The Sirian Experiments. Doris Lessing

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СКАЧАТЬ with the confidence of those invited, or at least expected, and this arrogance was typical of everything they did. In type they were Modified Two. Head hair, localized body hair, teeth at primary animal level, well-adapted hands, feet used only for locomotion. They were therefore above most of the species, though not all, currently being trained by us for colonial work; but far behind the Rohandan native species as evolved by Canopus. Though we were wondering, as we entertained these extremely vigorous and energetic visitors who had about them every mark of the barbarian and the savage, if this after all so common, not to say basic, type everywhere throughout the three Empires we knew anything about – Canopus, our own, and Puttiora – would not, if put into contact with the Giants, become as advanced as the northern natives. For we had recently adopted the theory that it was the Colony 10 Giants who had the secret of rapid evolution of inferior species.

      I will not waste time describing our encounters with these Shammatans. There were many, because they would not take our ‘no’ as final. They lacked inner discrimination as to other people’s intentions. What they wanted was this. They had heard of our experiments with deliberately breeding first-quality colonizers. They knew everything about these, so we had to come to terms with knowing that their spying on us had been as intensive as ours on Canopean territory. Shammat wanted to ‘take off our hands’ some of our surplus females. There were very few on that horrible planet of theirs. Those they had were not ‘able to match demand’. I cannot exaggerate the crudity of their thought, and their talk.

      While we continued to refuse, for of course there was no question of submitting any peoples under our care to such criminal savages, and while they continued to arrive day after day at our door, as if we had not discussed everything already, a pretty clear and unwelcome picture of their activities was forming in our minds.

      Shammat had been on Rohanda for some time, both sending down spaceships, though not often, and fostering a small colony that continually kept spies at work among the Canopean settlements. This was the explanation of the easy reception of our first emissaries: our visits had by no means been the first received by the Giants and the natives. Whatever it was Shammat had wanted, they had not been given it. Our visitors were cunning and evasive, but not able to hide what they felt and thought. They were angry, no, murderous, because of blocks and checks received from Canopus. And it wasn’t – from Canopus – females they had wanted, but something else. What this was we did not know, nor did we find out – for millennia, millennia! And we did not find out because we did not know the nature of Canopus, any more than Shammat did. But Shammat had suspected, had wanted, had tried to get – like Sirius. And Shammat succeeded where we failed. I am making this statement, here and now, without concealment – though certainly not without trepidation, nor without anticipating criticism – that Shammat the barbarous, the criminal, the horrible, that planet that for so long we cannot remember the beginnings of it has been a synonym for everything disgusting and to be despised: it was Shammat who found out something at least of the Canopean secrets. Enough to steal a little. And we, Sirius, the civilized, the highly developed have not found out.

      To return to smaller matters. We of course wanted to know why these pirates had not simply stolen females from Canopus, since a spacecraft had been stolen – if not more than one. We could only conclude that Shammat was afraid of Canopus, and afraid of us, too: believing that punishment would more likely follow theft of people than theft of things. Rightly. But there was more to it than that. These Shammatans, returning day after day, climbing up the road to our fortress headquarters, did so for the same reason we were so ready to listen to them: they wanted to find out what we were doing.

      We asked them at one point why they had not simply kidnapped some of the indigenous natives – at this point we had to suffer conniving glances and grimaces, as fellow criminals – but saw that they wanted not the unevolved unregenerate stock but the new improved stock, and members of this they were afraid of stealing, since they were all in the new fine cities, where the Giants lived, too. They were quite remarkably shamefaced and shifty about this, and itching with greed. Why had they not stolen some members of our other species – both failed and successful – who had, at various times, populated the Southern Continents? But again, it was the same: all these different types and kinds and stocks and strains were not good enough. Not good enough for these nasty thieves of Shammatans, sitting there in their red jackets – Canopean ex-colonial uniform of centuries back; in their green pantaloons – Puttioran fashion, long outdated; their hide shoes made from some unfortunate animals somewhere. No, they wanted the best. Their eyes were fevered as they talked of the fine, handsome, healthy females in the glorious cities up north. And they talked lip-lickingly of ‘those females on Canopus – they’ve got yellow hair and blue eyes, so we hear …’ (This was untrue.) And all this while they ate me up with their eyes. I could see that their fingers itched to feel my hair and poke at my pale skin.

      Shortly after these nasty visitors took themselves off – back to the northern areas, not to Shammat – we discovered that the females who had volunteered for breeding service had also been visited by Shammat. To the extent that some of the progeny were Shammatan. There had been plots to escape, with Shammatan help. These had failed. But it was now important to watch for Shammat characteristics among the new race of colonizers that we had been so proud of. Later still we had again to modify our conclusions. Some of the breeding females had in fact escaped. Their places had been taken by Shammatan substitutes. The escaped ones had gone to Shammat, taking a good supply of the very best Sirian genes with them. Some of these females had originated in our C.P. 7 of fair-haired, blue-eyed stock – Planet 7 was the birthplace of my mother. They had proved very popular on Shammat, and new suppliers were being demanded …

      I now come to the end of this phase on Rohanda.

      About ten thousand years after the Canopus-Rohanda ‘Lock’, we were summoned to an urgent conference. Canopus had to announce disaster. Unexpected cosmic changes … failure of the ‘Lock’ … total write-off of the poor planet for whose sake Rohandan development had been speeded up … degeneration and dislocation of Rohanda inevitable.

      We were told to expect random and wild mutations and changes of every kind among our experimental species; advised to limit our attempts until these changes could be monitored and understood.

      I have to admit that at first we believed this was a feint, a ploy. Particularly as we did not receive reports of any increased activity in the north – for instance, no increase in visits by their spacecraft. But then, their visits had always been few, and this had reinforced our belief that the ‘contacts’ they were always hinting at were to do with communications.

      We heard that a single emissary had arrived and was stationed in a circular city in a region where there were many inland seas. This was Johor, an official then of junior rank. Soon after that, our spies reported that spacecraft had taken off nearly the entire complement of Giants from the north, though a few had escaped. Our spies then submitted reports that seemed contradictory, vague, even foolish – we understood that Canopus had not exaggerated the ill-effects that would be expected. We recalled our spies, though a few never returned at all, and shipped out the remaining experimental subjects. After only a few years, these were showing signs of a decrease in life-span and of a tendency towards rapid reversal to barbarism – but this particular phase of Rohanda is so well documented under Social Pathology that I shall not linger over it: it has become, after all, the classic case of sudden evolutionary reversal.

      Our most urgent question was C.P. 23, which had been established as our Think-Planet – if I may be forgiven the flippancy at such a serious point in my story. It was completely dependent on supplies from Southern Continent I. We decided not to make alterations in our agricultural stations. It was necessary to increase our police establishment almost at once, for it was discovered that workers previously quite reliable had taken to pilfering, and then, slowly, to various kinds of criminality. Still we maintained our agriculture. Then something unexpected: waves of invaders from the area of the inland seas came sweeping down, destroying first the more northerly agricultural stations, СКАЧАТЬ