the mammals survive. Among them were the New World primates, from whom the Tanu are descended.

  There are no Old World mammals here because the Old World is saurian. There are no bears or canines. But the New World deer abound, from small species to immense ones as large as a moose. The mastodons are here as are many marsupials including saber-tooth tigers. Mammalia in rich diversity live in the fertile band south of the ice and north of the cold-blooded saurians.

  Most of the Tanu, imprisoned by a harsh environment, have never developed beyond the hunter-gatherer stage. But at this they are immensely successful. There are some exceptions, like the Sasku, who have moved on to a stable existence of neolithic farming. They have developed the settled skills of pottery and weaving, as well as a more complex and stratified society. But this does not mean that they are superior in any way to the hunting Tanu who have a rich language, simple art forms, many survival skills and a basic family group relationship.

  The same might be said of the Paramutan who occupy a perilous ecological niche in the subarctic. Their skills are manifold, their culture small and communal. They are completely dependent upon the hunt and upon the single marine creature, the ularuaq, for their material existence.

  THE MARBAK LANGUAGE

  Marbak, like the other languages spoken by the Tanu, is a modern dialect of the lost parent language that has been named Eastern Coastal. In Marbak ‘man’ is hannas, the plural hannasan. Variations are hennas in Wedaman, hnas in Levrewasan, neses in Lebnaroi, etc.

  All of the names of these small tribal groups are descriptive, e.g. Wedaman means ‘the island ones’; Levrewasan ‘tent-black-ones’, that is the people of the black tents. Like man, hannas, woman linga, plural lingai, has widespread similarity. A person, sex not specified, is ter, while the plural tanu is generally accepted as referring to all other people.

  The most common masculine noun declension is:

  THE PARAMUTAN

  * * *

  Like the Tanu, the Paramutan are descended from the New World primates. Although fossil evidence is lacking, gene analysis reveals that Tanu and Paramutan are genealogically quite close and only their great physical separation has prevented inbreeding up until this time. Although superficial resemblance does not seem to bear this out, i.e. the furcovered Paramutan and the relatively hairless Tanu, it should be noted that both groups have approximately the same number of hair follicles. Many Tanu are born with rudimentary tails, merely an external projection of the coccyx, which contain exactly the same number of bones as the Paramutan tail.

  Therefore the obvious physical differences between the groups are of little importance; what is relevant are the social and cultural factors. The Paramutan migrated further north than any of the other primates. We may postulate population pressure from behind or relevant technology that made subarctic existence first a possibility, then a necessity. Their dependence upon a single major source for food, raw materials, existence itself (the ularuaq) allows no other possibility. Their use of north-temperate materials (wood for their boats, oak-tanning of hides) is still important—but the ularuaq is irreplaceable to their existence as their culture is constituted now.

  It must be pointed out that Paramutan is a misnomer since this is a Marbak word that means “raw-meat-eaters”. The correct term in their own language is Angurpiaq, meaning “real people”, for this is how they see themselves. In their solitary existence in the northern wastes they feel, with some good reason, that they are the real people, the only people. This is why they call the Tanu Erqigdlit, the fantasy people. Strangers who come from an unreal world who therefore must be unreal themselves.

  ENVIRONMENT

  There are many more living creatures in the sea than on the land—and many more kinds. Life began in the sea and all of the major animal groups have many representatives still living there. The basis of all open ocean productivity is the floating unicellular algae. These microscopic plants live only in the top few meters of water where they can obtain energy from the sun. There are about 600 common kinds of algae which form the basis of the food chain. They are first eaten by tiny planktonic animals, the most common of which is the copepod crustacea of the genus Calanus. (The commonest animal on Earth—both by numbers and weight.) These are eaten in turn by larger, shrimp-like crustacea as well as many other animals including jellyfish, arrow-worms, ba
by fish, many larvae of molluscs and squid, as well as even larger benthic crustacea such as crabs and lobsters.

  The product of all this activity is a slow rain of corpses and excreta that sinks down to the bacteria on the ocean bed. The essential nutrients, particularly nitrogen and potassium produced by the bacteria, are carried away by the deep-sea currents. This is the primary source of the abundant life in the polar oceans. Despite the low temperature and lack of light their productivity is high and virtually continuous. For the cold is indeed the source of the ingredients that nourish life. The temperature of the surface water is a chill four degrees centigrade—the warm currents from the south range from five to eight degrees. The warmer water rises through the colder, denser water to feed the abundant life on the surface.

  An unusual feature of the ice shelf is the qunguleq that fills an ecological niche that is empty in the world as we know it. The cold eco-system of the qunguleq is unlike any other in the ocean. Rooted in the ice, the great skirt of green tendrils spreads out through the sea, talking nourishment from the water and energy from the sun. This northern meadow is grazed by the ularuaq, the largest living creatures in the world. They tear at the strands with their thick, muscular lips, taking food and life from the qunguleq. They are utterly dependent upon this single food source. With the southerly movement of the arctic icecap the ocean currents have been changed and emerge further to the west. The ularuaq follow the qunguleq and the Paramutan in turn must follow the ularuaq. Every link in the food chain is dependent upon the link before it.