The Sirian Experiments. Doris Lessing
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and this was the result. It seemed to us that we were unlikely to see the remnant of the poor natives again, belligerent and suspicious though they had become; the new stock was banded together in a large obviously efficient tribe, superior in intelligence and in strength. The old natives had a look about them that we knew only too well: the subdued, paranoid, almost furtive air of a species that would soon die out from discouragement.
We took note that this new stock could be used by us, possibly, in our experiments and flew north. Passing over the isthmus that joins the Isolated Northern Continent with the Isolated Southern Continent, we saw that the land-bridge had sunk, leaving a gap of 50 or so R-miles. Sometimes this bridge was there, at some epochs, and at others not, and we were able to deduce that the gap had been there for a long time, because the new stocks on the Northern Continent had not infiltrated southwards.
We met Klorathy as arranged on a high plateau of raw red rock and sand, the result of recent earthquakes, overlooking lower fertile plains untouched by the quakes. Our aircraft came down side by side on the burning desert: we conversed by radio, and together flew off into the shelter of a high wooded mountain. The three of us conducted our first conference under a large shade tree, sharing a meal. It was a most pleasant occasion. We were all quite frankly examining each other to see if our impressions on Colony 10 had been accurate. As for myself, I was more than happy. Klorathy in himself was as lively and attractive as I remembered, but there was the additional bonus always felt in meeting with the superior ones of our Galaxy. After all, so much of one’s time is spent with the lower races, and as interesting as the work is, as likeable as these races often are, to meet one’s equals is something to be looked forward to.
Klorathy was a typical Canopean Mother Planet Type I: very tall, lightly built, strong, a light bronze in colour, his eyes a darker bronze, he was not dissimilar from my Ambien I. And I was conscious that my own physical difference from them both was felt by them as an agreeable contrast.
We still did not know why we had been invited to this meeting – both Ambiens (as we often humorously refer to ourselves) had been speculating. I for one had been thinking most of all about the mathematical cities of the pre-Disaster phase. I had even been wondering if we hadn’t imagined all that – to the extent of asking Ambien I again and again to repeat to me what he had seen of them. But he reiterated that he had never seen anything like those cities ever, anywhere. Yet on the Canopean Mother Planet they had nothing so advanced. I had asked Klorathy about this at the last conference, and he had replied that there was ‘no need’ for this type of city or building on Canopus itself. I had believed him. When with Klorathy, one had to know he did not lie. When away from him, it was a different matter, and I had been wondering why he had lied. Together again, sitting with him there under the light fragrant shade of the tree, on soft spicy grasses, I had only to look at him to know that if he said that on Canopus (the Mother Planet) they had such and such a city, then it was true. He had described these to me, and they did not sound so dissimilar from those on Sirius. Agreeable, genial cities, planted with all kinds of attractive and useful trees and shrubs, they are places where one experiences well-being. But they are not built as those round, or starlike or hexagonal – and so forth – cities of the old Rohanda.
‘Why not? Why not, Klorathy?’
‘It’s like this, Ambien II: cities, buildings – the situations of cities and buildings on any planet – are designed according to need.’
Well, obviously – was what I was thinking.
I was disappointed, and felt cheated. I felt worse than that. I had not really, before actually meeting Klorathy, stopped to consider the effect it would have on our being together, that I could not say anything about what was so strongly in my mind then – the horrible new race, or stock, of beast-men on Isolated S.C. II. We had not told Canopus that we had had visits from Shammat, or that we had stolen without telling them some of ‘their’ Natives, or that C.P. 22 technicians had escaped with some Lombis and had settled not far from here, or that we had so often and so thoroughly conducted espionage in their territories, or that Shammat had done the same … it seemed to me, sitting there in that delightful picnic spot, as if instead of being open and generously available to this new friend, as one has to be in friendship, my mind had bars around it: keep off, keep off … and there were moments when I could hardly bear to look into that open and unsuspicious countenance. And yet I have to record that I was also feeling something like: You think you are so clever, you Canopeans, but you have no idea what’s in my mind, for all that!
No, there was not going to be any easy companionship between us, not really. Or not yet.
Soon we found out why Sirius had been invited to send representatives … when we heard, we could hardly believe it, yet what we had expected was not easy to say.
The remnant of the degenerating Giant race had proliferated and spread everywhere – over this continent as well. They were now half the size they had been, about our size – eight to nine R-feet tall, and were not as long-lived. They had retained little memory of their great past – not much beyond knowledge of the uses of fire for cooking and warmth and some elementary craftwork. They did not grow plants for food, but gathered them wild; and they hunted. From north to south of the Isolated Northern Continent they lived in large, closely organized tribes who did not war with each other, since there was plenty of territory and apparently infinite stocks of animals. The two tribes near here, near this spot, were called Hoppe and Navahi, and it was Klorathy’s mission to visit them and … I missed some of what he was saying, at this point. For I could not tell him the origin of these two names, and I was afraid even of looking at Ambien I. When I was able to hear again, he was talking about some dwarves that lived in these mountains, and in other mountain chains, too, over the continent, and he was to visit these, for Canopus would like to know more about them. And assumed that Sirius would as well. I can only say that I recognized in this a sort of shorthand for much more … for how much more I will not say at this point: certainly it turned out very differently from what I then imagined.
Klorathy was wanting us to go with him into the mountain habitations of the dwarves. This would involve danger, since they had been hounded by the Hoppes and Navahis, and while he was known by them we would have to win their trust. He was taking it absolutely for granted that we would be ready for this: and Ambien I most certainly was, for he liked challenge. As for me, I did not want any association with what were bound to be no more than squalid little half-animals – but I assented.
THE DWARVES. THE HOPPES. THE NAVAHIS
We concealed the two machines as well as we could in a canyon, and walked forth boldly towards the mountains. These had not been devastated by the quake, though some rock falls had taken place, giving the mountainsides a raw disturbed look. Standing close against a precipitous surface we could hear all kinds of murmurings and knockings and runnings-about, and I was reminded of the termite dwellings on Isolated S.C. II – putting one’s ear to the walls of one of these, having knocked on its surface or even broken a part off, one heard just such a scurrying, rustling murmur. Coming round the edge of this precipice, there was a low dark cave entrance, and Klorathy walked at once towards it, lifting up both his hands and calling out words I did not know. We, too, lifted our hands in what was obviously a gesture of peace. There was a sudden total silence, from which we were able to gauge the degree of the background of noise to which we had adjusted ourselves approaching the mountain. Silence – the sun blazing down uncomfortably from the warm Rohanda skies – heat striking out from the raw and unhealed rocks – heat dizzying up from the soil. Suddenly there was a rush of movement from the cave, so swift it was impossible to distinguish details, and we three were enclosed in a swarm of squat little people who were hustling us inside the cave, which we tall ones – they came up to our knee level – had to go on all fours to enter. We were in a vast cavern, lit everywhere by small flames, which we later found were outlets of natural gas, controlled and kept perpetually burning. Yet they were not enough to create more than a soft twilight. The cavern was floored with white sand that glimmered, and crystals in the rock walls twinkled, and a river that rushed along the cavern’s edge flung up sparkling showers