The Helianx Proposition/page 34

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Commentary


The basic biology of the Helianx has remained something of a mystery to latter-day planetary scientists. Quite how life evolved in the early superuniverses has never been fully understood, since little evidence remains of the species created so many millions of years ago. That the Helianx were masters of their own biological processes is clear from the instructions laid out for Noe by the computers; but the concept that sHe was to meld hir DNA with another species entirely was something the Helianx had never explored, or even considered.

It is thought that in those early days of Creation, the Beings of the Inner Worlds, whose function it was to design and lay down the patterns of evolutionary life, were experimenting with some very different reproductive strategies. The essentially hermaphroditic nature of the Helianx, in the sense that each creature was capable of expressing both male and female sexual organs, had allowed them a wide measure of control over their biological destiny.

Over time, and through their studied practice of eugenics, the Helianx had found that there had been periods in their development when it had been appropriate to procreate by a more normal mixing of chromosomes that results from the sexual coupling of two, or more, creatures. Once they had stabilized their population, their preferred method of reproduction became internal insemination, a form of procreation they thought of as auto-cloning. While this had somewhat reduced the genetic diversity, they observed that the young ones delivered in this way possessed the more finely developed psychic sensitivities required for serial reincarnation. It was also through this spiritual process that the Helianx had first been able to create their telepathic Web, which subsequently became so central to their lives.

Planetary anthropologists of the sacred have recently suggested that serial reincarnation was more widely practiced in the earlier eras in the evolution of intelligent life. This had the evident advantage of producing extremely conservative cultures, which then served to stabilize the gradual growth of sentience in the universes of time and space.

The downside, however, which the Helianx had the cosmic misfortune to experience so directly, was that this very conservatism had ill-prepared them for the disaster facing their world. The stability that had served them so well for many millions of years in their underwater world suddenly held no value for them. A growing panic had rippled endlessly through the Web, making it almost impossible for any of them to focus on what was happening to them. They had lost almost three-quarters of their number in the global catastrophe and the survivors, those who had supported the stringent eugenics, had blamed themselves for so slavishly following the traditions of their ancestors. This bruising realization had led them to ensure that they would rebuild their genetic diversity when they were safely established on the Great Ship.

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