Doris Lessing - The Sirian Experiments

Before we left the place we had to endure a long feast at which we played our parts. The feast was nauseating. The flesh of the natives and other animals was its main feature. The technicians of this place were glad of an excuse for a feast, we could see: they saw themselves as sophisticates banished for long tours of duty in a backwater, and longed to be returned to the capital.

They made speeches every one of which congratulated themselves on their brilliant experimental work. It did not cross their minds to think we might not admire them as they admired themselves.

And next morning we thankfully left.

News about the appearance of the “great ones from over the waters” had preceded us to the capital. We were received with much pomp and ceremonial. Again, the priesthood ruled, but the ruling caste did not consist only of the priestly families, as had been the case in old Grakconkranpatl. The division showed at once as we proceeded between two ranks, on one side the priests in their gorgeous robes and jewellery, flanked and buttressed by the soldiery; and on the other side the privileged families, in colourful clothing and jewels, charming and infantile as such indulged castes always are. No soldiers on their side! No guards, even! And no need of either, for they were the willing captives of the ruling priests. I shall not describe our visit to this capital city any further—there were no experimental stations there. But I shall mention the architecture. When the Lelannian and Grakconkranpatl states mingled, and Lelanos dominated, taking over the priesthood, the blocklike, ominous, Grakconkranpatl style was used for all administrative buildings, prisons, hospitals, and punishment centres. The light, fanciful Lelanos ways were used for housing and places of entertainment. Strange it was to see these extremes so juxtaposed.

We spent some months in the capital. Slowly I saw that Klorathy needed this time to find out whether these brutes were capable of regeneration. The process, for the most part, consisted of listening. Or he probed, lightly and skillfully. Sometimes he made experiments of his own—but so slight and subtle were they that at first I did not notice what he was doing: I to learn to be able to observe what went on. He would test their reactions to this idea or that, by suggestions, or even mild provocation. He would implant a new idea into a group and then wait to see how it would become processed by their particular mentation. I was not equipped to understand how he was reacting to what he found in them. But I was able to see that he was increasingly sombre, and even—it took me some time to be able to admit to myself that the great Canopus was capable of such emotions—discouraged. But there was soon no doubt of it: he was containing a dry and powerful sorrow, and I was able to recognise what I knew myself so very well and so intimately from such long immersion in it.

This stay in the capital is fully dealt with in my old report.

By the time we left, in spite of Klorathy's attempts to prevent us becoming cult objects, focuses of useless awe, that is what we had become. We had to forbid, absolutely, ceremonies in which droves of unfortunate natives were designated as “sacrifices to the Gods.” We insisted, as far as we could, that such practices were regarded at least “over the long blue seas” as unnecessary—it would not do to suggest to these self-satisfied ones that they were barbaric and primitive. When we left we travelled accompanied by priests, who performed their repulsive ceremonies at every opportunity; and by some of the youth, who saw no shame in describing themselves as “playpeople.”

The experimental station we visited next was similar to the other in appearance. The experimental subjects again consisted of the local tribesmen, but they also used some other kinds of animals, notably carnivores. They preferred to use the natives, on the ground that these were nearer to themselves in physical structure. Also that they had done so much work on them that comparisons could more usefully be made.

At this station Klorathy made an attempt to persuade the technicians to ask the natives in a systematic way for information about their medicine. He spoke of places “beyond the waters” where an advanced medicine was used, based on local balances and earth forces, on the rhythms of the stars, on the disposition of exactly placed and planned buildings, and on the use of plants. This “medicine” was more than curative or preventive: health was considered as a result and an expression of the exact sciences, used by a whole society, taught to every individual in the society. Health was being in balance with the natural forces of—the Galaxy. Yes, he went so far. And, yes, I was all ears. For this was what I had wanted to know. He was talking about the Necessity, even if in this guarded and indirect way. That much I did recognise. But as usual I was being disadvantaged by my emotional reactions. How was it that this precious information, the secrets of Canopus, of the Canopean superiority, was being given to these debased Lelannians. How was it, that when I had wanted, and for so long, to hear him talk in this way, it was not I who was addressed… it took me a long time, not until after we separated on this occasion, to see the simple fact that after all he had been speaking to me, since I was there. To Sirius… And he not been talking to the Lelannians, that is, if one was to judge by results: for they could make no use of what they heard. They did not hear. They could not hear. I have never before seen so clearly and simply that law of development that makes a certain stage of growth impossible to an individual, a people, a planet: first, they have to hear. They have to be able to take in what they are being offered.

Throughout the main occasions when Klorathy was with these top-level priest-technicians, they sat apparently all attention and respect, but their faces showed always the self-esteem that was their curse, the mark of their incapacity. The ground of their nature was this conviction of superiority, of innate worth over other species. Klorathy was not able to shake it.

This was true of nearly all. There were in fact a few of them who did absorb the intuition that there was something here they could learn, and they came to him secretly. And he instructed them as far as he could. When we left this station, they accompanied us. Our escort was now an extraordinary mixture of officials and priests, the frivolously curious, and these serious students of his ways of thought.

The third station was of particular interest, and the work there could have thrown light on the nature of the processes that had Rohanda in their grip—if the Lelannians had been capable of understanding them. The station researched the Degenerative Disease that caused the “ageing” that I had first seen—but still only in a mild form—in Rhodia. Since that time, this expression of Rohanda’s falling away from earlier excellence had accelerated. The term of life was half of what it been in the old Lelannian days. A hundred and fifty R-years was the norm now. And “ageing” began at the end of the stage of physical readiness for mating and reproduction. There was a dryness, a shrivelling, and, soon, a wrinkling of all the skin casing. The hair lost its colour and became spectral and pale. The eyes, too, lost colour. Hearing, sight, touch, taste—all the senses—became blunted, or ceased to operate. The processes of mentation were affected, sometimes to the point of imbecility. There were compounds full of local natives, all over a certain age, and these were being tortured to give up the secrets of “ageing.”

An interesting fact was that the natives were viable much longer than the “superior” race. They remained energetic and flexible in limb for longer, their hair kept its colour often until death—their pitifully early deaths—and their teeth often remained comparatively excellent. Also, there was less mental confusion. This, Klorathy said, was because of the natives’ closer bond with the natural flows and forces, as compared with the Lelannians, whose ways were mechanical and imposed by arbitrary law or by whim; because they worked physically, which the “superior” ones were proud not to do; because the stuff of their genetic inheritance did not include any contribution from Shammat and Puttiora.