Shikasta

What a crisis I left behind me on Canopus that time, what a roar of effort, change, and adjustment: plans cherished and relied on for millennia were being thrown over, adapted, substituted – and from this place of turmoil, I left for Shikasta, the stricken.

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 recreate 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 Natives, but most of the population was settled further south, in the Middle Areas, where there was a sparkling, 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 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 of 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 recognize – 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 eyes 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.

I was sent to Rohanda by one of our fastest craft, and not by means of Zone Six. I did want to inspect Zone Six, but not until after I had studied the situation on the planet itself where I needed to be quickly, and in the flesh. It had been decided that I should be in the form of a Native and not of a Giant, because I was to stay on and help the Natives after the Giants had been taken off. This decision was correct. Others were arguable. Looking back, afterwards, I knew that I should have sacrificed other considerations to getting to my task more quickly. Yet I did need to acclimatize myself. I could not appear at once in any one of the cities, with its specialized vibrations, without suffering severe effects. The difference between Canopus and Rohanda was very great, and none of us could begin work at once on arrival: time had always to be given to the process of acclimatization. But things were worse that we had thought: and were worsening faster than expected.

The spaceship approached the extreme eastern edge of the main landmass from the northwest, coming low over fertile and forested mountains and plateaux and plains that later were great deserts – thousands of square miles of deserts. We saw several cities, and wondered how the inhabitants who chanced to look up thought of our crystalline sphere darting past, and how they would talk of it to those who hadn’t seen us.

At that time I did not know which city it would be best to approach first. On the extreme eastern shore – the mainland, not one of the islands – I made my measurements. Meanwhile, the spaceship’s crew explored, but carefully, for we did not want to startle anybody, and if we were seen, it might lead to complications, for almost certainly it would be thought that a Native had been captured by alien beings. It was not easy to assess exactly what the change was, neither its nature nor extent, but I decided that the Square City would be best: we had seen it as we passed over. It was about a week’s hard walking away, and that was about right for my accustoming myself to Rohanda. I had already said that the craft might leave again, when I understood that the air of the planet had altered. And very suddenly. More calculations. The Square City would not now be right. I changed orders, and we ascended again, travelling not over the same cities, but further south over the Great Mountains, where I knew the Shammat transmitter must be: I could already sense it. I was put down to the east of the area of the great inland seas. There I again tested – and the same thing happened: I had decided on the Oval City to the north of the most northern inland sea, when again the atmosphere changed. But by now I had sent away the spacecraft. I had weeks of walking to do, in order to reach the Round City, which was now where I had to be. But this would take too long.

The Round City was on the high plateaux to the south of the great inland seas. It was not a centre of administration or of power, for there was no such centre. But apart from the suitability of its vibratory patterns, it was geographically central, and my news would be more easily disseminated. Also the height and the sharpness of the atmosphere would preserve this city longer than others from what would shortly befall. Or so I hoped. And I hoped, too, that there would not be another shift in the alignment of the planet, which would make the Round City the wrong one for me.

First, there was the problem of time. I approached some horses grazing in a herd on a mountain side, and stood near them, looking at them intently in a silent request for their help. They were restive and uncertain, but then one approached me, and stood waiting, and I got on its back. I directed it, and we cantered off southwards. The herd came with us. Mile after mile was covered, and I was becoming concerned for the state of the foals and young horses who were keeping up with us, and who seemed to enjoy it, flinging up their heels and neighing and racing each other, when I saw another herd not far off. I was carried to this herd by the first. I dismounted. The situation was explained by my mount to a strong and vigorous beast in the new herd. She came to me and waited, and I climbed up and off we went. This was repeated several times. I rested very little, though once or twice asked my mount to stop, and slept with my head on its flank under the shade of a tree. A week passed this way, and I saw that my problem was over. Now it was time to use my own feet, and to approach more slowly. I thanked my escorts for their most efficient relay system, and they touched my face with their muzzles and then wheeled, and thundered back to their own grazing grounds.

And now, day after day, I walked south, through pleasant savannah country of light airy trees, aromatic bushes, glades of grass that were drying pale gold. Everywhere birds, the flocks that are entities, with minds and souls, like men, yet composed of many units, like men. Everywhere animals, all of them friendly, curious, coming to greet me, helping me by showing the way or places where I might rest. I often spent a hot midday, or a night, with a family of deer sheltering from the heat under bushes, or with tigers stretched on rocks in the moonlight. A hot, but not painfully hot, sun – this was before the Events that slightly distanced it – the closer brighter moon of that time, gentle breezes, fruit and nuts in plenty, bright, fresh streams – this paradise I traversed during those days and nights, welcome everywhere, a friend among friends, is where now lie deserts and rock, sands and shales, the niggardly plants of drought and of blasting heats. Ruins are everywhere, and each handful of bitter sand was the substance of cities whose names the present-day Shikastans have never heard, whose existence they have not suspected. The Round City, for one, which fell into emptiness and discord, so soon after.

Always I was watching, monitoring, listening; but as yet the Shammat influence was slight, though I could sense, under the deep harmonies of Rohanda, the discords of the coming time.

I did not want this journey to end. Oh, what a lovely place was the old Rohanda! Never have I found, not in all my travellings and visitings, a more pleasant land, one that greeted you so softly and easily, bringing you into itself, charming, beguiling, so that you had to succumb, as one does to the utterly amazing charm of a smile or a laugh that seems to say, ‘Surprised, are you? Yes, I am extra, a gift, superfluous to the necessary, a proof of the generosity concealed in everything.’ And yet what I was seeing would soon have gone, and each step on the crisp warm-smelling soil, and each moment under the screens of the friendly branches was a farewell – goodbye, goodbye, Rohanda, goodbye.

I heard the Round City before I saw it. The harmonies of its mathematics evidenced themselves in a soft chant or song, the music of its own particular self. This, too, welcomed and absorbed me, and the Shammat wrong was still not more than a vibration of unease. Everywhere around the city the animals had gathered, drawn and held by this music. They grazed or lay under the trees and seemed to listen, held by contentment. I stayed to rest under a large tree, my back against the trunk, looking out under lacey boughs into the glades and avenues, and I was hoping that some beasts would come to me, for it would be the last time, and they did: soon a family of lions came padding, three adults and some cubs, and they lay down around me. I might have been one of their cubs, for size, since they were very large. The adults lay with their heads on extended paws, and looked at me with their amber eyes, and the cubs bounced and played all around and over me. I slept, and when I moved on, a couple of the cubs came with me, tussling and rolling, until a call from one of the big beasts took them back.

The trees were thinning. Between them and the environs of the city were the stone patterns. I had not seen the Stones for many days of walking, but now there were circles and avenues, single Stones and clusters. Around the other cities I had passed through or skirted, among their accompanying stones the animals had been thick, crowding there, for the harmonies they found, but I saw that here, outside the Round City, the stone patterns had no animals at all. The music, if that is the word for the deep harmonies of the Stones, had become too strong. Looking behind, I could see how the throngs of beasts were as it were fenced, but invisibly, by where the Stones began. The birds seemed not to be affected yet by the Stones, and I was accompanied by flocks of them, and their callings and twitterings were part of the symphony.

It was not pleasant walking through the Stones. I felt the beginnings of sickness. But there was no way of avoiding them since they completely surrounded the Round City. They ended with the wide good-tempered river which flowed completely around the city, holding it in two arms that came together in a lake on the southern side before separating and flowing away east and west. Little skiffs, canoes, craft of all kinds were tied along the banks for the use of anyone who needed them, and I took myself across the river, and on the inner bank the music of the Stones ceased, and was succeeded by a silence. A complete silence, of a quality strong enough to absorb the sounds of footfalls on stone, or the tools of a builder, or voices.

Before the curving low white cliff of buildings began was a wide belt of market gardens that surrounded the city. There were gardeners there, men and women, who of course took no notice of me, since I seemed one of them. They were a handsome breed, strong brown faces and limbs exposed by light brief garments predominantly blue. Blue was the colour used most in this city for clothes and hangings and ornament, and these blues answered the nearly always cloudless skies of the plateau.

The Round City showed nothing that was not round. It was a perfect circle, and could not expand: its bounds were what had to be. The outer walls of the outer buildings made the circle, and the side walls, as I made my way through on a path that was an arc, I saw were slightly curved. The roofs were not flat, but all domes and cupolas, and their colours were delicate pastel shades, creams, light pinks and soft blues, yellows and greens, and these glowed under the sunny sky. When I had passed through the outer city, there was a road that also made a complete circle, lined with trees and gardens. There were not many people about. A group sat talking in a garden and again I was seeing strength, health, ease. They were not less sturdy than the workers in the gardens, and this suggested that there was no division here between the physical and mental. I passed close to them, greeting and being greeted, and could see the glisten of their brown skins, and their large eyes, mostly of a full bright brown. The women’s head hair was long, brown or chestnut, and dressed in various ways, and decorated with flowers and leaves. They all wore loose trousers and tunics of shades of blue, with some white.

I passed through another segment of this city into another curved street, which had more people, for there were shops here, and booths and stalls. This street was a complete circle inside the outermost one, and was a market all its way – and like every market I have seen anywhere, was all animation and busyness. Another band of buildings, another street, full of cafés and restaurants and gardens. This was thronged, and a healthier friendlier crowd I have never seen. A pervasive good humour was the note of this place, amiability – and yet it was not clamorous or hectic. And I noted that despite the noise a crowd must produce, this did not impinge on the deep silence that was the ground note of this place, the music in its inner self, which held the whole city safe in its harmonies. More circles of buildings and streets: I was nearing the centre now, and was looking for grandiosities and pomps that are always a sign of the Degenerative Disease. But there was nothing of that kind: when I came out into the one central area, where the public buildings stood, made of the same golden-brown stone, all was harmony and proportion. Not in this city could it be possible for a child being brought by its parents to be introduced to the halls, towers, centres of its heritage, to feel awed and alienated, to know itself a nothing, a little frightened creature who must obey, and watch for Authority. Long sad experience had taught me to watch for this … but on the contrary, anyone walking here, among these welcoming warm-coloured buildings, must feel only the closeness, the match, between individual and surroundings.

I was not as acclimatized as I should be, to undertake the difficulties of my task … and I was sorrowful, and unable to control it. I sat for a while on the raised edge of a small lake circling a fountain, and watched children playing unafraid among the buildings, women idling in groups, men by themselves, talking, men and women in mixed groups sitting, or walking or strolling. It was all pervaded by the clear light of the plateau and the heat that was not too strong because of the many fountains and trees and flowers. And it was full of the strong quiet purpose which I have always found to be evidence, anywhere – city, farm, or groups of people and on any planet – of the Necessity, the ebbs and flows and oscillations of the Lock.

And yet it was there, just audible, the faintest of discords, the beginnings of the end.

I had not yet seen any Giants, yet they were here somewhere. I did not want to ask for them, thus revealing myself as an alien, and setting off alarms before it was necessary. I wandered about for some time, and then caught sight of two Giants at the end of an avenue, and went towards them. These were males, both of a deep glossy black colour, both in the same loose blue garments I had seen on the Natives, both concentrated on a task. They were measuring, by means of a device I was unfamiliar with, of wood and a reddish metal, the vibrations of a column of polished black stone that stood where two avenues intersected. The black stone, among so much of the soft honey-coloured stone everywhere, was startling, but not sombre, for its gleam mirrored the blue of the Giants’ clothes, and their strong black faces as they moved beside it.

I have to confess that I was on my guard now, waiting to see how I would be greeted: I was in appearance a Native, and I was never ready to be less than wary about the relations between tutors and taught – well, it was often my official task to be suspicious and to watch for signs of the Disease. I stood quietly waiting a few paces off, looking up to the shoulders of these enormous men: they were more than twice my height, and twice my breadth. When they had finished their task, they saw me as they turned to leave, and at once smiled and nodded – and were still prepared to move off, showing that they did not expect either side to be in need of the other.

I had satisfied myself that there was no condescension in their manner towards a Native, and now said that I was Johor, from Canopus.

They stood looking down at me.

Their faces were not as easily attractive and warming as those of the amiable people I had been watching and idling among, on my way in to the centre. Of course it is not easy to feel at home with a race different from oneself: there always must be a period of adjustment, while one learns to withstand assaults on one’s sense of probability. But here there was so much more! The Giants were at home in the Canopean mind, but had not seen a citizen of Canopus for thousands of years, for we had relied on the reports of these conscientious administrators. And here was Canopus announcing a physical presence, but from the mouth of a Native. As for me, I was surprised to find in myself childishness. Looking up at these immense people was to be reminded of impulses I had not consciously remembered. I wanted to reach for their hands and to be held, supported; wanted to be lifted up to the level of those benign faces, wanted all kinds of comforts and soothings that I did not really want at all – so that I was ashamed, and even indignant. And those conflicts of different levels of memory in me reinforced the woe I was truly feeling, which was because of what I had to say to them. And, besides, I was not well. Normally I would have spent time in Zone Six, as preparation. I was suddenly faint, and the Giants saw it. Before they could hold me up, which they were about to do, and which I did not want, for it would only feed this long-forgotten infant in me, I sat myself down on the plinth of the column, and from this even lower level looked up at these towering men behind whom the trees did not seem much taller, and made myself say, ‘I have news for you. Bad news.’

‘We were told to expect you,’ was the answer.

I sat absorbing this, making my faintness an excuse for silence.

What had they been told to expect? What had Canopus allowed them to know?

It was not the case that everything in the Canopean mind was instantly the property of the Giant mind – and vice versa. No, it was all more precise and specific than that.

The aim of the Pre-Lock Phase on Rohanda had been to develop the powers – for want of a better word – of the planet, through the symbiosis of the Giants and the Natives, so that the Planet Rohanda, that is, the physical being of the planet itself, could be linked, through the Giant/Native match, with the Canopean System. During this phase, which was so much shorter than had been expected, there had been little mental flow back and forth, Canopus to Rohanda, but there had been occasional flickerings, moments of communication: nothing that could be relied upon, or taken up and developed.

When the Lock took place the powers, vibrations (whatever word you like, since all are inaccurate and approximate) of Rohanda were fused with Canopus, and through Canopus with its subsidiaries, planets, and stars.

But it had not been that the very moment the Lock took place the Giant mind had achieved an instant, and total, and steady fusion with Canopus. From that time on, Rohanda was a function of the functioning of Canopus, but nothing could be considered as accomplished and to be taken for granted. The maintenance of the Lock depended on continuous care. First of all, the placing and watching and monitoring of the Stones, which had to be constantly realigned – slightly, of course, but with so many that was an arduous and demanding task. And then the building of the cities; and with each new mathematical entity created and maintained, the Lock was strengthened and each city had to be watched, adapted, and all this with the aid of the Natives, who were being taught everything, the moment they could take it in. And above all, what was being transmitted was how to watch their own development, and constantly to feed and adjust it, so that what they did would always be in harmony, in phase, with Canopus, the ‘vibrations’ of Canopus.

Canopean strength was beamed continually into Rohanda. Rohanda’s new, always deepening strengths were beamed continually back to Canopus. Because of this precise and expert exchange of emanations, the prime object and aim of the galaxy were furthered – the creation of ever-evolving Sons and Daughters of the Purpose.

But these interchanges of substance were infinitely varied and variable. The ‘mind’ shared between Rohanda and Canopus did not mean that every thought in every head instantly became the property of everyone at once. What was shared was a disposition, a ground, a necessary mesh, net, or grid, a pattern which was common property, and was not itself static, since it would grow and change with the strengthenings and fallings off of emanations. If one individual wished to contact another, this was done by a careful and specific ‘tuning in’, and thereafter what was communicated was exactly what had been decided would be communicated, no more and no less. So while the Giants were a function of the ‘mind’ of Canopus, they would not know anything that Canopus did not want them to know. Nor were conditions always perfect for exchange of ‘thought’. For instance, there was a period of more than a hundred years when no exchange of specific information was possible, because of interference from a certain configuration in a nearby solar system, temporarily out of phase with Canopus. The interchange of fuels went on, but subtler currents were interdicted until the star in question changed its disposition in the celestial dance.

‘Were you measuring the vibrations of the column for any reason?’ I asked at last.

‘Yes.’