Read Online Galaxies Like Grains of Sand by Brian W. Aldiss - Free Book Online
Authors: Brian W. Aldiss
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Some undertook vast new enterprises of labour. Micro-miniaturizing themselves, they saw to the regular pollination of plants; their enterprises encroached on work previously undertaken by sundry phyla of insects, bees, wasps, flies and butterflies. Rendered superfluous, these familiar denizens of Earth which had moved over the world long before even the War Millennia, faded away, and were no more. The machines replaced them, continuing ceaselessly to replace themselves with new models which finally resembled in every detail the organics they had superseded.
Mankind was not replaced. From machine-life, purpose was never absent; even the meditations of the Vehicularies, abstruse though they were, directed themselves towards pragmatic goals. The consciousness of the machine was like the directionality of water, which will flow only in the direction of down, and need not take thought to do so. The consciousness of mankind was a more subtle thing, less directed, capable on occasion of flowing in all directions at once.
Yet throughout the Mingled Millennia, mankind was no more than a huddle of tribes, existing in commensalisms with the swarming machine life. Generation succeeded generation, engaged in little more than generation — or little less, for regeneration is a prime response to the energies unleashed by the explosion of primal plasmas of the universe.
Among these tribes, the Solites were little more than barbarians, going by ancient reckonings. Their social organizations were by no means complex; in their homes they often walked barefoot on dirt floors; yet they had so far cast away materialist thinking as to attain a direct command over the world of the sub-atomic.
We see the Solites now as mysterious. They lived in a world of mysteries. That at least is a permanent factor in the ever-changing equations of existence.
The hooves of the slow-treading horse stirred ancient dusts which quickly settled again. Occasionally they crushed a rare clover or lavender, and tiny pseudo-bees rose humming to dart for safety.
The old man was eighty years of age, give or take a few millennia. Age had made him as light and hollow as an ancient willow; he sat gracefully on the white stallion as it crossed to the Vale of Apple Trees.
Spying became Yalleranda. When he watched the old man from cover, tensions added a piquant maturity to his sharp young face. The flesh of his body was smooth as apple skin, his movements were quick. He had no playmates but imaginary ones. In his eighth year, he was possessed by knowledge of some things he had only just found — a quality he detected in the old man. He followed the stallion and the trail of crushed lavenders instinctively, as wolves follow an ailing reindeer.
The old man’s name was Chun Hwa. This much Yalleranda had learned from people in his village, lounging artlessly against old packing cases outside the village’s one drinking house. Anything else he knew about the old man he had discovered for himself, through covert observation.
Although he sensed the old man to be his prey, he was also afraid of him. Cautious. Eight years is only eight years away from a state much resembling death; the memory of nonexistence breeds caution between generations.
The white stallion had climbed Blighted Profile every morning of the last week, lured perhaps by the calm fine weather when sunshine was the colour of falling leaves. Picking its way among boulders still seared by the ancient heat of devastation, it climbed until the black folds of land dropped away to one side whilst, on the other side, the Vale appeared like a hollow palm dipped in sweetness. Here the stallion halted, stretching forth its neck to snuff into its velvet nostrils scents of growing things before it turned to crop grass. With its neck arched to the ground, it left Chun Hwa perched in his big carved saddle like a pulpit, surveying the two worlds of good and bad earth.
Yalleranda followed, concave belly almost touching
Mankind was not replaced. From machine-life, purpose was never absent; even the meditations of the Vehicularies, abstruse though they were, directed themselves towards pragmatic goals. The consciousness of the machine was like the directionality of water, which will flow only in the direction of down, and need not take thought to do so. The consciousness of mankind was a more subtle thing, less directed, capable on occasion of flowing in all directions at once.
Yet throughout the Mingled Millennia, mankind was no more than a huddle of tribes, existing in commensalisms with the swarming machine life. Generation succeeded generation, engaged in little more than generation — or little less, for regeneration is a prime response to the energies unleashed by the explosion of primal plasmas of the universe.
Among these tribes, the Solites were little more than barbarians, going by ancient reckonings. Their social organizations were by no means complex; in their homes they often walked barefoot on dirt floors; yet they had so far cast away materialist thinking as to attain a direct command over the world of the sub-atomic.
We see the Solites now as mysterious. They lived in a world of mysteries. That at least is a permanent factor in the ever-changing equations of existence.
The hooves of the slow-treading horse stirred ancient dusts which quickly settled again. Occasionally they crushed a rare clover or lavender, and tiny pseudo-bees rose humming to dart for safety.
The old man was eighty years of age, give or take a few millennia. Age had made him as light and hollow as an ancient willow; he sat gracefully on the white stallion as it crossed to the Vale of Apple Trees.
Spying became Yalleranda. When he watched the old man from cover, tensions added a piquant maturity to his sharp young face. The flesh of his body was smooth as apple skin, his movements were quick. He had no playmates but imaginary ones. In his eighth year, he was possessed by knowledge of some things he had only just found — a quality he detected in the old man. He followed the stallion and the trail of crushed lavenders instinctively, as wolves follow an ailing reindeer.
The old man’s name was Chun Hwa. This much Yalleranda had learned from people in his village, lounging artlessly against old packing cases outside the village’s one drinking house. Anything else he knew about the old man he had discovered for himself, through covert observation.
Although he sensed the old man to be his prey, he was also afraid of him. Cautious. Eight years is only eight years away from a state much resembling death; the memory of nonexistence breeds caution between generations.
The white stallion had climbed Blighted Profile every morning of the last week, lured perhaps by the calm fine weather when sunshine was the colour of falling leaves. Picking its way among boulders still seared by the ancient heat of devastation, it climbed until the black folds of land dropped away to one side whilst, on the other side, the Vale appeared like a hollow palm dipped in sweetness. Here the stallion halted, stretching forth its neck to snuff into its velvet nostrils scents of growing things before it turned to crop grass. With its neck arched to the ground, it left Chun Hwa perched in his big carved saddle like a pulpit, surveying the two worlds of good and bad earth.
Yalleranda followed, concave belly almost touching
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