The Sirian Experiments (15 page)

We told each other our experiences: mine more dramatic
than theirs: they had been briefly visited by tempests of snow, which had been dissipated almost at once by floods of rain, the earth had shaken and had growled and creaked, some of the mountainsides had fallen and there would be new riverbeds running off the plateau to the oceans.

We pieced together, among us, the following succession of events. The planet had turned over, had been topsy-turvy for some hours, and then righted itself – but not to its old position: Klorathy's instrument, more sensitive than ours, told him that the axis of the earth was at an angle now, and this would mean that as this angled globe revolved about its sun, there would no longer be evenness and regularity in its dispositions of heat and cold, but there would be changes and seasons that we could not yet do more than speculate about. The planet was slightly further away from its sun, too – the Rohandan year would be minimally longer. Many kinds of animals were extinct. The level of the oceans had sharply dropped, because the ice masses of both poles were much enlarged and could be expected to increase. Cities that had been swallowed by the waters before in previous sudden changes would be visible again … islands that had vanished under the waves might even be visible, glimmering there in shallower seas … and perhaps poor Adalantaland, that vanished happy place, might ring its many bells close enough under the surface for voyagers to hear them on quiet days and nights – so we talked, even then, when we were surrounded by mud and swamp and flying clouds of steam, and the catastrophe was already receding into the past, becoming yet another of the sudden reversals of Rohandan condition. But when I used the word ‘catastrophe' of what had just happened – a not, after all, inconsiderable happening – Klorathy corrected me, saying that the Catastrophe, or, to use the absolutely accurate and correct word, Disaster, meaning an unfortunate alignment of the stars and their forces, could only properly be applied to a
real
misfortune, a true evolutionary setback, namely, the failure of the Lock. I have already hinted at my impatience with Canopean pedantry. As I saw it. As I
sometimes even now cannot help seeing it.

I remember my meek inquiry, which was I am afraid all impertinence, to the effect that
some
might consider recent events catastrophe enough to merit that word, and remember Klorathy's smiling, but firm, reply that: ‘if one did not use the exact and correct words then one's thinking would soon become unclear and confused. The recent events …' – I remember I smiled sarcastically at this little word, ‘events' – ‘… did not in any fundamental way alter the nature of Rohanda. Whereas the failure of the Lock, and the Shammat delinquency, had affected the planet and would continue to affect it. That was a catastrophe, a disaster. This was unfortunate.' And he kept the pressure of his bronze or amber gaze on me, making me accept it.

Which I did. But I was raging with emotion. I thought him cold and dispassionate. I was thinking that a being able to view the devastation of the whole planet with such accurate detachment was not likely to be warmly responsive to a close personal relationship: at the time, that my own personal concerns were being intruded by me did not strike me as shameful, though it does now. I have already said that ‘hindsight' is not the most comfortable of possible views of oneself or of events. The mention of Shammat affected me – I knew of course that it was all guilt. But while I was clear in my
mind
that our Sirian delinquencies and deceptions that I could not confess to had caused barriers between me and Klorathy, my
emotions
expressed this in anger and a growing irritation with Klorathy, even a dislike …

I left him and went to my own tent, which was set on a high rock, damp but at least not saturated, and sat there by myself, looking down on the weird scene – the savages dancing and singing, on and on, in the splashing brown water and the mud, illuminated by a moon that appeared fitfully among the tumultuous clouds, and vanished amid the mists and fogs. Ambien I came to talk to me. He was conciliatory and gentle, for he knew how I raged and suffered.

He had wanted very much to leave, before the
events
that
we were not to call a catastrophe. He had become bored with the inactivity of it all. The life of the savages went on, hunting, and curing hides, and eating their stews and their dried meat, and making clothes and ornamenting them. And Klorathy stayed where he was. He did
not
lecture or admonish them. What had happened was that the head man came to Klorathy one evening and sat down and finally asked Klorathy if he had visited the dwarves, and if there was anything that he could tell them – the savages. And Klorathy answered saying that he had indeed visited the little people and that in his view … explaining how he saw things. And then the head man went off and conferred, and days went past, and then he returned and asked again, formally, sitting on the ground near Klorathy, having exchanged courtesies, if Klorathy believed the dwarves could be trusted to keep agreements if they were made – for in the past, so he said, the dwarves had been treacherous and had spilled out of their underground fastnesses and slain the tribes, both men and animals … and Klorathy answered this, too, patiently.

What was happening, Ambien I said, was that Klorathy did not make any attempt to communicate what he thought
until he was asked a direct question –
or until something was said that was in fact a question though it was masked as a comment. And Ambien I then went to Klorathy and inquired if this was indeed a practice of Canopus: and whether Klorathy expected to stay there, living on as he did, with these savages,
until they asked the right questions
… and if this was Klorathy's expectation, then
why
did he expect the savages to ask the right questions?

To which Klorathy replied that they would come and ask the necessary questions in their own good time.

And
why?

‘Because I am here …' was Klorathy's reply, which irritated Ambien I. Understandably. I felt irritated to the point of fury even listening to this report.

Anyway, Ambien I had wanted to go, but could not, since I had the Sirian transport with me. He had in fact gone off to
visit the dwarves again, by himself, another colony of them – a foolhardy thing, which had nearly cost him his life. He had been rescued by the intervention of Klorathy, who had only said, however, that ‘Sirians as yet lacked a sense of the appropriate'.

Then had begun the ‘events' that were not to be described as more than that.

At last, I had arrived back, and he, Ambien I, could not express how he had felt when he saw the glistening bubble descend through all that grey steam, because he had believed me to be dead. And of course it was ‘a miracle' that I had survived – to use a term from our earlier epochs.

We stayed together that night, in emotional and intellectual intimacy, unwilling to separate, after such a threat that we might never have been together again at all.

We decided to leave Klorathy.

First, having pondered over what Ambien I had said about questions, how they had to be asked, I went to Klorathy and asked bluntly and directly about the Colony 10 colonists, and why we, Sirius, could not have them.

He was sitting at his tent door. I sat near him. We were both on heaps of damp skins … but the clouds of steam were less, the earth was drying, the thundering and trickling and running of the waters already had quietened. It was possible to believe that soon these regions would again be dry and high and healthy.

‘I have already told you,' said Klorathy, ‘that these colonists would not be appropriate. Do you understand? Not appropriate for Sirians, for the Sirian circumstances.'

‘Why not?'

He was silent for a while, as if reflecting inwardly. Then he said: ‘You ask me, over and over again, the same kind of question.'

‘Why don't you answer me?'

Then he did something that made me impatient. He went into his tent and came out with some objects – the same things that Ambien I and I had been supplied to maintain our
balance on this difficult planet.

I at first believed that because of the recent ‘events', certain changes in our practice were necessary, and I readied myself to take in instruction, since I knew that exactness was necessary here, and that it would not do for me to overlook even the smallest detail. (I had told him – and heard his dismayed yet patient sigh – about Adalantaland falling off in this respect, how they had not maintained the care needed to make these practices work.)

I watched what he did. Certain kinds of stone, of natural substance, some colours, shapes, were laid before him and handled and ordered. But I was watching very carefully and saw that he made no changes in the ritual I had been using.

‘So nothing has had to be changed?' I asked, knowing my voice was rough and antagonistic. ‘Not even the recent
events
, and the distancing of the earth from its sun, and all the other differences, are going to necessitate changes in what we have to do?'

‘No,' he said. ‘Not yet. Though perhaps later, when we have monitored the exact differences. In climate, for instance. And of course the magnetic forces will be affected …'

‘Of course,' I said, sarcastically, as before.

He continued to handle the objects, precisely, carefully. I watched his face, the amber, or bronze face, long, deeply moulded, with the strong eyes that were so closely observing the movements of his hands.

And I continued to sit there, arms locked around my knees, watching, maintaining a dry tight smile that was all criticism, and he continued patiently and humbly to manipulate his artefacts.

I did not understand him. I thought this was a way of putting me off, of saying wordlessly that he would not answer me.

As I formulated this thought, he said: ‘No, that is not it. But if you want to understand, then I suggest you stay on here for a time.'

‘For how long?' And answered myself with, ‘For as long as
necessary, I suppose!' 

‘Yes, that's it.'

‘And what sort of progress have you made? Are the savages and dwarves in an alliance? Are they ready to stand against the Shammats?'

‘I think it is likely the dwarves have been sealed into their caves, and that we may never see them again.'

The way he said this made my emotions riot. The end of a species – a race – the end of the Lombi strain on Rohanda and the 22 technicians.

He said: ‘Well, we have to accept these reverses.'

‘Then why are you staying on? The reason for your being here is gone – swallowed by
the events.'

‘The tribes are still here!'

‘So you are not with them just because of the old hostility between them and the dwarves?'

‘I am here as I often am with all kinds of peoples … races … species, at certain stages in their development.'

I did understand that here was a point of importance: that if I persisted, I would learn.

‘You want me to stay?' This was a challenge: deliberate, awkward, hostile.

‘Yes, I think you should stay.'

He had not said: ‘Yes, I want you to stay.'

I got up and left him. I told Ambien I that I intended to leave. And in the morning, having said goodbye to Klorathy, we took off in our space bubble. We surveyed, rapidly, the ravages of the ‘events' on both southern continents, and then went home to our Mother Planet.

For some time I had little to do with Rohanda, which was judged by our experts as too much of a bad risk, and I was allotted work elsewhere. This was, too, the period of the worst
crisis in Sirian self-confidence: our experiments everywhere, sociological and biological, were minimal.

The populations on our Colonized Planets were at their lowest, too.

As for me, I was pursuing thoughts of my own, for I could not get out of my mind the old successes of Canopus in forced evolution, and while whole strata of our Colonial Service and nearly all our governing class were publicly asking:
What for?
I was wondering if they would give room to such emotions (but they were called
ideas
, as heart-cries of this kind so often are, and the more so, the more they
are
fed by emotions and sentiments) if they had been able to watch, as I had done, creatures not much better than apes transformed into fully civic and responsible beings within such a short time. I shared these thoughts with Ambien I, with whom I was once again working, but our Empire was less tolerant then than it is now – or so I believe and hope – and the kind of social optimism that inspired me was classed in some quarters as ‘shallow irresponsibility' and ‘sociological selfishness'. This may be the right place to remark that I had long since learned that if one is entertaining unpopular ideas, one has only to keep quiet and wait for the invisible wheels to turn that will bring those ideas back as the last word in intelligent and forward-looking thinking.

Meanwhile, I got on with my work. It happened that I was in that part of the Galaxy where the transplanted Lombis were on Colonized Planet 25. I had not thought of them from the old time to this; but I made a detour from curiosity. It could be said that the whole Lombi experiment had been inutile. They had been carefully preserved from any contact with more evolved races, except for very rare reconnaissance trips by Colony 22 personnel to see if it were possible to keep a certain pristine social innocence that might be of use in ‘opening up' new planets. Yet we had nevertheless ceased to colonize new planets in the total – may I say reckless? – way that had distinguished our policies up till then: we acquired a new possession only after long and careful assessment. Our
interest in the Lombis continued to the extent that we wished to monitor the possible development of evidence of a craving for ‘higher things'. From the spacecraft I made contact home to ask permission to make a small experiment of my own: it would not have been given me if the Lombis had not virtually been written off as useful material.