No, I certainly was not able to see myself as an alien to Sirius. For that was what it amounted to. Was I to put myself forward at one of our regular Conferences on Overall Policy and say—but what? That I believed Canopus to be altogether finer and higher than we were, and that we should go humbly to Canopus begging for instruction? Wrap it up as I might, that is what it amounted to.
I have already made it clear in this memoir, or account, of mine that our attitudes toward Canopus made that quite inconceivable.
Was I then—knowing this—to start propaganda work among my close colleagues and personal allies, such as the others of the Five, or Ambien I, or my offspring, with the idea of changing a nucleus that would (but how?) slowly change all of Sirius? The formation and cultivation of such “cells” of course was perennial and only to be expected by all of us when facing dissident planets and insurrectionary movements.
I might consider this, playing with the idea sometimes, but could not imagine myself actually doing it. There is such a thing as the art of the possible, and working with it. Well, it was not possible that I, with my position in the Empire, my experience, my temperament, should start what amounted to revolutionary cell-building!
What alternatives were there? I now have to state, categorically, that I could not envisage any alternatives. These were the possibilities… as I saw it. I did, dimly and distantly, see that Canopus itself might have ideas of its own… I would entertain, sometimes, these rather visionary notions, and always when brooding about my various encounters with Canopus—where I had failed, where I had, in spite of these failures, learned. The practised and practising person that was Ambien II had to recognise facts, when I saw them. Facts, the more experienced one became, were always to be understood, garnered, taken in, with that part of oneself most deeply involved with processes, with life as it worked its way out. Facts were not best as understood formulas or summings up, but through this inward groping and recognition. Well, what I recognised in contemplating my relations with Canopus was some sort of purpose. It was unmistakable. To dismiss it, deny it, meant denying everything I had ever learned in my long career as participator in events. I could not dismiss it. But I could say that it was all too much for me. I postponed it. And for a long time was busy with my work, which I was not enjoying, and which inwardly I was questioning and feeling sapped and diminished by because of an ever-increasing sense of its (oh yes, treachery and treason, I know!), because of, in fact, the steady, unstoppable growth in me of that person or individual who was not “Sirius.”
Who was—who? Or what? Canopus?
This was why I caused the request to be sent that we might borrow or lease their Great Mountains. This was the cause of the disappointment at their refusal.
So! I was not to see Klorathy yet… Very well then. I set myself to my task, and again pushed these thoughts to the back of my mind.
A map of Isolated Southern Continent II shows that rather more than a third of the way down the mountain chain is a lake high among the peaks.
What we wanted was to accustom a sufficient number of suitable individuals to living on sparse supplies of oxygen. It happened that we had, on our Colonised Planet 2, some high mountains, and on them were living a species able to function on comparatively little oxygen. But they had been established for generations. We needed flexibility, adaptability. After some thought, we chose a species from C.P. 9, a damp, dismal sort of place, whose nature was to match, phlegmatic and dour. We space-lifted 30,000 of them not to the highest peaks but to a plateau halfway up a mountain range that had sparse but adequate food, and a wet changeable climate. There left them, under supervision, to adapt.
Meanwhile, 3 (1) was being surveyed and prepared. I visited there, I suppose it could be said, from curiosity, though there was not much on the place to feed interest.
It was arid, chilly, dusty. There were semi-frozen marshes, maintaining some sluggish lizards and frogs.
The vegetation was lichens, and a curious form of marsh weed that seemed half-animal. At any rate, while being anchored at one end in mud or slushy ice, the fronds, branches, feelers, crawled about all over the surface of the soil, sometimes even lifting and overturning stones and rocks, or burrowing down into mud, for the primitive insects and crustaceans. Sometimes these branches were half an R-mile long, and a single plant could cover a square mile. These animal-plants were a danger to our technicians. One was walking through what she believed to be quite ordinary, if unfamiliar vegetation, when the creature reached up with its “hands” or feelers, and tugged her over, and when she was rescued, it was only just in time, for the “plant” had already begun to dismantle her spacesuit, undoing screws and fastenings in search of the—obviously—delectable food within. This caused much excitement among our naturalists, it goes without saying; but as for me, I had a more localised interest in the place, namely, whether it would indeed be possible to change the planet’s climate, as our experts claimed. It had one great advantage from our point of view: there was oxygen locked up in the soil.
This moon revolves about Planet 3 four times in its year, and spins on its axis once. Planet 3 is far from its sun, and is itself on the cold and lethargic side.
I left instructions to follow our experts’ recommendations that thermonuclear explosions should be tried, with the aim of warming the planet, and returned to the settlement of our experimentees on the mountainside of Isolated S.C. II.
Enough time had passed for the first generation to have died out, and it was now a question of examining their progeny for signs of possible failure. None was found. Although they were existing on an oxygen supply of two-thirds of their familiar conditions on C.P. 9, they seemed to be thriving. I therefore took a decision: instead of giving them a further intermediate acclimatisation period, I ordered them to be transferred at once to as high as it was possible for animals to subsist. This was at over 15,000 R-feet, more than twice the height of their previous station, and the drop in oxygen level was severe, not only in comparison with that station halfway up the range but particularly in comparison with their Home Planet. The experts reported their lungs were already enlarging. I saw them established. It was now such an effort for them to accomplish what was needed that I ordered an abandonment of our usual policy and had housing installed for them.
As it happened, it was possible to get this from a Canopean settlement on the Isolated Northern Continent—I was interested, more than interested, in how this happened. I was pondering about how to get this housing easily, for while we had settlements over the other side of the mountain range—this was not far, relatively speaking, from my settlement of the old days, in the time of the Lombis—it happened we were short of suitable aircraft. It was at this moment I had a message from Klorathy offering the materials I needed. I record that I merely noted that this was Klorathy, that he was at work so close, in the continent north of this one, and that he had known where I was. I noted it, and went on with my task.
I did not meet the fleet of their cargocraft as they arrived on the sea parallel with the mountains we were on, for I was convinced that Klorathy would not be there personally. The materials were lifted to the high plateaux by our craft. The settlement was soon in existence, double-storey wooden buildings, set out according to a plan that was found attached to the consignments of dismantled dwellings. I merely ordered this plan to be put into effect.