The Sirian Experiments

by Doris Lessing

  ‘Yes. That is what I thought. And suppose I agree with you and not with my own dear Empire? Suppose I think I ought to be executed?’

  ‘You want to be punished?’ I inquired, as dry as I could manage. And again I saw him straighten, the black weight on him lift. He said, just as dry: ‘Yes, and perhaps that is it. But Sirius, when I say that they have made a mistake, I mean it. I have not been strong enough for my work.’

  ‘Do you never get leave?’ I asked. ‘They surely do not put you here indefinitely – not for the long ages you tell me you have been stationed here.’

  And now he came to stand by me, in my window embrasure, leaning against the inner wall, looking at me.

  ‘I take it,’ said he, ‘that you are of the liberal party on Sirius.’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Poor Sirius,’ he said softly, those dark-bronze, or copper, or amber eyes full and strong on my face. ‘Poor, poor Sirius.’

  Now this was quite unexpected, and I was thrown off my balance with him. We stood there, very close, looking into each other’s faces. I was not now thinking of Klorathy, or of my search for his real friendship, or anything of the sort: I felt near, because of what Nasar had said, to some sort of mystery or understanding.

  I waited until I could speak moderately, and said: ‘Why do you not simply go back home and tell them what you are saying to me.’

  ‘Because I have done so already.’

  ‘So you have been on leave?’

  ‘Yes. But it was a long time ago – just after what these poor wretches call “the Punishment”. But Sirius, to spend time there – and then to return here – do you know what that means? How one feels? How utterly intolerable …’ and he struck off and away again, and began his despairing pacing.

  ‘In short,’ he said, ‘it is not worthwhile to go home if one has to come back. And in my case I have to come back. That is what they say. This is my place. This hellhole. Shikasta the disgraced and the shameful one. This.’

  ‘Rohanda is very beautiful,’ I said, with a sigh for my long stay on the Southern Continent, before the failure of the Lock. ‘No planet in our system is anything near as beautiful and as rich and as …’ I was looking at the golden light in the grey sky to the southeast where the storm had now quite gone away. The brown cone nearest to this one showed the most elegant pattern of black markings all the way up, each touched with white: the snow underlined each window opening, and the symmetry and balance of the patterns gave me the deepest satisfaction; and that is what Rohanda – I was simply not prepared to use their niggardly little word for it – so plentifully did offer. A rich food for the senses – always and generously.

  ‘Yes, it is beautiful,’ said he in a stifled voice, and he stood upright, eyes closed, his hand at his throat, and his eyes closed tight, quivering. He was thinking of Elylé.

  ‘I understand,’ I said quietly. His eyes flew open: he gazed at me, sombre, but himself, and he strode across and bent over me, looking into my eyes. ‘Desiccated bureaucrat though I am, I understand very well. I wish I did not.’ And I could not prevent myself shuddering.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said and went off again.

  ‘I would like to know about this city – before it was spoiled.’

  He laughed, and with such bitterness. ‘And the other cities – before they were spoiled – because they are always spoiled, always, always.’

  ‘Always?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So then you have to make allowances for that?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said with a sigh, the driven black one gone again, and he simple and there with me. ‘Yes. We make allowances. We know that if we build a city, or make a jewel, or a song, or a thought, then it will at once start to slide away, fall away – just as I have done, Sirius – and then – pfft! – that’s it, it’s over. This city, you say: the city of the twenty-one tall cones? And what of the city just there – can you see?’ – and he pointed to where the storm had gone. I could just see a blur on the white horizon. ‘That is the city of the gardens. That was the city of the gardens …’

  ‘And what is it now?’

  ‘It is a city of gardens,’ said he, grim and savage, black and vibrating. ‘A gardened city. Elylé adores it. She has her place there, fountains and delights … Elylé, Elylé,’ he moaned suddenly, rocking, his hands up over his face.

  ‘Nasar,’ I said sharply and he sighed and came to himself.

  ‘You are going to have to give me your earrings,’ said he, coming up to me, taking me by the shoulders and peering into my face. The grip of those large hands bore heavily, and he felt me brace myself and he loosened them. ‘There’s nothing to you,’ he said, incredulously. ‘A dry bone of a woman, with your judicious little face and your …’

  ‘No, I am not Elylé,’ I said steadily. ‘Do you want me to be sorry for that?’

  ‘No,’ he said simply, coming to himself.

  ‘Nasar, is it that you want the earrings because you can stay here instead of going back home – and you have been ordered back home and don’t want to go?’

  ‘Exactly so.’

  ‘But wouldn’t they – come after you and punish you?’

  ‘No,’ he said, with his short laugh, that I now knew to associate with his inner comparisons between Canopus and what I made of Canopus as a Sirian. ‘No. What need of punishments? What punishments could conceivably be worse than this …’ and he shut his eyes, and flung back his head with something like a howl – yes, it was like the howl of a desperate animal. ‘Ohhh,’ he groaned, or howled, ‘to be this, to have become part of it, to be Shikasta, to be Shammat …’

  ‘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 had been given – I felt – another piece of my puzzle.

  ‘Shammat is not merely an external tyranny?’

  ‘Surely that is evident?’

  ‘I see.’

  He inquired, 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 any answer.’

  ‘But wasn’t that an answer?’

  I felt weighed 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 with 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 that every 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 away … 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, my 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 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, they would be enough,’ he muttered, desperate and evasive and savage.

  ‘How could they be enough? You have certain exact and accurate practices, always 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 scandalized – 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 realize 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 fascination 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 should 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 again, on a pile of cushions, stretched his legs out, put his arms behind his head and watched me, with a smile.

  ‘Canopus should argue with Canopus,’ said he. ‘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 always been an advocate of the policy that does not only allow, but insists on, the views of personnel being heard at all times. It is not possible for an administration that has to be centred 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 criticized.

  ‘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 say 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 always keep to the spirit, let alone the letter, of our agreements, was 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 my 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 had reached, Canopus and I, a moment when an 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 again 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 that you are not to be left down here so long without regular 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, 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 saw him, a small dark figure, emerge from the base of the tower. He had taken no covering with him. I slowly 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 all 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.