The Sirian Experiments

by Doris Lessing

  No, I conclude now, but was not dispassionate enough to do so then, the sojourn in the cold dungeons, the deprivation of my protective devices, close contact with the Canopean – all this had unbalanced me. And still Shammat rang in my mind and pulled me towards it – towards Tafta, who was working on me powerfully, though I did not know it. I was beginning to react away from Rhodia. I found myself watching this strong old, or elderly, female, with her simple directness, her honesties, and I was seeing in them callousness, indifference to suffering, a refusal to use powers she certainly must have, as Canopus, to relieve the lot of these Rohandans.

  It is a strange thing that I, Ambien II, after many long ages of a Colonial Service that supervised the continual and often – as we had to know – painful adjustment of innumerable species, cultures, social structures, the fates of myriads of individuals, could now suffer as I did over this one city. For never had a culture seemed more valuable to me than did Lelanos, never had one been felt by me as a more remarkable and precious accomplishment, set as it was among so much barbarity and waste and decline. I found I was wrung continually with pity, an emotion I literally at first did not recognize for what it was, so strange was it.

  I would wander about the streets and avenues of this place, sometimes with Rhodia and sometimes by myself, and everything about these people hurt me. That they should have been brought to such a pitch of responsibility and civil awareness in such a short time … and from such unpromising material, merely a few barbarous tribes living only to keep alive … and that they should use each other with such alert and lively and free kindness … and that all this was the achievement of poor wretches who were so far gone with the Rohandan Degenerative Disease that hardly a whole or healthy specimen was to be seen among them … and that every one of them, almost from middle age, was struck as if with an invisible withering blast, leaving them enfeebled and bleached and shrunk with ‘ageing’ … and that … and that … there was no end to the sights and sounds that could inspire me to pitying anger, to the need to protect and keep safe.

  Rhodia watched all this in me, and I knew she did, and I was by now in the grip of a resentment against her. Against Canopus. Yet I did, just occasionally, gain the most faint of insights into my condition and was able to match it with Nasar himself, in Koshi, wrung with conflict, and with the pain of this place, this unfortunate Rohanda. Or Shikasta.

  A great deal that I saw later was very far from me then. For instance, there was my casual, almost careless, approach to the priests’ dark city, my allowing myself to so easily be taken prisoner. How to account for that? For never before, not in any planet, had I behaved in a comparable way. I saw after it was all over, and my subjection to Shammat was past, that there had been a softening and a slackening all through me, long before my descent to Rohanda on this visit, and this was due to my low spirits and inner doubtings because of the work I was having to do, and for so long.

  And that was another thing: we might congratulate ourselves as we liked on the order and good sense on the planets we governed, with their minimum well-fed, well-cared-for populations, their willing submission to our rule, but it had been a very long time indeed, it had been long ages, since I had seen a culture anything like as lively as this city Lelanos. No, something had gone out of our provenance, our Empire – I had known it, sensed it; but not until I had been brought here by Rhodia was I able to see what it was that had been lost. This place had some kind of vitality that we lacked. A deadness, a lack of inspiration was afflicting us, Sirius …

  And why had Rhodia brought me here at all? All she had to do was to send me with guides back southwards to our Sirian stations. Yet here I was, with her, with Canopus, in this city. A city that had reached its perfection, and was about to sink … had begun to sink away from itself.

  And I could not stand the thought of it! I could not! I found that I wished to raise my voice and howl in protest, to cry out, to complain to – but to whom? Rhodia, the now willing and dutiful servant of Canopus?

  There was a morning when she and I sat together in one of the little rooms at the top of her house. We were not talking: talk between us had become difficult.

  The sun came in through window openings in the brick walls, and lay in patterns on woven and coloured rugs. It was a scene of such simple friendliness and pleasantness.

  I was looking in hostility at Rhodia, knowing she knew it, and yet I could not prevent my critical feelings. She seemed to me stubborn. I was seeing in her, as she sat quietly on her cushions, hands folded in her lap, looking up into the blue of the Rohandan sky, a stubborn and difficult woman who was refusing me, or something, or some demand. I felt towards her at that moment as I had done with Nasar in Koshi, when he rebelled, or half rebelled, or struggled against his inner rebellion. And I was not able to tell myself that this time the case was opposite.

  She looked straight at me, with one of her full steady looks, and said: ‘Sirius, I am going to leave you.’

  ‘Well, then, you are going to leave me! And you will leave this poor place, too, abandon it to its fate.’

  ‘There is nothing that can be done to arrest the laws of Rohanda,’ she said, ‘or indeed, the laws of the universe. They are worse here, that is all. We see them on Rohanda exaggerated and displayed, but there is never anything that can stay the same. You know that from your own Empire! Has there been a single culture you have established that has not changed and fallen away?’

  I looked into her eyes – I had to – and agreed that this was the case. But not willingly, not with grace.

  ‘The best we can do is to set up something that approximates to the good, for a short time. This I have done in this city. And now it is time for me to go.’

  ‘You have finished your task for this visit?’

  ‘Yes. For this time it is done.’

  ‘I have to thank you for rescuing me, Nasar.’

  ‘As you did me.’

  She stood up. I saw she was weary, holding herself up only with an effort.

  ‘You’ll be glad to go,’ I said, sullen.

  ‘I am always glad to go,’ she said, on the old grim note. ‘Yes, I shall never, I sometimes believe, come to terms with it – the striving and striving to make the good and honest thing, and then – and so soon, so terribly soon, it is done, it is finished, it has become its own opposite.’

  I saw her face ravaged, for a moment, with pain. Then it was clear again, patient. She contemplated some future I was trying to guess at.

  ‘Be careful, Sirius,’ she said. ‘You are in very great danger.’

  ‘Why did you lead me into it?’ I was angry, angry and resentful.

  ‘You have to know it,’ she said. ‘You are a stubborn one, Sirius. You are not of those who can be told a thing, and absorb it.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, sarcastically, ‘tell me, do you have hopes of my surviving this danger?’

  She turned her face full towards me, and smiled.

  ‘If not this time, then another,’ she said, and this struck me again with the idea of her callousness, her indifference.

  And she responded to this in me with: ‘Sirius, rebellion is of no use, you know. That is what you are now – rebellion, the essence and heart of no, no, no. But against what are you rebelling? Have you asked yourself? When you run about this city gazing at its people as victims and the abandoned – who is it that has abandoned them and what is it that governs their good and their evil? To rebel against an Empire – Sirius, you punish that quickly enough, do you not?’ And she held my eyes with hers, insistent, till I nodded. ‘Yes, you do, and very harshly! There is little pity in you, Sirius, for those who rise up against you. But when you, or I, rebel, protesting against what rules us all, and must rule us all, no one imprisons us, or kills us in the name of order and authority. Yet order and authority there are. We are subject to the Necessity, Sirius, always and everywhere. Are you thinking, as you sit there sulking and angry and bitter at what you see as the waste of it all, that you may ch
ange the Necessity itself? By your little cries and complaints? Well? And what did you say to me when I was biting my hands and howling like an animal, in Koshi? Do you not recognize a disobedient servant when you see one?’

  As she spoke, into the stillness of the morning, there came a sound of shouting, and distant anger. This was something I had heard often enough on other planets, and often, too, on this one, but I had not believed it possible I might hear it here.

  ‘Yes,’ said Rhodia. ‘When a place, or a person, begins to fall away, to descend from itself, to degenerate, then it is a quick business. It is inherent in this planet, in the states of mind it engenders, that we tend to see things, patterns of events, conditions, in terms of balances of force and energy that are already past and done. The high time of Lelanos is done with, Sirius. And be careful. Fare well. We shall meet soon enough. We shall meet again here, on Shikasta, the unfortunate one … unfortunately, we shall meet …’ and she accompanied this last ‘unfortunately’ with the ironic Nasar smile that oddly enough comforted me and made me laugh.

  She went quietly out of the room, and down the little stair. Outside a throng of people rushed past, with weapons of all kinds, screaming, shouting, raging. I heard ‘Death to the Tyrants, death to Rhodia, death to the Oligarchy …’ And as I stood looking down, I saw Rhodia walk out from the door of her house into the mob. They screamed abuse as they saw her, surrounded her, struck her down, and rushed on, leaving her lying dead on the sunny bricks of the roadway.

  Such was the disorder in the city that her burial was a matter of throwing her with the other victims of the riots into a communal grave. And it was how, I felt sure, she would have wanted it. I wished I were not there. I had no protection here now, I was known as her associate, and it was impossible to disguise my appearance. But soon Rhodia’s death had affected me into a state of noncaring, indifference: thus I was pulled down further away from my proper levels of thought and responsibility. I walked a great deal about Lelanos; and for me it was a ritual of mourning. Not for Rhodia, or Nasar, but for a perfect thing. I could not tire of what I saw. Each city, anywhere, has its unique note, and that of Lelanos was unexpectedness and variety gained by the ingenious use of its materials. There was its setting, a wide plain or plateau, ringed with mountains but not closely enough to oppress. The plain was not flat, but was full of change and unevenness, and the trees were of many tones of a rich full green. Oh, the green of Rohanda, infinite ranges of its greens, its wonderful green! Those of us who have not known such a planet must find hard to imagine the charm and interest that resides always in the colours of vegetation of this kind. And the ‘seasons’ that had resulted from the ‘events’ caused even wider changes in colour and texture. This Rohandan plain was – alas, one may not say is, it has been through many metamorphoses since those far-off days – one of the most beguiling I have seen. And the city seemed to grow from it, was its spirit, its expression. Anywhere in Lelanos one might walk, seeing only the rich shining greens of trees and grass, with glimpses of buildings that astonished and caused a need to smile, even to laugh – there was always the hint of fantasy or even self-parody in Lelanos. One longed to hasten, to come on this half-seen building, but did not, because of the pleasures of waiting, of lingering … and then there it was, and you were smiling, and laughing: at its best, in Lelanos, a smile was never far from any face. This was the architecture of the smile. The building in front of you was not large, though one might find, once inside it, that there was more space than you could believe possible. Not large, but then size was not what it spoke of. It was made of clouds, perhaps? Coloured bubbles? It looked like a thunderhead building itself up, up, rapidly, in a clear but electric sky. Glistening white puffs and balls and shafts underlay the dark blue-grey stone of the region, which balanced in light globes or cubes on it, as if the snowy crystal had given birth to these darker shapes, which in their turn sped up again, burgeoning and unfolding, as summer clouds do. The red stone was used in the lightest of touches, for instance in their symbol for the lightning flash – these buildings were all a reminder, a celebration, of the natural forces that gave them lite on this planet. And beyond these airy fantastic buildings, which yet spoke so accurately through stone of the necessary (so that I felt I was being enabled to glimpse that ‘need’ of the Canopean levels of thought), were others, but placed not in rows of an obvious order, but so that walking among them they opened and showed themselves, or became concealed, as if one were to walk through sky – as if these earthbound creatures had actually flown through their skies. Air and sky were brought near to them in Lelanos. I cannot express the lightness of spirit, the cheerfulness that the place induced: and I thought of the dreadful weight of threat and punishment expressed in the same dark grey stone over the far mountains. Through this happy city thronged the tall, sinewy, almost black race, a quick-witted, smiling, subtle people, and beautiful to look at, with the same sharpness of colour in them as their city, loving to wear the brilliance of feathers from their forest birds or multihued and vivid flowers in their clothes or in their hair.

  As I wandered there I saw a class of children, seated on bright green grass, their dark glossy skins and coloured clothes making brilliancy and light, but their faces were sullen and they stared at a woman who was a teacher from the time of the city’s health. She was asking them to comment on the rioting and destruction that was taking place now continually, to comment on it from within the spirit of their inheritance. She had a weary look to her, and seemed even distraught – and this was from lack of comprehension. She did not know what had happened or why it was happening. And as she stood there, appealing to them, one began to shout, and then another: ‘Death to the Oligarchy!’ And they were up and away and racing off into another part of Lelanos where, soon, we could hear shouting and screams. And then smoke rose slow and steady into the blue air.

  The teacher came slowly towards me. She stopped, and I saw the reaction I had become accustomed to. I was so amazing to them that their good manners could not prevent incredulity, then repulsion, at my white skin, my shreds of pale hair. ‘If this is your doing,’ she said, in a low bitter voice, ‘then be proud!’ And then, surprising herself, she spat at me. She looked horrified – at herself, and hurried away. I saw crystal drops of liquid splashing from her eyes on to the shining black of her arms.

  I understood that I was in danger of being killed like Rhodia, but I was unable to care. I went off in the direction of the now thickly rising blue smoke, which seemed, in its up-pouring, rather like another form of the buildings. Crowds were hurrying in from all parts of the city. Nothing had been set on fire before.

  And soon I was in a vast crowd that was sullen and silent, standing to watch one of those graceful stone fantasies pouring dark smoke from every opening, and then it seemed to shrink, and then dissolve, and it collapsed inwards in a burst of smoke. And now an angry roaring went up from everywhere, and the focus of the crowd having gone, they surged about, and looked for some other thing to absorb them. Those near me were staring hard, and muttering. I was becoming surrounded by ominous people. And then I saw, almost as if I had expected it, and as if nothing else could have happened, Tafta – and he was making his way through the throng. He was wearing the garb of Lelanos, loose blue trousers, with a belted tunic of the same, which I was also wearing, though it could do nothing to disguise me. He, too, could not be taken for one of them, being broad and brown and thickly bearded, but he was determined, and full of authority, and so they fell away from him – briefly, but it was enough. He took me by the arm, and pulled me out of the crowd, not running, but quickly enough. We had soon left them all behind, and were hidden from them by the curve of a crystal globule, in which there was a low round opening.

  This was some kind of public building. The interior shone more softly than its outer dazzle. It was like being inside a blown egg, dimly white and quiet. But we went on deeper into the building, so as not to be seen at once by someone entering, and climbing high thro
ugh the globes and cubes till we came out on a small flat roof, from which we could look down on the city. Smoke rose still from the fallen building. We were high enough for the crowds below to look small and easily manageable – this was a frame of mind familiar to me from so many hoverings above places, cities, herds, tribes, crowds. The space beneath one’s craft, everything within the span of one’s personal vision, seems under one’s control, and even contemptible or at least negligible. I have had often enough to note this reaction and to check it. Yet we were not so high that there were not still taller shapes of white and bluish stone around us where we could shelter, unseen.

  And that was the setting of my encounter with Tafta. We were there for a long time, all that day, and on into the night, and I shall give a summary of what was said, what I understood.

  First, it is necessary to establish my emotional condition – though that is hardly the kind of statement with which I normally preface a report! Tafta, who when he had been ‘the eighth man’ had struck me as an acceptable barbarian, compared with obviously evil priests, was now seeming to me a savage, but a not-unattractive one, compared with Rhodia, of whom I was thinking with reluctance, as if this was a duty. I did not want to think of her at all. There was something intractable, stubborn, even meagre about my memory of that elderly female. As if she had refused me something that was my due, and which I had earned: yes, this was a recurrence, in a milder form, of my old reactions to Klorathy. It was as if she were determined to keep herself out of my reach and would not let me encompass her with what I was convinced was a reasonable demand. I felt thwarted by her, refused.