The Sirian Experiments. Doris Lessing
had formed bonds of various kinds and, in short, the personal aspects of our lives had been satisfactory.
Ambien I had been on the committee that first considered what our work would be on Rohanda, and had been involved with it ever since. His visit to me was partly old friendship and partly investigative: I had not been back to our Home Planet for millennia: this was because I was thoroughly happy on Rohanda, enjoyed my work, and thought it too pleasant a place to abandon for service leave. Members of the Colonial Service, even members of the Five, visiting us for any reason always made excuses to stay. In short, Rohanda had become my home.
When we had had time to satisfy our accumulated curiosity about each other’s doings, after what had been a good lapse of time, I asked him if he would undertake a spying mission to the northern areas. He agreed readily. More than once he had been in the teams that ‘opened up’ new planets, and he had always enjoyed this type of rough dangerous work. We did not expect danger from this particular enterprise, but at least it would be a break from routine. He took a liaison ship to the extreme south of the central landmass, where he dismissed it. Altogether he was away ten R-years.
He travelled extensively over the central landmass, where there were everywhere settlements of colonists and natives, always positioned at short distances from each other. He went on foot, by boat, and sometimes by using suitable animals. Ambien I and myself are of course of the same general species, but his particular sub-species are broadly built, brown of skin, with straight black hair. I, being fair of skin and hair and very slight in build, could not go anywhere near the northern areas without discovery. But he, while being much shorter than the colonists – who were rapidly increasing in height, and were now twice the size of the original Colony 10 species – was rather taller than the natives, and could not hope to be taken for one of them. He at first avoided close contact with them, but seeing that he could not get the information we needed this way, approached them in settlement after settlement, and found no hostility at all – at the most, curiosity. At first he put this down to an innate good nature due to the favourable conditions they lived in, and lack of challenge. But then, though reluctantly, he came to believe they had visitors of other kinds. Not colonists, who were unmistakable because of their size. (They from this time were referred to as Giants by Canopeans, and I shall do the same.) If not colonists, then who? Was it possible the dwarf races of the Isolated Northern Continent had grown large and were making island-hopping journeys across that ocean? We were soon to learn differently: but it was this speculation that made him decide to visit the Northern Continent on his way back to me.
What he found everywhere on the central landmass corroborated the Canopean report. The native stock had improved so far beyond what they had been seven or eight thousand years before, it was not easy to believe them the same species. They were practising agriculture, understood the use of animals, and their dwellings were not only soundly built in well-planned settlements but were even being ornamented with attractive designs in sophisticated colours. They had begun to wear clothes, too, and these were well made and often dyed.
It was the Giants’ settlements that could not be explained. They were living on a level not very much higher than the natives; and yet on Colony 10 they had evolved to the stage of advanced cities.
When Ambien I’s survey was complete, he instructed the liaison ship to fly down over Isolated Northern Continent, to see what had happened to the Lombis and the stock from C.P.22. But he could find no sign of them. We had a rough idea of where they ought to be, from Hoppe’s information – but nothing. We concluded that they must all have succumbed to some epidemic, since there was no sign of settlement by natives or Giants either.
We had to come to terms with the facts about the Canopean work in the north. The captured native stock so happily living on their hillsides where they were always under our inspection could not be said to have regressed. They had not developed. They had abandoned attempts to care for and use other animals, but hunted skilfully and intelligently. They grew a few roots for food, but not grains. They picked leafy plants from the wild, but did not plant any. They wore animal pelts but no art was used in their preparation. The shacks and huts they lived in were adequate.
We did not understand what had happened to make the difference.
Again I was ready to conclude that the Canopean north was in some way better endowed, but Ambien I reminded me that the Giants actively instructed the natives on their visits, whereas we had pursued a policy of non-interference.
We decided to divide out stock of natives into two, and establish a colony of them at a distance from us, so that there could be no contact. This new colony would be energetically supervised and taught by us in the practical arts. Ambien I undertook this task: it was one he was particularly well fitted for.
He built himself a shelter in the new village, and settled down with them as an instructor.
This attempt was a failure. He was not able to teach them anything they could retain. That is, he taught them a variety of crafts, which they seemed to understand – but in a short time everything was forgotten. After a period of intensive work, he had to confess that the new colony was not much better off than the first one.
He did make further attempts during the next ten thousand years, goaded by the amazing results of the Canopeans, but they all failed. Meanwhile he was making more trips to find out what was happening in the north. Not only he, but others, too, whom we ordered from our Home Planet. We wanted individuals as near to the natives of the north as possible – no races in our Empire attained anything like the height of the Giants. Ambien I and these new experts again and again surveyed the north. Always, we believed, without discovery. Certainly without resistance.
Because of the number of spies we sent northwards, we believed that the Canopeans must be doing the same to us; and we were careful to spread rumours of the fierce and warlike nature of the southern hemisphere.
All this activity of ours during that period now makes me amazed and incredulous – as we are when remembering earlier cruder phases of ourselves. None of it was necessary. All we needed was to read, without suspicion and with an open mind, the material they continually supplied us and then to ask them questions. But it is always useless to bewail past mistakes.
During this period of ten thousand years, the reports by Ambien I and the others were increasingly amazing. There were cities being built everywhere, of a kind Sirius knew nothing about. The beauty of the cities on Canopus was famous, and we had always emulated them: to state the fact, which even now we are reluctant to admit. But these cities were built in remarkable shapes, of a mathematical kind. They were all different. The Giants and the natives lived together now. The cities were different not only in shape and size but in their qualities: Ambien I always said that it was not easy to describe what he could feel. On the islands, great and small, of the ocean between the Northern Continent and the main landmass were many cities, and the life on them was more advanced than any in our Empire. And we were talking about not only the Giants – whom we were certainly not surprised to find at this highly evolved level – but the indigenous stock whose unregenerate state we could see by going to the windows of our citadel and looking down: there they were, a lazy, amiable colony of – apes, for after all, that was all they were.
Why? It is not too much to say that Ambien I and myself and the others of our staff became obsessed with Canopus and their successes. I was, particularly. I had not seen what they described. But I did once insist on being taken in one of our fastest craft on a trip over the island-crammed ocean between the Northern Continent and the main landmass, and saw a very large island, that had on it a magnificent white city, circular, with many surrounding channels and causeways, and ships as fine as any we used anywhere riding in the harbours. This after only 5,000 years of the ‘Lock’ that Canopus attached so much importance to.
Because of the primary intention of this account – Sirian relations with Canopus – and my emphasis on aspects of our researches that affected these relations, there is a danger readers may believe what is described here more or less defines these researches. I can only repeat that during the roughly 18,000 years of that ideal period on Rohanda, only a small part of our work had any long-term effect on Rohanda or on Canopus. During the 10,000 years we were so preoccupied with