Doris Lessing - The Sirian Experiments

As I sat beside him, I felt the same strain, on the physical level, that I knew on the mental level, when I was endeavouring to follow him beyond my own natural limits. But he took my hand firmly and as he did so said, “Look at that wall, do not let your eyes close.” This I did, and saw on the wall, quite as clearly as one does ordinary vision—but as it were distanced and speeded up, so that what I was seeing was both exactly accurate, a true representation of actual events, and yet encapsulated, and simplified—a series of pictures, or visions, that drew me forward into them so that it was almost as if I was more a part of the events I watched than a spectator of them.

I was looking down at Rohanda, towards the east of the great central landmass, and rather to the north. This was not far from the area where I had met Nasar at the time of my visit to Koshi and where, before that, I had been tossed about the skies during the “events.” This region had been desert for millennia, then had become fertile again as the climate shifted, been deep desert where layers and layers of old cities lay covered, and was now a vast region of grassland. Looking down it was an ocean of grass, broken by mountains and hills where there were some trees. Great rivers crossed it, but it was a dry and harsh place, where a few nomads moved with their horses.

Around the areas of the great inland seas, and all over the plateaux of the southern part of the central landmass. and around the great mountains and on the eastern parts of the landmass, were many different cultures and social groupings infinitely complex and various and rich, and at every conceivable level of civilisation.

And as I watched, these little scattered groups of nomads multiplied, and covered all the vast plains, and there was a climatic change, and the grasses were replaced, here and there, by dust and drought, and the horsemen burst outward from their heartland to the east, and to the south and to the west and all the points between, and threatened the rich civilisations that bordered them—and then, loaded with booty, fell back and, because the winds were blowing differently and the grasses were covering their plains, stayed where they were bred. Besides, they were weakened by their conquests and, for a while, spoiled.

And again the civilisations on the edges of their enormous grassy homelands flourished and prospered and multiplied—and, as is the way (I was going to say of Rohanda) of our Galaxy, fell, and were overrun by local conquerors and remade themselves… and again the hordes on the grassy plains multiplied and covered them, seeming from the distance at which I was watching, or seemed to be watching, like swarms of insects that darkened everything… and again the winds blew dust instead of rain, and the horsemen massed themselves and then sped outwards east and south and west, and this time went further and threatened more, and despoiled more—and returned home, as before, carrying gold and jewels and garments and swords and shields and weapons of all kinds, and as the grasses grew up again covering all those vastnesses with their soft green or golden shine, they stayed home. But while these spoils of war amused them and even though they fought for them, they remained as they were, people of the horse.

They were very hardy, and brave, and they could live from their herds of horses and needed nothing else for months at a time, and their use of the horse for skill and cleverness has never been equalled, before or after. And the fame of these terrible peoples who could appear without warning at the edge of a valley full of rich farms, or on a city’s walls, covered all the central landmass so that even in the area that Canopus calls the Northwest fringes, which was at the very edge of the landmass, and at that time full of barbaric peoples who were so far from their great ancestors the Adalantalanders that these weren’t even a memory, were a savage fringe to the civilisations that lay to their south—even there, in black forests and swamps and in the misty isles of the extreme northwest, tales of the dreaded horsemen kept children awake when they should have been asleep, and even a rumour of their approach sent peoples running for cover.

Meanwhile, on that area that lies immediately to the east of the Southern Continent I, which had previously been forested and green and fertile, and since had become desert and semidesert, like so much of Rohanda, had arisen a religion, the third of those emanating from the region of the great inland seas, similar to one another, each succeeding one confirming its predecessor—though of course their exponents fought for dominance, claiming superiority. This third variation of the religion created marvellous rich and complex civilisations that tolerated—at least to an extent and as far as is possible for Rohandans—the previous variations and also all kinds of other sects and cults and idea-groupings. There was prosperity, the development of knowledge of cosmic matters, and a precariously maintained peace. I could not have enough of gazing at these pictures of this amazingly intricate and affluent culture. And then, as I watched, the nomad horsemen arose from their breeding places and overwhelmed everything I looked at, but everything, so that nothing was left but smoking cities, charred fields and mounds of the slaughtered. The horsemen chased after every fleeing thing, even domestic animals, and killed them. From the northern half of Southern Continent I to the far east fringes of the main landmass remained only a waste of ruins. I cried out, I came to myself sitting on the Rohandan moon by Klorathy, and I looked at him with passionate appeal and reproach.

“All!” I said to him, “Nothing left; is it possible that such an accomplishment can be wiped out, just like that?”

"Yes, indeed it is possible-and it nearly happened.”

“So what I saw was not the truth?”

“It is what will happen—unless…”

“Unless I help you?”

“I need your help. I keep telling you so. It is a strange fact, but everywhere in the Galaxy when the weaker look at the stronger and the more powerful, what they see is self-sufficiency, easy capacity, an effortless ability—very seldom something that is indeed stronger, but only if it receives support, a continuous and maintained regard of a certain kind, to enable this strength to function.”

I said nothing for a long time.

“Well,” I finally said, “I have a long leave due to me at home, and I shall take it now. It is without precedent—the way I propose to spend my leave! And as a matter of fact, how? What do you want specifically?”

“You shall be the ruler of a small realm, on the western slopes of the Great Mountains. And you shall confront the horsemen who will have overrun everything, leaving nothing behind but death—and who then stand at your gates ready to slay you and your people and lay your kingdom waste.”

“And Nasar?”

“He, and others, will be there.”

“Very well.” I sent the appropriate messages home and put myself into the hands of Klorathy.

To voluntarily submerge myself in that story of murder and destruction that I had watched to its last detail was not the easiest thing I have done. One moment I was poised still a spectator, with Klorathy, and the next it was as if I had been swallowed by the brilliancies and multitudinous detail of that mountainous kingdom where Queen Sha’zvin still ruled, waiting and watching the cruel horsemen came closer, destroying everything they found.

It was not without interest, learning this Canopean technique of occupying mind for a brief and exact purpose. The Queen, a vigorous and handsome woman in middle age, the widow of a much-loved husband who had been killed in her youth, fighting during an earlier campaign against the horsemen, was standing high at the windows of her palace, which overlooked the walls of her city, gazing down a narrow ravine where the horsemen would have to come. Her mind was alert, though anxious; and occupied with the surveillance of a thousand administrative details. To enter that mind was not to overthrow it, or to supplant its own intelligence—rather to remain a spectator, and rather to one side, in readiness for the moments of decision. And so, too, Klorathy was doing a hundred miles away, with the general, Ghonkez.