“Inevitably clashes occurred between bands, cultures, ideologies.
However, they were always less ferocious than among humans. Empathy is too natural when so much of language is somatic and chemical. Civilizations did rise and fall, with accompanying ruination. I suspect that more often than not the causes were environmental catastrophes, perhaps triggered by misguided agricultural and industrial practices.
“Be that as it may, Tahirians are no more born to sainthood than humans are. When a society no longer works smoothly, respect for the established order decays, the underlying mystique disintegrates, and chaos and suffering follow. This world, too, has known dark ages.
“When science opened a way to the stars, it gave the race unprecedented opportunities, but also enormous challenges.
“Probably in us humans the basic motivations for most of what we do, including science and exploration, fall into two general classes. One is the hope of gain, whether wealth, power, fame, freedom, or security. The other is the need to make sense of the universe, a need that expressed itself originally in myth and religion. I imagine corresponding urges are present in the Tahirians, but not in the same degrees and ways, and more for the group than the individual. To them, I think, science is as much communion as discovery. One shares findings and achievements with one’s society, thereby enhancing it as well as one’s own standing in it. Let us remember that science is itself creative art.
“Thus, I think — in the most vague and general terms, subject to endless qualifications and exceptions — the Tahirians went forth more in search of newness, inspiration, spiritual refreshment, than profit. And for thousands of years their ships traveled among the stars.
“Why, then, did they go no farther? Why did their voyaging fade out as their colonies were abandoned?
“I can only guess. Rather, we can, for our crew has discussed the riddle over and over. Let me list a few considerations.
“The sheer number of stars. Granted that most planets are barren, and most of the living ones bear little more than microbes, still, the variety, the puzzles, the possibilities, within just a few light-years are overwhelming. Data saturation begins to set in.
“As for going farther, one reaches a radius where nobody on the mother world will live long enough to hear about one’s discoveries. Motivation flags.
“The economics is, at best, marginal. Interplanetary enterprise saved human civilization by bringing in material and energy resources that Earth could no longer supply, as well as industrial sites outside the biosphere. But given a recycling nanotechnology, how much is a cargo hauled across light-years worth?
“Planets where people can settle — without needing an investment in life support that goes beyond feasibility — are very rare.
“Will such limitations close in on humankind? Have they already? We do not know.
“Nor do we know whether they were enough by themselves to bring about the extinction of Tahirian starfaring. We have hints that, early on, Tahirians encountered yet another interstellar civilization, which lost heart and gave up for reasons of its own. We also have clues to something else the Tahirians found, something terrible, to retreat and hide from; but this is barely an intimation, and I may be quite wrong about it. We shall have to learn more, pebble by pebble.
“Suffice it now that the Tahirians have long since recalled their colonists, ended their voyagings, scrapped their starships, and settled down into stability. Their clans are globally coordinated, population and economy are steady-state, they do not seem to fear the future. Indeed, they plan on continuing essentially as they are for as long as imagination reaches. By the time, perhaps a billion years hence, that their aging sun has grown so hot that Tahir is uninhabitable, the third planet will be ready for them. No doubt they look beyond even this. Humans could not. Tahirians are not human.
“How they reconcile such an endlessness, which is also such a narrowness, with what I believe is an instinctual need for a hierarchy with meaningful functions, we do not yet know. I suspect that multisensory electronic communications are necessary for dynamic equilibrium. Are they sufficient? Beneath the calm surface, are there tensions and contradictions, as there surely would be in humans?