Throughout the main occasions when Klorathy was with these top-level priest-technicians, they sat apparently all attention and respect, but their faces showed always the self-esteem that was their curse, the mark of their incapacity. The ground of their nature was this conviction of superiority, of innate worth over other species. Klorathy was not able to shake it.
This was true of nearly all. There were in fact a few of them who did absorb the intuition that there was something here they could learn, and they came to him secretly. And he instructed them as far as he could. When we left this station, they accompanied us. Our escort was now an extraordinary mixture of officials and priests, the frivolously curious, and these serious students of his ways of thought.
The third station was of particular interest, and the work there could have thrown light on the nature of the processes that had Rohanda in their grip—if the Lelannians had been capable of understanding them. The station researched the Degenerative Disease that caused the “ageing” that I had first seen—but still only in a mild form—in Rhodia. Since that time, this expression of Rohanda’s falling away from earlier excellence had accelerated. The term of life was half of what it been in the old Lelannian days. A hundred and fifty R-years was the norm now. And “ageing” began at the end of the stage of physical readiness for mating and reproduction. There was a dryness, a shrivelling, and, soon, a wrinkling of all the skin casing. The hair lost its colour and became spectral and pale. The eyes, too, lost colour. Hearing, sight, touch, taste—all the senses—became blunted, or ceased to operate. The processes of mentation were affected, sometimes to the point of imbecility. There were compounds full of local natives, all over a certain age, and these were being tortured to give up the secrets of “ageing.”
An interesting fact was that the natives were viable much longer than the “superior” race. They remained energetic and flexible in limb for longer, their hair kept its colour often until death—their pitifully early deaths—and their teeth often remained comparatively excellent. Also, there was less mental confusion. This, Klorathy said, was because of the natives’ closer bond with the natural flows and forces, as compared with the Lelannians, whose ways were mechanical and imposed by arbitrary law or by whim; because they worked physically, which the “superior” ones were proud not to do; because the stuff of their genetic inheritance did not include any contribution from Shammat and Puttiora.
It was at this stage in our journey that Klorathy informed me nothing could be done for the Lelannians. They were beyond improvement. He asked me—in that way of his—what I thought should be done in this situation, but asked, too, that I should take my time thinking about it, “putting aside my emotions.”
When we were back in the Sirian post in the hills above the rain forests, we sat together, as we had before our long and difficult journey, and we talked. I was impatient for him to come to a conclusion, to “sum up”—a favourite Lelannian expression. But he was in no hurry and for many days, and then months, our experience was allowed to, as it were, ferment between us.
He was at particular pains to make me think about the Lelannian experiments, the Lelannian attitudes towards themselves as experimenters and researchers. I was by then reluctant to do this. I had been so sickened and disgusted at what I had seen, and my inability to change anything, that I wanted only to put the whole experience out of my mind.
He said that the Lelannians, living in a rich and fruitful continent, blessed by the climate, by every natural resource, had little need to work hard to sustain themselves. That even if they had, they provided themselves with abundant slaves and servants who did their work for them. Leisure was their inheritance. It was, as the Shammat observers saw, their means of being kept in subjection, because it rotted them: the right amount of sloth and ease would keep them Shammat’s. Too much would make them useless. Shammat had influenced them towards their experimentation. Apart from a very small administrative class, who increasingly left this work to slaves trained for this purpose—who could be expected shortly to seize power for themselves, but that is another story—the ruling race as a whole occupied themselves with the increasingly refined techniques of research. There were not enough genuine avenues of enquiry to occupy everyone, and therefore the experiments became more bizarre, extensive—useless. And more and more unfortunate animals of other species were sacrificed.
Their attitude towards themselves, that everything that surrounded them was their property, to use as they wished, meant that the delicate and invisible balances of force and power were increasingly disrupted. The two Southern Continents, the Sirian responsibility, were wildly out of key, were unbalancing the already precarious Rohandan cosmic economy. There been a time, at the beginning of our journey, said Klorathy, when he believed it might be possible to arrest the brutalisation of these Lelannians, to make them see the natural balances of earth, rock, vegetation, water, fire, and the infinitely various differing species of the creatures of earth, of water, of air, as irreplaceable and distinct, each with its part to play in the invisible cosmic dance. But it had become clear the innate self-esteem of the Lelannians was too strong.
And now we come to the culminating point of our encounter, Klorathy and I: Canopus and Sirius.
He was making, in fact, a complaint. If one could call this long process of journeying together for the purposes of my instruction, and these long discussions, during which he never insisted, or demanded, but only demonstrated—a complaint. The differing roles of Canopus and Sirius, our different weights and emphases in the cosmic scale, made these conversations of ours have the effect of criticism and—on my side—of resistance.
Why had we neglected these Southern Continents?
Because they had not seemed worth our while.
But we had asked for them, had done more, had insisted on having them.
At the time we needed them. (And, of course, we were not going to let Canopus get away with anything—ridiculous and petty though this attitude was. And is.)
What were we going to do now?
The point was, Rohanda was not of much interest to our Empire. Not now. It had been relegated, with other planets, to a position of being possibly useful again in the future. Not all my persuasions, if I decided to take this course, would make Sirius actively exploit Rohanda again. It was too overrun with inferior species, too problematical—and there was Shammat, whose rule was established everywhere. Apparently with Canopean permission, and that was more than we could understand.
I said to Klorathy that there was nothing we, Sirius, could do for Rohanda.
“You will not then, I am sure, be resentful if we interest ourselves in your territories?”
“You are already! You have been for some time. I am not saying that anything you do is harmful, far from it. I am sure that without your intervention everything would be worse. But it is hypocritical to ask for permission for actions you have already taken.”
“Never without your knowledge.” At this we exchanged smiles: he was referring to the extensive and admirable Sirian espionage systems.
“But now, in my view, definite and prompt action is needed in Southern Continent II. As is being done in Isolated Southern Continent I. By your old friend Nasar, among others.”