The Sirian Experiments

The general atmosphere of the conference was low and dispirited. Canopus had been shaken by the Rohanda failure, and was made miserable, as they freely confessed, because of the fate of the unfortunate Planet 8, which they now could not save and which, even as the conference took place, was being abandoned, with loss of life and potentiality. And we Sirians were low, too, because of Rohanda. I ca

For me personally the conference was important because it was there I first saw Klorathy, who led their team. It was he who supplied the occasion with what vitality it could aspire to. I liked him at once. He was—and is—a vigorous, sardonic being who can always be counted on to alleviate the torpors and languors that attend even the best conferences. We were attracted, told each other so, in the way of course appropriate to our life-stages: both of us had our breeding-bond phases behind us. Ambien I also liked him, and all three looked forward to many pleasant and useful encounters.

It was Klorathy who had to carry the burden of refusing us the Giants, and I recall his patience as he over and over repeated: But, you see, it is not possible… while we didn’t see.

I can do no better than to get down the main points of the agenda as it related to Rohanda, in order to illustrate points of view then and now.

1. The Canopean-Rohandan Lock had failed—the basic fact.

2. That degeneration of various kinds must be expected—which we had already experienced.

3. That Canopus intended to maintain their link with Rohanda, some sort of skeleton staff, in order to maintain the flow at a minimum level.

4. As far as could be seen, the cosmic alignments that had caused this Disaster would not reverse for several hundred thousand years, after which there would be no reason Rohanda could not revert to its flowering flourishing healthy condition.

5. That (and this was to them—to Canopus—the most important factor in this summing up) Shammat of Puttiora had discovered the nature of the Canopus-Rohandan bond, and was tapping strength from it. And was already waxing fat and prosperous on it.

I can only say that, reading these words now, remembering what I saw in them then, I have to marvel at my blindness.

Again, resentment partly the cause. And also fear: There much talk about the Shammat “spies,” which Canopus claimed they had known nothing about. We did not believe this. But could not pursue it, for fear our own spying would come to light…

It will be seen from these brief remarks that this was an uncomfortable, unsatisfactory conference. When it was dissolved, I could see nothing positive in it except my meeting with Klorathy, and since he was to stay on Colony 10 to assist the Giants in their painful period of waiting, and I was to return to Sirius, we had nothing much to hope for, at least immediately.

Sirius had not abandoned the idea of using Rohanda for experiments. It was a question of finding ways of doing this without harm to ourselves. A joint committee Canopus/Sirius was set up at the conference for this purpose. Again I was assigned to Rohanda, at my request, and with instructions by Canopus—called by us and them advice—on how to survive the new discordant Rohandan atmosphere. We were told that if we were to build settlements in exactly this way and that—measurements and proportions prescribed to the fraction of an R-unit—and wore such and such artefacts, and ate this and that (there were long lists of such prescriptions), then we might work on that unfortunate planet, at least for limited periods.

To begin with, their advice was only partly, or halfheartedly, obeyed: bad results followed. We then took to an exact obedience. Success.

This obedience was more remarkable than perhaps it will seem now. At that time it would have been difficult to find anything good being said about Canopus anywhere in our territories. Our tone was one of indifference at best, but usually derision. We were spying on them everywhere and in every way. We did not hesitate to outdo them when we could, often quite childishly, and even illegally. Any who doubt this may find what I say confirmed in any common chronicle or memoir of that time: we were not ashamed of our behavior. On the contrary. Yet we suspected Canopus of ill-feeling and delinquency towards us, and complained of it. At the same time, and while apparently having little respect for their prescriptions, for we mocked them when we thought this would earn us admiration, we nevertheless followed them, and to the point where the practices became second nature, and we were in danger of forgetting where they originated. Then we did forget—or most of us—and “the Rohandan Adjustment Technique” was talked of as if it were a discovery of our own.

For a long time, more than a hundred thousand years, we Sirians were more on Rohanda than Canopus was. So we believed then. It was because we told our spies to look for Canopean technicians by the same signs that we understood for our own necessities and behaviour. We did not know then that Canopus could come and go in any way other than by spaceship—by ordinary physical transport. Did not know that Canopean technicians could exist on Rohanda—and on other planets—by taking the outward shape of the inhabitants of a particular time and place.

For long ages Canopean individuals were at work on Rohanda and we did not know it. Even now there are those who refuse to believe it. But a few of us who worked on Rohanda came to understand. And I will come to a fuller description of this, in its place.

Meanwhile, my preoccupation with Canopus continued, and I was not by any means the only one. And this was for a specific and definite reason.

It is necessary for me now to make general statement about Sirian development—a summary of history from the end of our Dark Age until the present. It will be argued that it is not possible to sum up several hundred thousand of Empire’s history in a few words. Yet we all of us do this when describing others. For instance, how do we—and even our most lofty and respected historians—refer to Alikon, the long-lived culture that preceded our own on Sirius, before we became an Empire? “Alikon was a rigid and militaristic society, based on limited natural resources, whose ruling caste maintained power by the use of a repressive religion, keeping nine-tenths of the population as labourers, slaves, and servants. It ended because…” That is how we describe ninety thousand S-years of what we always refer to as “prehistory.” To take another example, Colony 10 of the Canopean rule was once “Senjen, a natural paradise, a pacific, easygoing matriarchal society made possible by pleasant climate and abundant vegetable and animal stocks.” Senjen lasted for two hundred thousand years before Canopus decided it needed improvement.

No: the dispassionate, disinterested eye we use for other peoples, other histories, we do not easily turn on ourselves—past or present! Yet most societies—cultures—empires—can be described by an underlying fact or truth, and this is nearly always physical, geographical. Is it possible that our reluctance to regard ourselves as we do others is because we do not like to categorise our own existence as physical… merely physical?

The Sirian Empire has been preoccupied by one basic physical fact and the questions caused thereby since its inception: technology: our technical achievements that no other empire has ever approached… I write that statement without the benefit of “hindsight.” That is how we have seen it until very recently. It is because of how we define (and many of us still do) technology. The subtle, infinitely varied, hard-to-see technology of Canopus was invisible to us, and therefore for all these mille