Shikasta (29 page)

The old live waiting, longing, for the young to come to their senses and understand they personally have so little time left, and the planet has so little time left: ‘For God's sake! There is no time left, no time left for you, and not for us either, while you peacock about and play little games …'

But there the young are, in their hordes, their gangs, their groups, their cults, their political parties, their sects, shouting slogans, infinitely divided, antagonistic to each other, always in the right, jostling for command. There they are – the future, and it is self-condemned.

The old have no future, because particularly for creatures who must die almost before they come to their senses, the young have to be a future. The old, looking back on their little space of tinted mist, say, ‘I haven't lived.' And it is true. But they look at their young – and know that these will not live either.

This is one of the powerful forces at work here, now, on Shikasta. Among the innumerable divisions and subdivisions, peoples, races, subraces, ideas, creeds, religions, one operates everywhere, in every geographical area, the gulf that separates the young from the old.
   JOHOR
reports:

Here is a list of the individuals I was asked to check. Where their situations are satisfactory and their growth according to plan, I have not included them. I have however added some our agents suggested might be in difficulties, whose situation
was not yet known in Canopus, and therefore their names were not on the original list.

These are listed separately from the individuals I had to locate and help because of Taufiq's dereliction: they did not fall within his scope.

[Shikastans spend a good part of their time being surprised at each other's behaviour and commenting on it. This is partly because their knowledge in the area they categorize as ‘psychological' is faulty, and partly because they do not apply what they do know.

Most of the surprise, pleasurable or otherwise, felt by them because of some development, is when an inner drive is working its way out by means of encounters or clashes of personalities. Folk wisdom encapsulates the knowledge that people often are drawn towards those who are bound to cause them pain. And it is true that the hidden power, or force, that drives Shikasta along its difficult and painful roads, and which is felt by some of them as a ‘guide' or ‘inner monitor' is not one that may consider ‘happiness' or ‘comfort' when it is operating to bring some individual nearer to self-knowledge, understanding.

It is not necessary, most of the time, to direct an individual into this or that relationship or situation – components of his or her personality, aspects of themselves they may not be aware of at all, will push them, by the laws of attraction or repulsion, into the places, or near to the people, who will benefit them. Very often two people, or a group of people, may meet in forceful and beneficial situations, and onlookers may even cry out that this must be the result of a ‘miracle' or ‘divine intervention'. The couple, or group, have been drawn to each other sometimes across oceans, or overcoming ‘impossible' hazards, because they need each other – need
to learn from each other. But often this process, to the uninstructed onlooker, seems like a meaningless or wasted conflict, or a stalemate, or even damaging.

And of course sometimes such encounters are indeed mistaken, wasteful, damaging. How could it be otherwise on poor Shikasta, in its extremity, at the end of the long processes that have brought it to such a shameful state?

But again, very often not: and the people involved may later say to themselves, to each other, of that time they experienced as difficult, or painful almost beyond bearing, or mistaken: What a lot I learned then! I wouldn't have missed it for worlds!
Archivists
.]

33. Her undertaking was to manage a vast family fortune, she being the sole heiress. She was not seduced by wealth, to which she remained basically indifferent, but by the men attracted to her fortune. She married several times, never usefully to herself, though one of the men did profit by the experience to the extent that an aspect of himself was fully completed and he was able to move on to work on another. But she was not able to pull herself out of the cycle of ‘falling in love' and then becoming disillusioned. Discussions with Agent 15 suggested that her fortune should be drastically, even grotesquely, increased in ways never expected by her and which underlined her responsibilities. It is probable that the shock of this will return her to responsibility. Agent 15, who has undertaken this assignment, will arrange, too, for her to meet No. 44 who remains in the doldrums, and whose influence on her will be, we believe, constructive.

44. If he does not benefit, Agent 15 will move him on to something else. But he cannot be in a worse situation than he is now, and the risk of a setback from an involvement, even a business one, with a woman so infantile must be taken.

14. Her undertaking was to devote herself to caring for a crippled and difficult widowed mother. She did this from the
age of thirty. The relentless, unremitting task was within her capacity until she herself became elderly and suffered an illness which enfeebled her. She was unable to pull herself out of the resulting depression, and was considering suicide, or even abandoning her mother, now senile, into an institution. I added to her burden, causing her to become responsible for an aunt in as bad a condition as her mother, but with a vigorous, abrasive, and humorous nature. 14 did not go under, but rallied, and under the stimulus of the blow, ‘took on' the visiting and care of other old men and women in the neighbourhood. She is restored to her former capable and optimistic condition.

21. This man, of the oppressed black race in Southern Continent I (southern area), had undertaken to withstand oppression for the sake of others. He fell early into political action, as was expected and planned, for there was no other means of expressing self-reliance, self-respect, in that area, at that time. He was imprisoned, tortured, and became crippled as a result. It was at this point that he lost his way, becoming embittered and discouraged. He was turned in on himself, and was solitary, known to his fellows as the Angry One. If he had continued in this state, he would soon have attracted to himself an early death. He was earning his living as a vegetable seller in a ‘black' township, when he was again arrested in some civic disorder and unjustly imprisoned. This added to his rage. It was obvious to everyone in the prison that he could not last long, for he combated authority and his fellows in every way possible. I caused him to be put together with a man as crippled as he, as unjustly treated, and who had accepted his state with the aid of one of the – very many – local religious cults. These two men served out their prison sentences as friends. Now, released, they continue friends, and work for the improvement of conditions for the many crippled and handicapped children in the ‘black' township.

42. The undertaking was to live as normal and wholesome and ordinary a life as was available in a time of such horror, reminding others forced into extraordinary situations
by war, destitution, political hazard, of the possibilities of a simple, family life, and particularly of how parents may care for and guide their children. He was brought up by a mother who, unexpectedly widowed, consoled herself with food: indulgent, she taught him self-indulgence. He was obsessed with food. This is not an uncommon condition: food has assumed an importance that astonishes every one of us visiting Shikasta. There are many factors that have gone to create this situation. First, innumerable people never get enough to eat, and so they are obsessed with the need for food: and if they are in fact released from indigence, food becomes more than a necessity. Second, wars have imposed on vast areas of Shikasta periods when food becomes something to be dreamed of, longed for: when food returns, these habits remain. Third, as has been commented on, the economies of large parts of Shikasta are geared to consumption, so each individual, every minute, is being pressured into thinking about food and drink, and very few are able to withstand it. And then of course there is Shammat the greedy, whose poison is at work in the bodies and minds of every Shikastan. So extreme is this situation that it is not thought shocking, in a world where most of the inhabitants starve and half starve, for individuals to travel from one city to another, or one country to another, or even one continent to another, for the sake of good eating, attracted by places whose cuisine is notable. In describing the attractions of a city, first of all will be listed the food that is available and even the details of the cooking.

When 42 married, he chose a woman, who like nearly everyone he met, thought about food more than almost anything else. Their household was dominated by the buying, cooking, and eating of food. Their children were brought up to consider food of supreme importance. Agent 9 in the report before this one explained that it was arranged for 42 suddenly to lose his livelihood, and positioned where he could choose to run a restaurant. The intention was he might come to regard the processes of eating and cooking in a more objective light. But he, his wife, his children, and some of
their friends became obsessed with a restaurant that was famous not only in his own country but in several others. Food was never out of their minds, and it was clear that things were worse than before. I have arranged for him to be invited by a certain international agency because of his knowledge of every aspect of nutrition to become adviser to a nutritional programme in certain extremely poor areas in Southern Continent I. I believe that he and his wife may accept this invitation, and they, plunged into daily, hourly contact with the extremes of hunger, may be shocked out of their preoccupation. This leaves the problem of the children, additional to my assignment, and I have asked Agent 20 to intervene here.

17. She undertook to risk her sanity – in a time when more and more people become mad, or live on the edges of madness, or who can expect to ‘break down' several times in a life – in order to explore these areas calmly and chart them, for the benefit of others. This was more than she was able to sustain. She had to undergo more and worse pressures than we expected, due to the early death of her mother. Some individuals near her have learned from her as to the possibilities and risks and lessons of mental imbalance, but she herself has not kept balance. A great part of her life has been spent in mental hospitals, or in sheltered situations, at the others' expense, both financial and emotional. A previous report described her condition, with suggestions for positive intervention, but these did not lead to improvement. I contacted her in a mental hospital where she was by choice, and found her stubborn and recalcitrant: to keep herself going with even the intermittent and tenuous hold on sanity she does possess, means that she has to be stubborn and suspicious: she has been treated with stupidity and brutality too often. I have arranged that a certain doctor with unusual insight into these conditions, working silently and with discretion inside his profession, shall contact her and work with her, suggesting ways in which she may describe what she experiences so as to help others. This will be of benefit to
both, but I do not hold out much hope.

NOTE:
I was wrong. See added material, Lynda Coldridge, attached.

4. At a time when the convention has been that information about scientific discovery should be freely available, but when in fact great areas of research, mostly, but not all, to do with military possibilities, have remained concealed, so that the public knows only part of the horrors being brewed for them, this man undertook to work inside a military scientific research establishment. He had been remarkably good at his work, and early became eminent in this field, though his name was not known outside a small circle of similar searchers. But he has been and is in a key position. Slowly he became obsessed with the horrific nature of his work, which resulted in neurosis – conflicting duties to ‘country', ‘science', ‘family', etc., and so on, which he was unable to solve, made him ill. He was ill, privately, and secretly, for years, for there was no one with whom he could discuss his situation. While maintaining an ability to work, and even furthering discovery in a field he increasingly considered criminal, inwardly he has been in a nightmare of guilt. I arranged for him to meet, at an international conference on another topic, a man working in the same field as himself in an ‘enemy' country – I put this in quotes because these are times when enemy countries may become allies overnight, or may be secretly allied in some ways while at war in others. These two men, both with difficulty carrying the weight of their burden of knowledge, encountered each other at once, drawn together because of their real inner preoccupations. They have arranged for leakages of some of their more deadly information, in ways that will make it less lethal, and postpone its use. This man is therefore back on the road he chose. His time will be spent more and more in the dissemination of this secret information, until he is arrested and imprisoned.

Now follow the individuals whose situation was brought to
my attention as needing assistance. I number them according to System 3.

1 (5). This individual's chief characteristic was a critical sense: accurate, and keen. Various influences during upbringing reinforcing this equipment, any situation he found himself in was ‘seen through' by him at once. He left his own milieu early, rebelling against a parental situation in which he could see nothing but hyprocrisy, and married young. He had three children, found himself entombed in ‘mediocrity and hypocrisy' and left for various unconventional arrangements with women, three illegitimate children resulting. He married again, had two children, but the marriage did not hold. Again he married, and divorced, with one child. At the age of fifty-five he was alone, much impaired and made nonproductive by guilt. He has earned his living always on the fringes of the arts, often as critic and satirist. But a sense of derision that has never allowed him to succumb to any situation has always been complicated by a warm and generous heart – which attribute is strengthened by guilt, and caused his continually to fluctuate from ‘no' to ‘yes'.