Doris Lessing - The Sirian Experiments

Many and ingenious were the experiments, which had to end because all of Isolated S.C. II was overrun by an empire ruled by Grakconkranpatl and Lelanos. This uneasy alliance. Alliances between two partners equal in strength and much the same aim in my experience have to be unstable. They last only when one is in a generously tutelary relationship with the other. Our history is in point. Lelanos had become as horrible a place as the other. The Lelannians mated freely with the race of dark priests, whose main feature been a heavy uniformity of ugliness, and this match had produced a type of strong, but more flexible and varied people, who adopted the “religious” practices of their former enemies and terrorized the entire continent. The new cross dominated Grakconkranpatl and used the former priestly caste as slaves. Thus had the state of affairs come into being where the two cities had become allied in evil.

But I was not disposed to concern myself much with Rohanda. Affairs elsewhere in our Empire seemed more important. When I got message from Canopus, inviting me to a discussion “on the present situation in Rohanda, with particular attention to the Isolated Southern Continent II,” I at first ignored this order. For it was one. I was then sent a message signed by Klorathy of whom I had never ceased to think, and who was always at the back of my mind, even when I was much occupied elsewhere. What he said was that “the present situation in the continents under your control is disadvantageously affecting all of Rohanda.”

Now, I was quite aware that both the Southern Continents were populated by warring, savage, degenerated tribes. But when we had wanted the use of these two continents for—mostly—experimental purposes, it was not in my mind that our responsibilities should also be altruistic. I saw no reason why Sirius should not simply leave Rohanda altogether. Canopus was welcome to both Southern Continents. Nor did my reports indicate that the state of affairs in the northern hemisphere was much to the credit of Canopus. If our uses of Rohanda could not be described as having led to an improvement of the place, then the same had to be said about Canopus.

So I saw things then.

I was reluctant to accede to Klorathy’s invitation, because it was to discuss a squalid and unsatisfactory planet full of brutes who could be relied upon for only one thing—to kill each other on one pretext or another at the first opportunity.

If Klorathy had sent me an invitation to visit him on Canopus—or to discuss other planets that concerned us—yes.

I was disappointed. I felt as if I had been waiting, perhaps only half-consciously, for the development of an unfulfilled friendship, and then been offered participation in a dreary task that by definition could not succeed. I sent a message to Canopus that I could not meet Klorathy, “though I might be able to find time later.” There no satisfaction for me in this gesture. I felt only an intensification of my aridity. But a task that I knew I would find difficult and absorbing was waiting for me at the end of the Galaxy. As I prepared to leave, I was again summoned to a top-level conference. It concerned Rohanda, or rather, her moon. It had of course been known to us that Shammat was established on this small and unpleasant planet. Now it appeared there were new developments. I appointed someone to represent me at this conference, turned my mind from Rohanda—and found that as I went about my preparations for leaving, possibly for a long time, it as if, again, my ears were being filled with an insinuating memory. Sirius, I heard, Sirius, Sirius … and I could not free myself of it. Waves of this insidious whispering came up in me, so that I could hear nothing else, and ebbed, leaving a silence that I knew was waiting to be filled with Sirius, Sirius . In Nasar’s voice. In Rhodia’s. And in Klorathy’s. And in voices I had never heard but knew I would. I stubbornly ignored this call, or tried to, making my mind dwell on problems distant and different from Rohanda’s and found that no matter what I did, the whispering grew, so that I would find myself standing quite still, some task forgotten, listening.

I told the Department that my mission must be postponed. I sent a message to Klorathy that I was going to Rohanda, and ordered the Space Traveller to set me down near our old station. We had maintained this post, though it had several times fallen into disuse, and twice been destroyed by earthquakes. It was repaired partly through sentiment: I had been so usefully happy there. Now I promised myself a short space of freedom and thought, in solitude, for Klorathy would need time to reach me. For one thing, he have to enquire from my Home Planet where on Rohanda he could find me… so far had I forgotten what one might expect of Canopean abilities!

I walked by myself up to the little group of buildings among low foothills, the towering ranges of the western mountains at my back, a good way to the south from where I done the same, going towards Lelanos, and as I approached thought they did not look uninhabited. Had the Lelannian tyrants then taken this Sirian station for themselves? If so, if they had lost all fear of Sirius, then they had fallen very far away from any sort of understanding. I was preparing in my mind how to deal with an emergency if I found one, as I entered the first one of the buildings, an airy set of rooms similar to those I once, so pleasantly, lived in: it would be easy, for instance, to summon the Space Traveller, which was already stationed just above me, and visible as a silvery glitter.

There was someone sitting, back to the light, across the room. I at once that it was Klorathy. Though, of course, it was technically impossible that he should have got here in the time since my message went out. This meant that he had known I would be here, in this place, well before the message did go out, and even before I had decided myself… I was absorbing this as I went towards him saying: “This is Sirius.”

“I am an uninvited visitor, I know,” said he; and I left the remark unanswered, meaning him to feel that I was making a point. And went to sit where I could see him clearly. I had not seen him since the experience on their Colony 11. It is of course a not uncommon thing to see, on this or that planet, within the Canopean aegis or within ours, an individual one recognises, so that one goes forward to say: “Greetings, Klorathy,” or Nasar or whoever it might be. But then one sees it as a type one has recognised, a species, a kind—and what then looks back from inside this known shape is an individual quite strange to one. It has always been, to me, a disturbing business, to be with this shape , which is that of a remembered friend or associate: and to match gestures, glances, mannerisms, that are so close to those that are, in memory, the property of this or that person. What absolutely individual and unmatchable entity is it that is not here? And, conversely, this other experience: when one encounters the species, type, shape, equipped with roughly similar manners and ways, and it is the remembered individual. This was Klorathy. I had known it was he, the moment I saw him, a shape against light, all his features invisible. Yet this was not the identical Klorathy. He had chosen to inhabit a physical equipment almost the same as his last. Presumably it was useful, being strong, healthy, and—I deduced—a good all-purpose type that would adapt easily to any planet and species without too much remark. For instance, he would not be likely to choose my physical type, which in fact always calls forth often uneasiness, if not worse, except on my own originating planet.