The Sirian Experiments

I told the Department that my mission must be postponed. I sent a message to Klorathy that I was going to Rohanda, and ordered the Space Traveller to set me down near our old station. We had maintained this post, though it had several times fallen into disuse, and twice been destroyed by earthquakes. It was repaired partly through sentiment: I had been so usefully happy there. Now I promised myself a short space of freedom and thought, in solitude, for Klorathy would need time to reach me. For one thing, he have to enquire from my Home Planet where on Rohanda he could find me… so far had I forgotten what one might expect of Canopean abilities!

I walked by myself up to the little group of buildings among low foothills, the towering ranges of the western mountains at my back, a good way to the south from where I done the same, going towards Lelanos, and as I approached thought they did not look uninhabited. Had the Lela

There was someone sitting, back to the light, across the room. I at once that it was Klorathy. Though, of course, it was technically impossible that he should have got here in the time since my message went out. This meant that he had known I would be here, in this place, well before the message did go out, and even before I had decided myself… I was absorbing this as I went towards him saying: “This is Sirius.”

“I am an uninvited visitor, I know,” said he; and I left the remark unanswered, meaning him to feel that I was making a point. And went to sit where I could see him clearly. I had not seen him since the experience on their Colony 11. It is of course a not uncommon thing to see, on this or that planet, within the Canopean aegis or within ours, an individual one recognises, so that one goes forward to say: “Greetings, Klorathy,” or Nasar or whoever it might be. But then one sees it as a type one has recognised, a species, a kind—and what then looks back from inside this known shape is an individual quite strange to one. It has always been, to me, a disturbing business, to be with this shape, which is that of a remembered friend or associate: and to match gestures, glances, ma

I had long been considering the Canopean ways of re-juvenation and re-issue. I have given a good deal of time to this problem since. And I want to make the point at this time that I consider we, Sirius, would do well to master these other techniques.

There is nothing we do not know about substitution and prosthetics. We replace parts of the body as fast as they wear out. I do not think there is an organ or a tissue in me that was Ambien II in pre-Disaster time, let alone even what the Canopeans call the First Time. There is nothing left even of what made up my being when I was whirled about the skies during the “events.” Even the ichor in my veins has been replaced many times. But these transplants and transfusions are costly in time and patience. Yes, I know that the argument will be that a vast quantity of admirable technicians would be put out of work; that many skills and techniques would become redundant. But this is a question falls under the heading of the existential problem, question, or dilemma. If we have answered that, in all other fields, by always accepting advances in knowledge even at the cost of falling populations, as classes of work become obsolete, then it is consistent for us to consider whether we should adopt the Canopean ways of self-perpetuation. How simple to “die”—and to take on new physical equipment. After all, it is not even necessary to go through the tedious business of having to endure infancy and childhood—they learned to bypass all that. How pettifogging and even pedantic the Canopean attitude to outworn physical equipment makes ours look! We patch and preserve—they throw an inefficient body aside and step into a new one without fuss, sentimentality, or regret.

Klorathy had inhabited three different bodies since I had seen him last. And he told me that Nasar was at that time down in our Southern Continent I as very small brown male, a hunter, bringing a species up to a new height of knowledge about its position in relation to “The Great Spirit.” Which the was formulation suitable for that place.

Klorathy told me this in a way that meant it was a rebuke—a rebuke to us for our negligence, We had no stations on that continent then.

And so we two engaged in, if not conflict, at least disagreement, and from the very first moment.

I was with Klorathy for fifty R-years; and I will sum up the essence of our being together thus: that he was there to bring me to a new view of the Sirian usage of the planet, a new view of ourselves altogether. And he was prepared to go to a great deal of trouble… from the start I was wondering what sort of importance Canopus could possibly be attributing to it all, to designate Klorathy, one of their senior Colonial officials, to my tutelage for such a long time. Of course I did not fool myself that this was an individual matter. No, it was Canopus and Sirius—as always. But I recognised that I was in a familiar position. Nasar… Klorathy… or whatever names they might be choosing to use, whatever shapes they wore, when with me, were—I had to accept it—instructors.

And Klorathy sat there patiently with me in that pleasant, airy room, where we looked out together over landscapes I almost was able to match with what I remembered—and talked.

When I had lived here during the best time, in the days when I thought of Rohanda almost as my home, what I saw from the foothills was sava

There was nothing now in this continent pleasant to hear about. Klorathy was making certain that I did hear, and, as I have said, with the intention of making me feel it all as a responsibility. I shall never forget how, through those days of preparation—as he clearly saw it—I was held there by him, held by his determination, that I should not be allowed to escape anything of the truth. Sometimes, evading the necessity of looking at him, I gazed out into the hot steamy perspectives of green that were so often drenched by sultry rains: but otherwise I sat regarding him, Klorathy, taking in and wondering at the authority of this person who never demanded, never enforced, but who had only to be there, be present, be himself, to make of what he said a claim and something that had to be attended to.