Shikasta

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.

I said to him, "Ben, you have got to. Now. Trust me."

He sighed, and shut his eyes, and held on with both hands to my forearm.

Behind us the lines of waiting people stretched, winding away into a distance. I could not see their ends. Once they would have held a dozen or twenty souls. But as the wars of Shikasta, the hungers of Shikasta, the diseases of Shikasta, ate up people, now there were opportunities, and opportunities again... some in those lines had been there when I entered Zone Six on this same visit, and had in the meantime gone in to Shikasta, had succumbed to some hazard - illness, accident, war - and were here again. How many brave faces did I see then, as I held fast to Ben, and he to me, as we went forward into the whirling, tinted mists. The throngs of waiting souls fell behind, disappeared into cloudy dark. We stood, the two of us together, in an opalescent mist. There was a singing hush, a stillness that throbbed. And throbbed...

At that moment it was necessary to collect oneself as at no other time. We had nothing to sustain us but the imprint of the Signature, which would emerge, like a brand on flesh that could show itself only in heat or under pressure. It was as if we had chosen deliberately to obliterate ourselves, trusting to an intangible we had no alternative but to trust.

We were like those brave souls on Shikasta who, believing that they stand for what is right and just, choose to defy wicked and criminal rulers, in the full knowledge that the penalty will be a deliberate destruction by corrupted doctors of their minds, their familiar understanding of themselves, through drugs, psychological torture, brain damage, physical deprivation. But they trust, within their deepest selves, that they have resources which will sustain them through everything. We were like people jumping from a height into a pit of poisonous shadows, trusting that we would be caught...

In a thundering dark we saw lying side by side two clots of fermenting substance, and I slid into one half, giving up my identity for the time, and Ben slid into the other, and lay, two souls throbbing quietly inside rapidly burgeoning flesh. Our minds, our beings, were alert and knowing, but our memories had already slid away, dissolved.

I have to acknowledge - I can do no other - that this is a moment of fearful dismay. Even of panic. The terrible miasmas of Shikasta close around me and I send this report with my last conscious impulse.

 DOCUMENTS RELATING to

GEORGE SHERBAN (JOHOR)

RACHEL SHERBAN'S JOURNAL

I see I must plunge in. The more I think about it, the harder it gets. Facts are best. I told George I was actually starting this, and he said, Get your facts straight first.

I have two brothers, George and Benjamin, two years older than me. They are twins. Not true twins. I am Rachel. I am fourteen.

Our father is Simon. Our mother is Olga. Our name is Sherban, but it was Scherbansky. Our grandfather changed it when they came to England from Poland in the last war. (Second World.) Our grandparents laugh when they say no one could pronounce Scherbansky. I used to get angry when they said this. I do not think the English are fu

I see that our education has been far from ordinary. I am seeing a lot of things for the first time, as I think how to write this. Well of course that's the point I suppose.

First. Our family was in England where we were all born. Both our parents worked at a big London hospital. He did organising. She was a doctor. But they decided to leave England and got work in America. It was because England was so bureaucratic and stick-in-the-mud. They did not say this was why they left England never to return. Not to work. After America we went to Nigeria and then Kenya and then Morocco. Which is here. Usually our parents work together in a hospital or project. We always know about their work. They tell us what they are doing and why. They take a lot of trouble telling us. As I think about this so as to write it I see that this doesn't happen much to other children. Sometimes my mother Olga has to work somewhere by herself. I go with her. Even when I was a small child. It is fu

Our parents criticise many things about England. Yet they have sent us there quite a bit.

I have learned all sorts of things, but have not been regularly at school. I know French, Russian, Arabic, Spanish. And English, of course. My father has taught me mathematics. My mother tells me books to read. I know a lot about music because they are always playing music.

My brothers were sometimes with my mother, but these days mostly with Simon. When he went to seminars to give lectures or conferences he took them too. Sometimes our parents had us in school properly for a year or two years.

In Kenya this happened. I have just seen it. The headmaster was a friend of ours. He kept shifting us from class to class, pretending we didn't fit in, or had gone beyond a class or something. But what he was doing was making sure we learned a lot of different things. He did this with other children from outside Kenya and some of the black children too. He is a Kikuyu. We learned a lot of geohistory there, and geo-economics. We have had tutors all the time too. There is one thing to be said for being educated in this mad way, you don't get bored. But if I am supposed to tell the truth, then it is true that often I longed to be in one place and stay there and have friends for a long time. We seem to have a lot of friends, but they are often in another country. In fact more often than not.

We children have been sent for holidays to England three times. We stay in London, and then go to a family in Wales. They are farmers. We learn how to look after animals and about crops. My brother George was there for a whole year, December to December, to learn about the cycle of the seasons. Benjamin was critical about George going there, and didn't go himself, but he could have done. He was in a bad phase then. More than usual, I mean!

I was sorry when George went, I did not see him for a whole year.

I must tell the truth again. I have been jealous too much. When I was small I was jealous of the twins. They were together such a lot. When they were they often did not take any notice of me. George did more than Benjamin.

Benjamin always wanted to be with George when he was younger. People used to think Benjamin was younger than George. They are so different. Benjamin is not cheerful and confident like George. George was always telling Benjamin, Yes, you can do this. Yes, you can do that. Benjamin used to sulk and went away by himself. But when he came back he used to make George take notice of him.

And George always did. That is why I was jealous.

That is why I am still jealous.

When George was away for a year, I thought Benjamin would take notice of me, but he didn't. I didn't care all that much because really it is George I want to take notice of me.

Now I shall write down the facts I remember about when we were children.

I shall write what I think now about things that happened then. Not what I thought then.