The Helianx Proposition/page 54
Emerging from an aquatic background, Noe felt a natural affinity for most oceangoing species.
With very few exceptions, biological life on every planet the Helianx had charted invariably needed water to nurture and support its existence.
Just as the DNA principle, with minor variations,
appeared to be common to all life in the universes of space and time,
so also were the same basic chemicals involved in the building blocks of life.
Water was one, for example, which the Helianx had believed to be the sole possession
of Womb Planet, before their planet-hopping explorations had revealed otherwise.
Whether it was carried in the bodies of comets, or locked into polar ice; whether rising as steam from swamps, or falling as rain;
water, that subtle dance of two hydrogen atoms with one of oxygen,
in one form or another, had turned out to be ubiquitous.
While the Helianx had not visited every inhabited planet in the vastness of the Multiverse,
in their experience, where there was water, there was, or soon would be, life.
As more tens of millions of years passed, Noe concentrated on tailoring hirself more comfortably to the scale of other creatures in the oceans. Although sHe preferred to spend hir time with hir own tiny clan, sHe found a certain amount of kinship with the large-brained whales. Sometimes sHe even shared in their baleful songs, harmonizing with them and adding layers of tonal meaning that both mystified and entranced the whales. Many of the cetacean species by this point had developed fairly sophisticated echolocation systems with which they were able to find their prey in murky water. This led naturally to their discovery that the sounds generated by their biosonar could be modulated to contain meaning. But before a complex language was able to evolve, the more sensitive amongst them found that images would spontaneously form in their minds when they communicated with one another. Soon they became more adept at controlling these images, forming and shaping them by manipulating the sound waves. Out of these developments came a rudimentary form of visual telepathy, which allowed a number of the cetacean species to create, over time, mature and benign communities.
Noe noticed that as the cetacean culture flowered, it seemed to act as a beacon, attracting the attention of other curious extraterrestrial races. Most stayed briefly. After observing the generally primitive state of the landbased species, and not wanting to interfere with the orderly progress of evolution, they moved silently on to other worlds more suited to their needs. There was a small group of aquatic beings, however, who came from a planet in the Sirius Star System, and who appeared to Noe to have a remarkable kinship with some of the smaller species of cetaceans. This extraterrestrial race became regular visitors, reappearing every few millennia to help and guide their cetacean cousins in the ways of the Multiverse.
Yet for all this interplanetary interest, Noe understood intuitively that it was not going to be the whales or dolphins with whom sHe was to consummate hir secret mission.
