The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire (27 page)

‘Ormarin, they aren't bird-men …' And I explained about the relationship the Maken have with their beasts. I saw Ormarin's face twist up in disgust, and then with fear. ‘You tell me that these people have animals in their homes with them?'

‘A Maken will sleep with his head on the side of his pipisaur.'

‘And they eat these animals' secretions?'

‘Sometimes nothing else. Can you imagine the closeness of the bond?'

‘I don't want to,' said Ormarin, looking sick. ‘I simply don't want to think about it.'

‘Very well. But what you have to think about is this – how to limit their influence here, their power. And you can.'

‘If one planet invades another, it is not for anything but the loot!'

‘There is very little you have that will interest them. If it had been Sirius, yes. Your plantations here; they planned to make on Volyendesta vast plantations of the berry. They were going to use you too, because of your extraordinarily varied genetic mix, for all kinds of social experiments. But Maken is millenniums away from an interest in social thought. They are not yet conscious of themselves in that way. Their strength, the Pipisaurus, is their weakness. They can only function now within this bond. They see themselves only in relation to their beasts. They will invade other planets and take only what will benefit Maken from this point of view.'

‘And what will?'

‘Very little. They are looking for birds and insects to take back and try out on Maken so that they may allow themselves to breed more pipisaurs. They see this animal as their wealth, their only wealth. And as they are now, this animal
is
their wealth, their strength, their centre of affection, of emotion.'

‘And their weakness!'

‘Yes, because they will find all kinds of new birds, new flying things, even small mammals they will introduce to their beasts' diet. Their flocks will increase – no longer will the ratio of one Maken to one beast be observed – there will soon be vast herds or flocks of pipisaurs who have no ties of affection with the Maken, and they will declare themselves independent, for they are intelligent and in rapid evolution, and there will be the most terrible civil war on Maken. But all that is a long way in the future, in your time scale. It will not concern you, that time when the Maken Empire will be a rule not of Makens as we know them, but of pipisaurs. That will be a terrible rule indeed … Your immediate problem is how to allow the Makens to land, how to welcome them, how to
invite
some of them to stay as your
guests, how to give them what they want without depleting yourselves, how to change those that stay, for some will want to stay, so that they become as flexible and open-minded as in fact you are, how to wait until they go, or, rather, until one day you realize you have not been visited for a long time by the Maken forces, and that those of them that are here are like you, that you have so absorbed them, that Volyendesta is in fact independent, though nominally a part of the Maken Empire …

‘Are we never to be independent?' he groaned.

‘Yes, as good as. And quite soon.'

‘They'll never stand for it,' he objected. He was thinking of his long travels over the planet, talking of defence, bloodshed, willing martyrdom.

‘Yes, they will. You try it.'

And so Incent and I will be travelling with Ormarin and his colleagues all over Volyendesta, to prepare the Volyendestans for a sight, for an experience, which without preparation they could only find appalling, horrifying, even to the point of total inner collapse.

The inhabitants of Volyendesta waited for the Makens calmly, having been well prepared by Ormarin. Agents gave them warning of the approach of the spaceships. These vast structures, each designed to hold a thousand Makens with their beasts, lay in the atmosphere above the planet for some time, looking like solid silvery clouds. All over Volyendesta, well-organized and self-disciplined crowds stood looking up, and anxious to see what had been described to them,
though even at this last moment they found it hard to believe.

Small black apertures appeared in the bodies of the carriers, and from each dropped out small black dots that formed themselves into blocks of a hundred each. They were too high to be seen as more than dots, but soon these blocks, or companies, dropped swiftly down, and what came into sight were the ‘bird-men' of the rumours. This was the moment when panic might have – but did not – set in. Lower and lower they fell, and the sky was regularly patterned with the flying horrors … The Pipisaurus is like a furred lizard, but with a heavy, blunt beak, and on each, as close as if growing from it, was a Maken dressed in pipisaurian fur, his head inside a cap that was the head of a pipisaur, ears, beak, complete: the savage, heavy heads of the beasts, and above them the same beaked heads, as if each beast had two heads. Down, down they came, thousands upon thousands, all over the planet, and the sound of the wings, which were black membranes stiffened with slender rods of bones, was a beating, fluttering, drumming that disturbed the air, that hurt the hearing, so that everywhere could be seen people with hands over their ears, trying to shut out the sound even while they peered and strained to see.

When the Makens were a few measures above the surface, they hovered there so that everyone could see them very clearly. The Makens had learned, to their surprise and pleasure, how terrifying their opponents found the appearance they made.

Close to, these double-headed bird-animals, with their terrible weapons of beaks, their hard glittering eyes, their thick black fur, their clapping thunderous wings, their claws, were even more awful than the Volyendestans had been warned they would be. Yet they stood their ground, did not allow panic to show, remained quiet and undisturbed in outward demeanour.

Before the Makens could land on the earth, Ormarin came forward – just as representatives were doing all over the planet – and began on a speech of welcome.

‘Fellow victims of Volyen! Fellow Colonials! We, the second colonized planet of Volyen, welcome you, the third planet to be Volyen's victim, on our soil. Please land, please come forward, and allow us to extend to you our sincere greetings …' and so on.

In the midst of these speeches, the bird-men alighted, folded their wings, and waited. Each company had a leader, who jumped off his beast and stood beside it. There was a moment of indecision. On the back of each beast were tied weapons of all kinds, for the Maken spy system was as yet very poorly developed and they had believed that as soon as they landed they would have to fight for their existence. But they were faced with quiet and even friendly crowds, and speeches of welcome.

The weapons were taken off the backs of the beasts, but were held loosely, not aggressively. Meanwhile, the Volyendestans were observing this development: by each beast now stood the beast's other half, an upright two-legged creature, in shape and structure not unlike the other inhabitants of the Galaxy, not unlike the Volyendestans to see – and this was what the Volyendestans really could not understand, what they were always to remain uneasy about – how absolutely like each other they are.

At last, the Maken company commanders conferred, decided to send back to Maken for orders, allowed themselves to play the part of welcomed guests, left their weapons to sit loosely in the crooks of their arms – and took off their headpieces. The Volyendestans were dismayed by these short, rather lumpy, furred creatures, with round, smooth, yellow, bare heads – they shaved them – and smooth, round, yellowish faces, in which were slantingly set small black eyes that had no eyebrows or lashes. Smooth, dark, furred animals with maggot-like heads, and they were
all alike. Although they had been told, had been prepared for uniformity by observation of the slaves from S 181, Volyendestans could not take it in, were uncomfortable, did not know where to look; and then did look, with relief and appreciation, at themselves, at one another, resting their eyes and their understandings on their own infinite variety, on hair yellow and brown and red and silver and black, on skins that were white and cream and grey and pink and yellow and brown and black; they could not get enough of gazing at one another, marvelling at the infinite ranges of shape and size and testure, and at the surprises and amazingness of what they were. And then looked again at the Makens, who, having taken off their tight, smooth fur bodysuits, showed themselves as roundish, sturdy, smooth-yellow-skinned people, with their roundish, slit-eyed yellowish faces. All alike. All, all, absolutely alike. There might be a minimal difference in height, in thickness, and if their faces were examined hopefully for variegation, for a slight difference in the set of a feature, a mouth, then minor differences could in fact be seen.

Never had Volyendesta been so united, and it was by their own appreciation of themselves, the richnesses of their heritage.

Meanwhile, festivities, speeches: and when the Makens were tired, they were led to recently constructed barrada, most thoughtfully designed to accommodate soldiers with their beasts, though food for the beasts had indeed proved a problem. And this led at once to discussions – suggested by Ormarin, whose large, solid, bluff, sensible presence was everywhere – on how to supply the Makens' need, of which this planet had heard long ago and which the Volyendestans wanted only to accommodate, out of the sympathy one colonized planet must feel for another, on new strains of animals and birds and insects that could be adapted for the pipisaurs.

The Makens did not know how to take it all. Not the
most sophisticated, the most agile-minded of peoples, they had expected a sharp and unpleasant war of conquest, which they meant to win, and then … but then what? On Slovin they had landed as allies, and then had taken over. They had not fought there either. Secretly they longed for war, wanted to see if their horrid appearance – as they now knew it was – would indeed stun terrified opponents. But having conquered a new planet, what then? The Makens were every bit as uneasy as their ‘hosts.' They spent all their waking moments on their beasts. They woke beside their friends, embraced them, exchanged licks and kisses; then the Makens were on their beasts' backs and off into the air, until enough birds had been caught and eaten (on the wing) to satisfy the pipisaurs, or they ran everywhere over the ground, the great clawed legs bounding and leaping, until the strong beaks had speared up enough insects (on Maken, often the size of a Maken infant) to fill them. And then the day was spent, most often, in the air: all kinds of games and tournaments and sports went on up there. And, on the ground, races and sports again. Twice in the day a brief meal was taken, sometimes drunk straight from the glands of the pipisaurs, sometimes eaten on the beasts' backs.

On this planet, Volyendesta, halfhearted attempts were made to live as on Maken. But it was not the same. For one thing, the atmosphere was not identical, and the Makens felt lethargic. And then, while the Makens enjoyed the idea that other planets thought them terrifying, they did not seem to themselves terrifying, and it was awkward to try to enjoy themselves with so many Volyendestans gawking and staring: not with terror, it was true, but, rather, as if they found them, the Makens, repulsive or in some way unlikeable. And then, the Makens felt the obverse for the Volyendestans of what the Volyendestans felt for them: at first they could not believe, and then they could not become used to crowds of people who were all so different from one another. Wasn't there something off-putting … no,
unpleasant, even
wrong
about it? How could there be any fellow-feeling, any real togetherness, among people who, when they looked at one another must see something so different from themselves that surely they must carry around mirrors to look in so as to reassure themselves that their own appearances were as valid, as good, as
right
as what they saw? How awful – thought the Makens – it must be to belong to a planet so constituted that there was no pleasant, easy-going,
natural, 
and
right
similarity of appearance. How awful it must be always to be adjusting yourselves to differences, instead of reposing comfortably in the knowledge that everyone was of the same kind. And some Makens even took to sneaking off to the slave camps, to rest their sight on masses of people who looked like one another. And again there was this business of having these satisfactory, right people shut away together in camps as slaves, as if they were worse than the so wildly various and differentiated ones.

When asked, Ormarin said it was not so, they were no longer slaves now that Volyen had gone, now that the Mother Planet of Sirius – yes, yes, we know you have inherited the mantle of the Virtue, but Sirius brought in these slaves, they were not our invention – now we are ourselves again, and independent, slavery will not be tolerated.

At this information, that the – surely? – conquered planet of Volyendesta considered itself independent, the conquerors again applied to Maken itself for instructions, and were told to establish an occupying force, to liberate any species that might prove useful, and to return home. Only too thankfully, the Maken armies did this. Speeches, celebrations, even a few embraces. Not all Volyendestans found all Makens repulsive. There would soon be a strain of Maken in the planet's genetic inheritance; a pleasant thought for them all, and even more pleasant now that they had learned how sad a state of affairs it is when a planet's inhabitants can all look alike.

And the spaceships came and stood everywhere over
Volyendesta, and the Makens put on their fur suits and their beaked headdresses and leaped onto their animals' backs, and again the sky was filled with the terrible double-headed beasts whose wings made the air flutter and beat and vibrate so that the ears hurt, and up they flew in their hundreds to the spaceships, and small black dots could be seen vanishing one after another into the black holes in the bellies of the craft. And then the spaceships were gone, the skies of Volyendesta were empty.