"Judith Merril - The Lonely" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merril Judith)

 Originating as a social-colonizing lichen, on a heavy planet, withтАФeven at its primeтАФa barely
adequate atmosphere, the Arlemites combined smallness of individual size with limited locomotive
powers and superior air and water retentive ability. They developed, inevitably, as a highly psioid
cultureтАФas far to one end of the psichophysical as the Terrans are to the other. (My spelling up there. I
think it represents true meaning better than "psycho.") The constantly thinning choice was between
physical relocation and a conscious evolutionary measure which this mature psioid race was far better
equipped to undertake: the Arlemites now exist as a planet-wide diffusion of single-celled entities,
comprising just one individual, and a whole species.

(Visual stuff here helps establish conceptтАФas if you or I just extended the space between cells.)

It seems especially ironic that the Arlemites were not only one of the oldest and most psioid of
peoplesтАФso that they had virtually all the accumulated knowledge of the Galaxy at their disposalтАФbut
were also symbiote products. This background might have enabled them to comprehend the Terran mind
and the problems confronting the visitorsтАФexcept for the accidental combination of almost total
psi-blindness in the Terrans, and the single-sexed complement of the ship.
The visitors could not perceive their hosts. The hosts could find no way to communicate with the
visitors. The full complement of the ship,, eventually, came down in launches, and lived in them,
hopelessly, while they learned that their viability had indeed been completely lost in space. There was no
real effort to return to the ship and continue the voyage. The ranks thinned, discipline was lost, deaths
proliferated. Finally, it was only a child's last act of rebelliousness that mitigated the futility of the tragedy.
The last child saw the last adult die, and saw this immobility as an opportunity to break the most
inviolable of rules. She went out of the launchтАФinto near-airlessness that killed her within minutes.
But minutes were more than enough, with the much longer time afterwards for examination of the
dead brain. It was through the mind of this one child, young enough to be still partially free of the rigid
mental framework that made adult Terrans so inaccessible to Arlemites, that the basis was gained for
most of the knowledge we now have.
Sorrowingly, the Arlemites generated an organism to decompose the Terrans and their artifacts,
removing all traces of tragedy from the planet's surface. Meanwhile, they studied what they had learned,
against future needs.
The technological ingenuity of these young sexuals will be apparent when I tell you that only four
decades after the departure of that ill-fated ship, they were experimenting with ultra-dimensional travel.
Even at the time of the landing at Aldebaran, ultra-di scouts were already exploring the systems closest to
Sol. EventuallyтАФwithin a decade after the child's deathтАФone of these came to Aldebaran, and sighted
the still-orbiting Mother Ship.
A second landing was clearly imminent. The Arlemites had still devised no way to aid this species to
live in safety on their planet, nor did they have any means to communicate adequately with psi-negatives
whose primary perceptions were aural and visual. But they did have, from the child's mind, a working
knowledge of the strongest emotional symbols the culture knew, and they had long since devised a
warning sign they could erect for visual perception. The statue of the Woman of Earth was constructed in
an incredibly brief time through the combined efforts of the whole Arlemite consciousness.

They had no way to know that the new ship, designed for exploration, not colonizing, and equipped
with ultra-di drive, which obviated the long slow traveling, was crewed entirely by males. Even had they
known, they did not yet comprehend the extreme duality of the two-sexed double-culture. So they built
their warning to the shape of the strongest fear-and-hate symbols ofтАФa female.
(Shot of statue, held for some time, angle moving slowly. No narration. Assuming that
emotional-projection notionтАФand I think we mustтАФthe timing here is such that I believe they first project
what they seem to think a human female would feel, looking at it. I tried women on staff here. They
focused more on phallic than female component, but were just as positive in reactions as males.????