The Sirian Experiments (13 page)

What Klorathy hoped to achieve by this present excursion into the realm of the dwarves was first of all to encourage them, saying that Canopus was doing what it could. Secondly, he said he would now go out to meet with the Hoppes and the Navahis and put it to them that to harry these excellent craftsmen of the mountains was folly – better rather to become allies with them, to trade, and to stand together with them against the vicious children of Shammat who were
the enemies of both, the enemies of everyone. Therefore, Klorathy asked them – sitting again in the vast cavern under its canopy of twinkling lights, on the warm white sand that the dwarves carried from the outside rivers to make clean shining floors for themselves – leaning forward into the low and immediate light of the electric handlamps: be patient. When –
if –
the tribesmen come offering treaties and trade, then see if ways cannot be found to do this without laying themselves open to traps and treason. For his part, he, Klorathy, pledged himself to do what he could. And so we left that deeply hidden and fantastic realm, with its race of earthy craftsmen, being escorted into the outer air and the blue skies towards which the dwarves lifted their longing and exiled eyes before fleeing away into the earth again.

Now we had to make contact with the tribesmen.

Their lookouts soon saw us as we walked across the rocky and raw landscape, with no aim except to be captured. Which we were, and taken to their camp. This was the usual functional unit of the Modified Two stage. Their skills were less than those of the dwarves, so soon to be extinct. They hunted, and lived on the results of their hunting, and had developed a close harmonious bond with the terrain on which they lived. In which they had their being, as they – as their religion – saw it.

They did us no harm, because they recognized in us something of the stuff of certain legends – all about Canopus. Always of that Empire, never of ours. I drew the attention of my colleagues in the Service when I returned home to the fact that even in territories close to our allotted portion of Rohanda, which might be expected to owe some sort of allegiance to us, to Sirius, it was to Canopus that their higher allegiances were pledged, were given. Why was this? Surely there was a fault here in our presentation of ourselves?

These Hoppes recognized us – all three – as ‘from there', meaning Canopus. So it was as honorary Canopeans that we were welcomed into the camp, and then as guests at a festival that lasted thirty R-days, and nights, which Klorathy
obviously much enjoyed. I cannot say that I did. But I recognized even then that the ability to become part of – I was going to say ‘to sink oneself into', but refrained, because of the invisible moral pressure of Canopus – an unfamiliar scene, a foreign race, even one considered (perhaps out of ignorance) inferior, is one to be admired, commended, and even emulated, if possible. I
did
try to behave as Klorathy did and as Ambien I was doing, as far as he was able. Klorathy feasted and even danced with them, told stories, in their tongue – and yet was able never to be less than Canopus.

And when the feasting was over, I was expecting something on these lines: that Klorathy would say to them: I have some news for you, some suggestions to make, now is the time for us to confer seriously and solemnly and at length, please make arrangements for a formal occasion at which this may be done.

But nothing of the sort happened. Klorathy, in the tent they had allotted to him, and we two Ambiens, in our tents, simply went on as we were, taking part in the life of the tribe.

And now I have to record something that I most bitterly regret, for it set back my understanding for a very long time. Millennia. Long ages. I missed an opportunity then. I shall simply say it, and leave the subject.

I was impatient and restless. I found these Hoppe savages interesting enough and I would have stood it all – the lack of privacy, the flesh food, the casualness and indifference to dirt, the thousand and one taboos and proscriptions of their religion – if I had known the ordeal would have a term. The other Ambien advised patience. I did not listen to him but went to Klorathy and demanded how long he proposed to ‘waste his time on these semibrutes'. His reply was: ‘As long as it is necessary.'

I consulted with Ambien I, who said he would stay with Klorathy, if ‘Klorathy would put up with him' – a humility that annoyed me – and I took our surveillance craft, leaving him dependent on Klorathy for transport, and flew up northwards by myself.

This was the first time a Sirian had
openly
travelled into Canopean territory. Klorathy made no attempt to stop me, or discourage me. Yet he did say, quietly, just before I left: ‘Be careful.' ‘Of what, Klorathy?' ‘All I know is that our instruments seem to indicate some sort of magnetic disturbance – in my view it would be wiser to stay in the centre of a continent rather than anywhere at sea level.' I thanked him for the warning.

Millennia had passed since I travelled this way with Ambien I. From the height I was flying, the terrain mostly showed little signs of change, but there were areas sometimes several minutes flying time across (I was in a Space Conqueror Type III, long since obsolete) where below me was nothing but savagely torn and tumbled rock, stumps of trees, overthrown or shaken mountains. I remembered that the cities of the middle seas, which I had flown over with Ambien, had been shaken into ruin and wondered if this was in fact a particularly seismic time on this always precarious planet. Flying over the areas of islands and broken waters that had been, and would be again, the great empty ocean separating the Isolated Northern Continent and the central landmass, I thought I saw that some islands were quite new, as if they had just been upthrust from the ocean bed. The island that had been covered by that marvellous city surrounded by its great ships had been under the ocean and risen out of it again. It had some rather poor villages on it now. But I wanted to see that area of great inland seas again, and I flew over and around it seeing everywhere near the rocky sunlit shores, ruins and collapsed buildings, some gleaming up from under the waters. But the region of these seas was rich and fruitful and would soon again put forth cities, as it had done so often before. It was, however, discouraging to see how transient
things were and must always be on this planet, and I fell into a state of mind unusual for me, of the generalized discouragement known by us Sirians as ‘existential problem melancholia'. For what I felt was nothing more than the
emotional
expression of our philosophic dilemmas: what were the purposes of plannings, our manipulations, our mastery of nature? I was in the grip of a vision – as I hung there in my little bubble of a spacecraft, looking down at that magically beautiful place (for Rohanda was always that), the brilliant blue seas like great irregular gems in their setting of warm reddish soil – of impermanence, as if this little glimpse of a small part of a small planet was an encapsulation of the whole Galaxy that always, despite its illusions of great stretches of time where nothing much changed, nevertheless did change, always, and it was not possible to grasp a sense of it as lasting or of anything as permanently valuable … I hovered above that lovely but desolating scene for as long as I could bear it and then directed myself northwards again to Adalantaland, for I wanted to see what a peaceful realm run by women would be like on Rohanda in its time of rapid degeneration. Analyses of Adalantaland are plentifully available in our libraries, so I shall confine myself only to my present purposes.

It was a large island among several on the edge of the main landmass. While the middle areas of Rohanda at that time could be described as too hot for comfort, the northern and southern parts were equable and warm and very fruitful. It was a peaceful culture, rather indolent perhaps, and hedonistic, but democratic, and the line of women who were its rulers governed by ‘the grace of Canopus', which were a set of precepts engraved on stones and set up everywhere over the island. There were three main rules, the first saying that Canopus was the invisible but powerful lawgiver of Rohanda and would punish transgressions of its Rule; the second that no individual should consider herself better than another, nor should any individual enslave or use another in a degrading way; the third that no person should take more from the general stock of food and goods than was absolutely necessary.
There were many subdivisions of these precepts. I moved freely over this well-governed and pacific land, and found these laws were known by everyone and on the whole kept, though the third was perhaps rather freely interpreted. I was told that the Mothers had other, secret, laws given them direct by ‘those from the stars'. I was not considered as emanating from ‘the stars'. It happened that in physical type I was not far off from the Adalantaland general type: they were mostly fair-haired people, pale-skinned, with eyes often blue, and on the whole tending towards a large build, and plenty of flesh. My height and thinness caused much concern for my general health. I spent time with the currently reigning Queen, or Mother, who lived no better than her subjects, nor was in any way set up over them. The focus of my special curiosity was one that could not be shared with them. I wanted to know how it was that this realm managed to be so well ordered, lacking crime and public irresponsibility, when these qualities were not to be expected of Rohanda in this time of a general falling-off. The beautiful and generous and genial Queen, or Mother, of course did not realize that this paradise of hers – for she and her subjects saw their land as one, and knew they were much envied by more barbarous races – was not an apex of a long growth from a low culture to a high one, but was nothing but a shadow of former greatness that lay on the other side of that Catastrophe, the failure of the Lock. There were hints in old legends of a disaster of some sort, and many to do with the ‘Gods' who were watching over them and ‘would come again'. They had come in the time of this Queen's great-great-great-great-grandmother. From the description I recognized Klorathy. He had given fresh precepts, somewhat at an angle to those used previously; had – also – rebuked, and had strengthened in them their purpose towards the maintenance of their fair and smiling land.

And the secret laws? The Queen was not at all reluctant to share these with me; the only reason, she said, that they were not given out to everyone, and written up on the public stones, was that they were so precise and pernickety – yes, I
recognized Canopus here! – ordinary people, preoccupied as they had to be with ordinary life, could not be expected to bother with them.

These precepts were the same as those given to us Sirians by Canopus, used by us and already considered as Sirian, at least to the extent that it was hard to remember their Canopean origin. I even remember a feeling of affront and annoyance at hearing the Queen describe the things as from Canopus, remember chiding myself for this absurdity.

The Queen took time and trouble to explain these regulations, which were all to do with what substances would protect and guard, how to use them, the times to use them, the exact disposition of artefacts and how and when, certain types of place to avoid and others to seek out … and so on. There is no point in listing them, for they were not always the same, but changed, and we had been told how to change them and in accordance with what cosmic and local factors.

But I noted that in what the Queen was telling me were inaccuracies. Slight divergencies from prescription. It was a disturbing experience for me to sit quietly listening while this competent and friendly lady explained to me the conduct that must be followed on Adalantaland to preserve health, sanity, and correct thinking, when I was using these same laws of conduct myself … but using them not exactly in the same manner. My observances were more likely to be correct, since I had only just left Klorathy, who checked them with me. Yet he had told me not to alter this Queen's practices; had not mentioned them. So I said nothing.

The Queen wanted to know what part of Rohanda I came from, and I spoke to her of the Southern Continents, of which she had heard. In fact her mariners had visited the coasts of both – this interested me, of course, and from what she said, it seemed that these coasts had been explored by them. But recently she had forbidden voyages far afield: there was disquiet and alarm abroad, had I not felt it? People had not spoken to me of their fears and forebodings? Well, if not, that was because I was a foreigner and it would be discourteous to
spread such unhappy states of mind. But as for her, the Queen, and the other Mothers who governed this land, they felt that indeed there was reason to fear. Had I not heard of the great earthquakes that had swallowed whole cities down southwards? Of storms and tempests where normally the climate was equable … So she talked, her great blue eyes, which reminded me of the seas I had been hovering over only a few R-days before, roaming restlessly about, worried, full of trouble … and I was experiencing a lesson in the
relative
, for she was in fear for
her
culture,
her
beautiful land, while I had recently been contemplating the destruction of planets, cities, cultures, realms – and flying over large tracts of earthquake-devastated landscape in a frame of mind not far off that used for contemplating the overthrow of termite-queendom, or the extinction of a type of animal for some reason or other.

I left Adalantaland regretfully and travelled slowly to the coast where I had left my space bubble, not wanting to leave this realm of such lush and full fields, such orchards and gardens, so many orderly and well-kept towns – and not wanting to say goodbye either to these handsome people. I was thinking, as I went, about their third precept, that they must not take more than they could
use
, for it seemed to me to go to the heart of the Sirian dilemma …
who
should use
what
and
how much
and
when
and
what for
?
Above all what for!