The Sirian Experiments

When I was myself again and believed that the snow had stopped falling, and burrowed my way out of the bubble, and leaned on it, holding fast as one does to a solid place in water, because I was as it were floating in loose airy snow, I looked out over an all-white landscape, under a sky that was a light clear fresh blue, lit by the new, more distant, more yellow sun. I seemed to be clear in my mind, and functioning … I pushed enough snow off the bubble to free it, tried the instruments, found everything in order, and took off into this new air, which was so sharp and clean again, yet with a metallic tang to it, and flew interminably over white, white, a dazzlingly correct and uniform white, where all hollows and valleys had been obliterated, leaving only peaks that were of bare, scraped rock. But one had a clotted or furred look, as if encrusted with insects of a vast size; when I examined it, I saw a multitude of animals, every imaginable variety of animal, large and small, all in the attitudes of immediate death. They had been frozen in an instant where they had taken refuge from the floods, or the surging ice packs, or the oceans of snow. But on other peaks that I flew past at eye level, there were trees still upright, their branches loaded with frozen birds. And in one place I saw a glittering plume rising into the air just in front of me, and as I came near to it, found it was a geyser that had been frozen so fast it was hanging there with fishes and beasts of the sea solid in it. It sent out a high twanging noise, and snapped and crumpled and fell in a heap on to the white snowy billows below.

The great ocean where the islands had been was not frozen. I saw it then as I have seen it ever since. I was flying across the northerly part, and underneath me was water, where Adalantaland had been, as if it had never been. It was not that there were no islands left anywhere in those seas but that now they were clustered or fringed around the coasts of the Isolated Northern Continent on one side and the main landmass on the other – these last being the Northwest fringes that later played such a part in late Rohandan history.

I wondered that the ocean was not frozen. And even as I flew across the last of the waters before reaching land, I saw ahead of me that the snows were melting there – had already melted in some places, leaving floods and lakes and muddy expanses everywhere. By the time I did reach the mainland, and was flying into it, the snows had all dissolved in water … I was flying over a scene of mud and water and new rivers. I could not land anywhere, but went straight across the continent looking down at a soaked and watery scene whose changes I was not able to assess because I had not been that way before. When I reached the opposite coast, on another vast ocean, I was able to see that pressures of some awful intensity had squeezed higher the mountain ranges that run from extreme north to extreme south of the two isolated continents – if one were to imagine these continents shaped in some soft substance, like clay or sand, but on a tiny scale, as on a child’s teaching tray, and then pressure applied by some force right down one side of them, so that they buckle up and make high ridges and long mountain chains separated by narrow gorges and highlands, so had those two great continents been affected, and I had to postulate all kinds of pressuring forces deep inside the substance of Rohanda, under the ocean; and the visible signs of these were in the vast waters muddied and full of weed, and crowding jagged icebergs, and a metallic or sulphurous smell. I floated southwards along these tortured mountains seeing how forests and rock and rivers had been heaved up and down and toppled and spread everywhere until I reached the south of the Northern Continent and turned sharply inland to seek out Klorathy and the other Ambien. Again, I was not familiar with the terrain, but could see that, while everything had been soaked, so that lakes and sprawling rivers stained brown with earth lay everywhere, and the landscape was all mud, all earthy water, all swamp and fen and marsh, yet there were expanses of forests that had not been overturned and mountains that seemed intact, if shaken. And in fact it turned out that the southern continents, partly and patchily frozen and soaked and shaken and squeezed, had come off much better than the northern areas, and had not been entirely devastated. I travelled on in clouds of steam and spun me, so past my bubble and made turbulence that tossed and spun me, so that I felt as sick as I had done in the tempests of the great disaster, and all the blue Rohandan skies were coiling and churning with cloud. This had been a high, dry, sharp-aired landscape, and it would shortly become so again – yet I descended to where I had left the others through baths of warm steam. They were still there. On a wet muddy plain surrounded by the mountains of the dwarves were the tents and huts of the tribes, and splashing through mud and shallow lakes, the savages were dancing: were propitiating their deity, the earth, their mother, their source, their provenance, their protector, who had unexpectedly become enraged and shown her rage. And so they danced and danced – and continued to dance on, through the days and the nights. When I joined Klorathy, he was exactly where I had left him, seated in the open doorway of his tent, apparently unoccupied, watching the dance of his protégés. And Ambien was near him.

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.

THE LOMBIS. MY THIRD ENCOUNTER WITH KLORATHY

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.

We had sent no technicians there for over a thousand S-years. Their life-spans had remained at roughly two hundred R-years. This meant that as individuals they could have no memory at all of visitations ‘from the skies’.

I ordered a rapid survey of Planet 25 sunside and nightside, at maximum speed so that we would not be observed as more than a meteorite – we were not visible at all on sunside when moving – and then, having chosen a populous area, hovered in full view for some hours, while crowds collected.

I made as impressive a descent from the aircraft as could be devised. Unfortunately I had no formal wear with me on this working trip, but I devised a long cloak of some white insulation material, and made the most of my not exactly profuse yellow hair – it is not that I have ever wanted to be more hairy or furred than I am, but the yellow or gold-haired species always evoke awe, because of our rarity. I floated to earth from the spacecraft, and saw a multitude of the poor beasts fall to their faces before me with a deep and sorrowful groan, which did touch me, I confess, accustomed as I am to the awe so easily evoked in uncivilized races.

I had prepared all kinds of suitably vague replies to possible questions, but found that once I had said I had ‘come from the skies’ and was their friend, that was enough: awe is a great inhibitor of intelligent questioning.

They remembered – or their ceremonies and songs and tales did – ‘the shining ones’, and what dread they still kept from the old time on the other planets, I stilled by the most solemn promises that I would not take any of them away with me when I left.

And what was it they were so afraid of being taken away from? The reply to that is ironical … is sad … is a comment on more than just the situation of the Lombis … my so long, my so very long career in the Service furnishes me with several similar situations …

But first a general comment on their customs and mores.

They had not evolved much; any more than had the parent stock on Planet 24.

The prohibitions against covering themselves, and eating cooked and prepared food had not vanished, but had reversed; it was now for their ceremonies that they had to be naked and eat raw meat and roots and fruit. The lived as before in various types of crude shelter, hut or cave; they hunted; they wore skins; they used fire. Their basic unit was the family and not the tribe: this seemed to be retarding them. At least, as I travelled about that planet, which was adequately endowed with plant and animal life, though meagre compared to other planets – Rohanda, for instance – I was comparing these animals with the savages of the high plateaux whom Klorathy had thought it worthwhile to instruct: and such was the contrast that I was wondering for the first time if the superiority of those others was due to something innate, a superiority of a different kind and classification to those we Sirians could use, and which Klorathy and officials on his level would be able to measure? The point was that the Lombis had no capacity for development, or seemed not to have.

I was examining these short, squat, half-furred creatures, with their immensely powerful shoulders and arms, living in their groups of three, or four – up to seven or eight, but no more – each group jealously suspicious of its patch of hunting ground, its wild fruit trees, its sources of roots and vegetables, able to mingle with other groups only on ritual occasions when they all crowded together – and remembered with admiration things that I had scorned. Where were the customs that can make even hundreds of individuals a mutually supporting and culturally expanding unit? Where the intricate ceremonial dances? The finely worked garments with their fringes, their ornamentation, the delicately used feathers? The necklaces of carved bones and stones? The instruction of the young through tales and apprenticeship? The specialization of individuals, according to innate talent, into storytellers, craftsmen, hunters, singers? Where was … but I could see nothing here anything like the skills and knowledge of the Navahis and Hoppes.

Now I come to what was painful and pitiful in their situation. How often as I travel from one of our Colonized Planets to another am I forced to remember the natural advantages of Rohanda, with her close and shining moon, her nightside that is crammed with brilliant star clusters?