Shikasta by Doris Lessing Page A

noise a crowd must produce, this did not impinge on the deep silence that was the ground note of this place, the music in its inner self, which held the whole city safe in its harmonies. More circles of buildings and streets: I was nearing the centre now, and was looking for grandiosities and pomps that are always a sign of the Degenerative Disease. But there was nothing of that kind: when I came out into the one central area, where the public buildings stood, made of the same golden-brown stone, all was harmony and proportion. Not in this city could it be possible for a child being brought by its parents to be introduced to the halls, towers, centres of its heritage, to feel awed and alienated, to know itself a nothing, a little frightened creature who must obey, and watch for Authority. Long sad experience had taught me to watch for this … but on the contrary, anyone walking here, among these welcoming warm-coloured buildings, must feel only the closeness, the match, between individual and surroundings.
    I was not as acclimatized as I should be, to undertake the difficulties of my task … and I was sorrowful, and unable to control it. I sat for a while on the raised edge of a small lake circling a fountain, and watched children playing unafraid among the buildings, women idling in groups, men by themselves, talking, men and women in mixed groups sitting, or walking or strolling. It was all pervaded by the clear light of the plateau and the heat that was not too strong because of the many fountains and trees and flowers. And it was full of the strong quiet purpose which I have always found to be evidence, anywhere – city, farm, or groups of people and on any planet – of the Necessity, the ebbs and flows and oscillations of the Lock.
    And yet it was there, just audible, the faintest of discords, the beginnings of the end.
    I had not yet seen any Giants, yet they were here somewhere. I did not want to ask for them, thus revealing myself as an alien, and setting off alarms before it was necessary. I wandered about for some time, and then caught sight of two Giants at the end of an avenue, and went towards them. These were males, both of a deep glossy black colour, both in the same loose blue garments I had seen on the Natives, both concentrated on a task. They were measuring, by means of a device I was unfamiliar with, of wood and a reddish metal, the vibrations of a column of polished black stone that stood where two avenues intersected. The black stone, among so much of the soft honey-coloured stone everywhere, was startling, but not sombre, for its gleam mirrored the blue of the Giants’ clothes, and their strong black faces as they moved beside it.
    I have to confess that I was on my guard now, waiting to see how I would be greeted: I was in appearance a Native, and I was never ready to be less than wary about the relations between tutors and taught – well, it was often my official task to be suspicious and to watch for signs of the Disease. I stood quietly waiting a few paces off, looking up to the shoulders of these enormous men: they were more than twice my height, and twice my breadth. When they had finished their task,they saw me as they turned to leave, and at once smiled and nodded – and were still prepared to move off, showing that they did not expect either side to be in need of the other.
    I had satisfied myself that there was no condescension in their manner towards a Native, and now said that I was Johor, from Canopus.
    They stood looking down at me.
    Their faces were not as easily attractive and warming as those of the amiable people I had been watching and idling among, on my way in to the centre. Of course it is not easy to feel at home with a race different from oneself: there always must be a period of adjustment, while one learns to withstand assaults on one’s sense of probability. But here there was so much more! The Giants were at home in the Canopean mind, but had