Doris Lessing - The Sirian Experiments

They did us no harm, because they recognised in us something of the stuff of certain legends—all about Canopus. Always of that Empire, never of ours. I drew the attention of my colleagues in the Service when I returned home to the fact that even in territories close to our allotted portion of Rohanda, which might be expected to owe some sort of allegiance to us, to Sirius, it was to Canopus that their higher allegiances were pledged, were given. Why was this? Surely there was a fault here in our presentation of ourselves?

These Hoppes recognised us—all three—as “from there,” meaning Canopus. So it was as Canopeans that we were welcomed into the camp, and then as guests at a festival that lasted thirty R-days and nights, which Klorathy obviously much enjoyed. I cannot say that I did. But I recognised even then that the ability to become part of—I was going to say “to sink oneself into,” but refrained, because of the invisible moral pressure of Canopus—an unfamiliar scene, a foreign race, even one considered (perhaps out of ignorance) inferior, is one to be admired, commended, and even emulated, if possible. I did try to behave as Klorathy did and as Ambien I was doing, as far he was able. Klorathy feasted and even danced with them, told stories, in their tongue—and yet was never able to be less than Canopus.

And when the feasting was over, I was expecting something on these lines: that Klorathy would say to them: I have some news for you, some suggestions to make, now is the time for us to confer seriously and solemnly and at length, please make arrangements for a formal occasion at which this can be done.

But nothing of the sort happened. Klorathy, in the tent allotted to him, and we two Ambiens, in our tents, simply went on taking part in the life of the tribe.

And now I have to record something that I most bitterly regret, for it set back my understanding for a very long time. Millennia. Long ages. I missed an opportunity then. I shall simply say it, and leave the subject.

I was impatient and restless. I found these Hoppe savages interesting enough and I would have stood it all—the lack of privacy, the flesh food, the casualness and indifference to dirt, the thousand and one taboos and prescriptions of their religion—if I had known the ordeal would have a term. The other Ambien advised patience. I did not listen to him but went to Klorathy and demanded how long he proposed to “waste his time on these semibrutes.” His reply was: “as long as it is necessary.”

I consulted with Ambien I, who said he would stay with Klorathy, if Klorathy “would put up with him”—a humility that annoyed me—and I took our surveillance craft, leaving him dependent on Klorathy for transport, and flew up northwards by myself.

This was the first time a Sirian had openly travelled into Canopean territory. Klorathy made no attempt to stop me, or discourage mc. Yet he did say, quietly, just before I left: “be careful.” “Of what, Klorathy?” “All I know is that our instruments seem to indicate some sort of magnetic disturbance—in my view it would be wiser to stay in the centre of the continent rather than anywhere at sea level.” I thanked him for the warning.

Millennia had passed since I travelled this way with Ambien I. From the height I was flying, the terrain mostly showed little signs of change, but there were areas sometimes several minutes flying time across (I was in a Space Conqueror Type III, long since obsolete) where below me was nothing but savagely torn and tumbled rock, stumps of trees, overthrown or shaken mountains. I remembered that the cities of the middle seas, which I had flown over with Ambien, had been shaken into ruin and wondered if this was in fact a particularly seismic time on this precarious planet. Flying over the areas of islands and broken waters that had been, and would be again, the great empty ocean separating the Isolated Northern Continent and the central landmass, I thought I saw that some islands were quite new, as if they had just been upthrust from the ocean bed. The island that had been covered by that marvellous city surrounded by its great ships had been under the ocean and risen out of it again. It had some rather poor villages on it now.

But I wanted to see that area of great inland seas again, and I flew over and around it seeing everywhere near the rocky sunlit shores, ruins and collapsed buildings, some gleaming up from under the waters. But the region of these seas was rich and fruitful and would soon again put forth cities, as it had done so often before. It was, however, discouraging to see how transient things were and must always be on this planet, and I fell into state of mind unusual for me, of the generalised discouragement known by us Sirians as “existential problem melancholia.”

For what I felt was nothing more than the emotional expression of our philosophic dilemmas: what were the purposes of plannings, our manipulations, our mastery of nature? I was in the grip of a vision—as I hung there in my little bubble of a spacecraft, looking down at that magically beautiful place (for Rohanda was always that), the brilliant blue seas like great irregular gems in their setting of warm reddish soil—of impermanence, as if this little glimpse of a small part of a small planet was an encapsulation of the whole Galaxy, that always, despite its illusions of great stretches of time where nothing much changed, nevertheless did change, always, and it was not possible to grasp a sense of it as lasting or of anything as permanently valuable… I hovered above that lovely but desolating scene for as long as I could bear it and then directed myself northwards again to Adalantaland, for I wanted to see what a peaceful realm run by women would be like on Rohanda in its time of rapid degeneration.

Analyses of Adalantaland are plentifully available in our libraries, so I shall confine myself only to my present purposes. It was a large island among several on the edge of the main landmass. While the middle areas of Rohanda at that time could be described as too hot for comfort, the northern and southern parts were equable and warm and very fruitful. It was a peaceful culture, rather indolent perhaps, hedonistic, but democratic, and the line of women who were its rulers governed by “the grace of Canopus,” which were a set of precepts engraved on stones and set up everywhere over the island. There were three main rules, the first saying that Canopus was the invisible but powerful lawgiver of Rohanda and would punish transgressions of its Rule; the second that no individual should consider herself better than another, nor should any individual enslave or use another in a degrading way; the third that no person should take more from the general stock of food and goods than was absolutely necessary. There were many subdivisions of these precepts. I moved freely over this well-governed and pacific land, and found these laws were known by everyone and on the whole kept, though the third perhaps rather freely interpreted. I was told that the Mothers had other, secret, laws given them direct by “those from the stars.” I was not considered as emanating from “the stars.”

It happened that in type I was not far off from the Adalantaland general type: they were mostly fair-haired people, pale-skinned, with eyes often blue, and on the whole tending towards large build, and plenty of flesh. My height and thinness caused much concern for my general health. I spent time with the currently reigning Queen, or mother, who lived no better than her subjects, nor was in any way set up over them. The focus of special was one that could not be shared with them. I wanted to know how it that this realm managed to be so ordered, lacking crime and public irresponsibility, when these qualities were not to be expected of Rohanda in this time of a general falling-off.