Shikasta

They did bring us food. Animal food, so they had taken to hunting. We had not seen animals as we approached this settlement, so the herds must have already fled a long way off across the plains.

We laid ourselves down under some nearby trees, and I stayed awake while the others slept. When it was very late, the stars crowding down in a black sky, a great shadow came stooping out of the round enclosure, and it was Jarsum, striding across to us. He stood a couple of his paces away - many of ours - and peered and puzzled, but could not see us under the boughs, and came nearer, bending close. When he saw me awake, he smiled. It was an embarrassed smile. And he went away, cracking stones and twigs under his great feet that were shod in hides now.

In the morning the three of us walked the miles to the edge of the Hexagonal City, where the stone patterns began. The ugly vibrations did not seem as strong as those in other places, either because time had already weakened them, or because so many of the stones being carried away had broken the patterns, or for other reasons I could not surmise.

But we saw something astonishing. Half a dozen of the Giants had come after us from that pathetic settlement of theirs, but took no notice of us, striding straight into the middle of the Stones, where they stood, turning themselves about, and raising their arms and bending and bowing. I understood that they were enjoying the sensations. Yet this practice could only make them more befuddled than they were.

After some time of this, they came out of the Stones, their limbs and heads jerking, as if they were truly diseased, and they danced and twitched their way back to their home.

I noticed that both David and Sais showed signs of wanting to "try it and see" - for they had forgotten, or so it seemed, what those discords could do. I said to them, No, no, they must not - and led them back to the Giants.

There a feast was in progress, with mounds of roast meat, and they were singing and dancing. I understood that the Giants who had gone to the Stones went to fetch back, in themselves, the power of the disharmonies, which they were using like alcohol to fuel this revelry.

I reminded them of our presence and asked for fruit.

I asked Jarsum to come and talk with us, alone, under the trees. He came, but as if drunk or half asleep.

I spoke of Canopus again.

He accepted it. He listened. But nothing much was getting past the fogs and silliness of that poor brain.

I produced the Signature and held it in front of him. I had not wanted to do this, because I had noticed that its power had uneven or sometimes contradictory effects by now.

Yes, he remembered it. He remembered something. The half-dazed eyes, reddened and narrowed, as if with drink, peered close, and the great trembling hands came out to touch it. And he did something I had never seen on this noble planet, that could not have happened on Rohanda - he bent and prostrated himself and poured sand on his head. And David and Sais copied him: they did it eagerly, pleased with themselves for learning this new attractive thing.

I led the way back to the settlement, telling Jarsum that he must make everyone come. He did, but more than half had gone out to dance among the Stones, and we had to wait for them to come back.

Then I stood before them, in a space among the lean-to fragmentary buildings, and I held out the Signature, so that it shone and dazzled, and sent its gleams everywhere into their eyes, their faces.

I said that Canopus forbade them to go near the Stones. It was an order. And I made the Signature flash and shiver.

I said that Canopus forbade them to use each other or the other creatures of the planet as servants, unless these servants were treated as well as they would treat themselves, as equals at all times.

I said that Canopus forbade them to kill animals unless it was for food, and then only with care and without cruelty. They must plant crops, I said, and must harvest fruit and nuts.

I said that they might not waste the fruits of the earth, and each might take only what was needed, no more.

They must not use violence with each other.

Above all, over and above all these prohibitions, was the first one: never, never, must they go into the old cities, or use those stones for building other settlements, and they must not intoxicate themselves in these ways if they ever again came across places or things, that held the capacity to intoxicate. They were destroying themselves in these practices, and Canopus was displeased.

Then I put away the Signature, and I went up to Jarsum, who was prostrate, trembling, the white Giant beside him, and I said, "Farewell. And I will come to you again. And until that time remember the Laws of Canopus."

And I and David and Sais walked away, not looking back. I had forbidden them to, for fear this might weaken an effect which I believed was weak enough, and when we were deep in the trees on the foothills of the mountains, I asked these two companions of mine what had happened.

They did not reply. They were awed.

When I pressed them David said that I had knowledge of something called Canopus.

Sais? Perhaps it would be better with her?

I made a trial. I waited until we had gone up one range of foothills and down into a pleasant valley full of trickling streams and bright plants, and I asked them again if they had understood what had happened with the Giants.

David had that look on him which was so familiar by now, a sulle

Sais was looking at me attentively.

"What do you know of Canopus?" I asked.

She said that Canopus was an angry man, and he did not want anyone to dance where there were stones. He did not want hunting bands to kill more animals than they needed for meat. He did not want...

Well, she got through it, and I decided to concentrate on her. As we walked, I drilled her and I drilled her, and David her father ambled on, sometimes singing to amuse himself, for we bored him in our intensity, or sometimes listening, and chiming in with a phrase or two: "Canopus doesn't want..."

And so we went on, day after day, wandering on among the foothills and valleys of the Great Mountains, until I felt the presence of Shammat growing stronger, and knew I must make these two go away from me.

I made a solemn and fearful thing of the occasion. They were to undertake a task of the utmost importance - for me, but above all, for Canopus. They were to go from place to place over Shikasta, everywhere there were settlements, and they were to repeat everything I had said. Sais was to be the spokesman, but David was to be her protector. And I gave her the Signature, saying that they must regard this as more important than - but what? Life? They did not have that conception: the thought of death as an ever-present threat was not in them. This came from Canopus, I said. It was the very substance and being of Canopus and must be guarded at all times, even if they were to lose their lives doing it. Thus I held Death before them, using it to create in these creatures a sorrow and a vigilance where there had been none.

Sais put the Signature reverently into her belt and kept her hand there on it, as she stood in front of me, her eyes on my face, listening.

When they reached a settlement, I said, she must first of all speak of Canopus, and if the word was enough to revive old memories and associations, and if her hearers could listen because of that word alone, then she could give her message and go. Only if she could get no one to listen, or if it seemed that she and her father might be harmed, then she might show the Signature. And when they had been everywhere, and spoken with everyone, even hunting bands they met, or solitary farmers or fishermen in the forests or by rivers, then they must bring the Signature back to me.