In short, freedom is not possible to people who have been conditioned to need tyrannies.
This was the message that our poor Incent was impelled to take to Slovin.
The planet has been for several V-centuries a sullenly uniform place, poor, deprived of its own wealth, administered by a Volyen Colonial Service, kept in order by Volyen police, prisons, torturers. Suddenly it has ‘thrown off the yoke.’ The small class that was used by Volyen fled or were killed or became patriots. All Slovin seethes with new parties based on military groups that freed Slovin. Each of these has – of course – leaders, an army, and a creed, which it defends against all the other groups, often with bloodshed. One party stands for a united Slovin, another for a regionalized federated Slovin, and so on. The air is thick with the Rhetorics of liberty, for they know they are free.
Groups, armies, sects, parties, factions: Slovin, just like every other ‘liberated’ planet, is full of them.
Incent went straight to the capital, asked for the largest and most influential party, found that every Slovin gave him a different answer; so he caused an announcement to be made that he, ‘a dispassionate, disinterested well-wisher from a distant star system,’ would be addressing the liberated peoples of Slovin on such-and-such a day in the public square, this address to be heard by all of Slovin.
Now, the very language he was using had to attract attention, because words like disinterested and dispassionate had fallen out of use: the qualities they described had been eroded by the corruption and ugliness of Volyen rule, finally destroyed by the violent partisan passions of the period of ‘liberation.’ ‘Disinterested: what can that possibly mean?’ Slovins were heard asking. And, having looked up the meanings of that and similar words, they scoffed: ‘What nonsense, what idealistic rubbish!’ But wistfully. They felt that they might have lost something.
These tall, fragile, silvery creatures always arouse in foreigners the strongest feelings of protectiveness and compassion, because of their apparent vulnerability; and our Incent was moving around the planet, almost beside himself with emotion as he watched them approach one another with a new tentativeness and uncertainty, probing and asking. Like those exquisite shining insects that live for a night and then, losing their wings, die, so did the Slovins seem to Incent, who knew he could save them from themselves, if only he could make them listen. Oh, poor, poor Slovins, mourned Incent, as he mentally worked on the phrases of the address, on the perfect, above all appropriate, words that would magically do away with the results of centuries of Volyen oppression and uniformity.
Meanwhile, the Slovins did not know how much they had been attracted by the ‘otherness’ and ‘difference’ of the amazing message. What did impartiality mean? What: magnanimity? What: unenvious, detached, honourable, chivalrous? Somewhere or other, somewhere else, perhaps even once on Slovin, had there been a people for whom these words were everyday words, and had they been able to use them by right?
On the great day, Incent, beside himself with exaltation and the need to persuade, stood on a plinth in the central square of the capital, surrounded by many thousands of whispering, silvery, tenuous, delicate Slovins, who were gathered not in a single mass, but in companies and bands, all armed, all owing allegiance to different leaders, all staring upwards with their great many-faceted glittering eyes, waiting to hear some truth that would once and for ever enlighten them. This was because they unconsciously yearned for unity, because they had known Volyen unity for so long. Also, something had happened in the last few days that was very fortunate for Incent: fighting had broken out all over Slovin between guerrilla groups and armies, and the planet was afraid of civil war.
Imagine the scene, Johor! That vast but infinitely divided crowd, all yearning for inspiring, dedicated, and uplifting words, for they felt that what had already been reported to them of Incent’s message was a promise from a star whose existence they had known nothing of, but whose sovereignty they might very well have to acknowledge. Though of course they would have killed any one of their number who suggested such a thing.
Incent began by asking their permission to tell them a sad and sorry story. They would have permitted him anything, and anything he said would have seemed to them exactly what they had been longing for, their expectations from him were so vast. He told them the story of Shikasta, of its Northwest fringes, when its worst and oldest and longest-lasting tyranny dissolved, and all its people fought to re-enslave themselves. And succeeded. He told the tale well enough, making these unfortunates shudder and shiver at how easy it is to fall under the spell of the need to submit, when submission is what you have been taught.
‘You people,’ said Incent, after a long silence, which he held by the sheer force of his difference, and of his astonishing words, which seemed to come from some distant and wonderful sun.
‘You people,’ said or sang Incent, arms outstretched as if to embrace their future, their still-unfulfilled potentialities, ‘you people are in the greatest danger imaginable, and you seem not to know it. You are in danger of submitting yourselves to a new tyrant, because the patterns of tyranny are in your minds. But this danger has another face: a road to a beautiful future, of a kind you have never even envisioned. It is that you will all remain truly free people, refusing allegiance to leaders and to tyrants, to priests, to dogmas. You will keep your minds open and at liberty, examining possibilities, analyzing your own past conditioning, learning to observe yourselves as you might observe another species on a near planet – as you all observe and criticize, for instance, Maken.’ (Here there was a groan of dislike, for this area of the Galaxy conforms to the general law that planets loathe and distrust one another according to how close they are.) ‘Yes, that could be your future! You could say to yourselves, "We will never again submit to a leader, because we don’t need leaders; we understand that we have been taught we must have them.” Long ago, in your animal and semi-animal past, you were groups and bands and packs, and on these genetic inclinations tyrants have built, to keep you in groups and bands and packs; but now you can free yourselves, because you understand yourselves …
And the conglomeration of separate groups dissolved in an ocean of emotion, into one soul, everyone embracing and entwining in a susurration of dry, papery flesh, so that Incent seemed enclosed in a storm of rustling kisses. And then, in one motion, they swept together around him and bore him into the air, crying, ‘Our leader, you have come to save us!’ And ‘Incent for ever!’ And ‘Stay with us, O Great One, tell us your Noble Thoughts, so that we may write them down and study and recite them for ever.’ ‘O Incent the Great …
Incent struggled and cried, protested, ‘No, no, no, don’t you see, that isn’t the point. O Slovins, don’t, please, oh dear … what can I say that will make you …
These pleas and plaints were of course not heard in the typhoon of enthusiasm. At last he managed to creep away from under heaps of Slovins struggling with one another, even killing one another to pay him honour. He ran weeping to the Space Traveller and returned to Volyen, where he skulked into the safety of the tall white room.
Luckily, Shammat has been otherwise engaged, and was not on Slovin.
I have withdrawn all study material from Incent. He did not need me to explain that it was too inflammatory for him in his present enfeebled condition.
AM 5 ON MOTZ, TO KLORATHY.
Well, I am sorry to have to say so, but Grice has suffered a conversion. He demands ‘once and for all’ to be one of them. ‘It is not possible,’ insist these earnest ones in the severe manner that they strive to perfect; ‘you are a Volyen.’ ‘How can you say such a thing?’ he cries. ‘You are contradicting your own best selves. The Sirian Virtue is something that must overtake everything and everyone everywhere! You say that yourselves. How, then, can you exclude me by saying You are a Volyen – and at the moment when you plan to take the Sirian Virtue to all of Volyen? You are illogical!’
This jams the Embodiments’ mental machinery: it seems to
them logically to be true. But, on the other hand, he is demonstrably not remotely like them, not physically, not mentally. He may wear their uniform – he has asked for one. He may try to use their conventions of speech. But, as one of them remarked to me (you will remember that I myself am considerad to be an Embodiment): ‘Just take a look at him, will you! He one of us?’
KLORATHY ON VOLYEN TO JOHOR.
I shall now make an abstract of a very long Report from Agent AM 5.
It is a V-year since Grice was kidnapped by the Motzans, who have now come to regret the act. Every attempt to provoke Volyen into publicity for their cause fails. They hint at torture, and worse – no reaction. Above all, Motzans understand loyalty to their own, for everyone on Motz is ‘of us.’ That the rulers of Volyen seem to have forgotten one of their officials: Motzans have given up trying to think about such an incomprehensibility. Grice is still a ‘prisoner’; the library is his prison, but he is there because he wants to be. This collection of books was pirated from a provincial town on Volyen by the Motzans some time ago – again, to earn publicity. They succeeded. Outrage! Everyone on Volyen talked of nothing but the stolen library, and then forgot about it. How is it possible, wonder the Motzans, that the Volyens can care about books more than about an official? It happens that this library contains the results of research done on Volyens as a species by Volyens. In the high imperial days of Volyen, the subject planets were much studied, and the researchers got into the useful habit of seeing species and races of peoples as they would types of animal, studying them with the same – or almost – dispassion we use on similar studies of genera and species. It occurred to them at some point that although they observed others dispassionately, they had not made the attempt to do the same for their own patterns of living, but saw themselves always from within their own subjectivity. They turned their tools of research in on themselves, trying – though this is always hard enough – to see themselves as others see them. This provincial library was full of the results.
Grice has spent his time reading. His prior education was largely designed to equip him for ruling, particularly to inculcate the conviction of superiority that in one way or another the administrators of Empire must have. He has had no idea at all of the richness of information available about his own species. You may ask how it is that, once equipped with so much information, the Volyens have not hastened to put it into useful practice, have not taught it to their young – just as Grice is asking. Probably when the historians get to work on this particular epoch, the time before the Volyen ‘Empire’ falls to Sirius, this will be the fact they will single out as the most remarkable: with so much knowledge about the mechanisms that govern them as individuals, groups, conglomerates, why did they never use it? Well, they are a lethargic lot. With much-compartmented minds.
Grice is riven, split, fragmented. No sooner had he decided to give his wholehearted allegiance to the simplicities of the Motzans than he found himself every day acquiring facts that made singlemindedness difficult. His mind is exploding with new ideas, suppositions, possibilities; he lives in a fever which he cools by having loving thoughts of his new comrades, so stern, so austere, so dedicated, so restfully and admirably single-minded.
EXTRACTS FROM A
REPORT FROM AM 5.
Oh, these poor Embodiments! They cannot get to grips with Grice! Sometimes they think they’ll drop him back into Volyen and be rid of him. They long to be able to bump him off, but it seems that, when expressing his admiration for them, he accidentally used some verbal formula that is sacred and makes him immune – he is a guest now. But he is not finally classed as a guest, because they might find him useful after all as a hostage. I encourage them in these rare moments of flexibility, ambiguity, in my (I sometimes feel vain) attempts to evolve these mono-minded heroes.
But Grice admonishes them. ‘You are being illogical,’ he says sternly – their manner is now his, for at least most of the time. ‘Either I am a guest, or I am a hostage. I can’t be both.’
‘That is true,’ they reply, but continue to treat him as both.
As a guest, he asked to see more of Motz, and I was deputed to take him.
We went by air, back and forth and around this little planet, and Governor Grice – for it was the Governor, the administrator, who was with me, not Grice the Groaner – was ecstatic, and sobered, incredulous and admiring, at what we saw.
Flying over a steep and rocky mountain, looking down, you see that on every possible slope, in every miniscule valley, has been built a field. The mountain is black and barren; but it holds a hundred pockets of earth, each grain of which has been carried in a basket to be made fruitful by these exiles from a fertile planet. You descend, to be met by a group of strong, muscled, spare people who take you to see fields, gardens, orchards, tramping up and down impossible slopes and escarpments; and as they stand proudly beside some minute patch of glistening green, they will smile with such a passion of protective pride that there is no need for them to say: ‘There was nothing here before we came.’
You fly over a plain patched with healthy crops, and they tell you: ‘This was a marsh; we drained it.’
You see beneath you a desert, but around its edges are belts of dark green. ‘This is a desert now, but in a short time it will be a forest.’
I do not remember seeing anywhere a bleaker planet than this one, as nature made it; I have never seen anywhere such accomplishments, achievement.
They have done it all with their own strength, their own dedication, their austerity, their self-discipline. They possess total confidence: they know they can do anything they decide to do. They fear no deprivation, for they can live on a handful of grain a day, despising those who want more. They wear clothes whose simplicity makes them a uniform. What magnificent creatures they are! And how pitiful, for they despise, utterly, everyone else.
‘Oh,’ cried Grice, as we descended to yet another settlement surrounded by desert or scree, ‘oh, look what we could have done on Volyenadna, if we had tried.’
‘Nonsense,’ I kept saying. ‘You could have done nothing of the kind. You can’t impose this on a people. It has to be voluntary.’ You will remember that as far as Grice is concerned, I am an Embodiment, so I must speak in character. But, after all, it is true enough.
‘When I think of poor Volyenadna. Oh, poor, poor Volyenadna! We could have done something like this.’
‘So what is that planet like?’
‘It is all tundra and rubble and permafrost.’
‘You’ve never, perhaps, heard of a plant called Rocknosh? I believe it thrives in such conditions.’
He was in a state of violent agitation and conflict. ‘Oh, I believe I did. Some type mentioned it, but he was just a –’ He had been going to say ‘just a Sirian spy,’ but stopped himself. His face, at such moments, as it were disintegrates, crumbles, then convulses in a spasm, as his organism strives to achieve some sort of balance or wholeness.
‘A Sirian spy,’ I’ve heard him muttering, ‘but I was so young, I didn’t know better …’ And, at other times, ‘A Sirian spy? The words sound bad, but after all, if this Motz is Sirius, then …
I sometimes attempt to talk to him of the Sirian Empire, as it really has been. It is no use talking of the long perspectives, the long millenniums of such Empires, to a mind that has called ‘Empire’ the few V-years of the Volyen ascendancy. But I try to describe something of its changing histories, its fragmentation now. I remind him of the forthcoming overrunning of Volyen. He frowns, he sighs, he grimaces …
But he has found a solution to his emotional predicaments. Bizarre! But – you’ll agree, I am sure, Klorathy – of a psychological ingenuity that …
Grice has decided to sue Volyen for having defaulted on promises and guarantees made to every Volyen citizen in its Constitution.
The problems facing Grice have included: that he had only an approximate memory of the relevant clause in the Constitution; that there was no copy of the Volyen Const
itution on Motz; that he has to get back to Volyen to instigate this case; that he could not think of any sort of precedent.
Krolgul heard about Grice’s scheme from a baffled Motzan, and at once visited Grice. He entered the library with a sharp triple knock, stood in the entrance silently, stern-faced, till he knew Grice had seen him, and then advanced the length of the room, unsmiling. The grey uniform (a version of the Motzan one), the sombre responsible mien, the tread like a soldier’s … Grice involuntarily got to his feet, like one guilty, but before he could speak Krolgul shot out his hand with a bark of ‘Servus!’ And then, ‘I have heard of your plans. I have come to congratulate you! Magnificent! In scope, in courage, in daring. This is true revolutionary creativeness.’
After a few hours of Krolgul, Grice was ready for anything, including the task of making the Motzans understand.
Imagine it, Klorathy! Twenty Embodiments, and I, all fresh from our hard labours, with difficulty giving up an evening to this embarrassing request of Grice’s, sitting in a half-circle in a hut in the middle of a desert they have decided to reclaim. On a shelf, a jug of water, some chunks of vegetable, a lamp. Grice seated in front of us, but whether as guest or prisoner, no one has said.
‘You say you are going to publicly criticize your own people?’
‘Not my people, Volyen.’
‘What’s the difference? How can Volyen be distinguished from Volyens?’
‘If it cannot, how is it possible for it to promise and guarantee its people certain rights?’
The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire Page 13