The Sirian Experiments (44 page)

I hovered there near the monitoring Crystal and saw again how the edges of the continent were being pressed and squeezed up into its mountain folds, how the deserts lay and spread, how the great forests of other times had gone, and realized that I was seeing something extraordinary. A grid had been stamped over the whole continent. It was a mesh of absolutely regular rectangles. I was seeing a map, a chart, of a certain way of thinking … this was a way of thought, a set of mind, made visible. It was the mind of the Northwest fringes, the mind of the white conquerors. Over the variety and change and differentiation of the continent, over the flows and movement and changes of the earth – as vigorous as that of the air above, though in a different dimension of time – was this stamp of rigidity. Cities, towns, the larger mountains, the deserts, interrupted it: but over rivers and hills and marshes and plains lay the grid, this inflexible pattern. It was a pattern of ownership, a multiplication of the basic unit of the possession of land. I had not noticed it before: previous visits of surveillance from this height had been before the new conquerors had inflicted their ways of thought on everything: I had seen how the growth and unfolding of the material of the continent displayed itelf in surface contours, and in the disposition of its waters and its vegetation. But now, between me and the language of growth and change was this imperious stamp. This pattern. This grid. This print. This mint.

Now I knew what it was Canopus had wanted me to see, and I looked towards the Crystal, for some kind of directive. I
would have liked to leave, and to be allowed to take my attention from this depressing and miserable map – the mind of Shammat. But still it hovered there, silent, changing its shape at every moment, demonstrating the possibilities of a fluid communication … and then it was lifting up and away, was a great drop of glittering water from the black depths of space, and it hung there, this infinitely various and variable and flowing thing, this creation of the Canopean mind, it spoke to me, it sang to me, it sent messages of hope, of the eternal renewal of everything, and then it again elongated itself, and ebbed up and fled back to its station high above Rohanda, where it was a mote in sunlight, a memory of itself.

And so I was alone again. I wondered if I had seen all that I was meant to see, and if I should now return home. I thought of how I would speak to the Four of the messages I had been given, and of how they might receive it … but then reflected that I had not seen the western coasts of this continent during this present phase of Rohanda, and I directed my Traveller accordingly.

I was set down at the top of an immensely tall building in a large city. From there I could see the deserts and mountains inland, and the ocean on the other side. Beneath me the city itself was hardly visible, for it was filled with a poisonous smoke, and the buildings emerged from the fumes like islands from water.

I deliberately curtailed this survey since I knew I was being invaded by emotions not felt by me since my sojourn in Lelanos: these were because of the contrast between what these animals had made of their technical achievements and what they in fact were doing. But it is a story unfortunately not rare in our annals; and I will simply state that this
was
my state of mind – dangerous to my equilibrium. I left the top of the building and went down into a room in the heart of the building, a public room, constructed in such a way that it could only adversely affect the mental processes. In it was a machine for the transmission of ‘news'. Visual transmission,
and consisting only of brutalities and savageries of various kinds.

Of the real situation of the planet nothing was being coherently said: there were glimpses, references, all kinds of half-truths, but never the full picture.

Then I saw Tafta. On the screen of the machine was Tafta, and he was on a platform in a hall that was full of people. He was superficially different in appearance from how I had last seen him as the black-clothed, war-inciting priest. His physical being had not much changed. He glistened with health, was rather fleshy, and he emanated a calm, self-satisfied conceit. His garb was that now worn everywhere over the planet, as if it had been ordered by a dictator – but these animals have never been able to relinquish uniforms. He wore blue very tight trousers of a thick material, which emphasized his sexuality, and a tight singlet.

He was resting one buttock on the edge of a table, swung one leg, and smiled easily and confidently down at his audience.

Tafta was now one of the senior technicians of the continent, and his task was to answer questions put by this disquieted and indeed frankly terrified gathering. He was a world figure, as an apologist for current technology. For some years he had enjoyed a reputation as an intrepid critic of governmental and global policies to do with the uses of technology, and had written several works of fiction, of that category where social possibilities of the day were given expression in a popular form. This type of fiction was both challenging and useful, in that it gave the populace opportunities to examine potentialities of technological discoveries; but also anodyne, because the mere fact that sometimes appalling developements had been displayed in print at all seemed to reassure the citizens that they could not happen. At any rate, Tafta illustrated the social law – so often seen, and of course causing me, because of my own position, much private alarm in case I might fall victim to it – that to the extent an individual has been a deviant from a group, a set of ideas, a ‘received
opinion' of some sort, and then his own deviant opinions becoming ‘respectable', ousting or questioning the former standards, so that he as an individual has ceased to be a threat, but on the contrary had become stabilized in the new orthodoxy, then to the same degree he may be expected to misuse, scorn, and ridicule the new uprising generation of ‘freaks', of ‘eccentrics', of nonconformists.

I shall not detail the set of attitudes that on this occasion he was defending, but they were all to do with the despoiling of the planet, the damage being done by technology, poisoning, fouling, wastage, death. He was reassuring his questioners, and this easy, affable, smiling, democratic fellow, the very embodiment of successful adaptation, was deeply reassuring to them, or at least to most. And of course that this was so was not an accident.

There he sat, informally posed on the edge of the table, one leg pleasantly swinging, as if his exuberant vitality could not help expressing the sheer invincible joy of life in this way, the bright candid blue eyes beaming over his full healthy beard, and it occurred to me that he did not look all that different from the pirate whom I had watched plundering the continent south of this one. And he smiled. How he smiled! His smile was a most powerful instrument …

As a question was put to him from below, in the hall, the smile was adjusted: he adjusted, minutely, ridicule, scorn, contempt; but it was the mildest and almost careless ridicule that he was using to demonstrate the questioner's foolishness or stupidity.

And he was, similarly, mildly and almost carelessly sarcastic. An individual stood up to demand reassurance about something or other, and he would, as he listened, adjust that smile and adjust the tone of his voice – exactly. Perfectly. What a performance Tafta was giving! I could not help but admire it. The social mechanism he was using so well was that social law that most Rohandans could not bear to be ridiculed, to be ‘out of step'. It was too uncomfortable to them to be outside the current group mind, and they were easily
manipulated back into it.

Ten years before, the questions being asked had been different: in the meantime, many of the possibilities dismissed by Tafta or a similar spokesman as absurd had become fact. In ten years' time, the questions being asked today, and being so subtly ridiculed, would have been answered by events …

By the end of that ‘conference' and the ‘discussion period', Tafta's bland well-mannered contempt had succeeded in making his audience seem absurd and silly-minded little people, and most had a crestfallen look. But others, a few, had an air of stubborn self-preservation.

I left the scene and went down into the street, as much to escape the imbalances being caused in me by this unpleasant building as to rid myself of the sight of Tafta. It took Shammat – I was thinking – to make of good humour a quality to be suspected and distrusted.

In the street I was not conspicuous, for I was wearing the uniform, the thick tight trousers and a singlet, and my face was daubed thoroughly with paint.

Tafta soon sauntered towards me, smiling.

‘Were you watching?' And he let out a guffaw, which reminded me of the beach, the three whipped wretches, the buccaneers.

‘I was indeed.'

‘Well, Sirius?' – and I have never seen such a triumphant sneer. There was nothing in this vulgarian, all crude contempt, of the urbane gentleman of science I had just been watching.

‘It is not Sirius,' I said quietly, as I had done before, ‘who is master of this planet.'

But while his gaze did meet mine, it was only with the surface of his attention. He was enclosed in his conceit, and his pleasure at his cleverness. And yet, as this boasting animal swaggered there, laughing, I knew that what I was seeing was – defeat.

‘Tafta,' I said, ‘you are very sure of yourself.'

‘We have just had a directive from home,' said he. ‘From Shammat. Shammat of Puttiora …' And he laughed and he laughed, because the planet Shammat was now master of the Empire of Puttiora, and he was identifying himself with this mastery. ‘The directive was to test the degree of imperviousness among these Rohandans to the truth of their situation. And I have tested it. And believe me, Sirius, it is absolute.'

‘You are wrong. It only seems to be so.'

‘If any leader of any nation of Rohanda stood up and told them the truth, the full truth, of their real situation, do you know what would happen? They would not believe him. They would kill him. Or lock him up as a madman.'

‘So it seems now.'

He was looming and swaggering above me, smiling and ascendant, drunk with power and with confidence. And, just as had happened so often before, his great brown hairy hands came out, one on either side of my head, where my allyrium earrings hung. His fingers itchingly stroked the things, while his eyes glittered. But he had forgotten their purposes … And, as I remembered how much he had forgotten, how far he was from any real understanding, I felt some strength come back into me, and this repelled his leeching and sucking at me. His hands fell away.

‘What pretty earrings,' said he, in a different voice, a half-mutter, thick and dreamlike, and into his eyes came an anxious look.

‘Yes, Shammat, they are.'

Now we stood at a distance from each other. He seemed to shrink and diminish as I watched him. He was now only the poor beast Shammat, the doomed one, and I was sorry for him.

‘Tafta,' I said, ‘it was foolish of you to follow that order from your Home Planet. Very foolish.'

‘Why? What do you know …' As I walked away from him I heard him come running after me, and felt his hot carnivorous breath on my cheek.

Without turning I said, ‘Goodbye, Tafta.'

I heard him cursing me as he stood there impotent on the street's edge. And then he was coughing and gasping and retching in the fumes of the machines. And so I left him.

I bought myself a mask of the kind worn by these unfortunates in their streets, to protect themselves from the poisons manufactured by their machines, and which often made them blind, or ill, or silly, and I went walking around and about that city, unable to bring myself yet to summon my Traveller, for I was thinking of Klorathy, of Canopus. I wanted – I am afraid this was the truth – some sort of reassurance; for while I had been showing firmness and confidence with Tafta, I could not help feeling myself undermined by the familiar dry sorrow at the waste of it, the dreadful squandering waste of it all. I remembered Nasar and how he had learned to contain his pain on behalf of this sad place, and I was thinking of the things he had said, and how much I had learned. I was wishing I might see him again. How much it would reassure me simply to see him, and to exchange a few words. What would he be thinking now, my old friend Nasar – my old friend Canopus?

I was on the edge of the city, looking at a building, and thinking that it pleased me. It was simple enough, a dwelling place, and built of the local stone. There was nothing remarkable about it, yet it drew me. It was built on a small rocky hill that rose clear from the city's dirty fumes. I saw that on the steps stood a young man, wearing the familiar uniform of tight trousers and a singlet, but I could not see his face, for though he was turned towards me, he was wearing a mask. Nasar, Nasar, was ringing in my mind, and I said aloud: ‘Nasar, I am sure that it is you.'

We were like two snouted creatures, and he took off his mask, and I took off mine. We went higher up the hill, to be more above the fumes, since our eyes had at once begun to redden and water.

‘Well, Sirius?'

‘Did you build this place? Are you an architect?'

‘I am an architect among other things.'

We stood looking at the building, side by side. It was really very pleasant. The horrible dissonances of the rest of the city seemed to disappear, and only this house remained.

‘Those who live here will be sane?'

‘
I
am living here. I suppose I am slightly saner than most,' said he, on the familiar Nasar note, and I laughed.

‘Ah, Canopus, but why, why,
why?'

‘Are you still asking why, Ambien?'

‘Don't you?'

He hesitated, and I recognized in this something I knew well: he was not able to communicate what he was thinking to me, Sirius. I was not up to it! He said: ‘Ambien, has it not occurred to you that there are useful questions, and those that are not? Not at all! Not in the slightest degree!'