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Authors: Doris Lessing
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be much broader than we had envisaged in the early days of our Empire. Species could learn to adapt: some much more easily than others. But ourexperience had been that if representatives of one species had adapted to certain conditions, then these did not necessarily take well to further adaptation. We wished to breed technicians who would be available for work on different planets, of differing atmospheres, sometimes with little or no time for adaptation or acclimatization. These all-purpose, hardy, multifunctional technicians were in fact absolutely essential in certain outlying parts of our Empire.
The 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 â
had
taken, in the past â 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 â 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 forthis 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 â 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 â
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 â I do not see how we can conclude anything else â when such deliberate, controlled experiments take place, to produce definitely envisaged stocks or strains, it is felt â most deeply and profoundly, and by the most responsible and evolved of our peoples â 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
The 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 â
had
taken, in the past â 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 â 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 forthis 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 â 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 â
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 â I do not see how we can conclude anything else â when such deliberate, controlled experiments take place, to produce definitely envisaged stocks or strains, it is felt â most deeply and profoundly, and by the most responsible and evolved of our peoples â 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
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