This low huddling of rough buildings, crowds of poorly dressed people, children who I could see were ill-nourished, and assortment of canines (which I had to resist the temptation to stop and inspect, since on none of our planets had we tamed a similar species) soon terminated abruptly as I reached the circular base of one of the very tall cones, which soared up above me into the blue sky with its floating white clouds that I had so often longed to see again. But I did not feel familiar here. There was a sharp tang of difference, of the alien, that was affecting me sharply, causing in me emotions that I was expecting: instability of feeling was a concomitant of seasons—so Klorathy’s brief summary warned me. And I felt, as I looked behind me into a sun that was sinking fast and heard the cold winds creeping about among the hovels, a pang of melancholy that I did not like at all. Shaking it off, I plunged into the crowds. They were nearly all males. The figures shrouded like myself were presumably females. Even the female children were, after quite an early age, shrouded in this black. I was conscious I was feeling indignation—this seemed to me a bad sign, and a most unwelcome sign of possible imbalance.
I was now among crooked streets and lanes, all crammed with people. There were open shops and booths, eating places, and so much noise I felt dizzy from it. The silences of space, in which I had been immersed, had ill prepared me for this shouting, sometimes screaming and quarrelling mob. And now I was seeing females not shrouded up. On the contrary, they were almost naked, much painted, bejewelled, and offering themselves freely. This degeneration was worse than I had expected, though of course it is a result of poverty everywhere unless controlled by legislation… I realised I was straying through the crowds as their pressure moved me, looking at everything, stopping to stare when I was able to hold my place in the press, and in every way behaving like a stranger.
And in a moment I found my way blocked by a male, who stood firmly in front of me, obviously intending to keep me there. He was staring close into my eyes through the slit in my black sheet. I found him unpleasant. That is, specifically, there was something in him I was able to sense that was more than the alien, or the not-understood. He was of middle Rohandan height, a couple of spans taller than myself, broad and solid, and his skin, of a greyish colour, almost green, had the smooth cool appearance of stone. His eyes were opaque, oblong, without brows. He had no hair, as far as I could see, for he was wearing a square pull-on cap, ornamented with lumps of coloured stone, of a soft rich-looking material. His mouth was straight, almost to the ears, and only a slit. His clothing was a voluminous fur cloak. He put his arms akimbo, in a way that made me experience them as a fence or confinement, and stared closer and closer, the greenish eyes not blinking, and very intense. I realised he was trying to hypnotise me, and guarded myself. I was also noting something else: he wore heavy gold earrings of a certain pattern.
Among the artefacts I had been instructed by Klorathy to use as a protection were these precise earrings—but to be worn at certain times and in combination with other practices.
Earrings had been—and would be again—among the artefacts used in this manner. To ornament the ears can hardly be described as a rare thing; but I had long since concluded that the practice originated in this way—and therefore must contain hazards.
I had exactly similar earrings concealed in a bag I had under my wrap, with the other specified objects. I had got to the point of wondering how I could conceal these if this evil—for by now I knew he was that—person captured me or was in position to have me examined, when he said: “Very well then! I shall remember you!” and turned and vanished in the crowds. But he had spoken in basic Canopean, not in Sirian… altogether, I had been given a lot to think about. I concealed myself in a little porch and tried to decide how to proceed. The exhilaration that comes from having to pit one’s wits against strangeness persisted, but I knew I had to find shelter quickly. I had been instructed to go “to the top of the third cone.” And they were built together in a bunch! I was not going to risk my clumsy Canopean, and certainly not my Sirian, here: I left the porch and wandered among the odorous noisy throng, while the light left the sky, and flares were lit everywhere at angles of the streets and outside the eating places. This was a sad and to-be-pitied people, I could see, even more now that the night had come, and they were taking their ease.
They were drunken, often fighting, tense with deprivation, and the degraded females dominated everything, openly selling themselves, and retiring with their customers no further than into a doorway, or under a table. I had never seen anything like this scene, not anywhere. And still I did not know how to find the third cone. I tried to put myself back into that moment when I looked down from the spacecraft at the town, and had been able to notice, if there was one, a pattern in the cones—it could perhaps be said they were built in two very deep arcs that intersected: in which case I was near the third from the end of one of the arcs. I went inside, finding a cool pale interior: they used a very fine plaster, like a ceramic, to line their walls. A steep stairway spiralled inside the building. I went up and up, stopping continually to look out of narrow slitlike openings as the city opened below me, and the noisome hovels of the low town fell away, and the gardened suburbs, now shadowy and attractive with lights shining in the trees, came into view. Up and up… I thought that I would not easily make such a climb again, not that day—but when I reached the very top, I found a doorway curtained in thick red material, and on it a flake of writing ceramic that had on it the one word, in Sirian: Welcome.
I pushed the curtain aside and entered a large room, the half of a round: the circular top of the tower was bisected to make two rooms by a wall of the same finely gleaming plaster. This room was furnished pleasantly enough with low couches and tables and piles of cushions, but what I was looking at, after my first assessing glance, was Klorathy. But it wasn’t Klorathy.
That moment impressed itself on me sharply, and remains with me now. I often revive it, for a re-examination, because of what I learned from it—and still do.
It is not necessary for me to say again how intrigued I was, and had been, by Klorathy, how closely I attended to everything about him—what he said, how he said it. And so on… No matter how often I had been annoyed or checked, or disappointed, I had never ceased to know that if I could understand him and his ways I would understand… well, but that was after all the point! And this preoccupation with him had been bound up, inevitably, with his person, how he looked, spoke, certain tricks of manner. I unconsciously deemed these Canopus, associated a superior, and at the present time out of my reach, way of being with Klorathy’s physical presence. His personality…
Yet in front of me was a man not Klorathy, who looked very like him, and whose smile and nod as he greeted me were familiar. “I am Nasar,” he said. “Klorathy told me were coming, and asked me to see you have everything you want.”
I was quite stunned. Believing he could have no idea why, I disposed myself comfortably on a low pile of cushions and accepted some wine.
What I have to say here, so as to make it unmistakably clear, is that I felt more than the dislocation that comes from misdirected and thwarted expectations. I was feeling a different kind of letdown.
It was a warning, and a strong one. This was not because of how Nasar looked or how he behaved—his courtesy was complete. But warnings were flashing through me.
And I suppressed them!
This was because of my awe of Canopus. Of everything Canopus stood for.
And yet all the time my after-all highly trained eyes were noting all kinds of discrepancies—seeing what I should be seeing, and then setting it aside.
As I play back that scene, so as to examine it, there was everything there that I needed to prevent and save me from so much puzzlement and confusion.
There was a particular smile that appeared on the man’s face, very briefly—only a flicker—of recklessness… carelessness. He had a way of suddenly letting out—and often inappropriately to what was being said o
r done—a short laugh, as if he were astonished at himself, and yet proposed to stand by what he found. He had a general air or manner that was familiar to me, for I had often to deal with it—yet I chose not to put a name to it then.
So much for my perspicacity—or rather, for my readiness to use it.
We were not together for long. He showed me how to get food, if I wanted it, from the floor below, which was a foodshop for the building, opened a low door into the room next door, just like this one, which I was to use as a sleeping and private place—and having made his apologies, was ready to leave.
I was tired, but stimulated, and had hoped for more talk, or in lieu of that, to go out again into the teeming streets below. But he said that before I went out I must decide what role I was to play.
“In this charming place,” said he, “there are three roles for a woman. One is to be a whore. One, the wife of a high official, or at least a trader or merchant. Or you may be a servant or working woman of some kind. You would not choose, I am sure, the first.” The way he said this had a laugh behind it that I simply did not know how to take. The second is out of your reach—for you are not here with a permit or passport and must conceal yourself. Therefore, I can only suggest that you pose as my servant. This would be entirely within the customs and mores of Koshi. What you wear indoors does not matter, though if someone arrives unexpectedly you must cover yourself up absolutely, but wear appropriate clothes underneath in case you are searched.” He nodded at a chest and left. I found in it a plain blue skirt, baggy blue trousers, and a long tunic. And that was the last I saw of Nasar for several days.
What had I expected?
That I should spend time with Klorathy, that he would instruct me, and explain… all that I could not work out for myself, but felt continually on the edge of discovering.
I did not go out, but observed the town from my high vantage point, and from windows at many levels in the building. In the foodshop below, I excited notice. It was staffed by women wearing the same clothes as I did, short skirt over trousers, and the loose tunic; their hair tied in cloth. My unbound fair hair interested them: I was from the far Northwest, they said, and assumed I was a descendant of the survivors of the “events,” which they referred to as “The Great Punishment.” Some Adalantalanders had escaped somehow, had made their way east, and had helped to settle these great cities of the far eastern plains. They had a reputation for beauty, for wisdom—they were priestesses and shamanesses; and no fair or blue-eyed child could be born anywhere without being called “child of the lost islands of the great oceans of the west.” But I was no true daughter of Adalantaland—I was too thin, my locks were too sparse, my eyes were not sea blue. But my earrings, which I wore at certain hours of certain days, announced my true lineage, so these serving women knew: and they told everybody that the merchant on the top floor had as his serving maid a slave from the Northwest fringes. This I did not want, and wrapped my head thereafter so my earrings did not show, and tried to be inconspicuous, and took at one time as much food as was practical up the stairs so as to keep my visits few, though I wanted very much to talk with these cheerful slaves. For that is what they were. The females of this culture were truly enslaved, in that they did not know they were. They had never questioned that males should run everything, make laws, decide who should marry and how, and dispose of the futures of children. The dispossession of the true role of females had taken place so long ago they did not know it had ever happened. Their reverence for the old Adalantaland was all that remained to them of a real inkling of what females could do and be. And that had become “magic,” and “witchcraft.” Their highest ambition and possibility was to marry a man in a good position: or to give birth to sons who would prove themselves. I longed to study the warps and distortions in the female psyche that this displacement of their true function had caused: I wanted to study them in depth and in such way that I could return home with a contribution to our Studies in Perverted Psychology. But first things first.
I kept myself private and retired to the windows where I could look north and see—so I fancied—the white beginnings of the icecaps, and south to great mountains where the snows lay again. It getting colder daily, and I wrapped myself in my black cloth for the sake of warmth, and sat many hours quietly, thinking of the questions I was going to ask… Klorathy? Well, then, Nasar.
There were specific and definite things I wanted to know. It seemed to me that long ages had gone into my wanting to know them, that this wanting had fed a need that now could not any longer be put off.
And I imagined what would happen, how I would frame questions, how they would be answered, in all kinds of ways. And imagined, too, how they would not be answered, for I was already set to expect checks and delays.
One evening, when I had sat a long time in a window opening gazing over the rich suburbs and wondering who were the rich and powerful ones of this culture, and able—not all that inaccurately either—to picture them because of their victims and subjects I had seen in the streets, from the windows, and in the persons of the women downstairs in the foodshops; when I had watched in myself the melancholies and sadness that went with this “season” of the rapidly darkening days, so that there was less light in any day than there was night; when I had repeated in myself over and over again what I wanted to know, so I could ask sensibly and well—in came Nasar, unexpectedly, and flung himself down on a low seat, opening a package of food he had brought from the shop below, eating rapidly and in a way that I had never seen in Klorathy. He unceremoniously thrust a lump of some sweet stuff towards me and said “Have some,” and wiped his mouth roughly and lolled back, his hands locked behind his head, staring up and out at the sky that showed through the windows high in the ceilings. It was a cool sky and clouds fled past. I was utterly overthrown again, because he was so similar to Klorathy.
I sat myself down carefully, and said to him, beginning my cross-examination: “Are you a relative of Klorathy?”
This he took as a shock, or a check. He set his eyes direct on me, and gave me his attention:
“Well, lovely lady,” said he, and stopped. I remember how he briefly shut his eyes, sighed, and seemed to fight with himself. He said, in a different voice, patient, but too patient, there was much too much effort in it and he was speaking as from out of a dream or trance: “We come from the same planet, Klorathy and I. We are all similar in appearance.” And there was, again, that flicker of restless laugh—and then a turning aside of the eyes, a sort of painful grimace, a quick shaking of the head, as if thoughts were being shaken away. Then he looked at me again.
“Am I going to see Klorathy this time?”
“One Canopean is the same as another,” he said, and it was like the ghost of a derisive quote.
“You are not like Klorathy,” I said doggedly, surprised that I said it. And knew I had not meant it kindly.
He looked surprised, then laughed—sadly, I could have sworn to that—and said gently: “No, you are right. At this moment, at this time, I am indeed not remotely like Klorathy.”
I did not know what to say.
“I want to ask questions of somebody…” and this was desperate. I was becoming amazed at myself—the tone of this interview or exchange was different from any I had ever known. I, Ambien II, age-long high official of Sirius, with all that meant of responsibility and effectiveness—I did not recognise myself.
It seemed to me, however, that incompetent as I was being, he was arrested by me, and returned to something different from… I could not yet say to myself, simply, that he was in a bad, recognisably wrong and bad state. I said that at this moment at least I could see something in him of Klorathy.
“Ask, fair Sirian.” This I did not like but able to swallow it—because of the element of caricature in what he said, the manner of it.
“First of all. I met a man on the very first evening I was here. I disliked everything about him…” I described him, physically, and waited.
�
�You must surely be able to work that out for yourself. We are under the aegis of Puttiora here. As I believe you were told. That was one of them. They know everything that happens. Who comes into the city and who goes out. But you passed their test.”
“What test?”
“Obviously, you were of Canopus, and therefore you were not molested.”
“I am not, however.”
“They are an ignorant lot.”
“Why do you tolerate their rule?” I asked, fierce, hot, incredulous. “Why?”
“A good question, fair Sirian. Why? I ask it myself. Every hour of every day. Why? Why do we put up with the nasty, stinking, loathsome, horrible…” and he got up, literally sick and choking, and went to the window and leaned out. From far below I heard the clamour of evening, and imagined the flare-lit streets, the poor posturing women, the sale of flesh, the fighting, the drinking.
At that point there was a very long silence. I could have, then, said things I did not until later. But this was Canopus and so… and when he turned a hunted haunted face towards me, and sighed, and then laughed, and then shook his head, and then put his face in his hands and then flung himself down again, and yet was unable to stay still for even a moment, I said to myself that this was a man disgusted by Shammat.
“Very long term, the perspectives of Canopus, you must learn to understand that,” he said at last.
“And very long term are the perspectives of Sirius,” I said, with dignity. For if there was one thing I understood, it was that… empires and the running of them… but he stared and laughed—he laughed until he flung himself back and lay exhausted, staring at the ceiling.
The thought was in my mind that this was a man who was in very deep situational trouble. And I suppressed it.
“Very well,” I said, “for reasons of long-term development, you tolerate Shammat, you tolerate Puttiora and allow them to believe they are in control. Very well. But what are you doing here?”
The Sirian Experiments Page 14
