Shikasta. Doris Lessing

the planet, six of them in all, and none requiring much effort from you, since you will be entering and leaving them so quickly – none save the last Shell, or Circle, or Zone, Zone Six, which you must study in detail, since you will have to remain there for as long as it takes you to complete the various tasks you have been given: those which can be undertaken only through Zone Six. This is a hard place, full of dangers, but these can easily be dealt with, as is shown by the fact that not once have we ever lost one of our by now many hundreds of emissaries there, not even the most junior and inexperienced. Zone Six can present to the unprepared every sort of check, delay, and exhaustion. This is because the nature of this place is a strong emotion – ‘nostalgia’ is their word for it – which means a longing for what has never been, or at least not in the form and shape imagined. Chimeras, ghosts, phantoms, the half-created and the unfulfilled throng here, but if you are on your guard and vigilant, there will be nothing you cannot deal with.

      For instance. It is suggested that you take time to acquaint yourself with the different focuses available for viewing the creatures of Shikasta. You will find every dimension possible to Shikasta in rooms 1-100 in Section 31, from the electron all the way up to the Dominant Animal. The fascinations of these different perspectives are real dangers. On the scale of the electron Shikasta appears as empty space where tinily vibrate shaped mists – the faintest possible smears of substance, the minutest impulses separated by vast spaces. (The largest building on Shikasta would collapse if the spaces that hold its electrons apart were withdrawn, into a piece of substance the size of a Shikastan fingernail.) Shikastan experience in the range of sound is not something to submit yourself to, if you have not become practised. Shikasta in colour is an assault you will not survive without preparation.

      In short, none of the planets familiar to us is on as strong and as crude levels of vibration as is Shikasta, and too long a submission of one’s being to any of these may pervert and suborn judgment.

      JOHOR reports:

      When I was asked to undertake this mission, my third, it was not expected that I would spend much time in Zone Six, but that I would move through it fast, perhaps stopping only as long as I would need for a task or two. But it was not known then that Taufiq had been captured and that others would have to do his work, myself in particular. And do it quickly, for there would not be time for me to incarnate and grow to adulthood before attending to the various urgencies that had developed because of Taufiq’s misfortune. Our personnel on Shikasta are stretched to capacity as it is, and there is no one equipped to replace Taufiq. It is not always realized that we are not interchangeable. Our experiences, some chosen, some involuntary, mature us differently. We may have all begun on one of the planets, and some of us even on Shikasta in the same way, and with not much more to choose between us than between puppies of the same litter, but after even some hundreds of years, let alone thousands, we have been fused, baked out, crystallized, into forms as different as snowflakes are to each other. When one of us is chosen to ‘go down’ to Shikasta or any other planet, it is only after deliberation: Johor is fitted for this or that task, Nasar for that one, and Taufiq for a specific, difficult long-term job that it seemed he and only he could do – and in parentheses and without emphasis I confess here that there is a weight of self-doubt on me. Taufiq and I have more than once been considered as very alike: not equivalents, never that, but we have often headed a short list, we have been friends for … But how many times, and in how many planets have we worked together! And if so alike, brothers, life-and-death partners, friends on that level where there is nothing that may not be said, and no aspect of each other for which both may not take on absolute responsibility; if we are so close, and he is lost to us, temporarily of course, but nevertheless lost and part of the enemy forces, then – what may I not expect for myself? I record here that as I prepare for this trip, one of whose main tasks is to take over Taufiq’s undone work, that I spend many units of energy reinforcing my own purpose: No, no, I shall not (I tell myself), I shall not go the way of Taufiq, my brother. And again: I shall withstand what I know I must … and this is why I reacted badly to the news that I must spend so much time in Zone Six. I know well from last time that it is a place that weakens, undermines, fills one’s mind with dreams, softness, hungers that one had hoped – one always does hope! – had been left behind forever. But it is our lot, our task, over and over again to submit ourselves to hazards and dangers and temptations. There is no other way. But I do not want to be in Zone Six! I was there twice before, once as a junior member of the Task Force of the First Time, then as Emissary in the Penultimate Time. Of course it will have changed, as Shikasta has.

      I passed through Zones One to Five with all my inputs held to a minimum. I have visited them at various times, and they are lively and for the most part agreeable places, since their inhabitants are those who have worked their way out of and well past the Shikastan drag and pull, and are out of the reach of the miasmas of Zone Six. But they are not my concern now; and traversing them I experienced no more than rapid flickers of forms, sensations, changes from heat to cold, exhilaration. Soon I knew I was close to the environs of Zone Six by what I felt, and without being told I could have said, Ah, yes, Shikasta, there you are again – and with an inward sigh, a summoning of forces.

      A twilight of grief, mists of hungry longing, a sucking drag of all the emotions – and I had to force each step, and it was as if my ankles were being held by hands I could not see, as if I walked weighted by beings I could not see. Out of the mists I came at last and there, where last time I was here I had seen grasslands, streams, grazing beasts, now was only a vast dry plain. Two flat black stones marked the Eastern Gate, and assembled there were throngs of poor souls yearning out and away from Shikasta, which lay behind them on the other side of the dusty plains of Zone Six. Feeling me there, for they could not then see me, they came jostling forward like blind people, their faces turning and searching, and they groaned, a deep yearning groan, and as I still did not show myself, they began a keening chant, or hymn, which I remembered hearing in Zone Six all those thousands of years before.

      

       Save me, God,

       Save me, Lord,

       I love you,

       You love me.

       Eye of God,

       Watching me,

       Pay my fee,

       Set me free …

      Meanwhile, my eyes were at work on those faces! How many of them were familiar to me, unchanged except for the ravages of grief, how many of them I had known, even in the First Time, when they were handsome, wholesome, sturdy animals, all self-reliance and competence. Among them I saw my old friend Ben, descendant of David and his daughter Sais, and he sensed me so strongly that he was standing close against me, tears running down his face, his hands held out as if waiting for mine. I manifested myself in the shape he had seen me last, and put my hands in his, and he flung himself into my arms and stood weeping. ‘At last, at last,’ he wept, ‘have you come for me now? May I come now?’ – and all the others pressed in about us, clutching and holding, and I nearly lost myself into the gulf of their longing. I stood there feeling myself sway, feeling my substance dragged out of me, and I stepped back from them, making them release me, and Ben, too, took away his hands, but stood close, moaning, ‘It’s been so long, so long …’

      ‘Tell me why you are still here?’ I insisted, and they became silent while Ben spoke. But it was no different from what he had told me before, and as he finished and the others stood crying out their stories one after another, I knew I was caught and bound by the necessities of Zone Six, and my whole being was fermenting with impatience and even fear, for all my work was ahead of me, my work was calling me – and I could not get myself free. What they told me was always the same, had always been the same – and I wondered if they remembered how I had stood here, they had stood there, so long ago, saying the same things … they had made themselves leave this gate, and they had turned themselves around and crossed the plain, and had entered Shikasta – some of them recently, some of them not for centuries or millennia – and all had succumbed to Shikasta, had suffered some failure of purpose and will,