The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire (22 page)

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.'

‘Yes.'

‘Would you be good enough to tell the court what skills you have?'

Stil stood thinking for a moment before starting on a recital that lasted some minutes, beginning: ‘I understand all the processes to do with the catching, cleaning, curing of fish and its products, I can drain poor, sour land and clean it, I can plant and grow trees, and I can …' It ended with, ‘I know how to administer a settlement, and to use all the technical devices associated with that. Some of them we captured from you.'

A long silence.

Spascock: ‘I gather that your point, Grice, is that Volyen, your motherland, has not provided you with an education as comprehensive as Stil's?'

‘Exactly.'

‘I think his point is, Judge, that hardship has made Stil into what we see – and very admirable it is too,' said the Chief Peer.

At this point there was a light hand-clapping from the public benches, and Spascock, scandalized, shouted: ‘This is not a public theatre!'

‘I've never seen anything like him,' went on Arithamea. ‘I'm sure we none of us have. But are you really complaining, Governor Grice, that Volyen hasn't treated you badly, half starved you, all that kind of thing?'

‘Not exactly,' said Grice, though his point was in fact not far from that. ‘All I know is this. I am fit for only one thing – if that. Governing a colony. Provided I have enough underlings to do the dirty work. Oh, I can't understand the technical devices used in administration. And all my life I have been soft, self-indulgent, weak. I cannot stand up to the slightest setback or hardship. I could not survive a day
without the comforts and convenience I've known all my life. Compared with Stil here, compared with a Motzan, I am nothing.'

Here we all examined Grice, we examined Spascock. Certainly there was nothing much there to admire. Meanwhile, the Motzan stood silent, his arms folded, looking ahead of him. A soldier, standing at ease: that was what he suggested, with his broad, healthy face, his great neck, his arms, his legs exposed under the short tunic in the Motzan fashion. Arithamea went on:

‘I want to ask the witness a question.'

‘Certainly, if he agrees,' said Spascock.

Stil nodded.

‘How many Motzans died as children under such treatment?'

Stil looked uncomfortable for the first time. ‘A good many died. But we are talking of the past. You will remember, we developed a hostile planet from nothing, and it is only recently that –'

‘But many died?'

‘Yes.'

‘Not all have survived to tell the tale?'

‘No.'

‘Are all the people of your planet as well equipped and strong and able as you?'

‘Yes, I would say we all are,' said Stil unexpectedly, for we had expected him in his honesty to admit less than that. But because of his honesty, we knew it was true. ‘Yes, we are all able to turn our hands to anything that comes up. We aren't afraid of hardship. We can eat anything.'

‘You all of you rise when your sun rises, and you work all day, you live on two small meals in the day, you drink very little intoxicating liquor, you sleep no more than three or four hours in the night.'

Stil nodded. ‘That is so.'

At this point an earnest, worried-looking man who had
taken the place of the disappointed reveller on the seat next to Arithamea said, ‘It seems to me that what this Indictment is demanding is impossible.'

‘Not at all,' said Grice. ‘It's perfectly obvious. It is generally known, everyone knows, that a population who are pampered, softened, allowed to go to flesh, become fit for nothing and degenerate. This is a law of nature. We observe it all the time, in plants, animals – and in people, though there seems to have arisen a convention with us on Volyen that people are exempt from these laws, and –'

‘May I ask a question?' said the worried man.

‘May he ask a question, Chief Peer?' asked Spascock.

‘I didn't know I had to give him permission.'

‘He is being sarcastic,' said Incent protectively, hovering about the group of Peers. ‘Take no notice.'

‘But we have to take notice of the Judge, dear, even if his manners aren't up to mine.'

‘Thank you, Chief Peer,' said Spascock.

‘This is my question, then. You say in your Second Indictment, which is what we are considering today, that Empires are like animal organisms: they have a curve of development and ultimately decay. All Empires show this. While they develop they are vigorous, admire simple virtues and capacities, teach their children discipline and how to devote themselves to duty. On the ascending curve they produce people like this Stil hete, who are healthy and not neurotic, who admire forcefulness and determination and responsibility. But when they decline, they are like … like we are on Volyen. We are lazy and even proud of it. We teach our children that they are entitled to anything, without working for it. We are self-indulgent. We spend our time eating and drinking and sleeping. We dress as the fancy takes us. A lot of us take drugs and intoxicants.'