The Sirian Experiments - Doris Lessing

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spirits rose, and as I was rushed along by the pressure of the little people I was able to examine them. They were certainly less animal than the horrid new beast-men of the Southern Continent, but quite seemly and decent creatures, wearing trousers and jackets of dressed skins. Very broad they were, almost as broad as tall: and I was easily able to recognize in the stock the powerful arms and shoulders of the Lombis, and the yellow skins of the Colony 22 technicians. Their faces were bare of hair, under close caps of tight rough dark curls, and were keen and sharp and intelligent.

      We were taken swiftly through several of such caverns, always with the river rushing along beside us, until we were deep inside the mountain – yet it did not feel oppressive, for the air was sweet and fresh. We were in a cave so enormous the roof went up above us into impenetrable black, and the illuminations around the rocky verges were only pinpoints of innumerable light. There was a cleared space in the centre, quite large enough to take a horde of these little people and ourselves, but small in proportion to the enormousness of the place. We were sat down on piles of skins, and given some food – hardly to the palates of such as we, though it was not without interest to be reminded of what was – what had to be – the food of all the lowly evolved planets of our Galaxy. Meat. A sort of cheese. A kind of beer. All this time Klorathy was keeping up talk with them: he seemed to know their language at least adequately. It was Ambien I and myself who puzzled them, though they were civil enough – for we were both obviously of different kinds from Klorathy. They eyed us, yet not unpleasantly, and one of the females, a quite attractive little thing in her robust heavy way, begged to touch my hair, and in a moment several females had crowded up, smiling and apologetic, but unable to resist handling my blonde locks. Yet I, for my part, was looking around into the faces packed and massed all around, and remembering the Lombis – who had never set eyes on me or anything like me – and the Colony 22 techs, who had … a long, long time ago, far out of personal memory, in their time reckoning, but such a short time ago in ours. Did they have any sort of race or gene memory? We examined each other, in a scene of which I have been a part so very often in my long service: members of differing races meeting, not in enmity but in genial curiosity.

      How were we able to do this – see each other so close and well, when the twinkling walls of the cave were so far distant? It was by – electricity. Yes. Everywhere stood strong bright lights, wooden containers that housed batteries: it is never possible to foresee what part of a former technology a fallen-off race will retain.

      And they were that – reduced, I mean; under pressure, beset … I was able to recognize it at once, by a hundred little signs that perhaps I wouldn’t have been able to consciously describe. These were a people in danger, endangered – desperate. It showed in the sombre consciousness of their eyes, fastening on Klorathy, who for his part was leaning forward, urgent, concentrated on this task of his …

      Later we were led off, I by the women, the men separately, and we slept in small but airy rock chambers. And next day the discussions with Klorathy went on, while I and Ambien I were taken, on our request, to see this underground kingdom. Which I shall now briefly describe.

      First of all, it was not the only one: Klorathy said that not only all over this continent but in most parts now of Rohanda spread these underearth races. But they had not taken to the caves and caverns by nature, only from need, as they found themselves hunted and persecuted by races so much larger than themselves. Though not more skilled.

      These caverns were by no means the habitations of brutes. They had been adapted from natural holes and caves, often the old tunnels of former underground rivers and lakes. Sometimes they had been excavated. Many were carefully panelled with well-tailored and smoothed planking. All were lit, either by natural gas or by electricity. There were meeting places and eating places, sleeping places, and storage caves and workshops. Animals had been captured from the surface world and brought down to breed and increase in this below-earth realm. There were birds, some flying freely about, as if they had been in the air. These were underground cities, underearth realms. And they were all based on the oddest and saddest contradictions or predicaments.

      This race had become skilled miners and metallurgists. Beginning with iron, they had made all kinds of utensils and then – finding themselves hunted – weapons. For a time, and in some places, they had made approaches out into the world to offer trade, and trade had often been effective. They exchanged iron products for roots and fruits and fresh supplies of animals for their chthonic herds. Then they found gold. They had seen it was beautiful and did not rust and crumble as iron did, but found it too soft for tools and vessels – yet it was so beautiful, and everywhere they made ornaments and decorations with it. Taking it out to the tribes now forming everywhere above ground – for these were more likely to be their neighbours than the people of the advanced cities, at first gold was a curiosity, and then, suddenly, was something for which murder could be committed, and slaves captured – the dwarves were chased into the mountains and whole communities wiped out. They fled deeper into the mountains, or went into further ranges, always going further, retreating, becoming invisible except for rare careful excursions to see if trade was possible again. Sometimes it was. Often, coming out with their heavy dark vessels and spears and arrowheads, their glistening gleaming ornaments, they would be ambushed and all killed.

      Yet they always mined, since it was now in their blood, the skill of it in their hands and minds.

      Yet, and this was the sad paradox that they did not fully see until Klorathy pointed it out to them: suppose they had never mined at all, would they have missed so much: Did their food depend on it? Their clothing? Even their electricity? Their clay vessels were beautiful and strong and in every way as good as their iron ones.

      Suppose they had never learned how to melt iron from rocks, and gold from rocks – what then?

      But it was too late for thinking in this way.

      Finding themselves harried and hunted, these poor creatures had sent Klorathy a message. Had sent a message ‘all the way to the stars’.

      How?

      Coming together in a great conclave, from every part of this continent, creeping along a thousand underground channels and roads, they had cried out that ‘Canopus would help them’.

      Two of them had made a dangerous journey to the middle seas. There, so the news was, were great cities. This journey had taken many R-years. The two, a male and a female, having crept and crawled and lurked and sneaked their way across a continent and then from island to island across the great sea, and then across land again, had found that upheavals and earthquakes had vanished the great cities which were now only a memory among half-savages. The two had gone northwards, hearing of ‘a place where kindness and women rule’. There they were directed to Adalantaland, where there was kindness and a wise female ruler, who had said that ‘Canopus had not visited for a long time, not in her memory or in that of her Mother’s. The two had left their messages, obstinately believing that what Canopus had promised – for promises were in their memories – Canopus would perform. And though they had died as soon as they had delivered their reports of that epic and terrible journey, soon Canopus did perform, for Klorathy came to them.

      Had come first on an investigational trip from one end of this continent to the other. Had heard, then, of the ‘little people’ in the other continents, for oddly – or perhaps not oddly at all – emissaries from the ‘little people’, hunted and persecuted everywhere, had made their brave and faithful journeys to places where they believed ‘Canopus’ might have ears to hear their cries for help.

      Klorathy had then summed up all this information he had garnered, and pondered over it and concluded that there was another factor here, there was an element of savagery, of beastliness, more and above what could be naturally expected. It was the work of Shammat, of course, Shammat who Canopus had believed to be still far away half across the globe – not that its influence wasn’t everywhere … but on the subject of that ‘influence’ Klorathy was either not able or not willing to enlarge.

      ‘What do you mean, Klorathy? – when you talk of Shammat-nature?’ – and as I asked the question I thought of those avid greedy faces, those glittering avaricious eyes. ‘A savage is a savage. A civilized

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