We did not accept because we were handicapped by being resentful, even though the general euphoria of the Conference succeeded in masking these unfortunate emotions. The northern areas were plentifully stocked with certain species of primate. In these were upright, using tools and weapons, with the beginnings of semi-permanent settlement. This type of animal, at this level of evolution, is always of value, both for experiment and in training for simple tasks. There were none in Isolated Southern Continent II; and while there were some apes in Southern Continent I, they were at a low level of evolution, suitable for experiment, but of no use at for work.
We saw Canopus “as usual” grabbing the best of everything, for not once did remind ourselves that there no reason we should ever have been allowed on Rohanda at all. It was not we who had discovered this planet.
Canopus told us that certain rapid and desirable developments of the Colony 10 colonists would be because of a “symbiosis” between them and the apes, and that the apes, too, would be benefited. We saw this “symbiosis” in terms of beneficial cultural exchange and, more specifically, as the superior immigrants being set free for higher tasks by using the apes as servants.
In short, the two main pieces of information, the bases on which the Canopean plan was predicted, were not understood by us at all. In spite of our being told everything. To emphasize this even more: now, looking back at the Conference, I can see that there was nothing not said, not made plain, not explained. But we misinterpreted what we being told. And again, it is impossible not to ask, now, why Canopus set up the Conference in this way? To forestall reproaches of niggardliness? No! Knowing Canopus, this not the reason. But they must have realised that we were not taking in what being said, were understanding everything in our own way.
So why did they do it? It is only recently that I have had an answer to this question. The beginnings of an answer… The end of the Conference was marked by all kinds of festivities and jollities. We were taken on trips to other colonies; invited, “if we were in that part of the Galaxy,” to visit them for as long as we liked—the usual courtesies.
Back on our Home Planet we Sirians lost no time. Planets in the healthy, vigorous condition of Rohanda were—and are—rare. We of the Colonial Service were all delighted and full of optimism. Incidentally, it was at that Conference that Rohanda acquired its name. Perhaps this is not the place—it is too soon—to remark that when the planet suffered its cosmic reversal, and ceased to be so pleasant, even if it did not lose any of its fertility, Canopus at once jettisoned the name Rohanda, substituting another, Shikasta, “the broken or damaged one,” felt by us to be unnecessarily negative. This mixture of pedantry and poeticism is characteristic of Canopus, one that I have always found irritating.
Spacecraft had already thoroughly surveyed both Southern Continents, independently of Canopus. Our scientists had visited selected areas, and recommendations had been made. It was decided that Southern Continent I would be used mainly for agriculture. We had recently acquired our Colonised Planet 23 (C.P. 23) found it well able to sustain large-scale settlement, provided it was supplied with food. This being part of the same system as Rohanda, and quite close, we thought from the start of using one or other of the southern continents as an agricultural base. S.C. I was admirably equipped from the point of view of soil and climate. It was roughly divided into three zones, the middle one, equatorial, being too hot, but the other two, the southern part and the northern, useful for a vast variety of plants. We introduced several grain plants from both our colonised planets and those of Canopus and developed some indigenous grasses to supply grains and also developed locally-originating tubers and leaf crops. I was not directly in charge of this enterprise. Those interested will find accounts of S.C. I’s twenty-thousand-year career as a food supplier for C.P. 23 in the appropriate documents. During this time, too, several laboratories were maintained on that continent, and a good deal of useful research accomplished. This was nearly all to do with agriculture and the use of indigenous and introduced animals. Our C.P. 23 flourished during this period. Its inhabitants originated on our Home Planet, of first-class stock, carefully selected. None of their energies needed to be spent on feeding themselves, or on anxieties about their nurture; they had their attention free for mentation and intellectual activity. This twenty-thousand year period was C.P. 23’s Golden Age, when it achieved the position of Planning Centre for the whole of our Empire. The fact that it was short-lived does not detract from this achievement.
I do not propose to say much more about the experiments on S.C. I. Nor shall I be giving full or even balanced accounts of our experiments on Isolated S.C. II. Details can be found under the appropriate headings.
I shall again say that the purpose of this record is to put forward a certain view of our relations with Canopus. There have been a thousand histories, formal and informal of our experiments on Rohanda, but not one setting these in the Canopean context. This fact alone makes my point. What I say, therefore, about our researches will be chosen entirely from this point of view; and it must not be thought that the emphases given here would be those adequate from the point of view, let us say, of someone looking at the Rohanda experiments from a long-term view of their evolutionary usefulness. This epoch on Rohanda, short though it was, proved crucial in our relations with Canopus, both then and subsequently, and not only on that planet but generally. Which may lead us to ponder profitably on the implications of the fact that a short period of time, twenty thousand years, may turn out to be of more importance than epochs lasting millions of years; and that the small planet of a small and peripheral sun may have more influence than large and impressive-seeming constellations. I feel that this kind of speculation may throw light on the Canopean superiority to us in certain fields of endeavour.
In order to understand how our Colonial Service was thinking, it is necessary to sketch the situation in the Sirian Empire at that time.
Our technological development had reached a peak and had been established long enough for us to understand the problems it must bring. The chief one was this: there was nothing for billions upon billions of individuals to do. They had no purpose but to exist, and then die. That this would be a problem had not been foreseen. I shall at this point hazard the statement that it is usually the central, the main, consequences of a development that are not foreseen. What we had seen was the ending of drudgery, of unnecessary toil, of anxiety over the provision of the basic needs. All our efforts, the expenditures of energy of generations, had gone into this: a double or two-branched advance: one aspect of it to do with the conquest of space; the other, with the devices that would set us all free from toil.
We did not foresee that these billions, not only on our Home Planet but also on our Colonised Planets, would fall to depression and despair. We had not understood that there is inherent in every creature of this Galaxy a need, imperative, towards a continual striving, or self-transcendence, or purpose. To be told that there is nothing to do but consume, no work needed, nothing to achieve, is to receive a sentence of death. The hapless millions, offered by their triumphantly successful leaders plenty, leisure, freedom from want, from fear, from effort, showed every symptom of mass psychosis, ranging from random and purposeless violence to apparently causeless epidemics and widespread neurosis. This period, known as the Sirian Dark Age, does not lack its historians, and I shall concentrate on its aspects that germane to our theme. One was a phenomenon that became known as “invented usefulness.” Once the cause of the general malaise had been understood, there were various solutions suggested, of which this was the first attempted: areas that had been relinquished to machines and technical devices were deliberately reclaimed. I will mention one example.