females on what we now called the Lombi plain numbered fifty thousand. They were supervised as much as was necessary to prevent them escaping, to supply them with first-class medical care, and to monitor the growth of their young, with the appropriate testing and analysis.
These females regarded themselves as favoured and privileged: indeed they were. They knew themselves to be of superb physical fitness and condition. They had been told by the highest among our Colonial Service, which is itself the highest function of our Empire, how much their services were valued. But in spite of all this, we knew a degree of watchfulness had to be maintained: this, the reproductive instinct, being the strongest there is, it could take – had taken, in the past – many surprising forms; and we did not want any of them escaping with their young when the time came to give them up. For they all knew that this must be when the young had attained five R-years.
This was one reason the breeding station was on Rohanda, which was a long way from our Mother Planet and visited by none except our craft and those of Canopus. (Or so we believed then – but of that later.) It would not be possible for them to escape either by spacecraft or out of the Lombi plain, for there were guards stationed all around a vast periphery, well out of sight, who had been trained in every manifestation of the maternal instinct in desperation.
The other reason this station was here, well out of the way, was that such experiments always aroused opposition. This phenomenon is so well known that I will do no more than draw attention to it. Even when females have volunteered for this type of service, even when the experiments are crowned with success, and the results are shown in new breeds and strains that fulfil everything expected of them and are heaped with honours, and whose functioning is remarked and followed with approval and admiration from everywhere in our Empire – even so there is criticism, and of a certain kind, which I have learned to recognize. It is always marked by a sharp painful note, or tone, that signals a feeling of loss – and not only a personal loss, not at all: this is why I for one have always taken pains to notice this cry, or protest, which is so much more than personal. I can only put it like this: that it seems as if – I do not see how we can conclude anything else – when such deliberate, controlled experiments take place, to produce definitely envisaged stocks or strains, it is felt – most deeply and profoundly, and by the most responsible and evolved of our peoples – that some other possibility may have been lost.
As if randomness and chance in themselves are a good and a blessing and even a means of acquiring something not yet defined … I am stating my own personal opinion here, arrived at after much reflection.
This was the largest experiment in eugenics ever undertaken by us. Its success was due not least to the Rohandan atmosphere, the Rohandan isolation from other influences, our distance from the centre. When the fifty R-years of the experiment were over, and the breeding station finally dismantled, we congratulated ourselves that in that time not one of the successive inputs of females had escaped, and that we had not again contributed to the Rohandan species.
For five thousand R-years we did not investigate conditions in the northern Canopean areas: it will be remembered that we believed we had before us millions of years of a stable environment. We were informed that Canopus was sending a special mission, as they had reason to believe their plans were more successful than had been envisaged. The report of this mission was sent to us: it recommended the immediate implementation of something they called a ‘Lock’.
Again it has to be emphasized that we did not understand the bases of the Canopean work. We did not know what this ‘Lock’ was: though this did not mean we were not aware that there was regular contact between Canopus and Rohanda. But we assumed this was on the lines of the various types of electrical communication used by us with our own planets near enough for these methods. They also talked about ‘a degenerative disease’, but without specification. These two concepts were not understood by us at all, until recently: are not understood now generally. We might have asked questions: Canopus was always ready to answer them. We might have asked ourselves questions, since we believed our technology was as advanced as that of Canopus. But we did not. The reason was the same: various forms of pride. What was in the body of the report inflamed us with disbelief and suspicion.
The natives who still enjoyed their well-supervised and comfortable lives so close to us were nowhere near the level described in the report on the northern hemisphere.
We had chosen disbelief – but not entirely, for again I decided on some investigations of our own.
It happened that at that time Ambien I was visiting me.
In our long distant early youth we had been aligned for the purpose of producing our allotted four progeny – that was before the reduction of general population levels. Ambien I had decided after our progeny were grown to enter into another alignment with a female who subsequently worked with me on various projects when we had reached general-service-age. The eight products of the two alignments had formed bonds of various kinds and, in short, the personal aspects of our lives had been satisfactory.
Ambien I had been on the committee that first considered what our work would be on Rohanda, and had been involved with it ever since. His visit to me was partly old friendship and partly investigative: I had not been back to our Home Planet for millennia: this was because I was thoroughly happy on Rohanda, enjoyed my work, and thought it too pleasant a place to abandon for service leave. Members of the Colonial Service, even members of the Five, visiting us for any reason always made excuses to stay. In short, Rohanda had become my home.
When we had had time to satisfy our accumulated curiosity about each other’s doings, after what had been a good lapse of time, I asked him if he would undertake a spying mission to the northern areas. He agreed readily. More than once he had been in the teams that ‘opened up’ new planets, and he had always enjoyed this type of rough dangerous work. We did not expect danger from this particular enterprise, but at least it would be a break from routine. He took a liaison ship to the extreme south of the central landmass, where he dismissed it. Altogether he was away ten R-years.
He travelled extensively over the central landmass, where there were everywhere settlements of colonists and natives, always positioned at short distances from each other. He went on foot, by boat, and sometimes by using suitable animals. Ambien I and myself are of course of the same general species, but his particular sub-species are broadly built, brown of skin, with straight black hair. I, being fair of skin and hair and very slight in build, could not go anywhere near the northern areas without discovery. But he, while being much shorter than the colonists – who were rapidly increasing in height, and were now twice the size of the original Colony 10 species – was rather taller than the natives, and could not hope to be taken for one of them. He at first avoided close contact with them, but seeing that he could not get the information we needed this way, approached them in settlement after settlement, and found no hostility at all – at the most, curiosity. At first he put this down to an innate good nature due to the favourable conditions they lived in, and lack of challenge. But then, though reluctantly, he came to believe they had visitors of other kinds. Not colonists, who were unmistakable because of their size. (They from this time were referred to as Giants by Canopeans, and I shall do the same.) If not colonists, then who? Was it possible the dwarf races of the Isolated Northern Continent had grown large and were making island-hopping journeys across that ocean? We were soon to learn differently: but it was this speculation that made him decide to visit the Northern Continent on his way back to me.
What he found everywhere on the central landmass corroborated the Canopean report. The native stock had improved so far beyond what they had been seven or eight thousand years before, it was not easy to believe them the same species. They were practising agriculture, understood the use of animals, and their dwellings were not only soundly built in well-planned settlements but were even being ornamented with attractive designs in sophisticated colours. They had begun to wear clothes, too, and these were well
