“Of course,” I said, sarcastically, as before.
He continued to handle the objects, precisely, carefully. I watched his face, the amber, or bronze face, long, deeply moulded, with the strong eyes that were so closely observing the movements of his hands.
And I continued to sit there, arms locked around my knees, watching, maintaining dry tight smile that was all criticism, and he continued patiently and humbly to manipulate his artefacts.
I did not understand him. I thought this was a way of putting me off, of saying wordlessly that he would not answer me.
As I formulated this thought, he said, “No, that is not it. But if you want to understand, then I suggest you stay on here for a time.”
“For how long?” And answered myself with, “as long as necessary, I suppose!"
“Yes, that’s it.”
“And what sort of progress have you made? Are the savages and dwarves in an alliance? Are they ready to stand against the Shammats?”
“I think it is likely the dwarves have been sealed into their caves, and that we may never see them again.”
The way he said this made my emotions riot. The end of a species—a race—the end of the Lombi strain on Rohanda and the technicians.
He said: “Well, we have to accept these reverses.”
“Then why are we staying on? The reason for your being here is gone—swallowed by the events.”
“The tribes are still here!”
“So you are not with them just because of the old hostility between them and the dwarves?”
“I am here as I often am with all kinds of peoples… races… species, at certain stages in their development.”
I did understand that here was a point of importance: that if I persisted, I would learn. “You want me to stay?” This was a challenge: deliberate, awkward, hostile.
“Yes, I think you should stay.”
He had not said: “Yes, I want you to stay.”
I got up and left him. I told Ambien I that I intended to leave. And in the morning, having said goodbye to Klorathy, we took off in our space bubble. We surveyed, rapidly, the ravages of the “events” on both southern continents, and then went home to our Mother Planet.
THE LOMBIS. MY THIRD ENCOUNTER WITH KLORATHY
For some time I had little to do with Rohanda, which was judged by our experts as too much of a bad risk, and I was allotted work elsewhere. This was, too, the period of the worst crisis in Sirian self-confidence: our experiments everywhere, sociological and biological, were minimal.
The populations on our Colonised Planets were at their lowest, too.
As for me, I was pursuing thoughts of my own, for I could not get out of my mind the old successes of Canopus in forced evolution, and while whole strata of our Colonial Service and all our governing class were publicly asking: What for? I was wondering if they would give room to such emotions (but they were called ideas, as heart-cries of this kind so often are, and the more so, the more they are fed by emotions and sentiments) if they had been able to watch, as I had done, creatures not much better than apes transformed into civic responsible beings within such a short time. I shared these thoughts with Ambien I, with whom I was once again working, but our Empire was less tolerant then than it is now—or so I believe and hope—and the kind of social optimism that inspired me was classed in some quarters as “irresponsibility” and “sociological selfishness.”
This may be the right place to remark that I long since learned that if one is entertaining unpopular ideas, one has only to keep quiet and wait for the invisible wheels to turn that will bring those back as the last word in intelligent and forward-looking thinking.
Meanwhile, I got on with my work. It happened that I was in that part of the Galaxy where the transplanted Lombis on were Colonised Planet 25. I had not thought of them from the old time to this; but I made a detour from curiosity. It could be said that the whole Lombi experiment had been inutile. They had been carefully preserved from any contact with more evolved races, except for very rare reconnaissance trips by Colony personnel to see if it were possible to keep a certain pristine social innocence that might be of use in “opening up” new planets. Yet we had nevertheless ceased to colonise new planets in the total—may I say reckless?—way that had distinguished our policies up till then: we acquired a new possession only after long and careful assessment. Our interest in the Lombis continued to the extent that we wished to monitor the possible development of evidence of a craving for “higher things.” From the spacecraft I made contact home to ask permission to make a small experiment of my own: it would not have been given me if the Lombis had not virtually been written off as useful material.
We had sent no technicians there for over a thousand S-years. Their life-spans remained at roughly two hundred R-years. This meant that as individuals they could have no memory at all of
visitations “from the skies.”
I ordered a rapid survey of Planet 25 sunside and nightside, at maximum speed so that we would not be observed as more than a meteorite—we were not visible at all on sunside when moving—and then, having chosen a populous area, hovered in full view for some hours, while crowds collected.
I made as impressive a descent from the aircraft as could be devised. Unfortunately I had no formal wear with me on this working trip, but I devised a long cloak of some white insulation material, and made the most of my not exactly profuse yellow hair—it is not that I have ever wanted to be more hairy or furred than I am, but the yellow or gold-haired species always evoke awe, because of our rarity. I floated to earth from the spacecraft, and saw a multitude of the poor beasts fall to their faces before me with a deep and sorrowful groan, which did touch me, I confess, accustomed as I am to the awe so easily evoked in uncivilised races.
I had prepared all kinds of suitably vague replies to possible questions, but found that once I had said I had “come from the skies” and was their friend, that was enough: awe is a great inhibitor of intelligent questioning.
They remembered—or their ceremonies and songs and tales did—“the shining ones,” and what dread they still kept from the old time on the other planets, I stilled by the most solemn promises that I would not take any of them with me when I left.
And what was it they were so afraid of being taken away from? The reply to that is ironical… is sad… is a comment on more than just the situation of the Lombis… my so long, so very long career in the Service furnishes me with several similar situations…
But first a comment on their customs and mores.
They had not evolved much; any more than had the parent stock on Planet 24.
The prohibitions against covering themselves, and eating cooked and prepared food had not vanished, but had reversed; it was now for their ceremonies that they had to be naked and eat raw meat and roots and fruit. They lived as before in various types of crude shelter, hut or cave; they hunted; they wore skins; they used fire. Their basic unit was the family and not the tribe: this seemed to be retarding them. At least, as I travelled about that planet, which was adequately endowed with plant and animal life, though meagre compared to other planets—Rohanda, for instance—I was comparing these animals with the savages of the high plateaux whom Klorathy had thought it worthwhile to instruct: and such was the contrast that I was wondering for the first time if the superiority of those others was due to something innate, a superiority of a different kind and classification to those we Sirians could use, and which Klorathy and officials on his level would be able to measure? The point was that the Lombis had no capacity for development, or seemed not to have.
I was examining these short, squat, half-furred creatures, with their immensely powerful shoulders and arms, living in their groups of three or four—up to or eight, but no more—each group suspicious of its patch of hunting ground, its wild fruit trees, its sources of roots and vegetables, able to mingle with other groups only on ritual occasions when they all crowded together—and remembered with admiration
things that I had scorned. Where were the customs that can make even hundreds of individuals a mutually supporting and culturally expanding unit? Where the intricate ceremonial dances? The finely worked garments with their fringes, their ornamentation, the delicately used feathers? The necklaces of carved bones and stones? The instruction of the young through tales and apprenticeship? The specialisation of individuals, according to innate talent, into storytellers, craftsmen, hunters, singers? Where was… but I could see nothing here like the skills and knowledge of the Navahis and Hoppes.
Now I come to what was painful and pitiful in their situation. How often as I travel from one of our Colonised Planets to another am I forced to remember the natural advantages of Rohanda, with her close and shining moon, her nightside that is crammed with brilliant star clusters?
This planet was a dark one, by nature and position. No moon here. The Lombis must have had somewhere in their gene-memory the knowledge that nights could be lit with infinite variation from a star hanging so close it seemed like a creature, a living being—and changing from a full and bright disc to the tiniest of yellow cracks one had to peer towards and watch for… The Lombis had known what it was to wait for that moment when a sun seems to slide away into dark—and then up flash the stars, giving light when a moon is temporarily absent.
Not only was there no moon, but the nightside looked out into an almost empty sky—black upon black. In one or two places there was a faint sprinkling of light, stars far beyond our Galaxy, more like a slight greying of the night. And their sun was small and distant compared with the rumbustious Rohandan sun from which one may have to shelter, even now when it is further than it was. The Lombis’ “shining ones” were now these infinitely faint and nearly invisible stars. Their old festivals of the full moon took place once a year, when a vast windy plain became filled with groups of these animals who travelled long distances to be there—and they stood in their family groups, lifting their flat sorrowful faces up to their black night, and sang of “shining ones.”
And their sun was a “shining one,” too, but their worship of it was ambiguous and double, as if it was an impostor, or tried to claim more than was due. When our spaceship descended, a crystal and sparkling globe that evoked from them memories or half-memories buried in them by their environment, it was as if an original primal light had suddenly appeared to them. Oh, those black stuffy nights… those interminable unaltering nights, that seemed to settle on the nightside with the sun’s disappearance like a physical oppression. A complete black, a heavy black, where a fire burning outside a cave or inside a leafy shelter seemed to hold back a felt and tangible pressure of darkness. I have never experienced anything like night on Planet 25. Never been on a planet where nothing could be done after sunset. In the daytime the Lombis ran about, and attended to their sustenance, but at night they gathered with the first sign of the sun’s going into their groups and pressed together around their little fires, cowering and waiting for that moment when a rock, or a leaf, would emerge greyly from the thick black and tell them that once again they had survived the extinction of the light.
I left as soon as I could, making a dramatic exit from the planet, which they took on their faces, thanking me for my gracious appearance to them and my love for them. Yet I had promised nothing, told them nothing, given nothing: so easy it is to be “a high shining thing”!—and, speeding thankfully from that oppressive place, I was remembering the apes on Rohanda under Canopean tutelage, and again my old dream, or if you like, ambition, revived in me, and I wondered if I could not persuade Canopus now to part with some of those skilled colonists, the Giants: after all, a considerable time had passed.
If nothing could be improved in the Lombis, what was the point of keeping them as they were?
I sent in a report on my return home, reminding my superiors of the Lombis’ remarkable strength: this was on the lines of what they would have expected from me. Meanwhile, I decided on guile, but nothing beyond what I believed then, and believe now, to be legitimate: only a question of interpreting my standing orders more liberally than would been expected of me.
Our relations with Canopus had been limited for some time, because of our cutback in colonial development.
I summoned a meeting of my peer group, the Five, reminded them that it our policy to maintain full liaison with Canopus, and asked permission to apply for a rendezvous with Klorathy: after all, it had come from them, originally, though of course the idea had been in my mind, that I should maintain contact with Klorathy. The fact that it had not led to anything then, or did not seem to have led to anything, did not mean there could never be benefits for us. I felt no enthusiasm in them, but I had become used to being the odd one out among the Five, always slightly at an angle to current norms of thought. They did not criticise me for this: it was recognised to be my role, or function. Nor did they discourage me beyond saying that since Canopus could not solve her own problems, she was unlikely to contribute to the solution of ours. This was in line with our attitude at that time; the thriving planets of Canopus, her busy trade routes, her enterprise and industriousness, was being classed by us as “superficiality and lack of experiential and existential awareness.” I quote from a learned journal of that time.
The invitation I got from Klorathy was to meet him on their Planet 11. I was first gratified, since I had long wanted to see this planet that we had heard was “important” to Canopus and unlike any other known to either their Empire or ours. And then I found myself succumbing to suspicion: why Planet 11 and not Planet 10? For Klorathy must believe I was still after his Giants!
Their Planets 10 and 11 were neighbours: planets of the same sun. I even thought of making a landing on 10, with the excuse of power trouble, but decided to go on, and the first thing I saw on 11 was a group of Giants walking from the terminal to a hovercar. I told myself that I should put aside my readiness for suspicion: but wondered if Klorathy’s plans for me to see the Giants here, at work and occupied, was another way of refusing me. By now I had got into my own hovercar.
What I could see from the windows was a flat featureless landscape, greyish in colour, under a greyish sky. The sun was pale and large. As I looked, the sun plunged out of sight. A reddish disc appeared over the opposite horizon. A moment later, close to it, came a smaller bilious green disc. These two moved fast across a lurid sky, giving me a sensation of whirling rotation. Looking out made me feel queasy, so I read the information sheet on the wall.
It said that this planet was a well-lit one, with two fast-moving moons, and its nightside well starred. It had no seasons, but had zones of differing climatic conditions, being generally warm and mild with extremes of cold only at the poles, which were left uninhabited. Visitors should not be surprised to find that most long-term inhabitants wore little or no clothing. They might find they needed more sleep than usual, this being the most common reaction to the fast alternations of light and dark. They would probably lose their appetites for a while. Adaptation might be slow, but a longer acquaintanceship with the planet would…
As an old hand at interpreting these benign messages, I resigned myself to an uncomfortable time. And in fact fell asleep, for when I woke up it was day again, and we were still skimming over a grey-green surface, under a grey sky. I was looking for something on the lines of the mathematical cities of old Rohanda: on a new planet I was always on the watch for them: they had perhaps become something of a fixation with me. My mental picture of the Canopean Empire included planets covered with these fabulous, these extraordinary cities. I knew there were none on the Canopean Mother Planet… But why not?
I had asked Klorathy, one evening among the tents of the savages, where I might see these cities and he said: “At the present time, nowhere.” I saw now nothing but a dreary sameness, at more or less regular intervals rough dwellings like sheds, which I supposed to be some sort of storage shed. And then I saw that outside some of them were Giants, and had glimpses of a type of creature that did not attract me
at all.
Just as I had understood that these dwellings were what I could expect to see on this planet, and that there were probably no cities, the hovercar stopped suddenly, near one of the structures, and Klorathy came out of it. It was a single-storey building, flat roofed, surrounded by a type of low rough grass, which was clearly the characteristic vegetation. As I entered the place, dark descended again.
Klorathy and I were alone in a rectangular room, painted white, which was a relief after the dim colours of the sky and the landscape, lit by lines of soft wall lights that automatically came on and went off as the daylight and dark alternated outside.
Because we were alone I at once began to hope for the exchange of understandings that I associate with real companionship, but it was not to be. My set of mind forbade it: it was defensive, and critical; and my physical state forbade it, too, for I feeling sick and a little giddy.
This shack, or shed, had in it some low seats and a table. The window apertures and the doorway had screens that could be pulled over them, but they were open now and Klorathy said at once: “Better if you do not shut out the outside: otherwise you won’t get used to it.”
I submitted. I sat down. On the table was a meal. Klorathy said I would feel better if I ate at once, and I tried to do so, but could not get a mouthful down. Meanwhile, he ate and I watched. The food was standard galactic fare.
We were sitting opposite each other, the table between us. He was smiling and easy, I on my best official behaviour, because it was a way of holding myself together.
I remember thinking that connoisseurs of the contrasts so plentifully offered by the Imperial experience would have found the sight of us two piquant: Klorathy, the bronze man, so strong, well-built, solid, with me, who am usually described—affectionately and otherwise—as “a little wisp of a thing,” with my yellow locks and “luminously pale” or “unhealthily pallid” skin—as the case might be. A good deal of our art, the more popular forms of it, dealt with such contrasts, which are found endlessly entertaining, particularly when suggestive or openly sexual. I am not above finding it so myself. But at the time I wanted only to lie down, and in fact, did drop off to sleep suddenly, and woke to see through the apertures, in the full Planet 11 light, contrasts rather stronger than anything Klorathy and I could provide. There was another shed not far away, and outside it were two Giants, twice Klorathy’s size and nearly three times my size, one a totally black man, shining in the pale lemon glare, the other a rich chocolate brown, both virtually naked. I had always seen them clothed, because during conferences everyone made sure of being well clothed, regardless of the local climate, for the sake of giving least offence during occasions that were always quite rich enough opportunities for annoyance or criticism. They were magnificent men: I never seen anything like them. But they were in a group of creatures half their size, who seemed like frail and pale insects—that was the impression made on me.
The Sirian Experiments Page 12
