Shikasta Read online

  Shelters were being made in the forest from boughs, sheaves, of grass, even packed earth. Fire had been carried from the city in an earthenware pot, and was guarded day and night in the form of a great fire which was the focal point of this settlement of - savages. Ground had been marked out and was being dug for new gardens. Attempts were being made to duplicate the workshops and factories of the cities, but they could no longer remember their crafts, which in any case depended on the powers and technology of the Giants.

  The animals had begun to move away. The first hunters were killing them by walking up to one and plunging in a knife: they had never learned fear, these mild intelligent creatures of the Time of the Giants - for this was the name of the time just passed, how everyone referred to what had been lost. But the animals, learning fear, were moving away at first reluctantly, with the same wondering disbelieving look as the Natives had when they first felt the new pains. And then, being stalked and chased, troops and bands and herds of the beautiful beasts, infinitely more varied and adapted than Shikasta ever knew afterwards, began a rapid movement out and away. There would be the sounds of thundering herds, and we knew another part of the animal population had fled.

  Meanwhile, I had to try to visit all the cities, where I hoped that instinct had taken the inhabitants out and to safety. Perhaps there was enough of the communal mind left to have allowed the other cities to sense what was happening at the Round City? I and David and some others went first of all to the Crescent City, where we found bands of people wandering about outside in the fertile fields of the great river delta. They told us that their city was "full of demons," but that many of the population had not left, for "there had been no one to tell them to go, they were waiting for the Giants to come." Those who had escaped were making reed huts, and the ground had been cleared for spring planting. The animals had left. We had passed through flocks of every kind moving away from the deadly environs of the Crescent City, and from the creatures moving on two legs who had become their enemies.

  To shorten this part of my account: We went from city to city, splitting ourselves into several bands; from the Square City to the City of the Triangle, from the Diamond City to the Octagon, from the City of the Oval to the Rectangular City - and on, and on. It took a full term of the Shikastan journey around its sun. The bands that set forth did not remain as they had been, for some decided to stay with settlements that attracted them, some sickened and died, some, finding a particularly beautiful forest or river, could not leave there: but about a hundred or so, with those who joined, wishing to be of use, or impelled by the new restlessness which was such a feature of this Shikasta, journeyed incessantly for a year, and found that everywhere was the same. The cities were all empty. Not one was anything but a death-trap or a madhouse. Where people had stayed, they had killed themselves or were idiots.

  Around each were the new settlements of Natives living in every kind of roughly contrived hut, eating meat they had hunted, wearing skins, tending gardens and fields of grain. If there were any clothes left from their city past, these were being hoarded, were already part of ritual. The storytellers were singing of the Gods who had taught them all they knew, and - for this had been fed into the tales at the beginning - would "come again."

  When we got back to the Round City, meaning to walk outside the edge of the Stones, the vibrations had become so bad that we had to make a wide detour. For miles around, there was no life, no animals, no birds. And the vegetation was withering. The settlements we had left had been moved well out and away.

  The biggest change was that more children were being born than before. The safeguards had been forgotten: gone was the knowledge of who should give birth, who should mate, what type of person was a proper parent. The knowledges and uses of sex had been forgotten. And whereas previously an individual who died before the natural term of a thousand years was unlucky, it was clear that the life-span was about to fluctuate. Some had died already, very young, or in middle age, and many of the new babies had died.

  This was the situation all over Shikasta a year after the Lock had failed.

  At least, there were enough people living well away from the old cities to continue the species. And I knew that although for a time the cities would become more and more dangerous, after three or four hundred years (inadequate information made it impossible to be more definite), when the weather and the vegetation had done their work on the buildings and in the Stones, the cities would all become heaps of ruins, with no potency left in them for good or for harm.

  I come to the final phase of my mission.

  First of all I had to locate the rebel Giants. I now did have an idea of where they were, for when I was in the Hexagonal City to the north of the Great Mountains, I had seen from very far off a settlement where none was expected, and there were rumours about ghosts and devils "the size of trees."

  Again, it was David I decided to take with me. To say that he understood what went on was true. To say that he did not understand - was true. I would sit and explain, over and over again. He listened, his eyes fixed on my face, his lips moving as he repeated to himself what I was saying. He would nod: yes, he had grasped it! But a few minutes later, when I might be saying something of the same kind, he was uncomfortable, threatened. Why was I saying that? and that? his troubled eyes asked of my face: What did I mean? His questions at such moments were as if I had never taught him anything at all. He was like one drugged or in shock. Yet it seemed that he did absorb information, for sometimes he would talk as if from a basis of shared knowledge: it was as if a part of him knew and remembered all I told him, but other parts had not heard a word! I have never before or since had so strongly that experience of being with a person and knowing that all the time there was certainly a part of that person in contact with you, something real and alive and listening - yet most of the time what one said did not reach that silent and invisible being, and what he said was not often said by the real part of him. It was as if someone stood there bound and gagged while an inferior impersonator spoke for him.

  He mentioned, when I asked him to come travelling again with me, that he did not want to leave his youngest daughter. He had not ever mentioned this daughter. Where was she? Oh - with friends, he believed. But did he not see her? Was he not responsible for her? He seemed to want to please me, by eagerly nodding his head and producing some phrases to the effect that she was a good girl, and could look after herself. This was the first time I encountered what was to become a typical Shikastan indifference to their progeny.

  His daughter Sais was a large, light brown girl, with a mass of bronze tightly curled hair. Everything about her was wholesome and lively. She was not much more than a child, and indeed could look after herself - she had had to. She seemed to have no memory of having been brought up in the Round City, or of her life there with both her parents. She talked of her mother as if she had died many years before, hut I discovered she had been killed hunting with a party for deer. A couple of tigers had lain in wait, and knocked her dead with blows from their great paws. Sais did not know that so recently as a year ago such a thing would have been inconceivable. Tigers were, always had been, enemies of Native-kind!

  She agreed to come with us.

  When the spaceship had first set me down on the planet, it was well to the north of the Great Mountains, on the east of the central land-mass. I had walked and ridden west. Now we were walking back east-wards but to the south of the Great Mountains which are such a feature of Shikasta, towering over every other part. The foothills here were higher than the tallest mountains of the southern continents, and we climbed and climbed. All around the central peaks and masses, not one range, but range after range, chain after chain, peak after peak - a world of mountains, north and south, east and west. We looked down from immense heights into the dead Hexagonal City, with its surrounding settlements, which we could not see at all from there. But I did see something quite unexpected. Far below me, in a clearing on a mountainside, was a col
umn, or a pylon - something that glittered, and must be of metal, and was extremely tall, though from here it looked so tiny. This must be something to do with Shammat. Besides, even from where we were high in that marvellous tonic air, I could feel an evil message coming from it to me. I did not want to expose David and Sais to it, and marked where it was, so that I could return to it alone.

  We went on down, down, giving the Shammat thing a good distance, and then standing on the slopes of a minor peak, surveying interminable plains, I saw what I expected. We were looking down into the queerest kind of settlement. It had not been put together for shelter or for warmth or for any of the familiar purposes, but was an act of impaired memory.

  A tall cylinder lacked a roof, but a couple of branches had been laid across the top. Another, square, had a ragged gap in it. A five-sided shack was leaning and crooked. Every shape and size of building were there, not one complete. The materials had been taken from the Hexagonal City. To carry great stones for several miles was not difficult for these Giants.

  What had been in their minds, though? What did they remember of the old cities? How did they explain the vicious radiations they must have submitted themselves to, and how had they been affected?

  As we three walked down and down through the wooded slopes of the lower mountains, I spoke of the Giants to David and Sais. We would soon be meeting very tall, very strong people, but no, these were not the Great Ones of the stories and ballads. We would have to be careful and on our guard at all times. It was possible they might harm us.

  Thus I tried to prepare these two for what I feared. But how to explain to those who had never known anything like it, never even heard of such a thing, what slavery was, or serfdom? They had no means of knowing, or imagining, the contempt a degenerated and effete race may use for another, different from themselves.

  We at last reached the plain, and walked towards that haphazard settlement. The Giants were all inside their buildings. We shouted greetings when we got near, and they came out, showing fear. Then, as we did not seem to threaten them, and they could see we were half their size, first one put on an act of indignation, as it were trying it out and looking at the others to see if it was making an effect, and then they all copied, behaving as if calling out to them at all was an impertinence. They took us into a sort of corral, so badly made that light showed through the stones. Jarsum was there. He was a chief, or a leader. He did not recognise me. Beside him, like a queen, sat his consort, the freakish white Giant. She stared, and then yawned, ostentatiously. Nothing could be more pathetic than their way of looking surreptitiously at each other to see if these gestures were being admired. Both Jarsum and she then tried out all sorts of tricks and gestures of ridiculous hauteur, bridling, giving us contemptuous glances, putting their noses in the air. I could see that David and his daughter were confused, for they had never seen anything like it.

  I told Jarsum that I was Johor, an old friend, and he leaned forward to stare, his great face puckering and frowning, like someone presented with a conundrum too difficult. I said that my companions were David and Sais from what had been the Round City, his old home. But he did not remember, and looked in enquiry at the white Giant who lolled insolently there beside him, and around at the other Giants who stood like servants around the walls. But none remembered the Round City. Later I found that not all these Giants were from the Round City, but had come here from several of the cities, apparently guided by what remained in them of their old intuitions. They had tried to re-create what they could in these crazy sketches of buildings.

  The white Giant had been studying the sturdy David, and his healthy daughter, and now she whispered to Jarsum. He examined us, directed by her, and saw three beings half the size of him and his kind, with different features and skin colour.

  He announced that we would be permitted to stay and work for them.

  Then I used the name Canopus. I had to.

  Something did come home to them. Their eyes sought each other, first Jarsum and the white Giant, then, finding nothing there, these two leaned forward and stared at the other Giants, who stared back.

  Yes, Canopus, I said, Canopus, and waited again for the word to resonate.

  They might not go against the Laws of Canopus, I said, not one of us could do that, and the first Law of Canopus was that we may not make slaves and servants of others.

  This reached them.

  I asked for shelter for the night.

  They replied that there was no building unoccupied, but the truth was, they wanted us to go, for we presented them with a challenge too great for them.

  I said that we would rest for the night outside this settlement under some trees, and come to them again in the morning, to talk.

  I could see that they were going to demand that we leave, and might even chase us away.

  I said that Canopus ordained that travellers must be fed and given shelter. It was a Law binding on each one of us.

  This did not reach them easily. They were inwardly rebellious, and angry, and would have killed us if they were not afraid. As for us three, we stood waiting, I suppressing fear, because I knew how great our danger was, but David and Sais quite calm and even eager, since they did not understand anything of what was going on. And I saw again that these Natives were better off than the Giants, simply because they stood so much nearer to stones and earth and plants and the beasts: in them was a bedrock of strength the Giants did not have. The ones who had agreed to leave into airs and climates on planets chosen for them - yes; but these, no - I could see from their inwardly shocked, empty eyes that even their physical beings were doomed. They would not live long.

  They did bring us food. Animal food, so they had taken to hunting. We had not seen animals as we approached this settlement, so the herds must have already fled a long way off across the plains.

  We laid ourselves down under some nearby trees, and I stayed awake while the others slept. When it was very late, the stars crowding down in a black sky, a great shadow came stooping out of the round enclosure, and it was Jarsum, striding across to us. He stood a couple of his paces away - many of ours - and peered and puzzled, but could not see us under the boughs, and came nearer, bending close. When he saw me awake, he smiled. It was an embarrassed smile. And he went away, cracking stones and twigs under his great feet that were shod in hides now.

  In the morning the three of us walked the miles to the edge of the Hexagonal City, where the stone patterns began. The ugly vibrations did not seem as strong as those in other places, either because time had already weakened them, or because so many of the stones being carried away had broken the patterns, or for other reasons I could not surmise.

  But we saw something astonishing. Half a dozen of the Giants had come after us from that pathetic settlement of theirs, but took no notice of us, striding straight into the middle of the Stones, where they stood, turning themselves about, and raising their arms and bending and bowing. I understood that they were enjoying the sensations. Yet this practice could only make them more befuddled than they were.

  After some time of this, they came out of the Stones, their limbs and heads jerking, as if they were truly diseased, and they danced and twitched their way back to their home.

  I noticed that both David and Sais showed signs of wanting to "try it and see" - for they had forgotten, or so it seemed, what those discords could do. I said to them, No, no, they must not - and led them back to the Giants.

  There a feast was in progress, with mounds of roast meat, and they were singing and dancing. I understood that the Giants who had gone to the Stones went to fetch back, in themselves, the power of the disharmonies, which they were using like alcohol to fuel this revelry.

  I reminded them of our presence and asked for fruit.

  I asked Jarsum to come and talk with us, alone, under the trees. He came, but as if drunk or half asleep.

  I spoke of Canopus again.

  He accepted it. He listened. But nothing much was getting past t
he fogs and silliness of that poor brain.

  I produced the Signature and held it in front of him. I had not wanted to do this, because I had noticed that its power had uneven or sometimes contradictory effects by now.

  Yes, he remembered it. He remembered something. The half-dazed eyes, reddened and narrowed, as if with drink, peered close, and the great trembling hands came out to touch it. And he did something I had never seen on this noble planet, that could not have happened on Rohanda - he bent and prostrated himself and poured sand on his head. And David and Sais copied him: they did it eagerly, pleased with themselves for learning this new attractive thing.

  I led the way back to the settlement, telling Jarsum that he must make everyone come. He did, but more than half had gone out to dance among the Stones, and we had to wait for them to come back.

  Then I stood before them, in a space among the lean-to fragmentary buildings, and I held out the Signature, so that it shone and dazzled, and sent its gleams everywhere into their eyes, their faces.

  I said that Canopus forbade them to go near the Stones. It was an order. And I made the Signature flash and shiver.

  I said that Canopus forbade them to use each other or the other creatures of the planet as servants, unless these servants were treated as well as they would treat themselves, as equals at all times.

  I said that Canopus forbade them to kill animals unless it was for food, and then only with care and without cruelty. They must plant crops, I said, and must harvest fruit and nuts.

  I said that they might not waste the fruits of the earth, and each might take only what was needed, no more.

  They must not use violence with each other.

  Above all, over and above all these prohibitions, was the first one: never, never, must they go into the old cities, or use those stones for building other settlements, and they must not intoxicate themselves in these ways if they ever again came across places or things, that held the capacity to intoxicate. They were destroying themselves in these practices, and Canopus was displeased.