The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire (11 page)

Oh yes, it is with the wriest of thoughts that I have heard – so very often, for I have been present when Shammat is at its work, though Shammat has had no suspicion of it – this caricature of Canopus, this shabby mimicry.

And it is because Shammat can use words that
sound
so similar to Ours that so many of our own were among those aspirants for a degree from Krolgul's School of Rhetoric that day. I noted them. I spoke to the two who knew me, using our own quiet words that might remind them, that
will
remind them, when the time comes that they
are
not Shammat's, that their future is not to become one of the power-hungry of the Galaxy.

What Shammat does, in short, is to allow ‘life itself' to throw up its material, encourage ‘life itself' to develop it, and then, when these people are already well accustomed to assaults of Rhetoric both from others and as used by themselves, they are taken into Krolgul's school, where they have to learn to become immune to it, so that they may control crowds by the most passionate, violent, emotional language possible, without ever being affected by it.

And never, during the preparations ‘in life itself' or in the school, does Shammat say to its disciples: ‘This is a school for the use of power over others, for the crude manipulation of the lowest instincts.'

How easy it is for the unprepared, for the innocent, to lose their way: when Incent at last rolled over from his prone position on the bench beside me, he said, ‘Klorathy, I have been thinking, why not enrol me in Krolgul's school? He need never know that I am here simply to learn what I need.'

‘And what do you need?'

‘How not to be manipulated by words. What else?'

‘And you really cannot see any difference in the methods we use to harden you against Rhetoric, and Shammat's?' He was lying there, our Incent, moodily elongated, arms behind his head, legs straight, black eyes brooding, very pale because of his condition. Meanwhile a young Slovin orated, ‘What, then, is it that we are aiming at? What? Why, nothing less than …

‘They certainly seem to have a much more enjoyable time of it than we do,' he grumbled.

‘Indeed they do. Enjoyable, that's the word. What is more enjoyable than power or the promise of it?
When do we ever flatter you, Incent?'

A short, bitter laugh. ‘No, you can't be accused of that,
Klorathy. Well, perhaps I
choose
to learn what I need in Krolgul's school and not with you! At least Krolgul won't make me feel as if I'm a contemptible worm without a redeeming feature.'

‘No, but you
will
be a contemptible worm without a redeeming feature. If you go through Krolgul's school, Incent, you'll come out a first-class little tyrant, I promise you, able to stand on any plinth or platform anywhere, reducing crowds to tears or arousing them to murder,
having them under your will
, and not feel a flicker of remorse or compunction. Oh, Krolgul's school is very efficient, and I was certainly planning for you to see it in operation so that you could make certain comparisons, but only when you were internally strong enough to be able to make the comparisons.'

Incent lay there, looking at me: dark eyes, the blankness behind than showing that his degree of exhaustion, though improved, was still severe.

‘Some of our people are there, with Krolgul. One of them is reciting now. Agent 73, I know her.'

‘Yes, and when they've come to understand, through life itself, what they have become, do you imagine it will be an easy task to build them up inwardly, to restore to them what has been stolen? Incent, you are at risk. More than, perhaps, some of the others. Your temperament, your physical tendencies, your capacity for self-projection –'

‘Thanks,' said he, histrionically. ‘What equipment I've got, then!'

‘Well,
who chose it, Incent?
No, I don't want to hear any complaints that you think free will is a mistake. What do you suppose the difference is between
them
and us? It is that you choose.'

A long silence, while some youth chanted: ‘And what is there to prevent this paradise? We all know there is nothing! In our soil lies the wealth of harvests and of minerals …

‘Very well,' he said. ‘But you'd better keep me under your eye for the time being, hadn't you?'

I took him back to the hotel, and I do not need to say with what relief we entered the wonderful, all-artificial, cool, stimulus-free white room.

And there we have been resting. Side by side on the recliners. I, on my back, he prone and staring at the dull black of the flooring through the lattices of the chair, we recovered together. It was as silent as in a cave deep under the earth, as silent as if we floated in the black spaces between galaxies. The tall slim room reached up into the building, and at its top was a place of quiet light.

At first you are allowed only glimpses of circles, triangles, squares, all a luminous white on flat white, and the shapes darken, turn grey and then duller grey on a white that begins to shine, though softly. These statements of order remain, so that the eye may travel, but resting, soothed, reassured; soon, however, the mind begins to protest against changelessness, longs for relief, and as you understand that this is your thought – a hunger transmuted from a sharp need into the passionless stuff of the mind – the eye is in movement again because up there, at the very tip of the dim shaft, it is not polygons but polyhedrons you are trying to encompass with your gaze. They stand there, as it were waiting in the air, but their solidity is not yet defined and heavy, and you still believe it is a hexagon or an octagon that is enticing your gaze up into itself. But no, there is mass, and there is weight on the faintly gleaming white. Silence and stillness, no movement at all, for a long time, a long … And then again, when the restless eye begins to demand change, movement there is, tetrahedrons are changing into octahedrons, and then – dazzlingly! – into those charmers icosahedrons, which transform themselves into icosi-dodecahedrons, and it seems as if high above you in the tapering dimnesses of your own mind roll spheres that have within them all the luminaries, solid and plane, so that
dodecagons tease star polygons, and a decagon may merge into a dodecahedron which resolves into
a
pentagon which opts, modestly, for the condition of being a cube. Though not for long …

Infinitely refreshed, I suggested to Incent that he might turn over and look. He did so, but at once groaned out, ‘Snowflakes!' and flipped back again, to lie face down.

I continued to amuse myself with the mathematical game, and altered the controlling mechanisms from Automatic to Manual, so that I could at will move from the plane into the multi-dimensional and back again, for no sooner had I decided that I could never be seduced from the fascination of the dance of the polyhedrons, than I knew that I could contemplate for ever a ceiling that had become flat and decorated luminously with the patternings and intricacies of the interlacing polygons.

While I was returning to myself, Incent was also recovering, or at least showing signs of wanting to. ‘I have been thinking about Governor Grice,' he said.

‘Oh, no,' I said. ‘Do you have to? You really do have no sense at all of your boundaries, Incent!'

‘Oh. Is that it? Is that what's wrong with me?' At the idea that there was some hope of a diagnosis he brightened: it is quite extraordinary how these children of Rhetoric are comforted by the
word.

When I did not say anything, he said, ‘Oh, Klorathy, when I think of how unjust I was. After all, Grice was only doing what he had to do. And yet I was wanting to punish him as an individual.'

‘Incent,' I said, ‘if you'd only do your homework – Do you do it? Do you in fact study what has been set for you? Because there are no indications in your speech or behaviour that you do anything of the sort!
If
you did, you'd know that when individuals or groups or associations of groups are made exemplar for the populace, they are always blackened and vilified before the ritual sacrifice. After all,
you could even look at it as a sign of decency, or of the embryonic beginnings of justice, that it is so hard to
get
people to kill – even in hot blood – other people who they think are only doing their duty, though misguidedly. No, they have to be told that Grice is Greasy, and that Klorathy is Cruel, and that Incent is –'

‘There is something very stale and boring about that,' said he, turning over suddenly and lying with his forearm across his eyes, ready to shield them, but gazing into the intricate patternings above us.

‘You mean the words are stale,' I said. ‘You have heard them a thousand times in our schools. But they do not seem to affect the behaviour, certainly have had little effect on yours, so the
idea
isn't.
When
you enthusiasts and revolutionaries can withstand Krolgul and refuse to allow yourselves to be whipped into lathers of self-righteousness at slogans like Grice the Greasy,
then
you can use words like stale –'

‘I wish I could go and apologize to him.'

‘There is nothing stopping you.'

‘Why do you put this terrible burden on us?'

‘Why is this burden placed upon us all?

‘You too, of course. I forgot.'

‘All of us.'

‘Why, it is too much. We are not fit. I am not fit. Oh, no …' And he shut his eyes, away from a vision in the cool shade above of how a pattern of star octagons shifted from the flat into the three-dimensional, and back, lines and planes of dark grey on light grey, then a slight, fine black on shadow that was white only because a sharper white did not lie close enough to contrast with it and contradict. White upon white, or white that was as if a subtle warmth had been withdrawn, a world of strict and formal shapes lived in the spaces beneath the ceiling, which was itself unbounded, seemed to dissolve into nothing.

‘Oh, yes, we are,' I said. ‘Everyone of us has felt exactly like you.'

‘You too?'

‘Of course.'

‘And Johor too – and everyone?'

His incredulity echoed mine. For of course I find it hard to believe that you, Johor, were ever so feeble, as Incent does of me.

‘And then?'

‘You'll learn, Incent. But in the meantime –'

‘You do rather despair of me?' And his giggle was quite consoling, being full of vitality.

‘Oh, you'll do all right. But in the meantime –'

‘You'd rather I didn't go running after Governor Grice?'

‘If that's what you have to do, it's what you have to do.'

‘Hmm … I can hear that there is something about him I don't know. What is it?'

‘If I were to tell you that in some quarters he is regarded as a Sirian agent, what would you say?'

He exploded into laughter, a good coarse crude bray of scornful laughter. I felt an increase of optimism about him.

‘I suppose I can take it that you are planning to bump him off, or get someone else to, and that you have to blacken him first.'

‘Logical thinking,' I said. ‘Congratulations.'

‘Oh, don't laugh at me. They used to tell me at school that I always had to worry any proposition through into its own opposite before I could let it go … Well, is he a Sirian agent?'

‘That is one of the things I am here to find out. You, Incent – though I can tell by the sudden change in the set of your shoulders you find the news a disappointment – are not my only responsibility down here. Though I can assure you, there are times when you are quite enough for me … Do you think you can get along for a while by yourself in here, if I go out and do some fact-finding? Johor is waiting for a
report.' He watched me, soberly enough, as I prepared myself to leave. ‘Do you want the ceiling show left switched on?'

‘Yes. It makes me think of Canopus.'

‘Yes.'

‘And you trust me to stay here alone, after having made a fool of myself so often?'

‘I have no alternative, Incent,' I said.

If you were to pay a visit to Volyen now, Johor, I wonder if you would be struck most by the changes, or the lack of change? You were here when Volyen reached its peak as an Empire, having just conquered PE 70 and PE 71, and before it began falling back in on itself. It was very rich, self-satisfied, proud, complacent. Its public note, or tone, was the liturgic chant of self-praise characteristic of Empires at that stage. New wealth poured in from PE 70 and PE 71; Volyenadna and Volyendesta were already well integrated into the economic whole. The cities of Volyen itself grew and fattened with explosions of population due to an increase of general well-being: Volyen had been poor and backward for a long time, after having been sucked dry during its previous colonial period under Volyenadna. But the cities were horrible contrasts of extreme wealth and extreme poverty, for even at its richest Volyen was not able, was not willing, to keep its labouring classes in decency. These millions came into existence because of an improvement in conditions; but they were not allowed to live any longer than was useful to the privileged classes who employed them.

This was perhaps the most striking part of your Report, Johor, and one which was used in the Colonial Service
classes I was teaching that to illustrate an Empire can be described as wealthy; can increase its wealth many times in a century through loot and plunder; can present an image of itself, far and wide through a galaxy, of splendour and prosperity and growth; yet the bulk of its citizens may still be living as meanly and hopelessly as the most neglected of slaves. These, the poorest classes of Volyen, were worse off than slaves.

Your Report came out just at the time I was on leave on Canopus, and had undertaken to teach the course on Comparative Empires: Sirius, whose Empire had lasted almost as long as ours; and Volyen's, whose Empire in comparison is an affair of moments, provided my material. Your Report made the strongest impression on my students, and on me. I was able to base not only single lectures but also subsidiary courses on a single sentence. For instance: