Doris Lessing - The Sirian Experiments

There were three safeguards used by Lelanos. The first was the governing body itself, which made the laws. This was elected by general suffrage, every person over the age of sixteen becoming eligible both to vote and to take office. Each officeholder had to lay bare his or her life to the examination of a body of citizens separately elected by the citizens. This was to prevent any individual from benefitting from office, and to see him or her dismissed at the first evidence of any falling away from high conduct. What these officeholders might not do included the use of servants—there were no slaves—who were treated in any slightest detail differently from members of their households; the improper use of sex by either male or female—that is, to dominate or degrade; and luxurious or greedy behavior. The individuals voted on to this Scrutiny, for so it was simply called, were considered the best and most honourable of all Lelannians, and to serve Scrutiny, the highest office.

The second safeguard was an independent judiciary, to keep the laws made by the governing body. The members of this arm of the State, too, were continually watched by Scrutiny, and their behavior was expected to be as beyond reproach as that of the rulers.

While it was not considered undesirable for an individual suited for the work to be reelected, even for the whole of a lifetime, onto either the governing body or the judiciary, the citizens who staffed Scrutiny were not allowed to serve more than one term of four years, though they might after retiring from Scrutiny serve either on the judiciary or the governing body.

The third safeguard was a jealously kept law that the currency used to facilitate the exchange of goods should never be allowed to acquire a self-breeding value. That is, the coins used were only and always to be used as a means of exchange and nothing else. If any individual or group of individuals was to fall into debt, then no interest could be charged, and the debt itself must be abrogated at the end of seven years. Rhodia had caused to come into existence a body of instruction, framed as tales and songs, to enforce the message that if once “money” was allowed to become a commodity on its own account, then the downfall of Lelanos could be shortly expected, because she or he who charged “interest” would control the supply of goods and of labour and a ruling class would become inevitable. The songs and stories were based on the histories of innumerable cities and cultures in Rohanda, the means of exchange had become king. Over and over again, so Rhodia said, Canopus had laid down laws and instruction forbidding the improper use of money and yet never had this been prevented for long. Shammat was too strong in these unfortunate ones who could never retain excellence.

“And does this mean,” I enquired of Rhodia, “that Lelanos can be expected to fall away?” For, walking towards it, and then into its outer suburbs, I was struck with the manifest health and sanity of the place, the absence of poverty and deprivation, the real and inbred democracy that ruled here—for one may see its opposite in signs of servility, fear, deceitfulness.

And Rhodia said only: “You will see for yourself.”

She had a small house towards the centre of the place, in a group of them set around a small square. She lived there alone now, for her children had grown and left. The house had two small rooms on an upper floor and two on the ground floor. She had lived in it since the city was built, and had resisted all pressures on her by her children to move into a larger house—and when she told me this, her eyes met mine with a mordant amused glance I remembered from Koshi. Oh yes, I was being told quite enough to make me suspect that my arrival here was at point in the city’s fortunes before a fall, or decline: and in the next few days it seemed to me that Rhodia was doing everything to impress on me, not only the charm, the health, the good sense of this place, but, at the same time, what was wrong with it. And I could not help wondering why she did so…

Looking back I see that everything conspired to put me into a high (or low!) but at least irrational and emotional condition. First of all, the contrast between this lovely civilised city with its horrible opposite across the mountains. Within a few days I had been taken from one to the other, and they illustrated extremes of what was possible on this planet: I had experienced, was still experiencing, within myself, these two extremes. And there had been the unhurried walk here, with Rhodia, or Nasar, and the way this presence—this Canopean reality—seemed to explore and challenge my deepest self. And there had been something else. I had traversed a zone of forest in no different from any other, but this in fact been the barrier zone between the Lelannian territory and that of Grakconkranpatl. For many centuries the evil and predatory city had been kept from attacking Lelanos because of rumours set afloat by Rhodia and then sedulously kept up that there was a zone or band of forest completely surrounding Lelanos that, if invaded or infringed, would result in the most savage reprisals.

Lelanos was a villainous place—so the rumours went—feeding on flesh and blood, ruled by a self-perpetuating oligarchy that would lay in ruins any attacking city. Every kind of chance or even contrived incident or event was pressed into service to give credence to these tales. When I heard some of them on our way to Lelanos, from a terrified tribesman who had been fed all his life on stories of the cruelties of Lelanos, I felt my whole self powerfully affected. The shiverings and shudderings of the poor wretch as he described Lelanos the horrible showed how skilful had been the work of Rhodia and her associates. This propaganda work, and nothing else, had kept Lelanos safe. The clever and cunning priests of the city that really was wicked, using every kind of deceit themselves, had not been able to penetrate the disguise of Lelanos… and there was something as disturbing here as there had been in the sight of the band of thirty freed slaves who of all the innumerable slaves of Grakconkranpatl were the only ones able to free them by use of some inward recognition of reality, of the truth. Standing on a slender tower in magically charming Lelanos, looking out over forests where I had travelled, knowing what they were and how they were seen by those outside Lelannian borders—this was enough to set me shuddering in something not far off awe at the strange capacities for self-deception of the Rohandan mentality. And awe was not an emotion that I easily accommodated!

No, I conclude now, but was not dispassionate enough to do so then, the sojourn in the cold dungeons, the deprivation of my protective devices, close contact with the Canopean—all this had unbalanced me. And still Shammat rang in my mind and pulled me towards it—towards Tafta, who was working on me powerfully, though I did not know it. I was beginning to react away from Rhodia. I found myself watching this strong old, or elderly, female, with her simple directness, her honesties, and I was seeing in them callousness, indifference to suffering, a refusal to use powers she certainly must have, as Canopus, to relieve the lot of these Rohandans.

It is strange thing that I, Ambien II, after many long ages of a Colonial Service that supervised the continual and often—as we had to know—painful adjustment of innumerable species, cultures, social structures, the fates of myriads of individuals, could now suffer as I did over this one city. For never had a culture seemed more valuable to me than did Lelanos, never had one been felt by me as a more remarkable and precious accomplishment, set it was among so much barbarity and waste and decline. I found I was wrung continually with pity, an emotion I literally at first did not recognise for what it was, so strange was it.