The Sirian Experiments

At any rate, this was the main reason for our reconsidering Planet 3 (1), and it did not appear on the official list of reasons as released finally by our deliberating Conference. (It is my experience that this is a general rule, to be observed everywhere and in all kinds of situations: the real, the propelling cause of a situation or decision or change of policy is never mentioned at all, and must be sought for behind and buried under the peripheral ones.)

The reasons were listed as follows:

1.Planet 3 (1) is the only one of our Colonised Planets, or Planet’s Planets, left undeveloped, or not made use of in some way or another.

2.To choose an analogy from the remote past, it is as if a well-run farm of the old kind allowed a single field to remain uncultivated. (Our younger members are particularly fond of these archaic and romantic comparisons—one may almost say that it is a cult with them.)

3.This planet, being so near to Sirius, would be more economical to use for its minerals than other mineral-rich planets.

4.Planet 3 has shown signs of the familiar moral stagnation and will benefit from the debates and disagreements resulting from the decision to bring its moon to life.

5.Planet 3 (1) presents new problems, and their solution will add to our stock of scientific knowledge.

6.There have been reminders from our perso

I had a message sent to Canopus asking if it would inconvenience them to let us use part of their territory for a limited and definite time. I was not unaware of a certain duplicity here, if one was not to call it, simply, diplomacy; the point was that we did not know exactly how long we would need the territory. We wanted the highest possible mountains. Extremely high mountains covered a large area of the southern part of the landmass. These had become higher still, more extensive, during the internal squeezings and pushings of the planet during the unfortunate “events.” We believed, through our espionage, that Canopus was not making much use of these mountainous areas. (Later we discovered this was mistaken.) But in any case, the message came back that they were not able to lend us these mountains or any part of them, and they “wished to draw our attention to” the very high mountain chains along the western edge of the Isolated Southern Continent II. Thank you very much! I thought; but of course we did have these mountains, and they were adequate for our purpose. One motive for at least attempting occupation of their Great Mountain was that our reports indicated that Klorathy was or had been stationed in those parts. I had not heard anything further from him.

Nor from Nasar.

My experience with Nasar had gone into the background of my thoughts shortly after it ended. This in spite of an intriguing report of a conference on Canopus that had caused “great and unprecedented interest.” It was a question of whether Rohanda should be entirely given up. “Top and Authoritative Policy” had been challenged. “The debate, which lasted longer than any previous debate, and which argued the very bases of Canopean colonial policy, ended in a majority vote in favour of the maintenance of Rohanda.” Colonial policy been changed in a way that was unprecedented. “The disgruntled minority had put forward a suggestion which was adopted: that with the exception of those officials who had always been involved with service on Rohanda, service on the recalcitrant and burdensome planet would be voluntary: no one should be forced to sign up for a tour of duty.” I translated these concepts, all very Sirian, into what I imagined would be nearer to Canopean ideas, in accordance with the conversations I had had with Nasar, and with what had I learned of the nature of Canopus.

But a fact remained: there been a conference on Canopus, as I had suggested to Nasar, to debate conditions of colonial service on Rohanda. (Their Shikasta.) He had laughed at the mere idea of it, but it had happened, nevertheless. But I had too little information. All this was not even secondhand: one of our officials, visiting Colony 10 for a routine exchange of information with their officials, had heard this conference mentioned in a casual conversation and had enquired about it, but without any sense of its importance, or its historic nature… And I had to confess, thinking it all over, that perhaps it was not all that important. How was I to know the emphases Canopus must place on events, according to that “Necessity” of theirs! Because a disgruntled and disaffected—I hoped and believed only temporarily—official disagreed with a top-level policy, this did not mean that one had to take it that seriously! Officials on my level had to consider this kind of thing all the time, and I took it as no more than routine. All the same, there had been a conference, and Nasar had laughed, and laughed, at the very idea of such a conference being possible… I had to end up with this small fact, and abandon all other speculation.

The reason I did not dwell overmuch on my visit to Koshi was that it was all too much for me. That is the truth. What I had learned was a challenge to everything I was as a Sirian official. How could it not be? And yes, I was only too aware that to think on these lines—that I, Ambien II, might have ideas and intimations beyond my role as Sirius (I thought often enough of how Nasar had called me, simply, Sirius!) and was even begi

No, I certainly was not able to see myself as an alien to Sirius. For that was what it amounted to. Was I to put myself forward at one of our regular Conferences on Overall Policy and say—but what? That I believed Canopus to be altogether finer and higher than we were, and that we should go humbly to Canopus begging for instruction? Wrap it up as I might, that is what it amounted to.

I have already made it clear in this memoir, or account, of mine that our attitudes toward Canopus made that quite inconceivable.

Was I then—knowing this—to start propaganda work among my close colleagues and personal allies, such as the others of the Five, or Ambien I, or my offspring, with the idea of changing a nucleus that would (but how?) slowly change all of Sirius? The formation and cultivation of such “cells” of course was pere

I might consider this, playing with the idea sometimes, but could not imagine myself actually doing it. There is such a thing as the art of the possible, and working with it. Well, it was not possible that I, with my position in the Empire, my experience, my temperament, should start what amounted to revolutionary cell-building!

What alternatives were there? I now have to state, categorically, that I could not envisage any alternatives. These were the possibilities… as I saw it. I did, dimly and distantly, see that Canopus itself might have ideas of its own… I would entertain, sometimes, these rather visionary notions, and always when brooding about my various encounters with Canopus—where I had failed, where I had, in spite of these failures, learned. The practised and practising person that was Ambien II had to recognise facts, when I saw them. Facts, the more experienced one became, were always to be understood, garnered, taken in, with that part of oneself most deeply involved with processes, with life as it worked its way out. Facts were not best as understood formulas or summings up, but through this inward groping and recognition. Well, what I recognised in contemplating my relations with Canopus was some sort of purpose. It was unmistakable. To dismiss it, deny it, meant denying everything I had ever learned in my long career as participator in events. I could not dismiss it. But I could say that it was all too much for me. I postponed it. And for a long time was busy with my work, which I was not enjoying, and which inwardly I was questioning and feeling sapped and diminished by because of an ever-increasing sense of its (oh yes, treachery and treason, I know!), because of, in fact, the steady, unstoppable growth in me of that person or individual who was not “Sirius.”