And why?
“Because I am here…” was Klorathy’s reply, which irritated Ambien I. Understandably. I felt irritated to the point of fury even listening to this report.
Anyway, Ambien I had wanted to go, but could not, since I had the Sirian transport with me. He had in fact gone off to visit the dwarves again, by himself, another colony of them—a foolhardy thing, which had nearly cost him his life. He had been rescued by the intervention of Klorathy, who had only said, however, that “Sirians as yet lacked a sense of the appropriate.”
Then had begun the “events” that were not to be described as more than that.
At last, I had arrived back, and he, Ambien I, could not express how he felt when he saw the glistening bubble descend through that grey steam, because he had believed me to be dead. And of course it was “a miracle” that I had survived—to use a term from our earlier epochs.
We stayed together that night, in emotional and intellectual intimacy, unwilling to separate, after such a threat that we might never have been together again at all.
We decided to leave Klorathy.
First, having pondered over what Ambien I had said about questions, how they had to be asked, I went to Klorathy and asked bluntly and directly about the Colony 10 colonists, and why we, Sirius, could not use them.
He was sitting at his tent door. I sat near him. We were both on heaps of damp skins… but the clouds of steam were less, the earth was drying, the thundering and trickling and running of the waters already had quietened. It was possible to believe soon these regions would again be dry and high and healthy.
“I have already told you,” said Klorathy, “that these colonists would not be appropriate. Do you understand? Not appropriate for Sirians, for the Sirian circumstances.”
“Why not?"
He was silent for a while, as if reflecting inwardly. Then he said, “You ask me, over and over again, the same kind of question.”
“Why don’t you answer me?”
Then he did something that made me impatient. He went into his tent and came out with some objects—the same things Ambien I and I had been supplied to maintain our balance on this difficult planet.
I at first believed that because of the recent “events,” certain changes in our practice were necessary, and I readied myself to take in instruction, since I knew that exactness was necessary here, and that it would not do for me to overlook even the smallest detail. (I had told him—and heard his dismayed patient sigh about Adalantaland falling off in this respect, how they had not maintained the care needed to make these practices work.)
I watched what he did. Certain kinds of stone, of substance, some colours, shapes, were laid before him and handled and ordered. But I was watching very carefully and saw that he made no changes in the ritual I had been using.
“So nothing has had to be changed?” I asked, knowing my voice was rough and antagonistic. “Not even the recent events, and the distancing of the earth from its sun and all the other differences, are going to necessitate changes in what we have to do?”
“No,” he said. “Not yet. Though perhaps later, when we have monitored the exact differences. In climate, for instance. And of course the magnetic forces will he affected…”
“Of course,” I said, sarcastically, as before.
He continued to handle the objects, precisely, carefully. I watched his face, the amber, or bronze face, long, deeply moulded, with the strong eyes that were so closely observing the movements of his hands.
And I continued to sit there, arms locked around my knees, watching, maintaining dry tight smile that was all criticism, and he continued patiently and humbly to manipulate his artefacts.
I did not understand him. I thought this was a way of putting me off, of saying wordlessly that he would not answer me.
As I formulated this thought, he said, “No, that is not it. But if you want to understand, then I suggest you stay on here for a time.”
“For how long?” And answered myself with, “as long as necessary, I suppose!"
“Yes, that’s it.”
“And what sort of progress have you made? Are the savages and dwarves in an alliance? Are they ready to stand against the Shammats?”
“I think it is likely the dwarves have been sealed into their caves, and that we may never see them again.”
The way he said this made my emotions riot. The end of a species—a race—the end of the Lombi strain on Rohanda and the technicians.
He said: “Well, we have to accept these reverses.”
“Then why are we staying on? The reason for your being here is gone—swallowed by the events.”
“The tribes are still here!”
“So you are not with them just because of the old hostility between them and the dwarves?”
“I am here as I often am with all kinds of peoples… races… species, at certain stages in their development.”
I did understand that here was a point of importance: that if I persisted, I would learn. “You want me to stay?” This was a challenge: deliberate, awkward, hostile.
“Yes, I think you should stay.”
He had not said: “Yes, I want you to stay.”
I got up and left him. I told Ambien I that I intended to leave. And in the morning, having said goodbye to Klorathy, we took off in our space bubble. We surveyed, rapidly, the ravages of the “events” on both southern continents, and then went home to our Mother Planet.
For some time I had little to do with Rohanda, which was judged by our experts as too much of a bad risk, and I was allotted work elsewhere. This was, too, the period of the worst crisis in Sirian self-confidence: our experiments everywhere, sociological and biological, were minimal.
The populations on our Colonised Planets were at their lowest, too.
As for me, I was pursuing thoughts of my own, for I could not get out of my mind the old successes of Canopus in forced evolution, and while whole strata of our Colonial Service and all our governing class were publicly asking: What for? I was wondering if they would give room to such emotions (but they were called ideas, as heart-cries of this kind so often are, and the more so, the more they are fed by emotions and sentiments) if they had been able to watch, as I had done, creatures not much better than apes transformed into civic responsible beings within such a short time. I shared these thoughts with Ambien I, with whom I was once again working, but our Empire was less tolerant then than it is now—or so I believe and hope—and the kind of social optimism that inspired me was classed in some quarters as “irresponsibility” and “sociological selfishness.”
This may be the right place to remark that I long since learned that if one is entertaining unpopular ideas, one has only to keep quiet and wait for the invisible wheels to turn that will bring those back as the last word in intelligent and forward-looking thinking.
Meanwhile, I got on with my work. It happened that I was in that part of the Galaxy where the transplanted Lombis on were Colonised Planet 25. I had not thought of them from the old time to this; but I made a detour from curiosity. It could be said that the whole Lombi experiment had been inutile. They had been carefully preserved from any contact with more evolved races, except for very rare reconnaissance trips by Colony personnel to see if it were possible to keep a certain pristine social innocence that might be of use in “opening up” new planets. Yet we had nevertheless ceased to colonise new planets in the total—may I say reckless?—way that had distinguished our policies up till then: we acquired a new possession only after long and careful assessment. Our interest in the Lombis continued to the extent that we wished to monitor the possible development of evidence of a craving for “higher things.” From the spacecraft I made contact home to ask permission to make a small experiment of my own: it would not have been given me if the Lombis had not virtually been written off as useful material.
We had sent no technicians there for over a thousand S-years. Their life-spans remained at roughly two hundred R-years. This meant that as individuals they could have no memory at all of
visitations “from the skies.”
I ordered a rapid survey of Planet 25 sunside and nightside, at maximum speed so that we would not be observed as more than a meteorite—we were not visible at all on sunside when moving—and then, having chosen a populous area, hovered in full view for some hours, while crowds collected.
I made as impressive a descent from the aircraft as could be devised. Unfortunately I had no formal wear with me on this working trip, but I devised a long cloak of some white insulation material, and made the most of my not exactly profuse yellow hair—it is not that I have ever wanted to be more hairy or furred than I am, but the yellow or gold-haired species always evoke awe, because of our rarity. I floated to earth from the spacecraft, and saw a multitude of the poor beasts fall to their faces before me with a deep and sorrowful groan, which did touch me, I confess, accustomed as I am to the awe so easily evoked in uncivilised races.
I had prepared all kinds of suitably vague replies to possible questions, but found that once I had said I had “come from the skies” and was their friend, that was enough: awe is a great inhibitor of intelligent questioning.
They remembered—or their ceremonies and songs and tales did—“the shining ones,” and what dread they still kept from the old time on the other planets, I stilled by the most solemn promises that I would not take any of them with me when I left.
And what was it they were so afraid of being taken away from? The reply to that is ironical… is sad… is a comment on more than just the situation of the Lombis… my so long, so very long career in the Service furnishes me with several similar situations…