The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire

by Doris Lessing

  The faction on Maken that overthrew the Volyen forces there called itself ‘Sirius.’ Maken has no knowledge at all of the ruthlessness of Sirius, of the arbitrary, capricious cruelty that characterizes its last days. Maken’s idealistic young had heard tales of this ‘Virtue,’ had been captivated by the language of nobility, by the rumours of a golden age, by Justice, by Liberty, by Freedom, by – of course – the Logics of History, and the rest. It was with songs of Sirian Virtue that Maken freed, and then captured Slovin. As the armies of Maken train in the skies over Maken and over Slovin – and recently, daringly, in the deserts of Volyendesta – they sing of Virtue, and their war cries promise Peace and Plenty.

  But I had not given myself time to think of how all this must strike poor Ormarin, who had never seen flying animals larger than his hand or his head, has never imagined animals as colleagues – more, friends, blood friends, for when an infant is given his or her pipisaur, and this before either can properly walk, the adults cut a vein on both, so that the blood may flow between them.

  I went to meet Ormarin in a slave camp, on a plain between mountains where grew plantations of a certain berry that they use as a stimulating beverage. The slaves provide the labour for the plantations. The camp, consisting of identical rows of small single-room dwellings, each with a boxlike outbuilding for the disposal of bodily wastes, stretched out of sight in every direction. I stood there in its centre, waiting. The slaves, or ex-slaves, were all from Sirian Planet 181, and have never bred with any but their own kind, so that in the camps you see only these very tall, lithe, long-limbed creatures, of a uniform pale yellow: their height and their immensely long arms are of use in picking the berries. S 181 is a planet that has not been invaded, and its inhabitants have evolved uniformly. Standing there, I felt an unfamiliar sensation that I diagnosed as the dullness resulting from lack of variety or stimulus. Everywhere around me these tall, yellow, spindly people with their black eyes, so alike. As I waited for Ormarin to come to me, I reflected that in the streets of this planet’s cities you may watch its people passing for hours, and never see a face repeated or a bodily shape the same as another. So long has Volyendesta been invaded, settled, ‘protected,’ so long has it invaded other planets, so long and thoroughly have the genes been stirred and mingled and added to and inspired and excited by new material, that the natives have no general type or sort; they are tall and thin and blue-eyed and fair-haired, they are short and fat and dark-haired and black-eyed, they are of every skin colour from creamy white to glossy black, they are of every conceivable mix of these characteristics. I never tire of sitting in a Volyendestan public place and watching the infinite inventiveness of our galaxy. And it is not only the natives: Volyen’s settlers are just as varied, because Volyen itself has bean conquered and invaded, has invaded and conquered. The Volyen settlers and the natives have bred together for fifteen V-centuries. These two planets, Volyen and Volyendesta, have as variegated inhabitants as any I have encountered anywhere in the Galaxy. An inhabitant of Volyendesta will take it for granted that he will never, or hardly ever, see two individuals who resemble each other; if two are alike, then it is a matta for comment.

  The slaves from S 181, the other slaves imported by Volyen, the slaves used by Sirius on road-building and spacecraft landing places, are kept in camps by themselves and are hardly seen by ordinary people.

  And I began to understand, standing there, the unease, even the repugnance, often expressed by the Volyendestans. ‘They are as if stamped out of the same material by the same mould,’ is the complaint.

  But what of the Makens? What were the Volyendestans going to see when they invaded?

  Ormarin came to meet me through the huts of the camp, by himself. I knew that these days he was seldom without a group of ‘colleagues,’ his entourage, so I knew that he was still afraid I might be taken for a Sirian spy.

  He was smoking his pipe and had on his face a friendly comradely grin.

  This business of the pipe: admiration for Ormarin has spread the practice of pipe-smoking. From end to end of this planet, the inhabitants have had small stiff wooden objects in their mouths that emit smoke. Volyendesta has not as many forests as it would like; as wood became short, other substances have been used. An outward sign of inner calm, solidity, and sense ceases to be of use when an entire population employs it, so a law has been passed that only officials above a certain rank may smoke pipes. So now you may pick out the higher-ranking officials in any crowd by the pipes they smoke. Smoking has become, you will not be surprised to hear, a secret ritual in the camps of the slaves. All kinds of statements are made by the way a pipe is lit, held, filled with weed; the way the smoke is allowed to emerge from the bowl of the pipe. A superior will show his good will or benevolence by inviting an inferior to join in a ritual of smoking on a special occasion.

  ‘Will you smoke?’ was the first thing Ormarin asked me, and we stood there together, surrounded by the ugly little dwellings of the S 181 slaves, he smoking, I not.

  This large bluff personage, when examined, showed only signs of unease.

  ‘Ormarin,’ I said, ‘I will now describe your situation to you. Stop me if I go wrong … You have been travelling all over your planet, uniting slaves and citizens, Volyendestans and former Volyens, refugees and Sirian officials who have settled here – you have united the planet in a single-minded, passionate determination to defend yourselves against invasion.’

  ‘Right!’ he said, standing foursquare, his grey eyes full on mine, his mouth gripped tight over his jetting pipestem, while the embers in it glowed red and then faded, glowed, and faded.

  ‘You are about to defend yourselves against Sirius –’

  ‘It was you who said Sirius would invade.’

  ‘In the name of Sirius you will be invaded, by troops who will use nothing that Sirius made to facilitate invasion – they will not use roads, or even spaceports.’

  He nodded. ‘You made a mistake, then?’

  ‘If I had known exactly which planet was going to invade you, then there is no preparation I could have advised that could help you except a psychological one.’

  As he stood thinking soberly, his pipe, which he did not actually enjoy, dangled from his hand at his side.

  ‘Well, at least we’ve united the planet,’ he said, ‘if nothing else.’

  ‘And you are going to fight to the last drop of everybody’s blood?’

  ‘What else?’ he demanded, again puffing furiously so that he stood in a swirling cloud. ‘I suppose whichever planet it is this time is just as bad as the Sirians? Don’t tell me we’ve got to put up with all that guff about the Virtue again?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Do you know, I think I’d settle for a boss planet that described itself as bloody-minded, ruthless, and only out for what it could get. I think one more dose of all that Virtue will do me in.’

  ‘What’s in a word?’ I asked, not without a certain moral weariness.

  ‘At any rate, we won’t have to learn a new vocabulary for the new rulers.’

  ‘Why do you take it for granted you will be defeated?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know – it’s because of the reports of those, what are they, Klorathy? Half man, half bird? I’ve never even imagined … I can tell you, I’m scared stiff! I’ll admit it to you, though I wouldn’t to my mates, of course …’ And he looked quite exhausted with terror, shrunken with it. ‘I know we inhabitants of the Galaxy run to some pretty queer shapes and sizes. I mean, it took me a while to get used to this lot …’ And we looked, together, at people from S 181 standing all around us, watching curiously but with that passive, withdrawn, waiting look that marks a subordinate population biding its time. The tall, immensely thin creatures, with this dull yellow skin, their round black glistening eyes… ‘Compared with bird-men, this lot here are our twins!’

  ‘Ormarin, they aren’t bird-men …’ And I explained about the relationship the Maken have with their beasts. I saw Orm
arin’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 HISTORY OF THE VOLYEN EMPIRE,

  VOLUME 97, PART III:

  THE INVASION OF VOLYENDESTA BY

  MAKEN. (WRITTEN BY KLORATHY.)

  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 b
lack; 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.