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We had evolved beyond using force: Canopus had shown us this path long ago. (By this I mean the use of large numbers of people, under duress, for tasks they found abhorrent or demeaning. This did not mean that we did not conscript for work that everyone agreed to find interesting—such as the Colonial Service.) It was not possible for us simply to round up the numbers needed for mining, quarrying, building and so on, and then turn them into a prison population to do society’s dirty work.
In the preceding remarks to do with our condition during that time, I have not yet done more than mention the space drive, which was the greater part of our development—indeed, the motor that governed all our technical development.
Our crisis had its own built-in solution from the begi
I have now said enough to set the background to our experiments on Rohanda—which of course was only one of the planets being used in this way.
There are very few biosociological experiments not the result of natural development; whether they are set up deliberately or merely monitored as they unfold. Our first on Rohanda was imposed on us by necessity throughout and came definitely into the category of those that are observed during changes imposed by extraneous pressures.
I am starting with the Lombis, not because it was the first experiment but because it had long-term effects on the planet.
THE LOMBI EXPERIMENT. SOME OTHERS
Colonised Planet 23 needed to be made ready for the Thinkers… the reader may detect a note of derision in that phrase: but it is not my intention to detail social controversies of that long-past time: the criticisms of the institution of a planet devoted entirely to one function were certainly many, but these did not in any way affect it. It was a barren planet, waterless, all rock and sand and extinct volcanoes. Our activities there ca
They had to be built. This involved the use of large numbers of ordinary labourers, not only for the putting together of the dome-sections, which were of course manufactured elsewhere—on C.P. 3, at that time specialised for this type of manufacture—but for clearing the ground, a formidable task on that uneven and rocky terrain, which needed hundreds of different types of machine. I have said that our many and varied populations all had been taught to consider themselves to have gone past this type of work and would not be induced to undertake it.
We had come up against a problem, central to the development of our Empire, which the Lombi Experiment was directly concerned with. It was this: as soon as we had colonised a new planet that already had on it an indigenous population, and even if these were at the begi
What we were considering, at the time Rohanda’s new phase began, was why and how the mechanism worked that our mere appearance on a planet began this remarkable process. It was one that we found embarrassing, unwanted. We needed peoples at different levels. We already had billions of privileged peoples entitled to every benefit of technology. We did not want to discover, and then colonise, planet after planet of savages or semisavages who then, it seemed almost at once, would become privileged citizens. In short, we needed a reservoir or bank of populations whom we could use for ordinary, heavy, undifferentiated work.
We had recently found, and explored, Planet 24. This was in a solar system distant from both ours and Rohanda’s: too distant to be conveniently incorporated in our Empire in a closely interacting bond. Visits would have to be infrequent, and strictly functional. But it was a productive and fertile place, with an atmosphere, and an indigenous population of animals of a common—and useful—kind. They were of simian type, using four legs or two according to need, were both vegetarian and carnivorous and extremely strong and vigorous. They had long but not overthick hair on their heads, shoulders, and backs, but little in front. They were endowed with powerful shoulders and arms. They were squat, and shorter than any of the species we had discovered anywhere. Compared to the peoples of our Mother Planet they were a third of our height.