The Helianx Proposition/page 10

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Commentary


What had begun for the Helianx as the pure delight of flitting in their space glider from inhabited planet to inhabited planet, making contact with all the intelligent species they came across and gathering their belief systems, became, over time, a far more serious affair.

Patterns started to emerge as the Helianx assimilated and pared down more and more of the accumulated wisdom of the beings they encountered. These patterns, although admittedly adding a depth of poignancy to the songs their computers wove for them, also resulted in planting a seed of concern in their group-mind. Easygoing and mild by nature and happily relaxed by the long, indolent, journeys between the star systems, the Helianx were able to repress this vague sense of unease in much the same way as they had attempted to put the demise of their planet out of their collective mind.

Some contemporary galactic exopsychologists,in their recent studies of the Helianx, have pointed out the inadvisability of ignoring such profound trauma by repressing the memory of the pain. They have suggested that the growing intensity of Helianx research may well have been fueled by the slow and inevitable abreaction to the terrifying event in their past. These exopsychologists have further theorized that hearing firsthand of the many trials and tribulations faced by other emerging planetary cultures may have encouraged the Helianx, over time, to come to terms with their own near extinction. The more sympathetic among these social scientists have also proposed that the lack of predation on Womb Planet--the very factor which had allowed the Helianx such placid, pleasant lives--had ill-prepared them for the extremes of negative emotion they were bound to experience in the course of such a catastrophe. They point out that the challenges faced by a species that has to fight its way up the intelligence tree will tend to favor individuals of that species with greatly strengthened emotional bodies.

The Helianx, physically enormous and powerfully intelligent and capable of group-mind melding while retaining individual consciousness, soon became known for their emotionally immature and mischievous natures. To some of the races that the Space Gypsies visited, this ambiguity, this seemingly paradoxical quality of consciousness, caused some confusion when they came to study the new songs the Helianx had brought with them. Yet it was often out of this intellectual tumult that emergent cultures would reach new pinnacles of understanding and for that they were generally grateful to their strange visitors.

For the Helianx themselves, the effect they created on inhabited worlds was of little importance in the light of their own central question--the issue that had started to preoccupy them while they slowly came to terms with their fate as exiles from paradise.

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