Galaxies Like Grains of Sand

by Brian W Aldiss

  “We will wait here for you, Farro,” one of the two men said, extending his hand formally. “Good fortune with the Galactic Minister. As the only Isolationist with an extensive knowledge of the Galactic tongue, Galingua, you represent, as you know, our best chance of putting our case for Earth’s remaining outside the Multiplanet Federation.”

  As Farro thanked him and accepted the proffered hand, the other man, a stooping septuagenarian with a pale voice, gripped Farro’s arm.

  “And the case is clear enough,” he said. “These aliens pretend they offer us federation out of altruism. Most people swallow that, because they believe Earth ingenuity must be a valuable asset anywhere in the galaxy. So it may be, but we Isolationists claim there must be some ulterior motive for a superior race’s wanting to welcome in a junior one as they appear to welcome us. If you can get a hint from this Minister Jandanagger as to what that motive is, you’ll have done more than well.”

  “Thank you. I think I have the situation pretty clear,” Farro said sharply, regretting his tone of voice at once. But the other two were wise enough to make allowance for nervousness in time of stress. When he left them to make his way toward the Galactic buildings, their faces held only sincere smiles of farewell.

  As Farro pushed through the crowds of sightseers who stood here all day watching the new building develop, he listened with interest and some contempt for their comments. Many of them were discussing the current announcement on federation.

  “I think their sincerity is proved by the way they’ve let us join. It’s nothing but a friendly gesture.”

  “It shows what respect they must have for Earth.”

  “You can’t help seeing the future’s going to be wonderful, now that we can export goods all over the galaxy. I tell you, we’re in for a boom all around.”

  “Which goes to prove that however advanced the race, they can’t do without the good old Earth know-how. Give the Galactics the credit for spotting that!”

  The seventh building, around which so many idle spectators clustered, was nearing completion. It grew organically like some vast succulent plant, springing from a fiat metal matrix, thrusting along curved girders, encompassing them. Its colour was a natural russet, which seemed to take its tones from the sky overhead.

  Grouped around the base of this extraordinary structure were distilleries, sprays, excavators and other machines, the function of which was unknown to Farro. They provided the raw material from which the building drew its bulk.

  To one side of these seven well-designed eccentricities lay the spacefield. There, too, was another minor mystery. Earth governments had ceded — willingly when they sniffed the prizes to be won from federation — five such centres as that on Horby Clive Island in various parts of the globe. Each centre was being equipped as a spaceport and educational unit in which terrestrials would learn to understand the antiphonal complexities of Galingua and to behave as citizens of a well populated galaxy.

  Even granting vast alien resources, it was a formidable project. According to estimates, at least eight thousand Galactics were working on Earth. Yet on the spacefield sat but one craft, an unlikely looking polyhedron with Arcturan symbols on its hull. The Galactics, in short, seemed to have remarkably few spaceships.

  That was a point he would like to investigate, Farro thought, speculatively eying the inert beacons around the perimeter of the field.

  He skirted them, avoiding the crowds as far as possible, and arrived at the entrance to one of the other six Galactic buildings, quite as eccentric in shape as its unfinished brother. As he walked in, an Earthman in dark-grey livery came deferentially forward.

  “I have an appointment with Galactic Minister Jandanagger Laterobinson,” Farro announced, pronouncing the strange name awkwardly. “I am Farro Westerby, special deputy of the Isolationist League.”

  As soon as he heard the phrase Isolationist League, the receptionist’s manner chilled. Setting his lips, he beckoned Farro over to a small side apartment, the doors of which closed as Farro entered. The apartment, the Galactic equivalent of an elevator, began to move through the building, travelling upward on what

  Farro judged to be an elliptical path. It delivered him into Jandanagger Laterobinson’s room.

  Standing up, the Galactic Minister greeted Farro with amiable reserve, giving the latter an opportunity to sum up his opponent. Laterobinson was unmistakably humanoid; he might, indeed, have passed for an Earthman, were it not for the strangeness of his eyes, set widely apart in his face and half hidden by the peculiar configuration of an epicanthic fold of skin. This minor variation of feature gave to Jandanagger what all his race seemed to possess: a watchful, tensely withdrawn air.

  “You know the reason for my visit, Minister,” Farro said, when he had introduced himself. He spoke carefully in Galingua, the language he had spent so many months so painfully learning; initially, its wide variation in form from any terrestrial tongue had all but baffled him.

  “Putting it briefly, you represent a body of people who fear contact with the other races in the Galaxy — unlike most of your fellows on Earth,” Jandanagger said easily. Expressed like that, the idea sounded absurd.

  “I would rather claim to represent those who have thought more deeply about the present situation than perhaps their fellows have done.”

  “Since your views are already known to me through the newly established Terrestrial-Galactic Council, I take it you wish us to discuss this matter personally?”

  “That is so.”

  Jandanagger returned to his chair, gesturing Farro into another.

  “My role on Earth is simply to talk and to listen,” he said, not without irony. “So do please feel free to talk.”

  “Minister, I represent five per cent of the people of Earth. If this sounds a small number, I would point out that that percentage contains some of the most eminent men in the world. Our position is relatively simple. You first visited Earth over a year ago, at the end of Ishrail’s decade of exile; after investigation, you decided we were sufficiently advanced to become probationary members of the Galactic Federation. As a result, certain advantages and disadvantages will naturally accrue; although both sides will reap advantages, we shall suffer all the disadvantages — and they may well prove fatal to us.”

  Pausing, he scrutinized Jandanagger, but nothing was to be learned from the Minister’s continued look of friendly watchfulness. He continued speaking.

  “Before I deal with these disadvantages, may I protest against what will seem to you perhaps a minor point. You have insisted, your charter insists, that this world shall be arbitrarily renamed; no longer shall it be known as Earth, but as Yinnisfar. Is there any defensible reason why this outlandish name should be adopted?”

  The Minister smiled broadly and relaxed, as if the question had given him the key he needed to the man sitting opposite him. A bowl of New Union sweets lay on his desk; he pushed them across to Farro and, when the latter refused, took a sugary lump and bit it before replying.

  “About three hundred planets calling themselves Earth are known to us,” he said. “Any new claimants to the title are automatically rechristened upon federation. From now on you are Yinnisfar. However, I think it would be more profitable if we discussed the advantages and disadvantages of federation, if that is what you wish to talk about.”

  Farro sighed and resigned himself.

  “Very well,” he said. “To begin with, the advantages to you. You will have here a convenient base, dock and administrative seat in a region of space you say you have yet to explore and develop. Also, it is possible that when arrangements are worked out between us, terrestrials may be engaged to help colonize the new worlds you expect to find in this region. We shall be a cheap manufacturing area for you. We shall produce such items as plastics, clothes, foodstuffs and simple tools which it will be easier for you to buy from us than transport from your distant home planets. Is this correct?”

  “As you point out, Mr Westerby, Earth oc
cupies a key position in the Federation’s present thousand-year plan for expansion. Although at present you can only regard yourselves as a frontier world, at the end of that period you may well be a key world. At the end of ten thousand years — well, your peoples are full of confidence; the omens are good.”

  “In short, there is promotion ahead if we behave ourselves?”

  The acid note in Farro’s voice merely brought a slight smile to Jandanagger’s lips.

  “One is not made head boy in one’s first few days at school.”

  “Let me then enumerate the advantages, as opposed to the promises, which Earth will enjoy from entering your Federation. In the first place, we shall enjoy material benefits: new machines, new toys, new gadgets and some new techniques like your vibro-molecular system of building — which produces, if I may say so, some excruciatingly ugly structures.”

  “One’s tastes, Mr Westerby, have to be trained to appreciate anything of aesthetic worth.”

  “Quite. Or to regard the hideous as normal. However, that brings us to the nonmaterial assets inherent in belonging to your Federation. You plan to revolutionize our educational systems. From nursery school to university, you will inculcate mores, matters and methods foreign to us; Earth will be invaded not by soldiers but by teachers — which is the surest way of gaining a bloodless victory.”

  The wide eyes regarded Farro calmly, but still as if from behind a barricade.

  “How else are we to help Yinnisfarians become citizens of a complex civilization? For a start, it is essential your people learn Galingua. Education is a science and an art for which you have not yet begun to formulate the rules. The whole question is enormously complicated, and quite beyond brief explanation — not that I could explain it, for I am not an educational specialist; those specialists will arrive here when my work is done and the formal membership charters are signed. But to take just one simple point. Your children first go to school at, say, five years old. They go into a class with other children and are separated from their homes; learning becomes at once an isolated part of life, something done in certain hours. And their first lesson is to obey the teacher. Thus, if their education is rated a success, it is because, to whatever extent, they have learned obedience and forfeited independence of mind; and they are probably set at permanent odds with their home environment.

  “Our methods differ radically. We allow no children to enter our schools before the age of ten — but by that time, thanks to certain instructive toys and devices they have been familiar with for years, they will come knowing at least as much as your child at school-leaving age. And not only knowing — behaving, feeling, understanding.”

  Farro was at a disadvantage.

  “I feel like a heathen being told by a missionary that I should be wearing clothes.”

  The other man smiled, got up, and came over to him.

  “Be consoled that that’s a false analogy,” he said. “You are demanding the clothes. And when you wear them, you are certain to admire the cut.”

  All of which, Farro reflected, made the two of them no less heathen and missionary.

  “Don’t look so disconcerted, Mr Westerby. You have a perfect right to be distressed at the thought of your planet being depersonalized. But that is something we would not dream of doing. Depersonalized, you are nothing to yourselves or us. We need worlds capable of making their best personal contribution. If you would care to come with me, I should like to give you perhaps a better idea of how the civilized galaxy functions.”

  Farro rose to his feet. It consoled him that he was slightly taller than the Minister. Jandanagger stood courteously aside, ushered his guest through a door. As they walked down a silent corridor, Farro found his tongue again.

  “I haven’t fully explained why I think that federation would be such a bad thing for Earth. We are progressing on our own. Eventually, we shall develop our own method of space travel, and come to join you on a more equal footing.”

  Jandanagger shook his head.

  “Space travel — travel between different star systems — is not just a matter of being able to build starships. Any post-nuclear culture can stumble on that trick. Space travel is a state of mind. The journey’s always hell, and you never find a planet, however lovely, that suits you as well as the one on which you were born. You need an incentive.”

  “What sort of incentive?”

  “Have you any idea?”

  “I take it you are not referring to interstellar trading or conquest?”

  “Correct.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what sort of an incentive you mean.”

  The Minister gave something like a chuckle and said, “I’ll try and show you presently. You were going to tell me why federation would be a bad thing for Earth.”

  “No doubt it has been to your purpose to learn something of our history, Minister. It is full of dark things. Blood; war; lost causes; forgotten hopes; ages in chaos and days when even desperation died. It is no history to be proud of. Though many men individually seek good, collectively they lose it as soon as it is found. Yet we have one quality which always gives cause for hope that tomorrow may be better: initiative. Initiative has never faded, even when we crawled from what seemed the last ditch.

  “But if we know that there exists a collective culture of several thousand worlds which we can never hope to emulate, what is to prevent us from sinking back into despair forever?”

  “An incentive, of course.”

  As he spoke, Jandanagger led the way into a small, boomerang-shaped room with wide windows. They sank onto a low couch, and at once the room moved. The dizzy view from the window shifted and rolled beneath them. The room was airborne.

  “This is our nearest equivalent to your trains. It runs on a nucleonically bonded track. We are going only as far as the next building; there is some equipment I would like you to inspect.”

  No reply seemed to be required, and Farro sat silent. He had known an electric moment of fear when the room first moved. In no more than ten seconds they swooped to the branch of another Galactic building, becoming part of it.

  Once more leading the way, Jandanagger escorted him to an elevator, which took them down into a basement room. They had arrived. The equipment of which Jandanagger had spoken was not particularly impressive in appearance. Before a row of padded seats ran a counter, above which a line of respirator-like masks hung, with several cables trailing from them into the wall.

  The Galactic Minister seated himself, motioning Farro into an adjoining seat.

  “What is this apparatus?” Farro asked, unable to keep a slight tinge of anxiety from his tone.

  “It is a type of wave-synthesizer. In effect, it renders down many of the wave lengths which man cannot detect by himself, translating them into paraphrased terms which he can. At the same time, it feeds in objective and subjective impressions of the universe. That is to say, you will experience — when you wear the mask and I switch it on — instrumental recordings of the universe — visual and aural and so on — as well as human impressions of it.

  “I should warn you that owing to your lack of training, you may unfortunately gather a rather confused impression from the synthesizer. All the same, I fancy that it will give you a better rough idea of what the galaxy is like than you would get from a long star journey.”

  “Let’s go,” Farro said, clutching his cold hands together.

  Now the entire column of lemmings had embarked into the still water. They swam smoothly and silently, their communal wake soon dissolving into the grandly gentle motion of the sea. Gradually the column attenuated as the stronger animals drew farther ahead and the weaker ones dropped behind. One by one, inevitably, these weaker animals drowned; yet, until their sleek heads finally disappeared below the surface, they still pressed forward with bulging eyes fixed upon the far and empty horizon.

  No human spectator, however devoid of anthropomorphic feeling, could have failed to ask himself what might be the nature of the g
oal that prompted such a sacrifice.

  The inside of the mask was cold. It fitted loosely over his face, covering his ears and leaving only the back of his head free. Again a touch of unreasoning fear shot through him.

  “The switch is by your hand,” the Minister said. “Press it.”

  Ferro pressed the switch. Darkness submerged him.

  “I am with you,” the Minister said steadily. “I have a mask on, too, and can see and feel what you do.”

  A spiral curled out into the darkness, boring its way through nothing — an opaque, smothering nothing as warm as flesh. Materializing from the spiral there issued a cluster of bubbles, dark as polyhedric grapes, multiplying and multiplying as if breathed from an inexhaustible bubble pipe. The lights on their surfaces, glittering, changing, spun a misty web which gradually veiled the operation.

  “Cells are being formed, beaten out in endless duplication on the microscopic anvils of creation. You witness the beginning of a new life,” Jandanagger said, his voice sounding distant.

  Like a curtain by an open window, the cells trembled behind their veil, awaiting life. The moment of its coming was not perceptible. It was only that now the veil had something to conceal within itself; its translucence dimmed, its surface patterned, a kind of blind purpose shaped it into more definite outline. No longer was it beautiful.

  Consciousness simmered inside it, a pinpoint of instinct-plus without love or knowledge, an eye trying to see through a lid of skin. It was not inert; instead, it struggled on the verge of terror, undergoing the trauma of coming into being, fighting, scrabbling, lest it fall back again into the endless gulf of not-being.

  “Here is the afterlife your religions tell of,” Jandanagger’s voice said. “This is the purgatory every one of us must undergo, only it comes not after but before life. The spirit that will become us has to tread the billion years of the past before it reaches the present it can be born into. One might almost say there was something it had to expiate.”