The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire

by Doris Lessing

  ‘But you speak as if you are wanting to publicly criticize an abstraction?’

  ‘How can it be an abstraction if it can guarantee and promise, if it speaks like a parent? And besides, I am not criticizing it, I am bringing it to court.’

  ‘What, the Constitution?’

  ‘No, those who represent Volyen at this time.’

  Gloomy silence; hostile looks; impatience.

  ‘And what will you achieve by this?’

  ‘Achieve? I shall expose Volyen for the fraud it is.’

  ‘Volyen?’

  ‘I mean our ridiculous Constitution. Lies. Lies!’

  ‘But when we impose our Virtue on Volyen, then genuine justice and genuine liberty and real freedom will be theirs.’

  ‘Yes, but that won’t be yet awhile, will it? And anyway …’ Governor Grice is quite unable to believe in what he has spent so much of his life dreaming about: the actual advent of revolution, the actual arrival of Sirius in his land. ‘And besides,’ he said triumphantly, ‘if I expose them in the courts, as they richly deserve, then your task will be so much easier, won’t it? The hypocritical mask of false justice will be ripped off the face of tyranny and –’

  ‘We don’t understand how you, as an official of this tyranny, or even as a citizen, are in a position to take it to court. Which certainly sounds to us like a criticism. And how can you criticise a tyranny?’

  ‘Ah, but you see, we have a democracy, haven’t we? Of course, only because of historical anomalies and so forth,’ muttered Grice.

  And so it went on, nearly all night. From time to time I chipped in with something designed to remind the warriors of reality; or, as you and our other tutors in the Colonial Service Schools kept describing it, ‘life itself.’ For instance: Myself: ‘But if I may remind you, you don’t actually have a copy of the Constitution …

  In the end, it was decided to send down a team of two to Volyen, disguised as Volyens, to get hold of a copy of the Constitution for Grice.

  ‘And while you are about it,’ he shouted as they left, ‘you might as well get me the second volume of Peace’s Laws Governing the Behaviour of Groups. It was out on loan when you liberated the library, and I need it for my case.’

  He wrote it all down for them. The Motzans don’t read. Or, rather, they read only histories of their home planet, of their eviction from it, of their struggle to develop Motz, of their fight to keep Motz out of the hands of fellow Sirian colonies. They read books of practical instruction, technical books, and – recently – books descriptive of Volyen and its ‘Empire,’ but entirely from the Sirian point of view. Never do they read anything that might suggest they and their history, their passion, their dedication, could be seen from any viewpoint but their own. They are not even tempted to do so: they have been so thoroughly conditioned to see other people’s ideas as heresy. ‘That’s all, and that’s enough,’ to quote their invariable response if actually faced with some book that might even indirectly criticize them. And ‘What we have is what we need.’

  Making the case against Volyen has required the efforts of Grice, myself, Krolgul, and a Motzan introduced to Grice by Krolgul, who felt that this new associate could only do Grice good – from Krolgul’s point of view. This Motzan is a young male named Stil. His characteristic is the number of handicaps he has had to overcome. He was born on one of the new settlements, where a marshy estuary was being drained. It was cold, dank, dismal. His mother died giving birth to a third child. The father was working as hard as Motzans do. The children were reared haphazardly. Stil was helping rear the two younger ones, going to school, and working to earn money when he was a child. Then his father died in an accident. Stil’s history continues like this; and he matured early into a physically and mentally strong individual, able to do any work or cope with any event. This paragon spends his time with Grice, who is crushed even further into self-deprecation and a sense of inadequacy. As for Stil, he is naturally fascinated by Grice, whose life seems to him pathologically indulged and selfish. At every criticism, Grice agrees and cries out: ‘I’ll get them for it, see if I don’t’ – meaning, of course, ‘all of Volyen.’

  The ‘indictment’ already runs into several volumes, and there seems no reason why it should ever be concluded; but Krolgul is urging haste. Rumours! Rumours! Mostly about an imminent Sirian invasion. Motz’s army is, in theory, mobilized. Since these soldiers are also farmers and miners, essential workers, Motz cannot afford this situation. Protests have gone into ‘Sirius itself.’ Where, of course, there are nothing but squabbles. Debates. Disagreements. Changes of policy. No reply from ‘Sirius itself,’ so Motz has its army on standby, but tells itself, truthfully, that the self-discipline of its soldiers is such that they can be assembled again in a day. Krolgul says to Grice, ‘If you don’t act now, you never will. There won’t be any Volyen to sue.’

  ‘Oh, Krolgul,’ says Grice, ‘aren’t you exaggerating?’

  ‘Do you or do you not want the Virtue of Sirius?’

  ‘I didn’t hear anything from you of the Virtue of Sirius on Volyenadna. Why was that?’

  ‘You weren’t mature enough then to hear the truth.’

  ‘It wasn’t me who had to hear it. How about Calder and his mates?’

  ‘How do you know what I used to talk to them about? You weren’t always listening at the keyhole, Governor Grice!’

  To such a level of vulgarity has Krolgul sunk with Grice, who is uneasy, but can always cure moments of doubt about Krolgul simply by looking at him: That upright soldierly form! That heroic profile! That air of solitary self-sufficiency! Everything Grice longs to have been, to be, seems embodied in Krolgul when he looks at him. And if his doubts about Krolgul get acute, there nearby is Stil, who either has just come from or is about to leave for a long day’s physical labour on a diet of powdered fishheads and some marsh water.

  There is also, of course, myself, but Grice simply cannot come to terms with me. Sometimes he feels relieved that a Motzan can be capable of ordinary irreverence, even flippancy; that a Motzan can criticize Motz. At other times he feels that there’s something a bit off about me. ‘Are you sure you aren’t a spy?’ he snapped once. ‘Of course I am,’ said I. ‘How clever of you to spot me. But it takes one to know one, doesn’t it, Governor Grice?’

  KLORATHY TO JOHOR FROM VOLYEN.

  Since I last reported, I have (a) visited Ormarin on Volyendesta, now out of hospital; he is recovered and ready for the future, which he is preparing himself for by a judicious and sober study of the histories of certain of our planets; (b) flown over Volyenadna, large areas of which show a reddish tinge; and (c) been travelling Volyen from end to end.

  Incent sent me a message saying that he was feeling well enough to leave his retreat: he wanted to test himself. He too has been wandering over Volyen. I have encountered him twice.

  First, in a small town where there was unrest, rioting: immigrants, settled there from PE 70 and PE 71, were clashing with the locals. As you will have heard, these two planets have thrown off Volyen rule, and by the processes of logic usual in primitive minds, the unfortunate immigrants, who have been happy and loyal Volyen citizens for a long time, were suddenly designated Sirians and possible traitors by the mobs.

  I was there with 33, 34, 37 and 38, summoned from their work on Volyendesta, to do what we could to mitigate the worst excesses of the mobs. We were of course in disguise, and I was not recognized by Incent, who was seated on an embankment above the rioters, watching. His very presence could have been taken as an incitement. Sombre, white-faced, tragic in mien, but above all merely an onlooker – it would have taken only an unlucky chance to make him a target. I assigned 33 to watch him, unobserved. Then I sent him a message suggesting that he might care to join me and others in real, responsible work. To this I received no reply. The next time I saw him was yesterday, here in Vatun. Again it was a mob scene. Streets of houses were burning, and a small army of mostly young Volyens were destroying everything in their
way, with screams of ‘Down with …’ ‘To the fire with …’ The names were those of local shopkeepers, mostly immigrant Volyenadnans. Incent leaped from among them onto a low bridge that crossed the street where houses were burning on either side. Smoke, the tossing flames, the seething crowds beside themselves with rage – and there was our hero, shouting – or, rather, screaming – to make himself heard. ‘You have to realize … no, listen to me … you are betraying everything that makes you real, responsible individuals, no, you must listen … You are at this moment at the mercy of your animal brains … Did you know that …’ Below him the front ranks of the mass stopped momentarily to stare up, their mouths agape, arrested by astonishment, bewilderment – but above all by this check on the flood of their emotions. The shadows of the flames and smoke darkened the mass of faces. For a moment there was a near-silence, in which flames roared and some people at the back chanted, ‘Down with … we’ll bring him down …’ ‘Every man of you has in your head two brains, well, more actually, but one is an animal brain, and when that gets control then you become like animals, and that is what you are now, you are a herd of …’ The mass screamed with derisive laughter. ‘If we wanted a lesson in biology, we’d ask you,’ screamed back our 37, from among them, to deflect their rage. As the mass turned to see who it was speaking for them, in terminology certainly not possible to them at this time, 38 ran out to grasp Incent, who was in danger of toppling forward into the crowds, who would have torn him apart. ‘Listen,’ Incent was shouting, ‘listen to me … you are all under the control of your primitive brains, can’t you see that? You have regressed a million years and …’ At this he was hauled back onto the bridge by the resourceful 38 and hustled along to where I was. We grasped him by the arms and ran him out of sight along a street the mob had not reached.

  ‘But it’s true,’ Incent was reiterating as we ran.

  We left him in a small bar that was empty, telling him to stay there till we got back, and at once went out to see what we could usefully do. It was all very bad. The rioting, looting, fighting went on, and when I got back to the bar it was closed, with no sign of Incent.

  Do not be too discouraged about Incent! I can feel that he is actually mending and is no longer an open channel for the depredations of Krolgul.

  AM 5 TO KLORATHY.

  All of Motz is on full war-alert. Grice is on his way to Volyen: the Embodiments finally lost interest in him. They said, ‘Governor Grice, just go. Yes, yes, yes, anything you like, but just go.’ They have sent Stil with Grice, at Grice’s request.

  KLORATHY TO JOHOR, FROM VATUN.

  It has occurred to Grice that the Volyen he has arrived on is not the Volyen he left. Riots and disorders, arson and looting! ‘But Volyens aren’t like that,’ he keeps protesting. ‘We aren’t like that at all. We are good-natured and kind, we are reasonable people.’

  Yet another impossibility has had to be fitted into his already tortured mental balances. When the worst that can be said about Volyen has been said – that there is unemployment, for instance, that the immigrant populations from the other planets are not fully accepted as citizens, that the standard of living is falling because of the loss of Empire – when all this has been said, the lot of the poorest citizen on Volyen is better than that of the richest on Motz. As Stil expostulates, while he gloomily accompanies Grice everywhere in this task of his of ‘keeping an eye’ on him, ‘You call this poverty? You tell me these people are rioting because they are poor? No, you’ll have to explain to me, please! No, you just give me this poverty of yours, and let me take it back to my settlement. It would be riches for a year, what I can see wasted here, in just this one street.’

  Grice has succeeded in accommodating this, as he has everything else, as part of his grand ‘Indictment.’

  Grice could not find a lawyer to take his case, so he went to the Defender of the Public, a person specifically appointed to make sure legitimate grievances are heard. This gentleman leafed through the many hundreds of pages of the ‘Indictment’ with the quizzical look which Grice was too much of an expert on his own kind not to understand. Before the Defender could throw him out, in the whimsical and charming way Grice himself had used often enough, Grice said, ‘Do you remember me, Spascock? We were at Infant School together in ‘53.’ The official admitted that, although he did not remember Grice, he had in fact been at that Infant School. ‘Do you remember Vera?’ ‘Of course I remember Vera. One of the most fortunate influences on my life. My parents were more often than not on tours of duty on Volyenadna, and I am afraid I was rather starved of ordinary family affection.’ ‘You have never met Vera since then?’ Grice continued excitedly. (I have a detailed account of this meeting from Incent, who was present: Incent and Grice have become great friends, not surprisingly.) Spascock was uncomfortable, and could not hide it. ‘Because I did meet Vera much later, and her influence on my life was crucial.’

  Vera, charming and warmhearted girl, had gone for a holiday on Volyenadna, seen the suffering of the indigenous population under Volyen rule, and for the first time understood that the pleasant conditions on Volyen were not only not available to its colonies, but also that these conditions existed because of its colonies. Vera suffered an instant conversion to a belief in the Virtue of Sirius, and in short became an agent, but in the rather ambiguous way typical of the time. A few excited visits to a Sirian Embassy, some casual encounters at official receptions, an invitation to visit ‘Sirius’ – in this case Alput, which most favourably impressed her – and then nothing happened. Quite soon she learned what a horrible tyranny Sirius was, and literally ‘forgot’ her period of being an admirer of Sirius. But during this period she had been instrumental in introducing two ex-pupils, now grown up, to an admiration of Sirius. One of these was Grice, the other Spascock. She had in fact recruited them.

  ‘In my view, people in our position should stand together,’ said Grice to Spascock.

  Spascock, trying to smile, said he would look through the ‘Indictment’ and let Grice know. ‘And who,’ he inqued, as Grice and Incent left, ‘is your friend?’

  ‘He comes from far away, very far away indeed,’ said Grice, knowing how this must affect Spascock, who went straight back to his desk and began reading the ‘Indictment.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ he kept groaning, ‘oh, no, it really isn’t on … but this is absolutely lunatic … it is utterly …’ And then the telephone began ringing with colleagues of all kinds, high and low – but some very high indeed – and Spascock found every one of these interesting conversations, all apparently about something else entirely, unmistakable reasons why he should in fact allow this case of Grice’s to go forward.

  ‘Yes, I am reading it,’ he spluttered and groaned to person after person, each of whom had remarked something to the effect that ‘Grice, you know, our colleague,’ had brought a copy of his Indictment. ‘Yes, but it may all be true, I am not saying it isn’t, it’s all very fascinating, I am sure, but, but … yes, very well. Very well. I hear you.’

  ‘But surely,’ Spascock moaned, as he sat alone in his office after about the twentieth telephone call, ‘we can’t all be …?’ And of course they all weren’t, but did wonder if anything they had ever done or said …? Or were, but did not know to what an extent they were deemed to be ‘sleeping,’ or at least dozing, by Sirius; or were in fact actively engaged in undoing Volyen in any way that occurred to their ingenuity; or were in close contact with some secret Sirian taskmaster.

  This case is going to take place. Grice is in a fever of pleasure. It is this relish of his that is perturbing his comrade and ally. That Volyen should be ‘exposed, once and for all,’ and ‘brought to the bar of history’ seems to Incent only just, for while he is really very much better, certain sequences of words do still set him off easily; but his nature makes any form of pleasure suspect to him, except that which he experiences when contemplating his own deficiencies. In fact, his disapproval of Grice amounts to a form of envy. He has been heard to mutte
r, while Grice writhes with relish as he amends his Indictment to include yet another phrase that demolishes Volyen hypocrisy, ‘But Grice, I’ve been much worse than that, often, myself!’

  A message from AM 5 on Motz begs that he be allowed to transfer here: he has developed, he says, a taste for the contemplation of farce. ‘Oh, Klorathy,’ he cried, ‘how can I bear these admirable Motzans! They never do anything that cannot be expected to result in a solid achievement of some kind. They never make a remark that isn’t rooted ‘in life itself.’ Where are those famous ‘contradictions’ that I have come to enjoy now that Governor Grice has gone? There’s only one now, and that is that these Motzans, whether they like it or not, are also Sirians. And they are saved by their total lack of imagination, for their minds work like this: We are good. We are Sirians. Therefore Sirians are good. They are preparing for the invasion of Volyen in the same spirit that is theirs when they take over a stretch of sand and turn it into a settlement. Because of Grice, they can see Volyen only as needing their guidance. When I suggest, in the slightly whimsical manner that I have perfected here to gain me immunity from their solemnities (and which, of course, rightly earns their mistrust), that perhaps not everyone on Volyen is like Grice, their eyes glaze over: they are all like one another, since they have been ‘forged in the fire’ (forgive me) of their common hardship, and so they cannot conceive of a planet full of diversity. Klorathy, rescue me, let me come to Volyen.’

  To which I answered: ‘You may not recognize this in yourself, but this ‘whimsicality,’ the deliberate half-concealed mockery, the ‘enjoyment’ is exactly the same indulgence in, the inner surrender to, the potentiality for anarchy in yourself, that caused a whole generation of upper-class Volyens to become agents (to one degree or another) of Sirius. Do you not recognize the atmosphere, the ‘note’? I remember myself giving a series of classes, which I know you attended, on this particular period on Volyen, since it illustrated so well the laws of inner disaffection, of treachery. Do you not remember the lecture that was given under the tide ‘For If It Prosper, None Dare Call It Treason’? Obviously you do not remember. You are not an agent of Canopus in this (I admit) not very attractive little corner of the Galaxy in order to develop a taste for the study of historical anomaly. Which is nearly always rooted in conceit – it is no accident that it was the class on Volyen brought up to consider itself as natural rulers who were trained with that deep and pervasive frivolity – the pride of those who consider themselves better than others. The enjoyment of the anomalies that are always present when planets clash is from pride. Very well, I will admit that a little of this is allowable, even necessary, to save oneself from the depression and discouragement that lie in wait for us as we contemplate the wastefulness with which the Galaxy, or, as the Volyens put it, Nature, accomplishes its purpose. But one step beyond this small allowance, and you have taken off into contempt for those around you, and will soon be inflated by pleasure in your own cleverness. Agent AM 5 of Canopus – will you kindly do your work, as instructed, and moderate your enjoyment in it! As it happens, you are scheduled to come to Volyen with the invading Motzan armies, but do not imagine you will find much to enjoy in that.’