Shikasta. Doris Lessing
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A couple of Giant children did play for a while outside in a sunny court, calling out to each other and laughing, their exuberance making a painful contrast to our condition, but soon the white frail Giant made a signal to them and they went off.
At last Jarsum said it was not possible for them to absorb further on this occasion, and that more could be taken in tomorrow. Discussions would take place between the Giants on how best to tell the Natives, or if anything should be said at all. Meanwhile, there was my room, furnished, they all hoped, to make me as comfortable as possible. If I wished to stroll abroad, I should, for I was free to do exactly as I wished. And food would be available at such a time … oh, all the courtesies, everything of the kindest and pleasantest. But I felt my heart was breaking. I have to say it, in all the banality of these words. That is how I felt: desolation, an unutterable blankness and emptiness, and I was absorbing these emotions from the Giants, who were feeling all this and more.
Next day I was summoned early to the transmitting room. There were ten Giants waiting, different ones, but I did not feel any strangeness with them.
When the Giants left now, how would the Natives’ carefully fostered and trained expectations take the shock of it? What aberrations and perversities might be looked for? And what of the animals of the planet, of which the Natives had so recently ceased to be one variety? It had been planned that the Natives would administer and guard the animals, and see that the powers and qualities of the different genera would match and marry with the needs of the Lock. How would they view these animals now? How would they treat them?
As these thoughts developed in our minds that morning, I was needing, and urgently, to introduce Shammat. So strong was this current in me that I was surprised they did not introduce Shammat themselves. And I think that a strain of uneasiness, and even suspicion, did indicate that the theme was ready to surface. But it did not. Not then. I had to take my own cue from them, to wait on their signals and decisions. Soon the end of that session was decided on, and I was dismissed, again with courtesies.
This time I availed myself of the invitation to move about as I wished, and I returned to the parts of the Round City where I would find the Natives. Everything seemed flourishing and normal. I moved from group to group, and talked to anyone who had time to talk to me. At first I said I was visiting from the Crescent City, but soon found that travel was common among them, and did not want to reveal myself then. I discovered that an ovoid city very far in the north, which they spoke of as we might of the extreme edges of the galaxy, was not one they visited, and said I came from there, making up interesting histories of ice and snowstorms, and so was able to be accepted in easy conversation. I wanted to find out if these people felt anything of Shammat, if there were travellers’ tales of untoward events, or even if they felt ill, or out of sorts. I found nothing that helped me, until a female who sat with two small boys on a bench in the central square, said of their quarrelling that ‘they were very peevish these days.’ This was not much to go on. I felt low and irritable, but there were good reasons for that, and so I went back to my room, with its towering walls, at the foot of which crouched so tinily my bed and my chair, and almost at once was summoned back to the transmitting room.
Jarsum was there, but the others were again new to me. We arranged ourselves as before and I was determined to bring up Shammat, and did so, at once, thus: ‘I have to tell you something more and worse – worse from the point of view of the Natives, if not yours. This planet has an enemy. Were you not aware of it?’
Silence. Again, the word ‘enemy’ seemed to fade away from them, in the atmosphere of this chamber. It seemed, quite simply, to find nowhere to hook on to! It is the oddest experience, when you have yourself always thought in terms of the balancings and outwittings, the treaties and the politicking that must go on against the wicked ones of this galaxy, to find, suddenly, and so unexpectedly, that you are among people who have never, ever, thought in terms of opposition, let alone evil.
I tried humorously: ‘But at least you must know that enemies do, sometimes, come into being! They exist, you know! In fact they are always at work! There are evil forces at work in this galaxy of ours, and very strong ones …’
For the first time, I saw their eyes engage each other, in that instinctive reflex action which is always a sign of weakness. They were wanting to find out from each other what this thing ‘enemy’ might be. And yet their reports had said, at least at the beginning of our experiment with Rohanda, that there were rumours of spies, and surely spies implied enemies, even to the most innocent.
I saw that these were a species who, for some reason quite unforeseen, could not think in terms of enemies. I could hardly believe it. Certainly I had not experienced anything like this on any other planet.
‘When you told me, Jarsum, that you were monitoring your column, that you had suspected something was wrong, then what did you mean?’
‘The currents have been uneven,’ he said promptly, with all the responsibility and grasp he was capable of. ‘We noticed it a few days ago. There are always slight variations, of course. There might sometimes be intermissions. But we none of us remember this particular quality of variation. There is something new. And you have explained why.’
‘But there is more to it than I have said.’
Again a general, if slight, movement of unease, the shifting of limbs, small sighs.
Against this resistance I gave them a short history of the Puttiora Empire, and its colony Shammat.
It wasn’t that they were not listening, rather they seemed unable to listen.
I repeated and insisted. Shammat, I said, had had agents on this planet for some time. Had there been no reports of aliens? Of suspicious activity?
Jarsum’s eyes wandered. Met mine. Slid away.
‘Jarsum,’ I said, ‘is there no memory among you that your ancestors – your fathers even – believed there might be hostile elements here?’
‘The southern territories have been cooperative for a long time.’
‘No, not the Sirian territories.’
Again, sighs and movements.
I tried to keep it as brief as I could.
I said that this planet, under the changed influences of the relevant stars, would suddenly find itself short of – as it were – fuel. Yes, yes, I knew I had told them this. But Shammat had found out about this, and was already tapping the currents and forces.
Rohanda, now Shikasta, the broken, the hurt one, was like a rich garden, planned to be dependent on a water supply that was inexhaustible. But it turned out that it was not inexhaustible. This garden could not be maintained as it had been. But a slight, very poor supply of Canopean power would still seep through to feed Shikasta; it would not entirely starve. But even this slight flow of power was being depleted. By Shammat. No, we did not know how, and we wanted urgently to find out.
We believed that a minimum of maintenance would be possible, the ‘garden’ would not entirely vanish. But in order to plan and to do, then we must know everything there was to be known about the nature of our enemy.
No response. Not of the kind I needed.
‘For one thing,’ I insisted, ‘the more the Natives degenerate, the more they weaken and lose substance, the better that will be for Shammat. Do you see? The worse the quality of the Canopus/Shikasta flow, the better for Shammat! Like to like! Shammat cannot feed on the high, the pure, the fine. It is poison to them. The level of the Lock in the past has been far above the grasp of Shammat. They are lying in wait, for the precise moment when their nature, the Shammat nature, can fasten with all its nasty force onto the substance of the Lock! They are already withdrawing strength, they are feeding themselves and getting fat and noisy on it, but this is nothing as to what will happen unless we can somehow prevent them. Do you see?’
But they did not. They could not.
They had become unable to take in the idea of theft and parasitism. It was no longer in their genetic structure, perhaps – though how such a change had come about is hard to tell. At any