This little colony of northern animals was a most important factor of our relations with Canopus, and of subsequent developments on Rohanda. But this did not seem to us so at the time. Far from it. Yet we could hardly forget these creatures, who lived so close to us, always visible, and of much interest to us and our visitors in their comings and goings. They multiplied, but not very much; and their settlements spread, but never did more than cover the hills that were first allotted to them. Nor did we cease to monitor their development because this was where our preoccupation with Canopus and its work focussed. But while several thousand years passed, we were involved in many other experiments, all over this wonderful and rich continent, and these took up our attention.
I shall mention the one that did have an indirect effect on long-term Rohandan development.
Millions of females throughout our Empire, forbidden to produce young because of our population-reduction programmes, craved this experience while subscribing to a prohibition whose necessity they understood. We had more volunteers than we could use for our various eugenic attempts.
Prefabricated buildings of a high standard were space-lifted in from our manufacturing Planet 3, and placed on the terrain that the Lombis occupied. These were filled with females, already impregnated, from various of our planets. The fathers had also been chosen. Our need was to produce a strain that would adapt easily to widely varied conditions on different planets. While we were restricted by the nature of the conditions on our Mother Planet to planets that fell within certain atmospheric limits, these limits proved to be much broader than we had envisaged in the early days of our Empire. Species could learn to adapt: some much more others. But our experience had been that if representatives of one species had adapted to certain conditions, then these did not necessarily take to further adaptation. We wished to breed technicians who would be available for work on different planets, of differing atmospheres, sometimes with little or no time for adaptation or acclimatisation. These all-purpose, hardy, multifunctional technicians in fact were absolutely essential in certain outlying parts of our Empire.
The females on what we now called the Lombi plain numbered fifty thousand. They were supervised as much as was necessary to prevent them from escaping, to supply them with first-class medical care, and to monitor the growth of their young, with the appropriate testing and analysis.
These females regarded themselves as favoured and privileged: indeed they were. They knew themselves to be of superb fitness and condition. They had been told by the highest among our Colonial Service, which is itself the highest function of our Empire, how much their services were valued. But in spite of all this, we knew a degree of watchfulness had to be maintained: this, the reproductive instinct, being the strongest there is, it could take—had taken, in the past—many surprising forms; and we did not want any of them escaping with their young when the time came to give them up. For they all knew that this must be when the young had attained five R-years.
This was one reason the breeding station was on Rohanda, which was a long from our Mother Planet and visited by none except our craft and those of Canopus. (Or so we believed then—but of that later.) It would not be possible for them to escape either by spacecraft or out of the Lombi plain, for there were guards stationed all around a vast periphery, well out of sight, who had been trained in every manifestation of the maternal instinct in desperation.
The other reason this station was here, well out of the way, was that such experiments always aroused opposition. This phenomenon is so well known that I will do no more draw than attention to it. Even when females have volunteered for this type of service, even when the experiments are crowned with success, and the results are shown in new breeds and strains that fulfill everything expected of them and are heaped with honours, and whose functioning is remarked and followed with approval and admiration from everywhere in our Empire—even so there is criticism, and of a certain kind, which I have learned to recognise. It is always marked by a sharp painful note, or tone, that signals a feeling of loss—and not only a personal loss, not at alclass="underline" this is why I for one have taken pains to notice this cry or protest, which is so much more than personal. I can only put it like this: that it seems as if—I do not see how we can conclude anything else—when such deliberate, controlled experiments take place, to produce definitely envisaged stocks or strains, it is felt—most deeply and profoundly, and by the most responsible and evolved of our peoples—that some other possibility been lost.
As if randomness and chance in themselves are a good and a blessing and even a means of acquiring something not yet defined… I am stating my own personal opinion here, arrived at after much reflection.
This was the largest experiment in eugenics ever undertaken by us. Its success was due not least to the Rohandan atmosphere, the Rohandan isolation from other influences, our distance from the centre. When the fifty R-years of the experiment were over, and the breeding station was finally dismantled, we congratulated ourselves that in that time not one of the successive inputs of females had escaped, and that we had not again contributed to the Rohandan species.
For five thousand R-years we did not investigate conditions in the northern Canopean areas: it will be remembered that we believed we had before us millions of years of a stable environment. We were informed that Canopus was sending a special mission, as they had reason to believe their plans more successful than had been envisaged. The report of this mission was sent to us: it recommended the immediate implementation of something they called a “Lock”.
Again it has to be emphasised that we did not understand the bases of the Canopean work. We did not know what this “Lock” was: though this did not mean we were not aware that there was regular contact between Canopus and Rohanda. But we assumed this was on the lines of the various types of electrical communication used by us with our own planets near enough for these methods. They also talked about a “degenerative disease,” but without specification. These two concepts were not understood by us at all, until recently: are not understood now generally. We might have asked questions: Canopus was always ready to answer them. We might asked ourselves questions, since we believed our technology was as advanced as that of Canopus. But we did not. The reason was the same: various forms of pride. What was in the body of the report inflamed us with disbelief and suspicion.