The Sirian Experiments

by Doris Lessing

  At the back of my mind my thoughts were racing: not yet has Canopus wanted something, when it had not happened! A request became a fact, even if I seem to have done nothing to further it. Everything that has passed between Sirius and Canopus, re Rohanda, between Klorathy and myself as Sirius and as Ambien, is insisting now, in a thousand voices, that what Canopus wants will come to pass. The worst that can happen is that these dear colleagues of mine will punish me in some way, but this will not prevent a Sirian involvement in Rohanda. This is because we are already involved, and in a way that Canopus needs – for the education of Sirius. A decision has already been made. And therefore: the threat that is present here and now is only to me … and, since my fate is of no importance, there is no real threat present.

  While I considered all this, we were silent again – and whirling about among the other thoughts was that it was not possible that what I thought did not affect them, with whom I was so close. With whom I made a whole.

  Feeling that these words had already been said, or thought, or existed somehow, I said: ‘It is my belief that this association has always been for our benefit. And planned to be so.’

  This was, if you like, treason. But it was putting into words what had been implicit among us all for a long time. This is where Ambien II, a Five, had, if you like, ‘gone wrong’. And long ago.

  I felt a great relief, a relaxing all through me and through us all. A climax had been awaited, had been reached – had gone past.

  They were all looking at me, and not in hostility. Curiosity, perhaps, but not of an urgent or pressuring kind.

  ‘You have not once mentioned Shammat,’ said Stagruk.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Shammat is not a threat, in your belief?’

  ‘Shammat apparently controls Rohanda. And her moon. Shammat is prowling and working and busy from one end of Rohanda to the other. And yet this is with the permission or at least the tolerance of Canopus. Who could stop it tomorrow.’

  ‘And you believe we have to take all this on trust?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  I knew then that they were going to agree. Canopus, working on me, on my nature, had also worked on them – without knowing it. They had watched me involved with Canopus, had wondered, had speculated – and their innermost selves had been touched. As I understood this I felt close to them in a way I had not before. And I do now.

  ‘It is all good,’ I said. ‘Believe me. It is for our good. For the good of …’ I had been going to say, for the good of Sirius, but found myself saying, ‘… the Galaxy.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Stagruk. ‘We will agree. You will take charge of the new policy. You will be responsible for the training of the personnel. And for liaison with Canopus. And you will announce, and then control, the ensuing debates on policy.’ And then she added, with a smile, ‘May I suggest that the public reasons you give for this change of policy, on behalf of us all, include the threat of Shammat on Rohanda, and the possible need for us to start mining on the Rohandan moon.’

  ‘You four have decided on mining that moon?’

  ‘We are, after all, going to experience considerable difficulty in changing the policy for the entire Empire. Will you mind our pointing out that your new – alignments – at times seem to make you rather remote from our Sirian realities? Some kind of face-saving formula is essential.’

  I laughed, of course. And mostly with relief. But we all stayed where we were, looking close into each other’s faces.

  ‘Why can’t you tell us, Ambien?’ said Stagruk, suddenly, in a voice both hard with pride and reproachful. ‘Surely you must see how we feel?’

  And I said, in equal pain and conflict: ‘How can I? Don’t you see? It has taken – oh, so long! And so much reluctance on my part has had to be overcome. And everything I have learned from them has been bit by bit and slowly, so that I never even knew I had changed so much until I came to sit here with you …’ And then I wept. It was a long time since water had spurted from my eyes, like the most primitive of our populations. And they, too, my old companions, showed signs of relapsing into the older ways.

  The situation was so unusual for us all that we were not as disturbed by our reactions as we might otherwise have been.

  This is what happened in that council meeting that later was recognized by everyone as a turning point, the beginning of a new orientation, for Sirius. Of course, at the time, that this was so was implicit in everything we said, and what we did not say. But none knew how far-reaching the changes would be. Even now, as I write, the importance of that meeting is still being re-assessed.

  I shall now make two statements, without elaboration.

  The first is that I have not again met Klorathy.

  The second is that a very great deal of effort went into the change of policy that had to be made before I could actively and openly take my place identified in the eyes of the whole Empire as ‘Rohandan Ambien’. Ambien I aided me behind the scenes during this campaign.

  Meanwhile, I was thinking deeply and privately about what it was Canopus really needed from us. These thoughts could be shared with no one, not even Ambien I.

  Again, I shall not overload the narrative with detail. The attentive reader will be able, I am sure, to understand my reasons for this or that decision.

  I did not make arrangements for large numbers of technicians to establish themselves on Southern Continents I and II. This would have amounted to an armed occupation of these territories. Both continents were already being overrun by the white invaders from the Northwest fringes: Klorathy’s prophecies were being proved true. Both vast territories were being conquered by the most savage brutalities, and indigenous peoples and races were being wiped out or enslaved. The rule was everywhere that of force, of compulsion, or tyranny. Shammat, or its spirit, was absolutely dominant. And there was another thought: to equip our forces on a large enough scale to subjugate, or at least to control, these continents would be to undertake more than Canopus was doing in the northern areas. And it would mean teaching our technicians ways of war that we were forgetting – learning to forget as a deliberate and strict policy. We had our armed forces, yes; but these were small, and kept for special and particular occasions and tasks.

  What I did was to have trained a restricted number of carefully selected personnel, all from Planet 11, who were of a similar build and height to the average Rohandan, and of a dark colour – that is, similar to the subjugated ones on both continents. Being of the subject races meant they would be more policed and watched; yet even so they would be less visible than if they had been chosen from among our white peoples. These were trained in surveillance, and the arts of exact and accurate assessments of social and political situations. Yet, although so few, they were able to monitor everything that went on in these continents. I am going to make the claim here that there have never been, anywhere, such expert and tactful spies as these.

  And such self-sacrificing ones: their dislike of this unpleasant, and often heartbreaking, work was such that none was expected to do more than a tour of duty consisting of ten R-years.

  But when they returned, the effect of their experience was very great: what they had seen of the extremes of suffering, cruelty, social disruption, was conveyed in all kinds of ways to our populations; and as a result, the whole subject of how an Empire should, and could – but not necessarily did – behave was debated in a new way. And this effect of our acceding to the Canopean request has by no means been exhausted. I make a point of mentioning this, because it is sometimes forgotten where and why the sudden renewal of self-questioning originated. And it is since that time that there has been a small but persistent – and powerful – undercurrent of interest in Canopus, its ways, its function. Yes, that is a word, on the lips of so many of our young, that dates from then.

  To try and dismiss such a strong new way of thought as ‘treachery’, or even slackness of moral fibre, does not, in my view, show enough insight into our deeper social processes,and t
hose that will, I am sure, ultimately prevail. I am saying this in the conviction that I am speaking for very many more of our more senior individuals than have – as yet – expressed themselves.

  I made an investigatory trip through both Southern Continents when our skeleton staffs were well established. I was always on the lookout for Klorathy, believing that the relationship established on the moon would have a continuance on that same level. It was not that I had formulated something precisely probable in my mind: more that my emotional self was demanding some kind of food. Of an infantile nature. As I was soon coming to see it. I looked, too, for Nasar. But reflection told me that both these Canopean officials were more likely to be at work in the north, once they were assured that we had taken over at least an adequate, if minimal, responsibility. In fact, it was obvious I would not run into either – after what Klorathy had told me of their being so stretched. Obvious once I had reflected!

  It was Tafta I saw.

  TAFTA

  An advanced kingdom had been established for a good long time – Rohandan reckoning – in the mountain chain along the western coasts of Southern Continent II. This was at Stabilized Level 4, Galactic Scale. Invading whites from the Northwest fringes had by treachery overcome this state, and laid it in ruins, for the sake of the gold that filled its treasure-houses. From one end of this kingdom to the other, nothing was to be seen but corpses, ruined crops, and burning cities.

  I had summoned my Space Traveller to a long stretch of sandy coast, and was waiting for its descent. I saw a column of males with mules and horses coming from the foothills, all laden with gold in every shape and form – bars, bags of dust, ornaments, the stripped-off coverings of official and sacred buildings. These men were as if intoxicated: I recognized easily the characteristics of indulged greed. Then I saw them all, about three hundred or so, at an order from a leader, put down their burdens and gather in a great circle. Standing rather above, on some grassy dunes, I was able to look down into the circle. Tafta was there. He was the commander of this plundering expedition. He was dressed as they all were, in coloured tunic, belted, over knee breeches. He was hung about with knives and weapons of all kinds. He swaggered and laughed. I was comparing this animal with the one who had approached us, in the time of the Lombis. And with the Tafta who completed the destruction of the first Lelanos. He had refined, in the sense that physically he was less animal; there was an obvious worsening, too, in another way, which I could not easily define. Impudence, rascality, had always been his nature: the attributes of the thief were his inheritance. But there was a new savagery here, quite distinct from the physical, a quality of the moral self. He was sickening to look at: this band of thieves were revolting. They did not even have the easy animal attractiveness that Tafta had had when I had lost myself into the temptations of easy power.

  I saw that three men had been roughly flung into the centre of the ring. Three others were equipped with instruments of punishment. They were heavy sticks, to which were fixed nine thin tough ropes. Those who were to be punished were tied to stakes, their backs facing the punishers. Tafta, his hands on his hips, legs apart, swaggered there, grinning.

  He raised his hand, and dropped it, and the whips hissed as they descended into the exposed flesh. Screams, groans, which held a note of surprise: the degree of pain felt was unexpected.

  Again Tafta raised his hand and dropped it and the flails descended. I expected perhaps two or three strokes. I had never seen such coldly practised brutality. The groans and cries made the air quiver. The smell of blood sharpened the salt of the sea. It was a late afternoon, and the sun was sinking. A gold spread of cloud, gold edging the ridges of the waves, a wash of gold over the sands, and over the scene I was watching. And that hand rose, the palm facing out at shoulder height – and fell, and the whips came down and the shrieks went up. The watching circle of men was silent, watching in terror, their attitudes expressing how they, like me, counted each stroke by the sympathies of their own flesh. And the whistling flails came down, and down … the men being flogged sank as bushes or swathes of grass subside under flames.

  And then the groans ceased. But the whips went on. And on. The punished ones were three bundles of bloody rags slumped by the stakes.

  Tafta let out a shout. The company of pirates turned their backs on what they had been forced to watch, and shouldered their loads of gold. They made their way to boats tied to some rocks. A vessel with sails awaited them. The beasts they had used to carry these loads were being left on the shore to die or save themselves. I signalled my Space Traveller to wait, and walked down, past the butchered men, to the crowd of thieves. They all became immobile when they saw me, their jaws dropping. It was their silence that caused Tafta to turn, with brutalities already on his lips, before he even knew why they were silent.

  There was a moment of indecision when he saw me. Then a grinning confidence puffed him out and he swaggered forward. He made a deep bow, lifting off a broad hat that had jewels in it, and was about to take my hand to kiss it. But while he hid his fear at my look, he did not lose his ease.

  We looked at each other, across the small sandy space that separated us.

  ‘Tafta,’ I said, ‘were you punishing those men because they disliked the savagery of your behaviour with the Indian kingdom? Was that it?’

  From the men around him arose a deep assenting moan, which was at once stilled at his look. And in a moment they had recovered their air of greedy confidence.

  ‘One day, Tafta,’ I said, ‘there will be an account made. There will come a time when you will suffer as you now make others suffer.’

  Again the minutest flicker of indecision, and then his swagger was back. He smiled. This handsome coarse brute smiled, and strengthened the cocky thrust of his shoulders. And I was looking at this stage of the creature’s evolution, holding in my mind the stages of what he had been, and crying out to Canopus in my mind, Why, why, why do you allow it?

  ‘It must be a long time since you were on Rohanda,’ he said. ‘It is mine. Mine from end to end.’

  ‘No, Tafta, it is not. And you will see that it is not.’

  He let out a guffaw, which was easy, even indulgent, as if I were an inferior in mentality. This was the change in him: and, looking at him, seeing this in him, I glanced around at his company and saw the same in them. It was conceit. They were all thickened and stupefied by it. Their intoxication was of many strands, and conceit was as strong as their greed.

  I walked away from them back to the small eminence on which I had been before, and stayed watching as they put themselves and their loot into their boats and rowed themselves out to their winged vessel. Oh, yes, it was aesthetically very pleasing, this galleon of theirs: I had not before seen sailing craft at this precise stage of technology. And the scene was beautiful, as the light faded, leaving the dark acres of the ocean, crisping with light from a thin slice of moon. The Rohandan moon, which was my next assignment.

  Having made sure the poor wretches at their stakes were in fact dead and having called to the mules and horses to follow me from off the beaches into the forests where they could find food and water, I took off for the planet’s planet.

  Since I had been there last, considerable changes. The Shammat stake was still the largest and had been spreading rapidly. Mining operations were predominant. Everywhere the crawlers could be seen at work in the craters, and new craters were visible. That was on the surface: underground, we knew, every kind of technological operation was in progress. But we, Sirius, had placed ourselves all around the perimeter of the Shammat area in an arc on one side: Canopus had done the same on the other. Our crawlers were plentiful, some of them the largest we had, five or six miles in diameter. We were mining; and we proposed to make use of what we produced: but let me put it this way: I have never seen in one of our operations so great a proportion of visible effect to what was actually produced. And Canopus had placed vast domes, and manned them and armed them. Shammat was therefore contained, an
d knew it.

  Visible, too, were the observational towers of the three planets, and the pylons used by one of them to anchor their aircraft. The moon was now furiously active, but the inhabitants of Rohanda were only just beginning to develop instruments capable of seeing this.

  I made sure that our policy of friendly co-operation among the three planets was being maintained, and paid a short visit to each station myself.

  After consultation with the Canopean station, I ordered a Demonstration, first class, over the surface of the whole planet. It was interesting to me, underlining certain developments, that it was so long since we had had to use any such show of force, that our Mother Planet was hard put to it to raise enough craft and personnel of the required kind. But at length thirty-seven Battalions of our largest and most impressive machines, built for precisely this purpose, appeared all at once from space, hovered everywhere over the surface of this moon, swept repeatedly around it, hovered again, and departed in clouds of luminosity especially developed for this kind of effect. Yet, remembering Tafta, this new unreal confidence of his, I found doubts in myself. And I was dubious, too, about my reaction when I returned home. Which I then did, getting there not long after the return of the special Battalions.

  The Four called me to a meeting.

  The personnel were now returning as their tours of duty were completed, from the two Southern Continents, and what they were reporting of their experiences had caused a furore prognosticated by these experienced ones. Never had our Mother Planet even imagined anything like the pointless, barbarous treatment of the peoples of these continents by the invading ones, the Northwest fringers. They had not believed such cruelty could be …

  I shall now take the liberty of making a short observation. It is that a certain law clearly to be observed on Rohanda is not exactly unknown elsewhere. There, a geographical area, or nation, would criticize another for faults it committed itself. To such lengths was this tendency developed in the last period of Rohanda that this planet, at this time, has become the exemplar for us, and descriptions may be found plentifully in our technical literature. But for my own part I must say I have never been more amazed as when observing full-scale, all-global conferences on Rohanda, where all the nations hurled accusations at each other for practices that they were apparently incapable of seeing in themselves.