The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire

by Doris Lessing

  And, suddenly, they lost their discipline and became an invading army, and they ate, and they drank – particularly, drank, for on Motz there is very little strong liquor. Drunken, angry mobs of Motzans ravaged Volyen, and, when they came to their senses, were ashamed and frightened, even ascribing their behaviour to some sinister influence in the atmosphere of Volyen. At any rate, all they wanted was to get home. All, including the officers. From one end of Volyen to the other, Motzans were to be seen conferring in little groups, and then in larger ones, then forming into detachments, battalions, and going to the spaceports. Laden with Volyen’s riches, they piled themselves into the spaceships. No order, not a word from Sirius, from the ‘Centre,’ where fighting was – and still is – going on. So they simply went home, and were no longer Sirian. These straightforward, single-minded people did not need more than to put the question to themselves: ‘Sirius has lied to us. Do we want to be considered Sirian?’

  They dispatched a message to Sirius announcing that they were no longer to be counted as part of the Sirian Empire, and would repel any invasion. But their insubordination was hardly noticed. Meanwhile, the Motzan defection had been noted by their neighbour Alput, whose armies invaded Volyen at once.

  I attach a letter from our AM 5. I am afraid it is characterized by the Elation that is the worst symptom of war fever.

  Servus! (as I have not heard Krolgul say recently; where is he?) Klorathy, in such a situation do you expect me to be sober? No one else is, anywhere on Motz. Oh, these poor Embodiments, what a blow they have suffered, how the wings of their Virtue trail and drag. No, but seriously, it’s serious, Klorathy. Before they went off to make Volyen as Virtuous as Motz, never once had any of them thought that their ways were not the best in the Galaxy. And those who went are not believed by those who stayed. ‘On Volyen, you’ll see whole streets crammed with food and fruit and stuff, Volyens eat and drink what they fancy, stuff we’ve never dreamed of, and there’s no limit to it. In the poorest Volyen household they live better than in our richest …’ But the reply is, ‘That’s propaganda; you fell for it!’ ‘No, it’s the truth, believe us!’ But they aren’t believed, and so Motz is split, no longer has a single mind; Motzans are unsure of themselves, curse Sirius, and have thrown out everyone suspected of being Sirian, including me.

  ‘You are a spy,’ they said to me.

  ‘But not from Sirius. I am the agent of Canopus,’ said I, coming clean. ‘As you to Volyen,’ I said, ‘so Volyen to Canopus, but a thousand degrees of difference if you to Volyen are one degree. Do you understand?’ I said. ‘You have been dazzled by a little fitful gleam, whereas if you imagine Canopus …’ But they threw me out. They didn’t kill me: Motz remains Motz, fair and decent, if not sober, for they have brought from Volyen knowledge of shops full of a hundred varieties of wines and spirits. They said, ‘Leave.’ So I went to Alput. No alien remains on Motz, not one.

  Alput is not Motz! If Motz produces – produced – one type, the same all over Motz, the solid, hard-working, narrow, disciplined sort, then on Alput grow the representatives of a hundred planets; they are all aliens. As a result of Sirius’s growing so Virtuous after the downfall of the Five, prisons proliferated, and Alput has been a prison planet, full of the best and the worst from everywhere. But their diversity means that the rigidities and conformities of the Virtue, with them, are cynicism, not, as it was with Motz, conviction. How clearly is exemplified our law that a state or Empire will be the more long-lived the more its propaganda is not believed in! Motz believed Sirius was perfect – and Motz is no longer Sirian! Alput believes everything and anything and is cruel and arbitrary – and will probably remain a Sirian outpost here, while all other colonies declare themselves free. Believe me, Klorathy, going with the Alputs into Volyen is not something I can entertain you with. They looked at the plenty and the amenities of Volyen, the many races and breeds that (on the whole) accommodated one another, they made speeches interminably, as conquerors do, extolling their superiorities, and the Virtue of Sirius did as well as anything else for this purpose, but no deep inner convictions were upset when they noted how fat and fair Volyen was and how – on the whole – tolerant and amiable its citizens. Alput is overpopulated. They see Volyen as a useful bit of property to expand into. They have been killing and killing and killing; I won’t sicken you with it. As for the Sirian ‘agents’ on Volyen, Alput knew no more about them than Motz did. From one end of ‘the Volyens’ to the other, thousands of Volyens cowered and bit their nails and sweated at nights: ‘How will my treachery (or foresightedness?) be regarded by these Alputs, who call themselves Sirian, and who have never been to Sirius and know even less about it than we do?’ Some presented themselves to these new and horrible conquerors with, ‘Excuse me, but I believe I am one of yours, I believe in Sirian Virtue …’ and so on and so forth. ‘You do, do you?’ came the reply. And’ ‘Well, what do you think now?’ And hundreds of these sentimental agents found themselves in prison camps, where they were allowed to starve to death. A few have been employed by the Alputs as part of the Rule of Sirian Virtue (so they call their administration) in the role of overseers.

  Spascock is one. I understand he refused our offer to take him to Volyendesta? That was brave of him, I suppose. He is running the law courts, and is (punishment fitting the crime) an expert on the Virtue as it affects the day-to-day life of the citizens.

  And now a small tale, an incident, just a little light shining in all this darkness. While Motz came and went on Volyen, shut into a room in the court building were Arithamea and her associates, considering the Indictment of Volyen. Yes, they knew Motz had invaded; but had not Motz ordered ‘Business as usual’?

  Some Motzan soldiers reeled drunkenly into the chamber where the Peers sat reading diligently, making notes and communicating to one another their thoughts; and, since they knew that books are Good, reeled out again.

  Soon came the Alputs. Oh, Klorathy, imagine the scene, imagine it, allow me to indulge myself for just this one incident …

  A rather dusty room, with windows opening onto an inner court. None of the sights and sounds of invasion and sudden death. Twenty Peers sit together at one end of the room, among them Arithamea, and on a small dais an earnest, suffering soul, reading from a document. They are all much thinner, since supplies of food have been intermittent, all worried about their families, all concerned for the fate of Volyen. But this duty has been assigned to them, and this duty they will carry out. The document is a summing-up of Grice’s complaint against Volyen.

  The man who is reading has not yet heard that these Alputs are brutes likely to kill on a whim, and so, on seeing the five soldiers, of a type new to him – the Alputs have a varied genetic stock, but being Alputs gives them a characteristic easy, indulged, cynical good humour with which they conduct everything they do, with which they eat, drink, mate, kill, lie, cheat – he simply lifts a hand and says, ‘Just a minute, we are still considering our verdict,’ and goes on:

  ‘These are my main points.

  ‘One. You, Volyen, never gave me any obstacles to overcome. From cradle to grave, my paths have been made easy.

  Two. You have caused me to become soft and self-indulgent, unable to deny myself anything.

  ‘Three. You taught me that what I wanted I could have, it was due to me because I had conceived the wish for it.

  ‘Four. You inflicted on me a life of intolerable boredom, because you removed from me all risks and dangers, hid the face of death from me, behaved towards me like an overindulgent mother who believes that food and comfort can be equated with love –’

  ‘Just a minute there,’ demands the captain of this little company of Alputs. ‘Just what do you think you are doing?’

  ‘We are, as citizens of Volyen, doing our duty during the course of our turn of Peer service.’

  ‘Who told you to?’

  ‘Judge Spascock.’

  The captain dispatches a soldier to find out who is currently in charge o
f the courts, and stands listening.

  ‘Five. You never informed me that inherent in Volyen nature is the need to transcend ourselves, ever to step onwards and upwards on the corpses of our dead selves, achieve yet higher and higher steps on the ladder of evolution.

  ‘Six. You taught me that to eat and drink and sleep and entertain myself was the object of life.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ says the captain, ‘who is complaining to what?’

  ‘Well, actually, love,’ says Arithamea, ‘that hasn’t been decided yet. There’s a Select Committee sitting somewhere or other.’

  ‘Gawd,’ mutters the captain, ‘would you believe it.’

  ‘And as Leader of the Peers here, I really must ask you to let us proceed. It is our duty, do you see?’

  ‘Seven. In other words, you have robbed me of my birthright, which is to struggle, to fight, to suffer, to overcome, to perform the impossible, to accomplish miracles, to –’

  But at this point the messenger returns to say that one Spascock, a Volyen, had been nominated as Master, under Sirius, of the Courts.

  ‘Well, I suppose we’ll have to let you get on with it, won’t we?’ says the Alput, thoroughly bored with the whole thing, and disgusted too at the glimpse into Volyen ‘ordinary life,’ as he saw it.

  ‘What a crew,’ one Alput mutters to another, as they march off down the corridors into the streets where they intend to resume the pleasures of looting and destroying. ‘Well, if what they want is a bit of rough treatment, I for one am going to give it to them!’

  And so, Klorathy, here I am on Volyen with the Alput armies as interpreter. Do you want me to stay here? To go to Volyenadna? Volyendesta? I don’t see that there is much to be done here. That is a way of saying I don’t want to stay here. I do not see how Volyen can be any more than the fifth-rate colony of a disintegrating Empire.

  And so, Johor, here I am, on Volyendesta.

  I told AM 5 to stay on Volyen. I said that he was to make contact, and keep contact, with the Peers, who would continue to consider themselves a group, maintaining the knowledge of the laws of society gained by their period of enforced study, and would be sheltered by Spascock. Spascock is now our agent, this time without ambiguity. I said to him, ‘Stay alive. If you can manage that, it’s a great deal. Shelter the Peer Group that originated from the Grice Trial. They will influence all Volyen, and when the Alputs depart as the Sirian Empire finally falls apart, there will grow a society based on a real knowledge of how things work, real socio-psychological laws. One day, from Volyen will come influences that will change all the planets in this part of the Galaxy. But in the meantime, this small group of vulnerable people must be sheltered. By you.’

  Before I come to affairs on Volyendesta – Volyenadna.

  Except for the icecaps, all of this dour little planet now glows a soft red, as I saw when I directed the Space Traveller to fly over it. Calder caused the workers’ organizations to start underground factories for the thousand products of Rocknosh. He has been so much admired for his foresight he is virtually boss of the planet. The factories are underground because they remembered what I said of the coming invasions. Sirius invaded, again on secret orders that were countermanded too late by the Questioners: the planet’s minerals were of course the aim. But ‘Sirius’ here was the wildest mix of peoples. The army that overran Volyenadna was composed of troops from land-hungry Alput, together with soldiers from several Sirian factory planets, all in desperate need of minerals as the Empire collapses. This army was really many armies, made up of peoples who disliked one another and were united by one thing, their hatred of this dour, chilly little planet, all tundra and rock, populated by dour, angry people. Alput is feeding off Volyen and has told its armies to fend for themselves. The factory colonies felt themselves abandoned by Sirius and have since announced their independence of the Sirian Empire, but in the meantime they had no food. Chaos – hunger – fighting between armies and factions of armies all over Volyenadna. Calder and his people watched all this, and no one told the invaders of the supplies of rich food that filled underground storehouses everywhere. And when these aliens saw that a reddish crust was being scraped off the rocks, and were told this was a lichen used for dyeing and as pan of the processes of mining, they believed it. The invading armies had nothing to eat.

  Calder and his people bribed them to go away, offering enough food to carry all these polyglot armies back home to their various planets.

  ‘Food!’ scoffed the Alputs and the starving armies of the factory planets. ‘What food? Where are you going to get it?’

  ‘We’ll give you all the food we have stored against bad years – for we have bad years, you know, when the snow falls through the growing months. We have to stockpile food.’

  ‘Show us!’

  They were shown some underground storehouses specially prepared to contain only a few of the infinite variety of foods and products that Rocknosh can make. And these armies went away, the holds of their spaceships crammed with not very likeable foodstuffs, pitying and despising the Volyenadnans, and never suspecting the crammed storehouses everywhere under the surface.

  So Volyenadna is independent both of Volyen and of Sirius, its economy becomes daily more diversified, and its harsh climate is rapidly being modified by the influences of the new plant. Volyenadna, so recently the poorest and bleakest of the five planets that made the Volyen ‘Empire,’ will have the easiest time of it and is in for at least four or five of their centuries of steady progress.

  I see no need for our presence there, and with your agreement propose to withdraw all Agents except Agent AM 59, who will benefit by a period of Immersion in optimism and confidence. I have told her she is there for our benefit, but she is there for hers.

  As I landed on Volyendesta, I saw Incent waiting for me. Behind him was Krolgul, who watched him anxiously, yearned at me while I walked towards them, again turned his attention on Incent, as if his eyes could swallow and digest him. This was Shammat, the poor animal whose roles and disguises had failed him. Incent stood smiling, proud of himself for having withstood Krolgul.

  ‘We’ve done him,’ he said to me, as Krolgul capered about us, the monkeylike Krolgul, shrunken and lean-looking within his natty military-type uniform.

  ‘For the time being,’ I said.

  Krolgul was straining to hear what we said. I raised my voice. ‘I was saying, Krolgul, that it is only temporarily you have lost your conceit and your arrogance.’

  ‘Why do you Canopeans hate us so much?’ he whined. ‘What have we done? Why are we worse than anyone else? All planets have their times and turns at taking what they can get. But Canopus is always there, helping them. Even at their worst. When Volyen was at the height of its Empire, did Canopus turn its back on the Volyens?’ He was running along beside us, even dropped to all fours for a few moments – and then was up, was running along in front of us, backwards.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but you’ve never been anything but a thieving, lying planet.’

  ‘But you say yourself,’ he yapped, ‘that Empires rise and fall – they have their laws, they can’t help themselves.’

  ‘Yes, but you can help yourself, Shammat.’

  ‘What?’ said Incent, indignant, stopping dead. ‘These animals better than –’

  And Krolgul stopped and stood with one knuckle on the ground, so that he peered upwards, his eyes all hungry desperation.

  ‘Why can we help ourselves? Why – what are you saying, Canopus?’

  ‘You have put yourselves into opposition from the beginning of your history, Shammat. From your first moment as a planet, you looked at Canopus as the best and brightest – and decided to steal from everyone, but mostly from us. You have studied us, you have thought about us, you think about us Shammat-year in, Shammat-year out. You know a great deal about us. You know very well what you should do and what you should not. When you lie and steal and connive and intrigue, you know what you are doing.’

  They stopped K
rolgul, still with one fist on the earth, peering up at me, his eyes wavering.

  ‘Look here!’ said Incent, all indignation. ‘You can’t say that. They don’t know. All their workings against us, their spitefulness during the fall of Volyen, was for nothing, came to nothing, because they didn’t know, they had no idea how soon Sirius would invade, so that all their efforts would be wasted.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ said Krolgul hurriedly, anxious, avid. ‘No, we didn’t. And you let us go on, you didn’t warn …’ And he began prancing and capering in frustrated rage.

  ‘Listen to him,’ Incent jeered. ‘“You let us go on,” he says, just as if he wasn’t doing everything to undo us, doing everything to destroy us, using me as a sort of pump or siphon to steal Canopean power. “You let us go on,” indeed!’ And he kicked out at Krolgul, who yelped and stood rubbing the place where Incent’s boot had landed.

  Incent was astonished at himself, afraid to look at me, ashamed to look at Krolgul, who, mysteriously emboldened and encouraged, was giving him quick triumphant glances and edging closer, pushing out his backside as if to invite another kick.

  ‘There’s more than one way to feed Shammat on Canopus,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, Klorathy, I am sorry, what can I do? There’s no end to my foolishness.’ Incent was on the edge of tears.

  Krolgul, seeing that this opportunity had passed, stood upright again, but seemed to wait for more.

  ‘Krolgul,’ I said, ‘because you have thought of nothing but Canopus for so long, you have learned a good deal about the Purpose, the Law, the Alignments. Yet you never use them for anything but ill. Have you ever – has Shammat ever – asked what would happen if Shammat went to Canopus and said, “Teach us, we are no longer thieves”?’

  At this Shammat sidled and smirked and writhed and grinned, but at the same time he looked startled, and I knew that one day …