Doris Lessing - The Sirian Experiments

"Of the work you have done with Canopus…”

“Very well. Of the work we have done together. Because Sirius would not be able to understand one word of what I said. Only Canopus can understand me now.”

“You are lonely, Ambien!”

“Very.”

He nodded. “Please do what you can, Sirius.”

Before I left this moon, I instructed my Space Traveller to fly all over the sunlit side. The Shammat mining operations were evident everywhere. Their settlements were mostly underground, but in places were to be seen their observatories and laboratories. In the craters, some of them many R-miles across, their machinery laboured. It was ingenious, but none was unknown to me. Shammat the thief did not initiate; it sent spies into the territories of others, and copied what it saw.

A vast machine like a segmented worm whose segments could be fitted together in various ways was the kind they used most. One of these could be a mile or more long. Inside it were workplaces; temporary living places of labourers and technicians; and the extremities of a segment could be fitted with excavating devices. Some sucked in earth and sprayed it out again. One I hovered low over looked for all the world like the dragon of the Rohandan mythologies, with its spray of dirt emitted from its “mouth.” Others looked like starfish sprawling. They were a most ingenious type of machine. Flexible, so they could climb and clamber and balance; of any desired size, according to the number of segments fitted; very long, traversing difficult terrain and becoming bridges or tunnels as necessary; easily kept in repair, since an individual segment was so quickly replaced—these “crawlers” had been evolved us for use on inhospitable planets that were rich in minerals. But so adaptable and multifunctional had they proved that they were employed for purposes beyond mining.

As I sped away, I was escorted by a dozen of the wasplike Shammatan fighter craft. This was an act of impudence that in fact I welcomed. It would strengthen my hand in the efforts I was now about to make at home: I had to persuade our Colonial Service that our active presence on Rohanda was necessary to us.

As one will, I formulated in my mind all kinds of approaches to the problem, but soon understood that none was suitable: again and again, bringing to a situation or a person the framework of ideas, already formulated in my mind, these as it were fell apart, dissipated like a mist when the sun falls on it. I saw, then, that there was something wrong in my assessment of the situation. I even wondered if my mind had been affected by my excursions into the Rohandan reality; I half believed I had become more Canopean than Sirian. All kinds of doubts and weaknesses assailed me.

Meanwhile, my colleagues were referring to my “leave” on the Rohandan moon in a careful nonjudgemental way. I knew it was not possible for them to have any inkling as to what I had really been doing; and could not decide what it was they suspected that made them treat me like a—well, yes: I had to accept it: I was being handled in the way we use for those about to be summoned to a formal court of enquiry, or even arrested. Meanwhile discussions went forward for, again, my long interrupted work on our borders. I concluded at last that something was at work in the situation that I was severely misinterpreting.

Time was passing. I not raised the subject of Rohanda. Tempted to let the subject slide from me again, I made myself remember undertakings to Klorathy. At last, not knowing what else to do, I summoned a meeting of the Five.

The Five, of whom I am one, run the Colonial Service. This fact everybody in the Empire knows. That we implement policy made by our Legislature is known. That this policy is influenced by us is known. What is not understood is the extent to which we influence policy. I shall simply state here, without softening it, and as a fact, something that contradicts the Sirian view of itself; our view of ourselves. We Five run the Empire, govern everything, except for the details of the lives of our elite class. That does not concern us in the slightest! This elite of ours does as it pleases. Within limits. Our limits. I have already said that there has to be an elite: legislation will not prevent one coming into being, or do away with one when it has. And as little as we, the rulers of Sirius, are interested in the affairs of these darlings and charmers, so are they interested in what we do. There is a law that no formal framework of an organisation, or a society, can affect. Or not for long. It is that those who do the work are the real rulers of it, no matter how they are described.

We Five embody the governance of our Empire. That is what we are . And have been since the end of the war between ourselves and Canopus.

I took risk in summoning only the Five, and not the extended council of the planetary representatives. Whatever decisions the Five came to, would stand. If it were to be a meeting of the thirty, I would have right of appeal to the twenty-five who sit listening to the case we present, without taking part in the discussion, and who are available for precisely this purpose: to set aside our decisions for varying periods, according to their importance and severity, while we Five are instructed to re-consider.

The meeting took place as usual. Since the appearance of each one of us Five is familiar to every Sirian citizen from infancy, I shall say no more, beyond remarking that the extraordinary nature of the circumstances did make me conscious of the dramatic aspect; I found myself, as we took our seats, looking into the faces of these colleagues of mine, with whom I was, and am, so close, with whom I have worked through the millennia, who make up, with me, a whole, an organism, almost an organ of the Sirian body. And, feeling my closeness to them, I was at the same time anguished, being so distanced from them, so alien in part of myself, because of Canopus. I sat looking at one face after another, all so different since we come—by policy—from different planets, and wondering how it was possible that we could be so close, so one—and yet I could at the same time feel set apart from them.

The meetings of those who know each other as well as we do have no need of rules and order. Often enough we have sat silent together until agreement has been reached, and separated without a word being said.

I wondered, to begin with. if this was to be such an occasion. At last I addressed them: “You know that I want us to agree on a reversal of our policy towards Rohanda.”

Four faces said that they had expected me to take up the argument in a more developed way.

I said: “I am having difficulty. The reasons that I think are conclusive—I do not know to put to you.”

Silence again.

Then spoke Stagruk from Planet 2.

“Since it seems recent experiences have distanced you from us, to the extent we do not know how we each think, I shall sum up our thoughts.”

This pained me—and they, too, were suffering.

“First. There is no advantage to Sirius in Rohanda. As an experimental field it is valueless, because of the overrunning of every part of it, and because of the mixture of races and even species…”

“The latter largely as a result of our intervention.”

A pause. I had introduced, and so soon, a note foreign to us.

“We shall have to accept that you see things differently. Shall we continue? Since there is no advantage to us, it must be that there is an advantage to Canopus.” A pause. “Canopus is our old enemy.”

I sat silent, looking at them all in enquiry, because of how this had been said.

Up and down through our Empire, Canopus is talked of in, if I may say so, pretty stereotyped ways. These are the ways used always for the strong, the threatening—the superior. That is, when not implicit, as, almost, a background to our lives. Canopus is mentioned with a laugh of contempt, a sneer, a jibe, or at least with that hardening of the countenance and voice that means a subject is taboo from serious enquiry. Among us, among the Five, this tone was not used, of course; it would be more accurate to describe ours as that due to a senior partner who has won the position by unfair means. But the word “Canopus” had been spoken without any of these undertones, and almost as an enquiry. The word fell between us, lightly, and our eyes met over it.