Doris Lessing - The Sirian Experiments

At any rate, Tafta illustrated the social law—so often seen, and of course causing me, because of my own position, much private alarm in case I might fall victim to it—that to the extent an individual has been a deviant from a group, a set of ideas, a “received opinion” of some sort, and then his own deviant opinions becoming “respectable,” ousting or questioning the former standards, so that he as an individual has ceased to be threat, but on the contrary has become stabilised in the new orthodoxy, then to the same degree he may be expected to misuse, scorn, and ridicule the new uprising generation of nonconformists.

I shall not detail the set of attitudes that on this occasion he was defending, but they were all to do with the despoiling of the planet, the damage being done by technology, poisoning, fouling, wastage, death. He was reassuring his questioners, and this easy, affable, smiling, democratic fellow, the very embodiment of successful adaptation, was deeply reassuring to them, or at least to most. And of course that this was so was not an accident.

There he sat, informally posed on the edge of the table, one leg pleasantly swinging, as if his exuberant vitality could not help expressing the sheer invincible joy of life in this way, the bright candid blue eyes beaming over his full healthy beard, and it occurred to me that he did not look all that different from the pirate whom I had watched plundering the continent south of this one. And he smiled. How he smiled! His smile was a most powerful instrument…

As a question was put to him from below, in the hall, the smile was adjusted: he adjusted, minutely, ridicule, scorn, contempt; but it was the mildest and almost careless ridicule that he was using to demonstrate the questioner’s foolishness or stupidity.

And he was, similarly, mildly and almost carelessly sarcastic. An individual stood up to demand reassurance about something or other, and he would, as he listened, adjust that smile and adjust the tone of his voice—exactly. Perfectly. What a performance Tafta was giving! I could not help but admire it. The social mechanism he was using so well was that social law that most Rohandans could not bear to be ridiculed, to be “out of step.” It was too uncomfortable to them to be outside the current group mind, and they were easily manipulated back into it.

Ten years before, the questions being asked had been different: in the meantime, many of the possibilities dismissed by Tafta or a similar spokesman as absurd had become fact. In ten years’ time, the questions being asked being ask today, and being so subtly ridiculed, would have been answered by events…

By the end of that “conference” and the “discussion period,” Tafta’s bland well-mannered contempt had succeeded in making his audience seem absurd and silly-minded little people, and most had a crestfallen look. But others, a few, had an air of stubborn self-preservation.

I left the scene and went down into the street, as much to escape the imbalances being created in me by this unpleasant building as to rid myself of the sight of Tafta. It took Shammat—I was thinking—to make of good humour a quality to be suspected and distrusted.

In the street I not conspicuous, for I was wearing the uniform, the thick tight trousers and singlet, and my face was daubed thoroughly with paint.

Tafta soon sauntered towards me, smiling.

“Were you watching?” And he let out a guffaw, which reminded me of the beach, the three whipped wretches, the buccaneers.

“I was indeed.”

“Well, Sirius?”—and I have never seen such a triumphant sneer. There was nothing in this vulgarian, all crude contempt, of the urbane gentleman of science I had just been watching.

“It is not Sirius,” I said quietly, as I had done before, “who is master of this planet.”

But while his gaze did meet mine, it was only with the surface of his attention. He was enclosed in his conceit, and his pleasure at his cleverness. And yet, as this boasting animal swaggered there, laughing, I knew that what I was seeing was—defeat.

“Tafta,” I said, “you are very sure of yourself.”

“We have just had a directive from home,” he said. “From Shammat. Shammat of Puttiora…” And he laughed, because the planet Shammat was now master of the Empire of Puttiora, and he was identifying himself this master. “The directive was to test the degree of imperviousness among these Rohandans to the truth of their situation. I tested it. And believe me, Sirius, it is absolute.”

“You are wrong. It only seems to be so.”

“If any leader of any nation of Rohanda stood up and told them the truth, the full truth, of their real situation, do you know what would happen? They would not believe him. They would kill him. Or lock him up as a madman.”

“So it seems now.”

He was looming and swaggering above me, smiling and ascendant, drunk with power and with confidence. And, just as had happened so often before, his great brown hairy hands came out, one on either side of my head, where my allyrium earrings hung. His fingers itchingly stroked the things, while his eyes glittered. But he had forgotten their purposes… And, as I remembered how much he had forgotten, how far he was from any real understanding, I felt some strength come back into me, and this repelled his leeching and sucking at me. His hands fell away.

“What pretty earrings,” said he, in a different voice, a half-mutter, thick and dreamlike, and into his eyes came an anxious look.

“Yes, Shammat, they are.”

Now stood at a distance from each other. He seemed to shrink and diminish as I watched him. He was now only the poor beast Shammat, the doomed one, and I was sorry for him.

I said, “It was foolish of you to follow that order from your Home Planet. Very foolish.”

“Why? What do you know…” As I walked away from him I heard him come running after me, and felt his hot carnivorous breath on my cheek.

Without turning I said, “Goodbye, Tafta.”

I heard him cursing me as he stood there impotent on the street’s edge. And then he was coughing and gasping and retching in the fumes of the machines. And so I left him.

I bought myself a mask of the kind worn by these unfortunates in their streets, to protect themselves from the poisons manufactured by their machines, and which often made them blind, or ill, or silly, and I went walking around and about that city, unable to bring myself yet to summon my Traveller, for I was thinking of Klorathy, of Canopus. I wanted—I am afraid this was the truth—some sort of reassurance; for while I had been showing firmness and confidence with Tafta, I could not help feeling myself undermined by the familiar dry sorrow at the waste of it, the dreadful squandering waste of it all. I remembered Nasar and how he had learned to contain his pain on behalf of this sad place, and I was thinking of the things he had said, and how much I had learned. I was wishing I might see him again. How much it would reassure me to see him, and to exchange a few words. What would he be thinking now, my old friend Nasar—my old friend Canopus?

I was on the edge of the city, looking at a building, and thinking that it pleased me. It was simple enough, a dwelling place, and built of the local stone. There was nothing remarkable about it, yet it drew me. It was built on a small rocky hill that rose clear from the city’s dirty fumes. I saw that on the steps stood a young man, wearing the familiar uniform of tight trousers and singlet, but I could not see his face, for though he was turned towards me, he was wearing a mask. Nasar, Nasar, was ringing in my mind, and I said aloud: “Nasar, I am sure that it is you.”

We were like two snouted creatures, and he took off his mask, and I took off mine. We went higher up the hill, to be more above the fumes, since our eyes had at once begun to redden and water.