No matter. In 25,000 years, we haven't had a chance to mature. Because of political pressure, DLE 560 is out into the universe, trying to befriend other intelligences. And so are a host of other peoples from Earth: peoples who owe their allegiance to imaginary lines on Earth's surface. Suppose we do make contact? Can we—man, that is—handle the job? Have we matured? Why are we here?
The learning curve is exponential. It took man nearly 50 years to go from Jenny to jet, from Kittyhawk to Canaveral. It took him little more than a decade to go from Titan to transcontinuum, from exploring Earth to exploring the universe. And man being a contrary, contumacious, cockeyed Cat, it wasn't a good thing, Man.
There were some cynics who thought it was the most miserable thing that could happen to the universe. They based this on the shrieking ambivalence man displayed in the total course of events, primarily bad, he'd created and lived through. He began meekly enough. Hunted and planted and found a little leisure. With that commodity, he set up special caves and began to paint, to sculpture, to philosophize.
Then he changed. Maybe it was the cold draughts in the caves, maybe it was the old lady complaining about the draughts, or maybe it was plain frustration: he'd been trying, for a couple of thousand years, to invent writing and had failed. In any event, man was suddenly different. He found that scrambled brains—his neighbor's—were good eating. Ever the artist, he enjoyed the color of blood much more than those dull old mineral pigments. If a couple of the guys sneaked up behind a herd of horses and suddenly scared them, what fun! The whole herd would stampede off a cliff.
Aesthetic? Certainly. He went back into the caves and tried his hand at dirty pictures; had to give that up, though, until he invented plain brown envelopes and photography. Anyway, he'd lost the touch ... except in one area. These products were works of art, a delight to behold: man was making the damnedest, finest arrowheads and spear points he'd ever seen.
She, who may have jerked him out of the cave in the beginning, continued to warm her feet on his back, with the result that he'd go out and knock over a country rich in coal deposits. She didn't really like it, but she was stuck with it. Certainly, she was carrying out her function. If there were a war or two too many, she could always up production—having discovered how well before they set up cave-keeping. The flutter of an eyelash or an exposed ankle ... she carried out her function, and the population kept rising.
By the opening of the twentieth century, however, she'd grown apprehensive. Man was playing with bigger and bigger boom-boom toys. She tried to exert control, discovered too late it was out of her hands. For one day, man brought home the keenest, ginger-peachiest job of them all. Like maybe he could blow himself to hell with an atomic bomb.
Elders had shaken their heads over it; youngsters had joined them when the fusion bomb came next. And the world settled down to hold its breath while the two leading powers fenced economically—with Russia thrusting and the U. S. parrying.