Ten different agricultural stations were established on Southern Continent I. These were enough not only to supply all of 23, but later there were plentiful supplies of what were luxury products, at luxury prices, for our Home Planet. The setting up of these took over a hundred R-years.
The average life of the Lombis was 200 R-years. As always when establishing a species on another planet, the this would affect a life-term was a major consideration. We had come to expect random and wild fluctuation at the beginning, and thereafter unforeseen variations in life-term. The Lombis were no exception. During the first few R-years, some died for no apparent reason (some race-psychologists classed these deaths under the heading of due Mal-Adaptation due to Life Disappointment), and the young that were born seemed likely to be set for longer life-terms. There was also a quite unforeseen increase in height and girth.
When their work was done on Southern Continent I, they were not returned to their own planet. This was because, during the period between their being taken off their planet, and the end of their term on 23, another planet had been discovered, much nearer to Sirius, not dissimilar from 24, but with only limited and lowly evolved life-forms. It was our intention to space-lift the Lombis to this planet—Colonised Planet 25—in order to establish on it this species, which, we hoped, would continue to be useful for general hard unskilled labour.
In other words, they were not to return home at all.
But it was not possible for them to be taken to 25 at once, because that was being used for certain limited and short-term experiments, and their presence there would be disruptive. They were therefore brought under my aegis, on to Isolated Southern Continent II, as an interim measure.
During their hundred years on S.C. I, they were in what can only be described as a social vacuum. They had not been allowed to glimpse any sign of Sirian general levels of culture. They had continued to be instructed—less and less, since they proved able pupils—by the C.P. 22 technicians, who never allowed themselves to be seen as superior in expectation to their pupils. They were not told why they were doing this work of establishing agricultural stations. Nor what happened on 23 after they left it. Nor what their destiny was to be. Some of their supervisors considered they were not capable of either asking questions or understanding the answers. Others disagreed. We took note of these comments but continued our policy, unmoved by criticism that this whole experiment was brutal.
We were watching, closely, constantly, for signs of the familiar demand for more, for higher, for better. That was, after all as much a purpose of their being put on 23 and then on Rohanda as the actual work they did. Meanwhile, they were set free on a particularly favoured part of Isolated S.C. II. Of course this before the “events,” the changing of the angle of the axis, the slight distancing of Rohanda from the sun. Everywhere on Rohanda was hotter then, proportionately. The southern part of the continent was ideal, a paradise—for once to use the emotional language of course inappropriate to this report—and I have never seen anything to equal it. The conditions but similar but better than what the Lombis had known on 24: drier, more even, without extremes of any kind. They given well-wooded, fertile plain, that had a central river and its many tributaries, informed they were not to stray beyond certain limits, and left entirely to themselves. Our monitors from 22 were withdrawn.
I and my staff were established well away from them in an inaccessible place among mountains that they had no reason to approach. They were not told that their stay in this beautiful place would have a term—and probably a short one.
I was at that time much occupied with other enterprises.
This was one: observing the invigorating climate of this continent, we thought it worthwhile to transfer on to it, though temporarily, some of those who were succumbing to the mental disorders, chiefly depression and melancholy, that characterised our Dark Age. We used it, in fact, as kind of mental hospital, or asylum. The conditions were so easy, so little effort was needed to maintain life, that all we did was to space-lift those who wished to try the experience to parts of Isolated S.C. II—of course well away from the Lombis, and leave them there to make their own shelters of branches or grass. Food was brought across from Southern Continent I. They were not permitted to hunt or harm the animals, but were allowed to fish, within limits. The idea was a deliberate return to a primeval innocence, of a kind that did not need even to be newly invented or rehearsed, for this type of fantasy too, had its literature, and its conventions, like old-time farming. What we were doing, in fact, was really a variety of tourism, but in ideal conditions, allowing highly civilised and refined populations to experience instead of observing. Yet they could observe, too—for one thing, all kinds of animals and birds unfamiliar to them, as well as the most attractive forests and rivers. This scheme was immensely popular. From everywhere in our Empire they clamoured to be allowed a sojourn on Rohanda. Our medical profession were enthusiastic. At its height half a million were living over the southern plains, for shorter or longer periods.
But I have to record a failure. The original cause of the malaise that sent them to Rohanda was not touched. Doctors who worked among the unfortunates had to conclude that if melancholy and listlessness were sometimes palliated, then restlessness, feverishness, a hectic dissatisfaction, took their place. The scheme was classed as a mistake, ended. No one was supposed to be left behind after the final space-lift, and officially this was accomplished, but after experience in many such projects, I believe that a few eccentrics and solitaries always manage to evade vigilance and creep away to make lives for themselves. So in a small way this experiment may have affected Rohanda.
There were many other short-term experiments and they absorbed enough of our attention to prevent us from doing more with the Lombis than make sure they did not stray off their terrain.
When we were told Planet 25 would shortly become vacant, this was rather before we had expected. We at once put on order a complement of 2,000 Planet 22 technicians. Our immediate problem must be obvious: it was essential that the technicians should be able to mingle with the Lombis on their level, but we did not know what that level now was, after nearly a thousand R-years.
Before the 22-ers came, we had done enough work with binoculars and judicious near approach to have ascertained that they were outwardly at least not much changed. We put the techs in quarters near our head station. They had nearly all been involved with the moves of the Lombis from C.P. 24 to 23; from 23 to Rohanda; their sojourn on 23. There were no unexpected adjustments for them to make. But when the first investigative contingent of 500 went off stripped of their clothes, carrying nothing, not even a little food or a weapon, they could not hide discomfort. The 22 people do not have hair on their bodies, and have forgotten when they ran on four legs. But in my observation it is the moment a species puts on garments, even the most vestigial, such as aprons of foliage or bark, that marks the transition upwards from beast; and this much more than standing on two legs. It is the birth of a certain kind of self-consciousness. To put off every bit of clothing was hard for these Planet 22 people, and they did not like being looked at by us. We respected their feelings and let them go off down the side of our rocky plateau unaccompanied: normally some of us would have gone with them part of the way. We did watch them for a time, though: this kind of observation being part of our task. Planet 22 people are more yellow than the dark Lombis, and they had been under the sun-machines; but they were still more yellow than brown. The company of wiry little people were soon lost to view among the foothills, and we heard no more of them for some days.
Messengers sent back to report on first encounters with the Lombis said not much more than that it was safe to send in the other 1,500, who duly set off, naked and discomfited.
The task of these 2,000 techs was to dwell among the Lombis and to assess them and what changes had taken place.
I shall now sum up their several reports.
The first 500 did not find it easy to locate the Lombis. When
they did see some out on the plain gathering plants, and were observed, the Lombis ran to find cover and disappeared. It took days for the first encounter. None of them remembered, as individuals, their capture from their home planet and subsequent events. But they remembered as a race: this was the most important change: their speech had evolved. Not over the business of the day-to-day maintenance of life, but in this one direction: they had songs, and tales, that instructed them in their history.
The second change was that they now had festivals, or feasts, at the time of the full moon, so that these songs and tales could be exchanged. This had unified these animals. On their own planet they had lived in all types of association, sometimes in small groups with no contact with others. But now every individual without exception was expected to travel in to a central feasting place once every R-month. This not always the same, but changed, and situated in a well-wooded place with a river for hygiene and water supplies. Not only the regular festival or “solemn remembrance”—which was how their word for it translated; and the singing and storytelling; but the travelling to and from the central place had become ritualised and made the bonds held this new nation together: for this is what they now were, according to our classifications.
They were, in any case, constantly on the move, changing their residences, their plant-gathering places, their watering places. Restlessness and fitful energy was their new characteristic. This was because they were using more oxygen than they had done on Planet 24. It was their chief physical change.
And here was a paradox, a contradiction. While never able to be still, always active, they nevertheless had become fearful and secretive. This characteristic was reinforced by the subject of their monthly rituals, which was, in various forms, their abduction from their home.
They had become a race of strong, indeed violent, contradictions. When first seeing our exploratory contingent, they hid themselves—because their history was of just such “strangers from the skies” who arrived among them, were friendly, and then ruthlessly kidnapped them. But “strangers from the skies” were what they expected to come again and rescue them… for they expected to be returned to their “real home in the skies.”
They had, on their own planet, sometimes used leaves or hides as coverings, either for warmth or for ornament, but now all clothing of any sort was forbidden, and inspired terror, because the space suits of C.P. 23 were the worst of their memories. Even a female balancing a few berries on her nose in play or trying them behind her ears, or tying some leaves around her middle, or sheltering an infant in a pelt would bring forth a storm of chattering and scolding from any who saw her—as if they all felt that these were the first steps to the so-much-feared garments; the claustrophobias of the “little prison.”
On 23, and while building the agricultural settlements on S.C. I, they had been supplied with simple foodstuffs, mostly cereals and vegetables. But these had been supplied and set before them and some had been cooked or processed—and they knew that prepared food was a sign of captivity.
In these two major ways, then, their advancement been checked, and they were as naked as any animal in our Empire and their food was as they gathered it or caught it. They had previously roasted their meat: now this done only at feasts, as if it was too dangerous a thing for individuals to tempt fate with. To tempt “the skies” with…
Whereas previously they had lived in so many different ways and quite casually and openly, unafraid of attackers, protected by their different associations, now they built rocky shelters for themselves, or leafy ones, with great care—not for their comfort or warmth, but with one aim only: that they should not be easily visible. This was why our first attempts to locate them had been so frustrated.
Constant movement and activity—great festivals of thousands of animals all dancing and singing; and, at the same time, a terror of being observed and overseen.
The pleasant, easygoing, unsuspicious race of Planet 24 had become nervous, paranoid.
One of the changes had been expected by us.
Because of the disruption between males and females at the beginning, which took nearly five hundred years to disappear, the females had become the lawgivers, if not in fact, then in their view of themselves. The males were dominant in that they hunted, appointed sentinels and guards, saw themselves as protectors of the nation, but the women because of how they had been competed for at the beginning had all kinds of graces, behaved as if mating were “a gift of themselves”: and there were courtship rituals where it had to appear as if males were fighting for a female who at last and after long hesitation then “chose” one: and this even when the balances had been redressed and there was no competition for females. The females all had a rather bossy elder-sister manner, which was taught them by the mothers: this could even approach the regal, the gracious. These inevitable results of certain statistical facts do not cease to be risible because they are inevitable…
But these poor animals aroused more pity than amusement among our technicians. We were approached by a delegation from them a few months after their acceptance by the Lombis. They all felt uncomfortable about what they were doing, which was to put into operation a plan that involved lying and deception. We had expected this delegation; the 2,000 Planet 22 technicians were being observed in the same way as the Lombis were: it was for us to find out if they were to be entrusted with taking the Lombis to Planet 25 and supervising them there when they expected to be returned home.
It is our experience that if you put two species together, after initial hostility they will begin to absorb each other’s ways. If one is in a supervisory relation with the other, who are suffering hardship, then it is to be expected that a percentage of the first will sympathise with the second and make attempts to alleviate conditions—which result is often to be welcomed and encouraged—or to help efforts to escape. Under certain conditions even this second result is not always discouraged.
While we were making plans for adding companies of supervisors from another planet, which had not had contact with the Lombis, to the personnel would transfer and police the Lombis, we were selecting 22-ers for further training in the arts of long-term judgement and assessment and were putting the following points to them:
That conditions on Rohanda were better than on Planet 24.
That conditions on 25, while not perfect, could not be described as bad.
That it was no hardship to be a servant race—which admittedly was our plan for the Lombis—unless this race felt and resented their subjection, in which case the laws of our Empire made it inevitable that they would be advanced to a level they could sustain.
It was true this whole experiment was based on an attempt to keep, just for once, a race on a subservient level; but surely the fact that we had to make it at all proved our past good record.
Did they, the Planet 22 technicians, not think they might be sentimental instead of showing true benevolence—which always involved an overall view…
To this they respectfully but self-respectingly replied that they thought our arguments sophistry.
There no need for them to say more than one thing, to bring forward more than one basic fact: the Lombis had been free, living where they had evolved, and had shown all the characteristics of such races. Now they had all the attributes of slaves.
We enquired from them what they would like us to do. Their reply was: to return the Lombis to their own planet.
Even though their return would most certainly disrupt the lives of the Lombis there, who were quietly evolving at their own speed, and who had forgotten them—they had not preserved memory of the abduction of what had been very small proportion of their number? There was no doubt at all if we suddenly set down on Planet 24 this now well-cohered and self-sufficing nation, there would be sudden and savage war.
Was this really what they wanted us to do? If there had been wrong thinking on our part then it was too late. Surely they could see this?
They did see it.
&nbs
p; Of course, we knew what might happen: for in the circumstances it was to be expected. That we did nothing to forestall it was rooted in our improper attitudes to Canopus, and at the time we did not see anything wrong in these attitudes. Now, looking back—but if there is one thing I have learned, it is that it is not useful to say If I knew then what I know now…
I will come to the defection of the technicians in a moment.
The Lombi festival during which our spaceships descended for the lift-off was a special one.
The site was a favoured place between rivers. It was relatively high, with thickly growing trees surrounding a small plain. The animals came in during the preceding few days and settled themselves under the trees in their groups. Our technicians were with them. Mating was encouraged at these times. The techs did not refrain, we had not expected them to: a mixture of these two vigorous and promising stocks was part of our plan.
The hunters brought in the animals for the feast, and the cooking trenches, with the spits over them, were arranged and tended by both males and females.
The singing and dancing began as the sunlight went out and the moon rose.
First in groups around separate fires, and then in great revolving circles, these animals sang of their distant home and their longing for it; of their capture by the shining machines, of the place of imprisonment, where they had been confined in the “little prisons” or in the shining prisons where everything was false; of their second capture, and their return to “true breath and breathing, to the green earth, to the green hills”; of their labours under a foreign sun building “prisons” for invisible races whose presence they sensed, but whom they never saw; of their third capture by the shining machines, their being set down “here in this place where everything reminds us of our home but is not our home,” and of how—on a day that was still to come—the shining machines would come again, and take them home to “the place that knew them.”
The Sirian Experiments Page 4