Shikasta. Doris Lessing

of the Cities myself, and confirm that Shammat influence is so strong nothing can be expected there. I investigated in depth three of the cities and found not more than a hundred individuals who could respond in any way to Canopean vibrancies.

      Your envoy points out – as have former ambassadors – that races which receive genetic prods, while on the one hand being strengthened towards usefulness and Canopus-contact, on the other are more prone than the average to become corrupted.

      Nevertheless, since the contacts we have established in the Northwest fringe areas and the Extreme-east fringes will fall away from contact in 950 (their) years from now, it is recommended that further genetic addition be attempted on suitable candidates of Areas of the Cities in about four hundred years. This will allow time for the development of a new strengthened strain, but not enough time for this strain to be corrupted by Shammat. This is of course our usual optimistic forecast. I draw this comment to the attention of eugenists. ENVOYS 276 and 277, TAUFIQ and JOHOR, report: (Joint Mission.)

      TAUFIQ:

      I visited the Northwest fringes. Our staff, who set up the Stones, and instructed locals in the Art of the Stones, have all left, most to Planet 35, as instructed. A few went to the Areas of the Cities to instruct suitable candidates in maintaining contact.

      In the Northwest fringes is a stable but sparse population of indigenous stock. They practise agriculture and herd-keeping, neither on a high level. Our staff decided against advanced-level instruction as this has so often in the past led to the opposite of what was intended: extremes of accumulation and the oppression of others. (See later remarks about the Extreme-east fringes.) The basic unit is the tribe. It is still a meagre and unaccommodating landscape. These are very hardy people. Limited mating took place between them and our staff: unprogrammed. Their women are attractive, in a robust way. The progeny may be expected to improve the stock unpredictably. The indigenous people are small, dark-haired, wiry. The introduced genes tend towards tall, extremely fair-skinned blue-eyed or grey-eyed types. (Planet 14.)

      I visited the territories of the Extreme east. The accumulator villages have been abandoned, on instruction. They will soon be derelict. A few individuals were secretly visiting these sites for ‘sacred purposes’, history repeating itself. They have been warned. Our resident envoy has attempted threats and promises. These practices had already resulted in a deteriorating of the mentality. These remarks apply to the areas immediately adjacent to the accumulator villages.

      Otherwise this is a vast civilization already advanced to level G. It is growing, and constantly taking in territory, including the Southeast fringe islands. There is a stable and effective agriculture. The cities are very much more than trade centres. There is an extensive ruling class, previously efficient and devoted to duty, now luxury-loving and effete. The entire civilization is shortly to be overrun by a vigorous, more primitive culture from the north, the northwest, and the desert lands where there is no trace at all of our old Mathematical Cities, nor the more recent cities that flourished before the ice. The effete culture will therefore be revitalized. A selection of individuals has been taught contact. These are merchants and farmers; none of the enfeebled governing class had the qualities. Arrangements have been made to ensure that these instructed individuals will be absent when the invasion takes place, and will return afterwards, to take up their allotted positions.

      An earthquake recently completely devastated the chief east-fringe island. Nothing is left of any of the cities. There remains enough of the agriculture to restart a low level of culture.

      I met the representatives of Sirius. They report success with their experiments. Southern Continent II has been particularly useful to them. The animals introduced there in the last experiment evolved rapidly and well, and were removed, all at once, by intensive space-lift, back to Planet 3.

      They report that limited unplanned matings took place between their representatives and these animals.

      May your envoy take this opportunity of suggesting that when Canopean eugenists map possibilities for Shikasta, they take into account Shikastan sexual propensities. It has long been my opinion, expressed more than once, that when sexuality was emphasized to ensure survival of species, this was perhaps overdone? Your envoy discussed this with Sirian representatives. They, having spent time on Shikasta, agree. They are putting the same point to their eugenists. I would point out that there are few cases in Canopean or Sirian history of individuals or stocks being introduced, sometimes for very short periods of time, without unplanned mating taking place.

      May your envoy take this opportunity of suggesting that a delegation of eugenists actually be sent to Shikasta to experience conditions for themselves?

       JOHOR:

      It is thirty thousand years since I was in Shikasta; 31,505, to be exact.

      How dark it is here! How hard to move, pulled to the earth, pressed down, weighted.

      The air we breathe is so thin and insubstantial, the supplies of SOWF so meagre.

      Entering Shikasta – entering my memories – it is as if everything is dwarfed. Can these people really be the descendants of the towering and regal Giants, the magnificent Natives? So those seem to me now, as I look back from this shrunken time and these minified people who live eight hundred years, when once the expectation of life was many times that. A hurrying, and a scurrying and a frantic cramming of a life into a few starved breaths … scarcely born, and then adult, and then old, and then dead.

      Our people here, maintaining their real life with such difficulty, all acquire a look of quiet endurance, which all too easily melts into horror at moments when the contrasts are too great. And it is only with the greatest of effort that we prevent ourselves from grasping at every sensation that seems to promise or guarantee a meaning, even usefulness – as these creatures do, who lacking the substance, chase after shadows, after anything that seems to remind them – for the memory is still there, somewhere deep in them, of Canopean truth. They look at the sun as if they want to pull it down to them, they linger under a moon which is much further away than I remember it – and they hunger, they yearn, holding up their arms to the sun, and wanting to bathe in moonrays or to drink them. The gleam of light on a tree, or on water, the brief heartbreaking beauty of their young, these things torture them, without knowing why, or they half know, and make songs and tales, always with the hunger behind, a hunger not one of them could define. Yet their little lives are ruled by it, they are the subjects of an invisible king, a kingdom, even while they court Shammat, who feeds their hungers with illusions.

      I have been in the Areas of the Cities, which is where I was for most of my time before. Where the Round City was, the Square City, the Crescent City, and all the other marvels, cities have risen and fallen and risen, over and over again. The waters from the melting ice, the batteries of the ice itself, submerged, ground, destroyed. And yet it is green again, fertile, except where the deserts grow and spread and take possession. There are forests and green plains and herds of animals … I remember the great beasts of Rohanda, the wonderful ancestors of these little animals, miniature lions and tiny deer and half-size elephants that seem to these dwindled people so enormous – yet to those who knew those vast wise beasts of former times, they are endearing, almost toys for children. The children are heartbreaking now. In those times, the children of the Giants, the Natives’ children, were each one born after such deliberation, such thought, each one chosen and from parents known to be the best … each with such a long life, time to grow, time to play, time to think, time to ripen their inner selves and grow fully into themselves. Now these delightful infants are born haphazardly of any mating, any parents, treated well or ill as chance dictates, dying as easily as they are born, and dying anyway so soon after they are born – and yet each child, every one, has all the potentiality, has it still, and completely, to leap from his low half-animal state to true humanity. Each one of them with this potential, and yet so few can be reached, to make the leap.

      I do not like handling their infants, their children: it is a sad business.

      And their women, who give birth to these potentials but not knowing it, or half knowing it.

      And before we are through with the long sad story of Shikasta, so much more, and worse, to come.

      There