The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire (9 page)

‘Ah, well,' I said, ‘perhaps it is too soon. In my view you should stay here a bit longer and have a nice rest. I wish I could do the same. But if you want to leave, then of course you may.'

I left then myself, noting with relief that Incent stayed where he was. If a reclining position, feet on the same level as the head, can be called heroic, then Incent's approached the heroic: arms folded defiantly, chin confronting the ceiling, feet at attention.

After I left the hotel, through a lobby all excitement and noise – a trade delegation from the Sirian HQ on their planet Motz were just leaving, looking pleased with themselves – I walked straight into the park opposite. Some freely wandering gazelles came to greet me. They originate, as it happens, from Shikasta, stolen by Sirius and presented as part of a state gift. They licked my hands and nuzzled them, and I knew my emotional apparatus was nearly at Overload. Plant life in every stage of growth. The songs of birds. In short, the usual assault on one's stabilizing mechanisms. So hard did I find it to keep my emotional balance that I nearly went back into the hotel to join Incent.

Oh, the glamour of the
natural
life! The deceptions of the instinctual! The beguilements of all that pulses and oscillates! How I do yearn for Canopus and for its … but enough of that. Forgive my weakness.

I was, of course, on my way to Krolgul, and in fact had nearly gone to him first, before Incent.

Shammat has set up on Volyen a School of Rhetoric. This is along the lines of the very successful School of Rhetoric that flourished for so long under Tafta on Shikasta during
its latter days, positioned there to take advantage of the emanations from the Religions and Politics. But when Tafta made his miscalculation and backed the wrong junta on Shammat, the school on Shikasta was neglected and became useless. It was Krolgul who studied the history of that school, and who applied to the new Lords of Shammat to try to make one work on Volyen. It has been in operation since just after your visit here, fattening on the effluvia from the turbulences of Sirius.

I do not remember your mentioning Tafta's school on Shikasta. It had two main branches, one disguised as a theological seminary, one as a school of politics. The first building was ornate, grandiose, providing every kind of gratification for the senses; the second was unadorned and functional. In the first, students used robes and accoutrements of great richness and variety; in the second, clothing was austere. But the kinds and types of speech used in the two apparently so different seminaries were almost identical, so that students could, and indeed were encouraged to, translate the religious into the political and vice versa, a process that usually needed no more than the substitution of a few words in a passage of declamation.

It was not possible to copy this exactly on Volyen, because Volyen's ‘aspirations for higher things' have always been identical with its political aspirations. But there are two main branches of Rhetoric, and the buildings that express them are quite different, one being severe in style and the other using all the aids of a sensuous kind you can imagine, from the artifices of lighting and colour to indoor plant-growing and culture. Sound is of course fully exploited. Thus a visit to the branch of Rhetoric described by them vulgarly as ‘with-all-the-tricks' has the effect of reminding you of the Religious Seminary on Shikasta; while the one housed in a spare, undecorated building, full of students in plain clothing, induces comparisons with Shikasta of a different kind. If you remember, it was enough for a
politician of the most crassly power-seeking sort to wear simple clothes and employ the speech of the common people to impress the muddleheads with ‘honesty' and ‘sincerity.'

But since politics has accommodated, and still does, all Volyen yearnings for the better, it really is ‘as rich as life itself,' to quote the slogan painted over the entrance to Krolgul's School. Volyen has been a subject planet several times in the past: its thoughts and beliefs are full of the vestiges of the Rhetoric of slaves. It has been an independent planet, using minimum contact with its planetary neighbours: the language of proud and self-sufficient isolation is still in use, even though self-sufficiency is long past. It has been a rapidly growing and ruthless Empire: songs, poems, heightened and emphatic speech of all kinds, still in use, remain as evidence of this phase. It is an Empire falling apart and disconsolate in its present state: but its language has not caught up with its condition. It is soon to be a Sirian colony: well, it will not have to invent new means of expression, for the commonplaces of its epochs of servitude will only have to come forward again and find new life.

But the recital of this cycle, I see, is beginning to induce in me symptoms of Ormarin's complaint, and I shall desist.

It turned out that I arrived at the school at a good time, for examinations were being held. I found Krolgul with some fellow examiners sitting behind a table at the end of a large hall, while students came forward one after another to show what they could do.

The examination hall is a simple rectangle, white, with no means of exciting the emotions by form, colour, scent, or any type of sound. In order accurately to test the effects of speech on the subjects, any other stimulus has been ruled out.

As I entered, I passed through a lobby crowded with the anxious examinees. They were from Volyen, Volyenadna, Volyendesta, and the two outside planets Maken and Slovin. Among them were several of our agents, notably 23
and 73 – but you will already have had my reports on them. Since they were so young in the Service when they were captured by Shammat, they never had time to become fully Linked, and therefore are of no use to Shammat. Krolgul does not understand at all why his attentions to these two, who are just as enthusiastic as Incent, have no results. Because, the conflict in them being less, they seem to be so much more stable and consistent, he expects from them more than he does from poor Incent … There is luckily so much Krolgol does not understand!

I greeted our two (temporarily) lost members and received their embarrassed greetings. For in their hearts they know themselves to be of Canopus, and in some devious way believe that their service with Shammat is still service with Us. The other agents did not recognize me.

As I entered, a young examinee had just failed. Krolgul and his associates had signalled to have her disconnected from the apparatus when he saw me; he jumped off the platform and came to greet me.

Beaming. Krolgul is always pleased to see me! Surprised? I was, and had to think it out. For one thing, our presence seems to him a guarantee of the importance of what he, what Shammat, is doing. On planets where they have been at work sometimes for millenniums without our – apparently – knowing it, they get quite downcast and wonder whether their efforts are worth it. No, my arrival in the Volyen ‘Empire' gave them all a great boost.

And the other thing is that they know quite well how partial their information is, and that our plans for any planet are based on blueprints that are far beyond them. Krolgul, working with considerable skill for a mass uprising ‘all over the Volyens, all at the same moment – and that's all and that's enough,' to quote from a recent speech, knows in his heart of hearts that my expectations are almost certain to be quite different, because of
what we know.

He hurried towards me with his hand out, grinning a
welcome, looking rather apelike, and this pleasure was genuine.

He was wearing another semi-uniform. These are not uniforms
of
or
for
anything in particular, but most young people throughout the Volyen ‘Empire' wear self-invented uniforms. This is because they have been conditioned by recent wars and colonial uprisings, which were all fought in uniform. Every army, even if no more than a guerrilla group, used uniforms, imposing uniformity down to the last fastening and belt and neck opening, and any infringement, even the slightest, earned penalties, sometimes death. In fact, it is no longer possible for them to think of war except in terms of uniforms. This mental set now infects every aspect of their lives. There is a certain type of covering for the lower limbs, in thick, unyielding cloth, always of the same colour, and very tight, emphasizing the buttocks and the genitals. It is not only worn in every corner of the ‘Empire,' but has spread to the near planets of Sirius as well. A young person who for some reason or another does not own this garment will regard himself or herself as an outcast, and will be so regarded by others.

This particular uniform of Krolgul's is original in that the lower part consists of a skirt, similar to that worn by unskilled labourers – usually foreigners – on Volyen. On them it is hitched up between the legs into a waistband, but Shammat legs are too hairy and knotted to be displayed, so it is left to hang free. Also, it is coloured; the real reason is that Shammat loves strong colours, but the excuse is that ‘to wear black, the colour of the working clothes of the working masses, is a false identification.' Over scarlet, blue, green, yellow flimsy cotton skirts are worn crisp brown tailored tunics whose main feature is that they are crammed with buttoned pockets all over the front and at the lower back. This gives the impression of a person who needs two free hands, probably to hold a gun of some sort.

Krolgul wore a bright-blue skirt, and his tunic was
bulging with papers and writing instruments and various electronic devices.

‘Servus,' he said, shaking my hand. ‘You are welcome. Do you want to listen?'

‘Do you think I have much to learn?' I teased him.

‘Who knows?' he said, pleased. ‘We flatter ourselves that … but you will see for yourself.' He signalled for the entrance of the next candidate, but stood beside me, giving me quick, almost pleading glances, of which he seemed to be unconscious.

‘You are wanting to ask me about Incent?'

‘Yes, yes,' he said, all eagerness, but trying to sound offhand.

‘He is by no means recovered,' I said. Krolgul brightened. Extraordinary, when his own personality is not being governed by some impersonation or other, how transparent he becomes, how easy to read. ‘Nor, to my mind, will he recover soon. It is a very great strain on him, as of course you know, when you use him as a conduit as you do.' Here there were a variety of flickering glances at me, doubtful, triumphant, apologetic, even embarrassed. For Krolgul seemed to believe that we did not know of Incent's importance to them in the battle between us, between Canopus and Shammat, though all our actions, both Shammat's and mine, since my visit here began, proclaimed it. ‘You risk making him very ill,' I said. ‘At this moment he is undergoing treatment.'

‘Well, he is just one of your agents, as far as we are concerned,' said Krolgul, in a bluff liar's style which even he knew was hardly convincing. And he took out a pipe and lit it.

‘Krolgul,' I said, I hope temperately, and with the ‘humour' without which one cannot survive a day in this place, ‘you are giving us an awful lot of trouble.' At this he brightened, flattered again, jerking and writhing a little with pleased laughter. ‘But you really are on the wrong
track, you know.' I said this to observe how discouragement took possession of his whole person, and how suddenly, so that there stood this visibly dismayed person who, without any outward feature's betraying it, reminded me so often of the ape, the animal; a blinking, open-mouthed Krolgul, Shammatian Overlord for the Volyen Empire, stood drooping beside me, and his eyes a single craving plea: Tell me, tell me, tell me.

But the attendants had wired up the examinee, and Krolgul had to return to his place on the platform. I refused to go with him, but stood near the wall by myself.

It was a young male from Volyenadna, a stocky grey-green stolid creature, who showed no sign of nervousness, but began at once, raising his hand carefully so as not to disturb the wiring of the monitors.

‘Comrades!
Friends.
I know I may call you friends, because of what we are going to undertake together.'

The graphs and print-outs showing his emotional responses to what he was saying were displayed, not where he could see them and perhaps become influenced by them, but behind him, on a large, high screen. I, and the examiners on the platform, could watch him and, at the same time, note the precise condition of his emotional apparatus.

It was already evident that this one could not last for long, despite his apparent heaviness and stolidity: at the word
friends
every part of his organism had responded, and
undertake together
had lifted him almost to the limit.

‘… No, you are not asking yourself, “And what is that?”, for you already know.
We
already know …

But the young man had already failed. On this we his voice had cracked with feeling; and the
Failed
buzzer went.

He was replaced by a strong, handsome young woman, from Volyendesta, full of assurance and calm smiles for us all.

She survived the first passage, with that dangerous and
deliberately planted
friends,
very well; she went past that
we
while the machines registered hardly a flicker of response. But then it began to build up in her ‘… If we do not agree on the reasons for what has come to pass, then we shall on the cure. We stand together here united in one thing, that the situation cannot go on like this. Why are we surrounded by gross inequalities, by appalling injustice, by dreadful poverty and cynical wealth …' Her voice had acquired a timbre that meant tears were in her throat, and she could not last long. But she persisted, although we could see by the impatience and irritation with herself on her face, that she knew she was defeated ‘… Why are we afflicted as we are by the bumbling stupidities of a bureaucracy groaning under the weight of its incompetence? Why in one street do we see the faces of young people who have never known what it is to open their own pay packet for their own honest work …