The Sirian Experiments

There was a good deal more, too. I made a detour to visit our Planet 13 that had climatic seasons. How did Canopus know so much about us? I was prompted to brood about a wonderful espionage system with equipment beyond anything we could imagine. Planet 13’s disabilities were the result of a hotheaded, and to my mind irresponsible, phase of our early Empire. The counsels of maturer minds in our Colonial Service had been unable to prevent a decision to propel a certain planet, then in orbit with several others around a vast gaseous planet, away from its station there, and into orbit around 13, a rich and fruitful planet, where it could make use of 13’s natural resources of water and food to balance its own barre

The upsets on 13 wiped out millions and completely changed the patterns of fertility—I see that I am talking like Klorathy, when he referred to the horrific cataclysms on Rohanda as the “events.” As far as we were concerned, these unfortunate effects on 13 were enough to prove our policy correct: but there is no arguing that 14 has been producing minerals enough to supply all our Empire ever since.

All I wished, during my stop on 13, was to check briefly on the effects of continual, often violent, climatic change, sometimes from extreme heat to extreme cold. My account of this stopover, which turned out differently—and more dramatically than I expected—will be found in the records, entitled “Under a Punishing Moon.”

It is enough to say here that I learned all I needed about these continual variations.

When I arrived over the designated area of Rohanda and looked down, it was with the thought that somewhere here I had been buffeted and swept about in the blizzards and torrents during the “events”—and that below me must be the mountain where I had rested in my space bubble and seen the fleeing herds of animals and heard their sad, lamenting cry. Now I could see a dozen great cities on a vast plain that was coloured green from its grasses, and deeper green where forests spread themselves. But the grassy areas were showing tints of brown and ochre, and I saw at a glance that deserts were threatening—and was able to diagnose at once that these cities were doomed to be swallowed by the sands. As I have seen often enough on some of our own planets, before we became the skilled administrators we now are. I yearned, as I hovered there in my Space Traveller, to simply descend, give the appropriate orders, see them carried out—and then be able to rejoice that these cities, which looked healthy enough from this height, would live and flourish. It gave me the oddest feeling of check and frustration to know that I could not do any such thing!—that I must keep quiet about what I knew, and must allow long experience to remain unvoiced.

It is not often that an individual as well ensconced in a career, a way of living, as I am—with patterns of work, friends, companions, offspring, and so much varied experience always ready to be pulled into use—it is very seldom, in fact, that one may be attacked suddenly with such a feeling of futility. Of uselessness… which feelings must then at once and inevitably attack much more than an individual sense of usefulness. Again I was afflicted—as I had been before, hovering over the Rohandan scene, but such a different one—with existential doubts. It is not possible to be armoured against such feelings. However, I pushed them away and instructed the crew to hover in the fast-invisible mode over Koshi itself.

I like to examine a city in this way before actually entering it: one may often see at a glance its condition and probable future.

The first thing to be seen here was that it had experienced recent growth, that it bulged and spread out to the west in large suburbs of shining white villas and gardens. These covered more ground than the old city, which was earth coloured, and composed of densely crammed buildings from which rose tall cone-shaped towers. In other words, there was a disparity between the rich and the poor—a punishable disparity, to mind. Gardens of an ornamental kind spread around the western suburbs. Market gardens lay to the south. To the east, the poor mud-coloured dwellings ended in the shabby-looking semi-desert. This great city on its eminence in the plain had lost its vegetation almost entirely. The expanses of browns and yellows that surrounded it had little smears of green in some places, but dust clouds hung over the many roads and paths that ran into the city from all directions. I did not need to know more, and gave the order to set me down on the edge of one of the roads, which we could see were not frequented.

When this was done I experienced the usual exhilaration as I saw the spacecraft disappear like a soap bubble and I was alone and dependent on myself. Also, this was Rohanda, a planet with which I could not help but feel bonded. And I was already able to examine evidences of the “seasons” that were now part of Rohanda’s nature: a cold wind blew hard on my back from the north, off ice and snow fields around the pole, so much more extensive than they had been. And the cold would intensify shortly, for it would be the time of the R-year when the northern hemisphere would be revolving on its tilt away from its sun. I was looking forward to experiencing the approaches to a “winter,” something new for me.

There was no one on this road I had chosen. It was a minor road, unpaved, not much more than a dirt track, though straight and well ditched. Looking ahead at Koshi all I could see of the rich suburbs were a mass of trees in which I knew the houses were disposed. But the poor part of the town rose high, in a pattern of shapes I had not seen anywhere. Very tall and narrow conical buildings, twenty-one of them, all dun coloured and rather like certain ant heaps I had seen in my time on Isolated Southern Continent I, were crammed together, in a small space, looking as if their bases touched—yet already I could see low habitations, as if crumbling ant heap filled what space there was between the cones. I judged these tall buildings to be ten or eleven storeys high, and wondered at the reasons for building so tall when there was all the space any system of government could possibly need—unless this was the reason: tall tightly populated buildings are easily policed and supervised. So I speculated as I walked firmly in, keeping my eyes open for other travellers, for I wore my usual garb, basic Sirian, and carried over my arm a large piece of cloth I had been advised I must envelop myself in as a female.

I did see a group of individuals approaching, and wrapped myself completely in the black cloak, allowing only my eyes freedom. They were all men—that was the first obvious fact. Probably traders. And of a very varied genetic mix. I fancied I was able to see in them the high moulded cheekbones and wide-set eyes of the old giants, as well as the sturdy set of the natives, but this group of twenty or so were quite extraordinarily mixed, of several skin tones, and with grey and green eyes as well as the more familiar brown. They wore loose trousers, and baggy but belted tunics. I had seen variations on this theme so often, and in so many places, I was able to guess that these were not of the upper class who with quite remarkable uniformity everywhere in the Galaxy choose garments that are unsuitable for physical labour and for easy and unconfined movement: galactic nature is very much the same everywhere. But as I was thinking this, I remembered the garments of the Canopeans, which contradicted this rule.