The Helianx Proposition/page 27
When the Helianx designed the Great Ship, their computers had insisted on including a large simulacrum of Womb Planet to be buried deep within the hold of the craft. This was not to be a mere hologram, but needed to be fabricated directly into the structure of the ship. The Helianx had been advised to fashion their substitute world as a simulation of their planet at the point at which there were still large lakes separated by dry and sandy mesas. The computers had wanted to duplicate the most challenging environment the Helianx had had to face in those dreadful last years. But they had relented slightly when the Elders had suggested that it would be far more valuable to include a wider range of physical conditions. They had maintained that in this manner the younger Helianx--born after their world had been destroyed--would have some idea of what it was like to swim in the constricted and diminishing waters of their home planet. In their omnisentient wisdom, the computers had understood that it was important for the Helianx to have a sentimental remembrance of the glorious days before the nova. Although the compromise reached did not completely satisfy either party, the spacious lakes had allowed the Elders to initiate the young ones into an admittedly vague reminder of what life had been like in an increasingly distant past.
In retrospect, we can now appreciate that even in those early stages of shipbuilding, and well before they had finished crunching the numbers on the many cosmologies they had collected, the computers had been starting judiciously to prepare the Helianx for the trials ahead. Later, the Elders were grateful for this fortunate prescience. However, they still remained profoundly disturbed by the sight of those bleak and barren hills, on the rare occasions they were required to accompany a young initiate to the simulated world in the hold of the ship. The pair would slip into the water-filled tunnels that linked the maze of chambers to the furthest and most private reaches of the craft, where they had located the enormous simulacrum. Without surfacing, the Elder would guide hir young companion directly into the great central lake. Then, by placing hir massive body between the coastline and the sight line of hir younger ward, they were both able conveniently to avoid any thought of those barren, sandy hills, and the frightful memories that the devastated landscape invariably raised.
Planetary psychohistorians have since speculated that whilst the Helianx might well have dedicated themselves to investigating the physical and spiritual causes for the demise of their world, they clearly had not come to emotional terms with the trauma. Some have suggested that it was by consistently ignoring the implications of the intense gravitational field and the harsh conditions of the arid desert above the waterline, that the collective consciousness of the Helianx had developed what might be considered a carapace of psychic scar tissue.
Over time, this level of profound denial resulted in a cultural taboo which effectively discouraged all the younger Helianx from exploring the arid wastes: All, apparently, with the exception of Noe.
