Kitabı oku: «The Sirian Experiments»

SIRIUS-CANOPUS. BACKGROUND

This is Ambien II, of the Five.

I have undertaken to write an account of our experiments on Rohanda, known to Canopus in this epoch as Shikasta.

I shall employ the time divisions commonly used, and agreed on between ourselves and Canopus. (1) The period up to the first burst of radiation from Andar. (2) That between the first and second bursts of radiation – again from Andar. (3) From the second irradiation to the failure of the Canopus-Rohanda Lock, known as the Catastrophe. This third period is sometimes referred to as the Golden Age. (4) The period of subsequent decline. This account of mine will deal mainly with (4).

I shall not do more than mention the experiments before the first radiation, which are fully documented under Lower Zoology. During (1) Rohanda was damp, marshy, warm, with shallow seas hardly to be distinguished from swamp, and deep oceans kept turbid by volcanic activity. There was a little dry land. On this were a few land animals, but there were numerous varieties of water lizards, and many fishes. Some of these were unknown on other Colonized Planets, and on our Mother Planet, and we made successful transfers of several species. We also introduced on to Rohanda species from elsewhere, to see what would happen to them. All our experiments during (1) were modest, and did not differ from similar experiments in other parts of our Empire.

(2) The first burst of radiation from Andar was not expected. Both Canopus and ourselves were taken by surprise. We had kept a watch on the planet ever since the war between us that ended our hostilities. Because of the new situation we boosted our surveillance. The irradiation had the effect of abolishing some genera overnight, and of speeding evolution. The planet remained wet, swampy, steamy, cloudy, with the slow enervating airs that accompany these conditions. Yet new genera and species seemed to explode into life and existing ones rapidly changed. Within no more than a million R-years there were not only many varieties of fish and reptile, but there were species that flew, and insects – both of these formerly unknown. The place teemed with life. It also soon became clear we were to expect a period of the gigantic. The lizards in particular showed this trend: there were many kinds of them, and some were a hundred times, and even more, their former size. The vegetation became huge and rank. Land and water were both infested with enormous animals of all kinds.

Throughout these times Canopus and ourselves conferred, when it seemed to either or both that this was necessary. Sometimes we, and sometimes Canopus, initiated discussions.

We always supplied Canopus with reports on our proceedings on the planet, but they did not at that time show much interest. This very important point will be gone into later. Canopus supplied us with reports, but we did not put much effort into studying them. Again, I emphasize that this is an important point, as will later become plain.

Canopus maintained a monitoring station during (2). We did initiate some experiments in various places over Rohanda, but these were mostly to do with sudden, not to say violent, growth; and since the planet itself was so generously supplying us with observation materials, we did not intrude ourselves very much. It was not a popular place with any of our scientists. Our Planet 13 once had a similar swampy and miasmic climate, and we already had considerable data.

For something like two hundred million R-years this state of affairs continued. Just as the previous, pre-irradiation characteristics seemed to be stable, if not permanent, so, now, did it seem that this watery pestilential place full of gigantic and savage animals would remain as it was. There then occurred, and again unexpectedly, the second burst of radiation.

The effects were again dramatic.

There was every kind of cataclysm and upheaval. Land sank beneath the water and became ocean bed; new land appeared from the seas, and for the first time there was high terrain and even mountains. Volcanic activity had never been absent, since the crust covering the still molten core was so thin, but now land and water were continuously convulsed. The mantle of cloud that had sometimes kept the whole planet in warm gloom for weeks at a time was rent tumultuously with storms and winds.

All the large species were destroyed. The great lizards were no more to be seen, and the forests of giant ferns were laid flat by the violent winds and rain.

There was a sudden cooling. When the convulsions lessened, and ceased, the planet was left transformed. In a very short time, much of the water was massed around the poles in the form of ice and snow. Some swampy areas remained but now earth and oceans were separated, and there were areas of dry land. That was of course long before the planet’s axis had been knocked out of the vertical: before the ‘seasons’ that contributed so much to its instability. The poles were cold. The area around the middle was hot. In between were zones of predictable and steadily temperate climate.

This was period (3), from which both Canopus and ourselves hoped so much, when conditions were as perfect as can be expected on any planet – and which was to last rather less than twenty thousand R-years.

It was at the very beginning of this new period (3) that Canopus invited us to a joint Conference.

This Conference was held, not on our Mother Planet, nor on theirs, but on their Colony 10, convenient for us both.

The mood of the Conference was one of confidence and optimism.

This is the place, I think, to say more about our relations with our eminent friend and rival.

I shall begin with this statement: that Canopus pioneered certain sciences, and in the opinion at least of some is still far ahead of us.

In my view the duty of a historian is to tell the truth as far as possible … no, this remark is not meant as provocation, though in the prevailing climate of opinion everywhere through our Empire, there are many who will see it as such.

For far too long our historians refused to accept the simple truth, that Canopus was the first to explore and develop the skills associated with what we all now call Forced Evolution. (I do not propose to enter here into discussion with those – I am afraid still quite numerous – people who believe that nature ought to be left to itself.) It was Canopus who began to look at species – or whole planets – from the point of view of how their evolution could be modified, or hastened. We learned this from them. That is the truth. We were pupils in their school. Willing – and not unworthy – pupils; willing and generous teachers.

That is why, when it came to sharing out Rohanda between us, we got the less attractive share. This was what fitted our position in relation to Canopus.

The critical reader will already be asking: Why this praise of Canopus when as we all know the story of Rohanda was one – to put it baldly – of disaster?

If Canopus was at fault, then so were we, Sirius. At that Conference on their Planet 10, we all assumed that if Rohanda had – to our certain knowledge – experienced very long periods of stability, two of them, both lasting many millions of R-years, then we might safely expect that this new period would similarly last millions of years. Why should we not? There are factors, which we all agree to call ‘cosmic’, over which we have no control, and which may not be foreseen. All evolutionary engineering is subject to these chances. If we did not permit ourselves to begin any development on a newly discovered planet, or one that has become suitable for development and use, because of the threat of cosmic alteration or disaster, then nothing at all would ever be achieved.

Canopus, like ourselves, has experienced disappointment – and worse – in their career as colonizers. Rohanda was not the only failure. I am calling it a failure, though I know they do not – but it is no secret that I have been generally known throughout my career as belonging to that body of opinion that finds Canopus sentimental. Sometimes to the point of folly. What else can we call attitudes that are often uneconomic, counter-productive, wasteful of administrative effort?

What else? Well, I have learned that there are different ways of looking at things; though I do not yet share these viewpoints. That is, I hope, for the future … meanwhile, I am saying that judged from the immediate and practical view, Rohanda was not only a failure but perhaps their worst; and yet this was not at all or in any way their fault. And why should some of us be so ready to ascribe blame to Canopus, when we were, equally with her, ready to use Rohanda for as long as was possible – for millions of R-years, as we then thought was likely to be the case?

The disposition of the land and seas was roughly, very roughly, the same as it is now. There is a central mass of land fringed with promontories, peninsulas, islands. Around it is a vast ocean, with many islands, some of them large. There are two continents, separated from the main landmass, and joined by an isthmus which has sometimes been submerged, and these are now referred to as the Isolated Northern Continent and the Isolated Southern Continent. Between the central landmass and the Isolated Northern Continent, looking west with their north pole at North, have been at various times, according to the rise and fall of the ocean levels, many islands, one of them at least enormous. But sometimes there has been only an almost islandless ocean.

Projecting southwards from the central landmass, of which its northern areas form a part is another southern continent, now called Southern Continent I. (The Isolated Southern Continent is Southern Continent II.) Southern Continent I has sometimes been considered by geographers as part of the main landmass, since its northern parts have been so influenced by the easy migrations and movements to and from every part of the main landmass. But the southern parts have on the whole had such a different history that they are more usually classed as a different and separate continent. We, Sirius, were allotted in the share-out of Rohanda the two southern continents, including the northern areas of S.C. I, and any islands large and small lying in the oceans that we felt inclined to make use of.

More has to be said about the Conference itself.

It was considered a success. Remarkably so. Even though it was only one of very many conferences and discussions about the situations of a large number of Colonized Planets whose problems, in one way or another, we shared, everybody taking part felt that it marked a new level in co-operation. And the further it receded into the past, the more we were all able to see it had been extraordinary, and this not only because of the unexpectedly fortuitous new epoch on Rohanda. Committees, conferences, discussions, followed one after another through the millennia: it was to that particular one, on Colony 10, we were always referring back, as if there had been some particular and unrepeatable spring of life and vigour there we had not been able to approach again.

I am now going to say, with equal emphasis and confidence, that the Conference was a failure.

What Sirius understood of the resolutions, the agreements, the verbal formulations, was not the same as the understandings of Canopus. This was not evident then. It did not even begin to be evident for a very long time. It is not seen now, except by a small number of us Sirians.

By now it will have become clear, I think, that this report of mine is an attempt at a re-interpretation of history, from a certain point of view.

An unpopular point of view, even now: until recently, impossible.

Until recently, I have been among those who would have made it impossible: this I must say now, and clearly: I am not claiming that I am one who has been preserving an individual (and seditious!) view of history in secrecy, because of an oppressive conformity in the official way of looking at things. Far from it. If there is, if there has been, a minority of individuals who have in fact maintained a view different from the official one, then these will have considered me as a bastion of orthodoxy. This is not an apology I am making. We all see truths when we can see them. When we do, it is always a temptation to consider those who have not yet seen them as quite intrinsically and obdurately stupid.

In throwing in my lot with this minority – if it exists – I am doing so in the expectation of strong criticism – but not, I hope, of worse.

I shall deal at once with what I consider to be the root of the problem: that long-ago war between Canopus and Sirius.

It ended in a Truce … the anniversary of which occasion we still celebrate. The beastliness and horror have been formalized in tales of heroic exploits that we teach our young. The fact is that Canopus won this war, and, at the moment when they might reasonably have been expected to humiliate us and to exact tribute and retribution, they summoned our – thoroughly defeated – leaders, returned to us our Colonized Planets, which they were in a position to retain for themselves, informed us that we must stay behind our own boundaries, offered us co-operation and friendship, and announced that this agreement would be described as a Truce, so that we would not suffer ignominy in the eyes of our fellow states and empires.

A very long time later, and quite recently, I asked my Canopean friend Klorathy, head of their Colonial Administration, what he and others like him now felt about this magnanimous and high-flown behaviour, in view of the fact that we, Sirius, had never given them credit for it, but on the contrary had done everything to expunge from our history books, and even – apparently – from our memories, any hint that Canopus had won that war and had then behaved as no empire has ever – to my knowledge – behaved anywhere. His reply was that ‘it was too early yet to say what the results would be and he preferred to withhold judgement’.

I record this typically Canopean remark. Without comment. Without comment at this place.

I said earlier that Canopus had not shown much interest in the results of our experiments on Rohanda, or on any other planet, for that matter.

Just as we did not understand their attitude at the end of the great war between us, so we did not, do not, understand their indifference to our work.

This is because they, in their own work, have gone so far beyond us. They have never had anything to learn from us. But we have consistently interpreted their attitude as one of dissimulation, believing them to be pretending indifference, out of pride, while secretly ferreting out any information they could, even sending spies into our territories and making use of our work without acknowledgement.

Our set of mind has been one that has consistently led us into wrong judgement.

Let us take an example. That the Conference was on Colony 10 and that it was from here the colonizers for Rohanda were chosen was merely a coincidence. Yet we were talking about the ‘cleverness’ of Canopus in making sure that we met these vigorous and formidable people, so that we would not be tempted to overrun our boundaries on Rohanda. And this belief of ours, crystallized at the Conference – I was one of those responsible, and am in a position to admit to the harm done – continued on into our sojourn on the planet, influencing us in all kinds of ways. But it was quite simply nonsense: we had suggested their Planet 10 ourselves. This is the kind of error suspicion leads us all into.

There are many more examples I could give, but I will deal with the two main factors, or themes, of this Conference: that is, as we were affected. We supplied to Canopus outlines of the experiments we proposed, but did not see then – were not prepared to see! – to what an extent these were to be conditioned by what Canopus proposed to do.

That was at the beginning of the 20,000 years during which we were to profit by Rohanda’s great time, under the influence of Canopus. It was not until later that Canopus decided to speed up her plan, because of her Planet 8, which was due to reach an untimely end because of unforeseen cosmic changes. Canopus was then thinking in terms of 50,000 and not 20,000 years, in which to advance the Colony 10 individuals to a certain level. She informed us that she planned two phases. First, a general heightening and consolidation of these Colony 10 volunteers up to a determined point. (That they were volunteers struck us then as laughable, though it was not long before we were employing the same policy, instead of conscripting.) This predetermined point – and we were offered full information and details – would be marked by what they called a ‘Lock’ – that is, a synchronization between Canopus and Rohanda that would bring the planet into harmony with their Empire as a whole. Harmony of a particular kind.

This, then, was the first theme, one unfamiliar to us at that time. Unfamiliar, I am going to risk saying, even now: for when we use words like harmony, good fellowship, cooperation – which we do plentifully and all the time in relation to our own Empire – we do not mean by them what Canopus means. At the Conference, being told that Canopus proposed to develop the Colony 10 volunteers, to stabilize them, to make use of their evolution to advance the Canopean Empire, what we understood from this was no more than the sort of development, stabilization, evolution, advance, that we associated with our own territories.

The second theme was how Canopus proposed to achieve these admirable results. For we were given – or offered, for we did not make use of this opportunity – all the information we wanted.

We did not accept because we were handicapped by being resentful, even though the general euphoria of the Conference succeeded in masking these unfortunate emotions. The northern areas were plentifully stocked with a certain species of primate. In parts these were already upright, using tools and weapons, with the beginnings of semipermanent settlement. This type of animal, at this level of evolution, is always of value, both for experiment and in training for simple tasks. There were none in Isolated Southern Continent II; and while there were some apes in Southern Continent I, they were at a low level of evolution, suitable for experiment, but of no use at all for work.

We saw Canopus ‘as usual’ grabbing the best of everything, for not once did we remind ourselves that there was no reason we should ever have been allowed on Rohanda at all. It was not we who had discovered this planet.

Canopus told us that certain rapid and desirable developments of the Colony 10 colonists would be because of a ‘symbiosis’ between them and the apes, and that the apes, too, would be benefited. We saw this ‘symbiosis’ in terms of a beneficial cultural exchange and, more specifically, as the superior immigrants being set free for higher tasks by using the apes as servants.

In short, the two main pieces of information, the bases on which the Canopean plan was predicated, were not understood by us at all. In spite of our being told everything. To emphasize this even more: now, looking back at the Conference, I can see that there was nothing not said, not made plain, not explained. But we misinterpreted what we were being told. And again, it is impossible not to ask, now, why Canopus set up the Conference in this way? To forestall reproaches of niggardliness? No! Knowing Canopus, this was not the reason. But they must have realized that we were not taking in what was being said, were understanding everything in our own way.

So why did they do it? It is only recently that I have had an answer to this question. The beginnings of an answer …

The end of the Conference was marked by all kinds of festivities and jollities. We were taken on trips to other Canopean colonies; invited, ‘if we were in that part of the Galaxy’, to visit them for as long as we liked – the usual courtesies.

Back on our Home Planet we Sirians lost no time. Planets in the healthy, vigorous conditon of Rohanda were – and are – rare. We of the Colonial Service were all delighted and full of optimism. Incidentally, it was at that Conference that Rohanda acquired its name. Perhaps this is not the place – it is too soon – to remark that when the planet suffered its cosmic reversal, and ceased to be so pleasant, even if it did not lose any of its fertility, Canopus at once jettisoned the name Rohanda, substituting another, Shikasta, ‘the broken or damaged one’, felt by us to be unnecessarily negative. This mixture of pedantry and poeticism is a characteristic of Canopus, and one that I have always found irritating.

Spacecraft had already thoroughly surveyed both Southern Continents, independently of Canopus. Our scientists had visited selected areas, and recommendations had been made. It was decided that Southern Continent I would be used mainly for agriculture. We had recently acquired our Colonized Planet 23 (C.P. 23) and had found it was well able to sustain large-scale settlement, provided it was supplied with food. This being part of the same solar system as Rohanda, and quite close, we had thought from the start of using one or other of the southern continents as an agricultural base. S.C. I was admirably equipped from the point of view of soil and climate. It was roughly divided into three zones, the middle one, equatorial, being too hot, but the other two, the southern part and the northern part, useful for a vast variety of plants. We introduced several grain plants from both our colonized planets and those of Canopus and developed some indigenous grasses to supply grains and also developed locally-originating tubers and leaf crops. I was not directly in charge of this enterprise. Those interested will find accounts of S.C. I’s twenty-thousand-year career as a food supplier for C.P. 23 in the appropriate documents. During this time, too, several laboratories were maintained on that continent, and a good deal of useful research accomplished. This was nearly all to do with agriculture and the use of indigenous and introduced animals. Our C.P. 23 flourished during this period. Its inhabitants originated on our Home Planet, all of first-class stock, carefully selected. None of their energies needed to be spent on feeding themselves, or on anxieties about their nurture; they had their attention free for mentation and intellectual activity. This twenty-thousand-year period was C.P. 23′s Golden Age, when it achieved the position of Planning Centre for the whole of our Empire. The fact that it was short-lived does not detract from this achievement.

I do not propose to say much more about the experiments on S.C. I. Nor shall I be giving full or even balanced accounts of our experiments on Isolated S.C. II. Details can be found under the appropriate headings.

I shall again say that the purpose of this record is to put forward a certain view of our relations with Canopus. There have been a thousand histories, formal and informal, of our experiments on Rohanda, but not one setting these in the Canopean context. This fact alone makes my point. What I say, therefore, about our researches will be chosen entirely from this point of view; and it must not be thought that the emphases given here would be those adequate from the point of view, let us say, of someone looking at the Rohanda experiments from a long-term view of their evolutionary usefulness. This particular epoch on Rohanda, short though it was, proved crucial in our relations with Canopus, both then and subsequently, and not only on that planet but generally. Which may lead us to ponder profitably on the implications of the fact that a short period of time, twenty thousand years, may turn out to be of more importance than epochs lasting millions of years; and that the small planet of a small and peripheral sun may have more influence than large and impressive-seeming constellations. I feel that this kind of speculation may throw light on the Canopean superiority to us in certain fields of endeavour.

In order to understand how our Colonial Service was thinking, it is necessary to sketch the situation in the Sirian Empire at that time.

Our technological development had reached a peak and had been established long enough for us to understand the problems it must bring. The chief one was this: there was nothing for billions upon billions of individuals to do. They had no purpose but to exist, and then die. That this would be a problem had not been foreseen. I shall at this point hazard the statement that it is usually the central, the main, consequences of a development that are not foreseen. What we had seen was the ending of drudgery, of unnecessary toil, of anxiety over the provision of the basic needs. All our efforts, the expenditures of energy of generations, had gone into this: double or two-branched advance: one aspect of it to do with the conquest of space; the other, with the devices that would set us all free from toil.

We did not foresee that these billions, not only on our Home Planet but also on our Colonized Planets, would fall victim to depression and despair. We had not understood that there is inherent in every creature of this Galaxy a need, an imperative, towards a continual striving, or self-transcendence, or purpose. To be told that there is nothing to do but consume, no work needed, nothing to achieve, is to receive a sentence of death. The hapless millions, offered by their triumphantly successful leaders plenty, leisure, freedom from want, from fear, from effort, showed every symptom of mass psychosis, ranging from random and purposeless violence to apparently causeless epidemics and widespread neurosis. This period, known as the Sirian Dark Age, does not lack its historians, and I shall concentrate on its aspects that are germane to our theme. One was a phenomenon that became known as ‘invented usefulness’. Once the cause of the general malaise had been understood, there were various solutions suggested, of which this was the first attempted: areas that had been relinquished to machines and technical devices were deliberately reclaimed. I will mention one example. Everything to do with the supply and demand of food, and household goods, had been mechanized so that the means in most general use everywhere in the Empire were vast depots, each one of which might supply a million inhabitants, needing no attendants at all. These were dismantled in favour of small suppliers, sometimes specialist suppliers, and the billions employed in this artificial industry were conspicuously happier than the idle masses. For a time. We had to take account of what is, so we know now, a law. This is that where the technology exists to accomplish a service or task or to supply a need, then if this is not used, because of humanitarian or other social reasons, there is no real or lasting satisfaction for the people involved in that sector. They all know, in the end, even if this realization is delayed – sometimes deliberately, and by themselves, in efforts of self-deception – that their labours, their lives, are without real purpose. And – in the end, if this is delayed – they fall victim to the same constellation of ills and general malaise. This is not to say that ‘invented usefulness’ was not plentifully used; that it is not sometimes, in controlled areas, still used. As therapy, for instance; I will shortly describe an experiment on these lines.

Another phenomenon of the Dark Age was named, derisively and with unconcealed resentment, ‘pastimes of the rich’. Few of our better-off citizens did not acquire for themselves land, where they farmed in the old style: ‘pastimes of the rich’ were mostly in the agricultural area. Innumerable people everywhere on our Colonized Planets left their leisure, their controlled and planned entertainments, and regressed to a long-distant past, with families working sometimes quite small plots of land, aiming at full self-sufficiency, but of course using the technical advances when this suited them. A favourite model was the ancient one of crops, animals, and workers as an interacting and mutually dependent unit. Such ‘farms’ might not trade at all, but consumed what was grown. Others did set up trade, not only with each other but sometimes even made links with the cities where their products were in great demand – again with the rich. I do not have to say that the resentment against these ‘drop-outs’ was due to envy. There was a time when it seemed as if there was not a male, female, neuter or child anywhere in our Empire who was not possessed with one idea: to get hold of some land, even by criminal means, and to retreat into primitive production. This period produced its literature, a rich one, which is not the least curious of our literary side products. This phenomenon, at its height, was not confined to parts, or areas, of planets, but whole planets were taken over, and sometimes even conquered, solely with this idea in view. Our Colonized Planets 19 and 22 were for several millennia agricultural paradises, with not a town to be seen and both consciously planned and developed to avoid the growth of villages larger than market-places for the exchange of goods. There were mass movements of mainly young people whose aim was only to reach either of these planets or to conquer a new one. These movements had all the characteristics of the ‘religions’ that afflicted Rohanda in its period of decline and degeneration. To ‘live simply’, to ‘get back to nature’, seemed to nearly everyone the solution to all our new problems. But this phase, too, passed, when it became evident that these artificial schemes, these expedients, did not succeed in stilling the inner drive towards transcendence, both social and personal. There are still such farms, such ideas, in existence, but they have long ago been understood by everyone as pathetic regressions.

It was by then clear to us all that we needed a drastic decrease in population. To state this is enough to raise the questions that then ravaged us all. Were we saying that the conditions of our existence in our Empire were to be governed entirely by economic factors? That the lives of our peoples should be judged solely by the levels of our technical achievements? Of course it goes without saying that when the question was put like this, the answer was that the numbers of populations, and their ways of living, had always been governed by economic factors: all that had happened was that famines, floods, diseases, had been replaced by the consequences of technical development. Nothing had changed: that was the argument. No need to torment ourselves now about questions about the purpose of life, the value of the individual, and so forth. Had we pondered and agonized over the results of natural disasters? Yes? Had this done any good? No? Then why were we now prepared to agonize and torment ourselves over equally uncontrollable factors?

But that was the nub of the thing. We had seen ourselves, in bringing our technical achievements to such a pitch, as being in control, as exercising choice. Our thinking had been governed by this one idea. That we had abandoned chaos, and random decimation; that we had advanced towards conscious and deliberate controls.

To say that we were deliberately choosing to reduce our populations, that this was a choice, was simply not true, no matter how judiciously and carefully we were doing it. We had been forced into this position by our economic growth that had gone naturally from step to step – upwards. As we had seen it.

This debate went on for a long time, throughout our Dark Age, in fact, and while we were actively reducing populations everywhere. And has gone on ever since, in one form or another.

Thus did our technological advances announce to ourselves, to other empires, to anybody interested, that what governed the coming into existence, or not, of an individual, was work. Or the lack of it. And where would that end? Were we to refuse life to more people than we had work for? Surely that was ludicrous, absurd. We needed agriculturalists – these could never, can never, be dispensed with. We needed technicians of all kinds to do with the production of synthetics and foodstuffs and household goods. We needed some craftsmen. And there was necessary a small governing and administrative class. On our Home Planet, it was estimated that we could do very well with half a million people. At our population peak, our Home Planet had two billion people.

Again, it had to be recognized and acknowledged that we were not in control of what we did, for we were forced into what we did. And that our social programming was always a matter of compromises, of adjustments, of balancing one force against another. We had a very small area of choice, if that word could honestly and accurately be used at all.

This realization affected some of our administrative people badly, resulting in depressions and psychological maladjustments of all kinds.

The populations everywhere, on every one of our planets, were drastically, but carefully reduced; while the philosophical aspects of the matter were left, temporarily, to the intellectuals.

There was a very long period while this was being done when there were blocs of vast numbers of people who had no occupation, and for whom occupation was made. This fact, too, is relevant to what follows.

Meanwhile, there were extraordinary and bizarre contradictions to be observed everywhere.

The idea of ourselves, not only on the Home Planet but everywhere, as people who had evolved beyond certain levels made it impossible for them to be asked to do some kinds of work.

I did not mention in the list of classes of work that had still to be done by people and not machines, some kinds of heavy manual labour, for which we had not found technical substitutes. Without using force, it was not possible to get any of our peoples to undertake these. In the early heady days of euphoria when we were so effortlessly and successfully – it seemed – surmounting every kind of technical obstacle, abolishing one by one the different classes of unpleasant and degrading work – so we called it – intensive propaganda had gone into adjusting and setting the minds of populations accordingly. When we reversed, or were prepared to adjust, our thinking, it was too late. It is easy for a skilled administrative class to change the ways of thinking of populations, but not easy to do it fast – not without all kinds of social upheaval. We found ourselves in the ludicrous situation where, with hundreds of millions of ‘surplus’ people, we did not know where to find enough ordinary labourers.

We had evolved beyond using force: Canopus had shown us this path long ago. (By this I mean the use of larger numbers of people, under duress, for tasks they found abhorrent or demeaning. This did not mean that we did not conscript for work that everyone agreed to find interesting – such as the Colonial Service.) It was not possible for us simply to round up the numbers we needed for mining, quarrying, building and so on, and then turn them into a prison population to do society’s dirty work.

In the preceding remarks to do with our condition during that time, I have not yet done more than mention the space drive, which was the greater part of our development – indeed, the motor that governed all our technical development.

Our crisis had its own built-in solution from the beginning. It was to increase our space fleets, our space personnel, our programme for the conquest of space. Our situation was not a static one, not self-limited. Though it certainly did have its limits: the war with Canopus was a result of this sudden restless drive outwards. The devastation caused, the vast numbers killed, certainly solved, or postponed, some problems. I am speaking now dispassionately, and without submission to sentimental considerations: it had not been our intention to use this way of reducing our surplus populations – but that was the result; not our intention to ruin whole planets, so that much labour would be needed to repair them – but that was what happened. These were the facts. But the inherent productivity and resources of our Empire were such that all this damage was soon and easily – looking at it from a long-term view – put right. The real lesson of this war was that we were not to be allowed to trespass on Canopean territory. Certain parts of the Galaxy were out of bounds. This meant that the planets available to us, at our then level of technical achievement, were limited: we had already conquered, or at least surveyed, them all. What was necessary was an expansion of our space technology so that greater areas of the Galaxy would become open to us. This is what happened; but this story does not concern us here: only the aspects of it that help to make clear the general situation then, which was, to sum up: a deep and indeed permanent and incurable crisis due to technical mastery, which could be alleviated only by a continuous expansion in space.

I have now said enough to set the background to our experiments on Rohanda – which of course was only one of the planets being used in this way.

There are very few biosociological experiments that are not the result of natural development; whether they are set up deliberately or merely monitored as they unfold. Our first on Rohanda was imposed on us by necessity throughout and came definitely into the category of those that are observed during changes imposed by extraneous pressures.

I am starting with the Lombis, not because it was the first experiment but because it had long-term effects on the planet.

THE LOMBI EXPERIMENT. SOME OTHERS

Colonized Planet 23 needed to be made ready for the Thinkers … the reader may detect a note of derision in that phrase: but it is not my intention to detail social controversies of that long-past time: the criticisms of the institution of a planet devoted entirely to one function were certainly many, but these did not in any way affect it. It was a barren planet, waterless, all rock and sand and extinct volcanoes. Our activities there cannot be regarded as experiments, because we had long since perfected techniques for existing on such planets. We had to make structures that were self-contained, with their own climates and atmospheres. Once created, such societies needed very little maintenance. It was quite easy to grow food by hydroponic and other techniques, but these had proved to have their limitations. One was in the area of grains. There were other foodstuffs, too, that did not do well in these limited conditions. And it had been long established that while adequate for maintaining life, crops produced in water lacked an element that we only later isolated. But this subject can be studied under its headings. It had been decided that since C.P. 23 was close to Rohanda, which was so fertile, there was nothing to be gained by planning C.P. 23 to feed itself. The structures on C.P. 23 were therefore not as comprehensive and vast as they sometimes are on such planets; but they were large enough so that flying over it, the entire surface seemed to be covered by glistening silvery blisters: the domes of the controlled environment.

They had to be built. This involved the use of large numbers of ordinary labourers, not only for the putting together of the dome-sections, which were of course manufactured elsewhere – on C.P. 3, at that time specialized for this type of manufacture – but for clearing the ground, a formidable task on that uneven and rocky terrain, which needed hundreds of different types of machine. I have said that our many and varied populations all had been taught to consider themselves to have gone past this type of work and would not be induced to undertake it.

We had come up against a problem, central to the development of our Empire, which the Lombi Experiment was directly concerned with. It was this: as soon as we had colonized a new planet that already had on it an indigenous population, and even if these were at the beginning not more advanced than apes, or other types of animal, almost at once they saw themselves as defrauded of benefits and advances that they were entitled to. Over and over again we had seen this development. Our administrators would arrive on such a planet, and it could still be in a condition of first-degree savagery, and in no time at all, it was clear that a process of rapid social evolution had been begun, which might express itself in many ways, one of which was rebellions and revolts that at the start, and before we understood the causes, had to be put down by force. For it was then believed that this impulse towards self-betterment was due to crude envy and primitive emulation, and was regarded unsympathetically. It was only later that we saw that we were observing a force for growth that would constantly uplift and progress all the peoples of our Empire. It was not at all just a question of ‘they have such and such good things, and we want them, too’, but of an irrepressible evolvement. Very soon in our career as the makers of Empire, we knew that if we established ourselves on even the most barbarous of planets, with the intention of using its inhabitants in various necessary ways for the good of our Empire as a whole, then it must be expected that in a very short time these savages would demand – at which point they would be freely given – all the advantages at our disposal. Our Empire could be regarded as a mechanism for the advancement of an almost unlimited number of planets, in different stages of development, towards a civilized norm. Towards uniformity? – an unwanted and undesirable uniformity? That is a different question; a crucial one, certainly, but not our concern here.

What we were considering, at the time Rohanda’s new phase began, was why and how the mechanism worked that our mere appearance on a planet began this remarkable process. It was one that we found embarrassing, unwanted. We needed peoples at different levels. We already had billions of privileged peoples entitled to every benefit of technology. We did not want to discover, and then colonize, planet after planet of savages or semisavages who then, it seemed almost at once, would become privileged citizens. In short, we needed a reservoir or bank of populations whom we could use for ordinary, heavy, undifferentiated work.

We had recently found, and explored, Planet 24. This was in a solar system distant from both ours and Rohanda’s: too distant to be conveniently incorporated in our Empire in a closely interacting bond. Visits would have to be infrequent, and strictly functional. But it was a productive and fertile place, with an atmosphere, and an indigenous population of animals of a common – and useful – kind. They were of simian type, using four legs or two according to need, were both vegetarian and carnivorous and extremely strong and vigorous. They had long but not overthick hair on their heads, shoulders, and backs, but very little in front. They were endowed with powerful shoulders and arms. They were squat, and shorter than any of the species we had discovered anywhere. Compared to the peoples of our Mother Planet they were a third of our height. They lived in a variety of patterns, in tribes, smaller groups, in families, even as solitaries. They knew fire. They hunted. They were at the very beginnings of an agriculture. It will be seen that their main characteristic was adaptability.

It was decided that our technicians should from first contact with them adapt themselves to their level, their ways. There was to be no attempt at our usual practice of maintaining a clear-cut, well-defined level of Sirian living – which we did both as self-discipline and as an example. The problem was the physical difference. We chose Colonial Service officials from C.P. 22 who, because of their experience with backward self-sufficient agriculture, could be expected to find conditions on 24 at least recognizable, and who fortuitously were a small, stockily built people. They were instructed to approach the Lombis in a way that would give no indication of any sort of superiority in thought or practice. It was these researchers who established our knowledge of the Lombis.

Another controversy arose at this point. Previously it had been our practice to space-lift as many males, or females without young, as we needed. But not both. There had been disquiet at the inhumanity of this practice recently. I was involved in the widespread self-questioning: it was no longer possible for us to use newly conquered peoples without considering their emotional and mental, as well as their physical, welfare. To accommodate families on 23, and then on Rohanda, would add difficulties to our attempts, but would also enhance and widen the experiment. Our faction in the Colonial Service won the day. We defeated a compromise suggestion of taking sterilized females, and adopted a further compromise: of taking not equal numbers of males and females, but two-thirds males to one-third females. There were advantages to this: not least that it was something not yet tried by us before.

Fifty thousand of these animals were space-lifted to 23, where conditions contrasted in every way with what they had been used to, and both males and females were set to work to set up the space domes. This involved their working, to start with, in heavy equipment, of the standard type for such environments, which they could discard only when the domes were operational. This was not without interest: taking animals who had learned to spit meat over a fire, but not yet to use cooking pots, and putting them into space-age suits and machines. They were able, after instruction, to manage both.

Our technicians were always with them, on exactly the same level, eating as they did, deliberately refraining from any show of difference or superiority.

These technicians continued to be recruited from C.P. 22. This caused a good deal of unrest throughout the Service, though its necessity was appreciated: only 22 produced the individuals of a build approximating the Lombis’. Involvement in such experiments was always competed for. There was not enough to occupy our clamouring and idealistic youngsters. The term of service for the technicians was restricted to six months (Rohandan time) for two reasons. One was to give as many young people as possible their chance; the other was the contradictory one that none could have endured it for longer. To live on a day-to-day level with the Lombis was to regress to a past that our planets liked to think they had gone beyond forever.

During their time on C.P. 23, the Lombis were not pressured or indoctrinated in any way whatsoever.

Previously, our practice had been to find out the structure of belief on a planet, and then use these ‘Gods’ – whatever form they took – in appropriate ways. For instance, we would have told the Lombis that their ‘Gods’ needed them to perform special duties in distant skies. But as far as we could see, they had not reached the stage of gods and deities.

We told them nothing. Our technicians were among them on 24 for a time, without explanation – and none could easily have been given, within their language structure, which was primitive. When our spaceships descended on 24, they took the fifty thousand from different areas so that social patterns would not be too badly disrupted. On 23 they were simply told what they had to do, put into space suits already being used by our exemplars, shown where they were to eat and rest. When the first domes were up, they were given the use of them. All without any information beyond the utilitarian. The atmosphere on that planet inside the domes, strictly controlled, approximated that of their own. No physical shock could have been experienced on that score. Their food was also arranged with this in view.

It was much too soon to watch for signs of a demand for ‘higher things’, for any such impulses in them were bound to be absorbed by these new habits of living they were learning. An immediate and expected development was fierce competition for the females, and a certain amount of belligerence.

Their term on C.P. 23 lasted five Rohanda years, during which they were supervised and instructed by the Planet 22 technicians, who were always changing, always lived exactly as they did, and who explained nothing at all of the reasons for what was happening to them.

Then these Lombis were all, again without explanation, space-lifted to Southern Continent I. Their task was the same: to create the physical conditions for others to use; but not controlled domes and environments, since this was Rohanda. As they arrived on the planet and were released from the spacecraft, our observers were there – but concealed from them.

The Rohandan atmosphere is not dissimilar from that of C.P. 24, but it has 5 per cent more oxygen.

I have to record that the observers – among whom I was one – felt more than a little disquiet as the poor creatures emerged on to the grassy, watered plains. They had been for all that time – to them it must have seemed interminable – on 23, either within the domes, or outside working in their cumbersome space suits. There were skies inside the domes – but false skies, which they knew, since they had made them; there was vegetation, but none they had not put there; there was water that they had set moving. Here they stood on earth that was not all sand and rock and gravel, but was grassed and fertile, under real skies … as they came pouring down the spacecraft steps they let out hoarse cries of wonder and gratitude, and then flung themselves down on the grass and rolled there, and then clutched each other and – so it sounded – laughed and, when we looked closely at their broad, hairy faces through our powerful lenses, wept: we saw the tears roll. Tears are not part of our own functioning on our Mother Planet, but they are of some among our family of species. We had not known that these animals wept; no mention had been made of it. And then they danced, slowly, solemnly, thousands upon thousands of them, holding up their arms, lifting their ape faces to the skies and celebrating their joy at returning to – normality? Was that what they thought, we wondered? That this was their own home again?

So it turned out. They believed that they were home, since trees and blue skies and grasses and freedom from clumsy machinery and space equipment were their home; and did not realize for some time that this was not a part of their own planet but another planet.

When they did, they were not given time to develop negative reactions.

After an interval while they were allowed to rush about and to dance and to let out strange – and surely rhythmic – grunts and cries, a time while they were permitted to enjoy their freedom, they were again rounded up, divided into companies, and set to work. Forest had to be cleared for, first of all, settlements of our colonizers; and then when this was accomplished, wider tracts cleared for the planting of crops, and the siting of laboratories. When one station was ready with its buildings, its cleared fields, its laboratories, then the entire work force was lifted off again to another site further south. As soon as they left, but not before, since these animals were not to see creatures more evolved than themselves, the first contingent of agriculturalists came in from our Mother Planet. They had been chosen by lottery; such was the fierceness of the competition for this work, it was the only method that could be guaranteed not to cause resentment.

Ten different agricultural stations were established on Southern Continent I. These were enough not only to supply all of 23, but later there were plentiful supplies of what were luxury products, at luxury prices, for our Home Planet. The setting up of these took over a hundred R-years.

The average life of the Lombis was 200 R-years. As always, when establishing a species on another planet, the way this would affect a life-term was a major consideration. We had come to expect random and wild fluctuation at the beginning, and thereafter unforeseen variations in life-term. The Lombis were no exception. During the first few R-years, some died for no apparent reason (some race-psychologists classed these deaths under the heading of Mal-Adaptation due to Life Disappointment), and the young that were born seemed likely to be set for longer life-terms. There was also a quite unforeseen increase in height and girth.