Shikasta (4 page)

We have to look at things now rather differently. In short, it is a question, if not of apportioning blame – never a very helpful process, tending always to draw the attention away from essentials, rather than focusing it – then of knowing what went wrong, so as to avoid it on other planets. But the main cause of the disaster was what that word
dis-aster
implies: a fault in the stars. That we could not foresee, beyond acknowledging that nothing on Rohanda could be taken for granted. If there had not been that shift in stellar alignments, it would not have mattered what the Shammat agents were doing, or plotting.

But how was it we did not know they were there?

The fault was partly ours – Canopus. As for Sirius, our relations continued to be formally correct: exchanges of information took place between the Colonial Services on the mother planets. At the local Rohandan or Shikastan level, they did not behave worse than we had expected, considering the much lower level of their Empire. But it
is
this lower level of the Sirian Empire which is the key to this and other problems of Rohanda/Shikasta; and my understanding of it is different now. It must be remembered that we servants of Canopus are also in the process of evolution, and our understandings of situations change as we do. [See 
History of the Sirian Empire.
]

In short, we were not thinking much of Shammat at all. It is easy now to say we were mistaken. Puttiora itself was concerned, or so it seemed, to keep well out of our way: the alliance between the Empire of Sirius and the Canopean
Empire was not to be taken lightly! Throughout our part of the galaxy there was peace, there was harmonious development, and no one challenged us. Why should they? Seldom has the galaxy seen such a blaze of accomplishment, such a long period without any war at all.

Perhaps it is the fault of the species who thrive in peace, mutual help, aspirations for more of the same – to forget that outside these borders dwell very different types of mind, feeding on different fuel. It is not that Canopus did not guard itself from the vile Puttiora emanations, that we did not keep ourselves informed about that revolting empire, which dismayed us more because it could only remind us of our earlier, less pleasant stages of development – it was not that we were negligent in that. But Puttiora did not challenge us anywhere else – so why on Rohanda?

And so we did not take Shammat enough into account. That Puttiora should allow an outpost on a planet all rock and desert had always seemed to us inexplicable, though the rumours did come that Shammat had been colonized by criminals fleeing from Puttiora, that Puttiora had ignored them until it was too late. We had no idea at all of how Shammat was sucking and draining sources of nourishment everywhere they could be found, of how it built itself up, a thief getting fat on its loot. When Shammat was already a successful pirate state, we still thought of it as a disgraceful but unimportant appendage to the terrible but fortunately far-distant Puttiora.

And what of the Giants, that alert, intelligent species who had everything on Rohanda under their control?

Again, we believe that this is a question of benign and nurturing minds not being able to credit the reality of types of mind keyed to theft and destruction. Colony 10 had never been anything but a place of fruitful cooperation, and as I have said, they are peculiarly well adapted to harmonious symbiosis with others. And on Rohanda they had not experienced setback and threat. We now believe it is a disadvantage to allow too much prosperity, ease of development – and on none of our other colonies have we again been
satisfied with an easy triumphant growth. We have always inbuilt a certain amount of stress, of danger.

But suppose there had never been a disaster? Probably no one would ever have known that Shammat was on Rohanda … for Shammat can succeed only where there is disequilibrium, harm, dismay.

We had very little notice of the crisis. There was no reason to expect it. But the balances of Canopus and her System were suddenly not right. We had to find out what was wrong and very quickly. We did. It was Rohanda. She was out of phase, and rapidly worsening. The Lock was weakening. There were shifts in the balance of the forces from inside the body of Rohanda. These answered a shift – and now we had to look outwards, away from Rohanda – in the balances of powers elsewhere, among the stars who were holding us, Canopus, in a web of interacting currents with our colonized planets. Rohanda had felt the wrong alignment first, because it is her nature to be sensitive. Rohanda was at risk, Rohanda must be urgently rescued, held in phase, adjusted – so went our early thought.

But it was soon established that this could not be. Rohanda could not hold her place in our System. It was not so much a question of jettisoning her, as of her jettisoning herself.

Very well then: we could cushion and provide … so went our thought in that second stage of our discovery.

Rohanda was in for a long period – but at that stage we had no idea how very long it would be – of stagnation. But we would make sure that at least there would be no serious falling away from what she had accomplished, we would maintain her until the cosmic forces changed again, which they would do, so we had ascertained.

But then something else and worse was forced in on us. We could not make our information match with what we could register coming from Rohanda! The currents from Rohanda were coming wild, shrill, cracked … it was clear that they were being tapped. Previously, the strong full Lock between us and Rohanda had made impossible any such leeching away, but now there was no doubt of it.

Things started happening all at once. Information from Sirius about Puttiora, its sudden increase of strength and pride. Information from our spies in the Puttiora Empire – about Shammat, in particular. Shammat was like a drunk, shameless, boastful, reeling … Shammat was going from strength to strength. Shammat was taking advantage of the new weakness of Rohanda, who was unshielded, unguarded, open to her. Which meant that Shammat had been lying in wait on Rohanda, had been established there … had known what was going to happen? No, that was not possible; because with all our technology, so infinitely in advance of Shammat's, we had not known.

It was not a question of Rohanda being nursed through a long quiescent period, but much worse.

An envoy would have to be sent, and at once.

And now I will describe Rohanda as I found it on my first visit.

But it was Shikasta now: Shikasta the hurt, the damaged, the wounded one. The name had already been changed.

Can I say that it is ‘with pleasure' that I write of it? It is a retrospective emotion, going back before the bad news I carried. Rohanda had given us all so much satisfaction, it was our easiest and our best achievement. And don't forget that it was Rohanda who was to take the place of that unfortunate planet who was so soon to be destroyed and who we were already emptying of its inhabitants, taking them to other places where they might thrive and grow.

What a crisis I left behind me on Canopus that time, what a roar of effort, change, and adjustment: plans cherished and relied on for millennia were being thrown over, adapted, substituted – and from this place of turmoil, I left for Shikasta, the stricken.

At least there is something of consolation that such excellence had been. What has been good is a promise that in other places, other times, good can develop again … at times of shame and destruction, we may sustain ourselves with these thoughts.

At the time of the disaster there were still not more than
sixty thousand Giants, and about a million and a half Natives, distributed over the northern hemisphere. The planet was amazingly fruitful and pleasant. The waters that – released – would recreate the swamps and marshes were still locked up in ice at the poles, and we could see no reason why this should change.

There were great forests over all the northern and temperate zones and these were plentifully stocked with animals of all sorts, differing from those of my later visits mostly in size. These were not enemies of the inhabitants. There were settlements in the north, even in extremes of climate, both of Giants and Natives, but most of the population was settled further south, in the Middle Areas, where there was a sparkling, invigorating climate.

The cities were established where the patterns of stones had been set up according to the necessities of the plan, along the lines of force in the earth of that time. These patterns, lines, circles, arrangements were no different from those familiar to us on other planets, and were the basis and foundation of the transmitting systems of the Lock between Canopus and Rohanda … now poor Shikasta.

The arranging and alignment of the stones had been done initially entirely by the Giants, whose size and strength made the work easy for them, but by now the understanding between the Giants and the Natives was such that the Natives wished to assist in a task which they knew was – as they put it in their songs and tales and legends – their link with the Gods, with Divinity.

They did not see the Giants as Gods. They had developed beyond that. Their intelligence was so much greater, because of the Lock, that it was not far from that of the Giants just before the Lock.

The cities had been built on the lines indicated by the experiments that had been so extensive in the long preparatory phase before the Lock.

They were of stone, and were linked with the stone patterns as part of the transmitting system.

Cities, towns, settlements of mud, wood, or any vegetable
material cannot disturb the transmitting processes, or set up unsuitable oscillations. It was for this reason that during the preparatory phase, the Giants discouraged stone as building material and themselves lived in houses of whichever organic substance was most convenient and to hand. Once the Lock was established, and the stone patterns set and operative, the cities were rebuilt of stone, and the Natives were instructed in this art – so soon to be lost to the memory of Shikasta – for the plan was that when the Natives had evolved to the adequate level, the Giants would leave for another task somewhere else, themselves evolved beyond anything that could have been envisaged by the handful from Colony 10 those many thousands of years ago.

What the Natives were being taught was the science of maintaining contact at all times with Canopus; of keeping contact with their Mother, their Maintainer, their Friend, and what they called God, the Divine. If they kept the stones aligned and moving as the forces moved and waxed and waned, and if the cities were kept up according to the laws of the Necessity, then they might expect – these little inhabitants of Rohanda who had been no more than scurrying monkeys, half in and half out of the trees, animals with little in them of the Canopean nature – these animals could expect to become men, would take charge of themselves and their world when the Giants left them, the work of the symbiosis complete.

The cities were all different, because of the different terrains on which they were established, and the currents and forces of those places. They might be on the open plains, or by springs, or by seashores, or on mountains or plateaux. They might be among snow and ice, or very hot, but each was exact and perfect and laid down according to the Necessity. Each was a mathematical symbol and shape, and mathematics were taught to the young ones by travel. A tutor would take a group of pupils to sojourn in, for instance, the Square City, where they would absorb by osmosis everything there is to be known about squareness. Or the Rhomboid, or the Triangle, and so on.

Of course, the shape of a city was as rigidly controlled upwards as it was in area, for roundness, or the hexagonal, or the spirit of Four, or Five, was expressed as much in the upper parts as it was by what was experienced where the patterns of stone in building enmeshed with the earth.

The flow of water around and inside a city was patterned according to the Necessity, and so was the placing of fire – as distinct from heat, which was done by steam and heated water – but fire itself, which the Natives could not rid themselves of thinking as Divine, was according to Need.

Each city, then, was a perfect artefact, with nothing in it uncontrolled: considered, with its inhabitants, as a functioning whole. For it was found that some temperaments would be best suited, and would contribute most, in a Round City, or a Triangle, and so on. And there had even evolved a science of being able to distinguish, in very early childhood, where an individual needed to live. And here was the source of that ‘unhappiness' which must be the lot, to one extent or another, of every inhabitant of our galaxy, for it was by no means always so that every member of a family would be suitable for the same city. And even lovers – if I may use a word for a relationship which is not one present Shikastans would recognize – might find that they should part, and did so, for everybody accepted that their very existence depended on voluntary submission to the great Whole, and that this submission, this obedience, was not serfdom or slavery – states that had never existed on the planet, and which they knew nothing of – but the source of their health, and their future and their progress.

By now the two races lived together, there was no separation between them in that way, though they did not intermarry. This was physically not possible. The Giants had not grown more than was reported by the last mission: they were about eighteen feet in height. And the Natives were half that. But in the meantime, the Giants had become much varied in colour and in facial and bodily type. Some were as black, a glossy shining black, as the first immigrants. Others were all shades of lively warm brown. There were some with
very pale faces, and their eyes were sometimes of a blue which when it first appeared caused unease and even abhorrence. The Natives were also of all shades of colour, and their head hair could be of any colour from black to chestnut. The Giants had evolved some head hair, probably from climatic pressure, but it was sparse, and short, contrasting with the Natives' profuse locks. The blue-eyed Giants might have colourless, or light yellow hair, but this was considered a misfortune.