The Sirian Experiments

by Doris May Lessing Little Dorrit

  “You are not Shammat,” I said, sharp and cold. And afraid.

  “What do you suppose Shammat is, lady?” And he again marched and strode, and stopped, on his desperate course.

  I been given—I felt—another piece of my puzzle.

  “Shammat is not merely an external tyranny?”

  “Surely that is evident?”

  “I see.”

  He enquired, really surprised. “How is it you have to ask?”

  “I ask… and I ask… and I ask… there are questions I seem to ask over and over again. Yet I do not ever get an answer.”

  “But wasn’t that an answer?”

  I felt weighted with a half-knowledge, something too much, too painful, too dark—a long dark wail that was inward. And I could see the same on Nasar’s face.

  “This is a terrible place,” he said in a bleak voice, as if suddenly seeing something for the first time—he who had lived this for so long! Yet he was contemplating it again, anew. “A terrible place.”

  “Will you tell me why?” I said. “Please will you try and say. What is Shammat? That is what I want to know.” And I added, “If I knew that, then could I understand Canopus?”

  At this he laughed—a real laugh. “What is Shammat? Shammat is this—if you build a city—perfectly and exactly, so every that feeling and thought in it is of Canopus—then slowly, the chords start to sound false—at first just slightly, then more and more—until soon the Canopus-nature has gone, it has slipped, it has fallen… like me… and if you start again, and collect together, let us say, ten people and teach them Canopus—if you can, if you can—then that is all you can do because Shammat rises up and strikes back and for the ten of Canopus nature there will be ten times ten of Shammat. The ten you cherish, if they stand, if they stand, if they do not fall away like me… and if you say Love, then Love is the word, it is Love, yes, but then…” and he was muttering now, in a crazy, restless, wild desperation and misery, “but then it is Love still but cracked, the sound false, then falser, and it is not love but wanting, oh Elylé, Elylé, Elylé the beautiful one, beautiful one…”

  “Nasar!” I stopped him and he sighed and came to himself.

  “Yes,” he said, “Love the golden word does not sing her song for long here, before her voice cracks… Love slowly turns down, down the spiral and then there is Hate. Each perfection becomes its opposite, that is Shammat. You ask what is Shammat—it is that if you say Love, then before long, it is Hate, and if you build for harmony, then soon it is quarrelling, and if you say Peace, then before long it is War—that is Shammat, that is Shammat, Sirius.”

  “And yet Canopus persists here. Canopus keeps this planet. Canopus does not jettison it. Rohanda is under your protection.”

  “That is our policy.”

  “And do you not agree with it?”

  “No, I do not agree with it—but then, I am now Shammat, or at least for a good part of the time, so what does it matter what I agree with or not?”

  “Tell me, you have been ordered back and you do not want to go.”

  “Yes.”

  “Because you cannot face what you feel when you have to come back again?”

  “Yes.”

  “And if I gave you the earrings and the other things…”

  “Oh, the earrings would do, would be enough,” he muttered, desperate and evasive and savage. “How could they be enough? You have certain exact and accurate practices, changing as circumstances change. Is that not so?”

  He was staring at me, sullen, admiring in a way but disliking.

  “Very true.”

  “So if you are asking for the earrings, they cannot be to enable you to maintain yourself healthily here, but to give to Elylé. Is that it? Or is there something else?”

  “There might be.”

  “Can it be that the Puttiorans, who have the earrings and who are making wrong use of them, are putting pressure on you to join them?” I heard my own voice, prim and scandalised—and incredulous.

  “Something like that.”

  “You cannot conceivably be tempted by Puttiora?”

  “Why not? If I can be tempted by Elylé—and more than tempted—do you realise I have been as good as her husband for—oh, I don’t want to think how long…”

  “Well, how long?” I asked, as the thought came into me that these creatures lived very short lives.

  “Exactly so, Sirius. There is the additional torment that this absolute and incredible beauty is—stuff for a moment, snow on your palm. It is like being allowed to become besotted, drunk, gone into the perfection of a butterfly. Do you have butterflies on Sirius?”

  “No. But I have seen them elsewhere.”

  “In Shikastan terms, I have loved—forgive the word—Elylé for a long time. In our terms, our time, I am drinking, drunk, gone into something that dissolves as I look at it, like wanting to possess a snowflake. Can you imagine the fascinations of that, Sirius?”

  “Nasar, you should go home. And you should say all this—in the right quarters.”

  “And then?" he said—amused. I could see that: and in exactly the same way as I would be by a very young child.

  “Very well,” I said. “Sirian ways are not yours. But surely the problems of discipline are the same everywhere? You should obey orders, freely confess your derelictions, and take your punishment—but you say there isn’t any.”

  He sighed, and began his pacing.

  “And you should put forward your point of view—you should say that in your opinion the policy for this planet is incorrect.”

  He flung himself down on pile of cushions, stretched his legs out, put his behind his watched me, with smile.

  “Canopus should argue with Canopus,” he said. “Well, why not? It has never been done. But…” and he laughed.

  “I do not understand why that is so amusing,” I said. “But I have had a very great deal of experience with the administration of planets, and the personnel who administer them. I have been an advocate of the policy that does not only allow, but insists on, the views of personnel being heard all times. It is not possible for an administration that has to be centered on the Home Planet to remain always au fait with local problems. That is exactly how administrative policies get top-heavy and inflexible. If there is not a continual and active liaison between headquarters and the local officials—then in my experience, one can expect things to go wrong.”

  I have to record here that he laughed until I became very angry, but on behalf of Sirius, not of myself. For it was Sirius that was being criticised.

  “Very well,” said he, “I shall go back, as ordered. I shall demand active rehabilitation—for I certainly need it. I shall demand the right to put forward an opposition to existing policy. I shall that that this was on the advice of Sirius…” and he nearly began laughing again, but he saw my face and stopped. “I am sorry,” he said, “I really am. But you simply do not know…”

  “No, I don’t know. But I would like you to go on. If your persuasions fail, and the existing policy stands, then…” I hesitated, and said: “I shall not attempt to conceal from you that Sirius would like all of Rohanda. We obviously have very different ideas from yours. Let us say they are not so lofty! We could make good use of this Planet for our experiments. We have made very good use of the southern hemisphere…” and here I had to stop.

  I had forgotten, because of the superior and even commanding position I had had to take in relation with this Canopean functionary, that our part on this planet had not always been honestly played! Again I found myself in the position of hoping a Canopean was not able to read my thoughts, yet knew he did.

  I made myself say: “Did you know that some of our experiments in the south were not always entirely within the terms of our agreements?”

  “Yes, of course we know that.” He did not seem inclined to say any more. Because it was of no importance?

  “That you would not keep to the spirit, let alone the letter, of our agreements, wa
s foreseen and allowed for.”

  I was angry now. And defensive. “What I can’t understand is this: Canopus both allots this defective little planet a far more important role than we do—certainly you go to far greater lengths than we ever do—but at the same time you seem quite extraordinarily perfunctory…” and as I spoke, words flashed into my mind, and I received them with a sense of weariness. “I suppose you are going to say that what you do is in accordance with what is needed?”

  “But what else could I possibly say?” he asked, genuinely surprised. For some reason the insectlike people of their Planet 11 came into mind: I remembered an infant that was a frail pink squirm held in milky semitransparent arms, surrounded by waving tentacles. And these loathsome things were higher in the evolutionary scale than I was, or at least very well regarded by Klorathy, and, therefore, also, by Nasar. For me to approach “the Need” seemed to demand resources of tolerance in me that I could not believe I would ever have. And yet again we reached, Canopus and I, a moment when understanding had been on the verge of trembling into light. And then had gone again. Had been engulfed in anger, guilt, and in disbelief in my own capacities.

  I did not know what it was I had not understood. I heard myself muttering: “I don’t understand. I don’t understand.”

  “Poor Sirius,” said Nasar, in the way he had done before.

  “What will happen if you fail to persuade them?” I asked.

  He stood up. He looked drained, and ashy and lustreless, all the energy gone out of him.

  “I shall go home now. I shall take your advice. If I succeed in my application to question the Colonial policy, I shall say that in my view we should jettison Shikasta. I shall say that Sirius has put forward a serious request to take over Shikasta. If I fail, and the existing policy stands—and this is what will happen, Sirius, please do not expect too much—I shall, I suppose, have the pleasure of seeing you here some time.”

  “Are you not permitted to request transfer to another planet?”

  “I do not think that… but let us put it this way. Once I am there, and back in my normal frame of mind, I probably will not want to demand a transfer.”

  “I do not understand why not,” I insisted. “And if you do return here, I hope you will suggest you are not to be left down here so long without periods of leave.”

  He smiled again. It was gentle, and even appreciative and even—again—with a certain admiration. “I shall make your views known,” he said.

  “And what work do you think you will be assigned when you come back? If you do.”

  “What? Why, as always, I shall be sent to a new place—for of course it will not have escaped you that these cities of the eastern central landmass will soon be under sand?”

  “No, it did not escape me!”

  “Exactly so… and I shall either find myself in some dreadful city, which I shall regard, at first, as hell and torment, and then… perhaps it will all happen again? In any case, I shall set the current flowing, and guard the flow, and make checks to Shammat… all that I shall do—as I always do! Or perhaps they will tell me to make another city, or a cluster of cities, like these—all perfect, perfect… until…

  “How do you go about creating your cities?” I asked—and again the word came to me. “Oh, according to need,” I said. “Yes, but how?”

  “I think I shall go now,” he said. “If I don’t, who knows what may happen! I shall even perhaps find myself back with Elylé—I wouldn’t put it past myself, I assure you.”

  “How will you call your spacecraft?” I asked.

  “I shall return—in another way,” said he. “Goodbye, Sirius. And thank you. Look after your equipment—your earrings and the rest—they will be coming after it and after you, and when they find I have disappeared they may make that an excuse to take you physically… Call your spaceship in and leave. That is my advice.”

  He ran out of the room, and after some time I him, small dark figure, emerge from the base of the tower. He taken no covering with him. I understood. He was going to walk off into the great snow wastes and die there. This gave me food for thought indeed—it was the beginning of a new understanding about the ways of Canopus, their different means of going and coming, of “travelling,” if you like… I did not have time to think of all this then, any more than I had time to reflect on this long conversation with Canopus, in which there were so many openings for a greater comprehension. I was watching Nasar struggle forward. I could see from the low crowding white in the northeast that soon it would snow again. But long before it did, Nasar would be lost in the billowing piling masses. He would be dead very soon, I knew. He would not be found, I could be pretty sure, until the snow melted. That was when I could be afraid of the Puttiorans coming to take me in; probably on a charge of not reporting a disappearance, and even of murder—who knew what one could expect in a place like this! But the melting of the snows was a long way off. I had hoped to wait till the spring. I stood looking out at the scene that seemed crammed with white substance, and thinking that all that was water. How it would swirl and flood around these towers when the season changed! I would stand up here in the little tip of this tower, and look down at brown floods—and then, so I believed, there would be a burst of vegetation. I had never seen anything like that.

  I had no reason at all to doubt that when Canopus warned, they should be listened to. I did not want to have to face the Puttiorans, or even that degenerate smiling cruel lot—these gone-to-self-indulgence classes are always cruel in their lazy insolent way… Then why was I waiting here? Why, of course, to meet Klorathy.

  I had come here to meet Klorathy…

  I understood that I had met Klorathy. There was a mystery here I did not expect to unravel then, but I knew there was one.

  I decided that I would call in my hovering Space Traveller and leave. I sent out the call and collected my belongings. I found a white hooded garment folded in a chest and huddled myself in it. I did not want to be seen, a dark escapee against the snows, and arrested.

  Just as I was preparing to leave these high rooms at the cone’s tip, and descend to the street, I saw some writing sheets where Nasar had been stretched before I came into the room.

  His despair, his misery, his self-loathing, his conflicts, were written there in broken, sometimes abusive or obscene words. I ran my eyes swiftly over them, leafing through the many sheets: there were months of comment there. But on the sheet he had been scribbling over, just before I had come into the room, was written:

  I come again and again to the same thought. I may not be able to face Canopus and my own nature now, and the shame that will overwhelm me when I contemplate what I have been here, but I have only to contemplate Sirius to be strengthened in the better side of myself: thinking of Sirius I feel that perhaps I may at last force myself back to my duty. How is it possible that an Empire can be so large, so strong, so longlasting; so energetic, so inventive, so skilled; how can it be so admirable in so many ways—and yet never have any inkling at all of the basic fact? They continue; they thrive; they fall into periods of decline; they make decisions; they advance again… they let their populations rage out of control, and then suddenly limit them to practically nothing. And all this done according to a temporary balance of social forces and opinion—never according to Need. This worthy and correct and competent official who is no more capable of the shameful falling that I have shown I am only too capable of, is not able to take in anything of what the function of Canopus is. What the function of Sirius could be. Is that not a thought with enough power in it to make me whole again?

  That is what I saw written there. I put this sheet of brittle yet at the same time flexible substance—it was new to me—in my clothes, and in my turn walked rapidly down the stairs and out into the cold whiteness. It had begun to snow again, though lightly. I not afraid I would not find the Space Traveller, only that I might be stopped first. I did see a couple of Puttioran guards at the base of the far tower, and I ran fast al
ong the road I had come into the city on. It was hard to keep on the road. On either side were faint depressions to mark the ditches. I stumbled on, wondering if Nasar was still upright and walking onwards, or if he had fallen and was dying. It was strange to think in this way: we did not expect to die! Not we of the Sirian Mother Planet who can renew our bodies almost indefinitely. Death was hardly a reality to us. And that Canopus should use bodies like an equipment of garments…

  I had not run forward for long when I saw the soft glitter of the Space Traveller, and was in it and up and off the white thicknesses in a moment—soon below us the brown cones stood up out of the white coverlet, and above us was the Rohandan night sky crammed with blazing stars. I looked for our own dear star, which shed such a happy glow on our Home Planet, but I was bound for the southern hemisphere. We swept on, with the white expanse below us, and then over the mountains that were white, too, and suddenly below us was the blue ocean. The experiments I was proposing to organise do not concern my purpose in this account.

  And so I conclude my report of my encounter with Canopus in Koshi, of the cities of the eastern central landmass.

  PLANET 3 (1), THE PLANET 9 ANIMALS

  For long time I was nowhere near Rohanda, but at the other end of our Empire, dealing with problems, mostly psychological, arising from the reductions of population. I did not enjoy this work, and if it were not that the problems were so taxing, and, often, dangerous to the Empire, I would have visited Rohanda for a personal inspection of the experiments that were being pursued there. But none of these were of the class described sociobiological, only small-scale laboratory work on genetic engineering.

  It not until the question arose of Planet 3 (1) and its future that I could with good conscience return home for the discussions on policy, and then look forward to a tour of duty on Rohanda.

  The policy discussions were long and even stormy. Our decision not to acquire and develop further planets had been maintained. Planet 3 (1) was Planet 3’s moon or satellite. Planet 3 was in active use. Its moon had never been developed, was almost entirely without oxygen: but it fell within the class of planets that are considered potentially the most useful and desirable, if their atmosphere can be adjusted. At the height of our Empire’s expansion, plans had been made to force 3 (1), for it plentifully equipped all kinds of minerals. But as pursued our deliberate policy of retraction and reduction, the search for supplies of minerals became unnecessary. I think it is not far off the truth to say that we came to overlook 3 (1), even forgot it. Planet 3 itself, an adequately functioning place, was not concerned with it, except as to how it affected her gravitational situation.