Shikasta

by Doris May Lessing Little Dorrit

  The man, the woman, sitting humbly in the corner of their room, stare at that indescribably perfect thing, a golden chestnut leaf in autumn, when it has just floated down from the tree, and then may perform any one of a number of acts that rise from inside themselves, and that they could not justify nor argue with or against - they may simply close a hand over it, crushing it to powder, and fling the stuff out of the window, watching the dust sink through the air to the pavement, for there is a relief in thinking that the rains of next week will seep the leaf-stuff back through the soil to the roots, so that next year, at least, it will shine in the air again. Or the woman may put the leaf gently on a blue plate and set it on a table, and may even bow before it, ironically, and with a sort of apology that is so near to the thoughts and actions of Shikastans now, and think that the laws that made this shape must be, must be, must be stronger in the end than the slow distorters and perverters of the substance of life. Or the man, glancing out of the window, forcing himself to see the tree in its other truth, that of the fierce and furious war of eating and being eaten, may see suddenly, for an instant, so that it has gone even as he turns to call his wife: Look, look, quick! - behind the seethe and scramble and eating that is one truth, and behind the ordinary tree-in-autumn that is the other - a third, a tree of a fine, high, shimmering light, like shaped sunlight. A world, a world, another world, another truth...

  And when the dark comes, he will look up and out and see a little smudge of light that is a galaxy that exploded millions of years ago, and the oppression that had gripped his heart lifts, and he laughs, and he calls his wife and says: Look, we are seeing something that ceased to exist millions of years ago - and she sees, exactly, and laughs with him.

  This, then, is the condition of Shikastans now, still only a few, but more and more, and soon - multitudes.

  Nothing they handle or see has substance, and so they repose in their imaginations on chaos, making strength from the possibilities of a creative destruction. They are weaned from everything but the knowledge that the universe is a roaring engine of creativity, and they are only temporary manifestations of it.

  Creatures infinitely damaged, reduced and dwindled from their origins, degenerate, almost lost - animals far removed from what was first envisaged for them by their designers, they are being driven back and away from everything they had and held and now can take a stand nowhere but in the most outrageous extremities of - patience. It is an ironic, and humble, patience, which learns to look at a leaf, perfect for a day, and see it as an explosion of galaxies, and the battleground of species. Shikastans are, in their awful and ignoble end, while they scuffle and scrabble and scurry among their crumbling and squalid artefacts, reaching out with their minds to heights of courage and... I am putting the word faith here. After thought. With caution. With an exact and hopeful respect.

  JOHOR continues:

  Warnings that it will be dangerous to delay any longer have been received. Before I enter Shikasta on the necessary level, I must make a final check on two possible sets of parents suggested by Agent 19. It is even more difficult than was envisaged to choose circumstances that will allow me to develop quickly, and with time to become independent, and without incapacitating damage.

  JOHOR reports:

  There is not much to choose between the two couples.

  First Couple. He is a farmer, a farming technologist, and will not find himself unemployed. She is similarly employed. There are already two children. This is a healthy, intelligent, practical pair, not likely to split up, and with a responsible attitude towards their offspring. There is one disadvantage: both are natives of a certain island of the Northwest fringes, and suffer from a characteristic disinclination or inability to adapt to other races and peoples. As I have, of course, in view of one of the major tasks in front of me, no alternative to choosing parents who are white or partly so, this problem must be circumscribed. By, I think:

  Second Couple. They combine between them many useful capacities. His parents came from the central landmass during World War II and he was brought up speaking several languages. They had the energy that often is to be observed in immigrants and refugees, and he has this, too. He is a doctor, an administrator, and a musician. Her mother is a native of the extreme western islands of the Northwest fringes: being "working class" and much handicapped by her origins in a class-obsessed society, though she was able to overcome these to a certain extent by energy and ability, she has made sure her daughter was equipped with as good an education as is available. Her father is of mixed race, which will almost certainly be an advantage. This woman has therefore as much energy and effort in her background as her husband. She is trained in medicine and sociology and writes books of an informative sort. This couple is not likely to divorce. They, because of their cosmopolitan background, are particularly able to view the world scene with competence and comparative lack of regional bias. They are healthy, well balanced, likely to be responsible parents. They have no children as yet. They are, because of their dispositions and their work, likely to travel.

  This couple seems suitable.

  JOHOR reports:

  I had taken so much power from the Giants that I did not expect to see anything left of that sad habitation, its pitiful occupants. I travelled as fast as I could across blowing sands, and saw that these were deeper and wider, the rocks starker and blacker, no green anywhere, no life - just as on Shikasta the deserts spread while the forests were levelled or died of disease. The halls of the Giants were like a mirage, shimmering towers, battlements, courts, broken walls - ghosts and illusions, all, all, and I walked through them as through a soap bubble. In the great hall the thrones, the dais, the banners, the crowns, and the sceptres glimmered into sight and vanished, so that one moment I stood in a deceiving dream of halls and princes looking for Jarsum or for anybody at all who might survive there, and the next on empty sands that lifted and settled around my feet with a small hissing sigh. When the scene appeared, I saw the transparent wraiths of my old friends, Jarsum among them, but they dissolved, and I waited for a reappearance, and tried in that moment to grasp at least his hand - but when I stood where he had been a moment before, waiting for him to be there again, and he came, his great eyes yearning awfully towards me, he was like a reflection on water. Jarsum, Jarsum, I said, or called to him, through the shaking and dissolving reflections, Jarsum, you may not know it, but you and your companions have been of use in your end, you have helped us, you have steadied and speeded me in what I had to do... and then it was the end. It was as if a fountain had faltered and gone, the last emanations of that power that had sustained them from those millennia long ago faded and went and there was nothing. And never would be again.

  I left there and walked towards the borders of Shikasta. I passed many possibilities of slipping over into the other Zones, Zones Four and Five in particular, and, remembering the lively scenes I had observed or taken part in on past visits, it was a real effort to make myself move on.

  Besides, there was an unpleasant region of Zone Six to pass through, and I was not looking forward to it.

  All around the boundaries with Shikasta, on a certain level, crowd the avid ghosts, and not one of us enjoys contact with them.

  They are souls who were unable to break the links with Shikasta when they left it. Very often they are unaware they have left it, are like goldfish who find themselves inexplicably outside their bowl yearning in, not knowing how they got out or how to get back. Like hungry people at a feast: but while the food and festivities are real, they are not, dreams in a real world. These poor wraiths crowd around every part of Shikasta, as thick as bees. Some scenes, places, occasions, attract them irresistibly. Around the proud and the power-loving, there they cluster, trying to partake of what they yearn for, because in their lives they were powerful arid proud and cannot stop themselves wanting that sweet food, or because they were beaten down and humiliated and wish now for revenge. Oh, the revengeful and bitter ghouls that surge all abo
ut the pomps and the powers of Shikasta! Scenes of sadism, cruelty, murder - there crowd those who allowed themselves to be sunk in the aromas of pain and the inflictions of it, and who never got their fill of it, and who want to feel it, or to deal it... Sex: there they crush and crowd, for of sex one can never have enough, that is its nature, and most of those who stand hungry there are those who in life fed most on sex. Food: around the kitchens and the dining places throng the greedy, whose lives were spent in eating or thinking about it. Those who spent their lives on their own beauty, or on thoughts of the superiority of their family, or race, or country, those who... but every spendthrift passion has its attendant courtiers, swarming close, invisible, seeing everything, hungry, wanting, never fed, and never to be fed...

  And there are those who long for the subtler fulfilments, for not all by any means of these hungry ones long for the sensational and violent, the crude or the ugly.

  Around those beds where lovers lie obsessed, what accomplished beings hover, savouring each caress, each long drunken look, each kiss - of all the intoxicants, this is the most powerful, and these are not savage or brutal ghosts, no hungerers for pain or to inflict it, not owners of comfortable bellies and soft beds - no, these may be among the most refined and responsive souls, most closely tuned to Canopus, but who allowed themselves to be tangled in these Shikastan nets and could not free themselves before they died. Among the fascinated crowds are uglier beings, the succubi and the incubi, the many varieties of vampire, those who have learned how to feed off the energies of Shikasta.

  Around the accomplished and the talented, those who have easily, or through some lucky combination of circumstances, become artists of all kinds, the tellers of stories, musicians, makers of images or of pictures - the souls who linger here are to be pitied more than any. These knew what it was to feed the needs of poor mankind with the nourishments of art (part food though it is, only shadows of what they might have had) but who could not, for some reason to do with the oppressions and hazards that are the very nature of Shikasta, which chokes off and destroys so much vital creativity. These are not souls to be feared or shrunk from. As I passed by a scene, perhaps, of a scientist calculating the nature of stars and star-forces, or a woman at work on a tale that may help others to see a situation or a passion more clearly, I recognised friends crowding hungrily there. Poor ghosts. "Move on, move on," I urged, "leave here, don't allow yourselves to be fastened here around these glass walls, go - free yourselves. Find useful work in the other Zones, or return the hard way to Shikasta - those are your ways out. You may yearn and lean and pine here for long ages and never know anything but frustration and emptiness and longing..." But they cannot hear, these bewitched ones, hanging there, eyes fixed on scenes which to them have a wonderful attraction, a glamour which makes them forget anything they ever really knew of the truth.

  I passed through crowding souls who, knowing of the imminent and awful trials of Shikasta, tormented with anxiety for their children, their friends, their lovers, sigh and pine around the council rooms and discussion chambers where the powerful talk and make decisions as to the future of Shikasta - or think they do - and found there many old friends. They recognised me, some of them. "Johor," they cried, "Johor, look, let me back, let me tell them, let me, let me, me, me, me, me..." and great wails and groans go up, as they stand listening to the infantile wranglings of the conference tables, the matchings of strength with strength, power with power - and ahead lies destruction, where nothing will remain alive across continents but an occasional diseased animal, a demented child. "Johor, Johor," they cried, grasping me, pulling me back, "let me in, let me through, let me slip through now, and stand there among them and tell them, warn them..."

  "Leave it," I said, "go, leave these frontiers. You've played your part, and it wasn't chosen by you - and if you did not do as well as you should, then turn your back on what you may not change now. Or if you want to be one who can change, then don't crowd there like little children who cannot do anything but imagine competence in a future they are unable to direct, children who are nothing at all except in their imaginations. You may not help your families, your friends. Not this way. Come back into Shikasta, but the hard way..."

  But they cannot hear me, hear only what they want to hear. They return to their lamentings around the conference tables and the committee rooms.

  Oh, the borders and frontiers of Shikasta are very terrible, not for the easily swayed to pity, not for the easily horrified. Many have faltered there, eyes so filled with what they see they are blinded to what they have to do. And I, too, pushing my way through, felt faint, and lost my strength to these bitter and famished ghosts. As I had done before, of course, and that helped me, being able to recognise what I felt - though this visit was so much worse than the last, things are so much worse, oh, poor Shikasta, its dramas being played out on such a stage, and with such crowded tiers of observers.

  I left this region and approached the entry posts where the lines waited. I looked for Ranee, who had again worked her way halfway up her line, having lost her position to go and deal with the emergency. She was alone there. I could not see Rilla and Ben. I asked her where they were, and she said that she had brought them to the region of the lines, put them together, and returned to her own place. I stood by her, looking everywhere, then went up and down asking for them. At last I was told that a couple similar to those I described had been seen. They were in their places at the end of a long line, but had strayed off, attracted by something, and had not been observed to come back.

  And now what should I do! Already late, and weakened - yet I had to go and search for them.

  I did not have to go far into the scrubland. I saw before I came close, some coloured blobs or balls floating and playing in the air, and found that I had come to a standstill, watching, enchanted. It was as if these flying tinted balls had life and intention, and could direct themselves. As if they were playing a game, teasing each other, evading, then chasing and gently bumping, before swerving off again. I realised I had been there for some time, quite absorbed. I made myself go on. Soon I came on Ben and Rilla, sitting side by side on the warm white sand between shrubs, staring up, smiling, delighted, altogether lost. "Rilla! Ben!" I called, and called again. It was some time before I could attract their attention away from those delightful fleeing and pursuing balls or bubbles that now I was close under them seemed like animated soap bubbles, globules of differently tinted light, transparent, or seeming to be, for as one hung immediately above me - perhaps to observe me, I wondered? - I saw that inside transparent surfaces were moving sparks and flashes, always changing. At any moment Ben and Rilla would have forgotten me again, and I called to them to stand up and follow me. They did not, at least not at once. They looked up, they looked down, they looked anywhere and at anything but me. I saw Rilla was concealing something, and heard, or felt, a small pulse of complaint and fear. I went to her, and pulled up her fist, and made her open it, and she had captured one of these lights or bubbles which, through being confined in her hand, had lost most of its colour and vitality and was a dull sick thing pulsing feverishly, as if breathing for its life. I held my hand under hers, and lifted both, till our palms lay one above another in front of us, with the damaged creature recovering there, slowly regaining its life, and then suddenly it sped up and off and resumed its games among the others. And again I found I was standing staring, just as Ben and Rilla did, for I had never seen any thing so pretty and engaging as the game of the lights, or the crystals. I put one arm around Ben, and one around Rilla, and walked them away from that place, while they hung back and dawdled and looked over their shoulders - just as they had with the scenes of the churning sands. And then, as we got away from the enchantments of the place, Rilla began scolding me. "Why did you take so long! I thought you'd be back to fetch me before this!" I could not help laughing, it was so absurd, and Ben laughed, too, but Rilla certainly did not, and kept up her scolding as we approached the long lines of wai
ting people.

  I found Ranee, and left Rilla in her care, with precise instructions. For I reckoned that by the time Ranee reached the entry post, it would be time for Rilla to enter.

  Then, taking Ben by the hand, while of course Rilla complained that I was abandoning her and favouring Ben, I went forward with him, past the lines, keeping a firm hold of him. He had understood suddenly that the time had come and was afraid, and I could feel him indecisive.