The Helianx Proposition/page 30
The Elders noted that one of the unusual aspects of Noe's sly expeditions
into the simulated desert in the hold of the Great Ship, was the enthusiastic way in which
the young Helianx disconnected hirself from the constant telepathic chatter of the Web.
As with most telepathic species, the Helianx could always act a trifle skittish
around the subject of individuation. It had not come naturally to them.
The planetary trauma, while it was still echoing in the group mind,
had served to discourage all but the youngest amongst them from exploring what it meant to be a singular being.
The Elders would weave their great heads from side to side in gestures of mutual puzzlement, half-horrified and half-fascinated by Noe's seemingly irrational behavior. This concern was only compounded by hir newfound ability to block the Elders' telepathic probings when sHe returned finally from hir lengthy and mysterious visits to the arid desert hidden away in the hold. Being intensely inquisitive by nature, a curiosity fueled by their appreciation of the limitless variety of life forms they had encountered in their journeys, the Elders could only suppress their frustrations in the light of Noe's evident recalcitrance.
The truth of this, however, was rather more straightforward than the Elders might have imagined. Noe had no idea either of quite why sHe was being drawn so consistently back to the inhospitable wastes. She had decided simply to follow hir intuition, or what sHe had come to think of as the clearest of hir inner voices. This development was something new to hir and had only started to manifest as sHe had progressively detached from the easy familiarity of the Web and its constant distractions.
Noe, like all adolescent Helianx, had been taught from infancy about their race's discovery of the intelligence inherent in matter, and how that knowledge had been so vital in allowing the Helianx to fashion their biological artifacts. SHe learned for hirself, along with the other young ones and through much trial and error, how to tickle out the intentions coded into matter on an ultimatonic level; and how to work collaboratively with the apparent proclivity of matter to settle into the natural forms the Helianx observed all around them. SHe knew, too, how this insight had come to form the basis of their understanding of astrophysics. Research consistently revealed that a primal organizing intelligence, working through matter at its most basic level, was actively shaping the space/time continuum. How else, they reasoned, had the stars become stars; how had their families of planets been created in all their wonderful variety and, above all, why had so many of these worlds turned out to be so ideally suited for the evolution of organic, sentient life? The Helianx all agreed that there had to be a fundamental purpose to Creation.
What they had not yet deduced, in spite of their extensive travels through the astral planes, was what they came much later to understand as the celestial realms. At this point in time, and throughout the many millennia of the Helianx diaspora, the intelligent organizing principles, those whose hidden hands lay behind the material universes, had continued to remained a complete mystery to them.
