Pinnipeds And Bipeds

Poul Anderson, World Without Stars, XI.

The Ai Chun, poorly adapted to life on land, bred a biped for intelligence. The resultant Niao are devoted to the Ai Chun not like a man to a god but like a dog to a man. Some Niao went wild. Independence removed submissiveness but left an instinct of devotion, expressed through monotheism and mutual loyalty. Thus, the Azkashi's worship of the galaxy and community ethos derive from their ancestors' devotion to the "downdevils" - "'the evil ones in the depths.'" (IX, p. 63)

Rorn deduces that the Ai Chun run a large, old empire. As readers, we have not yet suspected such a civilization on the planet because the Meteor crew first met the primitive Azkashi.

The environment lacks awesomeness like stars, volcanoes or seasons. There is the galaxy but the Ai Chun fear its brightness. Thus, they believe that they themselves created everything else in a previous incarnation. Currently, they build and breed. Previously, they created. They have remained unchanged in form for over a billion years, exterminated their natural enemies in prehistory, have acquired empirical knowledge but never discovered or invented scientific method, do not overbreed or fight among themselves, divide up the world between them and expect to eliminate the savages after millions of years of slow and careful expansion - rapid expansion would be disruptive.

Human beings must be subjugated in order to confirm that they had been created for some subsequently forgotten purpose. The mere existence of beings who claim to have come from a vast, complex and independently existent universe threatens the ideology and identity of the Ai Chun. Even a steel knife that could not have been made on the planet and that cannot even be copied is a subversive artifact.

This universe-denying culture does not deserve to survive.