The Sirian Experiments

by Doris May Lessing Little Dorrit

These Hoppes recognised us—all three—as “from there,” meaning Canopus. So it was as Canopeans that we were welcomed into the camp, and then as guests at a festival that lasted thirty R-days and nights, which Klorathy obviously much enjoyed. I cannot say that I did. But I recognised even then that the ability to become part of—I was going to say “to sink oneself into,” but refrained, because of the invisible moral pressure of Canopus—an unfamiliar scene, a foreign race, even one considered (perhaps out of ignorance) inferior, is one to be admired, commended, and even emulated, if possible. I did try to behave as Klorathy did and as Ambien I was doing, as far he was able. Klorathy feasted and even danced with them, told stories, in their tongue—and yet was never able to be less than Canopus.

  And when the feasting was over, I was expecting something on these lines: that Klorathy would say to them: I have some news for you, some suggestions to make, now is the time for us to confer seriously and solemnly and at length, please make arrangements for a formal occasion at which this can be done.

  But nothing of the sort happened. Klorathy, in the tent allotted to him, and we two Ambiens, in our tents, simply went on taking part in the life of the tribe.

  And now I have to record something that I most bitterly regret, for it set back my understanding for a very long time. Millennia. Long ages. I missed an opportunity then. I shall simply say it, and leave the subject.

  I was impatient and restless. I found these Hoppe savages interesting enough and I would have stood it all—the lack of privacy, the flesh food, the casualness and indifference to dirt, the thousand and one taboos and prescriptions of their religion—if I had known the ordeal would have a term. The other Ambien advised patience. I did not listen to him but went to Klorathy and demanded how long he proposed to “waste his time on these semibrutes.” His reply was: “as long as it is necessary.”

  I consulted with Ambien I, who said he would stay with Klorathy, if Klorathy “would put up with him”—a humility that annoyed me—and I took our surveillance craft, leaving him dependent on Klorathy for transport, and flew up northwards by myself.

  This was the first time a Sirian had openly travelled into Canopean territory. Klorathy made no attempt to stop me, or discourage mc. Yet he did say, quietly, just before I left: “be careful.” “Of what, Klorathy?” “All I know is that our instruments seem to indicate some sort of magnetic disturbance—in my view it would be wiser to stay in the centre of the continent rather than anywhere at sea level.” I thanked him for the warning.

  ADALALANTALAND

  Millennia had passed since I travelled this way with Ambien I. From the height I was flying, the terrain mostly showed little signs of change, but there were areas sometimes several minutes flying time across (I was in a Space Conqueror Type III, long since obsolete) where below me was nothing but savagely torn and tumbled rock, stumps of trees, overthrown or shaken mountains. I remembered that the cities of the middle seas, which I had flown over with Ambien, had been shaken into ruin and wondered if this was in fact a particularly seismic time on this precarious planet. Flying over the areas of islands and broken waters that had been, and would be again, the great empty ocean separating the Isolated Northern Continent and the central landmass, I thought I saw that some islands were quite new, as if they had just been upthrust from the ocean bed. The island that had been covered by that marvellous city surrounded by its great ships had been under the ocean and risen out of it again. It had some rather poor villages on it now.

  But I wanted to see that area of great inland seas again, and I flew over and around it seeing everywhere near the rocky sunlit shores, ruins and collapsed buildings, some gleaming up from under the waters. But the region of these seas was rich and fruitful and would soon again put forth cities, as it had done so often before. It was, however, discouraging to see how transient things were and must always be on this planet, and I fell into state of mind unusual for me, of the generalised discouragement known by us Sirians as “existential problem melancholia.”

  For what I felt was nothing more than the emotional expression of our philosophic dilemmas: what were the purposes of plannings, our manipulations, our mastery of nature? I was in the grip of a vision—as I hung there in my little bubble of a spacecraft, looking down at that magically beautiful place (for Rohanda was always that), the brilliant blue seas like great irregular gems in their setting of warm reddish soil—of impermanence, as if this little glimpse of a small part of a small planet was an encapsulation of the whole Galaxy, that always, despite its illusions of great stretches of time where nothing much changed, nevertheless did change, always, and it was not possible to grasp a sense of it as lasting or of anything as permanently valuable… I hovered above that lovely but desolating scene for as long as I could bear it and then directed myself northwards again to Adalantaland, for I wanted to see what a peaceful realm run by women would be like on Rohanda in its time of rapid degeneration.

  Analyses of Adalantaland are plentifully available in our libraries, so I shall confine myself only to my present purposes. It was a large island among several on the edge of the main landmass. While the middle areas of Rohanda at that time could be described as too hot for comfort, the northern and southern parts were equable and warm and very fruitful. It was a peaceful culture, rather indolent perhaps, hedonistic, but democratic, and the line of women who were its rulers governed by “the grace of Canopus,” which were a set of precepts engraved on stones and set up everywhere over the island. There were three main rules, the first saying that Canopus was the invisible but powerful lawgiver of Rohanda and would punish transgressions of its Rule; the second that no individual should consider herself better than another, nor should any individual enslave or use another in a degrading way; the third that no person should take more from the general stock of food and goods than was absolutely necessary. There were many subdivisions of these precepts. I moved freely over this well-governed and pacific land, and found these laws were known by everyone and on the whole kept, though the third perhaps rather freely interpreted. I was told that the Mothers had other, secret, laws given them direct by “those from the stars.” I was not considered as emanating from “the stars.”

  It happened that in type I was not far off from the Adalantaland general type: they were mostly fair-haired people, pale-skinned, with eyes often blue, and on the whole tending towards large build, and plenty of flesh. My height and thinness caused much concern for my general health. I spent time with the currently reigning Queen, or mother, who lived no better than her subjects, nor was in any way set up over them. The focus of special was one that could not be shared with them. I wanted to know how it that this realm managed to be so ordered, lacking crime and public irresponsibility, when these qualities were not to be expected of Rohanda in this time of a general falling-off.

  The beautiful and generous and genial Queen, or Mother, of course did not realise that this paradise of hers—for she and her subjects saw their land as one, and knew they much envied by more barbarous races—was not an apex of a long growth from a low culture to a high one, but was nothing but a shadow of former greatness that lay on the other side of that Catastrophe, the failure of the Lock. There were hints in old legends of a disaster of some sort, and many to do with the “Gods” who were watching over them and “would come again.” They had come in the time of this Queen’s great-great-great-great-grandmother. From the description I recognised Klorathy. He had given fresh precepts, somewhat at an angle to those used previously; had—also—rebuked, and had strengthened in them their purpose towards the maintenance of their fair and smiling land.

  And the secret laws? The Queen was not at all reluctant to share these with me; the only reason, she said, they were not given out to everyone, and written up on the public stones, was that they were so precise and persnickety—yes, I recognised Canopus here!—ordinary people, preoccupied as they had to be with ordinary life, could not be expected to bother with them.

  These precepts were the
same as those given to us Sirians by Canopus, used by us and already considered as Sirian, at least to the extent that it was hard to remember their Canopean origin. I even remember a feeling of affront and annoyance at hearing the Queen describe the things as from Canopus, remember chiding myself for this absurdity.

  The Queen took time and trouble to explain these regulations, which were all to do with what substances would protect and guard, how to use them, the times to use them, the exact disposition of artefacts and how and when, certain types of place to avoid and others to seek out… and so on. There is no point in listing them, for they were not the same, but changed, and we had been told how to change them and in accordance with what cosmic and local factors.

  But I noted that in what the Queen was telling me were inaccuracies. Slight divergences from prescription. It was a disturbing experience for me to sit quietly listening while this competent and friendly lady explained to me the conduct that must be followed on Adalantaland to preserve health, sanity, and correct thinking, when I was using the same laws of conduct myself… but using them not exactly in the same manner. My observances were more likely to be correct, since I had only just left Klorathy, who checked them with me. Yet he had told me not to alter this Queen’s practices; had not mentioned them. So I said nothing.

  The Queen wanted to know what part of Rohanda I came from, and I spoke to her of the Southern Continents, of which she had heard. In fact her mariners had visited the coasts of both—this interested me, of course, and from what she said, it seemed that these coasts had been explored by them. But recently she had forbidden voyages far afield: there was disquiet and alarm abroad, had I not felt it? People had not spoken to me of their fears and forebodings? Well, if not, that was because I was a foreigner and it would be discourteous to spread such unhappy states of mind. But as for her, the Queen, and the other Mothers who governed this land, they felt that indeed there was reason to fear. Had I not heard of the great earthquakes that had swallowed whole cities down southwards? Of storms and tempests where normally the climate was equable… So she talked, her blue eyes, which reminded me of the seas I been hovering over only a few R-days before, roaming restlessly about, worried, full of trouble… and I was experiencing a lesson in the relative, for she was in fear for her culture, her beautiful land, while I had recently been contemplating the destruction of planets, cities, cultures, realms—and flying over large tracts of earthquake-devastated landscape in a frame of mind not far off from that used for contemplating the overthrow of termite-queendom, or the extinction of a type of animal for some reason or other.

  I left Adalantaland regretfully and travelled slowly to the coast where I had left my space bubble, not wanting to leave this realm of such lush and full fields, such orchards and gardens, so many orderly and well-kept towns—and not wanting to say goodbye either to these handsome people. I was thinking, as I went, about their third precept, that they must not take more than they could use, for it seemed to me to go to the heart of the Sirian dilemma… who should use what and when and what for? Above all what for!

  THE "EVENTS"

  The scene that I saw when I looked down from my space bubble, and the thoughts in my mind then are very clear to me: it is because after the “events,” as soon as I knew that everything I surveyed was chaos and desolation, I took pains to retrieve my mental picture of it all so that it was clear in my mind, ready for instant recall.

  I could see a great deal: below me the fair and smiling islands of those blessed latitudes… on one hand the great ocean that spread to the Northern Continent, with its unstable family of islands, now all visible and alive… to the north, the little patch of ice and snow whose very existence showed the sensitive nature of Rohanda’s relation with her sun… southwards the coasts of the main landmass stretched—at first balmy and delightful, then rocky and parched—to the burning regions of the middle latitudes… and inland from these coasts, the vastnesses of the mainland itself, where I had never been, though Ambien I had. I longed to see them. Such forests and jungles were there!—so he said: he had darted back and forth across and about in his spacecraft and even so advantaged had found it impossible to easily mark the bounds of these forests. The beasts in the forests!—such a multitude of them and such a variety of species, some of them even now unknown to us. And beyond the forests, on great plateaux under blue and crystal skies, the cities that Ambien I spoke of. These were not the mathematical cities of the Great Time, but were remarkable and amazing places, often with systems of government unknown to us, some of them benign and comfortable to live in, and some tyrannous and very wicked. There they lay, a day’s easy journey in my little craft, and it seemed that Canopus did not mind my travels in their dispensation, and so there was nothing to stop my going there at once… nothing except my state of mind, which was most unpleasant, and every moment getting worse.

  I did not know what was happening to me. We have all of us experienced those shadows from the future we call “premonitions.” I was not unfamiliar with them. It seemed as if I was inside a black stuffy room or invisible prison, where it was hard to draw breath, and from where I looked down on those brilliant scenes of sea and land that seemed to baffle and reject my sight, because of my state of mind. I kept thinking of Klorathy’s warning… just as the thought formed that his warnings were filling me with something I had only just recognised as terror, it happened…

  What happened?

  I have been asked often enough by our historians, delighted that just for once they had an actual eyewitness to such an event. And I always find this first moment hard.

  There was an absolute stillness that seemed to freeze all of the scene below me. The air chilled—all at once, and instantaneously. I looked wildly around into the skies around me, with their Rohandan clouds and blue spaces—and could see nothing. Yet I was stilled, checked, silenced in all my being.

  Suddenly—only that is not the word for the instantaneous nature of this happening—I was in total darkness, with the stars swinging about around me. I was in starlight. And now the stillness had been succeeded by a hissing roar. I looked down to see if the scene under me had also been vanished away, and saw that I was in movement—my craft was being spun about so that I could not see steadily. Yet I was able to make out the coastlands of the main landmass, and the islands, one of which was Adalantaland. My mind was clear only in flashes—as if lightning lit a landscape and then left it dark. This is why I had no coherent idea then of what was happening. Moments of intense clarity, when I was able to work out that Rohanda had turned over on itself, as a globe in a decelerating spin may wobble over—an understanding that this need no more affect the tiny inhabitants on its surface than the microbes of a child’s ball know that they are in violent and agitated movement as the ball is flung from hand to hand and bounced here and there, but continue complacently with their little lives—calculations of how this reversal of the planet might affect it… all this went on in my mind in those moments of brilliant thought, when that mind in fact worked at a level I have not known since, in between periods of black extinction.

  I had no idea how long this thing went on, and can only say now that it was for some hours—so our astronomers have calculated. Suddenly—and again I have to emphasise that this word cannot in any way convey the feeling that the event happened in an order of time not Rohandan—I was back in sunlight. The scene below did not change—that is, not for a long moment. And then all at once, flick! just like that, Adalantaland vanished beneath the sea, and a whirlpool formed where it had been. My eyes drawn to that place, darkened in grief for the loss of those people, were nevertheless aware that all around the periphery of my vision islands were vanishing, leaving their spins of water, or land rising up—and sometimes islands would plunge under the waters and then almost at once rise up again, seeming to be settled there stable and permanent, and then, flick! they disappeared. When I was able to withdraw my immediate grief from Adalantaland, to gain a wider view, I was able to see th
at all over the great ocean the islands that studded it had gone.

  And have not come back again since… and that is when the Isolated Northern Continent became permanently isolated. Though of course I am using that word relatively: often enough I have flown from one end of that enormous expanse of waters, with its few and clustered islands, and remembered those other times, and thought at how any moment those old islands may rise again, bare, water-scoured, to begin their slow process of weathering into fruitfulness and plenty. Not only islands were vanishing or appearing—everywhere the earth of the mainland was bulging up and buckling, and the waters were rocking and spouting and sloshing about as they do when someone jumps heavily into a water pool. There was a foul mineral smell. The scene grew wilder as I watched—as I intermittently watched, for I was being spun about and I could see only in flashes. Spouts of water miles high rose into the air and crashed thunderously, land spurted upwards like water, clouds formed in the skies in a swift massing process that seemed impossible—and then poured down at once in rain. Suddenly everything below was whitened: the rain had fallen as snow, and I was in a blizzard being whirled about in shrieking winds. And yet, immediately afterwards, the white had all gone, warm rains had washed the snow from the heaving, spurting, boiling surfaces of the globe, and I saw that the ice of the pole had gone, and where it had been was a spinning whirlpool—and then the spin of the water was slower, was hardly there, a crust was forming over it, and the white of the ice cover gleamed again, and spread, was rapidly growing.

  Again I was in a thick snowstorm that seemed to be weighing down my little bubble. I felt that I was sinking down, was being pressed down, and then again—and with that same unimaginable suddenness—a wind arose from somewhere and carried me violently off. Of course none of my instruments was working, nor had worked since the start of this violent re-orientation of Rohanda. I did not know where I was being sucked or pulled, but felt that it was not any longer in a vortex or spin but was direct, in a straight line. And I was always inside the thick swirl of snow that was like no snow I had ever seen anywhere or on any planet. I knew I was being steadily pressed down by it and readied myself for a crash. Now that I was able to be more calm, because of this long steady drive onwards inside the storm, without sudden twists or dizzyings, I was able to hear again: beyond the dreadful hush of the snowfall and the howl of the wind that drove me were the multitudinous sounds of the earth itself, groaning and shrieking, moaning and grinding… this went on for some time, and yet, even as it did, there were sudden spaces or moments within this time when the opposite happened. I mean that I suddenly found myself in sun and wetness, clouds of steam arising everywhere and not a trace of snow to be seen anywhere under me: a water world, with spouts of water flung up to the height of my craft, lower now than it was, far too close to the earth, and in that space of—a few minutes? seconds?—I was able to direct my craft upwards, away from the churn of the muddy steamy land under me. And then the snow descended again and the cold was intense and frightful. I lost consciousness, I think, or at least if I did not, the awfulness of the strain has blocked out my memory. For what I remember next is that I had come to rest, and the crystal shell of my little space bubble was hot and glittery with sun. I was beyond rational thought, or decision, and I opened it stepped out—risking death from a change of atmosphere, though I certainly did not think of that. The sun struck me first. It had a different look to it. Seemed smaller… yet not much. Seemed cooler… but was that possible? I wondered if I been tossed off Rohanda altogether and had arrived on another planet.