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The third safeguard was a jealously kept law that the currency used to facilitate the exchange of goods should never be allowed to acquire a self-breeding value. That is, the coins used were only and always to be used as a means of exchange and nothing else. If any individual or group of individuals was to fall into debt, then no interest could be charged, and the debt itself must be abrogated at the end of seven years. Rhodia had caused to come into existence a body of instruction, framed as tales and songs, to enforce the message that if once “money” was allowed to become a commodity on its own account, then the downfall of Lelanos could be shortly expected, because she or he who charged “interest” would control the supply of goods and of labour and a ruling class would become inevitable. The songs and stories were based on the histories of i
“And does this mean,” I enquired of Rhodia, “that Lelanos can be expected to fall away?” For, walking towards it, and then into its outer suburbs, I was struck with the manifest health and sanity of the place, the absence of poverty and deprivation, the real and inbred democracy that ruled here—for one may see its opposite in signs of servility, fear, deceitfulness.
And Rhodia said only: “You will see for yourself.”
She had a small house towards the centre of the place, in a group of them set around a small square. She lived there alone now, for her children had grown and left. The house had two small rooms on an upper floor and two on the ground floor. She had lived in it since the city was built, and had resisted all pressures on her by her children to move into a larger house—and when she told me this, her eyes met mine with a mordant amused glance I remembered from Koshi. Oh yes, I was being told quite enough to make me suspect that my arrival here was at point in the city’s fortunes before a fall, or decline: and in the next few days it seemed to me that Rhodia was doing everything to impress on me, not only the charm, the health, the good sense of this place, but, at the same time, what was wrong with it. And I could not help wondering why she did so…
Looking back I see that everything conspired to put me into a high (or low!) but at least irrational and emotional condition. First of all, the contrast between this lovely civilised city with its horrible opposite across the mountains. Within a few days I had been taken from one to the other, and they illustrated extremes of what was possible on this planet: I had experienced, was still experiencing, within myself, these two extremes. And there had been the unhurried walk here, with Rhodia, or Nasar, and the way this presence—this Canopean reality—seemed to explore and challenge my deepest self. And there had been something else. I had traversed a zone of forest in no different from any other, but this in fact been the barrier zone between the Lela
Lelanos was a villainous place—so the rumours went—feeding on flesh and blood, ruled by a self-perpetuating oligarchy that would lay in ruins any attacking city. Every kind of chance or even contrived incident or event was pressed into service to give credence to these tales. When I heard some of them on our way to Lelanos, from a terrified tribesman who had been fed all his life on stories of the cruelties of Lelanos, I felt my whole self powerfully affected. The shiverings and shudderings of the poor wretch as he described Lelanos the horrible showed how skilful had been the work of Rhodia and her associates. This propaganda work, and nothing else, had kept Lelanos safe. The clever and cu
No, I conclude now, but was not dispassionate enough to do so then, the sojourn in the cold dungeons, the deprivation of my protective devices, close contact with the Canopean—all this had unbalanced me. And still Shammat rang in my mind and pulled me towards it—towards Tafta, who was working on me powerfully, though I did not know it. I was begi
It is strange thing that I, Ambien II, after many long ages of a Colonial Service that supervised the continual and often—as we had to know—painful adjustment of i
I would wander about the streets and avenues of this place, sometimes with Rhodia and sometimes by myself, and everything about these people hurt me. That they should have been brought to a such pitch of responsibility and civil awareness in such a short time… and from such unpromising material, merely a few barbarous tribes living only to keep alive… and that they should use each other with such alert and lively and free kindness… and that all this was the achievement of poor wretches who were so far gone with the Rohandan Degenerative Disease that hardly a whole or healthy specimen was to be seen among them… and that every one of them, almost from middle age, was struck as if with an invisible withering blast, leaving them enfeebled and bleached and shrunk… and that… and that… there was no end to the sights and sounds that could inspire me to pitying anger, to the need to protect and keep safe.
Rhodia watched all this in me, and I knew she did, and I was by now in the grip of a resentment against her. Against Canopus. Yet I did, just occasionally, gain the most faint of insights into my condition and was able to match it with Nasar himself, in Koshi, wrung with conflict, and with the pain of this place, this unfortunate Rohanda. Or Shikasta.
A great deal that I saw later was very far from me then. For instance, there was my casual, almost careless, approach to the priests’ dark city, allowing myself to so easily be taken prisoner. How to account for that? For never before, not on any planet, had I behaved in a comparable way. I saw after it was all over, and my subjection to Shammat was past, that there had been a softening and slackening all through me, long before my descent to Rohanda on this visit, and this was due to my low spirits and i