The Sirian Experiments - Doris Lessing

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something to be glossed over and then forgotten.

      This entirely successful experiment on Rohanda – the teaching of so many different stocks to be good and flexible colonizers, which was making us so gratified and confirming our confidence in our Colonial Service – was nevertheless and at the same time a defeat. We knew very well that none of these animals we were teaching would evolve very much beyond what they were now, or not quickly: their capacities would be stretched, their skills added to, they would make use of their new opportunities. But it was out of the question that we could expect them to make the jump, and in a few thousand years, from their animal state to one where they would live in cities as fine as anything we knew on Sirius, and maintain them, and change in them so that they could hardly be recognized as the same species as our engaging and likeable companions, the simians who lived on their hillside so close to our headquarters, and who were always such a pleasant source of entertainment and interest for us and our visitors.

      The Canopean experiment had changed the native stock. Fundamentally.

      This was the point.

      Our being able to survey all these different kinds of animals all at once, and coming to terms with their possibilities and limitations, resulted in a stepping up of our already quite intensive spying in the north. We had spies, both as individuals and in groups everywhere. We used less and less disguise. This was partly because of the openness with which we were received. Partly because all the southern hemisphere was covered with our supply fleets filling the skies between Southern Continents I and II, and we could always excuse our presence by talking of forced landings. Partly because of a new factor.

      We were approached by emissaries from Shammat. It is not easy to believe now, but Shammat at that time was hardly even a name. Puttiora, the shameful Empire, was, of course, not ignored by us, if for no other reason than that we were continually having to fight off incursions on to our territory. Shammat was spoken of as some dreadful sun-baked rock used by Puttiora as a criminal settlement. At any rate, they were pirates, adventurers, desperadoes. We had certainly not thought of them as having reached the stage of technology, and we were right, for the craft that set itself down on the plain below our headquarters was a stolen Canopean space shuttle. Four Shammatans came up the rocky road with the confidence of those invited, or at least expected, and this arrogance was typical of everything they did. In type they were Modified Two. Head hair, localized body hair, teeth at primary animal level, well-adapted hands, feet used only for locomotion. They were therefore above most of the species, though not all, currently being trained by us for colonial work; but far behind the Rohandan native species as evolved by Canopus. Though we were wondering, as we entertained these extremely vigorous and energetic visitors who had about them every mark of the barbarian and the savage, if this after all so common, not to say basic, type everywhere throughout the three Empires we knew anything about – Canopus, our own, and Puttiora – would not, if put into contact with the Giants, become as advanced as the northern natives. For we had recently adopted the theory that it was the Colony 10 Giants who had the secret of rapid evolution of inferior species.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      About ten thousand years after the Canopus-Rohanda ‘Lock’, we were

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