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 re-create 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 of Natives, but most of the population was settled farther south, in the Middle Areas, where there was a sparkling, light, 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 now 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 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 recognise - 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 eves 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.
Sex had different intensities for the two races. The Giants, living four thousand or five thousand years, bred once, or twice, or not at all in a lifetime. (And carried their young for a long time, four or five years.) The female Giants, when not breeding or caring for children, did the same work as the males, and this was for most of their lives. The work was mostly mental, the continuous, devotional task of keeping the proper levels of transmission between the planet and Canopus. Sex with the Giants was not a strong drive as the Natives would understand it. The powers of sex, the attractions, the repulsions, the ebbs and flows, were transmuted into higher forces except when actually in use for propagation.
The Natives were being encouraged to breed. They lived now for about a thousand years, but the planet could sustain, with ease, a larger population. It was never envisaged that there would be more than about twenty million, building up slowly over the next few thousand years: nothing had ever been planned in the nature of a sudden increase. There would be a careful, controlled building of new, well-sited cities, and there was no shortage of places suitable for the Necessity. Natives who chose to, and were considered suitable by general consent, might have several progeny in the first hundred years of their lives. After that, while sex continued as a pleasure and a balancing force, the breeding mechanisms became inoperative, and they entered a long, energetic, vigorous middle age. The Degenerative Disease, as we define it, did not yet exist; degenerative diseases of the physical sort that later were common had not come into existence. Both Giants and Natives died of accidents, of course, but otherwise not unless through the very rare invasions of viruses against which they had no defence. The breeding programmes were then adjusted as necessary.