The Sirian Experiments

So disquieting did I find these glimpses of her that I tried to turn my attention from her, and instead reviewed what I knew about recent events so to make some kind of coherent picture.

Rhodia’s main concern, when I was taken prisoner, was to make sure that the talismans should not fall into their hands: very evil use would been made of them. For, in spite of their efforts, Grakconkranpatl had not once managed to steal any of the articles that had, for this time, Canopean effect.

Her second concern—and I was expected to understand and to agree with this order of priorities—was to get me away. She had caused the priests to believe that I had powers they would be wise to fear. They believed I had made the ornaments vanish by use of these powers. But they had not been of one mind, the group of Overlords, or Chief Priests, whom I had seen: they had almost decided to take me out of their city and leave me to make my way back to my own kind if I could—if I could. But I had actually been seen arriving “from the heavens.” They could not cause the memory of this to vanish from the minds of their enslaved peoples. So it had been given out that I was an enemy, drawn to the city and into their hands, by their cu

When I was pushed up on to the plinth they were all apprehensive. There was a point in the ceremony when the priests shouted and sang to their “Gods” that they were the Dead, identifying themselves temporarily with the sacrificed ones who would almost immediately in fact be dead: the victims were in some ambiguous and rather unsatisfactory way—to a rational mind—the same as those murdered them. My call, Death to the Dead, condemned the entire priestly caste. Behind the idol was a stone that moved on levers, used for purposes of trickery and illusion in the ceremonies. As my threat momentarily froze the priests and then made them run from where I stood bathed in the unexpected green ray, Rhodia and her accomplices turned the stone, and pulled me down into the rooms underneath the temple proper. This was the most dangerous part of the escape, for of course those clever priests were not likely to remain confused for long. It was, for a few moments, speed that had to save us. There were passages under the buildings of the city, ru

It was this that saved us, the jealous knowledge of mutually suspicious sects. But Rhodia had learned of every one of the passageways. As our band fled deeper and further, the guards of the priests were ru

We found ourselves on the side of a high mountain, in a little cleft among rocks, screened by bushes. Far below us was the priests’ dark city. And I saw those poor slaves who had come with us fling themselves on the sun-fed earth and kiss it and weep. And when they lifted their faces, of that faded red-earth colour, to the sun, I fancied that I saw health come into that starved skin even as I watched. And as Rhodia watched, standing aside, waiting for them to be past their first convulsion of delight.

She caught my questioning thought and said to me: “These are the slaves I was able to talk to, and who I was able to trust.”

It was an obvious, a simple, thing to say. She could have said nothing else! Yet it struck me so painfully then, the strength, the inexorableness of the laws that govern us all. Down in the chilly dim prisons under the priests’ city, slaves who—some of them—could remember nothing else, having been born there, had been able to respond to some quality that they—recognised? remembered?—in a fellow slave who was better than they only in as much as she was able, so it must often seemed to them, to torment them, stand in authority over them… But they had seen, felt something in her, listened; and because of some—chance?—qualities in themselves, had been found reliable. Trustworthy. And so it was they who now kissed the earth on the free mountainside, and lifted their faces to the sun. For the first time in their lives, for some of them. It was a thought enough to chill the heart—my heart that, if it were not for Rhodia, would now have been lying in a pool of blood in the idol’s hollowed-out belly. And she knew what I was thinking and smiled. And for the first time I caught from her a physical memory of Nasar, and his derisive angers. It was Nasar, for that moment, sharing with me an appreciation of our grim necessities… so strongly there that I could have been back him at the top of the tall cone with the snow flying past.

And then I saw her quelling the emotions of her charges, and urging them to their feet, and pointing out over the slopes of the mountains to the north. For they were to go one way into the forests, for safety, and she and I another. When they had gone off, some fifty or so, turning to smile and hold up their arms to her in thankfulness and farewell, she came to me and, rummaging in the folds of her garments again, produced the ornaments and told me to put them on. As I did so, first the band on my thigh, then the girdle of cool starstones, and then the bracelets, and lastly the necklace, it was as if my mind cleared, my thoughts steadied, and even a short moment after my old state of mind had been banished by the secret strengths of the ornaments, it seemed as dreadful and inconceivable a place or state of being as the dungeons of the city now seemed. I looked at Rhodia with clarity and steadiness of thought and saw her straight. Again, my thought was that she was suffering from some horrible disease, like a leprosy. She had a faded, drained look, as if she had been dusted with ashes. I not seen anything like it before. The face, the hands, what was visible of her arms and legs, were all dried up, and had a shrivelled look, as a corpse sometimes does. And the hair on her head, which by race was a vigorous glossy black, had white in it.

She saw how I stared, and she said: “Sirius, you are looking at the physical aspect of the Shikastan Degenerative Disease.”

“Rohanda has become so decadent?”

“Now, by halfway through their lives, sometimes even sooner, they start to show signs of decay. This is a process that accelerates generation by generation. They have even forgotten that this is recent thing with them.”

I could not at once recover from the horror of it. I was trying to imagine what it must be like for these unfortunates, trapped inside their enfeebled defective bodies, and I was wondering if it was not possible for Canopus, with their knowledge of the techniques of how to discard bodies at will, to aid the poor creatures.

She sighed, and then gave her short characteristic Nasar-laugh. “There are other priorities. Believe me. We have other, and most urgent, things to do.”

“Necessities,” I said, meaning to joke with her.

And she acknowledged my intention with a smile, but said, “Yes, indeed, Sirius—necessities!”

And on this familiar note we began our journey eastwards through the alleys and passes of the mountain chains along the coast. We went up and we went down, but it was without haste. We were not in danger, she said. This was because “our greatest danger is also our protection. On this occasion.” And when I pressed her to elucidate she gave me a long strong look from eyes that I saw had around their black pupils colourless edges, the tax of Rohandan age—a look that made me think of the whisper: Sirius, be careful!—which seemed to sound, now, all the time, somewhere in my deepest self. She said only: Your greatest danger. Yours, Sirius.” And would not say any more on the subject. Though she talked willingly and at length about the city we were going to.