The Sirian Experiments (24 page)

‘Yes, of course we know that.'

He did not seem inclined to say any more. Because it was of no importance?

‘That you would not always keep to the spirit, let alone the letter, of our agreements, was foreseen and allowed for.'

I was angry now. And defensive. ‘What I can't understand is this: Canopus both allots this defective little planet a far more important role than we do – certainly you go to far greater lengths than we ever do – but at the same time you seem quite extraordinarily perfunctory …' and as I spoke, words flashed into my mind, and I received them with a sense of weariness. ‘I suppose you are going to say that what you do is in accordance with what is needed?'

‘But what else could I possibly say?' he asked, genuinely surprised.

For some reason the insectlike people of their Planet 11 came into my mind: I remembered an infant that was a frail pink squirm held in milky semitransparent arms, surrounded by waving tentacles. And these loathsome things were higher in the evolutionary scale than I was, or at least very well regarded by Klorathy, and therefore, also, by Nasar. For me to approach ‘the Need' seemed to demand resources of tolerance in me that I could not believe I would ever have. And yet again we had reached, Canopus and I, a moment when an understanding had been on the verge of trembling into light. And then had gone again. Had been engulfed in anger, guilt, and in disbelief in my own capacities.

I did not know what it was I had
not
understood.

I heard myself muttering: ‘I don't understand, I don't understand.'

‘Poor Sirius,' said Nasar, in the way he had done before.

‘What will happen if you fail to persuade them?' I asked.

He stood up. He looked drained, and ashy and lustreless, all the energy gone out of him.

‘I shall go home now. I shall take your advice. If I succeed in my application to question the Colonial policy, I shall say that in my view we should jettison Shikasta. I shall say that Sirius has put forward a serious request to take over Shikasta.
If I fail, and the existing policy stands – and this is what will happen, Sirius, please do not expect too much – I shall, I suppose, have the pleasure of seeing you here again some time.'

‘Are you not permitted to request transfer to another planet?'

‘I do not think that … but let us put it this way. Once I am there, and back in my normal frame of mind, I probably will not want to demand a transfer.'

‘I do not understand why not,' I insisted. ‘And if you do return here, I hope you will suggest that you are not to be left down here so long without regular periods of leave.'

He smiled again. It was gentle, and even appreciative and even – again – with a certain admiration. ‘I shall make your views known,' he said.

‘And what work do you think you will be assigned when you come back? If you do.'

‘What? Why, as always, I shall be sent to a new place – for of course it will not have escaped you that these cities of the eastern central landmass will soon be under sand?'

‘No, it did not escape me!'

‘Exactly so … and I shall either find myself in some dreadful city, which I shall regard, at
first
, as hell and torment, and then … perhaps it will all happen again? In any case, I shall set the current flowing, and guard the flow, and make checks to Shammat … all that, all that I shall do – as I always do! Or perhaps they will tell me to make another city, or a cluster of cities, like these – all perfect, perfect … until …'

‘How do you go about creating your cities?' I asked – and again the word came to me. ‘Oh, according to
need,'
I said. ‘Yes, but
how?'

‘I think I shall go now,' he said. ‘If I don't, who knows what may happen! I shall even perhaps find myself back with Elylé – I wouldn't put it past myself, I assure you.'

‘How will you call your spacecraft?' I asked.

‘I shall return – in another way,' said he. ‘Goodbye, Sirius. And thank you. Look after your equipment – your earrings and the rest – they will be coming after it and after you, and
when they find I have disappeared they may make that an excuse to take you physically … Call your spaceship in and leave. That is my advice.'

He ran out of the room, and after some time I saw him, a small dark figure, emerge from the base of the tower. He had taken no covering with him. I slowly understood. He was going to walk off into the great snow wastes and die there. This gave me food for thought indeed – it was the beginning of a new understanding about the ways of Canopus, their different means of going and coming, of ‘travelling', if you like – I did not have time to think of all this then, any more than I had time to reflect on this long conversation with Canopus, in which there were so many openings for a greater comprehension. I was watching Nasar struggle forward. I could see from the low crowding white in the northeast that soon it would snow again. But long before it did, Nasar would be lost in the billowing piling masses. He would be dead very soon, I knew. He would not be found, I could be pretty sure, until the snow melted. That was when I could be afraid of the Puttiorans coming to take me in; probably on a charge of not reporting a disappearance, and even of murder – who knew what one could expect in a place like this! But the melting of the snows was a long way off. I had hoped to wait till the spring. I stood looking out at the scene that seemed crammed with white substance, and thinking that all that was water. How it would swirl and flood all around these towers when the season changed! I would stand up here in the little tip of this tower, and look down at brown floods – and then, so I believed, there would be a burst of vegetation. I had never seen anything like that.

I had no reason at all to doubt that when Canopus warned, they should be listened to. I did not want to have to face the Puttiorans, or even that degenerate smiling cruel lot – these gone-to-self-indulgence classes are always cruel in their lazy insolent way … Then why was I waiting here? Why, of course, to meet Klorathy.

I had come here to meet Klorathy …

I understood that I had met Klorathy. There was a mystery here I did not expect to unravel then, but I knew there was one.

I decided that I would call in my hovering Space Traveller and leave. I sent out the call, and collected my belongings. I found a white hooded garment folded in a chest and huddled myself in it. I did not want to be seen, a dark escapee against the snows, and arrested.

Just as I was preparing to leave these high rooms at the cone's tip, and descend to the street, I saw some writing sheets lying where Nasar had been stretched before I came into the room.

His despair, his misery, his self-loathing, his conflicts, were written there in broken, sometimes abusive or obscene words. I ran my eye swiftly over them, leafing through the many sheets: there were months of comment there. But on the sheet he had been scribbling over, obviously, just before I had come into the room, was written:

I come again and again to the same thought. I may not be able to face Canopus and my own nature now and the shame that will overwhelm me when I contemplate what I have been here, but I have only to contemplate Sirius to be strengthened in the better side of myself: thinking of Sirius I feel that perhaps I may at last force myself back to my duty. How is it possible that an Empire can be so large, so strong, so long-lasting; so energetic, so inventive, so skilled; how can it be so admirable in so many ways – and yet never have any inkling at all of the basic fact? They continue; they thrive; they fall into periods of decline; they make decisions; they advance again … they let their populations rage out of control, and then suddenly limit them to practically nothing. And all this done according to a temporary balance of social forces and opinion –
never
according to Need. This worthy and correct and competent official, who is no more
capable of the shameful falling away than I have shown I am only too capable of, is not able to take in anything of what the
function
of Canopus is. What the function of Sirius could be. Is that not a thought with enough power in it to make me whole again?

That is what I saw written there. I put this sheet of brittle yet at the same time flexible substance – it was new to me – in my clothes, and in my turn walked rapidly down the stairs and out into the cold whiteness. It had begun to snow again, though lightly. I was not afraid I would not find the Space Traveller, only that I might be stopped first. I did see a couple of Puttioran guards at the base of the far tower, and I ran fast along the road I had come into the city on. It was hard to keep on the road. On either side were only faint depressions to mark the ditches. I stumbled on, wondering if Nasar was still upright and walking onwards, or if he had fallen and was dying. It was strange to think in this way: we did not expect to die! Not we of the Sirian Mother Planet who can renew our bodies almost indefinitely. Death was hardly a reality to us. And that Canopus should use bodies like an equipment of garments …

I had not run forward for long when I saw the soft glitter of the Space Traveller, and was in it and up and off the white thicknesses in a moment – soon below us the brown cones stood up out of the white coverlet, and above us was the Rohandan night sky crammed with blazing stars. I looked for our own dear star, which shed such a happy glow on our Home Planet, but I was bound for the southern hemisphere. We swept on, with the white expanse below us, and then over the great mountains that were white, too, and suddenly below us was the blue ocean. The experiments I was proposing to organize do not concern my purpose in this account.

And so I conclude my report of my encounter with Canopus in Koshi, of the cities of the eastern central landmass.

For a long time I was nowhere near Rohanda, but at the other end of our Empire, dealing with problems, mostly psychological, arising from the reductions of population. I did not enjoy this work, and if it were not that the problems were so taxing, and, often, dangerous to the Empire, I would have visited Rohanda for a personal inspection of the experiments that were being pursued there. But these were none of them of the class described as sociobiological, only small-scale laboratory work on genetic engineering.

It was not until the question arose of Planet 3 (1) and its future that I could with good conscience return home for the discussions on policy, and then look forward to a tour of duty on Rohanda.

The policy discussions were long and even stormy. Our decision not to acquire and develop further planets had been maintained. Planet 3 (1) was Planet 3′s moon or satellite. Planet 3 was in active use. Its moon had never been developed, was almost entirely without oxygen: but it fell within the class of planets that are considered potentially the most useful and desirable, if their atmosphere can be adjusted. At the height of our Empire's expansion, plans had been made to force 3 (1), for it was plentifully equipped with all kinds of minerals. But as we pursued our deliberate policy of retraction and reduction, the search for new supplies of minerals became unnecessary. I think it is not far off the truth to say that we came to overlook 3 (1), even forgot it. Planet 3 itself, an adequately functioning place, was not concerned with it, except as to how it affected her gravitational situation.

The question of developing 3 (1) arose because there is always a latent hunger in our Colonial Service for the old days of expansion and development. I say this knowing I shall attract criticism, and cries of ‘Old Imperialist!' But why avoid
the truth! It is my belief that very many of the ills and problems of our Service stem from this hunger. There is something in Sirian nature that demands, that flourishes, in situations of challenge, provided best by the takeover of a new planet, its problems, its regulations, its development. To
expand
, I maintain, if not normal for us (in the sense that is
right)
is at least the most agreeable condition. To monitor and police planets kept deliberately stable, and on a low level of energy generally, is
not
exhilarating, does not inspire and develop the members of the Service. If this were not true, why should we always have in operation so many schemes deliberately contrived to provide challenge to our Service?

No, the truth is that Planet 3 (1) came to our attention again because a large number of our personnel, particularly the younger ones, wanted to experience the sharp edge of difficulties, problems, hazards. Even dangers – for there is something quite different in quality between the dangers that have to be surmounted in establishing something new, and those faced in, let's say, a regular policing job on a planet that erupts in dissatisfaction or discontent because of a life level that is seen too clearly to be stagnant. I do not wish here to reintroduce metaphysical questions! It is far from my intention to stray into regions that are only too thoroughly explored by our social philosophers. If I mention that on many of our thoroughly stable and economically balanced planets we have deliberately – during some epochs – allowed the inhabitants to believe in dangers that are nonexistent, that is only because it is relevant here. We have invented threats from Puttiora, or from Shammat; caused rumours of possible cosmic hazards, such as approaching comets or unfortunate starry alignments; even provoked minor uprisings – all this to prevent planets from becoming dolefully sunk into What-is-the-purpose-of-it-all states of mind that, unchecked, can even lead to mass suicide.

At any rate, this was the main reason for our reconsidering Planet 3 (1), and it did not appear on the official list of reasons as released finally by our deliberating Conference. (It is my
experience that this is a general rule, to be observed everywhere and in all kinds of situations: the
real
, the propelling cause of a situation or decision or change of policy is never mentioned at all, and must be sought for behind and buried under the peripheral ones.) The reasons were listed as follows: