The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire (3 page)

‘Speaking on behalf of the working men and women of
this planet, I have the great pleasure to open this section of the highway and to express gratitude to our generous benefactors the Sirian …' etcetera. Ormarin had seen who it was by then.

Ormarin likes me and is always pleased to see me. This is because he knows he does not have to disguise himself from me. Yet he suspects me of being a Sirian spy, or sometimes does; or of being some kind of a spy from somewhere, the central Volyen government perhaps. He jokes sometimes that he ‘should not be associating with spies,' giving me looks that compound the ‘frank honest modesty' of his public
persona
with the inner uneasiness of his role. Or roles …

I joke that at any given time among his associates there is at least one spy from the Volyen central government, one from the Volyendestan central government, probably one each from Volyenadna, PE 70, and PE 71, and several from Sirius. He jokes that if that were true then half of his associates at any given time would be spies. I joke that he surely understands that this is an accurate statement of his position. He puts on the look obligatory at such moments, when one is forced to admit
impossible
truths – that of a wry, worldly-wise regret, tinged with a scepticism that makes it possible to dismiss the necessity of doing anything about it.

He is in fact surrounded by spies of all kinds, some of them his most efficient associates. Spies who have certain talents for, let's say, administration, and who are in administration for the purposes of espionage, often enjoy this secondary occupation and even rise to a high position, at which point they may regret that they didn't start off in a career of simple ‘public service,' as this kind of work is styled, and they suffer private sessions of ‘Oh, if only I had seen early enough that I was fit for real work, and didn't have to settle for spying.' But that is another story.

Ormarin soon ended the official part of the occasion; his colleagues went off; he shed his public self with a small
smile of complicity with me; and we sat down together on the hilltop. On the hilltop opposite us the Sirian contingent were heading back to their spacecraft. The several hundred Sirian workers swarmed over and around the road, and we could hear the barks and yelps of the supervisors.

This planet's weather is unstable, but one may enjoy intervals without needing to adjust to unpleasant heat, cold, or assaults of various substances from the skies.

We watched, without comment, one of the men who had just been with us running to join the group of Sirians: a report on me and my arrival.

I was relieved that Ormarin decided against a ritual lament along the lines of ‘Oh, what a terrible thing it is to have to work with deceivers …' and so on. Instead, he said to me, on a questioning note, ‘That's a very fine road they are making down there?'

‘Indeed it is. If there is one thing the Sirians know how to do, it is road-building. This is a first-class, grade I road, for War, Type II, Total Occupation.'

This was deliberate: I wanted him to ask at last, But
where
are you from?

‘I am sure it could be used for any number of purposes!' said he hastily, and looked about for something neutral to comment on.

‘No, no,' I said firmly. ‘When Sirius builds, she builds to an accurately defined purpose. This is for the purposes of Total Occupation, after Type II War.'

Was he now going to ask me? No! ‘Oh, come come, you don't have to look all gift horses in the mouth.'

‘Yes, you do. Particularly this one.'

Alas, I had miscalculated my stimulus, for he assumed a heroic posture, seated as he was on a small rock beside a rather attractive flowering bush, and declaimed: ‘We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them on the roads, we shall fight them in the air …'

‘I don't think you'll get very far, fighting Sirius in the
air,' I said in a sensible voice, designed to dissolve this declamatory mode into which all of them fall so easily.

A silence. He kept sending me short anxious glances. He didn't know what to ask, though. Rather, he didn't want to ask me the key question, and perhaps it was just as well. The trouble is, ‘Canopus' has become a concept so dense with mythic association that perhaps he would not have been able to take it in, or not as fast as I needed.

I made it easy for him to think of me as Sirian, at least temporarily. ‘I've seen this type of road on a dozen planets before a takeover.'

A silence.

‘Oh, no, no,' he said, ‘I really can't accept it. I mean, we all know that Sirius has quite enough trouble as it is, keeping her outlying planets in subjection; she's not going to add to her troubles … and anyway … they needn't think they are going to prevail over …' There followed a few minutes in the ritual patriotic mode.

After which, since I said nothing, he said, in a different voice, low, appalled: ‘But I can't face it; I really don't think I would want to live under Sirian occupation.'

I recited a portion of the history of Volyendesta, as it appears in our annals.

‘Of the fourteen planets of Star P 79 three are inhabited, Planet 3 and its two moons. The central feature of their history is that they have been invading and settling one another for millenniums. The longest stable period was of several thousand millenniums, when Moon II overran and conquered the other two and maintained by a particularly savage despotism –'

He interrupted, as I wanted him to: ‘Excuse me, Moon II, is that this planet or …?'

‘You. Volyenadna is Moon I.'

It was wonderful to see the look of satisfied pride, which he was unaware of. ‘We, Volyendesta, administered all three planets? Volyen was an underdog then?'

‘As you so graphically put it, Volyen and your brother planet Volyenadna were underdogs.'

He became conscious that his reaction of exulting pride was hardly becoming to an opponent of Empires, adjusted his expression, and said, ‘There is nothing of that in our history. And besides …' The opponent of Empires was struggling for the appropriate words. ‘The locals here, the natives, they are pretty backward. I mean, it is not their fault' – and here he cast fearful glances right and left, in case he might have been overheard – ‘there are sound historical reasons for it, but they are just a little, let us say …'

‘Backward,' I said firmly, and he looked relieved.

‘As always happens,' I went on, ‘there came a time when the peoples of your two enslaved planets grew strong and self-reliant through overcoming hardships, and they evolved in secret the methods and technologies to overthrow – not you, but your predecessors, who were almost entirely wiped out. A rather unpleasant race, they were. Not much loss, or at least so it was felt by those whom they had subjugated. But one may still see traces of them in these natives here, if one knows how to look.'

‘Extraordinary,' he murmured, his broad and honest face (genuinely honest, on the whole) showing the tensions of historical perspective. ‘And we know nothing of all that!'

This was my clue to say, ‘But luckily we do …' but I had decided against the subject of Canopus, for the time being. I saw his eyes most shrewdly and thoughtfully at work on my face; he knew a good deal more than he was saying, and more, perhaps, than he was admitting to himself.

‘You don't want to know the rest?' I asked.

‘It is all a bit of a shock; you must realize that.'

‘What I am going to say now is in your histories, though certainly very differently from how it appears in ours. I shall continue, then. Moon II – you – and Moon I were occupied for several V-centuries by Volyen. It was not entirely a bad
thing. Moon II, this planet, was sunk in barbarism, so thoroughly had your former subjects from Volyen defeated you. Volyen's inhabitants, so recently your slaves, were full of confidence, knew all kinds of skills and techniques, most of them learned from you. You could say that it was they who preserved your inheritance for you, at least partly. These qualities were introduced, reintroduced if you like, and maintained by Volyens – though interbreeding soon made it hard to say what was native and what Volyen in what had become a vigorous new people. And the same process was going on in the more temperate parts of Volyenadna. Even faster there, because the awful hardships of life on that icy planet had always produced strong and enduring people. Very soon Moon I, or Volyenadna, partly threw off, partly absorbed its Volyen invaders, and then conquered Volyen, and settled this planet.'

‘One of my ancestors,' said he, with pride, ‘was a Westerman from Volyenadna.'

‘I can see it in you,' said I.

He looked modest, while holding out his hands for me to admire. They are very large strong hands, the distinguishing mark of Westermen from Volyenadna.

‘Mind you, we gave them a good fight, it wasn't just a walkover,' he boasted.

‘No, an army of one thousand Volyendestans met them as they landed, and every one of the Volyendestans was killed. You died to a man, all blasted to cinders by the weapons of Moon I.'

‘That's right. Our Gallant One Thousand. And as for the invaders, nine-tenths of us were killed, even though the Volyendestans had only primitive weapons in comparison.'

‘What a massacre that was – of both invaders and invaded.'

‘Yes.'

‘A glorious chapter in the annals of both sides.'

‘Yes.'

‘I was admiring today the two memorials standing side by side in your main town square, commemorating that glorious day, one for the Gallant One Thousand, the Volyendestans, or Moon II, and the other for the Heroic Volyenadnans, or Moon I. Your ancestors, whose blood runs in your veins. Together, of course, with the blood of the Volyens, and many others.'

He was regarding me steadily, with a thoughtful expression tinged with bitterness.

‘Right, mate,' he said. ‘I know you well enough by now. What is it you are warning me about?'

‘Well, what do you think, Ormarin?'

‘You really think Sirius will …?'

‘You are weak, divided, declining.'

‘We'll fight them on the –'

‘Yes, yes, but don't you think …'

‘How is it you are so sure of it, if you aren't a Sirian agent, that is? I'm beginning to think –'

‘No, I am not, Ormarin. And I am sure that you don't really think anything of the kind. Why should I have to have any special sources of information to enable me to see what is obvious? When a planet is weak, divided, declining, nearly always it is taken over by a stronger planet or group of planets. If not Sirius, then some other power. What makes you think you are immune to this law, Ormarin?'

Down in the valley dark was falling. The hundreds of slave labourers were being pushed into a double file on the new road by the guards who ran and scampered all around them: they were being marched off for the night.

‘Poor creatures,' he said suddenly, his voice hot with pity. ‘And is that going to be our fate?'

I said, ‘The Sirian Empire is well past its peak. It has been expanding slowly, for – But if I told you how many millenniums, would you be able to take it in?
Your
history covers a few thousand of your years. The Sirian Empire is the greatest
in size
in our galaxy. There have been periods
when its growth was checked, periods when it was reduced, because of indecision on the part of the rulers of Sirius. But, looked at overall, it has grown. This last period is one of frenetic and frantic unplanned growth, because of the internal battles going on inside the Sirian ruling classes. It is an interesting fact that the theory governing the Sirian Empire at this time does not include the idea of expansion! Expansion is not on its agenda. They are not stupid, the Sirians, or not all of them: some at least know they are not in control of what they do, and they have just begun to understand that such a thing is possible, that an Empire may control its development according to … but that is another story.' I was watching his face for a glimmer of understanding, and if he had showed any sign I would have gone on to talk of Canopus, and what governs
us.
But there was nothing there but the strain of trying to follow ideas, if not beyond him, at least too new for easy assimilation. ‘Recently – talking comparatively, of course – Sirius has conquered several new planets, not as a result of a planned and considered decision, no, but because of some hasty decision made to meet an emergency.'

‘Hasty,' murmured Ormarin, indicating the fine road below us, along which the slave labourers were being marched to their barracks for the night.

‘The decision to build this road was made a year ago – a Sirian year. When Volyen conquered the two planets that Sirius considered were part of their Empire.'

‘You didn't finish that history.'

‘The Westermen, those unscrupulous conquerors of whose blood you are so proud, created here and on Volyen a highly structured society of multifarious skills.' Here I saw him smile wryly down at those formidable Westerman hands. ‘But, as always has to happen, Moon I and its two colonies lost impetus … This time it was Volyen's turn to rise again and conquer. A quite interesting little Empire it has been, the recent Volyen Empire, with some mild ideas
of justice, not indifferent to the welfare of its inhabitants, at least in theory, trying to absorb into its ruling classes the upper echelons of the conquered …'

I saw him begin to feel ashamed, and heard him sigh.

‘Well,' I said, ‘you could have chosen to live in the compounds and barracks with the natives, rather than compromise, but you didn't …'

‘Oh, believe me,' said he, in the hoarse, suffering voice I had almost deliberately invoked, ‘I have lain awake night after night, hating myself.'

‘Yes, yes, yes,' I said, ‘but the fact is, you did do what you've done, and as a result your position on this planet is a key one. And when the Sirians invade –'