They were returned to their own planet after all had been given a fair chance to show if they could match their actions with their demands. But we did not want to exacerbate their already poisonous discontent and therefore tried to soften this rejection of them in various ways, by saying that ‘real’ work would be found for them later, and so on. On the whole it was felt that these attempts had not only been failures but worse: for when these millions found themselves back on their home planets, their complaints and discontents fomented uprisings and uproar of every sort, which were already quite enough of a threat. Our military strength had to be increased at a time when we believed that we could look forward to rapidly rising prosperity due to a welcome dismantling of our armies. Some of the more discontented planets became, for a time, not much more than vast prison camps. And yet I can say that every possible effort was made by us to alleviate the tragic situation of these unfortunates, the victims of our technical genius.
In the meantime an, alas, only too familiar situation continued: while these useless millions degenerated, we still needed vigorous and intelligent stock for hard labour on the planets that the same technical prowess was opening up.
What we had to do was to take from those planets recently settled species that still retained their native vigour, and were uncorrupted by soft living – as you can imagine, we were being extremely careful how we introduced our luxuries and our ease to these newcomers to our Empire – and after suitable training, use them to develop the new ones. We would choose from these planets stocks and species that seemed suitable, and train them not on their home ground but somewhere else. Rohanda was tried for a while, the empty settlements and stations of the failed experiment being put to use. The work given these more vigorous stocks was much harder than that given to the enfeebled ones. It was necessary to preserve a balance between retaining an ability for physical labour, while developing capacities for initiative and enterprise. What we did was to tell them they were to explore possibilities of developing fauna and plant life, without damaging their surroundings. The results were most gratifying and useful.
I remember a trip I made with some of my staff from end to end of Southern Continent II during this period, using a small fleet of our liaison craft. Flying north to south and up the coasts, and crossing the continent back and forth, it was over magnificent wooded terrain with vast peaceful rivers. But everywhere this sylvan paradise, populated by herds of peaceful animals, showed the settlements of the successful experiment. We landed day after day, week after week, among these representatives of species from our numerous colonies, all so different, yet of course all basically of the same level of evolution – for it is only when a species had got to its hind legs and started to use its hands that it can make the real advances we look for and foster. Furred and unfurred, with long pelts and short, with fells and tufts of hair on their backs and shoulders leaving their fronts bare, black of skin and brown, their faces flat and snouted and heavy-browed and with no brow ridges, jutting-chinned and chinless, hairless and naked, naked but with leaves or bits of skin around their loins, slow of movement and quick, apt to learn and not capable of anything but beast work … to travel thus from place to place was really an inventory or summing up of the recent developments of our Empire. This trip was pleasurable, and gave us relief from the disappointment of our recent failure with the northern captives.
All these species – some of them new ones to me; all these animals, and none of them incapable of adaptation, were nevertheless, when matched in our minds with what we were being told of the Canopean experiments up north and the amazing, the incredible evolution of the indigenous native species, fell so short that the two achievements could not be compared. We knew this. We discussed it and thought about it. We did not conceal the situation then; though later our pride made it something to be glossed over and then forgotten.
This entirely successful experiment on Rohanda – the teaching of so many different stocks to be good and flexible colonizers, which was making us so gratified and confirming our confidence in our Colonial Service – was nevertheless and at the same time a defeat. We knew very well that none of these animals we were teaching would evolve very much beyond what they were now, or not quickly: their capacities would be stretched, their skills added to, they would make use of their new opportunities. But it was out of the question that we could expect them to make the jump, and in a few thousand years, from their animal state to one where they would live in cities as fine as anything we knew on Sirius, and maintain them, and change in them so that they could hardly be recognized as the same species as our engaging and likeable companions, the simians who lived on their hillside so close to our headquarters, and who were always such a pleasant source of entertainment and interest for us and our visitors.
The Canopean experiment had changed the native stock. Fundamentally.
This was the point.
Our being able to survey all these different kinds of animals all at once, and coming to terms with their possibilities and limitations, resulted in a stepping up of our already quite intensive spying in the north. We had spies, both as individuals and in groups everywhere. We used less and less disguise. This was partly because of the openness with which we were received. Partly because all the southern hemisphere was covered with our supply fleets filling the skies between Southern Continents I and II, and we could always excuse our presence by talking of forced landings. Partly because of a new factor.
SHAMMAT. THE END OF THE OLD ROHANDA
We were approached by emissaries from Shammat. It is not easy to believe now, but Shammat at that time was hardly even a name. Puttiora, the shameful Empire, was, of course, not ignored by us, if for no other reason than that we were continually having to fight off incursions on to our territory. Shammat was spoken of as some dreadful sun-baked rock used by Puttiora as a criminal settlement. At any rate, they were pirates, adventurers, desperadoes. We had certainly not thought of them as having reached the stage of technology, and we were right, for the craft that set itself down on the plain below our headquarters was a stolen Canopean space shuttle. Four Shammatans came up the rocky road with the confidence of those invited, or at least expected, and this arrogance was typical of everything they did. In type they were Modified Two. Head hair, localized body hair, teeth at primary animal level, well-adapted hands, feet used only for locomotion. They were therefore above most of the species, though not all, currently being trained by us for colonial work; but far behind the Rohandan native species as evolved by Canopus. Though we were wondering, as we entertained these extremely vigorous and energetic visitors who had about them every mark of the barbarian and the savage, if this after all so common, not to say basic, type everywhere throughout the three Empires we knew anything about – Canopus, our own, and Puttiora – would not, if put into contact with the Giants, become as advanced as the northern natives. For we had recently adopted the theory that it was the Colony 10 Giants who had the secret of rapid evolution of inferior species.
I will not waste time describing our encounters with these Shammatans. There were many, because they would not take our ‘no’ as final. They lacked inner discrimination as to other people’s intentions. What they wanted was this. They had heard of our experiments with deliberately breeding first-quality colonizers. They knew everything about these, so we had to come to terms with knowing that their spying on us had been as intensive as ours on Canopean territory. Shammat wanted to ‘take off our hands’ some of our surplus females. There were very few on that horrible planet of theirs. Those they had were not ‘able to match demand’. I cannot exaggerate the crudity of their thought, and their talk.
While we continued to refuse, for of course there was no question of submitting any peoples under our care to such criminal savages, and while they continued to arrive day after day at our door, as if we had not discussed everything already, a pretty clear and unwelcome picture of their activities was forming in our minds.
Shammat h
ad been on Rohanda for some time, both sending down spaceships, though not often, and fostering a small colony that continually kept spies at work among the Canopean settlements. This was the explanation of the easy reception of our first emissaries: our visits had by no means been the first received by the Giants and the natives. Whatever it was Shammat had wanted, they had not been given it. Our visitors were cunning and evasive, but not able to hide what they felt and thought. They were angry, no, murderous, because of blocks and checks received from Canopus. And it wasn’t – from Canopus – females they had wanted, but something else. What this was we did not know, nor did we find out – for millennia, millennia! And we did not find out because we did not know the nature of Canopus, any more than Shammat did. But Shammat had suspected, had wanted, had tried to get – like Sirius. And Shammat succeeded where we failed. I am making this statement, here and now, without concealment – though certainly not without trepidation, nor without anticipating criticism – that Shammat the barbarous, the criminal, the horrible, that planet that for so long we cannot remember the beginnings of it has been a synonym for everything disgusting and to be despised: it was Shammat who found out something at least of the Canopean secrets. Enough to steal a little. And we, Sirius, the civilized, the highly developed have not found out.
To return to smaller matters. We of course wanted to know why these pirates had not simply stolen females from Canopus, since a spacecraft had been stolen – if not more than one. We could only conclude that Shammat was afraid of Canopus, and afraid of us, too: believing that punishment would more likely follow theft of people than theft of things. Rightly. But there was more to it than that. These Shammatans, returning day after day, climbing up the road to our fortress headquarters, did so for the same reason we were so ready to listen to them: they wanted to find out what we were doing.
We asked them at one point why they had not simply kidnapped some of the indigenous natives – at this point we had to suffer conniving glances and grimaces, as fellow criminals – but saw that they wanted not the unevolved unregenerate stock but the new improved stock, and members of this they were afraid of stealing, since they were all in the new fine cities, where the Giants lived, too. They were quite remarkably shamefaced and shifty about this, and itching with greed. Why had they not stolen some members of our other species – both failed and successful – who had, at various times, populated the Southern Continents? But again, it was the same: all these different types and kinds and stocks and strains were not good enough. Not good enough for these nasty thieves of Shammatans, sitting there in their red jackets – Canopean ex-colonial uniform of centuries back; in their green pantaloons – Puttioran fashion, long outdated; their hide shoes made from some unfortunate animals somewhere. No, they wanted the best. Their eyes were fevered as they talked of the fine, handsome, healthy females in the glorious cities up north. And they talked lip-lickingly of ‘those females on Canopus – they’ve got yellow hair and blue eyes, so we hear …’ (This was untrue.) And all this while they ate me up with their eyes. I could see that their fingers itched to feel my hair and poke at my pale skin.
Shortly after these nasty visitors took themselves off – back to the northern areas, not to Shammat – we discovered that the females who had volunteered for breeding service had also been visited by Shammat. To the extent that some of the progeny were Shammatan. There had been plots to escape, with Shammatan help. These had failed. But it was now important to watch for Shammat characteristics among the new race of colonizers that we had been so proud of. Later still we had again to modify our conclusions. Some of the breeding females had in fact escaped. Their places had been taken by Shammatan substitutes. The escaped ones had gone to Shammat, taking a good supply of the very best Sirian genes with them. Some of these females had originated in our C.P. 7 of fair-haired, blue-eyed stock – Planet 7 was the birthplace of my mother. They had proved very popular on Shammat, and new suppliers were being demanded …
I now come to the end of this phase on Rohanda.
About ten thousand years after the Canopus-Rohanda ‘Lock’, we were summoned to an urgent conference. Canopus had to announce disaster. Unexpected cosmic changes … failure of the ‘Lock’ … total write-off of the poor planet for whose sake Rohandan development had been speeded up … degeneration and dislocation of Rohanda inevitable.
We were told to expect random and wild mutations and changes of every kind among our experimental species; advised to limit our attempts until these changes could be monitored and understood.
I have to admit that at first we believed this was a feint, a ploy. Particularly as we did not receive reports of any increased activity in the north – for instance, no increase in visits by their spacecraft. But then, their visits had always been few, and this had reinforced our belief that the ‘contacts’ they were always hinting at were to do with communications.
We heard that a single emissary had arrived and was stationed in a circular city in a region where there were many inland seas. This was Johor, an official then of junior rank. Soon after that, our spies reported that spacecraft had taken off nearly the entire complement of Giants from the north, though a few had escaped. Our spies then submitted reports that seemed contradictory, vague, even foolish – we understood that Canopus had not exaggerated the ill-effects that would be expected. We recalled our spies, though a few never returned at all, and shipped out the remaining experimental subjects. After only a few years, these were showing signs of a decrease in life-span and of a tendency towards rapid reversal to barbarism – but this particular phase of Rohanda is so well documented under Social Pathology that I shall not linger over it: it has become, after all, the classic case of sudden evolutionary reversal.
Our most urgent question was C.P. 23, which had been established as our Think-Planet – if I may be forgiven the flippancy at such a serious point in my story. It was completely dependent on supplies from Southern Continent I. We decided not to make alterations in our agricultural stations. It was necessary to increase our police establishment almost at once, for it was discovered that workers previously quite reliable had taken to pilfering, and then, slowly, to various kinds of criminality. Still we maintained our agriculture. Then something unexpected: waves of invaders from the area of the inland seas came sweeping down, destroying first the more northerly agricultural stations, but then penetrating further and further south. Who were these rapacious ones? None other than the natives brought to such a high pitch of civic and personal responsibility by Canopus. What it amounted to was that we would have to maintain armies right across the top of Southern Continent I. Full-scale and urgent conferences were held on the Sirian Mother Planet itself. Our military resources were already stretched to their limit by the unrest on many of our Colonized Planets. We had no alternative but to withdraw from Rohanda. Other arrangements were going to have to be made for C.P. 23: its brief but glorious career was concluded, and the Thinkers were transferred elsewhere.
I went on a last survey of S.C. I, just before the end. Everywhere over this noble continent, similar to S.C. II, but even larger and more various, were our agricultural areas. Each little group of buildings was surrounded by vast fields over which our servicing and surveillant machines hovered, glittering in the sunlight: green and yellow and umber fields, and brightly coloured craft. The shining rivers … the infinitely variegated greens of the plantations … the irrigation canals … enormous transparent structures of hydroponics, and for general research … I cannot pretend that I enjoyed that final trip. Even then they were dismantling the stations, while the enormous craft of our Inter-Colony Heavy Transport Fleet were landing and taking off, loaded with these structures, and with the last of our crops. I flew over some stations that had already been evacuated. Our policy to disrupt the landscape as little as possible had succeeded. Nothing was left to be seen but some hastily harvested fields, that would shortly be reclaimed by jungle and forest, and some belts of introduced trees that were already Rohandan.
The millennia of our occupation would soon have left no traces.
I was not feeling myself, and Ambien I was not well either. We put this down to disappointment at this check of our plans. Then all our team confessed to general malaise and low spirits. It became evident that our mental powers were being affected. There was nothing for it: I gave the order for us all to leave Rohanda.
The Sirian Experiments Page 7