A great deal that I saw later was very far from me then. For instance, there was my casual, almost careless, approach to the priests’ dark city, allowing myself to so easily be taken prisoner. How to account for that? For never before, not on any planet, had I behaved in a comparable way. I saw after it was all over, and my subjection to Shammat was past, that there had been a softening and slackening all through me, long before my descent to Rohanda on this visit, and this was due to my low spirits and inner doubtings because of the work I was having to do, and for so long.
And that was another thing: we might congratulate ourselves as we liked on the order and good sense on the planets we governed, with their minimum well-fed, well-cared-for populations, their willing submission to our rule, but it had been a very long time indeed, it had been long ages, since I had seen a culture anything like as lively as this Lelanos. No, something had gone out of our provenance, our Empire—I had known it, sensed it; but not until I had been brought here by Rhodia was I able to see what it was that had been lost. This place had some kind of vitality that we lacked. A deadness, a lack of inspiration was afflicting us, Sirius…
And why had Rhodia brought me here at all? All she had to do to was to send me with guides back southwards to our Sirian stations.
Yet here I was, with her, with Canopus, in this city. A city that had reached its perfection, and was about to sink… had begun to sink away from itself.
And I could not stand the thought of it! I could not! I found that I wished to raise my voice and howl in protest, to cry out, to complain to—but to whom? Rhodia, the now willing and dutiful servant of Canopus?
There was a morning when she and I sat together in one of the little rooms at the top of her house. We had been taking a meal of fruit and bread. We were not talking: talk between us had become difficult.
The sun came in through window openings in the brick walls, and lay in patterns on woven and coloured rugs. It was a scene of such simple friendliness and pleasantness.
I was looking in hostility at Rhodia, knowing she knew it, and yet I could not prevent my critical feelings. She seemed to me stubborn. I was seeing in her, as she sat quietly on her cushions, hands folded in her lap, looking up into the blue of the Rohandan sky, a stubborn and difficult woman who was refusing me, or something, or some demand. I felt towards her at that moment as I had done with Nasar in Koshi, when he rebelled, or half rebelled, or struggled against his inner rebellion. And I was not able to tell myself that this time the case was opposite.
She looked straight at me, with one of her full steady looks, and said: “Sirius, I am going to leave you.”
“Well, then, you are going to leave me! And you will leave this poor place, too, abandon it to its fate.”
“There is nothing that can be done to arrest the laws of Rohanda,” she said, “or indeed, the laws of the universe. They are worse here, that is all. We see them on Rohanda exaggerated and displayed, but there is never anything that can stay the same. You know that from your own Empire! Has there been a single culture you have established that has not changed and fallen away?”
I looked into her eyes—I had to—and agreed that this was the case. But not with grace.
“The best we can do is to set up something that approximates to the good, for a short time. This I have done in this city. And now it is time for me to go.”
“You have finished your task for this visit?”
“For this time it is done.”
“I have to thank for rescuing me, Nasar.”
“As you did me.”
She stood up. I saw she was weary, holding herself up only with an effort.
“You’ll be glad to go,” I said, sullen.
“I am always glad to go,” she said, on the old grim note. “Yes, I shall never, I sometimes believe, come to terms with it—the striving and striving to make the good and honest thing, and then—and so soon, so terribly soon, it is done, it is finished, it has become its own opposite.”
I saw her face ravaged, for a moment, with pain. Then it was clear again, patient. She contemplated some future I was trying to guess at.
“Be careful, Sirius,” she said. “You are in very great danger.”
“Why did you lead me into it?" I was angry, and resentful.
“You have to know it," she said. “You are a stubborn one, Sirius. You are not of those who can be told a thing, and absorb it.”
“Well,” I said, sarcastically, “tell me, do you have hopes of my surviving this danger?”
She turned her face full towards me, and smiled.
“If not this time, then another,” she said, and this struck me again with the idea of her callousness, her indifference.
And she responded to this in me with: “Sirius, rebellion is of no use, you know. That is what you are now—rebellion, the essence and heart of no, no, no. But against what are you rebelling? Have you asked yourself? When you run about this city gazing at its people as victims and the abandoned—who is it that has abandoned them and what is it that governs their good and their evil? To rebel against an Empire—Sirius, you punish that quickly enough, do you not?” she held my eyes with hers, insistent, till I nodded, “Yes, you do, and very harshly! There is little pity in you, Sirius, for those who rise up against you. But when you, or I, rebel, protesting against what rules us all, and must rule us all, no one imprisons us, or kills us in the name of order and authority. Yet order and authority there are. We are subject to the Necessity, Sirius, always and everywhere. Are you thinking, as you sit there sulking and angry and bitter at what you see as the waste of it all, that you may change the Necessity itself? By your little cries and complaints? Well? What did you say to me when I was biting my hands and howling like an animal, in Koshi? Do you not recognise a disobedient servant when you see one?”
As she spoke, into the stillness of the morning, there came a sound of shouting, and distant anger. This was something I had heard often enough on other planets, and often, too, on this one, but I had not believed it possible I might hear it here.
“Yes,” said Rhodia. “When a place, or a person, begins to fall away, to descend from itself, to degenerate, then it is a quick business. It is inherent in this planet, in the states of mind it engenders, that we tend to see things, patterns of events, conditions, in terms of balances of force and energy that are already past and done. The high time of Lelanos is done with, Sirius. And be careful. Fare well. We shall meet soon enough. We shall meet again here, on Shikasta, the unfortunate one… unfortunately, we shall meet…” and she accompanied this last “unfortunately” with the ironic smile that oddly enough comforted me and made me laugh.
She went out of the room, and down the little stair. Outside a throng of people rushed past, with weapons of all kinds, screaming, shouting, raging. I heard “Death to the Tyrants, death to Rhodia, death to the Oligarchy…” And as I stood looking down, I saw Rhodia walk out from the door of her house into the mob. They screamed abuse as they saw her, surrounded her, struck her down, and rushed on, leaving her dead on the sunny bricks of the roadway.
Such was the disorder in the city that her burial was a matter of throwing her with the other victims of the riots into a communal grave. And it was how, I felt sure, she would have wanted it. I wished I were not there. I had no protection here now, I was known as her associate, and it was impossible to disguise my appearance. But soon Rhodia’s death had affected me into a state of noncaring, indifference: thus I was pulled down further from my proper levels of thought and responsibility. I walked a great about Lelanos; and for me it was a ritual of mourning. Not for Rhodia, or Nasar but for a perfect thing. I could not tire of what I saw. Each city, anywhere, has its unique note, and that of Lelanos was unexpectedness and variety gained by ingenious use of its materials. There was its setting, a wide plain or plateau ringed with mountains but not closely enough to oppress. The plain was not flat, but full of change and unevenness, and the trees were of many tones of rich full green. Oh, the green of Rohanda, the infinite ranges of its greens, its wonderful green! Those of us who have not known such a planet must find it hard to imagine the charm and interest that resides always in the colours of vegetation of this kind. And the “seasons” that had resulted from the “events” caused even wider changes in colour and texture. This Rohandan plain was—alas, one may not say is, it has been through many metamorphoses since those far-off days—one of the most beguiling I have seen. And the city seemed to grow from it, was its spirit, its expression. Anywhere in Lelanos one might walk, seeing only the rich shining greens of trees and grass, with glimpses of buildings that astonished and caused a need to smile, even to laugh—there was always the hint of fantasy or even of self-parody in Lelanos. One longed to hasten, to come on this half-seen building, but did not, because of the pleasures of waiting, of lingering… and then there it was, and you were smiling, and laughing: at its best, in Lelanos, a smile was never far from any face. This was the architecture of the smile. The building in front of you was not large, though one might find, once inside it, there was more space than you could believe possible. Not large, but then size was not what it spoke of. It was made of clouds, perhaps? Coloured bubbles? It looked like a thunderhead building itself up, up, rapidly, in a clear but electric sky. Glistening white puffs and balls and shafts underlay the dark blue-grey stone of the region. which balanced in light globes or cubes on it, as if the snowy crystal had given birth to these darker shapes, which in their turn sped up again, burgeoning and unfolding, as summer clouds do. The red stone was used in the lightest of touches, for instance in their symbol for the lightning flash—these buildings were all a reminder, a celebration, of the forces that gave them life on this planet. And beyond these airy fantastic buildings, which yet spoke so accurately through stone of the necessary (so that I felt I was being enabled to glimpse that “need” of the Canopean levels of thought), were others, bit placed not in rows of obvious order, but so that walking among them they opened and showed themselves, or became concealed, as if one were to walk through sky—as if these earthbound creatures had actually flown through their skies. Air and sky were brought near to them in Lelanos. I cannot express the lightness of spirit, the cheerfulness that the place induced: and I thought of the dreadful weight of threat and punishment expressed in the same dark grey stone over the far mountains. Through this happy city thronged the tall, sinewy, almost black race, a quick-witted, smiling, subtle people, beautiful to look at, with the same sharpness of colour in them their city, loving to wear the brilliance of feathers from their forest birds or multihued and vivid flowers in their clothes or in their hair.
As I wandered there I saw a class of children, seated on bright green grass, their dark glossy skins and coloured clothes making brilliancy and light, but their faces were sullen and they stared at a woman who was a teacher from the time of the city’s health. She was asking them to comment on the rioting and destruction that was taking place now continually, to comment on it from within the spirit of their inheritance. She had a weary look to her, and seemed even distraught—and this was from lack of comprehension. She did not know what had happened or why it was happening. And as she stood there, appealing to them, one began to shout, and then another: “Death to the Oligarchy!” And they were up and racing off into another part of Lelanos where, soon, we could hear shouting and screams. And then smoke rose slow and steady into the blue air.
The teacher came slowly towards me. She stopped, and I saw the reaction I had become accustomed to. I was so amazing to them that their good manners could not prevent incredulity, then repulsion, at my white skin, my shreds of pale hair. “If this is your doing,” she said, in a low bitter voice, “then be proud!” And then, surprising herself, she spat at me. She looked horrified—at herself, and hurried away. I saw crystal drops of liquid splashing from her eyes on to the shining black of her arms.
I understood that I was in danger of being killed like Rhodia, but I was unable to care. I went off in the direction of the now thickly rising blue smoke, which seemed, in its up-pouring, rather like another form of the buildings. Crowds were hurrying in from all parts of the city. Nothing had been set on fire before.
And soon I was in a vast crowd that was sullen and silent, standing to watch one of those graceful stone fantasies pouring dark smoke from every opening, and then it seemed to shrink, and then dissolve, and it collapsed inwards in a burst of smoke. And now an angry roaring went up from everywhere, and the focus of the crowd having gone, they surged about, and looked for some other thing to absorb them. Those near me were staring hard, and muttering. I was becoming surrounded by ominous people. And then I saw, almost as if I had expected it, and as if nothing else could have happened, Tafta—and he was making his way through the throng. He was wearing the garb of Lelanos, loose blue trousers, with a belted tunic of the same, which I was also wearing, though it could do nothing to disguise me. He, too, could not be taken for one of them, being broad and brown and thickly bearded, but he was determined, and full of authority, and so they fell from him—briefly, but it was enough. He took me by the arm, and pulled me out of the crowd, not running, but quickly enough. We had soon left them all behind, and were hidden from them by the curve of a crystal globule, in which there was a low round opening.
This was some kind of public building. The interior shone more softly than its outer dazzle. It was like being inside a blown egg, white and quiet. But we went on deeper into the building, so as not to be seen at once by someone entering, and climbed high through the globes and cubes till we came out on a small flat roof, from which we could look down on the city. Smoke rose still from the fallen building. We were high enough for the crowds below to look small and manageable—this was a frame of mind familiar to me from so many hoverings above places, cities, herds, tribes, crowds. The space beneath one’s craft, within the span of one’s personal vision, seems under one’s control, and contemptible or at least negligible. I have had often enough to note this reaction and to check it. Yet we were not so high that there were not still taller shapes of white and bluish stone around us where could shelter, unseen.
And that was the setting of my encounter with Tafta. We were there for a long time, all that day, and on into the night, and I shall give a summary of what was said, what I understood.
First, it is necessary to establish my emotional condition—though that is hardly the kind of statement with which I normally preface a report! Tafta, who when he had been “the eighth man” had struck me as an acceptable barbarian, compared with obviously evil priests, was now seeming to me a savage, but a not-unattractive one, compared with Rhodia, of whom I was thinking with reluctance, as if this was a duty. I did not want to think of her at all. There was something intractable, stubborn, even meagre about my memory of that elderly female. As if she had refused me something that was my due, and which I had earned: yes, this was a recurrence, in a milder form, of my old reactions to Klorathy. It was as if she were determined to keep herself out of my reach and not let me encompass her with what I was convinced was a reasonable demand. I felt thwarted by her, refused.
And now, by contrast, here was this Tafta, about whom she had warned me. He was her enemy, the enemy of Canopus. And therefore of Sirius. But here I was sticking, in my thoughts. She had said that we had been enabled to escape from that dreadful city because of our enemy—that meant he had helped, or at least allowed our escape. She had said… and implied… not said…
Tafta was doing everything to win me—I could see that, of course, but did not dislike this, or even resent it—provided he kept at a good distance. The physical presence of the creature, this great hairy barbarian, glistening with crude strength, affected me as if I was being threatened by the smell of their blood, or at least by something too hot, too thick, too pressing. As he leaned towards me, where he sat in his characteristic swagger on a low seat—this little patch of roof was used for sitting out on—and smiled, showing the great glistening teeth of a healthy animal, and compressed his features in a smile that was like a snarl—even so, I found myself reassured. The snarl, after all, was only what I saw with my experience of these lower species: it was their expression of friendliness: the shining white teeth, like the exposed teeth of the lower animals, meant I need not expect attack. The light, almost colourless eyes, surrounded by fringes of yellowy hair were not unfamiliar to me: these were to be seen even among the favoured class of our Home Planet. Provided I was able to hold off in myself a strong reaction to this animality, I was able to regard him steadily—and to regard myself, too. I was not unconscious of the contrast between us, and of how he must be seeing me, Sirius, in the light of our long history of domination of Shammat. What I was thinking most strongly was that this almost overpowering vitality of his, which he was using like a weapon, was at least not a symptom of decline as were the inner doubts and dryness that was afflicting our Empire. At least this one was not likely to let his magnificent confidence be assailed by existential confusions! And when he spoke to me of what I, Sirius, could do here, in this city, to prevent its decline, I found myself unable to stand up to him. That is the truth.
He was speaking to me as if he, Tafta, this enemy of Sirius, had somehow become the voice of my most inner feelings. As if he had laboured, with me, devising my last tour of duty in our outermost planets, asking himself why, and what for, and what next. As if he wandered, with me, through Lelanos, inwardly grieving for its imminent overthrow.
I had hardly to speak! As the day passed and the blue went out of Rohanda’s sky, I was feeling that this enemy was myself. As if some part of my mind, or inner self, had been occupied by this Tafta without my knowing it. And long before the Rohandan sky had filled with its stars and I had signalled a private greeting to my home, I had agreed, at least by silence, to the following:
That I would put myself at the head of the government of this city. That he, Tafta, would maintain me in power for as long as I needed to restore Lelanos to its former balance and health. That I would set up a governing body with his aid, of the best individuals to be found in Lelanos. And that when all this was done, I would either stay as ruler, or queen, or whatever I wished, or he would see me to my own part of the continent.
He told me I might now return to my room in Rhodia’s house, without fear since I was “under his protection” and that he would meet me again next day for further discussion of “our plans.”
I spent the night seated at a window, star-bathing, as if I were safely home. I was immersed in my plans for the re-establishment of Lelanos.
And next day, when I walked quite openly and at ease through the green spaces to the same airy building, and went up to our little platform among those stone symmetries, my mind was at work on management: the exercises and uses of management.
He was not there as he had said he would be. I did not think anything of this, then. I was considering the causes of the falling away of Lelanos, among which Rhodia had indicated was the failure to maintain the independence and integrity of money. Well, that was easily put right! An enforcement of the law… if necessary an enforcement by the power of Tafta’s troops… the strengthening of the Scrutiny, and its powers… perhaps Tafta should be made a member of the Scrutiny…
Tafta did not come at all that day. I felt as if I had had something snatched from me: and I was again full of grief on behalf of Lelanos, the deprived—the deprived of me, and my expert and benevolent guidance. But as I waited there on my little platform among the snowy and bluish cubes and spheres, the deep blue of the Rohandan sky enclosing the lovely scene, I looked down on little people far below, and it was as if I held them in my protection; as if I was promising them an eternal safety and well-being.