“A good question again, fair Sirian.”
I said, "You do not have to call me that. I have a name. But it doesn’t matter. What I want to know is, what is the function of Canopus? What are you?” And I was leaning forward, twisting my hands together, so that they cracked—all my limbs are thin and frail, and I sustain breaks easily. I was using enough strength to break bones. I sat back, carefully relaxing myself.
He was watching me thoughtfully, with respect.
“You are right to ask that question.”
“But you are not going to answer it?”
At this he started up, leaning forward, gazing at me as if incredulous. “Can’t you see…” he began—and then lay back again, silent.
“See what?” But he said nothing. “Why do you stop? Why is it that you will never answer? Why is it I always get so far and then you won’t answer?”
He was gazing at me from where he reclined. I could have sworn that this copper man, or bronze man, that bronze-eyed, alert, smiling man was Klorathy. But he was not. The contrast was so absolute, and definite, to the extent that I said to him, not knowing I going to: “What is the matter with you?”
He laughed.
And even then I didn’t pursue it, for if I had he would have answered. He stood up. He collected himself. He smiled—oh, not at all like Klorathy.
“First of all… I have to tell you…” and he stopped, and he sighed. I saw that he was not going to say it!
“I have to go,” he said.
“Why? To work? They say you are a merchant.”
“I am a merchant. In Shammat land do as Shammat does. I am a merchant as you are a servant.” He came close to me then and bent and put out both hands and touched my earrings. “Take care of them,” said he, and sprang back, as if the touch burned him.
“Where are yours?” I asked.
“A good question. But they are on the earlobes of Shammat. They were stolen, you see. Or, more accurately, I got drunk and gave them to the earlobes of Shammat… very bad,” he said. “Not good.”
And he smiled in a way that frightened me, and left.
And now I knew at last that there was something very wrong with this Canopean. I was enabled to search my memory and come up with: the fact that this was a suborned, or disaffected, or rebellious official. I had seen it! I had had to deal with it a hundred times! This was Canopus gone wrong.
And I wrapped myself rapidly in my black cloth and I ran down those stairs after him, catching him halfway, and making him stop.
“Where are you going?”
“To visit my woman. I have a beautiful woman,” he said. “Oh, don’t look like that! Believe me, it is only those who understand nothing that look like that…” and he bounded down the stairs.
I went after him, the alabaster walls of the stairs gleaming around us both, and we reached the dark street that was luridly illuminated and full of sweating shouting demented people. I grabbed him and made him turn.
“Don’t be a fool,” he said. “Do you imagine we are unobserved?” He tore himself away. I did not listen, and went after him. He turned again and said in a low urgent voice: “I may be lost, but do you have to lose yourself, too? Be careful…”
And as we stood there, up came two of the same greenish-grey cold-eyed officials I had seen before, and one reached and wrenched down my headcloth to show my earrings, and a hand was already coming out to wrench them off, while another was pulling Nasar around by the arm, when Nasar said, “Punishment from Canopus!” and the one who had touched my earrings fell, like a stone, and the other ran off into the crowds. Nasar looked full at me, his amber eyes pained and sick, and said: “That cost us a good deal, Sirian, more than you know—get back upstairs. I may be lost, but why should you be?”
I took hold of both his arms, and said to him: “Very well, I have just understood… you have gone bad, you have gone wrong… I know the symptoms—yes, it has taken me long enough to see it… but come back, come back, Nasar… please. I demand it. You must. In the name of Canopus.” Well, he came back up the stairs with me, the long climb of them, and when he was at the top he was ill and frightened. He had lost the inner power that for good or bad had sustained him in his encounters with me. He trembled, pale under his dark copper skin.
“What happened?” I kept asking.
I asked, and I pressed, and it was very late in the night, and the snow, a pale presence, filled the windows, and at last he said this: “Lady, I have been on this planet for twenty-five thousand years. Since before Adalantaland. It was I who taught that island and the peoples around it. I was here before the change of earth’s axis and the birth of the seasons. It was I who taught—other cities and cultures you know nothing of. I have been here, here, here. Klorathy my brother has come and gone… there are those who visit, they come, they warn, they set the stones, they make the lines, they order, they align—and they go again if they are recalled to home, but I, I am a permanent official. And in my case they have made a mistake. Do you understand? I have gone very bad, as you say, Ambien the II or the III or the 97th. You come and go, too, I suppose? A sojourn on this planet and a little holiday on that? But I been in this hellhole for… ages, ages, long ages…” He muttered, and he swung his head, and he puckered up his face and sighed, and then leaped up and ran out of the door so fast I could not catch him.
It was a day and an hour when I had to perform the regulatory observances. I set out the objects on the rugs of the floor, arranged colours as they should go, put garments on myself in a certain way, adjusted my earrings, and observed the hour exactly, standing quietly there alone at the top of the great tower, enclosed in the snow’s white hush… it was very difficult. I knew by the resistance of the time and the substance about me that I was contending with a great deal: many times had I performed these rituals, since the failure of the Lock, had performed them on this or that continent, and in several different manners, but never had I felt as if I, or the substance of something felt through me, was pushing against a resistance experienced as—evil. Felt as a heavy, dead weight. But stuck to my purpose, thinking of Klorathy, and that he had asked me here. Why? For what purpose?
I had just finished what I had been instructed to do, when the curtains of the door were yanked back, and the man I had seen on my first evening stood there.
“Canopus,” he said. “You are on sufferance here and that does not allow you to kill our officials.”
What I was feeling as I stood up to face him surprised me: it was exactly the same tone or taste as what I felt when with Nasar. There was no mistaking that sensation, a resonance. I had told myself that Nasar had gone bad: but I had not gone on to understand what it might mean that he had been captured by Shammat, was Shammat.
I said nothing, but stood before him in my slight white robes, the luminous metal circlets on my upper arms, the metal band on my head of the same softly shining silvery gold, a metal foreign to Sirius, which I did not know, and my heavy golden earrings.
As he took in what I was wearing, his dull stonelike eyes stared, and he involuntarily took several steps forward. He was still wearing the golden earrings.
I was preserving a distancing and detached manner, while I attended to a large variety of thoughts and sensations. Speculations about Nasar continued. I was also thinking that this official ought never to have seen me thus accoutred and that he was at this moment fixing my image in his mind so as later to copy what he could. I noted, too, that he had not observed the patterns of colours, nor the scents, nor the stringed instrument on which I had been making the necessary sounds. I was right in thinking that he would be bound to believe these some sort of “female entertainment” and of no use to him. I was thinking that I did not believe the official punished by Nasar was in fact dead: more probably he was stunned. No authority of even ordinary sense uses greater methods of punishment or deterrent than are necessary. I was also concluding that my having to pretend to be Nasar’s servant could not be for the benefit of the Sha
mmat surveillance, but was not to disturb the populace. More than all this, I was trying to decide how to behave in a way that would control him.
Before I could move he had again advanced, and now stood immediately in front of me, arms akimbo, legs apart. Seen thus, I had every opportunity for a full scan of this species, enabling me on my return to furnish the biologists with ample details. The most remarkable feature was the wide slit of a mouth, connected, I judged, not with alimentation, but with voice production: when he spoke next, I was able to see, as I not when crushed in the street, that this slit seemed to vibrate, and the sounds came from his mid-torso. The way he spoke was resonant, giving a fuzzy sound to the words.
“Ornaments of this kind are not permitted in this city!”
And as his stone eyes seemed to swallow the artifacts, so that I was enveloped in a glitter of cupidity, I felt he was again trying some rather crude technique of hypnotism. But there was more to it: he was testing me, trying to elicit from me some kind of show of authority—was that it? Something he had been accustomed to find in Nasar? At any rate, I felt his triumph—and then, in myself, a weakness of fear because of this triumph in him. I knew that I had failed in some test he had applied.
My mind was racing. I turned from him casually, and moved away, my back to him, stood a few moments glancing out of the window, then sat down on a low chair. There are few places in the Galaxy where superiors do not sit, while supplicants or inferiors stand. As I sat, an idea flashed into my mind unrelated to the present situation—very clear my thoughts were, because of the aligning practices just concluded, and because of this situation of danger.
“How long has it been,” I enquired, “since this city was allowed to spoil its original design?” For I had understood that this city, as it had been designed, had consisted solely of the conical towers, in a certain alignment—probably interlocking arcs—and that the huddle of poor buildings around their bases, and the spreading suburbs, were a dereliction of an original purpose. Memories of what I had been told of the ancient mathematical cities, speculations that were never far from my mind as to what their function was—these were in my mind, and my distance from this situation and this stone slab of a man was genuine.
His response was immediate: sullen, and this meant a genuine annoyance, cunning—which alerted me to say: “There will one day be an end to your cupidities and your despoilings.”
He stood still. Very still. The heavy eyes seemed to glow. What I had said, not idly, but certainly not with any crushing intention, had made him remember past—warnings? Threats?
I remained where I sat, watching him. In my mind two were models of behaviour—one was Nasar, and everything that I felt was needed by this situation dismissed him. The other was Klorathy, who I understood as I thought of him would not regard this little servant of even the most horrible power with anything but—at the most—a detached dislike. So I said mildly, even with humour: “As for your colleague, he is of course not dead. He will recover, if he has not already…” and I rose again, as if dismissing him, and returned to the window, for I wanted to look around at these spiring towers with my new ideas in mind, and to imagine this city as it had been. For what purpose?
But I heard a humming, or vibration just behind me, and turning, there he was, that slit mouth of his thrumming: I knew now that that wordless sound had meaning, but knew, too, that I could not allow him to think I did not understand it. I leaned on the ledge there, and saw the towers dark against the pale falling sky.
“You are to come with me. I have authority. In this city I have the authority,” he insisted, and I believed him: it was part of some agreement that Canopus had allowed.
“I shall change my clothes,” I said.
“No,” he said, slamming it out, and he again ate my headband, the armlets, my earrings, with his eyes. I remarked: “But it is cold tonight.”
“You have a cloak.”
“I take it we must be expected at some very fine function indeed,” I said, smiling. And his lips’ rapid quiver conveyed to me that this was the case.
“I can only hope that you have a good reason to take me there tonight,” I remarked, as I took up the great black cloth and enveloped myself in it, “for I had other plans. Canopus has work to do.”
“I understand perfectly, perfectly,” he said, hurried and placating, and I knew that while he had not expected that he would fail to get his way, he was at least relieved he had got it: and was afraid that I might find some reason to give him the slip. And all the time everything about this creature emanated greed, so that I thought back to the visit, long ago, by the hairy avid Shammat-brutes: they were the same breed, different though they were. And I was not going to ask what he must be expecting me to know: Are there many different kinds on that Shammat of yours? Or are you from Puttiora itself? Well, I learned later he was from Puttiora: the cities of this plain were policed by Puttiora, and not by its subject planet Shammat—but that is part of another story.
We descended the long twining stairs, he coming close behind me, and I could feel the pressure of his itching want, want, want, all over me, his eyes like the touch of hands.
In the street we stood in a white storm, with dull lamps half obliterated at the entrances to streets and lanes. There were only the two of us. I was being chilled to stiffness as I stood, and the whine of the northern wind struck a painful fear into my bones: winter was fear, on this planet, and fear was the memory of sudden tempests of snow and ice that could wipe out a continent in a breath, of screaming winds that could tear water-masses and vast sea beasts into the air and whirl them around like dust. A square shape appeared in the white, an opening showed itself, and I got in, urged by my jailer, and found myself in a box furnished with cushions and a little oil lamp. I did not know at once how it was being conveyed, but soon thought it was by runner, for it was not the first time I had been carried in this way—the sign of a slave state, of a proud and ruthless governing class, wherever it is to be found.
The Puttioran smelled bad: it was a cold greasy smell. I of course checked this thought, knowing that mine was not likely to be pleasant to him: smell has always been the hardest obstacle to overcome in the good relations between species: in that nothing has changed! As I wrote the words beginning the account of my entry into the city of tall dun-coloured cones—which, alas, I could see nothing of from inside the jogging box—I was called to a delegation from one of quite the most pleasant of our Colonised Planets, and with the best will in the world, I had to leave the audience chambers on an excuse, for the smell that emanated from the otherwise quite ordinary and normal individuals, equipped as usual with “two legs, two arms, a head, a nose, and mouth.” as we say (but in this case it was a tail as well), was so appalling that I could not stand it.
The distance was not great. We stepped down on to thick snow outside a building that streamed light through pillars and from windows. We were outside one of the villas of the western suburbs, and this was a festivity of some kind, for I could hear music, of a kind I was ready to suppose an entertainment, though to my ears it was a high wail not unlike the whine of the gale. The box we had been brought in seemed to lift itself, and jerked away into the white: I could just see projecting handles, and dimly, four ill-clad beasts, who I hoped were being kept warm by the thick head hair that fell to the shoulders, which they freed from deposits of snow by continually shaking their heads. They vanished with the box into the snowfall.
I ascended wide steps beside the Puttioran, to a deep verandah that had many ornamented pillars, and braziers standing here and there. I was familiar with the affectation of governing classes anywhere for modes of their past, and knew that braziers were not the sum of their current technology for keeping themselves warm: the rooms at the top of the tower were heated by air that flowed in from ducts. Few individuals were on the verandahs because of the cold, but I saw they were in full festive dress by the fact that they were half naked.
I did not know whether it was o
n account of Sirius or of Canopus that I should strive for a good impression, but removed the poor black cloth in which I was muffled, and draped it over my right forearm in a way that I had seen in a certain history of custom from our early Dark Age: this manner of arranging an outer garment had signified rank.
I was being aided as I advanced through the graceful springing pillars by another historical comparison: a planet recently visited by me had preserved as a record of former times an area of villas similar to these, also set among vegetation—though of course I could see nothing of the gardens that I knew enclosed these suburbs.
The verandah was separated from the very wide and large inner room, or rooms, by curtains of thick many-coloured materials. I stood quite still in the entrance, in order that I might be observed. What I was observing was not unexpected: there were about twenty individuals there, all scantily clad, and with the unmistakable air of a ruling or privileged class taking its ease. They sat about on cushions, or on light chairs. Low tables were heaped with every kind of food and fruit. Around the walls stood about dozen servers, almost naked young females and males, holding jugs and ewers of intoxicant. The lights were not braziers, but some kind of gas burning in transparent globules from pillars and walls. The stone floors had handsome rugs.
Their immobility was not because they were surprised at my arrival but because they had expected it and did not want to show—yet—whatever emotions or needs had led to my being summoned. For I could see that this was the case. There was no surprise shown by the Puttioran at my side. There were two others of this most unattractive species present, seated among the others, but not lolling or sprawled about—I was at once able to see that they were tolerated here, no more.
“Klorathy”—was there: Nasar, in this dim light so like Klorathy that for moment I could not believe it was not he. But then he turned his head, and I knew at once his lateness in doing this was not because he had only just understood I arrived but because he was ashamed. He had a studied and casual air, as he sat on a low square seat with his back to a pillar. He at least was not half naked.
The Sirian Experiments Page 15