Free Shikasta by Doris Lessing Page B

me, Jarsum, that you were monitoring your column, that you had suspected something was wrong, then what did you mean?’
    â€˜The currents have been uneven,’ he said promptly, with all the responsibility and grasp he was capable of. ‘We noticed it a few days ago. There are always slight variations, of course. There might sometimes be intermissions. But we none of us remember this particular
quality
of variation. There is something new. And you have explained why.’
    â€˜But there is more to it than I have said.’
    Again a general, if slight, movement of unease, the shifting of limbs, small sighs.
    Against this resistance I gave them a short history of the Puttiora Empire, and its colony Shammat.
    It wasn’t that they were not listening, rather they seemed
unable
to listen.
    I repeated and insisted. Shammat, I said, had had agents on this planet for some time. Had there been no reports of aliens? Of suspicious activity?
    Jarsum’s eyes wandered. Met mine. Slid away.
    â€˜Jarsum,’ I said, ‘is there no memory among you that your ancestors – your fathers even – believed there might behostile elements here?’
    â€˜The southern territories have been cooperative for a long time.’
    â€˜No, not the Sirian territories.’
    Again, sighs and movements.
    I tried to keep it as brief as I could.
    I said that this planet, under the changed influences of the relevant stars, would suddenly find itself short of – as it were – fuel. Yes, yes, I knew I had told them this. But Shammat had found out about this, and was already tapping the currents and forces.
    Rohanda, now Shikasta, the broken, the hurt one, was like a rich garden, planned to be dependent on a water supply that was inexhaustible. But it turned out that it was not inexhaustible. This garden could not be maintained as it had been. But a slight, very poor supply of Canopean power would still seep through to feed Shikasta; it would not entirely starve. But even this slight flow of power was being depleted. By Shammat. No, we did not know how, and we wanted urgently to find out.
    We believed that a minimum of maintenance would be possible, the ‘garden’ would not entirely vanish. But in order to plan and to do, then we must know everything there was to be known about the nature of our enemy.
    No response. Not of the kind I needed.
    â€˜For one thing,’ I insisted, ‘the more the Natives degenerate, the more they weaken and lose substance, the better that will be for Shammat. Do you see? The worse the quality of the Canopus/Shikasta flow, the better for Shammat! Like to like! Shammat cannot feed on the high, the pure, the fine. It is poison to them. The level of the Lock in the past has been far above the grasp of Shammat. They are lying in wait, for the precise moment when their nature, the Shammat nature, can fasten with all its nasty force onto the substance of the Lock! They are already withdrawing strength, they are feeding themselves and getting fat and noisy on it, but this is nothing as to what will happen unless we can somehow prevent them. Do you see?’
    But they did not. They could not.
    They had become unable to take in the idea of theft and parasitism. It was no longer in their genetic structure, perhaps – though how such a change had come about is hard to tell. At any rate, I saw that there was nothing I could say that would get through to them. Not on this subject. I would have to make efforts myself.
    My first was to spend time with Jarsum, when the transmitting sessions were over, and to try and make an impact on him. From him I got every kind of help and information on any subject but one.
    The transmitting sessions went on. They are always the same. A theme would be brought forward, held in the minds of those present, a little discussion might take place, or there might be continuous silence. The theme, as translated into ideas and facets in the individual minds