The Helianx Proposition/page 24
Since the Helianx had traditionally maintained their population
at the relatively small number of 210, and compounded by their immensely long lifespans,
the bonding they experienced as a race was so intimate and interdependent
that the prospect of being separated from anyone of their number
was perhaps the most difficult challenge they had had to face up to this point.
As the horrors of their planetary exodus, so many millions of years earlier, dimmed in their collective memory, the Helianx had tended to fall back into their old, easygoing ways of life on Womb Planet. Their explorations of the superuniverse had proved it to be essentially unthreatening. The few belligerent races they had encountered sensibly avoided any confrontation with the mountainous space gypsies. Despite the speeds attainable by the Great Ship, the vastness of the interstellar distances ensured that the Helianx spent much of their time passively suspended in a collective meditational trance, broken only when the ship was placed securely in geosynchronous orbit around one of the planets they were studying. Then, emerging reluctantly from the warm embrace of Oneness, they would individuate sufficiently to entertain the visiting diplomats and ambassadors in the reception chambers of the enormous glider.
The Helianx had learned enough about the nature of the Multiverse by this time to understand how the seven superuniverses were enfolded within the seven primary dimensions of the Multiverse. Those more metaphysically minded had even started to invoke the need for the existence of a Central Universe that lay behind, or, as some suggested, within the very heart of the space/time continuum. They understood also that the first of the seven superuniverses had acted as a guide for the remaining six. As the Multiverse aged and the inhabited worlds of the subsequent superuniverses became settled in Light and Life, the vibrational frequency of matter itself slowed down and grew denser. Consequently, all the species created and seeded throughout the seventh of these superuniverses were formed of a considerably denser material than the creatures existing in the earlier creations.
It was this very factor that the computers counseled might be turned to the space gypsies' advantage in the matter of their ultimate survival. For the Helianx to accomplish their purpose they knew they would have to project the one chosen by their computers on what was essentially a journey down through the space/time continuum, to arrive, hopefully, on a world somewhere in the seventh and final superuniverse.
They had little idea of what this individual Helianx would find when sHe finally arrived on the designated planet, but they suspected that it was going to be a lot more demanding than anything they had previously experienced. It was also next to impossible for the Council of Elders to imagine how the denser medium of the seventh superuniverse would affect the emotional intelligence of the beings inhabiting it. But here again, their computers had reassured them that the challenges would only serve to strengthen the emotional muscles of the Helianx for the demanding tasks that lay ahead of hir.
