Doris Lessing - The Sirian Experiments

Queen Sha’zvin was not aware of my entrance into her being, except as an increase in her anxiety. It was an experience more powerful than I had expected. I did not lose my Sirian perspectives, the Sirian scope of time and space. But I was inside, too, this civilization’s view of itself as all there was of the known world—for on its edges were to the north, the threatening horsemen, to the northwest, very far away, dark forests full of barbarians whom these people scarcely accounted as human at all, believing them not much more than beasts—and from their point of view, accurately—while beyond what was known and understood, in the Southern Continent, were, again, barbarians useful for trade and as slaves. Nothing was known at all of the Isolated Northern Continent and the Isolated Southern Continent. The world as understood by this great and powerful Queen was, though it stretched from one end of the main landmass to the other, circumscribed indeed, and the stars that roofed it were understood only—and to limited extent—by their influences on their movements… on our movements… an odd, a startling, a disturbing, clash of focusses and perspectives encompassed me; and as for the historical aspect, this queen knew the story of her own civilisation and some legends, mostly accurate, of a “distant” past, which to me, and my mind, was virtually contemporary with her.

She was feeling, as she stood there—part of a scene drenched with sunlight and the colours of Rohanda—that death lay just ahead not only for her but for her people. Death had already ended so much of what she knew. This kingdom of hers lay among the passes and roads that controlled the territories to the south, to the east, and to the west. The horsemen had already devastated everything to the west. For hundreds of miles there was nothing but ruins and corpses and the stink of death. She looked over her kingdom that as yet was all richness and peace, and the wind brought to her nostrils the news of corruption and of spoiling. The horsemen were encircling her to the south—there, too, the principalities and the kingdoms lay smoking. To her east, high in the mountains still remained some small safe valleys—for how long? Beyond them, on the other side of the Great Mountains, the horsemen ravaged and plundered and killed. She had survived so long because of this position on a small plateau encompassed by rocky and precipitous mountains. The horsemen of the plains did not love high places and rocks and fastnesses where, looking down, their heads swam and dizzied. They had left her and her people to the last.

Her land maintained five hundred thousand people. It was, had been, a place of contentment and order and harmony. She had seen herself as one blessed by God—such were the words she used—since her rulership had experienced none of the misfortunes that she knew well enough came sooner or later to all kingdoms. Now she ruled three times that number. Men, women, children, fleeing from the horsemen, had begged for refuge. She had taken them all in. Where a household had had ten people, now it had thirty. The smallest hut and shelter was crammed with refugees from hundreds of miles of devastated country. There was little food. The wells were so low that water was limited to a few mouthfuls a day. Over this fair city of hers, all markets and buildings and lively streets, lay a silence. Often had she stood here, for the pleasure of watching her people—but now there was little movement, and no cries of buying and selling or greeting, no singing or laughter. Silence. They all, as she did, awaited death.

This scene I had noticed, as the sweep and scope of the terrible invasion had been shown to me by Klorathy, but now, there was a variation—a great hammering and clamour at the western gates of the city. The Queen turned to face, so she believed, the horsemen, looking to see them appear on the high walls. But they were not there. A messenger came running, breathless, pale.

“There are more refugees from the west—about ten thousand—they have made their way here and beg your aid.”

The Queen stood silent. She was thinking that now, in this decision she was going to make, she would pay for all her long years of pleasure in the equilibrium of her rule, where she had never had to make decision out of the pressures of a hard choice. She was about to say that she would not open her gates, because these ten thousand would drag her city into famine tomorrow instead of its possibly lasting another week, and it was her duty as custodian to… but I caused her to say, instead, “Admit the leader of these people. For the time being bar the gates to the others.”

“They are dying of thirst and hunger,” said the man who had brought the message.

“Take them enough food to keep them alive, no more.”

He ran off, and shortly entered a young man, who ordinarily would be handsome, strong, and full of vitality, but now was gaunt and faint with famine. He put out his hand to hold himself on the painted arch of the entrance, and at the sight of his condition, Queen Sha’zvin filled a cup of water and took it across to him, and held it to his lips. He took one swallow of the precious liquid, and looked her in the eyes and said: “We beg mercy, great Queen.”

I was saying to myself Nasar, Nasar, knowing it was he, though nothing in his appearance said so. And now I was in control of this Queen’s mind and her decisions: Sirius and Canopus commanded, and Canopus was racing towards us at the head of a myriad brutes ready to destroy everything they could see.

“Among us are savants, wise men and women, poets, geographers—those who have been saved from the devastation by Allah for purposes in the future. Take them in, and quickly, for it will not be long before the Mongols appear.”

The Queen said, smiling: “These precious ones will die almost as quickly inside our gates as they would outside them!” And I said, or made her say: “But bring them in. I will give the order.” She clapped her hands, called the order to an attendant, who ran off.

We three stood together in the silent city, in the high rooms of this delightful palace, the death-smelling breeze stirring the embroidered hangings, and clinging in an unseen miasma on the surfaces of pillars, the brilliant tile work of the ceilings.

“You will buy time,” said Nasar, “in this way. You will go out to the northern wall and stand there, alone, facing them as they ride up the ravine.”

“They have been slaughtering women all the way from China to the dark forests of the northwest and to the southern seas.”

“Ah, but we will be aided, just a little, for just long enough, in an illusion, great Queen.”

“It will have to be a strong one,” said she, smiling—and I, now, had retreated to the back of her mind. For the course of events I had seen projected by Klorathy was altered: I had seen nothing of this: what was happening because of our intervention.

Nasar, revived a little by the swallow of water, but still staggering as he went, descended the stairways of this lovely building, so soon to be ruins. and arrived in the open square below the palace as the people he had brought across the deserts of the west came in. They, too, could hardly stand. They were an army of ghosts and phantoms. And yet they were to live, a good many of them.

The Queen divested herself of her dagger, her ornaments, and, wrapping herself in a dark cloak, walked along the northern wall of her kingdom as the first horseman came chasing up the ravine.

Flights of arrows were already on their way to her when the leader shouted an order. These men who could shoot at full gallop as accurately as from the ground rested their bows on their horses’ necks. There was not room in the narrow ravine, dark between its rock edges, for more than a few hundred of them. They were gazing up to the sunlit walls of this famed city, where there stood a single figure, a woman, confronting them steadily and without moving at all.