The Sirian Experiments (43 page)

Each of them arrived with this aggressive and embarrassed
manner, and then inquired most solicitously after my health. Which I assured them was, as always, excellent. The visits were all the same. We agreed that we were seeing Sirius in ferment, beliefs and ideas held for millennia being thrown out, new ones being adopted. When this upheaval was over – and as usual during a period of tumult it was hard to believe it could ever be over – there was no means of foreseeing what our Empire would have become.

Our talk then turned to Rohanda. ‘Paradox, contradiction, the anomalous – when a planet is in a period of transformation, these are always evident. Well then, in your view, Ambien, what is the most important of these? Important from the point of view of illustrating mechanisms of social change?'

‘First of all, I am not equipped to talk of the real, the deep, the really fundamental changes that are taking place.' I said this firmly, knowing it would exasperate. But looked my visitor calmly in the eyes, insisting that I had to say this. And when it was accepted, with good grace or not, I said: ‘But as for the immediately evident and obvious paradoxes, I would say that it is that Rohanda has perfected techniques of communication so powerful that the remotest and most isolated individual anywhere can be informed of anything happening anywhere on Rohanda at once. There are millions of them engaged in these industries to do with communication. Through the senses of sight and sound and through ways they do not yet suspect, each Rohandan is subjected day and night to an assault of information. Of “news”. And yet never has there been such a gap between what this individual is told, is allowed to know, and what is actually happening.'

‘But Ambien, is this not always true, everywhere, to an extent at least?'

‘Yes, it is. For instance, if a Sirian were to be told that our Empire is run by a Dictatorship of Five, he would laugh or call the doctors.'

‘I am not talking about that, Ambien – and I don't like how you put it. If we are dictators, then when have there been
rulers so responsive to the needs of their subjects … so compassionate … so concerned for the general good … Very well, you look impatient, you look as if I am quite ridiculous – we all of us recognize that we Five no longer think as one. You have your own views … but I was not talking of any specific problem we may have. I was suggesting that what
can
be taken in by an ordinary individual is
always
behind the facts.'

‘It is a question of degree. But are generalities useful at this point? This dangerous and crucial point? Very well then, let me put it like this. When what the populace believes falls too far behind what is really going on, then rulers do well to be afraid. It is because a mind, individual or collective, can be regarded as a machine. From this point of view. Feed in information too fast and it jams. This jam manifests in rage – riots, uprisings, rebellions.'

‘Which we are seeing now throughout our Empire. All kinds of new ideas fight for acceptance.'

‘But how many more are there that are not yet seen at all? But you don't want to talk about the particular. Very well then, though in my view we –
you –
are making a mistake. We ought to be talking about the Sirian situation. And about
our
situation. We ought to be thinking of ways our populations can be told: you Sirians, you, the Sirian Empire, have been ruled by an Oligarchy of Five, and this fact does not fit in at all with what you have been taught … oh very well then, let us stick to Rohanda. I shall make a very general observation. We all know that the central fact in a situation is often, and in fact most usually, the one that is not seen. We may say even that there is
always
a tendency to look for distant or complicated explanations for something that is very simple or near at hand. I shall say that as a result of watching the mental processes on Rohanda, I have concluded that they do not understand an extremely simple and basic fact. It is that each person everywhere sees itself, thinks of itself, as a unique and extraordinary individual, and never suspects to what an extent it is a tiny unit that can exist only as part of a whole.'

‘And that is a really new idea for you, Ambien? Ambien of the Five?'

‘Wholes. A whole. It is not possible for an individual to think differently from the whole he or she is part of … no, wait. Let us take an example from Rohanda. There is a large ocean vessel of a new and advanced design. It is struck by a lump of floating ice and instantly sinks, though it has been advertised as unsinkable. They appoint a committee of experts – individuals, that is, of the highest probity and public admiration, with the longest and most efficient training possible in that field. This committee produces a report that whitewashes everyone concerned. But this same report, studied only a few years later, strikes a new generation as either mendacious or as incompetent … well?'

‘You occupy your mind with the minuscule! It isn't what we expect of you.'

‘It seems to me that the minuscule, the petty, the humble example is exactly where we can study best this particular problem. What happened in the interval between the first report and the reassessment of it?'

‘Change of viewpoint.'

‘Exactly. An assortment of individuals, identically trained, all members of a certain class, came together on a problem. They were already members of a group mind – together they concentrated into a smaller one of the same kind. They produced a report that could not have been different, since they could
not
think differently. Not
then.
That is why one generation swears black, and the next white.'

‘But you, Ambien, are surely proof that a group mind is hardly inviolable – or permanent!'

‘Ah, but here is another mechanism … what we are seeing are only mechanisms, machineries, that is all … let us consider these group minds … these little individuals making up wholes. Sets of ideas making up a whole can be very large, for instance, when they are occupying a national area, and millions will go to war for opinions that may very well be different or even opposite only a decade later – and die
in their millions. Each is part of this vast group mind and
cannot
think differently, not without risking madness, or exile or …'

Here there was a moment of consciousness, discomfort, sorrow – which I dissipated at once by going on.

‘Yes, you said that I have been at odds with you and for a long time, and that this fact proves I am wrong. But what is the mechanism, the machinery, that creates a group, a whole, and then develops a dissident member – develops thoughts that are different from those of the whole?'

‘Perhaps this individual may have been suborned? Influenced by some alien and unfriendly power?'

‘If we are going to allow ourselves to think like that, then – '

‘Then
what
, Ambien? Tell me. Tell
us.
We are ready to understand, don't you believe that?'

‘It is a mechanism for social change. After a time … and it can be a very long time indeed; or after only a short time … as we see now on Rohanda, where everything is speeded up and sets of ideas that have been considered unchallengeable can be dispersed almost overnight – after a period of time, short or long, during which the group mind has held these sacred and
right
ideas, it is challenged. Often by an extremely small deviance of opinion. It is characteristic of these group minds, these wholes, to describe an individual thinking only very slightly differently as quite remarkably and even dangerously different. Yet this difference may very shortly seem ludicrously minor …'

‘And so we all hope, Ambien.'

‘But there is a question here, it torments me, for we do not know how to answer it. This deviant individual in this group – he or she has been unquestioningly and happily and conformingly part of this group, and then new ideas creep in.
Where do they come from?'

‘Well, obviously, from new social developments.'

‘Thank you. Oh, thank you so much! That's settled then, and we need think no more about it! May I go on? When such a deviant individual becomes too uncomfortable for the group
mind to tolerate, various things can happen. Commonly, expulsion. Labelled seditious, mad, and in any case wrongheaded, he or she is thrown out … yes, yes, we all agree that in our case this would be a pity. Talking generally though, this individual may start an opposing group having attracted enough people with similar ideas – no, I am
not
threatening you. Can we not talk about this with less personal reference? Can we not? Yes, indeed, I am concerned about our ancient association, indeed I am anxious for my personal saftey – but can you not believe that brooding about these questions I am still Ambien II, who have with you administered a vast Empire for so long? Thank you! This deviant individual may influence others of this group, this mind, to think differently, when the entity will split into two – and I do not expect this to happen in this case. No. What has caused me to think differently from you has affected, I believe, only myself … no? We shall see! No, I am
not
threatening! How can it be a threat?
We are not in control of these processes.
We like to think we are. But they control us. You don't like that thought! We of the Five don't like to think that all this long time we have never been more than straws in a current … but may I go on to suggest another possibility for this deviant and so irritating individual? If he or she is not expelled, or does not expel herself, but remains, contemplating her position, then a certain train of thought is inevitable. She has been part of a group mind, thinking the same thoughts as her peers. But now her mind holds other ideas.
Of what whole is she now a part?
Of what invisible whole? It is surely not without interest to speculate, when feeling isolated, apparently alone, on the other little items or atoms who with her are making up this other whole … this line of thought doesn't interest you? And yet surely I have been seeing indications that it does, it interests you very much – and in fact perhaps
your
speculations in this realm are why you are here, visiting me, just as the others have done … you did not know that the others have all been? Odd, that!
Once
we would all have known, we
did
all know
what the others did, and thought. What is happening to us? We don't know! That is the point! Are we going to be like the Rohandans, quite happy to use social machinery without being prepared to examine the mechanisms that rule them?
Are
we quarrelling? Does our disagreement have to be seen as such a threat?'

‘We are not hostile to you, Ambien. You must not think that we are. Not to you personally.'

‘When have we ever seen our relations with each other as personal? Well, I am delighted to have your
personal
good wishes, of course.'

‘I must go. Can we send you anything? Do you need anything?'

‘I am not ill! I am not, as far as I am aware, under arrest? But thank you, no, I don't need anything, and I have occupation enough with what I am thinking. I think day and night about group minds and how they work. Do you realize that one may present a fact as hard and bright and as precious as allyrium to a group of individuals forming a group mind, one that is already set in a different way, and they cannot see it. Literally.
Cannot take it in.
Do you understand the implications of that?
Do you?
Well, thank you for coming to see me. Thank you. Thank you.'

During this period I had not heard from Klorathy, nor had there been any official communication between Canopus and Sirius. When the other members of the Five had concluded their visits to me, a message arrived addressed personally to me. ‘Perhaps you would consider making a visit to the Isolated Northern Continent.'

The Four had seen this, and had directed it on: normally a message for an individual of the Five is not intercepted.

I informed the Four that I was again visiting Rohanda, but they made no comment. Not knowing what I was supposed to be doing, I instructed my Space Traveller to hover over the Isolated Northern Continent, at the highest altitude possible for observation. I was not alone. The skies were full not only of craft originating on Rohanda, but of the observational
machines of Canopus, Shammat, the three neighbouring planets. A Canopean Crystal, Shammat Wasps, and ten of the Darters evolved by the three planets: they often shared their technology.

I was looking down at the continent, in an idle nonfocused way, remembering the other guises and transformations I had seen it in, when the Canopean Crystal floated down and lay in the air in front of me. It was in its most usual shape, a cone, and as it hung point down among the charming clouds of that atmosphere, with the blue of the atmosphere beyond, it was most attractive, and I was admiring it when it moved off, slowly, and I followed. I did not understand this lesson, which I assumed it was, but only watched, and enjoyed – as always – the aesthetic bonuses of this planet. The Crystal became a tetrahedron – the three facets of it I could see reflecting the landscape of these blue and white skies – then a globe. A glistening ball rolled and danced among the clouds. I was laughing with the pleasure of it, and even clapping my hands and applauding … it elongated and became like a drop of liquid at the moment when it falls from a point. But it was lying horizontally, the thin end in front of us. This exquisite drop of crystalline glitter was thus because of the pressures of the atmosphere, it was adjusting itself to the flow of the jet stream, we were being sped along by the air rivers, and the Crystal had become a long transparent streak. My craft was almost in the end of the streak, and for a few moments we seemed almost to intermingle, and what delicious thoughts sang through my mind as we saw the rivers and mountains and deserts of the landmass beneath through what seemed like liquefied light. My guide was changing again, was showing how it had to change, and flow, and adapt itself, for all the movements and alterations of the atmosphere we were submerged in like liquid moulded this Globe, or Rod, or Streak, or Fringe … How many shapes it assumed, this enchanting guide of mine, as we followed the flowing streams of the upper airs of Rohanda – how it evolved and adapted and shone! – but then dulled, so it seemed as if a lump
of dullish lead lay there, sullen in a chilly and yellow light, but then lost its grey, and took in a sparkle and a glisten again, and seemed to frolic and to play, and yet again became serious and stern, with an edge of hardness in it, all the time a flowing and an answering, and an astonishment, but then, my mind lost in contemplation of this Crystal that seemed to have become no more than a visible expression of the air currents, I saw it had stopped, and had become the shape of a drop that points down. Its narrow end was directing my attention below. What was it I was supposed to be noticing?