The Sirian Experiments

by Doris Lessing

  And he, looking embarrassed, was not looking at me, but away.

  ‘Oh, very well, very well, then! But you cannot possibly be saying, Canopus, that to an outside view, an objective view, yours, Canopus, the inhabitants of Sirius, or at least some of us, the lower kinds of our Empire, strike you as repulsively as Rohandans strike me?’ And, as he did not reply, I cried out: ‘That cannot be! You do not take into account the efforts that have gone into our Empire. How we have striven and tried and even when we have failed, have tried again! You do not seem to notice the excellence of our Colonial Service, the concern we show for the good of all, or how individual officials sacrifice themselves for their charges! If we have made mistakes – and of course we have – we have always tried to right them. Do you not give us any credit for the long periods of peace and prosperity under our rule, at least on some planets or for a time? Yes, I know it seems as if there is something deeply rooted in the very nature of things that must work for the overthrowing of everything that is, no matter whether it is good or bad, so that nothing we set up can be trusted to last, but is that the fault of those who try and try again to … to …’

  ‘To what, Sirius?’

  ‘We are not as bad,’ I said stubbornly. ‘We are not.’

  ‘As?’

  ‘As them, the Rohandans. Or as Shammat.’ ‘Did I say you were?’

  ‘But as you sat there and I was talking I had such a vision of us, of Sirius, of our greatness, and it seems to me suddenly that all it is – is a mirage. A shadow of greatness. And not very different from what I see when I … no, I am not going to equate us with Shammat. I can’t bear it. I cannot stand … what we are,’ I concluded with difficulty.

  ‘But it is not what you will be.’

  ‘So you say, Canopus.’

  ‘And now I want to show you something.’ He indicated that I should sit on a low seat near to him. I could not help hesitating. It is always risky, too close a physical contact between those of different planets. Often enough, I have seen my own proximity badly affect others, even to death. It is one of the first things taught us of the Colonial Service: ‘Never go near the inhabitants of another planet without being sure how your differing specifics may interact.’ I had not been within touching distance of Klorathy before: had been careful not to be.

  THE HORSEMEN

  As I sat beside him, I felt the same strain, on the physical level, that I knew on the mental level, when I was endeavouring to follow him beyond my own natural limits. But he took my hand firmly and as he did so said, ‘Look at that wall, do not let your eyes close.’ This I did, and saw on the wall, quite as clearly as one does with ordinary vision – but as it were distanced and speeded up, so that what I was seeing was both exactly accurate, a true representation of actual events, and yet encapsulated, and simplified – a series of pictures, or visions, that drew me forward into them so that it was almost as if I was more a part of the events I watched than a spectator of them.

  I was looking down at Rohanda, towards the east of the great central landmass, and rather to the north. This was not far from the area where I had met Nasar at the time of my visit to Koshi and where, before that, I had been tossed about the skies during the ‘events’. This region had been desert for millennia, then had become fertile again as the climate shifted, been deep desert where layers and layers of old cities lay covered, and was now a vast region of grassland. Looking down it was an ocean of grass, broken by mountains and hills where there were some trees. Great rivers crossed it, but it was a dry and harsh land where a few nomads moved with their horses.

  Around the areas of the great inland seas, and all over the plateaux of the southern part of the central landmass, and around the great mountains and on the eastern parts of the landmass, were many different cultures and social groupings infinitely complex and various and rich, and at every conceivable level of civilization.

  And as I watched, these little scattered groups of nomads multiplied, and covered all the vast plains, and there was a climatic change, and the grasses were replaced, here and there, by dust and drought, and the horsemen burst outward from their heartland to the east, and to the south and to the west and all the points between, threatened the rich civilizations that bordered them – and then, loaded with booty, fell back again, and, because the winds were blowing differently and the grasses were covering their plains, stayed where they were bred. Besides, they were weakened by their conquests and, for a while, spoiled. And again the civilizations on the edges of their enormous grassy homelands flourished and prospered and multiplied – and, as is the way (I was going to say of Rohanda) of our Galaxy, fell, and were overrun by local conquerors and remade themselves … and again the hordes on the grassy plains multiplied and covered them, seeming from the distance at which I was watching, or seemed to be watching, like swarms of insects that darkened everything … and again the winds blew dust instead of rain, and the horsemen massed themselves and then sped outwards east and south and west, and this time went further, and threatened more, and despoiled more – and returned home, as before, carrying gold and jewels and garments and swords and shields and weapons of all kinds, and as the grasses grew up again covering all those vastnesses with their soft green or golden shine, they stayed at home. But while these spoils of war amused them, and even though they fought for them, they remained as they were, people of the horse. They were very hardy, and brave, and they could live from their herds of horses and needed nothing else for months at a time, and their use of the horse for skill and cleverness has never been equalled, before or after. And the fame of these terrible peoples who could appear without warning at the edge of a valley full of rich farms, or on a city’s walls, covered all the central landmass, so that even in that area that Canopus calls the Northwest fringes, which was at the very edge of the landmass, and at that time full of barbaric peoples who were so far away from their great ancestors the Adalantalanders that these weren’t even a memory, were a savage fringe to the civilizations that lay to their south – even there, in black forests and swamps and in the misty isles of the extreme northwest, tales of the dreaded horsemen kept children awake when they should have been asleep, and even a rumour of their approach sent whole peoples running for cover.

  Meanwhile, on that area that lies immediately to the east of the Southern Continent I, which had previously been forested and green and very fertile, and since had become desert and semidesert, like so much of Rohanda, had arisen a religion, the third of those emanating from the region of the great inland seas, similar to one another, each succeeding one confirming its predecessor – though of course their exponents fought for dominance, claiming superiority. This third variation of the local religion had created marvellous and rich and complex civilizations that tolerated – at least to an extent and as far as is possible for Rohandans – the previous variations and also all kinds of other sects and cults and idea-groupings. There was prosperity, the development of knowledge of cosmic matters, and a precariously maintained peace. I could not have enough of gazing at these pictures of this amazingly intricate and affluent culture. And then, as I watched, the nomad horsemen arose from their grassy breeding places and overwhelmed everything I looked at, but everything, so that nothing was left but smoking cities, and charred fields and mounds of the slaughtered. The horsemen chased after every fleeing thing, even domestic animals, and killed them. From the northern half of Southern Continent I to the far east fringes of the main landmass remained only a waste of ruins. I cried out, I came to myself sitting on the Rohandan moon by Klorathy, and I looked at him with passionate appeal and reproach.

  ‘All!’ I said to him, ‘Nothing left; is it possible that such an accomplishment can be wiped out, just like that?’

  ‘Yes, indeed it is possible – and it nearly happened.’

  ‘So what I saw was not the truth?’

  ‘It is what will happen – unless …’

  ‘Unless I help you?’

  ‘I need your help. I keep
telling you so. It is a strange fact, but everywhere in the Galaxy when the weaker look at the stronger and the more powerful, what they see is self-sufficiency, easy capacity, an effortless ability – very seldom something that is indeed stronger, but only if it receives aid, support, a continuous and maintained regard of a certain kind, to enable this strength to function.’

  I said nothing for a long time.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I have a long leave due to me at home, and I shall take it now. It is without precedent – the way I propose to spend my leave! And as a matter of fact, how? What do you want specifically?’

  ‘You shall be the ruler of a small realm, on the western slopes of the Great Mountains. And you shall confront the horsemen from the plains.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I shall be the general who commands the army of horsemen who will have overrun everything, leaving nothing behind but death – and who then stand at your gates ready to slay you and your people and lay your kingdom waste.’

  ‘And Nasar?’

  ‘He, and others, will be there.’

  ‘Very well.’

  I sent the appropriate messages home and put myself into the hands of Klorathy.

  To voluntarily submerge myself in that story of murder and destruction that I had watched to its last detail was not the easiest thing I have done. One moment I was poised above, still a spectator, with Klorathy, and the next it was as if I had been swallowed by the brilliancies and multitudinous detail of that mountainous kingdom where Queen Sha’zvin still ruled, waiting and watching while the cruel horsemen came closer, destroying everything they found.

  It was not without interest, learning this Canopean technique of occupying a mind for a brief and exact purpose. The Queen, a vigorous and handsome woman, in middle age, the widow of a much-loved husband who had been killed in her youth, fighting during an earlier campaign against the horsemen, was standing high at the windows of her palace, which overlooked the walls of her city, gazing down a narrow ravine where the horsemen would have to come. Her mind was alert, though anxious; and occupied with the surveillance of a thousand administrative details. To enter that mind was not to overthrow it, or to supplant its own intelligence – rather to remain a spectator, and rather to one side, in readiness for the moments of decision. And so, too, Klorathy was doing a hundred miles away, with the general, Ghonkez.

  Queen Sha’zvin was not aware of my entrance into her being, except as an increase in her anxiety. It was an experience more powerful than I had expected. I did not lose my Sirian perspectives, the Sirian scope of time and space. But I was inside, too, this civilization’s view of itself as all there was of the known world – for on its edges were, to the north, the threatening horsemen, to the northwest, very far away, dark forests full of barbarians whom these people scarcely accounted as human at all, believing them not much more than beasts – and from their point of view, accurately – while beyond what was known and understood, in the Southern Continent, were, again, barbarians useful for trade and as slaves. Nothing was known at all of the Isolated Northern Continent and the Isolated Southern Continent. The world as understood by this great and powerful Queen was, though it stretched from one end of the main landmass to the other, circumscribed indeed, and the stars that roofed it were understood only – and to limited extent – by their influences on their movements … on our movements … an odd, a startling, a disturbing, clash of focuses and perspectives encompassed me; and as for the historical aspect, this Queen knew the story of her own civilization and some legends, mostly inaccurate, of a ‘distant’ past, which to me, and my mind, was virtually contemporary with her.

  She was feeling, as she stood there – part of a scene drenched with sunlight and with the vivid colours of Rohanda – that death lay just ahead not only for her but for her people. Death had already ended so much of what she knew. This kingdom of hers lay among the passes and roads that controlled the territories to the south, to the east, and to the west. The horsemen had already devastated everything to the west. For hundreds of miles there were nothing but ruins and corpses and the stink of death. She looked over her kingdom that as yet was all richness and peace, and the wind brought to her nostrils the news of corruption and of spoiling. The horsemen were encircling her to the south – there, too, the principalities and the kingdoms lay smoking. To her east, high in the mountains still remained some small safe valleys – for how long? Beyond them, on the other side of the Great Mountains, the horsemen ravaged and plundered and killed. She had survived so long because of this position on a small plateau encompassed by rocky and precipitous mountains. The horsemen of the plains did not love high places and rocks and fastnesses where, looking down, their heads swam and dizzied. They had left her and her people to the last.

  Her land maintained five hundred thousand people. It was, had been, a place of contentment and order and harmony. She had seen herself as one blessed by God – such were the words she used – since her rulership had experienced none of the misfortunes that she knew well enough came sooner or later to all kingdoms. Now she ruled three times that number. Men, women, children, fleeing from the horsemen, had begged for refuge. She had taken them all in. Where a household had had ten people, now it had thirty. The smallest hut and shelter was crammed with refugees from hundreds of miles of devastated country. There was very little food. The wells were so low that water was limited to a few mouthfuls a day. Over this fair city of hers, all markets and pleasant buildings and lively streets, lay a silence. Often had she stood here, for the pleasure of watching her people – but now there was little movement, and no cries of buying and selling or greeting, no singing or laughter. Silence. They all, as she did, awaited death.

  This scene I had noticed, as the sweep and scope of the terrible invasion had been shown to me by Klorathy, but now, there was a variation – a great hammering and clamour at the western gates of the city. The Queen turned to face, so she believed, the horsemen, looking to see them appear on the high walls. But they were not there. A messenger came running, breathless, pale. ‘There are more refugees from the west – about ten thousand – they have made their way here and beg your aid.’

  The Queen stood silent. She was thinking that now, in this decision she was going to make, she would pay for all her long years of pleasure in the equilibrium of her rule, where she had never had to make a decision out of the pressures of a hard choice. She was about to say that she would not open her gates, because these ten thousand would drag her city into famine tomorrow instead of its possibly lasting another week and it was her duty as custodian to … but I caused her to say, instead, ‘Admit the leader of these people. For the time being bar the gates to the others.’

  ‘They are dying of thirst and hunger,’ said the man who had brought the message.

  ‘Take them enough food and water to keep them alive, no more.’

  He ran off, and shortly entered a young man, who ordinarily would be handsome, strong, and full of vitality, but now was gaunt and faint with famine. He put out his hand to hold himself on the painted arch of the entrance, and at the sight of his condition, Queen Sha’zvin filled a cup of water and took it across to him, and held it to his lips. He took one swallow of the precious liquid, and looked her in the eyes and said: ‘We beg your mercy, great Queen.’

  I was saying to myself Nasar, Nasar, Nasar, knowing it was he, though nothing in his appearance said so. And now I was in control of this Queen’s mind and her decisions: Sirius and Canopus commanded, and Canopus was racing towards us at the head of a myriad brutes ready to destroy everything they could see.

  ‘Among us are savants, wise men and women, poets, geographers – those who have been saved from the devastation by Allah for purposes in the future. Take them in, and quickly, for it will not be long before the Mongols appear.’

  The Queen said, smiling: ‘These precious ones will die almost as quickly inside our gates as they would outside them!’ And I said, or made her say: ‘But bring them in. I wil
l give the order.’ She clapped her hands, and called the order to an attendant, who ran off.

  We three stood together in the silent city, in the high rooms of this delightful palace, the death-smelling breeze stirring the embroidered hangings, and clinging in an unseen miasma on the surfaces of walls, pillars, the brilliant tile work of the ceilings.

  ‘You will buy time,’ said Nasar, ‘in this way. You will go out to the northern wall and stand there, alone, facing them as they ride up the ravine.’

  ‘They have been slaughtering women all the way from China to the dark forests of the northwest and down to the southern seas.’

  ‘Ah, but we will be aided, just a little, for just long enough, in an illusion, great Queen.’

  ‘It will have to be a strong one,’ said she, smiling – and I, now, had retreated to the back of her mind. For the course of events I had seen projected by Klorathy was altered: I had seen nothing of this: what was happening because of our intervention.

  Nasar, revived a little by the swallow of water, but still staggering as he went, descended the stairways of this lovely building, so soon to be ruins, and arrived in the open square below the palace as the people he had brought across the deserts of the west came in. They, too, could hardly stand. They were an army of ghosts, and phantoms. And yet they were to live, a good many of them.

  The Queen divested herself of her dagger, her ornaments, and, wrapping herself in a dark cloak, walked along the northern wall of her kingdom as the first horseman came chasing up the ravine.

  Flights of arrows were already on their way to her when the leader shouted an order. These men who could shoot at full gallop as accurately as from the ground rested their bows on their horses’ necks. There was not room in the narrow ravine, dark between its rock edges, for more then a few hundred of them. They were gazing up to the sunlit walls of this famed city, where there stood a single figure, a woman, confronting them steadily and without moving at all.