Shikasta (57 page)

None, or few, understood the nature of the intense
interest taken in them by various outside localities.

That there was interest, on the part of ‘beings from space', was suspected, and there was a worldwide belief that heads of states and governments knew factually and specifically about the visits, peaceful or otherwise, from other parts of the galaxy. It was believed that these functionaries and their underlings denied this knowledge out of a fear of the reactions of their populations, who, for their part, because of the innumerable ‘sightings' and ‘experiences' of all kinds of unknown spacecraft, believed in 'visitors from space', but in a vague and almost mythic way, as they did in religious exemplars and other-worldly beings of a saintly or devilish kind: for there was no part of Shikasta whose myths and legends did not include visits from superior visitors.

Meanwhile, under the noses of the unfortunates, real battles were being fought, real events took place.

First of all, there was our former enemy and uneasy ally Sirius.

Through the long development of Shikasta, Sirius had several times used areas, mostly in the southern hemisphere, and usually with our agreement, for experiments. Some of these animals proved unsatisfactory for Sirian long-term purposes, and were allowed to remain and develop along their own lines, without further modification or interference. Some of the experiments were successful or promising, and more than once Sirian fleets had descended and taken off an entire species, sometimes numbering many thousands, after anything from between five hundred or a thousand, to several thousand, years. These were transferred to other Sirian colonies, to develop along planned and foreseen lines, or to go into service at once according to their specific physiques, their mental development.

Due to the comparative ease of travel in recent times, and the accessibility of all parts of Shikasta to
the others, a great deal of racial mixing had taken place.

Sirius was not much involved in the culminating events on Shikasta. One reason was in fact this racial mixing: as soon as travel, due to the developments of technology, had become general, Sirius had wound up certain experiments, and had no further expectations of Shikasta. She always kept us informed, telling us exactly when she withdrew her active participation, placing in our hands details of the experiments she had at various times undertaken, whose results we might have to oversee, or take into account, ourselves. She did send observing spacecraft however, and these were of premier size and quality, the cream of her fleets. This was partly to indicate to us, her ancient rival, that the relinquishing of her power was voluntary, and partly to intimidate Shammat, whose frenzies of mind caused all of us anxiety.

Shammat of Puttiora was now in fact the most powerful planet in that complex, and Puttiora was her puppet, but remained the apparent centre for purposes of Shammat's convenience. Shammat knew that at some time the unfortunate cosmic pattern which had caused the long decline of Shikasta because of the diminishing flow of SOWF was due to end. She knew that Shikasta would again lock into place in the great plan that kept Canopus and her planets and colonies in an always harmoniously interacting whole. At some time, Shammat's influence would end.

But Shammat did not know when. Did not know how complete her overthrow was to be. Did not know what our plans were.

Shammat's disability has always been of the same kind and degree, and can be described in a useful Shikastan saying: it takes one to know one! For Shammat's low level of development has always prevented her from understanding the nature of our interests and intentions.

Shammat's nature has always been that of an exploiter, a drainer, a feeder, a parasite. She has never been able to comprehend that other empires may be based on higher motives.

Shammat, since her rapid rise to a key position in the Puttiora Empire, has been a place of power, highly fortified, always at war, whose citizens, all of a single racial stock, ex-Puttiora, have considered themselves superior, and draw tribute from any other part of the galaxy they might happen to conquer or influence. Shammat sits in the middle of the complex like an ever-open mouth. Shammat is, and always has been, a threat to the overall development of the galaxy. A vast planet, the largest known, it is barren, dry, lacking in resources. Everything has to be imported. And she lacks, completely, any wholesome balancing powers and currents because of her position in the cosmic organization. Even Puttiora would not develop this dreadful place. Yet by an unfortunate combination of chances, some criminals found their way here, seized it, used its very awfulness to wrench power for themselves from others.

For a short time (in cosmic terms) Shammat was the most luxurious in the galaxy. It overflowed with riches, wealth, the products of a hundred inventive and industrious cultures. The inhabitants lived on a level of self-indulgence and beastliness that has never been equalled, not even during the nastiest episodes on Shikasta.

Power from Shikasta remained always Shammat's main source, and she was not able to find anything to replace it.

More and more power had been drawn from Shikasta. Shammat was taking everything she could, while she could. But she simply was not able to understand what was happening. She did not know how to find out, and flailed about wildly, blindly, in every sort of damaging way, in the hope that
‘something would work'. She knew that we, Canopus, was, is, must always be, her enemy: knew that we were always present, potent, unconquerable – but did not know what to look for, unable to recognize us in our innumerable guises.

Shammat, until the very end, believed that in some extraordinary way or other, it would be possible to maintain ‘somehow', the link with Shikasta. ‘Something will happen.' ‘It will all come right.' This desperate unclarity was not what characterized Shammat in the days when we observed her accurately foreseeing the weakening of the link Canopus/Shikasta, and what that weakening might offer her in the way of benefits – but Shammat had degenerated. The long history of shameless dependence on others, the selfishness of her attitude towards neighbours in the galaxy, parasitism, her luxury and the weakening of her moral fibre – all had conspired to ruin her. And the emanations from Shikasta itself, in her final phase, were poisonous. The very process that Shammat had set moving – reducing, weakening, enslaving a large part of Shikasta's populations, this had reduced and weakened itself, and caused self-division and civil war.

There were battles fought above Shikasta in those days that had nothing to do with Shikasta! Shammat fought Shammat – wildly, senselessly, self-destructively.

The skies over Shikasta were in any case filled, crammed, with every sort of mechanical and technical artefact, observing stations, weather stations, relaying stations, some in the service of usefulness, others for war; there were weapons of every kind, of every degree of destructiveness – and these too competed in ways the inhabitants of Shikasta knew nothing about. Shikasta had an outer shell of metal hurtling around it. That this had a weakening effect on the links and meshings of the cosmic forces was of course not a
consideration of Shikasta, whose technicians, even at the end when certain facts were becoming obvious, had not yet reached an ability to understand these forces: for several centuries their sciences had been set in a retrograde and backward path of thought which prevented them from thinking usefully along these lines. (They never suspected for instance that certain of their cities, or certain buildings, were built in such a way as inevitably to make their inhabitants mad, or unbalanced at the least.) All around the whirling shell of metal that encased Shikasta battles took place. And others observed these battles. More than once Sirian master-ships appearing on a routine reconnaissance trip put to flight Shammat's craft that had been dogfighting all over the Shikastan skies. More than once Sirian master-craft, and our own, patrolled these skies in protective alliance, keeping away the ugly little Shammat machines, whose almost automatic belligerence only increased the pressures on Shikasta. And the Shikastan moon was hotly contested.

Craft from the Three Planets were also visitors to Shikasta. Their happy balances in the structure of forces had long been affected by the Shikastan descent into barbarism, and to maintain their health had not for a long time been easy. The Twentieth Century War with its evil and deadly emanations, useful only to Shammat, had affected these planets. Their visiting craft were for observation. At all times our servants have been on the best of terms with them, have given them every assistance. They were waiting, as were we all, for the moment when Shikasta's long night would end, and be succeeded by a slow return to the light.

It will be seen, then that a large part of the work of the visitors to Shikasta was for monitoring and observation, and was no threat at all to that unhappy planet – on the contrary. But that there were so many different visitors, with so many different types of craft, was not known by them. There was of course and in addition
the already mentioned fact that the major powers all had weapons of war kept ‘secret' from each other, and certainly kept secret from the populace, and since from the point of view of such powerful weapons, the skies of Shikasta were small enough, every part of the globe was visited by craft originating in Shikasta itself.

Nor did Shammat fully understand the nature and extent of these many different craft, many visitors.

How very much did Shammat
not
understand; and what damage she did; and how she did crash about and blunder and spoil!

For instance, in her ignorance, Shammat's agents would often destroy large numbers of people whose proper term on Shikasta had not ended – and whose destruction was no help at all to herself. These we would return to Zone Six and immediately reintroduce into Shikasta for service as soon – sometimes – as they could talk and walk.

For instance again: Shammat's preoccupation was always to weaken and soften the moral fibre of the inhabitants. Ours was always the opposite effort. But Shammat was not always – and increasingly less so, towards the end – able to control her own efforts or to observe and understand ours.

Again: Shammat's agents prowled and lurked, feeding the spirit of hatred, antagonism, unreason, contention: we did the opposite always, but they were never able to observe, let alone understand, the techniques working against them, and this led sometimes to situations quite farcical, where they might be working against themselves, without knowing it.

Again: Shammat's agents, relying on the link between Shikasta and Shammat, often saw this bond where it did not exist, or had been destroyed or weakened by us. People who in fact were free of Shammatan influence, and who had clung to us, understanding – perhaps at first only in an inkling, or
the thread of a thought – that salvation lay with us, people who in fact were in our service, and often without knowing it, were trusted by Shammat, who did not have the means to recognize the situation.

All over Shikasta, in those last days, moved our agents, our servants, our friends, and with them went the Signature, imprinted on them, in them, in their substance, just as the sick distortion of Shammat was imprinted on Shammat's kith and kin; and anyone who retained, anywhere, even a vestige of the shadow of the Signature, felt our presence, looked up – recognized – and followed. Or tried to. I am not saying that our struggle was anything but desperate, dire, awful. There were many casualties, failures. But just as, during the last days, in the last phase, Shammat's agents filled Shikasta with horror, and terror, and self-disgust, and destruction, so, too, did the Shadow of the Signature summon everyone who could remember … there was a sweetness, a promise, a lightness of heart and of hope in those dreadful last days.
Notes added to the above by JOHOR, TAUFIQ, USSELL, and others

With so large an area of Shikasta due to be laid waste, one of our preoccupations was of course the preservation of adequate representative genetic material. This was partly accomplished by judicious and specific pressures on certain individuals and groups of individuals capable of putting personal concerns aside in the interests of the broad perspective. For when directed to certain places temporarily or comparatively ‘safe', this was not necessarily with the idea of their personal survival. Certain types of Shikastan were able to respond very well: in fact their capacity to respond made them eligible. But of course
our difficulty was that admirable and useful traits were so mixed with the undesirable. Sirius and its colonies, Canopus and its colonies, Shammat – and others too – all were now in the inheritance of Shikasta. And the increasing pressure on the Shikastan stock from local and external radiation; from the increasingly poisoned and adapted atmosphere; from their sustenance itself, full of every sort of chemical and radiation, from, too, the sober knowledge deep within them of the responsibilities of their destiny: all this had the effect of adapting the genetic material even more, causing sports of all kinds. Some of these were – and are – valuable, with potential. But others, alas, not.

We shall mention, as an example, a particular hazard that was overcome by – very – long-term foresight and planning: this because it has formed part of the story in this volume, not because it was more or less important than others of our concerns.

It had long been foreseen that there would be a strong reaction against the white races, whose technology had ruined so much of the world, and so many of its people. There was a real danger that feelings would run so high that there would be a serious depletion of genetic material. The ‘white race' – or races – were of a very varied genetic mix. Some parts of the globe, even at the end, were still comparatively homogeneous, still virtually unmixed: but the central and western areas of the central landmass, particularly the Northwest fringes, had absorbed such a number of different stocks, from other parts of Shikasta and from outside Shikasta, that it was undesirable this ‘race' should be lost. A great deal of effort, some of it apparently even bizarre, went into making sure that enough of these animals survived to carry on their genes into the future: these efforts were continuous and energetic everywhere over the northern hemisphere. Or almost everywhere: the Isolated Northern Continent, originally
uniformly populated by a fairly homogeneous genetic stock, indigenous, adapted to the surroundings, was supplanted by a conquering people, mostly from the Northwest fringes and the central landmass with nothing in the way of genes that was not already receiving our attention.