"You need to rest, perhaps?" enquired one.
"No, no, no," I cried, again trying to force into them the urgency I felt. "No, I must talk to you. I will tell you now, if you like, and you can tell the others."
I saw that it was at last coming home to them that here was something terrible. Again I watched them muster inner strengths. Understanding flowed between these two: here was no need for inferior gestures such as exchanging glances, or meaningful nods.
In front of us the avenue of trees curved away and slightly down to a cluster of tall white buildings.
"It will be better if we arrange a gathering of a Ten," said one and forthwith he departed, with strides so long that he was at the end of the avenue in a moment, his immense figure in scale with the buildings he approached, seeming to hold them in proportion.
"My name is Jarsum," said my companion, and we walked forward. He dawdled and stopped and lingered, while I walked my fastest, but there was no strain here, and I saw that Giants and Natives were in the habit of walking together, and had adapted themselves to this form of companionship.
When I was near the arrangement of the Giants' buildings, they were certainly tall, but not oppressive; but inside the one we entered, I did feel strained and stretched, for the cylinder seemed to reach up forever above my head, and the seats and chairs were almost my height. Jarsum saw this and he sent instruction through an instrument that a Native-sized chair, table, and bed should be fetched and placed inside a special room that was smaller than the others. Even so, when I came to inhabit it, I found these articles of furniture comical enough, in a Giant-sized room.
This room, or hall, was used as a meeting place. In a short time, ten Giants had arrived. They sat on the floor, ignoring their usual seating arrangements, and put me on a pile of folded rugs, adjusted so that our faces were at the same level. They sat waiting for me to begin. They looked troubled, but not more than that. I was looking around at these kingly, magnificent beings, and thought that there can be no one so armed against shock that it is not felt, when it comes. And I would have to go slowly stage by stage, even with such beings as these.
I had to tell them that their history was over. That their purpose here was over. That the long evolution they had so brilliantly conducted and which they had believed was only just beginning - was over. As individuals they had a future, for they would be taken off to other planets. But they would no longer have an existence and a function as they had been taught to see themselves.
An individual may be told she, he, is to die, and will accept it. For the species will go on. Her or his children will die, and even absurdly and arbitrarily - but the species will go on. But that a whole species, or race, will cease, or drastically change - no, that cannot be taken in, accepted, not without a total revolution of the deepest self.
To identify with ourselves as individuals - this is the very essence of the Degenerative Disease, and every one of us in the Canopean Empire is taught to value ourselves only insofar as we are in harmony with the plan, the phases of our evolution. What I had to say would strike at everything we all valued most, for it could be no comfort here to be told: You will survive as individuals.
As for the Natives, there was no message of hope for them, unless the news that there would be a remission in the long-distant future could be called that. Evolution would begin again - after long ages.
The Giants' reason for being, their function, their use, was the development of the Natives, who were their other halves, their own substances. But the Natives had nothing ahead of them but degeneration... The Giants were in the position of the healthy, or healthier, twin who will be saved in an operation in which the other one must die.
I had to say all this.
I said it.
And waited, for this much to be taken in.
I can remember how I sat there, ridiculously perched on that heap of rugs, feeling myself a pygmy, watching their faces, and Jarsum's in particular. Now I was on a level with him, I saw that he stood out among the others. This was a man with an extraordinarily strong face, all dramatic curves and hollows, the dark eyes brilliant under the heavy brow ledges, cheekbones jutting and moulded. He was an immensely powerful man, outwardly and inwardly. But he was losing strength as I looked. They all were. It was not lack of fortitude, not that - they were not yet capable of that disobedience to the laws governing us. But as I gazed in awe from face to face I saw them, very slightly, dwindle. There was a lack of power. And I wondered if up on Canopus they were registering this moment and knew by it that I had accomplished what I had been sent for. Partly accomplished: but at least I was past the worst of it.
I waited. Time had to be allowed for the absorption of what I had said. Time passed... passed...
We did not speak. At first I believed that this was entirely because of the pain of this news I was bringing, but soon saw that they were waiting for what was in their minds to pulse outwards into the minds first of all of the other Giants in the Round City, and from there - though this would necessarily be in a weaker, vaguer form, would transmit probably no more than feelings of warning, danger, unease - to the Giants of the other Mathematical Cities. This tall cylinder we sat in was a transmitting chamber, constructed to work if it had in it between ten or twelve Giants. Any ten of them would do, male or female, but they had to be trained, and so the very young were not used in this function.
The way this transmitting work was done mirrored the exchange between Canopus and Rohanda. There was a grid, or common ground, which made possible the transfer of exact news; but things had to be set up, ordered, arranged. It was not that everything in the mind of one, or of ten, carefully brought together, would at once, and automatically, go out and reach the minds of others in the same city, and then the others in the other cities.
As we all sat there effects were being calculated. First a basis of emotion, if this is the right word for feelings so much higher than what was understood later on Shikasta by emotions. And then, the ground prepared, further news would be broadcast.
Meanwhile, I was using my eyes... I was interested that among these ten was a female of a type that had been, still was, by common Canopean standards, a freak. She was taller than the other Giants, by a good span of their hands, and all her bones were frail, and long, with the flesh hollowed on them. Her skin was dead white, and cold, with grey and blueish gleams. I had not seen a skin colour like it anywhere m my journeyings, and found it repulsive at first, but then was fascinated, and did not know whether I was repelled or attracted. Her eyes were amazing, a blazing bright blue, like their sky. She, like the other Giants, had very little head hair, but what she did have was the lightest fleece of pale gold. And she had long extensions of bony tissue on her finger ends, like the Natives, who once had paws and claws. The genetic ideas evoked here were many and troubling - but what must she feel about it all! She was so much an exotic, among so many brown and black and chestnut people with their black and brown and greyish eyes. She must feel herself excluded and alien. And then, too, there was her look of attenuation, even of weakness and exhaustion, and this was not just to do with this difficult and taxing occasion, but was bred into her substance. She certainly was not full, as were the other Giants, of an immediate and obvious vitality. No, for her, everything must be an - effort. I noted that she was the only one here who seemed affected by what I had said to the point of evident stress. She sighed continually, and those unbelievable cerulean eyes roamed about restlessly, and she bit her thin red lips. Again these were something I had never seen before: they looked like a wound. But she made efforts to contain her feelings, straightening herself where she sat leaning against the wall, and smoothing down the soft blue cloth of her trousers. She laid her very long delicate fingers together on her knees, and seemed to resign herself.