The Sirian Experiments

by Doris Lessing

  As they looked, it seemed as if the rays of light dazzled around her. Their ideas of deity did not include an illuminated female figure, and they were only temporarily stayed. They were riding steadily nearer, and higher, and soon, as the gates of the city swung back on a signal from the Queen, they saw the city itself, in its gardens and orchards and fantastic variety, a scene of plenty and deliciousness that had never failed to inflame these men – whose measures of worth were all related to the hardships and endurance of their symbiotic relationship with their herds – into a rage to destroy and afflict. Yet as they looked, every tree and plant and flower seemed to dazzle with light that was like a million minute rainbows. The woman on the high wall, the gardens, the buildings, all shone and dazzled, and from the watching horsemen there rose a deep and anguished groan. Their leader shouted to them that they were faced with demons; and the massed horsemen in their close leather tunics and trousers and caps, emanating a smell of sweaty skins – their own and their beasts – sent up, too, the smell of fear as they jostled back down the pass again, in the shades of the evening. Sending back fearful glances they saw high above them the red sandstone walls, and the woman there, motionless, surrounded by a dazzle of light.

  They made a camp at the foot of the escarpment, and their cooking fires seemed to burn with otherworldly lights. But then their fear became anger, and after that, derision. These were not cowards, these men. They could not remember ever staying their hands before. Besides, not all had seen the enchanted city in its halo of iridescence. Even those who had, now doubted what they had seen. Their General Ghonkez maintained steadily – as his troops, who were not accustomed to subservience and blind obedience, but only to following orders whose sense they could understand, and who increasingly shouted criticisms at him – that they had done well to wait there through the night until the morning came and they could again ride up the pass and face the city in the plain light of day.

  When these horsemen again jostled up the pass to the city, it was in a mood of savage anger against their general. The gates of the city were still open. The rode inside the walls like avenging devils and found only what they had seen in a hundred other places – an intricate and rich and comfortable web of streets and markets and gardens, which they felt they had to obliterate. No radiant mists of light surrounded what they saw and they burned and destroyed as they rode. But there were very few living creatures. A dog sitting at the door of his empty house. Cats sunning themselves on sills in dwellings where humans had gone. An old man or an old woman who had said they would stay behind, since their days had been lived through and it was enough. These the horsemen killed.

  And when they reached the palace, they found Queen Sha’zvin standing alone in her rooms and they killed her. They then turned on their General Ghonkez and slew him, so that we two lay side by side, in our deaths, as the palace burned down around us.

  Meanwhile, Nasar had led away long columns of people out of the eastern gates of the city. Not all had had time to leave and these were killed. And then, suddenly, and out of season, a blizzard descended, and the horsemen were stopped. They knew blizzards and cold from the terrible winters of their northern plains. But they understood nothing of the treacherous snowdrifts and the ice masses and the murderous winds of the mountains. They rode away down into the plains to wait until better weather, so that they could chase the refugees into their high fastnesses and kill them all. For they had sworn to leave no one alive in all the lands they raided. But the winter came and blocked the way. Thousands of the fleeing ones died of cold and deprivation but most did reach the high sheltered valleys. When the spring came and the snows of the passes melted and the way was open for the horsemen, they did not come. There were rumours of an enchantment and of dangers from demons. Their killing of their general had put a curse on them – so it was said. And they had heard that none of the refugees had survived their ordeals in the snow.

  But among those who did survive were enough with the skills and knowledge of their destroyed civilization to instruct others. Those who came to be instructed were the descendants of these same horsemen.

  And that was how I, Ambien II, and Klorathy, and Nasar, together with others who have not been mentioned, took our roles in this drama. And this was not the only one. In two other sequences of events, at that time of the cruel horsemen, did we three play our parts, altering enough of the pattern to save a few here, preserve a city there, and keep safe men and women equipped with the knowledge of the sciences of matching the ebbs and flows of the currents of life with invisible needs and imperatives. These were scientists. Real scientists, armoured by their subtle knowledge against all the wiles and machinations of Shammat.

  Klorathy and I sat together in the Sirian moon station. I had just rescued him from slow death in prison. Nasar had made me captive to save me from being executed, and had secretly released me. I had been one of the raiding horsemen. Klorathy was a deposed judge. Nasar was a female slave from the heart of Southern Continent I, who had risen to be the manager of a large household belonging to an indolent and tyrannical princeling.

  A monitor showed that above us on the moon’s surface it was night, and very cold. Rohanda was hidden from us, being between us and the sun.

  Klorathy clapped his hands, and on to the blank wall came a map of Rohanda – the continents and oceans laid flat. Klorathy went to stand beside it. With his finger he outlined that part of the main landmass that had been afflicted by the horsemen. Holding me with his eyes he outlined it again – slowly. I knew what he wanted me to understand: that all those centuries of invasion and destruction were being contained within the shape his finger had traced. And he expected me to make, too, comparisons with Sirius, our vast Empire.

  ‘Very well,’ I said.

  ‘The horsemen have terrorized this part of Rohanda for centuries, and the fear of them is imprinted in the innermost nature of all the peoples of this region. Yet soon they will have been absorbed into what remains of the peoples they conquered. And civilizations will rise and fall, rise and fall – until quite soon, a race will come into being – here.’ And he ran his finger down the edge of the great landmass. ‘Here, in the Northwest fringes, in these islands, in this little space, a race is being formed even now. It will overrun the whole world, but all the world, not just the central part of it, as with the horsemen of the plains. This race will destroy everything. The creed of this white race will be: if it is there, it belongs to us. If I want it I must have it. If what I see is different from myself then it must be punished or wiped out. Anything that is not me, is primitive and bad … and this creed they will teach to the whole of Shikasta.’

  ‘All? The whole world?’

  ‘Very nearly.’

  ‘Shammat being their tutor?’

  ‘Shammat being their nature. Do you want to see what will happen?’ And he stretched out his hand to make a gesture that would summon the stream of pictures, the moving vision, that had showed me the wave after wave after wave of the Mongol threat.

  ‘No, no, no – or not yet.’ And I covered my eyes.

  He returned quietly to his seat near me.

  ‘You want our help?’

  ‘Yes. And you need our help.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know it.’

  I could hear through the earthy walls of this shelter the grinding and shuddering of machinery: Shammat at work in a crater not far away.

  ‘When I go back home now, I shall say only that I have chosen to spend my leave here. I shall not be questioned about this choice: but my reputation for eccentricity will be added to. I, Sirius, shall not be able to say one word to Sirius of what I have experienced with you …’

  ‘Of the work you have done with Canopus …’

  ‘Very well. Of the work we have done together. Because Sirius would not be able to understand one word of what I said. Only Canopus can understand me now.’

  ‘You are lonely, Ambien!’

  ‘Very.’

  He nodded
. ‘Please do what you can, Sirius.’

  Before I left this moon, I instructed my Space Traveller to fly low over the sunlit side. The Shammat mining operations were evident everywhere. Their settlements were mostly underground, but in places were to be seen their observatories and laboratories. In the craters, some of them many R-miles across, their machinery laboured. It was ingenious, but none was unknown to me. Shammat the thief did not initiate; it sent spies into the territories of others, and copied what it saw.

  A vast machine like a segmented worm whose segments could be fitted together in various ways was the kind they used most. One of these could be a mile or more long. Inside it were workplaces; temporary living places of labourers and technicians; and the extremities of a segment could be fitted with excavating devices. Some sucked in earth and sprayed it out again. One I hovered low over looked for all the world like the dragon of the Rohandan mythologies, with its spray of dirt emitted from its ‘mouth’. Others looked like starfish sprawling. They were a most ingenious type of machine. Flexible, so they could climb and clamber and balance; of any desired size, according to the number of segments fitted; very long, traversing difficult terrain and becoming bridges or tunnels as necessary; easily kept in repair, since an individual segment was so quickly replaced – these ‘crawlers’ had been evolved by us for use on inhospitable planets that were rich in minerals. But so adaptable and multifunctional had they proved that they were employed for purposes far beyond mining.

  As I sped away, I was escorted by a dozen of the wasplike Shammatan fighter craft. This was an act of impudence that in fact I welcomed. It would strengthen my hand in the efforts I was now about to make at home: I had to persuade our Colonial Service that our active presence on Rohanda was necessary to us.

  THE FIVE

  As one will, I formulated in my mind all kinds of approaches to the problem, but soon understood that none was suitable: again and again, bringing to a situation or a person the framework of words, ideas, already formulated in my mind, these as it were fell apart, dissipated like a mist when the sun falls on it. I saw, then, that there was something wrong in my assessment of the situation. I even wondered if my mind had been affected by my excursions into the Rohandan reality; I half believed I had become more Canopean than Sirian. All kinds of doubts and weaknesses assailed me.

  Meanwhile, colleagues were referring to my ‘leave’ on the Rohandan moon in a careful nonjudgemental way. I knew it was not possible for them to have any inkling as to what I had really been doing: and could not decide what it was they suspected that made them treat me like a – well, yes: I had to accept it: I was being handled in the way we use for those about to be summoned to a formal court of inquiry, or even arrested. Meanwhile discussions went forward for, again, my long interrupted work on our borders. I concluded at last that something was at work in the situation that I was severely misinterpreting.

  Time was passing. I had not raised the subject of Rohanda. Tempted to let the subject slide away from me yet again, I made myself remember undertakings to Klorathy. At last, not knowing what else to do, I summoned a meeting of the Five.

  The Five, of whom I am one, run the Colonial Service. This fact everybody in the Empire knows. That we implement policy made by our Legislature is known. That this policy is influenced by us is known. What is not understood is the extent to which we influence policy. I shall simply state here, without softening it, and as a fact, something that contradicts the Sirian view of itself; our view of ourselves. We Five run the Empire, govern everything, except for the details of the lives of our elite class. That does not concern us in the slightest! This elite of ours does as it pleases. Within limits. Our limits. I have already said that there has to be an elite: legislation will not prevent one coming into being, or do away with one when it has. And as little as we, the rulers of Sirius, are interested in the affairs of these darlings and charmers, so are they interested in what we do. There is a law that no formal framework of an organization, or a society, can affect. Or not for long. It is that those who do the work are the real rulers of it, no matter how they are described.

  We Five embody the governance of our Empire. That is what we are. And have been since the end of the war between ourselves and Canopus.

  I took a risk in summoning only the Five, and not the extended council of the planetary representatives. Whatever decisions the Five came to, would stand. If it were to be a meeting of the Thirty, I would have a right of appeal to the twenty-five who sit listening to the case we present, without taking part in the discussion, and who are available for precisely this purpose: to set aside our decisions for varying periods, according to their importance and severity, while we Five are instructed to re-consider.

  The meeting took place as usual. Since the appearance of each one of us Five is familiar to every Sirian citizen from infancy, I shall say no more, beyond remarking that the extraordinary nature of the circumstances did make me conscious of the dramatic aspect; I found myself, as we took our seats, looking into the faces of these colleagues of mine, with whom I was, and am, so close, with whom I have worked through the millennia, who make up, with me, a whole, an organism, almost an organ of the Sirian body. And, feeling my closeness to them, I was at the same time anguished, being so distanced from them, so alien in part of myself, because of Canopus. I sat looking at one face after another, all so different since we come – by policy – from different planets, and wondering how it was possible that we could be so close, so one – and yet I could at the same time feel set apart from them.

  The meetings of those who know each as well as we do have no need of rules and an order. Often enough we have sat silent together until agreement has been reached, and separated without a word being said.

  I wondered, to begin with, if this was to be such an occasion.

  At last I addressed them: ‘You know that I want us to agree on a reversal of our policy towards Rohanda.’

  Four faces said that they had expected me to take up the argument in a more developed way.

  I said: ‘I am having difficulty. The reasons that I think are conclusive – I do not know how to put to you.’

  Silence again.

  Then spoke Stagruk from Planet 2.

  ‘Since it seems recent experiences have distanced you from us, to the extent where we do not know how we each think, I shall sum up our thoughts.’

  This pained me – and they, too, were suffering.

  ‘First. There is no advantage to Sirius in Rohanda. As an experimental field it is valueless, because of the overrunning of every part of it, and because of the mixture of races and even species …’

  ‘The latter largely as a result of our intervention.’

  A pause. I had introduced, and so soon, a note foreign to us.

  ‘We shall have to accept that you see things differently. Shall we continue? Since there is no advantage to us, it must be that there is an advantage to Canopus.’ A pause. ‘Canopus is our old enemy.’

  I sat silent, looking at them all in inquiry, because of how this had been said.

  Up and down through our Empire, Canopus is talked of in, if I may say so, pretty stereotyped ways. These are the ways used always for the strong, the threatening – the superior. That is, when not implicit, as, almost, a background to our lives, Canopus is mentioned with a laugh of contempt, a sneer, a jibe, or at least with that hardening of the countenance and voice that means a subject is taboo from serious inquiry. Among us, among the Five, this tone was not used, of course; it would be more accurate to describe ours as that due to a senior partner who has won the position by unfair means. But the word ‘Canopus’ had been spoken without any of these undertones, and almost as an inquiry. The word fell between us, lightly, and our eyes met over it.

  ‘Canopus was once our enemy,’ I said.

  ‘You have just spent a long – a very long – leave, with Klorathy.’

  ‘On the Rohandan moon.’

  ‘The attractions of which we do not belie
ve responsible for the quite inordinate time you were away.’

  I looked at each of them, slowly one after another, so that they might read, if they could, the truth in my eyes.

  It seemed I had failed, for Stagruk said: ‘For us to re-engage in Rohanda means to re-open the debate about our function as an Empire. About whether we maintain our present minimum performance or whether we expand again. It will mean training technicians to operate in the two Southern Continents. This will be of necessity a difficult and expensive training because of the appalling situation on Rohanda. There will be, almost certainly, loss of life among them. This will again re-inforce the questionings among us – it is absolutely essential for us to realize that if we do as you say, the very least we can expect is an inflammation of the Existential Question – and to a dangerous point. That is our view, Ambien.’

  I sat, absorbing the news that this had already been fully discussed among them: they, as four, had discussed one, me, Ambien. My distance and alienation from them, my ancient friends and co-workers, was such that I could have given up then. If I had not been thinking of Klorathy.

  I was conscious that my continual reliance on him, in thought, was creating, or continuing, or reminding me of – I did not know which – a feeling that was becoming stronger as I sat there. For through this talk of ours a silent word reverberated: Klorathy, Klorathy, Klorathy.

  I said: ‘It has long been policy that I should cultivate an association with Klorathy.’

  At once Stagruk said: ‘For our benefit.’

  This was a threat. And yet – there are threats and threats!

  A situation can contain a threat – and then it doesn’t matter what is said: a group of individuals in a room swearing eternal brotherhood are eating the wind, if the situation they are in contains threat to them. And vice versa. Here there was no doubt – on the face of it – that there was a threat. I knew the calm judgemental expressions on the faces of these colleagues of mine very well. They were using this look because they believed the situation demanded it. And yet …