Doris Lessing - The Sirian Experiments

And they were that—reduced, I mean; under pressure, beset… I able to recognise it at once, by a hundred little signs that perhaps I wouldn’t have been able to consciously describe. These were a people in danger, endangered— desperate. It showed in the sombre consciousness of their eyes, fastening on Klorathy, who for his part was leaning forward, urgent, concentrated on this task of his…

Later we were led off, I by the women, the men separately, and we slept in small but airy rock chambers. And next day the discussions with Klorathy went on, while I and Ambien I were taken, on our request, to see this underground kingdom. Which I shall now briefly describe.

First of all, it not the only one: Klorathy said that not only all over this continent but in most parts now of Rohanda spread these underearth races. But they not taken to the caves and caverns by nature, only from need, as they found themselves hunted and persecuted by races so much larger than themselves. Though not more skilled.

These caverns were by no means the habitations of brutes. They had been adapted from holes and caves, often the old tunnels of former underground rivers and lakes. Sometimes they been excavated. Many were carefully panelled with well-tailored smoothed planking. All were lit either by natural gas or by electricity. There were meeting places and eating places, sleeping places, and storage caves and workshops. Animals had been captured from the surface world and brought down to breed and increase in this below-earth realm. There were birds, some flying freely about, as if they had been in the air. These were underground cities, underearth realms. And they were all based on the oddest and saddest contradictions or predicaments.

This race had become skilled miners and metallurgists. Beginning with iron, they had made all kinds of utensils and then—finding themselves hunted—weapons. For time, and in some places, they had made approaches out into the world to offer trade, and trade had often been effective. They exchanged iron products for roots and fruits and fresh supplies of animals for their chthonic herds. Then they found gold. They had seen it was beautiful and did not rust and crumble as iron did, but found it too soft for tools and vessels—yet it was so beautiful, and they made ornaments and decorations with it. Taking it out to the tribes now forming everywhere above ground—for these were more likely to be their neighbours than the people of the advanced cities, at first gold was a curiosity, and then, suddenly, was something for which murder could be committed, and slaves captured—the dwarves were chased into the mountains and whole communities wiped out. They fled deeper into the mountains, or went into further ranges, always going further, retreating, becoming invisible except for rare careful excursions to see if trade was possible again. Sometimes it was. Often, coming out with their vessels spears and arrowheads, their glistening gleaming ornaments, they would be ambushed and all killed.

Yet they always mined, since it was now in their blood… the skill of it in their hands and minds.

Yet, this was the sad paradox that they did not fully see until Klorathy pointed it out to them: suppose they had never mined at all, would they have missed so much: Did their food depend on it? Their clothing? Even their electricity? Their clay vessels were beautiful and strong and in every way as good as their iron ones. Suppose they had never learned how to melt iron from rocks, and gold from rocks—what then? But it was too late for thinking in this way. Finding themselves harried and hunted, these poor creatures had sent Klorathy a message. Had sent a message “all the way to the stars.”

How?

Coming together in a great conclave, from every part of this continent, creeping along a thousand underground channels and roads, they had cried out that “Canopus would help them.”

Two of them had made a dangerous journey to the middle seas. There, so the news was, were great cities. This journey had taken many R-years. The two, a male and a female, having crept and crawled and lurked and sneaked their way across a continent and then from island to island across the great sea, and then across land again, had found that upheavals and earthquakes had vanished the great cities, which were now only a memory among half-savages. The two had gone northwards, hearing of “a place where kindness and women rule.”

There they were directed to Adalantaland, where there was kindness and a wise female ruler, who had said that “Canopus had not visited for a long time, not in her memory or in that of her mothers.” The two had left their messages, obstinately believing that what Canopus had promised—for promises were in their memories—Canopus would perform. And though they had died as soon as they had delivered their reports of that epic and terrible journey, soon Canopus did perform, for Klorathy came to them.

He had come first on an investigational trip from one end of this continent to the other. He had heard, then, of the “little people” in the other continents, for oddly—or perhaps not oddly at all—emissaries from the “little people,” hunted and persecuted everywhere, had made their brave and faithful journeys to places where they believed “Canopus” might have ears to hear their cries for help.

Klorathy had then summed up all this information he had garnered, and pondered over it and concluded that there was another factor here, there was an element of beastliness, more and above what could be expected. It was the work of Shammat, of course, who Canopus had believed to be still far away half across the globe—not that its influence wasn’t everywhere… but on the subject of that “influence” Klorathy was either not able or not willing to enlarge.

“What do you mean, Klorathy?—when you talk of Shammat-nature? ”—and as I asked the question I thought of those avid greedy faces, those glittering avaricious eyes. “A savage is a savage. A civilised race behaves like one.” At which he smiled, sadly, and in a way that did not encourage me to press him.

What Klorathy hoped to achieve by this present excursion into the realm of the dwarves was first of all to encourage them, saying that Canopus was doing what it could. Secondly, he said he would now go out to meet with the Hoppes and the Navahis and put it to them that to harry these most excellent craftsmen of the mountains was folly—better rather to become allies with them, to trade, and to stand together with them against the vicious children of Shammat who were the enemies of both, the enemies of everyone. Therefore, Klorathy asked them—sitting in the vast cavern under its canopy of twinkling lights, on the warm white sand that the dwarves carried from the outside rivers to make clean, shining floors for themselves—leaning forward into the low and immediate light of the electric handlamps: be patient. When— if —the tribesmen come offering treaties and trade, then see if ways cannot be found to do this without laying themselves open to traps and treason. For his part, he, Klorathy, pledged himself to do what he could. And so we left that hidden and fantastic realm, with its race of earthy craftsmen, being escorted into the outer air and the blue skies towards which the dwarves lifted their longing and exiled eyes before fleeing away into the earth again.

Now we had to make contact with the tribesmen.

Their lookouts soon saw us as across the rocky and raw landscape, with no aim except to he captured. Which we were, and taken to their camp. This was the usual functional unit of the Modified Two stage. Their skills were less than those of the dwarves, so soon to be extinct. They hunted, lived off the results of their hunting, and had developed a close harmonious bond with the terrain on which they lived. In which they had their being—as their religion saw it.