The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire

by Doris Lessing

  ‘Helpless, is it?’ inquired another Peer, a solid young man dressed in a variety of red-and-green sportsgear and a funny hat. ‘Helpless? Some are and some are not.’

  ‘It’s a question of people’s characters,’ said the young woman. ‘People with some basic decency and common sense can stand firm against wrong notions.’

  And both Grice and Spascock let out at the same moment a groan, so desperate, so sad, that everyone again turned to look.

  On reflex, Spascock hastily pulled out a pipe and lit it. So did Grice. The good citizens of Volyen do not know that their publicity experts (usually Krolgul) advised so many to smoke pipes as a sign of integrity and moral balance, and most people in the court looked amazed. Particularly since not merely the Judge and the Chief Accuser, but others were pulling out pipes. Among the public on their benches, among the court officials in their gloomy robes, and even among the Peers everywhere could be seen anxious and even trembling lips closing around the stems of pipes, and clouds of sweet moist smoke dimmed the air. Spascock and Grice both leaned forward to examine these unknown accomplices of theirs. On their faces could be read, Don’t tell me that you are another …

  ‘If you can smoke a pipe, then I shall knit,’ said the Chief Peer, and pulled out her bundle again.

  ‘No, no, certainly not. You are quite right. Smoking absolutely forbidden!’ And in a moment pipes were vanishing, hastily extinguished, all over the court.

  Meanwhile, Stil, who had been sitting near Grice, correctly upright, arms folded, every inch of him under control, his face expressing first incredulity, then shock, now remarked:

  ‘If the courts on Volyen are so undisciplined, then what may we expect of ordinary people?’

  ‘And who are you, dear?’ inquired the Chief Peer, who had not put away her knitting, which lay on her lap.

  ‘This is the Prosecution’s Chief Witness for Indictment Two,’ said Spascock.

  ‘Yes, I know that, but who is he?’

  ‘I am from Motz.’

  ‘And where’s that? Yes we’ve heard of it, but it would be nice to know –’

  He’s a Sirian spy was in the air – but of course Krolgul maintained a smiling correctness.

  ‘Are you a Sirian, love?’ inquired the woman amiably, just as if there were not talk of lynchings from one end of Volyen to the other.

  ‘Yes, I am proud to call myself a Sirian.’

  ‘He is a Sirian as someone from Volyenadna is a Volyen,’ said Grice.

  ‘Or someone from Maken and Slovin,’ said Incent passionately, not intending to evoke the sardonic laugh that swept the court. Everyone looked at the despoiled walls and the ceiling. A gale of laughter.

  Stil said, ‘I am unable to see what is so humorous about the successful patriotic and revolutionary uprisings of downtrodden colonies.’

  ‘No, no, you are quite right, love,’ said the Chief Peer soothingly. ‘Don’t mind us.’

  ‘Look, are you going to conduct this Trial properly or are you not, Spascock?’ inquired Grice.

  ‘If you can call it a Trial,’ said Spascock. ‘Right. Well, go on, then.’

  ‘I have already made my point.’

  ‘Not to my noticing,’ said Arithamea, and her associates agreed in chorus. ‘Just run over it again, will you? I don’t seem to have got the point.’

  ‘Of course you’ve got the point,’ said Grice. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? We now know a great deal about the mechanisms that govern us, that make us dance like puppets. Some of the most powerful mechanisms are those that we can roughly describe as comprising the functioning of groups.’ Here he indicated the piles of red, green, blue, yellow books on the trolley below his little plinth. ‘There is no disagreement, not real disagreement, about these mechanisms. We know, within a certain group, the percentage of those who will not be able to disagree or dissent from the majority opinion of the group; we know the percentage of those who will carry out the orders of the leaders of the group, no matter how savage and how brutal; we know that such groups will fall into such-and-such patterns; we know they will divide and subdivide in certain ways. We know they have lives that are organic.’

  ‘Like Empires, for instance,’ Incent could not stop himself from adding helpfully, and Krolgul again caused the word spy to appear in the minds of everyone.

  ‘And who are you?’ asked Arithamea. ‘No, I mean, where are you from?’

  ‘He’s a Sirian spy, of course,’ remarked one of the Peers. ‘They all are. They are everywhere.’

  ‘Oh come on, get on with it,’ said someone loudly from the public benches.

  ‘Well, then, this is the point,’ Grice went on, trying to recover his momentum. ‘If we are governed by mechanisms, and we are, then we should be taught them. In school. At the age when one is taught how the body functions or how the state is run. We should be taught to understand these mechanisms so that we are not controlled by them.’

  ‘Just a minute, love,’ said Arithamea. ‘I know you mean well; I really do see what you are getting at. But don’t tell me you believe that if you say to some young thing, all ready to take off for independence, and of course knowing much better than her elders –’

  ‘Or his elders; fair’s fair,’ said the colourful Peer beside her.

  ‘His or her elders … you can’t say to such as them, Keep a cool head and watch the mechanisms. That’s the one thing they aren’t capable of.’

  ‘That’s right, she’s right,’ from the public benches.

  ‘I’ll clear the court,’ threatened Spascock.

  Silence.

  Spascock: ‘Is your point made, then, Grice?’

  ‘I don’t agree with her. She’s negative. She’s pessimistic. Volyen can’t jettison its responsibilities like that! Besides, Volyen has promised in the Constitution to –’

  ‘Have you read Tatz and Palooza on Group Mechanisms?’ inquired Krolgul.

  ‘No, should I have?’

  ‘They are in total disagreement with Quinck and Swaller,’ said Krolgul. ‘For instance, in the percentages of possible resistance to authority.’

  ‘Well,’ said Grice hotly, ‘I’m handicapped, aren’t I? I’ve been in captivity on Motz, and I was in no position even to know if all the relevant literature was there. But it seems to me that this is evidence enough …’ indicating the tomes.

  ‘I’m just pointing out that the consensus is not a hundred percent,’ said Krolgul.

  ‘Look, Judge,’ said Arithamea, ‘are you going to run this Trial, or are you not? This one here having his say as far as I can see is only an usher.’

  ‘Yes, yes, sorry,’ said Spascock. And to Grice: ‘Would you be kind enough to frame your request in adequate words?’

  ‘Yes. I want this court to condemn Volyen utterly, root and branch, for failing to instruct its young in the rules that its own psychologists and anthropologists have extracted from research and study; for failing to arm its youth with information that would enable it – the youth – to resist being swept away into any system of ideas that happens to be available. I want this court to say, clearly and loudly, that at least three generations of Volyen youth, and may I say at this point that I am one of the victims’ – boos, cheers, hisses – ‘have been left unprotected because of the failure to provide knowledge that is readily available to any specialist in the field of group function. That Volyen has allowed, nay, connived at, a situation whereby its specialists acquire more and more expertise about groups, the primary unit of society, but where this information is never allowed to affect the actual institutions of society, which continue to be archaic, clumsy if not lethal, ridiculously inappropriate machineries. Our left hand does not know what our right hand does. On the one hand, ever-increasing facts, information, discovery. On the other, the lumbering stupidities of our culture. I want Volyen condemned.’

  A long silence. The citizens were, in fact, impressed. But the trouble was, in every mind was just one thought: It does look as if Sirius is about to invade – no
t that we shall let them get away with it – and we’ve got other things on our minds …

  Spascock turned to the Peers. ‘Well, do you want to retire?’

  Arithamea consulted with her associates, those that were awake.

  ‘No, Judge.’

  ‘Well, then, do you agree to call Volyen guilty, or not?’

  Again she consulted – for no longer than it is taking me to write this sentence.

  ‘Fair enough, Judge. Guilty. Of course, I’m taking Governor Grice’s word for it that those books are what he says.’

  ‘Tatz and Palooza,’ murmured Krolgul.

  ‘Oh, you keep out of it,’ she said. ‘I don’t like the look of you at all. Volyen’s guilty. Of course it is. We should have been told all that kind of thing. I’ll be doing a bit of reading on my own account, now that I’ve had my attention drawn to it all. Yes. Guilty.’

  Spascock: ‘I hereby pronounce Volyen guilty on Indictment One. This is an intermediate judgment, which will come into force if and when the Select Committee has defined “Volyen.” If and when Volyen is defined as an entity that can be sentenced, Volyen will duly be sentenced. Right. That’s that. We shall now adjourn until tomorrow. We shall then take Indictment Two.’

  And Spascock went striding out, evidently in the last stages of emotional attrition. Grice and a gloomy and reluctant Stil went off together. Stil was heard to say, ‘If you can make this kind of criticism of your government, then how is this a tyranny? Explain, please.’ Incent was nearly captured by Krolgul, but came with me. Anyway, as will be obvious by now, Krolgul’s work on this planet is done: total collapse and demoralization is his – Shammat’s – meat and drink. Incent is coming out of the ordeal strengthened, and that is a good augury for the condition of Volyen during the Sirian occupation and the subsequent Sirian collapse. If he goes on like this, I propose leaving him here. If he can avoid getting strung up somewhere, I think he would be a beneficial influence.

  It is now the end of the second day. When we assembled this morning, at least half of the Peers had not turned up; the Trial had not provided them with the entertainment they had expected. But a large number of a different kind of Volyens had arrived, hoping to take their places, hoping, indeed, for any kind of seat in the court. Word had gone about that attempts at serious criticism of Volyen’s structure were being made. When the new Peers were accommodated there were strong contrasts between them and those of the festive ones who remained. Among them all sat the Chief Peer, at ease and ready.

  As Spascock took his place with his attendants and sat down, Arithamea stood up and said, ‘Excuse me, Judge.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I have been awake all night,’ she said, not without dramatic effect.

  ‘And so have a good many of us, I dare say,’ said Spascock, his pale and worried face attempting a smile.

  A general silence. For the news today is that Sirian spaceships are poised to strike.

  ‘No, I don’t mean what you mean, Judge. Not that I am not bothered as much as the next person … But there is this business of the mechanisms of groups we were having us out yesterday.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Incent, his gracefully dramatic presence as it were infinitely at her service. ‘Oh, no, Chief Peer, that was a perfectly sound decision of yours yesterday. And it might have wonderful long-term results here in Volyen.’

  She looked him up and down. ‘Where else could it have a result? If it has results on Volyen, that’s enough for me.’ Here a storm of cheers, boos, and general emotion. The mobs were out everywhere, and were asking every other person first, Were you born on Volyen? and then, finding that practically no one was, Are you a Volyen? and then, as the definitions of Volyen proliferated, simply beating up anyone they didn’t like the look of. ‘And I don’t want to add to all this mob stuff either,’ she announced. ‘Really, I don’t know what has got into us all. I used to think of us on Volyen as fair and sensible people.’ Such was the force of this strong and competent presence that the crowd quietened and even looked ashamed. ‘No, it’s this, Judge. I have been reading about the structure of groups all night, and it is obvious that yesterday I was authority in the group – because this is a group of Peers, isn’t it? Right. I was a bit high-handed, it seems to me now. And I have to give notice that there’s not going to be any nonsense about making snap decisions today in this court. We are all going to take our time about our decisions –’

  ‘You’re bossing us again, aren’t you?’ said one wag, a man from yesterday in bright colours, with a large button on his chest that read, ‘Volyen Rules: OK?’

  ‘Well, if so, today I am within my rights. The rules allow for any member of the Peers, leader or not, to insist on a proper withdrawal to privacy.’

  Suddenly there was a stir on the Peers’ bench. The half dozen or so that remained from yesterday were standing up and leaving. ‘Sorry,’ they were saying, and ‘All this is too much,’ and ‘We thought we were in for a bit of a laugh really,’ and went.

  ‘Substitutes for the Peers,’ said Spascock, and in a moment the overcrowded public benches were providing serious-looking, responsible people.

  And so, except for the Chief Peer, the citizens on the Peers’ platform were different ones today from yesterday.

  ‘May we begin?’ inquired Spascock, his voice trembling with his attempts at the obligatory sarcasm.

  ‘Yes, I think it’s all right now, Judge,’ said Arithamea.

  ‘Good. Then, with your permission, we shall start.’

  Grice stood up. He was as gloomy, dramatic, pale as Spascock. They are so obviously two of a kind, and could be used as an illustration of the type produced at the end of Empires.

  Beside Grice, the admirable, the incomparable Stil seemed a living illustration of the subject of today’s exchanges.

  Grice said, ‘I wish to put my Chief Witness on the stand.’

  ‘Just a minute, Grice; what’s your Indictment?’

  ‘We all know what it is, Judge,’ said Arithamea. ‘It’s written out on these programmes we’ve got. It’s about us treating ourselves too well.’

  ‘Will you be good enough to let me conduct this Trial?’ half screamed Spascock.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘She has a point,’ said Grice.

  Again these two thin, nervous, wan, quivering individuals confronted each other, each with the look of being about to attack the other, but at the same time showing every sign of the tenderest protective concern for the other, as if for himself.

  ‘Yes, I dare say,’ said Spascock, ‘but it’s not in order, and I simply cannot –’

  ‘But if you could stretch a point. This Second Indictment will take half a day to read.’

  ‘I simply don’t understand how no one is prepared to let me, the Judge, conduct this case in my own court. But if you insist …

  ‘It’s not a question of insisting, but just listen to …

  Outside, the sounds of running, shouting mobs.

  ‘Well, I suppose so, but it’s really very –’

  ‘Irregular, I know, but …’ Grice motioned to Stil, who moved to the witness plinth and stood there waiting. There was another long silence. Volyen had not actually understood that they were about to be invaded by Motz: ‘Sirius’ was still their word for what threatened. But what a contrast between this being and themselves, between this Motzan and anyone at this time in Volyen.

  There he stood, this immensely strong man, all muscle and contained energy, with the exact and measured movements of those who use themselves to their limits. Stil is not taller than a Volyen. He is not any more intelligent. Not better endowed genetically. But as they looked at him, the Volyens let out a long sigh, and could be seen glancing at one another in disparagement.

  Spy – released into the air by the ever-hovering Krolgul – could not survive; it was as if the atmosphere rejected it.

  ‘I am not a spy,’ said Stil, in his sturdy, slow way. ‘I was invited here by this court, to assist in
this Trial.’

  ‘All spies say that kind of thing,’ suggested Krolgul, and here Incent said, ‘Stop it, Shammat!’ He had not meant to say ‘Shammat’ but did, and then stood by it, for he turned himself around and confronted Krolgul, who lounged there, laughing in his hollow-cheeked, self-dramatizing way.

  ‘Fascist,’ said Krolgul.

  Incent did not collapse.

  The Chief Peer said, her tolerance clearly leaking away, ‘Judge, do let’s get on. I’m sure this gentleman means well, but that kind of talk used to get me irritated even when I was a girl.’

  ‘The Chief Peer is quite right,’ said Spascock. ‘Do let’s get a move on.’

  ‘I want you to tell the story of your life, Stil,’ said Grice, and Stil did so. False modesty is not a convention among the Motzans, and his narrative, neither embellished nor played down, was impressive. If he seemed to forget something, Grice would interrupt: ‘But, Stil, you told me that when you were alone at that time, with no family, you earned your living digging up those plants and –’

  ‘No, that was the second time I found myself alone. The first time, I found work stripping fish of its skin for use in the family of a fish merchant.’

  ‘What did you use the skin for?’

  ‘For? What do you use it for?’

  ‘We don’t,’ said Grice.

  ‘We don’t need to use rubbish like that,’ came from the public benches.

  ‘Rubbish?’ said Stil, and took off a thick, sinuous belt, stuck full of knives, implements, needles, pouches. ‘Fish skin,’ he said.

  ‘Very well. And when you could not find a family?’

  ‘I earned my living thieving for a time, since I had to eat, and then I took to the moors and I dug up edible plants which I sold in the settlements. I lived like that for three M-years.’

  ‘And you were ten years old then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you were keeping your two siblings, a brother and a sister, and you all lived in a cave near a settlement where the two smaller children could get work as fish cleaners?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then, as soon as your brother and sister were old enough, you three went off to an empty part of Motz and started your own settlement, draining marshes and digging dikes, and soon others came and joined you.’