Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [577]
‘Nevertheless, statistics suggest that there must be other planets like Earth. Maybe Armageddon was one. Suppose a race with a wide-ranging diet reaches supremacy and dominates the planet, as happened on Earth before the nuclear war. That race must use technology to do so – from the club and bow-and-arrow onwards. It masters the laws of nature.
‘The time comes when technology is advanced enough for the race to choose alternatives. It can put out into space, or it can destroy its enemies with nuclear weapons.’
‘Suppose there are no enemies on the planet?’ someone called.
‘Then the race invents them. The pressure of competition which technologies generate makes enemies necessary, as we know. And there’s my point. At that stage, poised for a whole new way of life, no longer to be confined to the planet of its birth, on the brink of major discoveries – right then that race is set the big examination question: Can I develop the international social skills required to bring my aggression under control? Can I excel myself and make a lasting truce with my enemies, so that we throw away these vile weapons for good and all?
‘You see what I mean? If the race fails the exam, it destroys its planet and itself, and shows that it was unfit to cross that vital quarantine area space provides.
‘Armageddon was unfit. Its people failed the exam. They destroyed themselves.’
‘But you’re saying everyone everywhere was unfit. We never have found another space-going race.’
The leader laughed. ‘We’re still only on Earth’s doorstep, don’t forget. Nobody is going to come looking for us until they know we’re trustworthy.’
‘And are we trustworthy?’
Amid general laughter, the leader said, ‘Lets tackle Armageddon first. Maybe we can get the old place going again, if we press the right button.’
Further surveys showed what the world had once been. One notable feature was a considerable high-latitude sea which – before the nuclear disaster – had been only partially ice-covered. After the disaster, atmospheric contamination had cooled the umbrella of air, leaving the water of the high-latitude sea warmer than its overlying air. The air was in consequence heated from below, and moisture drawn upwards. Violent high-latitude storms had resulted, probably enough in themselves to finish off any survivors of the nuclear strike. Plentiful snow fell on middle-altitude ground, a plateau once covered by urbanisation. The major glaciation which set in became self-sustaining.
The Outlanders decided to drop what the leader had called vile weapons on the frozen high-altitude sea, in order to ‘get things started’ again. But the ice wilderness remained an ice wilderness. Here, the local tutelary spirit, the biospheric gestalt, was dead.
They were now almost out of fuel. They decided to return to New Earth and conquer it. Their discoveries on Armageddon had provided them with a strategy. Their idea was that one – just one – thermonuclear device dropped over New Earth’s north pole would cause heavy rainfall, transforming the planet. The sea could be enlarged; the local zombies could make themselves useful by cutting canals. More kelp could be encouraged to grow, and eventually more oxygen released into the air. The calculations looked good. To the Outlanders, the decision to try just one more nuclear bomb was a sane one.
So they climbed into their ship, leaving Armageddon to its eons of frost.
For the people who lived on New Earth, one part at least of their only myth came true. The sky cracked and fell.
What were the vital differences here? Why could New Earth never recover, while Earth flourished and put forth new forms like the geonauts?
When the terrestrials developed their empathic link with the gossies of Helliconia, a new factor entered the universe. The terrestrials, whether or not they knew it, were acting as a focus of consciousness for the whole biosphere. The