I walked slowly forward in a dead, an ominous silence. I could see the glint of eyes inside the oblong narrow slits in the dark hoods that hemmed me in; I could see behind them the heavy savage faces of the men and women of this horrid land.
I understood that my mouth was dry. That my knees were weak. That my breathing was shallow. Recognising these classic symptoms of Fear, which I could not remember having felt, I was of course fascinated. But at the same time I was analysing my situation. Very bad indeed, if they meant ill by me, as the atmosphere convinced me they did. I had told the aircraft to vanish itself well and it would not return without my signal. This would depend on my being able to preserve my Canopean artefacts exactly as they should be.
When I had got halfway along this living avenue, four figures detached themselves from the group of priests ahead. They were in black, the same robes as those of the patricians. These advanced swiftly towards me, and two came behind me and two went just ahead. I was impressed by their odour, a thick cold dead smell.
I knew now I was a prisoner.
When I was standing in front of the group of priests, in their vivid clothes, heavy with gold and jewels, the four escorts went back to join their groups—each to an exact place. I was reflecting that in all that large multitude there was not one out of his or her ordered place, not one there by casual impulse, or who was watching, even, from the roofs. The slaves were well down in their dungeons, it seemed, for none was to be seen here. Yet at other times, so I learned later, when the sacrificial murders took place, the slaves were herded out, and crammed into the narrow place between the five-deep bank of guards.
There was not a single individual in that city, on that day, whose whereabouts could not be accounted for, was not known by these dreadful cruel men and women whose faces I was studying as I stood below them, looking up. I said nothing. Silence is a potent weapon. Can be.
And so they had decided, too. Nothing was said by them. They stared contemptuously down at me. I outstared them, and even, sometimes, turned my head, as if unimpressed, and allowed myself to glance about.
On either side of the bank of brilliant priests sat a large animal of a kind unfamiliar to me, a feline, with a yellow hide marked with black, and large unwinking green eyes. At first I thought them statues, so still were they; then saw the lift and fall of breath as sunlight moved on glossy fur. These were not chained or restrained in any way. Beside each stood a tall strong female, skirted to the waist, naked above, but marked with many intricate patterns all over the flesh, using the breasts and nipples and navel as eyes. The animals kept their gaze on me. I realised I was in danger of being torn apart by those trained beasts. I therefore summoned up certain techniques that I had learned, and had hardly ever had the occasion to use. I caused them one after the other to lie down, their paws stretched in front of them: their eyes, no longer on mine, were directed out over the heads of the silent crowd.
I heard the slightest commenting breath among the priests, and momentarily in the ascendant, I smiled at them and said:
“I am from the star Sirius. Your Lord and Governor.” I had spoken loudly, so that I could be heard at least by the guards nearer to me. I heard a movement among them. I knew the priests would now have to act one way or the other.
The four black-robed ones closed in on me, and I was hustled by them into the midst of the priests. I could not then be seen from outside that group. I saw the harsh angry faces, reddish-bronze, with dense black eyes, bending down all around me. I was moved off by them into the low entrance of the temple. There was a smell of stale blood. The blood of this planet is a thick unstable substance, and its smell speaks of its animality. It was dark in the temple, except for flames high up near the unseen roof. I was hustled along passages, and then more and longer dark passages that were cold and musty—I was in the lower part of these great blocklike buildings, perhaps even being pushed along from one to another, and then another. We passed slaves, poor pallid creatures, who stared in terror at my guards and shrank away into some side passage. These corridors were lit at very long intervals with feeble lights on the walls. This was the underworld of the slaves. I was at last thrust into a cold and dimly lit place and left.
Alone. I was surrounded by cold blue-grey stone. It was not a small room, but was oppressive, because of its dimensions. I will here say that while Sirius even then was familiar with ideas to do with the relations between the dimensions of buildings and the psychological state of their inhabitants, we had—dare I say have?—not approached the understanding of Canopus in the field. It was a place designed to crush, belittle, depress. (These dimensions were in common use through all the levels of the buildings, even those in use by the ruling class. When I found this I concluded that this culture had been Canopus-inspired and had then degenerated under the influence of Shammat.) The walls were of large slabs of squared stone. So was the floor. The ceiling was made to look the same, as it was faced with stone. The door was a single slab of stone, moving in a groove on invisible weights. There was no window. Two small oil lamps stood on a cube of stone that was the only table. A stone bench or ledge ran along one wall. This bluish-grey stone did not reflect the light. It was not stuffy: there was air coming from somewhere.
There was nothing in this room, or tomb, to soften or reassure. I decided therefore that my captors intended to threaten or even torture, and that I had been put here to lower my resistance.
I sat on the bench. as comfortably as I and entered into reflection on situation. First of all, and most important for the overall situation of Sirius, the exact timing of my arrival had been known: I had been expected. This meant a much closer acquaintance with our activities on this continent that we had known. One had always to expect some sort of espionage or at least a local curiosity enough to supply a certain amount of information, but the manner of my reception showed something well beyond this. No matter how I mentally surveyed my companions, our local staff, the members of our internal and external air forces, I could not find anyone to suspect. There was another thought that kept presenting itself: who was it that had always seemed to know what our movements and plans were? Canopus! Was I to believe that Canopus had supplied this nasty little kingdom with information us? No, that was out of the question. Yet, here, in this area of possibility, was something that could not be dismissed… I set it aside and considered my own present situation.
If it been planned simply to kill me, to remove me as a threat, then this could have been done as I landed, or soon after, without this obedient populace knowing anything about it. The fact that I had been received by the entire priesthood—the upper class of this culture—and their guards meant that I was to be sacrificed publicly, probably as the central and even sole figure of an imposing ceremony.
I was beginning to feel very cold inside my prison. This, too, was not a sensation I could remember feeling—not to this degree. I noted my thoughts were slowing; my mental reactions were becoming as stiff as my limbs. There was an absolute silence here under this weight of stone.
If they were so well informed about our movements and intentions, why was there any need to interrogate me?… It was at this point I noted that my thinking was becoming too inefficient to continue and so I switched it off. Soon afterwards, the great stone slab slid sideways in its grooves and a female entered. She was a slave. The reddish skin colour of this face was paler in her because of her long sojourn within these stone prisons. She was shorter and lighter in build than those great strong specimens, the ruling caste and their guards. But her face had the same brutality and I could see in her dulled brutish eyes that she would kill me at a word. She had brought in some dishes and jugs that contained quite an adequate meal. I told her I was very cold. She stared, and did not seem to hear. She came swiftly to me, her black eyes not on my face but all over me, as if they were curious hands. And then her hands were all over me and I thought she going to take my protective necklace and bracelets. I could see that she was afraid of this exploration
of my person, but could not resist it. Her face showed an uneasiness not far off terror, and her eyes kept flickering towards the open doorway. Yet she felt my hair, ran thick fingers up and down my arm, and then bent to peer right into my face, and my eyes: this was the oddest sensation, because it was the colour of my eyes, that fascinated her, the shape of my face, and I might been inanimate for all the interest she had in my intrinsic self, in anything my eyes might have been saying to her.
Then she abruptly stood straight and turned to go out. I said again that I was cold and again she did not respond.
Perhaps she was deaf. Or even dumb.
Although I believed there might be drugs in the food, I did not hesitate to eat and drink, and without any real concern for the results. This was partly because of the frigid slowness of my mental processes, but partly because of what I have already mentioned, my inbuilt unconquerable belief that I was immune. Not eligible for death!
Yet I was certainly able to consider, and even with an appreciation, that I was likely to be murdered in this ugly little city on this inferior little planet. It was a fact that I kept supplying to myself, as something that had to be taken in. But I could not.
Between my functioning being, the familiar mechanisms of Ambien II, senior official of Sirius, member of a race that did not expect to die, except by some quite fortuitous event—such as a meteorite striking a Space Traveller—between that state of consciousness, and the real urgent apprehension of the fact: You may very well be murdered at any moment, there was really no connection. I literally could not “take it in.” I wondered what it would feel like to “take it in” so that my whole organism knew, understood, was prepared. What would it be like to live, as these unfortunates did, not more than four hundred to eight hundred years, depending on their local conditions—no sooner born than ready to die? Did they feel it? Really feel their impermanence? Or was there something in the nature of the conditions of living on this planet that imposed a barrier between fact and its perception?
I pursued these thoughts, or rather, allowed them to float through my mind, or—perhaps even more accurately—observed them take shape and pass, while I ingested foodstuffs that I hoped would soon warm me.
Soon there came in another female. Once again I am faced with that problem of hindsight. The female was Rhodia. To try and put myself back into my state of mind before I knew who she was, without distortion, is not easy.
But I can say accurately that at once I was saying to myself that she did not resemble the slave who had brought the food. She was dressed in the same clothes, long loose dark blue cloth trousers, and a tunic of the same, which was belted with leather, and hung with various keys. She was a wardress or jailor. She was larger in build than the other, and her red or red-brown skin was lightened by lack of sunlight, like the other. But I at once felt at ease in her presence, to the extent that I warning myself: Be careful, it might be a trap. She was not, as I was already seeing, of the same race. Or not of the same sub-race. Same in general style or pattern—skin colour, build, the long hair—she nevertheless had an aliveness that at once set her aside.
She stood immediately in front of me, this handsome, alert female, her large black eyes full on mine. And remained there, as if expecting or requesting an exchange. I did smile at her, even while I was telling myself that it was the oldest trick in the world—the amiable jailor. She had over her arm a length of dark blue woollen cloth, and this she unfolded to display a warm cloak, in which I thankful to muffle myself. Then she grasped me by the arm and assisted me to rise, knowing that I had become stiffened and lumpish. This firm confident touch was quite unlike the avid, brushing touch, like a snake’s tongue, of the other inferior wardress. She walked me, gently enough, to the door, and then assisted me through it. By now my responses were blocked and confused. Everything in me that told me to like this creature was being chided and set aside by me. She felt this, for her hand fell from my elbow and I stumbled on by myself along the low corridors, all straight, all lit by the same regular minor gleams of light at long intervals, all of the same regular blocks of dark stone. Somewhere above me was the sunlight of this region, were the peaks capped with snow. But it was as hard to take in, to really believe that fact, as it was to believe that this woman might easily slide a knife into me.
After a long walk, turning with monotonous regularity at sharp angles from one corridor to another, the lights on the walls suddenly increased, there was softness under my feet—and I saw coloured rugs and carpets, and the walls had hangings on them. Abruptly, we stopped. Apparently facing a blank wall. She pressed down a lever that projected from the wall, and another great slab of stone slid silently back. I was in the entrance to a brightly lit room that had windows in it.
This alone nearly overthrew me—being in ordinary daylight again. Seven tall men, in the black cloaks I had already seen, were seated behind a long wooden table. An eighth stood by a window half turned away, looking out. Again, I have to disentangle what I later learned of the eighth man and what I felt then. Then, I saw at once he was not of the same race as that of Grakconkranpatl, nor of my wardress, who was standing just behind me. He reminded me of those Shammat pirates who had visited me such a very long time ago, the shameless thieving ones. He was, however, taller than they. He was more finely built. His skin was pale brown, as theirs had been. His eyes were quick and brown. His hair was profuse, curly and reddish, worn long on the head, with a neat strong beard. He was the old Shammat type much refined. Compared to the seven, in their heavy black, with their brutish features, their long black eyes that conveyed coldness and deadness as much as they did avidity and lust for power, he seemed infinitely better, even reassuring. And it was as I stood there, my eyes turning for relief to this eighth that I heard a breath from behind me: “Sirius, be careful.” This sound floated into my mind, as if it came from not now and here but from Koshi, or from the spaces between the stars. I could not believe I was hearing it, and even thought I had imagined it… when I slightly turned my head, the woman was a few paces behind, and her face was immobile, even indifferent.
And I was still waiting there, in front of these coldly observant men, all eight of them, now that the one by the window had turned to stare, too. And as yet nothing had been said.
One of the men rose, came over to me, his cold gaze assessing my hair, my skin, my light brittle build, and whipped off the dark cloak, and, gripping my upper arm, pushed me forward closer to the seven so that I stood close against the table they sat along, one, two, three, four, five, six, all so alike, copies of each other, so little variation there was between them. And the seventh stood behind me, and lifted my hair in his large hands, so that he could feel it and show it to the others, and then lifted one of my arms, and then the other—both bare, now that the enveloping cloak lay discarded on the floor. Then he slid the bracelets up down my arms in a way that showed he wanted to take them from me, but, leaving them for the moment, he began to unhook the necklace of Canopean silver. I was surrounded by his cold unpleasant smell and I felt faint, but I said calmly:
“If you take these things from me, it will be the worse for you.”
I saw the eyes of all six of these rulers—priests and tyrants—turn towards the one who lounged still at the window, showing his superiority to them and the scene by his affectation of half-indifference, sometimes watching what went on in the room, sometimes observing some events out of my sight on the central avenue that, presumably, was not now lined with the guards. He now glanced at them, and nodded slightly—such a minimal gesture was this that I could easily have believed it had not occurred, was it not that it had its effect: the hands of the man who stood behind me no longer fumbled at the catch of the necklace.
Was this eighth man, then, the tyrant who called himself the High Priest? How otherwise was he in a position of supereminence?
Under my robe, I could feel the girdle of starstones, which was the third object given me for protection by Canopus, lying tightly around my w
aist, not a few inches from the one behind me. I was conscious of the smooth clasp of the gold band around my left thigh, which was the fourth of the talismans.
If the priests had not summoned me to take these things, or to interrogate me, why then was I here? The thought strongest in me was that it was the eighth man who had demanded this confrontation. But why?
Again, I was standing there, no one speaking, the eighth man gazing apparently indifferently out of the window, six of them ranged one beside the other opposite me on the other side of the long narrow table, six pairs of black eyes staring at me. I do not remember any other species that has struck me with such unpleasantness as these did: if they had been simple brutes—that is, a species still totally brutish, or one just lifting itself away from brutishness—they would have been more tolerable. But they were a long from running about on four legs or tearing their food with their fangs. It was the end of a line of evolution I was seeing; one that had taken its path into this cruelty and narrow caste interest and was frozen there.
It came into me that there were two different interests at work here: those of the eighth man being different from the seven, but they did not know it.
One of the men got up, pushed down a lever that slid stone panels across the windows, extinguishing daylight, and I found myself standing in a beam of brilliant light that fell on me from above. All me was quite black and I stood illuminated. I knew then that this was a rehearsal for some ceremony: they wished to see how I would look to an assembly of, probably, slaves as well as the ruling caste, when I stood before them, bathed in light, in one of the temples, before the priests cut the heart out of my body.
A moment later, the stone window panels had slid open again, the light had been switched off, and I was being wrapped in the heavy cloak by the woman, and then taken back along the passages to my room.
The Sirian Experiments Page 21