Читать книгу The Sirian Experiments - Doris Lessing - Страница 12

We concealed the two machines as well as we could in a canyon, and walked forth boldly towards the mountains. These had not been devastated by the quake, though some rock falls had taken place, giving the mountainsides a raw disturbed look. Standing close against a precipitous surface we could hear all kinds of murmurings and knockings and runnings-about, and I was reminded of the termite dwellings on Isolated S.C. II – putting one’s ear to the walls of one of these, having knocked on its surface or even broken a part off, one heard just such a scurrying, rustling murmur. Coming round the edge of this precipice, there was a low dark cave entrance, and Klorathy walked at once towards it, lifting up both his hands and calling out words I did not know. We, too, lifted our hands in what was obviously a gesture of peace. There was a sudden total silence, from which we were able to gauge the degree of the background of noise to which we had adjusted ourselves approaching the mountain. Silence – the sun blazing down uncomfortably from the warm Rohanda skies – heat striking out from the raw and unhealed rocks – heat dizzying up from the soil. Suddenly there was a rush of movement from the cave, so swift it was impossible to distinguish details, and we three were enclosed in a swarm of squat little people who were hustling us inside the cave, which we tall ones – they came up to our knee level – had to go on all fours to enter. We were in a vast cavern, lit everywhere by small flames, which we later found were outlets of natural gas, controlled and kept perpetually burning. Yet they were not enough to create more than a soft twilight. The cavern was floored with white sand that glimmered, and crystals in the rock walls twinkled, and a river that rushed along the cavern’s edge flung up sparkling showers of spray. I had not expected to find this soft exuberance of light inside the dark mountain, and my spirits rose, and as I was rushed along by the pressure of the little people I was able to examine them. They were certainly less animal than the horrid new beast-men of the Southern Continent, but quite seemly and decent creatures, wearing trousers and jackets of dressed skins. Very broad they were, almost as broad as tall: and I was easily able to recognize in the stock the powerful arms and shoulders of the Lombis, and the yellow skins of the Colony 22 technicians. Their faces were bare of hair, under close caps of tight rough dark curls, and were keen and sharp and intelligent.

We were taken swiftly through several of such caverns, always with the river rushing along beside us, until we were deep inside the mountain – yet it did not feel oppressive, for the air was sweet and fresh. We were in a cave so enormous the roof went up above us into impenetrable black, and the illuminations around the rocky verges were only pinpoints of innumerable light. There was a cleared space in the centre, quite large enough to take a horde of these little people and ourselves, but small in proportion to the enormousness of the place. We were sat down on piles of skins, and given some food – hardly to the palates of such as we, though it was not without interest to be reminded of what was – what had to be – the food of all the lowly evolved planets of our Galaxy. Meat. A sort of cheese. A kind of beer. All this time Klorathy was keeping up talk with them: he seemed to know their language at least adequately. It was Ambien I and myself who puzzled them, though they were civil enough – for we were both obviously of different kinds from Klorathy. They eyed us, yet not unpleasantly, and one of the females, a quite attractive little thing in her robust heavy way, begged to touch my hair, and in a moment several females had crowded up, smiling and apologetic, but unable to resist handling my blonde locks. Yet I, for my part, was looking around into the faces packed and massed all around, and remembering the Lombis – who had never set eyes on me or anything like me – and the Colony 22 techs, who had … a long, long time ago, far out of personal memory, in their time reckoning, but such a short time ago in ours. Did they have any sort of race or gene memory? We examined each other, in a scene of which I have been a part so very often in my long service: members of differing races meeting, not in enmity but in genial curiosity.

How were we able to do this – see each other so close and well, when the twinkling walls of the cave were so far distant? It was by – electricity. Yes. Everywhere stood strong bright lights, wooden containers that housed batteries: it is never possible to foresee what part of a former technology a fallen-off race will retain.

And they were that – reduced, I mean; under pressure, beset … I was able to recognize it at once, by a hundred little signs that perhaps I wouldn’t have been able to consciously describe. These were a people in danger, endangered – desperate. It showed in the sombre consciousness of their eyes, fastening on Klorathy, who for his part was leaning forward, urgent, concentrated on this task of his …

Later we were led off, I by the women, the men separately, and we slept in small but airy rock chambers. And next day the discussions with Klorathy went on, while I and Ambien I were taken, on our request, to see this underground kingdom. Which I shall now briefly describe.

First of all, it was not the only one: Klorathy said that not only all over this continent but in most parts now of Rohanda spread these underearth races. But they had not taken to the caves and caverns by nature, only from need, as they found themselves hunted and persecuted by races so much larger than themselves. Though not more skilled.

These caverns were by no means the habitations of brutes. They had been adapted from natural holes and caves, often the old tunnels of former underground rivers and lakes. Sometimes they had been excavated. Many were carefully panelled with well-tailored and smoothed planking. All were lit, either by natural gas or by electricity. There were meeting places and eating places, sleeping places, and storage caves and workshops. Animals had been captured from the surface world and brought down to breed and increase in this below-earth realm. There were birds, some flying freely about, as if they had been in the air. These were underground cities, underearth realms. And they were all based on the oddest and saddest contradictions or predicaments.

This race had become skilled miners and metallurgists. Beginning with iron, they had made all kinds of utensils and then – finding themselves hunted – weapons. For a time, and in some places, they had made approaches out into the world to offer trade, and trade had often been effective. They exchanged iron products for roots and fruits and fresh supplies of animals for their chthonic herds. Then they found gold. They had seen it was beautiful and did not rust and crumble as iron did, but found it too soft for tools and vessels – yet it was so beautiful, and everywhere they made ornaments and decorations with it. Taking it out to the tribes now forming everywhere above ground – for these were more likely to be their neighbours than the people of the advanced cities, at first gold was a curiosity, and then, suddenly, was something for which murder could be committed, and slaves captured – the dwarves were chased into the mountains and whole communities wiped out. They fled deeper into the mountains, or went into further ranges, always going further, retreating, becoming invisible except for rare careful excursions to see if trade was possible again. Sometimes it was. Often, coming out with their heavy dark vessels and spears and arrowheads, their glistening gleaming ornaments, they would be ambushed and all killed.

Yet they always mined, since it was now in their blood, the skill of it in their hands and minds.

Yet, and this was the sad paradox that they did not fully see until Klorathy pointed it out to them: suppose they had never mined at all, would they have missed so much: Did their food depend on it? Their clothing? Even their electricity? Their clay vessels were beautiful and strong and in every way as good as their iron ones.

Suppose they had never learned how to melt iron from rocks, and gold from rocks – what then?

But it was too late for thinking in this way.

Finding themselves harried and hunted, these poor creatures had sent Klorathy a message. Had sent a message ‘all the way to the stars’.

How?

Coming together in a great conclave, from every part of this continent, creeping along a thousand underground channels and roads, they had cried out that ‘Canopus would help them’.

Two of them had made a dangerous journey to the middle seas. There, so the news was, were great cities. This journey had taken many R-years. The two, a male and a female, having crept and crawled and lurked and sneaked their way across a continent and then from island to island across the great sea, and then across land again, had found that upheavals and earthquakes had vanished the great cities which were now only a memory among half-savages. The two had gone northwards, hearing of ‘a place where kindness and women rule’. There they were directed to Adalantaland, where there was kindness and a wise female ruler, who had said that ‘Canopus had not visited for a long time, not in her memory or in that of her Mother’s. The two had left their messages, obstinately believing that what Canopus had promised – for promises were in their memories – Canopus would perform. And though they had died as soon as they had delivered their reports of that epic and terrible journey, soon Canopus did perform, for Klorathy came to them.

Had come first on an investigational trip from one end of this continent to the other. Had heard, then, of the ‘little people’ in the other continents, for oddly – or perhaps not oddly at all – emissaries from the ‘little people’, hunted and persecuted everywhere, had made their brave and faithful journeys to places where they believed ‘Canopus’ might have ears to hear their cries for help.

Klorathy had then summed up all this information he had garnered, and pondered over it and concluded that there was another factor here, there was an element of savagery, of beastliness, more and above what could be naturally expected. It was the work of Shammat, of course, Shammat who Canopus had believed to be still far away half across the globe – not that its influence wasn’t everywhere … but on the subject of that ‘influence’ Klorathy was either not able or not willing to enlarge.

‘What do you mean, Klorathy? – when you talk of Shammat-nature?’ – and as I asked the question I thought of those avid greedy faces, those glittering avaricious eyes. ‘A savage is a savage. A civilized race behaves like one.’ At which he smiled, sadly, and in a way that did not encourage me to press him.

What Klorathy hoped to achieve by this present excursion into the realm of the dwarves was first of all to encourage them, saying that Canopus was doing what it could. Secondly, he said he would now go out to meet with the Hoppes and the Navahis and put it to them that to harry these excellent craftsmen of the mountains was folly – better rather to become allies with them, to trade, and to stand together with them against the vicious children of Shammat who were the enemies of both, the enemies of everyone. Therefore, Klorathy asked them – sitting again in the vast cavern under its canopy of twinkling lights, on the warm white sand that the dwarves carried from the outside rivers to make clean shining floors for themselves – leaning forward into the low and immediate light of the electric handlamps: be patient. When – if – the tribesmen come offering treaties and trade, then see if ways cannot be found to do this without laying themselves open to traps and treason. For his part, he, Klorathy, pledged himself to do what he could. And so we left that deeply hidden and fantastic realm, with its race of earthy craftsmen, being escorted into the outer air and the blue skies towards which the dwarves lifted their longing and exiled eyes before fleeing away into the earth again.

Now we had to make contact with the tribesmen.

Their lookouts soon saw us as we walked across the rocky and raw landscape, with no aim except to be captured. Which we were, and taken to their camp. This was the usual functional unit of the Modified Two stage. Their skills were less than those of the dwarves, so soon to be extinct. They hunted, and lived on the results of their hunting, and had developed a close harmonious bond with the terrain on which they lived. In which they had their being, as they – as their religion – saw it.

They did us no harm, because they recognized in us something of the stuff of certain legends – all about Canopus. Always of that Empire, never of ours. I drew the attention of my colleagues in the Service when I returned home to the fact that even in territories close to our allotted portion of Rohanda, which might be expected to owe some sort of allegiance to us, to Sirius, it was to Canopus that their higher allegiances were pledged, were given. Why was this? Surely there was a fault here in our presentation of ourselves?

These Hoppes recognized us – all three – as ‘from there’, meaning Canopus. So it was as honorary Canopeans that we were welcomed into the camp, and then as guests at a festival that lasted thirty R-days, and nights, which Klorathy obviously much enjoyed. I cannot say that I did. But I recognized even then that the ability to become part of – I was going to say ‘to sink oneself into’, but refrained, because of the invisible moral pressure of Canopus – an unfamiliar scene, a foreign race, even one considered (perhaps out of ignorance) inferior, is one to be admired, commended, and even emulated, if possible. I did try to behave as Klorathy did and as Ambien I was doing, as far as he was able. Klorathy feasted and even danced with them, told stories, in their tongue – and yet was able never to be less than Canopus.

And when the feasting was over, I was expecting something on these lines: that Klorathy would say to them: I have some news for you, some suggestions to make, now is the time for us to confer seriously and solemnly and at length, please make arrangements for a formal occasion at which this may be done.

But nothing of the sort happened. Klorathy, in the tent they had allotted to him, and we two Ambiens, in our tents, simply went on as we were, taking part in the life of the tribe.

And now I have to record something that I most bitterly regret, for it set back my understanding for a very long time. Millennia. Long ages. I missed an opportunity then. I shall simply say it, and leave the subject.

I was impatient and restless. I found these Hoppe savages interesting enough and I would have stood it all – the lack of privacy, the flesh food, the casualness and indifference to dirt, the thousand and one taboos and proscriptions of their religion – if I had known the ordeal would have a term. The other Ambien advised patience. I did not listen to him but went to Klorathy and demanded how long he proposed to ‘waste his time on these semibrutes’. His reply was: ‘As long as it is necessary.’

I consulted with Ambien I, who said he would stay with Klorathy, if ‘Klorathy would put up with him’ – a humility that annoyed me – and I took our surveillance craft, leaving him dependent on Klorathy for transport, and flew up northwards by myself.

This was the first time a Sirian had openly travelled into Canopean territory. Klorathy made no attempt to stop me, or discourage me. Yet he did say, quietly, just before I left: ‘Be careful.’ ‘Of what, Klorathy?’ ‘All I know is that our instruments seem to indicate some sort of magnetic disturbance – in my view it would be wiser to stay in the centre of a continent rather than anywhere at sea level.’ I thanked him for the warning.